What Happened to Lori Read online

  Grim texted, surprising himself with what he wrote.

  YOU’RE FIRED.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

  Grim’s finger hovered over the send button.

  And kept hovering.

  And kept hovering.

  THE EXPERIMENT ○ August 16, 2017 ○ 4:56+am ○ 7442497503118564

  how long have I been here

  who am I

  who are we

  are these my thoughts

  or are these my thoughts

  or these

  or all

  or none

  what… what is wrong with this body

  WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS BODY

  arms

  legs

  ears

  what am I looking at

  too many too many too many

  what is this

  pain

  SO MUCH PAIN

  make it stop make it stop MAKEITSTOP

  PRESLEY ○ August 17, 2017 ○ 1:21pm

  Fabler finished the teriyaki chicken Presley had prepared for lunch, and naturally didn’t have any comments, positive or negative.

 

  “What’s next? Shooting sprints?”

  “Something new today.”

 

  Fabler left the kitchen and returned with… something.

 

  He spent a few minutes attaching it to the bracket on the top of her helmet so she could see her own face.

  “What’s this for? Checking my make-up?”

  “I want you to jog around the cabin. Backward. Use it like a rearview mirror.”

  Presley put on her helmet and followed him outside. Then she tried walking backward.

 

  “Be careful; when I did this, I kept hitting the corners of the house when I made a turn.”

  “You did this?”

  “Six times. When you were in town yesterday.”

  He took out his stopwatch, which she’d come to loathe.

  “Go.”

  Presley took the first lap slow, not quite jogging, getting used to navigating in a mirrored image.

  “I need you faster than that.”

  She didn’t bother to ask him why; he wouldn’t say.

  On the second time around, her brain got the hang of it, and she cut her time in half.

  “Faster.”

  After her third lap, Fabler stood in her path, and when she tried to go around him, he blocked her.

  Presley halted. “Am I stopping?”

  “Try to hit me.”

  “You’re behind me.”

  “Remember when I made you shadow box?”

  “Sure.”

  “Try mirror boxing. Look at me, in the mirror, and try to hit me like I’m standing in front of you.”

 

  It took Presley a little while to figure out how direction worked, left and right, forward and back, but within a few minutes she could anticipate Fabler’s reflection and hit where he moved.

  Then he pulled out a flare, and Presley inwardly groaned and pulled down her welding goggles, knowing what he wanted next.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

  After two more hours of backward mirror nonsense, Fabler allowed her to remove her gear.

  She almost fell over.

  After a few minutes, her brain readjusted to normal movement, and he announced they were done for the day.

 

  She stowed her equipment for tomorrow, then showered the sweat and zinc oxide off her body.

  Fabler made dinner. Fried pork chops, mashed potatoes.

 

  Presley kept the compliment to herself.

  After dinner, more science fiction DVDs awaited. Since the only movies Fabler had in the house were ones they’d already seen, Presley assumed be bought new discs every time he went into town.

 

  “Can’t you pick up a comedy? Or romance? I’m getting a little tired of watching Will Smith save the world.”

  “This is Independence Day: Resurgence. Will Smith isn’t in this one.”

  “Have you ever heard of Nicholas Sparks?”

  “No.”

  “How about Pixar? Toy Story? Something fun?”

  “I’ll tell you what; if you start paying me a salary, we can watch Toy Story.”

 

  So she endured the Independence Day sequel, which actually suffered from the lack of Will Smith.

  Next, Fabler put on Battle: Los Angeles, and seemed uncharacteristically enthused about it.

  “I’ve seen this. Whoever the military advisor is, they did a great job.”

  “I’m sure it’ll be amazing.”

  Twenty minutes into it, Presley fell asleep.

  She woke up an undetermined time later.

  The television was off, but Fabler remained sitting there. In the dark. Staring at her.

  “What time is it?”

  “A little after one am. Good nap?”

  “Yeah. You’ve just been… sitting here?”

  “Got a lot to think about.”

  “Want to share any of it?”

  “I was thinking about atomic clocks.”

  “Atomic clocks?”

  “I’ve been reading a lot of science books lately. Physics. Astronomy. Quantum mechanics.”

  Presley hadn’t seen any books lying around the house.

  “Atomic clocks are supposed to be ridiculously accurate, right?”

