Trellis Page 26

The young girl named E that looked like a younger version of D was handed a gun by Zombie guy, without hesitation she lifted the gun to Peter Coughlin’s head and shot him dead. No hesitation, no sign of remorse. Coughlin’s lifeless body slumped over slightly and the screen snapped to a black and white static. There would be no more messages from the doctor today or from Coughlin, ever.

  D fell to her knees and gaped at the black screen. “Why?” Was the only word she could utter.

  Colin tried to reason out what he witnessed, “He was no longer part of the Doctor’s plan. If you are D, and that was E… Was there an A, B and C clone that looked… like you? Why would he show you the video of Treeny. Wasn’t that the memory you said haunted your dreams? How can one man be filled with such evil and destruction, set to destroy what he had helped create…”

  D’s heartrate was racing so fast now that she couldn’t control what happened next. Fighting it off as long as she could but the feeling of deep dejected sadness filled every crevice of her memories. The feelings overwhelmed her and she felt a darkness enclose her eyesight, she slumped sideways onto the damp concrete floor.

  When she awoke, the men were standing over her discussing what the next action they would need to take should and would be.

  When Colin realized she had opened her eyes he moved to her and knelt beside her, pushing the wisps of hair from her batting eyelashes as she tried to focus. Her stomach and head were woozy as she tried to steady herself to stand.

  Colin reached out to her shoulder and with a slight force instructed her to stay put. “D, stay there for a moment and let the blood even out.”

  “Even out?” She asked confused.

  “I don’t know exactly, just give it a second, you have been out a few minutes. That was a lot to take in in a short time. Just move slowly, please.”

  “He isn’t going to stop till Trellis gets me back. Maybe it is a lost cause?” She speculated, still feeling somewhat faint. D took deep calculated breathes thinking she would forget to breath if she didn’t focus on her air intake.

  “Look me in the eyes. Do you see someone that just gives up? No, I will protect you. You have my word that the so called doctor I saw in that video, the girl E, and that freak of a Zombie guy will not get to you. I promise.”

  Looking up at Colin from under her wet eyelashes, she didn’t want to completely trust him with her life but she knew deep down he meant what he said, at least for now.

  He reassured her one more time, “I know you have never been able to trust anyone, you can trust me. These men. This group. You are no longer alone.”

  Her voice cracked and in a distant tone she asked, “The others? What are their opinions about helping me now… after seeing what Salvaggi was capable of, are they still willing?”

  Colin nodded assuredly at her. D took a deep reflective breath and nodded back in silent appreciation. She was going to have to trust this man in front of her and his friends. She had no option for the time being. She trusted them this far and she had hoped that Dr. Salvaggi’s message and promise of money of turning her in didn’t modify their original arrangement. She had hoped their character was stronger than his offer.

  She wondered what story would be disclosed to Ruby Coughlin about her husband’s death. Despite D not liking Coughlin, she knew that Peter and Ruby Coughlin shared a great love and it made her want to punch that younger replica of herself in the face. She knew this anger was misplaced, it was Salvaggi she was angry with, and he would get his, D would make sure of it. However, her intuition was shouting that she and this E would have an all-out battle someday.

  They spent many more hours on the island moving around cautiously and confirming there was no movement and no clones left. Compound by compound the men came to the realization that D had not exaggerated what she had described to them. How was this operation able to go on for so long on such a large scale and no one questioned it? No one had let this information slip after so many years? How can this be? The men now had more questions after being on the island than before they set foot on its shores. They were hoping the island would give up the secrets that D had intrigued them with when telling them her past life.

  D and Colin made their way to the cafeteria and D stood in the middle of the room while Colin moved around the tables and counters. D was flooded with emotions of Treeny and the last time she had seen the woman was there in that exact room.

  Without moving, she softly spoke, “Colin.”

  He looked up, intrigued why she was not as curious in this room as she had been in the others they had searched, “Yes, D.”

