Chapter 5:
Over the next weeks, John walked further, exploring the grounds within the Compound. It was mostly quite pleasant parkland featuring garden beds, many still choked with weeds, an avenue of overgrown climbing roses sprawled over a trellis, and trees, big trees, growing in clumps and avenues, with heavy branches intermingling with that of their immediate neighbors. Always, there was a chorus of bird calls.
For the guards, it was a more pleasant job than they’d expected. Their subject seemed cheerful and they were forgetting that he was not a normal human, but something else, possibly something dangerous.
The Colonel watched some film with Isaac one day, an edited collection that showed John’s introduction to the new bedroom, and clips of him relating to his guards and to Isaac. John still refused to cooperate in any tests when requested, but it was in a perfectly good humored fashion. They hadn’t attempted to force anything on him. He said, “I’m surprised he’s settled down so well. The way he knocked out Will and destroyed Ward 3 didn’t leave me optimistic.”
Isaac said, “You forget. He has total amnesia which appears to be permanent. He doesn’t know any other home, and as long as we treat him well, I expect he’ll remain perfectly contented.”
“He seems to be getting a lot stronger.”
Isaac nodded. “Weight’s improving all the time, and he’s walking further and faster each day. The stagger that he used to show is gone, although he still has trembling attacks, maybe related to the fitting he’s prone to.”
Mark said with satisfaction, “We’re learning things about him, too. The strategy of allowing him a reasonable degree of freedom is a good one.”
“I wish I could get him to do an IQ test, and maybe a personality test. It’s clear he’s unusual.”
Mark looked at him, thinking that they might be able to try a little trickery. There were demands for quicker results in certain quarters, and Mark had watched enough film of the subject that he felt a certain fondness for him. If Colonel Forster was put in charge of him, for instance, John could be treated very differently.
It may have been a relatively pleasant captivity, but John wanted his freedom. He was too well guarded, the fences were too high, even the entry drive now had two guarded gates, only one of which was ever opened at a time. Every day he walked the perimeter, which was now beginning to show a track, as it was a favorite walk of off duty soldiers, as well. He made friends with the dogs first, but soon knew most of the perimeter guards by name. The only conceivable escape would be by taking a hostage, but John recoiled at the idea. In any case, Rick had happened to mention that they had orders to sacrifice any hostage up to and including a general, rather than allow his escape.
He’d found some privacy now, in the treetops. He could see well in the trees, as it seemed they helped him. Even without touching, he could feel within himself where the branches were. He was quick and nimble, a lot more so than his guards realized. They always just stayed around at the foot of the tree that he climbed, knowing he was there from the flash of bright color high above. But John habitually took his shirt off, left it in his favorite tree, and then leapt to the next tree, and then another and another, ending up a considerable distance from his guards.
He spent hours just watching the gate, waiting for the times when his vision would clear, tolerating the times when he could barely see. He thought nothing of his eccentric vision. It was just the way he’d always been able to see. But security was complete. How on earth could he escape? Just one man, and there were scores of guards. And they were not careless or incompetent guards. From a high perch in a tree, he’d watched them at Physical Training, he’d watched them when they ran obstacle courses, and he’d watched them at rifle practice, which made him shudder somewhat, but he had to know.
The birds of the trees liked him, and he liked to talk to them. It was Autumn, and they were no longer nesting. But John never called them from the sky when people watched. He never saw other people talking to birds, and had become very secretive about anything which he thought might be unusual, though he still was sure that the film of the so-called ‘shave’ some weird joke.
They said he had more privileges because he was being well behaved. But John studied Isaac as he told him that he could use some of the soldiers’ facilities whenever his personal guards permitted, the gymnasium, and the swimming pool as soon as it was complete. It was more of the same, a way of Isaac and Mark measuring his fitness and looking for evidence of unusual powers. There were still cameras everywhere. But John was sincerely pleased. Isaac thought he was still too thin, but John thought he was strong, not knowing how far he was from normal fitness.
Every day then, he added a stint in the gymnasium, his efforts always noted by Isaac. And when the indoor pool was finished, he started swimming every day, too. He knew a lot of the soldiers now, especially those who shared his tastes in exercise. They knew him as a personality, not just as the subject. Except for breakfast, he ate in the staff dining room, and his personal guards only watched from a distance as he joined those he knew, and laughed and joked with them, although there had been some natural awkwardness at the beginning.
It was the soldiers’ talk that alerted him to a deprivation he hadn’t even noticed. He was never allowed to watch TV or hear the radio. Isaac thought talk of current events might disturb him. He had films to watch, and now sometimes invited a guard or one of the nurses to join him. Only if someone watched with him could he really see what was happening, and he needed to know there was an outside world.
One Sunday, Rudy suggested that he should attend the weekly Church Service that was always held for the soldiers. John agreed, mostly on the basis that it was a good idea to seem settled. But he was soon yawning, fidgeted like a child, and left with relief.
The trees lost their last leaves, and John could no longer hide from his guards. He gave up swinging himself through the trees, as he wanted to preserve that ability for use next Summer. The thought that he would still be there next Summer made him very restless.
There was one of the perimeter guards whom he’d talk to every morning, as he made his customary circuit of the Compound. The officers had been told to encourage this sort of interaction, and the soldiers were expected to report on the conversation, especially if anything interesting was said. The way the trained attack dogs fawned on the subject was another piece of evidence that he was something different.