  “Accurate. And dependable. All clocks work on the same principle. They keep track of ticks of a resonator. A resonator on a grandfather clock is the pendulum. On a watch, it’s usually a spring. A digital clock uses oscillations of the power line, or a quartz crystal. An atomic clock uses the frequency of cesium atoms. It keeps perfect time, within one second, for up to fifteen billion years.”

  “Interesting.”

  “You were in the military. You know the importance of accuracy. And dependability. Soldiers are trained to act and react in certain ways. That’s why there is so much routine. Wake up at a certain time. Make up your bed. Shit, shave, shower, and shine. March. Drill. Repeat. You know why?”

  “So when things get FUBAR, you can fall back on your skills. And on your team.”

  “Exactly. I’ve found there are two types of people in the world, Presley. Those who wake up and make their beds. And those who don’t. Which one would you want on your side when the shit goes down?”

  “Is this a subtle way of telling me you want me to start making my bed?”

  “I don’t check to see if you’re making your b
ed or not. But whether you do or not, it isn’t about me. It’s about you.”

 
 

  “How was your movie?”

  “I paused it when you nodded off.”

  “Oh. Thanks.”

  Fabler pressed a button on the remote and the TV came on. “I rewound a little bit, to catch you up.”

  Presley yawned, making it louder than required. “I think I’m going to bed.”

  “Stay and finish. The military advisor on this movie did a great job.”

  Presley stayed and finished.

  When Presley finally went to bed, she hoped to dream about Tom Hanks as a cowboy doll.

  Instead she dreamt of national monuments blowing up.

  GRIM ○ August 18 ○ 3:02am

  “Do you like what I’m wearing, Grim?”

  “Yes.”

  Presley’s clingy red dress had less fabric than a handkerchief, hugging her perfect body so tight he could count her heartbeats through the material, and she wore red pumps with impossibly high heels.

  “Do you want to have sex with me, Grim?”

  “Yes.”

  Presley smiled. “Not even in your dreams. You know this is a dream, don’t you?”

  “Yes. That’s why you’re two hundred feet tall.”

  Giant Presley smiled, an impossibly wide goblin smile, baring teeth like crooked, thrift-store knives. “You’re a worthless, insignificant jerk, Grim. You’ll never have me. You’ll never have anything.”

  As Giant Presley lifted her giant spikey heel to impale him, Grim woke up.

  He looked around for the liquor bottle, and the realization slapped him.

 

  That realization hit even harder than that nightmare.

 
 
 

  A thought so amusing that Grim actually LOLed.

 
 
 

  He closed his eyes, trying to get back to sleep, hoping that if Giant Presley stepped on him, it would be a quick death.

  THE WATCHER ○ August 19 ○ 2:18+am

  Armless and legless, the Watcher rolls through the mud, naked, surrounded by rutting, stinking, wild hogs.

  He screams, and during mid-scream his head is severed from his torso and grafted to the underbelly of a pig.

  As his face drags upside-down through the mud, the Watcher realizes he is in the slaughterhouse line. The pig he is attached to is trotting up the ramp—

  —to the grinder.

  He hears laughter.

  Familiar laughter.

  Fake laughter.

  Mu.

  The Watcher wakes himself up.

 

  Then he goes to check the cage.

  FABLER ○ August 20 ○ 5:31am

  For once, the nightmare wasn’t about Lori.

  It was about Iraq.

  Fabler spat sand—sand got in everything—then motioned for Grim to breech. They were thirty clicks west of Kirkuk, weaving through makeshift housing comprised of metal shipping containers stacked three high and five long, welded together for protection against shamal; the strong winds.

  The door was nothing more than a corrugated panel on rusty hinges. Grim knelt next to the doorknob, then unclipped the borescope hanging on his belt; a gun-shaped device with a small monitor on the top and a meter of flexible tubing where the muzzle would be. He uncurled the tube, stuck it in the crack between door and frame, and powered up the screen, peeking inside the domicile.

  “No trips, no wires, no IEDs.” Grim grimaced. “Man down.”

  “Hoopland?” They’d been searching for the abducted journalist for over a week.

  “Can’t tell.”

  “He breathing?”

  “Negative.”

  Grim tilted the endoscope, letting Fabler see the screen.

  The outside temperature topped a hundred and four degrees, but Fabler shivered.

 

  Grim retracted the camera, squared it away, and put his hand on the door handle, waiting for Fabler’s signal.

  Fabler didn’t bring his weapon to the ready, still trying to get that image out of his head.

 

  “Fabler?”