  “Will you open that cabinet behind you on the left?” She asked as she pointed behind him.

  “This one?” He asked as he reached out and opened the door completely revealing the contents.

  She viewed the sapphire glass pitcher that was so vivid in her memories. A vessel that Treeny had held many times. “Can we take that blue pitcher?” Her eyes filled with hot tears brimming to spill over.

  Colin gulped and his voice cracked at her pain as he answered, “Yes, sweetheart. This pitcher will come with us.” He wasn’t sure why she wanted it but he wasn’t about to question her motives. Clearly, she was reliving a memory that she didn’t want to share.

  “Thank you.” She bobbed her head in gratefulness and walked out the side doors into the courtyard. He followed behind her carrying the pitcher.

  Sloan, Harper, and Doc moved throughout the island from complex to complex on the asphalted pathways. Sloan left the path letting the others get ahead of him and searched for a place to relieve himself. Walking a little further than he normally would he saw something that caught his eye. He reached for his radio and asked the men and D to come to his coordinates. He moved warily towards what looked like a small bungle house draped in military camo netting.

  Sloan tried looking in the windows and made a completed circle around the heavily covered up home. He pulled out a large bladed knife from its sheath and began cutting an opening by the front door, slicing through it like butter. He looked back behind him to listen for the others but heard no one as of yet. He knew he needed to wait to enter the building and went over the right and wrongs in his mind.

  “Here goes nothing,” He gruffed as he turned the doorknob knowing it would be locked. Once it didn’t budge, he wrenched himself into the door easily pushing the lock apart from the doorjamb.

  ‘Too easy,’ he thought.

  He slowly pushed the door open with his long arm and peered inside. He saw a quick movement in the far room and he began to lift his weapon when he realized it was a mirror with his own reflection. He lowered his gun and lowered his caution. He chuckled to himself knowing he was here by himself as he stepped through the doorway and began taking in his surroundings. He had the strange sensation he was being watched but saw no one.

  He moved to a table and Barcalounger and began flipping through a picture album of sorts. The pages were filled with small photos of boys and girls like a school yearbook when he heard the couch behind him scoot and scratch across the tiled floor. He swung around with his gun drawn and his breath pulled from his lungs. There on the floor in front of him moved a mammoth size python snake. The colossal serpent sped towards Sloan with fangs exposed ready to coil around its dinner. The snake moved the legs of the furniture pushing things out of its way as it slithered rapidly. Sloan froze solid.

  ‘Was this real?’ Was the only thought Sloan could process.

  The thing looked as though it was over ten feet long and as large as Sloan’s thick thighs. As the thing reached Sloan’s legs ready to coil around the Hawaiian treat a bullet rang out from the doorway. The bullet stopped the slithering snake dead in it’s scaly tracks and Sloan sucked in an audible gasp. Sloan’s hero? Jase Furlough was standing there with his gun raised, white as a ghost.

  Sloan finally breathed in relief, “Thanks, man.”

  Jase nodded once not moving the aim of his gun at the snake waiting for it to move again. He fina
lly lifted a hand to his forehead and wiped a stream of sweat dripping down his hairline.

  “Is that real?” Jase stuttered.

  Sloan moved out from the front of the snake’s head to the thick body and gave it a push with his boot. “It is real.”

  “That is the best security alarm I have ever seen.” Jase croaked.

  “Hands down. My guess it hasn’t been fed in a long time.” Sloan surmised.

  “I would ask if there are others but I think they would have been eaten by now.” Jase reasoned as he stepped over it moving through the rest of the house slowly.

  Soon they could hear the others trotting to where they were. Once they reached the entry of the hidden home, they stopped dead in their tracks when they viewed the enormous python. The reptile was spread out in the living room revealing its massive size.

  Jase looked up at them and waved his gun at the floor and assured them it was dead.

  Colin looked angry, “Why would you kill that? Snakes help the environment!”

