Generation retaliation, p.1
Generation Retaliation, page 1
Also by Tracy Hewitt Meyer
The Reformation of Marli Meade
The Blackthorn Peak Duology
Generation Annihilation
Generation Retaliation
The Rowan Slone Novels
A Life, Redefined
A Life, Forward
A Life, Freed
Quotation from Edgar Allan Poe. Public domain.
generation Retaliation
Copyright ©2024 Tracy Hewitt Meyer
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please write to the publisher.
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Published by BHC Press
Library of Congress Control Number:
2023945953
ISBN: 978-1-64397-400-2 (Hardcover)
ISBN: 978-1-64397-401-9 (Softcover)
ISBN: 978-1-64397-402-6 (Ebook)
For information, write:
BHC Press
885 Penniman #5505
Plymouth, MI 48170
Visit the publisher:
www.bhcpress.com
For Rhys
“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”
— Edgar Allen Poe —
He stands on the lawn of the Blackthorn Peak Lunatic Asylum, marveling at its beauty. The massive building is a true work of art, an accomplishment in construction that rivals the great churches in Europe. Hand-cut local stone. Skilled masonry. Gothic and Tudor Revival style. Hundreds of perfectly placed windows.
Simply magnificent.
He feels a pang of sadness, though, that someone had the audacity to try and burn it. Of course, so much stone would never burn to the ground, but still. The upstairs section that did burn is blackened and charred where it should be beige, windows shattered where they should be intact. If he wasn’t so busy trying to return this building, and its purpose, to its full potential, he would’ve set about repairs already.
Alas, in due time.
He turns his gaze toward the red building that stands off to the side like the detached smaller line of the letter L. This building lacks all the charm and significance of the main structure, but it too has its purpose. Formerly used to house tuberculosis patients, now it will be used for research.
The most important research of his life, of this generation, and likely for generations to come.
That is only his second goal, though. Glory and renown are admirable, but there is a more pressing, vital purpose to this red building and the reemergence of the asylum itself.
Blackthorn Peak Lunatic Asylum will literally be the phoenix rising from the ashes.
He releases a soft chuckle. “Maybe I should thank you, Shaun Treadway, for setting that fire after all. How poetic it will be when you are returned to this most symbolic of places.”
He inhales the crisp mountain air.
After years spent in Chicago, to return to the area of his birth, his childhood, his shame… His vision darkens with memories. Yes, his shame. To return here triumphant, ready for the ultimate showdown, is such sweet justice.
Yes, he belongs here. Time for the final show.
He counts the windows in the asylum until he finds the one that belongs to the room he will use as his office. It was formerly the office of Dr. Esther Richter, but she will now be in the red building with everyone else. She needs to know her place, and this is a clear sign to her, and to the others, that she is no longer in charge of this place. There is a new sheriff in town. The head of the Agency is here, in person, to take control and move progress swiftly along.
There can be no mistaking who is in charge here. The Agency, yes. But who is in charge of the Agency?
Les Range.
The cool breeze ruffles through the dying leaves, both those that have already fallen to the ground, as well as those that still cling to the branches. It’s autumn in West Virginia, and I, Shaun Treadway—Baltimore native, redhead, asylum escapee, murderer, avenger, forgotten, forsaken—am alone in the forest surrounding the Blackthorn Peak Lunatic Asylum.
There is a sound that comes with this breeze through the vast forest. It’s become as familiar to me as the cool burst of air that awakens me every morning. It’s a dry sort of sound, an empty sort of sound, not lush and vibrant like a spring breeze when the leaves are alive and hearty and plush. Rather, it’s somber and voided. A sound that evokes the dying and the dead.
The leaves crunch under my shoes as I hike through the forest.
I’m aware of this wind, this solemn sound, but I don’t acknowledge it as I walk on. My focus is elsewhere, trained on my destination. That place absorbs every ounce of my attention, though I can’t say why. Nothing has happened in the months since my escape from the asylum, so I don’t expect any activity there now, but I have visited daily since April when my three friends and I escaped. It’s become a habit now, though, and the routine comforts me.
Eventually, I come to the familiar giant rock, and I scamper atop, then sit. This rock rests on one of the mountainsides that overlooks the asylum. The hospital was built in 1830, to house West Virginia’s insane, and closed its doors in the 1990s. It didn’t stay closed, though, as I’m sure it was intended to do. If only…
I gaze down at the monstrous building. It’s about a forty-five-minute hike from my grandfather’s cabin, where we—Ryan McComber, Emily Howard, Cassidy Rutherford, and I—have been staying since our escape, along with three other escapees we met that fateful night.
Now it’s October, and as each day has rolled into the next and the next, we have all settled into a kind of melancholy that comes with having absolutely no choices in life.
