Sacrifices - Chapter 5
Rating: TMT for TOO MUCH TALKING. Sheesh(also wanton cruelty to the common comma)
Summary: plans are made, old men are tied up, and something finally happens. Maybe?
Dan lay on the visitor’s couch, having given up his bed to a newly arrived patient. It was past midnight, but sleep had never seemed further from his mind. Dalton’s words echoed in his head.
He likes coming at night, when there’s the least notice. He comes in to cull the weak and the wounded.
The clock hung crooked on the wall. The second hand seemed to work uphill as the minutes ticked by.
He comes in through a side door, but if it’s locked he’ll chance the front door. Don’t appear confrontational, and don’t get too close.
Dan took a deep breath, eyes burning holes in the ceiling. The object in his pocket had a peculiar weight, almost too much for its size.
Don’t let him go anywhere. Don’t let anyone see you do it. Get him to tell you what we need and then restrain him somehow. Find a closet or a bathroom and lock him in. Just make damn sure he can’t follow us.
The front bell tinkled. Dan tried to calm the hammering of his pulse, forced himself not to bolt upright.
The old man stood in front of him, smiling amiably, as if waiting for him.
“Well,” he said in a voice even older than his face, “I have a welcoming party.”
Dan crossed the room in a few long strides, leveling his coat pocket at the old man’s back.
“I have a gun in my hand,” he said softly, “don’t scream and do what I say.”
To his dismay, the old man began croaking laughter. “You will not shoot me,” he said, “your face is too kind.”
Dan ground his teeth a little. “Just shut up and follow me.”
He steered them to the supply closet. It was unnerving how calm the old man was, like he was leading rather than being led.
“You have my ear, Daniel.” The old man grinned like tar. Dan grimaced and took the gun from his pocket.
“I only want to know what the code to gate is.”
The old man’s face fell, as if to say oh, that’s all?
Dan shifted his grip, hoping he wouldn’t have to fire. “Tell me, old man.”
Joy bloomed on the old man’s face. “I will tell. I have more than that, if you want to know.”
“Only that.”
The old man clucked his tongue. “Your friend spoke highly of you. It makes me sad to prove him wrong.”
“Whoever it was,” Dan snarled, “he knew nothing about me.”
The old man was very forthcoming with the details, and Dan didn’t like his cheerful composure as he locked the supply closet door. The next shift nurse wouldn’t be by for hours, the old man would be fine in there till then.
There was a soft padding down the hall and Dan took cover at a corner, cursing silently. His gun hand wouldn’t stop shaking.
Saeng waddled into view. She had been up, probably going to the bathroom for the twentieth time that night. She had told Dan a story once of how the child stood on her bladder when she dreamed of water, crinkling her face up in a way that made Dan laugh until he cried. Suddenly he desperately needed to talk to her.
He stood up slowly and called to her. “Saeng.”
“Ah.” She started slightly, but didn’t freak out. A smile, half puzzled, spread over her features. “Mr. Dan?”
Dan couldn’t figure out what to say next. He wanted to ask for a hug, but couldn’t really come up with a better reason beyond ‘I need someone to touch me to make sure I’m still human.’
Instead he said, “I’m going Saeng. I’m going after the others, the ones Surama took away.”
“Ahhh.” Something heavy slid into place behind the girl’s eyes, a kind of melancholic understanding. The patients had probably known about this long before anyone else, and yet they’d had to accept it as part of life here. Dan was filled with a sudden, crushing despair and fished through his gunless pocket. He came up with a fistful of crumpled bills.
“Here,” he gasped. He’d scrounged this up for medical supplies, it wasn’t nearly enough for that, but for a woman with child, maybe, maybe...
“Here.” He deposited it into her cupped hands as she puzzled her brow at him. “For- for the baby. This place won’t be here, much longer, Saeng, do you have somewhere else to go? “
Saeng cocked her head, studied him. Her face was a cool mask of sorrow, dread, and (he realized only later) pity.
“Dan,” she whispered, “there is always somewhere.”
~`~`~`~
Dalton had the car running, there was an endless mountain of butts stagnating in the ash tray. At Dan’s nod they set on their way, up the winding hills to the Clarendon estate.
Forty minutes into the drive and both were completely silent. Dalton appeared to be doing some deep-sea navel gazing, while Dan weighed his crushing existential dread over his more immediate circumstantial dread. He came to the conclusion that both sucked, but didn’t make much progress beyond that.
“He’d wanted a boy,” Dalton said, apropos of nothing. The road unspooled on either side of them. Dan waited, but no follow-up was forthcoming.