  Jase looked surprised that he had been reprimanded and scoffed back, “Well, we were going to be one Hawaiian friend short if I hadn’t.”

  Sloan slapped Jase on the back and whispered, “I guess I should be extra happy it was you that showed up first.”

  “No kidding…” Jase blurted back.

  Sloan asked D as she inspected the small home they were now standing in, “What is this place? Who lived here?”

  She shook her head, “I have no idea, Sloan.”

  He walked to the album he was looking at, careful to avoid the head of the snake and handed the book to D. She slowly flipped through it as the men looked around the living quarters.

  Colin stood at the small kitchenette and only spoke once he had formed a good awareness as to whom the home might belong. “I think this was Salvaggi’s home. I mean everything else was dismantled on the island. Yet nothing was taken here. He clearly had time to cover the outside and get a security system placed inside like that snake. He plans on coming back.”

  “Lets get any paperwork we can find here and I have plans for this building.” D said as she picked up the photo album and headed outside to continue looking through the pages.

  Harper had walked to a small set of hooks that held odd and ends of what looked like medical instruments and noticed a silver, band. The type of banded collar that D had described that Zombie guy had on at Fort Knox. He pulled it from the hook, turning around he waved it in the air at D and asked with a bemused look, “Could this be what Zombie guy had on? Could we be so lucky?”

  D focused in on the object looking it over, “That looks a lot like it. Of course, I was far away from the people wearing those things but it certainly looks similar.” She held the object, studying the circular gadget.

  Jase tossed a few notebooks in a small box and thought aloud, “I wonder if Doc could reverse engineer that thing. You know, so we can figure out what it is and how it works. Because if it keeps you out of our heads I am asking for one.”

  D squinted her eyes at him and grabbed a few more of the instruments on the wall that looked interesting and tossed them in the box. “Believe me, if this thing can keep me out of your thoughts, Jase Furlough, I am supergluing it to you myself.”

  Jase shrugged and grinned, “Yeah, yeah.”

  Close to an hour later, they had gathered a few small boxes of books, small peculiar medical instruments, and papers and carried them outside.

  D asked the men if they had a lighter and Harper handed her a small gold box. She walked back inside of the small home, scrutinizing one more time at the relatively normal living quarters and mused at how different it was from the home she knew on the island. She hated the doctor and wanted him to pay for everything he had done to her and the other clones, and not to mention the workers like Treeny.

  D lifted her hand up to the curtain in the small room and rolled her thumb across the lighter’s ignition wheel and a long flame burst out in the air. She slowly held it to the curtain until the flames started to lick up the material to the ceiling.

  Walking out of the building and she could hear the cracks of the fire cackle up the dry wood. The group of men and D watched the fire engulf the tiny home. Long black clouds raised high in the air and the breeze carried the smoke away. The dark smoked billowed in the air like smoke signaling the beginning of a war, and in reality, that is exactly what the small group had waged, a war on Trellis.

  Not one of the men questioned her intentions or asked her not to burn the home down. They let her, knowing that this was the first time she was able to get revenge on a man that had wreaked so much harm on her life and others.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight ~

  Floating in the submarine D’s mind was whirling; she wasn’t sure what to think or what to do next. She couldn’t even form her words in to a coherent audible thought. Finally, after an hour when her thoughts started to clear she began to process what she witnessed on the video. She sat there with Peter Coughlin’s military jacket across her lap.

  Coughlin didn’t deserve to die, how could this clone that looked like D have taken someone’s life like that in such a quick cruel way, and what else was this E capable of doing? An insidious fear pierced her resolve in a thousand different capacities and she was coming to terms with the knot that had set up permanent residence in her gut.

  She could hear the men’s thoughts; they were as confused as she was. They had all witnessed the same thing on the video that Colin and D had and no one had a response that seemed sufficient in this situation. They didn’t exactly train you for this situation in Special Force training.

  She lifted her head gazing unseemly at a spot on the submarine’s hull and dryly asked, “Can I get a bottled water?”

