CHAPTER 11
Location Unknown
He was okay, just humiliated, but it was worth it just to see another human being in the room with him again. Nate felt no shame as he sat in a wheel chair, naked, while Rose wiped him down and helped him change his clothes. His hard gaze remained fixed on Walker, who was leaning back in a corner with a lit cigarette dangling from his mouth.
“Aren’t there any rules against that?” he said, nodding at Walker.
“Against what?” Walker replied.
Rose rolled her eyes as she stuffed his dirty clothes into a plastic bag and slung them in the corner.
“Smoking, Dickhead.”
Walker sucked on his cigarette and laughed as he flicked is ashes in the floor.
Rose said, “Walker, quit that. You know I have to clean that up.”
“Ah, I’m sorry Rose, I forgot,” he said, rubbing the ashes into the tiled floor with his booted toe.
“I’d hate to see where you live,” she said as she helped Nate back into his bed.
His stomach gave a loud growl.
“Oh, I’ll be right back with your Milk and Honey,” Rose said, pinching his cheek.
Nate sat in the bed and continued his glare into the mirrored eyes of the man in black. He hated the man. One of the most vivid memories he had was of the man taking out a shotgun and blowing away his fiancé Jeanine’s face. Instinctively, his hand went to his chest.
“Feeling sentimental, are we?” Walker said, dangling from his hand the necklace that Jeanine had given Nate.
“Hey!”
Walker flung the necklace, hitting him square in the face. The gold metal was warm as he inspected it. It was his, the tiny figurine of Jesus on the cross with every detail in place that he remembered. He let out a relived sigh as he began to realize that he was alive, and everything around him was not some distorted dream. “I suppose I have you to thank for this,” he said quietly.
“I suppose so,” Walker said as he walked over and sat in the wheel chair.
“Not you, Douche Bag—Jesus!”
“Oh …” Walker said as he began rolling back and forth in the wheel chair. “My uncle used to ride one of these. Pretty cool.”
Nate put the cross back around his neck and shook his head. Psychotic idiot!
Rose made her way back into the room, sat along the edge of the bed, and handed Nate the warm cup of milk. It was the same one he remembered from earlier, marked in blue and gold lettering, with a small chip along the rim.
“When did you take this?”
“I didn’t,” Rose said, “he did.”
A memory bulb popped inside Nate’s mind as the image of Walker spitting in his favorite coffee cup came to life. He remembered now, like it was just seconds ago. He'd been drugged, paralyzed as a pair of strong hangs held him up like a doll. Walker sat before him, calling him names, mocking him and spitting tobacco juice in his mug. He drew his mug-filled hand back.
“Stop it, Nate; you don’t want to do that,” Rose warned.
“He’s a murderer, Rose! He’s a bastard murdering creep!”
Tears were rolling from his eyes and soaking into the wiry hairs of his beard. His arm was quaking, and the liquid began to spill onto the sheets. Rose took the mug from him and rubbed his face like he was a little boy.
“Nate,” she said softly, “He’s not a murderer, and I shouldn’t be the one to tell you this,” she cleared her throat as she gave a scornful look at Walker, “but he’s the man who brought you to us. He saved your life.”
Nate was looking into her eyes, searching for lies and deceit, but he only saw the truth. The truth was something that he had become obsessed with over the past couple of years, but if all of his time representing the WHS taught him anything, it was that truth was hard to find. He looked over at Walker. The man’s head was cast down, elbows on his knees, blowing smoke rings at the floor.
“Nah, I don’t believe it. He killed Christy. I saw him. Why would he kill Christy?” he said, searching Rose’s face for an answer.
She looked over at the man in the wheel chair and cleared her throat.
Walker didn’t respond.
She did it again.
“Okay Rose, you don’t have to yell,” Walker said as he stood back up and faced Nate. “You want to know why Christy was killed? Do you?”
“Yes!”
“Because she was about to kill you, Dumbass! There, I said it, Rose. Happy?”
“No, well yes, but you need to explain.”
Nate’s mind spun like a blender. Why in the world would Christy kill anyone? Why would anyone want to kill him? It had to be a lie.
“LIAR!” he screamed.
“I told you he was an idiot. How am I supposed to work with an idiot?”
Nate felt Rose take his hand in hers as she said, “I’ll explain, Nate. Walker isn’t much of a talker, it appears.”
“I don’t believe you or him!”
Nate was angry and confused. For all he knew, the WHS was behind all of this. Walker was behind all of this. Maybe Harry was on the other side of the door, waiting to surprise him. If he was alive, maybe Christy Backwater was, too. His eyes darted to every nook and cranny of the room, searching for cameras, lenses, anything. He had done the same thing back in his apartment. This can’t be true; it can’t be happening. But, in his heart he knew it was real.
“Nate, I’m going to explain. Just, look at me, and settle down. I have your back, remember.”
He nodded. Exhausted, he slumped backward, closed his eyes, and said, “Go ahead. I guess it can’t hurt too bad coming from you.”
“First, let me tell you about Christy. She was going to kill you. She was a WHS spy of sorts, deep cover. She was going to make it look like an overdose. That's where all the drugs came from. But, being the slut she was, she decided to give you a couple of extra rides, for kicks I guess. You must have been pretty good if she let you live through the night.”
A half-smile creased his face as the blood drained from it.
“If it weren’t for that, you would’ve been dead. Our people tipped us off about the plan to have you killed, and we had been watching you. That’s where Walker came in. He’s the one that came in and took out Christy.”
“What about the other guy, the big one that jerked me around like a doll?”
“Oh him. Don’t worry about him; he’s dead now,” Rose said, matter-of-factly.
The room began to feel less like a hospital and more like a morgue as Nate stiffened inside his covers and took another sip of his drink. I bet that guy’s on the other side of the door, just waiting for them to call.
“You know,” Nate said, “it doesn’t seem likely that Christy was a spy. I mean, I left her on the bed. She was out cold almost. I find it hard to believe that she was going to take a nap right before she was going to kill me.”
“She wasn’t asleep, Stupid,” Walker said.
“How do you know that?”
“We were in the closet the whole time, you know, the one that was almost as big as your bedroom. It was a great hiding spot.” Walker huffed some smoke. "And she was watching you the entire time after you left. Not a minute passed before she was on the move, but I could see the whites of her eyes as I popped her in the head.”
Nate shuddered inside at the callousness of the statement. The man was nothing more than a stone cold killer with a heart of coal.
“You enjoy killing, don’t you?”
“Only when it’s evil.”
The statement caught Nate off guard.
“Jeanine wasn’t evil,” he retorted.
“Jeanine was a zombie, Moron, remember? Did you lock her in that cell because you were scared she’d kiss you, or eat you? Besides … I had my orders.”
Nate shook his head and said, “So, you wouldn’t have killed her, otherwise?”
As Walker stepped away he said, “It had to be done … eventually.”
Something in the man’s voice had the sound of a hint of
compassion. For all Nate knew, Walker might have had to put his own family down. Even Nate had done that himself, but he had managed to bury those thoughts over the years.
“So, why is my face changed?”
Rose explained to him that Walker and Leo slipped him out of his apartment building in the dark of the storm. It was a lucky thing because the WHS was moving in fast to secure the scene. It wasn’t long before the news spread that Nate McDaniel had killed Christy Backwater in a murder suicide.
That’s when he retched.