John liked Alec, and Alec was lured into talking about his family, and about the everyday doings of the small town he’d grown up in. John couldn’t get enough, and listened avidly as Alec talked, John on his side of the high barbed wire topped fence, and Alec on his, Butch usually curled up next to the fence, as close to John as he could get.
The weather was getting colder, and although the large outdoor swimming pool was now finished, no-one ventured in. The heated indoor pool was popular, though. There began to be talk of Christmas plans, and John became more and more restless, no longer able to totally hide his discontent from those who watched. He’d come to realize that he did, after all, have cameras watching in his room, though he didn’t know from where they looked. So when his eyes followed the women who worked in the cafeteria, or the few female soldiers, he turned away again. He had no privacy to be with a woman, and he thought that if he came too close, just to talk, it would hurt only more.
The soldiers had an undemanding job. There was only one man to guard, and he was easy to get on with, never threatened anyone, and seemed content to be just where he was. Security was relaxed, though still efficient. John’s personal guards were satisfied to know where he was, and didn’t stay very close except when he wanted company. There were usually only one or two now.
A female worker wanted to show her new baby to her workmates in the cafeteria, though it was not strictly allowed. John was at lunch, chatting to Kyle and Edward, with whom he’d been swimming. He looked up. Sheila had been heavily pregnant when she left, and now she ha
d a tiny baby in her arms. She was surrounded by cooing workmates, and even some of the soldiers had gone to have a look.
Irresistibly attracted, John rose from the table, took a few steps, and held out his hands, a plea on his face. Sheila hesitated, but then put her baby in his arms. John held the tiny girl with an obvious familiarity, and caressed the soft cheek. He had tears in his eyes. No-one was very worried that he could be dangerous to either Sheila or her baby, his fighting ability having been almost forgotten.
Quite suddenly, he handed back the baby, turned and walked out, striding. His guards were caught inattentive, one having gone to the toilet. John had a long lead. He couldn’t leave, of course. There was no alarm, no risk of an escape, the personal guards more to make sure that John didn’t hurt himself or anybody else than to prevent escape.
By the time he came to the fence, he’d shed his shoes and socks. He scrambled over the first fence, ignoring the deep wounds from the barbed wire, crossed the intervening strip, only briefly patting Butch as he passed, and was up and over the second fence, ruthless with himself as more deep scratches hurt him. Alec ran toward him, shouting, too late to use the stun gun.
The orders came just in time, and the electrified fence was no longer lethal when John scrambled over it. He was at the last barrier. Alec called again, and then sent a stream of bullets across his legs. John jerked, and his legs dangled uselessly, and still he pulled himself up over the fence and dropped down the other side. He tried to get up and walk, but his wounded legs would not support him. Fallen, he still stretched a hand in the direction he longed to go.
Alec let himself and Butch out, and ran to his friend whom he’d had to shoot. Butch was already there, as John turned himself over onto his back. The pain hit, and John clutched a handful of the dog’s thick ruff and buried his face against the strong warm body until it eased.
Butch whimpered, and licked his face. John took a deep breath, and when Alec knelt beside him, distressed, he smiled slightly at him and apologized for putting him in that position. But then he closed his eyes and just waited. There was so much blood - from his legs, and from cuts all over his body. Barbed wire was sharp. It was his own fault. He’d lost control just because he held a baby. But the memory of the tiny face sent a pain through him just as sharp as that of the bullet holes in his legs.
They let Butch go with him when they took him back to Ward 3. Touching the dog seemed to help him cope with the pain. He refused any injection, only saying to Isaac, perfectly calmly, that he was terrified of injections, and would fight if they persisted. Isaac nodded. Silly, silly man, how could he have been such an arrant fool? He had the story now, that holding a baby had so upset him that he’d made the doomed escape attempt. Isaac thought it might instead have been a suicide attempt. It was obvious that his apparent contentment had been either a sham, or short-lived.
Whether he was frightened of drugs or not, he had to be anaesthetized when the bullet wounds were repaired. But he was weak from loss of blood as well as pain and shock, and when Zack and Bob held him down, the initial injection was made quite easily, to Isaac’s relief.
The wounds were not as bad as they first looked, one bullet had shattered his right tibia, but the fibula was still intact. His left leg had taken two bullets, but both had gone straight through, one just barely grazing the tibia. The soft tissue, however, was a mess. It wasn’t Isaac’s area of expertise, and a surgeon was brought in. The repair work was done within the facility, a small, but well equipped operating theatre and X-Ray Department housed within the same block that included Ward 3 and John’s living quarters.
When he woke again, much later that night, John turned his head slowly to look through that horrible wall. The man who observed turned his eyes away. It made him nervous when the subject met his eyes, when it was not supposed to be possible.
The IV stand looked a little bent, but a plastic bottle of blood dripped down through the narrow tube. Comprehension dawned, and the needle was yanked out before the nurse could intervene.
Isaac just shrugged. It was no good persevering, John was a very stubborn man. And anyway, it might teach him a lesson when he realized how slow his recovery would be if he didn’t allow a blood transfusion. It had long been established that his blood group was shared by at least a tenth of the population. He was not unusual in that respect.
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