Are You Haunted (part forty-nine)

Are You Haunted

(part forty-nine)

That Rohdl had jolted him by speaking was immaterial; his answer might, to Rohdl, have done the same. “Is there a way out?”

“I suppose there would have been two ways out.” By the volume of his voice, and unwashed smell, Rohdl was coming closer. “I would not consider the vent. I came in that way. They have closed that off also.”

Powell felt a hand pat his arm, and put his own on Rohdl’s shoulder. “But I mean…”

“You mean, will they allow us to escape? Mr. Kenzie, I believe they hope for you to kill me.”

They had come to the fenced enclosure, a parking area graveled in when the new building housing the lab had been attached. Jeeps used by the guards were kept here; and the buses that brought the shift workers.

Dr. Lealy’s and Davis Drybrook’s reserved spots looked, in this light, somewhat ostentatious…not many of them drove private cars.

Rohdl waited with a colleague, the two isolated from the line workers, with whom their work had nothing to do. A guard dangled a walkie-talkie about ten feet away, and no one spoke.

Finally, the siren was switched off.

The column of smoke no longer churned black, but puffed an ashy grey. A crunch rolled across the lot; a sedan braked. A door slammed, Rohdl catching his chief’s eye as the clumsy receipt of a message, voice Drybrook’s, came over the guard’s radio.

“There, yes, take it. Is he bloody saying ‘roger’ to me?”

A mutter, no use for it, as he passed, but Lealy did not lift a hand to indicate that Rohdl or Glass ought to follow.

Except under emergency orders, they were not to remove anything from the lab. Rohdl, without compunction; then Glass, taking his example, had carried out their notes in any case. Security was such that all staff under Drybrook’s management: production workers, guards, grounds crew, and cleaners, knew no one from the lab, and the lab workers knew none of the others. Dr. Lealy had handpicked his chemists and insisted for them perfect latitude. Interference from Drybrook’s side he considered a personal insult.

Not that Rohdl or Glass had anything in mind other than the preservation of a lifetime’s work. Ten minutes after Lealy’s arrival, they exchanged another look. There was little they could discuss.

“I suppose it will be over soon,” Glass said, and Rohdl shrugged, noticing a chain of cars, trucks, motorcycles, even a bicycle toed along the verge, where route seven climbed in the distance.

48

Haunted
Are You Haunted (part fifty)

(2019, Stephanie Foster)