The Prisoner - Carlos J. Cortes [55]
“Well, if it’s not Sleeping Beauty returning to the land of the living!” Raul emerged from the gloom between two fires farther down the platform, followed by Henry, another man, and a scrawny kid carrying a box. She could have retorted there had been no kiss from a handsome prince, but she felt too weary and drowsy. Rather than the land of the living, the abandoned tunnel felt like someone’s deep, dark thoughts buried and repressed in an empty room of the brain, accessible only by nightmares and shrinks.
“This is Metronome,” Henry said.
She nodded and focused on the boy; he was perhaps ten to twelve years old, although his age was difficult to guess under a coat of grime. His head swung nonstop from side to side, a thin dribble of spit dangling from wet lips. Regardless of the motion, his intelligent eyes remained riveted on hers.
Laurel sat upright. Henry reached for two small empty crates and kicked a third one ahead of him.
“How long have I been asleep?” Laurel asked.
“Almost four hours, but don’t worry, you haven’t missed anything,” Raul answered.
“And him?” She glanced toward Russo.
Raul paused before answering. “As the doctor says, stable.”
Dying, she thought. The men moved the boxes to form a semicircle around her. Metronome lowered his box—a polymer container with a wire mesh stretched over its top. The other man remained erect, as if standing at attention, close to the curved platform wall and away from the light. He was almost as tall as Henry, and gaunt. Decked head to toe in a long black overcoat, he looked like an old photograph she had once seen of Grigory Rasputin, the mad monk of czarist Russia, complete with lank hair plastered down the sides of his face and a matted beard reaching to his chest. Laurel swallowed.
“I’ll get some light.” Henry turned on his heel and entered the opening in the curved wall, reappearing a few seconds later with a rusty stand, like those used in hospital wards to hang IV drips on half a century before. He reached under Russo’s stretcher to pick up one of their LAD flashlights, turned it on, and hooked it to the contraption. Its last user must have set it on low, but it cast a pleasant white circle on the floor.
Henry settled on his crate, clearly disturbing whatever festered underneath the greatcoat and sending forth a sharp waft of stench. Laurel peered toward the fires, wishing someone would resume cooking, then glanced once more toward the unnerving figure standing straight in the gloom.
Henry followed her gaze and swiveled toward the silent man. “Barandus.”
“Pardon?”
“My friend Barandus. He’s offered to help. Good man.” With that, he turned away, and Laurel suspected no further information would be forthcoming.
Floyd had roused. He stretched, looked around the area he’d commandeered as his domain, squatted somewhere beyond Russo, and returned with a self-heating unlabeled bag. He offered it to Laurel. “You must be starving. Here. Henry gave me a few. It’s only rice, but your stomach can’t take much more than this anyway. How long since your last meal? Thirty-six hours? Forty-eight?”
“Something like that.” She inspected the bag; it looked intact but old and grimy. With a sigh, she pulled a red tab that would cause two chemicals to mix in its base and produce heat. When she felt it warming, she settled it against the wall to cook.
Henry followed her motions. “It’s good rice, organic; none of that cloned stuff. My wife hoarded tons of it.”
“You live here with your wife?” Laurel asked, aghast.
A cloud passed across his eyes. “I had a mate, a wonderful woman, fat and homely. Before descending