I guess that’s not true, I think as I watch a caterpillar maneuver its spiny body over a fallen twig. We decide to get up each morning. Rebuild the fire outside. Eat if we have food. Drink water from the spring. Pee. Shit. Maybe talk, though we don’t do that as much as we did over the summer. There’s little to talk about, I guess, when you know you have no future.
When I couldn’t take the stagnant silences any longer, I started hiking to the asylum, unable to bear our camp’s droning existence. Here, on this rock, I spend my days. Sometimes I nap, or I stare at the sky and count the leaves. Mostly I think and remember.
Sometimes Cass joins me, but I think it’s mostly to check on me and make sure I’m not planning to off myself. She could just like my titillating company, though I doubt that’s the reason.
I think about her now and feel a little warming in my chest. I haven’t known her for long—I met her right before I landed in the asylum as a science experiment awaiting certain death—but she’s been special to me since I first saw her. Not sure why. Maybe because she was unlike any girl I’d ever come across in my hometown of Baltimore. Who knows? Who really cares?
I wish she was here with me today as oppressive loneliness pushes down on my shoulders, oozes up from the ground, surrounds me as if trying to suffocate me.
I pick up the twig with the caterpillar and study its fat form.
At least I’m not in the asylum.
“Count your blessings,” I say to the caterpillar. “It could always be worse.”
I snort and lay the twig down on the rock beside me. It could be worse, I think, but this is still pretty damned bad.
My sigh is heavy and loud. I sit on that rock, waiting for time to pass, waiting for something to change, though I know it won’t. We are in a self-imposed exile at my grandfather’s old cabin, deep in these woods. And there is nowhere for us to go from here.
When I hear footsteps, I don’t turn, knowing without looking that it’s Cass.
She scrambles onto the rock and claims her place by my side. Cass is a girl of few words, and I appreciate her silence. Today, though, she has something on her mind.
“Shaun?” she asks, her voice hoarse from the rare use of it.
I feel her eyes on my face, but I don’t look at her. She knows I’m listening, so there’s no need to respond.
“I’m worried about you.”
I didn’t expect that. “Why?” The word comes out croaky and dry, so I clear my throat, and ask again, “Why?”
“You’ve been coming here every day for months. You’re staying longer, isolating yourself away from the camp—away from us. You hardly talk, eat, or help out. You seem more withdrawn with every passing day.”
All of those things are true, so I don’t answer.
“Should I be worried?” she presses.
I snort my answer, staring down at the asylum. I suspect it’s only late afternoon, but considering the time of year and the vast height of this forest, it’ll probably get dark soon. It feels like bedtime even though most people are probably just getting home from school or work. Well, most people save for those around here, because there are no schoolkids or workers here.
The Agency made sure of that.
The asylum below me is as quiet today as it’s been since the day I started hiking to this rock. I don’t see cars or vans or people. I don’t even see anim
What happened to the Agency? To Dr. Esther Richter and Cass’s father, Cyrus Rutherford?
What happened to all those teens who were drugged and kept inside that massive stone building, awaiting lobotomies and death? Stuck like wooden soldiers behind a glass wall, alive, yet not, until they were led away to meet their fate: to become another freshly dug grave in the cemetery behind the building.
Before we made our escape, we found a list of all the teens housed inside that resting monster. We even found our own names and learned that we had been labeled as dead. Since we are not dead, not in the physical sense anyway, I wonder if the other teens aren’t quite dead either.
I shake my head in the growing darkness. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.
“I’m fine,” I manage to say.
She waits several moments for me to continue, but when I remain quiet, she says, “Why don’t I believe you?”
“Cass.” I look at her out of the corner of my eye, see those big gray eyes staring at me, those full lips downturned, that face as pale as a ghost. Her hair, now a few inches long, has grown in darker than I remember it being before Dr. Richter shaved it off. Then it was light brown with deep purple tips. “Don’t ask me questions you don’t really want the answers to.”
“I do want the answer.”
“Why?”
“I’m worried about you, plain and simple. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
She pauses again, and I think back to that day when we escaped, when I unexpectedly found her unresponsive form lying on a hospital bed in a straitjacket. I wouldn’t leave her that day and ended up dragging her body out of that room toward what I thought was freedom. This sure doesn’t feel like freedom, but at least we’re not dead.
“I don’t know what I’d do if you weren’t here,” she continues, “and I just have this nagging feeling…”
“I’m not going to hurt myself,” I say, “if that’s what you’re afraid of.” I don’t really care if my tone doesn’t reassure her. I have little feeling left in this body of mine. It’s like the medicine we were given during our time in the asylum is still in my system, and it ate away all of my ability to feel anything.
“Again, why don’t I believe you?”
I shrug. “I don’t know, Cass. I just don’t know.”
“Something is bound to change. It has to.”
There is no hope behind her words, but I appreciate her effort anyway. Nothing has changed in the six months since our escape.