“Who?” he prompted.
Dalton started, as if Dan had been the one to break the interminable silence.
“Nothing, just...she didn’t even get her own name. Georgie. That was what they wanted to name the first boy, stillborn. She got saddled with it, and then with Alfie when their mom up and died and daddy decided he didn’t want to bother paying for help.”
Dalton swallowed, he seemed to be gearing up for a rant. “He’s responsible for a lot of this, you know. Never taught Alfie how to act like a human being. And Georgie... she grew up being a doormat, she died-” his voice cracked.
Dan watched the trees whip by. They were up in the foothills by now, green swaths of grass dotted by oaks curling into dark shadows. The air smelled like summer. In another life, he wouldn’t have minded coming here. To visit.
“I think Herbert got a little of that,” he surprised himself by saying, “only his dad was...Herbert doesn’t talk about his family much, you understand. His dad had...mental issues, from what I gather, that got worse after his mom died. Only there was no Georgie for him.” No, only you, a voice said in his brain.
Dalton chewed on his lower lip and shifted into second as they crested a hill. “Isn’t that funny? These people, they’ve got more just...rattling around in their brains than all the rest of us put together, but because of this or that, such little, petty things...”
Silence rolled over the car again. Dan thought of John, what he would have done. All that was humanly possible, really, and then even more. He was not John. He would do what needed to be done, and if that wasn’t enough he would cheat.
He wondered if John went smiling to his death, happy to be of help even one last time. Something inside him clenched.
“We’re there,” Dalton announced.
The mansion, remote as it was, had a very complex security system. The gate was only the first hurdle, there were specially bred Mongolian attack dogs, tripwires, the full Monty. Dalton had spent months staking out the house. Apparently Clarendon had once hired guards to patrol the grounds as well, but warm bodies grew scarce in the wake of high turnover.
“Wonder why?” Dan grunted, hefting a duffel bag. He’d brought his own arsenal to the fight, not telling Dalton he had a backup plan. And a backup plan for the backup plan. West would’ve been proud. Dalton produced a pair of bolt cutters from his own warbag and they made their way across a lush, verdant lawn of weeds. Thistles grew head-high along the less-than-frequently-used paths, the only clear paths went from the house to a small laboratory out back. There any plants had been trodden out of existence.
Dan calculated. Herbert was a perpetually late worker, and provided they did the bulk of the experiments in that little white building he might be in there now. He couldn’t tell Dalton, whose main plan of attack centered on Clarendon, what he was preparing to do, because it sounded stupid even to him. He just wanted to get Herbert alone for a minute or two, talk to him, maybe, maybe...
A light went on in a parlor and Dan flattened himself against the white stucco wall of the house. Okay, they were in the house. Which probably meant alarms and guns hidden in drawers or fake books. Still, they had to act while the target was in sight.
The light clicked off again and Dalton nodded. Dan, who’d been in a crouch, leapt up and pried at the edge of the window with his fingernails. Nothing doing. He turned to Dalton, palms open and empty in a pantomime gesture, and Dalton made a swinging motion with his hands. Dan gritted his teeth and fought the urge to ask Mr. Prepared why he hadn’t thought to bring a glass cutter as he rummaged through his bag. He found the crowbar he’d nicked from the supply closet. With a creak that sounded like a gunshot, the window slid up, dragging the lock from the rotten wood of the sash as it went. Dalton gave him the thumbs up, which just looked odd coming from a man like him, but Dan returned it.
Dalton gave him a boost up to the window ledge, and as he climbed in he turned on his perch to help Dalton in after him. The two of them fell into the room, trying to suppress grunts of pain. They were in.
“Dan?” came Herbert’s voice, “what are you doing?”
Both men looked up to find the scientist, who showed every indication of having seen their entire pitiful burglar act. He held a glass of milk in one hand, a pistol in the other. He squinted at Dalton, who stuck his chin out in defiance at his stare. Dan gulped.
“Why didn’t you just come in the front door?” he asked. “I’ve been waiting to show you the labs for so long, Dan, did you think I would shut you out?
Dan blinked. And Herbert, as always, was Herbert.
~`~`~
A/N: so lusciously sorry for such a long delay. I hate it when people who write fanfic I get engrossed in abandon it with plot threads trailing in the wind. But then, real life strikes and what can you do? A few years late, here’s the concluding chapters for all two of you that were waiting.
Side note: it was always part of my headcanon that Herbert’s dad had a mental illness and he grew up having to deal with it (don’t ask me how I came to that conclusion) and I’d always meant to flesh it out in some way. If anyone wants to take it and run with it, be my guest.