Emergence (6 page)

But nobody was paying the slightest bit of attention to Dave Hooper anymore. Nobody cared. Certainly not about him and probably not about any of the men and women he had failed out on the Longreach. Before he even knew what he was doing, Dave let his temper off the leash. He balled his right hand into a fist and slammed it down on the little bedside unit on which rested his empty water glass and the TV remote.

‘Shut up!’ he shouted, but not loudly enough to be heard over the enormous crash of the bedside table exploding under the force of his blow. He had not meant to destroy another piece of furniture. Jeez, would the insurance even cover that? All he’d wanted was to stop them from bickering and get them to pay him some attention.

Mission accomplished. Nurse Fletcher shrieked. Pradesh spun around in alarm and almost tripped over his own feet. Allen came off the wall as if roused from a nap, his hand on his weapon, ready to use it. The two orderlies didn’t know what to do. Dave just stared at his fist where it hung in midair over the shattered sticks of furniture. He hadn’t been looking when he’d lashed out, and his fist had come down on top of a drinking glass. It’d exploded as if dropped from a great height, and jagged shards of glass laid open the side of his hand. One long, bloodied fang of glass had penetrated the heel of his palm and emerged on the other side.

It was uncomfortable but not as painful as it should have been, Dave thought. He must be in shock. Reaching across, feeling a little queasy but fascinated at the same time, he pinched the shard between the thumb and forefinger of his uninjured hand and pulled it out. It was an unusual sensation, having something hard slide through his body like that. But again it didn’t really hurt. Not like his arm had hurt all those years ago when he broke it playing on the trampoline with his cousin.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said in an almost childish voice. ‘I hurt myself. And I broke your table.’

He held his hand up to Nurse Fletcher, who backed away from him, and then to Pradesh, whose eyes betrayed his shock. Allen also gaped at the ugly gash, but not because of any squeamishness about the blood. Presumably he’d seen plenty in his line of work. As had Fletcher and Pradesh.

What none of them had seen, however, was the way Dave Hooper’s wound sealed itself and stopped bleeding within a few seconds. His hand itched terribly where he had opened it up, and he examined it with a sort of fearful curiosity, half expecting to pass out. But instead of some lipless, pulsing violation, all he saw was the blood he had spilled. He ran his fingers gently over the site of the gash.

The skin was sticky with blood but otherwise unmarked.

‘Holy fuck,’ Dave said.

‘I told you so,’ Nurse Fletcher hissed at the doctor.

06

N
urse Fletcher hurried back, wearing rubber gloves and carrying a clean-up tray. She dipped cotton balls into a bowl of warm water that was cloudy with antiseptic. After what had happened to Dent, Dave was careful not to make any sudden movements as she wiped away the blood. He was feeling dizzy again, but not because of the gore. He was certain now that he was starving. It had been a long time since he’d eaten any solid food, and that had been a bag of Doritos, and he’d tossed them up on the grass back at the depot. The hunger was becoming more than just uncomfortable. The pain in his stomach was much worse than the glass going into his hand. Or coming out.

Pradesh shooed away the orderlies when Dave agreed to behave himself on the promise of something to eat and somebody finally answering his questions. Allen, who introduced himself as a chief petty officer, some sort of navy sergeant, assured Dave he would ‘brief him in’ on the situation out at the Longreach, including an updated casualty list. Vince Martinelli, he said, had been taken to a military hospital with minor injuries but otherwise suffering only from shock. He would be fine.

‘This is most unusual,’ Pradesh muttered as the blood came off Dave’s arm and hands. ‘Most unsatisfactory.’

‘Unsatisfactory’ wasn’t the word Dave would have chosen. ‘Bugshit crazy’ would have been his choice. Nobody had asked him about monsters or nightmares or told him to piss into a cup yet, for which he was grateful. He’d been doing pretty well convincing himself he was having some kind of acid flashback or crystal meth moment until he’d destroyed the bedside table and sliced open his hand, only to see it heal in less than a minute. That was madness enough to put a man over the edge, but at least he wasn’t alone in having witnessed it. Five other responsible adults had seen it, too. And none of them had been snorting lines off some hooker’s tits the previous night as far as he knew.