  The men were surprised to hear her speak and by the looks they were giving one another, hearing her small voice was a relief.

  Colin walked to her handing her a clear plastic bottle, “Here you go, kid.”

  “I’m not a kid,” She cracked.

  Colin closed his eyes. He didn’t mean the phrase in a negative way but he guess it sounded that way to her. “I know you aren’t a kid. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. You are in no way a kid and you have proved that time and time again. Now that we know you will be eighteen soon we should do something, plan something.” He wasn’t sure what but normal people had birthday parties and cake and stuff he told himself.

  She nodded at him in acceptance of his apology but ignored the birthday remark.

  He sat next to her on the metal bench and asked, “You must be exhausted.”

  She nodded again.

  “When we get back you can sleep as long as you need,” he sighed, feeling her depression and hopelessness. He reached out and placed his strong arm around her shoulders pulling her into the side of him tightly.

  Again, she nodded, fighting back tears.

  She couldn’t believe he could show someone that had done so many cruel things in her life any compassion whatsoever but he had. She wanted to melt into his protection and hide from the world. Too soon, he let his grip go and stood to walk back to the circle of men going through the box of books and papers they took from the now burned home.

  D looked up at him walking away and in exasperation, “Colin, we need to talk. You said you had déjà vu back there in the courtyard. That was the word you used? What was it you saw?”

  “It was nothing. It was a stupid feeling and it passed.”

  “No, please… Answer me. What flashes of memory did you see?”

  Colin sighed, he knew she wasn’t going to let this go and not to mention she was under tremendous strain and decided to cooperate.

  “I saw a swing and a young girl. That was it. As if I had dreamed the scene and the swing in the courtyard just happened to jog my memory. No big deal.” He explained indifferent.

  “When you met Mr. Zhao you could speak Chinese. Where and when did you learn that language?” She asked with an accusing tone in her voice.


  All the men had stopped what they were doing and listened to the exchange between Colin and D.

  Sloan chimed in as well, “Yeah, we’ve never asked that. Where does a kid raised in Louisiana learn Chinese?”

  Colin was silent, trying to remember a memory that wouldn’t come to mind was irritating him and being nagged about it was worse.

  “Colin, answer us.” D urged, again.

  “I just have always known it. Since I could remember. I never thought about it. Sissy knows it as well. Lots of people speak another language.” He reasoned.

  D looked at him puzzled. “No. Not that language. What is your earliest memory growing up?”

  Colin was getting tired of all the attention focused on him and he started to show annoyance. “I guess learning to ride my bike when I was about fourteen. What are you guys getting at?”

  Jase piped up, “You didn’t learn to ride a bike till you were fourteen?”

  The others all agreed that was a late age to learn.

  D tapped her fingers on the metal table staring at Colin, to satiate her feelings of uneasiness about his childhood she asked, “Do you have a picture of your parents?”

  Colin tugged out a leather wallet and pulled a small family picture out. An old worn-out picture the group could tell he had had in his wallet for a long time. He looked at the family memento affectionately for a few seconds and slowly handed it to her. D looked down at the cherished keepsake Colin had held so dearly and viewed something that would change his memories forever.

  “This is your mom, dad, Sissy, and you?” D asked in disbelief. “How old were you here?”

  “Fourteen and Sissy was about nine, I guess. Why? Tell me where you are going with this interrogation.”

  “Your mom here, this lady in the picture, was my nurse... On the island. The one that never talked to me, only took my vitals like she was a… robot.”

  “My mom was a sweet warm lady. Kindest woman I know, knew...” Remembering her death brought up pain, which only made him angry.

  “This man here, your dad, he was Dr. Salvaggi’s security, his right hand man. Sissy and you, you were what Dr. Salvaggi called L12 and L13,” she didn’t get to finish her sentence before the look on Colin’s face twisted in confusion. He was remembering more now that she had said the names L12 and L13, D was sure of it..