We can’t go to the authorities. Of the seven of us living at the cabin, five of us are wanted for some crime or other. Personally, I am wanted for murdering my stepfather, Rodger, after he beat my mother one too many times. Besides, the authorities are working with the Agency and would likely just return us to the asylum—or some other sinister situation—where medication, experimental surgery, and death awaits us. Even our parents are in cahoots with the Agency.
There is literally no one we can turn to for help.
I think of my mom briefly, then shove all emotion down with the force of a sledgehammer. It doesn’t take as much force anymore, though. The emotions I used to feel when I thought about how my mom was the one who put my name on the Agency’s list are gone. But still. She is my mom and all.
“Maybe we’ll hike to Canada,” I say.
Cass doesn’t laugh at my attempt at a joke. We are hundreds and hundreds of miles away from Canada, deep in these rural Appalachian Mountains. There is nowhere to go. No one to turn to.
“Come back with me,” she says, pulling my hand into hers. “It’s getting dark, and you shouldn’t be out here when the sun goes down.”
“I don’t need a mother,” I snap, the memory of my own mother too close to the surface. Maybe the emotion isn’t gone after all.
She drops my hand. After pausing for a moment, she slides off the rock. In my peripheral vision, I see her flashlight come on, and I listen as her footsteps carry her away.
I stare down at the asylum.
When I saw my name, Shaun Treadway, with the word dead beside it on the computer in the office just before our escape, I never dreamed that it was actually true. But, for all intents and purposes, it is. The Agency has managed to kill us without doing a single experiment.
Now that’s an accomplishment.
I hike back to camp well after dark. The only feeling inside me, other than the cold from the temperature and my increasing ambivalence toward, well, everything, is a blip of gratitude for the flashlight in my hand and for the batteries that Lith, a fellow escapee who I’d met after my own escape, had found inside an empty cabin not too far from my grandfather’s cabin.
I’m met with the outdoor fire’s bright crackling as I step out of the dense forest. I see my friends sitting around it, as they do every night, on roughly carved wooden stumps. I tick off their names in my head, always doing a count, always desperate to reassure myself that they’re safe: Cass, Emily, Ryan, Lith, Traz, and Celexa.
When we—Cass, Emily, Ryan, and I—met Lith, Traz, and Celexa deep in the forest the night of our escape, those were the names they gave us. And even though we know their real names—Carter, James, and Liza—we stick to the nicknames. They just fit somehow. Lith for the lithium he was given. Traz for trazodone. Celexa for, well, Celexa.
If the rest of us adopted similar nicknames, I’d be Dex for Dexedrine since Lith has already claimed lithium. Cass would be Lex for Lexapro, and Emily would be Pax for Paxil. Ryan would just be Ryan. I don’t think he was pumped full of drugs by pediatricians and psychiatrists like we were.
All in an attempt to make us “normal” by society’s standards.
Such bullshit, I think as I walk forward. I haven’t had that kind of medication—for either my bipolar or ADHD diagnoses—since I ended up in the asylum, and I feel fine.
Well, I feel nothing, but I certainly don’t have volatile moods or trouble concentrating.
“There you are,” Lith calls out. “We were about to send out the cavalry to find you.”
Someone snorts.
I ignore them and sit on the stump between Cass and Emily. I don’t touch either of them, but their closeness gives me a pinch of comfort. I can sense Emily studying me, but I don’t look at her. Something about those big dark eyes of hers and the way they watch me makes me keep my guard up. It’s like she’s trying to see into my soul, and I don’t want her to. She’d be frightened by what she’d find there—or wouldn’t find. I don’t know which is worse. I briefly wonder if Cass talked to her after how I acted at the rock.
I glance around the rest of the group. Everyone seems to be waiting on the two rabbits that are roasting on the fire. The smell of meat fills the air, giving both Lith and Traz focused, slightly crazed looks in their eyes. The occasional pop and sizzle of fat hitting the flames are the only sounds other than an owl hooting in the distance. It doesn’t look like a lot of meat, though when I look around at our scrawny forms, I think it’ll likely be enough.
I don’t have an appetite anyway.
“Did you see anything interesting today?” Lith asks. His dark hair is hanging in his eyes, and he blows upward, but the strands settle back in the same place. He and Traz and Celexa all have longer hair than the rest of us, having escaped the asylum—and the Agency’s penchant for giving every teen in its care a bold, bald look—long before us.
I stare into the fire, mesmerized by the embers that pop and lift and get carried away with the wind. “Nope. Same old thing. There is nothing going on. It’s as quiet and empty as it has been since I first started watching it.”
“I don’t know why you continue to hike down there. What do you think is going to happen?” Celexa asks. She’s sitting unusually close to Traz.
“Dunno.” Because I don’t. But I can’t imagine sitting around this campsite every day like they do.
“I think it’s good to keep an occasional eye on the place,” Lith says, turning the rabbits. “It makes sense to me.”
“What do you think he’ll find there?” Emily asks. I look up and study her profile, the teardrop tattoo under her eye barely noticeable in the dim light from the fire.