‘There,’ said Nurse Fletcher as she finished cleaning a wound that wasn’t there. ‘Doctor?’

Pradesh stepped forward a little cautiously and leaned over to take Dave’s hand gently. He turned it this way and that, looking for any signs of the injury they’d all seen Dave inflict upon himself just a couple of minutes earlier. Again Dave was careful not to make any sudden or forceful movements. The doctor frowned and shook his head, muttering something to himself.

‘We all saw what happened, did we not?’ Pradesh said at last, in his snooty Oxford English.

‘Yep,’ noted Nurse Fletcher. ‘It’s just like I told you. You didn’t believe me, but I told you he came in here badly wounded. And now
. . .’
She trailed off.

‘And now,’ said Dave, wincing in pain, ‘I think I’m going to disappear up my own butthole if I don’t get something to eat. I’m not joking, Doc. I’ve never felt this hungry before in my life. Feels like a fire inside me.’

‘Of course, of course,’ Pradesh said. ‘Increased metabolism.’ He spoke as though he were talking about Dave, not to him. ‘Nurse, call down to the children’s ward and see if they can send up a couple of packets of high-energy milk biscuits. Straight away. And talk to the canteen; have them send some of that dreadful fatty slop they served at lunch. I am sure there will be leftovers. I don’t know what is wrong with Mr Hooper, but I fear his energy needs may be
. . .’
He paused and seemed to ponder the question. ‘. . . extreme,’ he concluded.

‘Here,’ Allen said, reaching into one of the large cargo pockets of his jungle-green-coloured combat trousers and retrieving a couple of energy bars. He unwrapped them and handed both carefully to Dave, who took them with equal care. He wasn’t sure what the bars were, but he could smell citrus and cocoa. Spit flooded his mouth as soon as he jammed both bars in there, working his jaws in a fury. It was as though he couldn’t chew fast enough, and the pangs in his stomach sharpened while he tried to get the impromptu meal down as quickly as possible. When he was done eating a minute later, the dizziness and fatigue he had felt creeping up on him receded.

‘That working for you?’ the navy guy asked.

‘Shit, yeah,’ Dave told him. ‘Man, that was bad. That really fucking hurt.’

‘I’m afraid I’m going to need to schedule some tests,’ said Dr Pradesh. ‘Many tests. I’m sorry. This is unprecedented.’

He didn’t sound as if he was afraid or even apologetic. He sounded like a guy who’d just spotted a Nobel Prize for Medicine dropping into his lap and wanted to grab it as quickly and hold on to it as hard as he could.

‘Doc, there’s not going to be any tests,’ said Chief Petty Officer Allen. ‘Not now and not here. I meant what I said before. I have orders and the authority to place Mr Hooper in protective custody and escort him from here to a secure location where he can be –’

‘Absolutely not,’ said Pradesh.

‘Whoa, hold on there,’ Dave said, adding his objections. ‘You might have bought me dinner, but that doesn’t mean you get to fuck me, Admiral.’

‘The language is not necessary, sir,’ Allen said. The words sounded weird in his oddly misplaced surfer’s drawl.

It was the sort of thing Marty would have said, but Marty was dead. Eaten like a big born-again burrito. ‘A sailor who doesn’t swear?’ Dave said, concentrating fiercely to keep his thoughts in the present. ‘Seriously? Well, I’m not going anywhere and I’m not doing anyone’s tests until I get some answers. You can take me to Vince Martinelli if you want, if he knows more than I do. But right now you can start by telling me what the hell happened out on the Longreach this morning. It was this morning, wasn’t it? I haven’t been out of it overnight?’

‘No, sir, you have not,’ said a new voice from over by the door.