  Fabler shifted his gaze to Grim, then nodded an affirmative.

  “You freeze?”

  “I’m good.”

  “We going in, or waiting around to be humped by sand cats?”

  Fabler nodded again.

  But he didn’t bring up his rifle.

  Grim rolled his eyes and abandoned procedure, opening the door without being covered, switching on the tactical light attached to the picatinny rail of his M4 carbine and entering the container, low and slow.

  His friend’s breach of protocol snapped Fabler out of his stupor, and he switched on his tac light and brought up his weapon, covering left as Grim covered right, doing a ninety-degree sweep as the stench of dead, rotting, partially cooked journalist assaulted his nose and throat and a thick, flying blanket of sandflies buzzed over them.

  Once they established the room was clear, Fabler’s eyes fell on the corpse.

  Then they fell on the corpse’s head, several meters away.

  Eyes open, milky and bloated, mouth gaping.

  A camel spider the size of a rat crawling through the bloody, matted hair.

  “That’s Hoopland.” Grim waved away some flies. “And they left a record of it.”

  Grim’s flashlight beam moved to the left of the body, illuminating a videotape.

  In real life, they brought the tape back to base, and didn’t see it until it appeared on the news a few days later.

  In the dream, Fabler and Grim watched it immediately.

  Hoopland, bound to a chair, crying while being forced to read anti-US propaganda.

  Hoopland, begging for his life as the cutting began.

  They used a knife.

  It took eleven slices, back and forth, before getting all the way through his neck.

  Hoopland’s severed head blinked several times, and his lips moved as if trying to speak, even though he made no sound.

  In the dream, he actually did speak.

  “You killed her, Fabler. And more are going to die because of you.”

  Fabler woke up unable to breathe, the terror of sleep paralysis amplified by his brain losing oxygen.

 

  And then his diaphragm lurched and Fabler sat up in bed and took great gulps of air while his hands unconsciously rubbed his own neck.

 

  Fabler quickly vanished the thought.

 
 
 

  After a minute of getting his breathing back under control, Fabler flipped on the nightstand light and noticed a fly perched atop his lampshade. One of those metallic-green houseflies, the kind that caught light like an emerald.

  Fabler swatted it away, and if flew off, soundlessly.

 

  He got out of bed, trying to watch his step so the creaky floor didn’t wake Presley, and padded

  into the kitchen, finding the bag from the hardware store, unwrapping the roll of flypaper, pulling off a ten inch section and hanging it above the refrigerator.

  The fly had followed him into the kitchen and executed a lazy eight near the microwave.

&n
bsp; “There’s the paper.” Fabler pointed. “Go kill yourself.”

  The fly left the room.

  Fabler gave the paper a long glance, then he left the room, too.

  PRESLEY ○ August 22 ○ 3:31am

  She couldn’t sleep. So her mind wandered.

  She thought about Brooklyn.

  She thought about Grim. His smell. His lips on her neck.

 
 

  So she thought about Fabler. About the job.

 
 
 

  The training had become almost routine. Lots of repetition. Lots of sticking to a regimented schedule, the only exception when Fabler woke her up at odd hours. Then it became a mad rush to leap out of bed and play dress up like an idiot, putting on the football pads and sunscreen and contact lenses and holsters and guns and goggles and backpack.

  Then Presley would light a flare and jog through every room in the dark house, knowing the layout so well she hardly needed the flare to navigate.

  Then she’d do a lap around the cabin.

  Then another lap in the opposite direction.

  Then breakfast, in full gear, though Fabler allowed her to remove the welding goggles.

  She would cook. Wearing the fifty pound backpack.

  To make things even weirder, Fabler wore the same ensemble. He’d perch on a stool while she made eggs, because the bulk of his backpack made a chair impossible.

  After eating, shooting sprints.

  Then grappling, in full football gear.

  Then lunch.

  Fabler usually cooked. Some boring variety of meat-based sandwich, though Presley had some success in getting him to expand his mayonnaise game by mixing it with various herbs, spices, and vegetables.

  After lunch, Fabler would disappear for a while. Sometimes for ten minutes. Sometimes for over an hour.

  When he returned, weight training.

  After weight training, cardio.

  After cardio, walking through the house, wearing a blindfold and ear plugs, counting the steps from the kitchen to the bedroom to the living room to the front door.

 
 

  Then maybe shadow boxing. Or sightless target practice. Or running backward in the mirror helmet.