A tall African-American man stood in the doorway. An officer by the look of him. He wore a short-sleeve khaki dress uniform, a more formal arrangement than Allen’s fatigues with their pockets full of high-energy chocolate bars. A swathe of multicoloured ribbons covered a patch over his left pec, topped by a bright gold bird bearing a trident in its claws. Dave’s eye was drawn to the purple ribbon. He was pretty sure his brother had been awarded one of those.

‘Michael Heath, captain, United States Navy. Joint Special Operations Command,’ the officer said.

Special Operations, Dave thought. Did that make the captain a Black Seal? He suppressed an embarrassed, idiotic chuckle, ashamed of himself, blaming it on feeling so dizzy and light-headed with hunger and maybe some leftover drug residue, but the captain really was
that
dark. Like he had stepped out of Africa and right into Harvard or Yale to judge by the snooty accent. Man, you could sell hundred-dollar bottles of wine with that voice.

Hooper cursed himself.
Jesus, Dave. Get a grip you redneck asshole.

‘Okay,’ he said, mostly to stop himself from giggling like a stoned idiot, ‘more navy guys. Awesome.’

Captain Heath considered Dave with a foreboding frown but addressed himself to Pradesh. ‘Doctor, you will find papers have been served to your administrators releasing Mr Hooper into our care. We require his consultation on a matter of national security.’

Pradesh started to object loudly. His arms flew around, and he bobbed up and down on his expensive-looking loafers as he argued with, or rather
at,
Captain Heath.

‘Well I’m afraid this will not stand, Captain Heath. It will not stand at all. This patient is under my care and will remain under my care.’

Nurse Fletcher was still invested in her issues with Pradesh, sniping at him as he railed at the iniquities of military high-handedness and fought a gallant rearguard action in defence of his Nobel.

‘I told you, Doctor,’ she said. ‘I told you there was something wrong with this patient.’

Meanwhile the intimidating Captain Heath absorbed the doctor’s attack and the general uproar with an utterly impassive face. He waited for Pradesh to take a breath, looking just like a dude with the patience of Buddha.
No
, Dave thought as his mind began to wander,
scratch that.
He looks like a dude with the patience of a
statue
of Buddha
. When Pradesh paused momentarily, Heath seemed to come to life, as if he’d been in power-down. He strode into the room with a nod to Allen, and his physical presence seemed to subdue the doctor in a way no words were likely to. He limped, though, ever so slightly, and Dave’s eye was drawn to the subtle imbalance in his gait. He had to make himself look away, like when you saw someone, some hot-looking piece of ass, say, with a really ugly birthmark messing up half her face. You didn’t want to be caught staring. Nobody else was staring, however, or even seemed to have noticed the limp.
Probably got his Purple Heart for whatever gave him the gimpy leg
, Dave thought.

‘If you’ll get dressed, please, Mr Hooper,’ said Heath. ‘I have transport waiting for us downstairs. Time is short.’

He didn’t look at his watch but gave Dave the impression he could tell the time to within thirty seconds without it.

‘I must protest this,’ Pradesh began.

‘Of course you must,’ said Heath.

‘Doc, from what I’ve seen,’ Allen said, jerking his thumb at Dave, ‘we’re doing you a favour. You’ll thank us someday.’

‘Thank you, Chief Allen,’ Heath said in a tone that gave everyone to understand he didn’t think the CPO was helping. Dave wondered if the captain was the senior SEAL hereabouts and quickly hid a smirk at the sound of that phrase.
Senior seal. Good one, Dave
. He couldn’t shake the faint, buzzy, blurred feeling of being stoned. Not totally wasted. Just pleasantly high – say, half a joint rather than three bongs – finding everything funny and, of course
. . .
hungry. So hungry.

Heath produced a sheaf of paper and handed it to the doctor. ‘Complaint form,’ he explained. ‘We’ll need it in triplicate. Mr Hooper, sir. I note you are still not dressed.’

The warning tone in Heath’s voice transported Dave back to his childhood. To the sound of his mom’s voice warning him he’d be late for school. Again. And the fear of his father appearing from somewhere, smelling of hand-rolled cigarettes and breakfast bourbon, snarling threats and backhanding him hard enough to raise a bruise. Dave, feeling as though he’d done something wrong – you know, besides throwing that last navy guy halfway through a wall and totally smashing the crap out of a bunch of innocent hospital furniture – fumbled for an excuse until he realised he actually had one.

‘I got no clothes,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what happened to mine, and this hospital gown –’

‘Chief?’ Captain Heath snapped his fingers, and CPO Allen bent over and produced a sports bag, which he tossed onto the bed.

‘Brought it in while you were sleeping. Had to guess at your size. Are you an Eddie Bauer man?’

‘Not normally,’ Dave said.

‘Dude, you are today. The Original Outdoor Outpatient.’

Dave opened the bag with care, afraid that he might tear it apart, and found a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, a grey zip-up hoodie, socks, jocks, and a pair of Nikes. All new.

‘Bauer’s a little uptown for me,’ he said.

No one smiled or reacted in any way. Pradesh was still reading the pro forma complaint letter and fuming silently. The nurse was cloaked in the armour of vindication, and the navy guys stared at him, waiting for him to do as he was told.

‘Do I have to, er
. . .
my wallet is back on the –’

Heath cut him off.

‘Contingency funds, Mr Hooper. You need to get dressed now.’

Allen herded the two civilians out of the room, with Pradesh still muttering about taking this to a higher authority.

‘Section 3 of the form, sir,’ said Heath.

‘I told you he was burned,’ Fletcher said again. ‘Must have healed up just like we saw him do. Just then.’

Both military men stayed in the room. Dave climbed carefully out of bed for the first time since he’d put the unfortunate lieutenant through the cupboard door. He concentrated on the basics: removing his gown, getting dressed. He took his time with each movement, as though learning it anew. It helped keep his mind off things.

‘How many dead and injured?’ he asked as he dressed. Better to think about other people’s problems than the pile of shit he seemed to have his face planted in. ‘You never told me.’

Chief Allen didn’t hesitate. The surfer dude aura faded as he relayed the bad news. ‘Last figures I had were twelve dead, including one woman from your catering staff. Eighteen missing. Twenty-six injured, nineteen of them critical. I’m sorry; I don’t have any individual details. But your colleague Mr Martinelli did make it out.’

Dave got his leg through jeans that were just a little big for him. He was glad of that. If he had to pull them on with any sort of effort, he feared tearing them like tissue paper. He felt awkward dressing in front of Heath and Allen like this. It was stupid, because he was used to showering with dozens of naked rig monkeys. But Heath in particular seemed to emanate censorious judgment. He hadn’t mentioned the other officer Dave had put into surgery, but you could tell he was pissed about it.

What’s wrong with me?

An image of the thing from his nightmare forced itself into his thoughts. He pushed it away and cursed instead at the butcher’s bill from the rig. That was what he should have been worrying about. Not bullshit drug flashbacks. He was responsible. No matter what had gone down out there, he, Dave Hooper, was the guy paid to make sure shit didn’t go down on the platform. And he’d failed. He wanted to climb back into bed and pull the covers over his head.

It was a miserable feeling. The last couple of years, as everything else in his life turned to shit, he’d at least been able to hang on to the idea that no matter what else might happen, whether he was hungover or reeking of paid-for-pussy, Dave Hooper turned up and got the job done. Dave sat down heavily on the hospital bed, all the giggles gone now. He pulled on the shoes and did up the laces. Tied them as carefully as a first-grader.

‘Hello?’

A candy stripper stood at the door, bearing a paper bag. From the smell of them, the promised cookies. Saliva jetted into Dave’s mouth again. Captain Heath thanked her with more grace than Dave would have thought possible given his uptight personality, but his smile vanished when he turned away from the girl. ‘We good to go?’