CHAPTER 41

   Nate was not in the best of moods and wondered if he should even take the call. He had gotten back to Atlanta in the middle of the night and found out that a cab ride, from the airport to his apartment, cost almost a hundred dollars. He had managed to grab a nap on the plane but was looking forward to his own bed, only, he had not even had time to set it up yet. His apartment was in the same state, that of of not having been unpacked, as when Didi had drug to Britain a few weeks before. Nate had just pushed the new mattress on the floor and then grabbed a blanket that was still packed in a box. He then sacked out for the few hours that he had left before he had to get up and be back at work.
There were already multiple calls from at least two different numbers in Florida, on his phone. Nate was deciding what to do about it as he searched for the coffee which was easy enough to find. He had managed to buy a few groceries before leaving and they were all still in the plastic bags from the store. Some of that was going to need to be thrown out since he never put it in the fridge. Of course, having a sealed can of coffee was only part of what you needed and Nate still had no idea where his coffee maker was. He decided to get dressed and just buy a cup on the way to the zoo.
It was on the drive down I –20 that the call came and this time it was not a number but, a name on the screen. He finally decided he had to answer it even if he had not been looking forward to this. No sooner than he picked up, he knew that his attitude was for a good reason. He heard a very hostile woman on the other end exclaiming, "where is my daughter!?" Before Nate could even answer, Dana Thompson continued with, "and don't lie to me. She wouldn't go anywhere else."
Nate tried to remain as friendly and light as possible when he replied, "she's perfectly fine Dana."
As Nate expected, that did not go over very well and Dana was still on the blood trail as she shot back, "she's my daughter and I will be the judge of that. Put her on the phone right now."
How did he respond to that? Nate took a deep breath and told the irate mother, "I said she was safe. I didn't say she was with me." Nate had been practicing this conversation in his mind ever since Sarah left for North Carolina. He recited the next line in his mental script, "Dana, what you need to do is call and talk to her. This is something that you two have to work out on your own. As much as I would like, I'm not sure it's something that I can help you guys with."
It worked about like Nate had expected, although, he had hoped it would do better. Dana was not buying, "oh don't hand me that Nate Caldwell, you had something to do with this. I know it."
"I had...” Nate caught himself and bit his bottom lip. He really felt like letting Dana have it right now. He also found that he suddenly believed most of what Sarah had to say about the situation. It was not that he ever really disbelieved Sarah, it's just that Nate had figured the truth of the matter was somewhere in the middle but, given Dana's last statement, this did not seem to be the case. Was the woman really that delusional? Nate also had another strange thought. Now he knew where Angie got it from.
Dana took the pause and it was clear she was probably going to do this every time Nate took a breath. She was every bit as hostile as when Nate picked up. She practically snarled as she said, "I've been trying to call her. She's not picking up. Tell her to pick up."
"I already told you Dana," Nate said trying to stay reasonable, "she's not with me."
The next thing that Nate heard surprised him even if it should not. It also socked him in the gut pretty hard. Dana broke down in tears and was sobbing into the phone as she practically begged, "please Nate. I've already lost one of my baby girls. Don't make me lose the other one."
How did you respond to that? Nate was not even sure that he could. Fortunately he was granted a short reprieve. Dana was obviously doing something on the other end of the phone and it sounded as if she had just answered the door. She was still crying when he heard her distant voice say, "can I help you?" Then Nate was not sure what he heard next. It was loud enough that he actually grabbed the Bluetooth in his ear and pulled it out. When he put it back in his ear he began calling out for Dana but, all he heard was rustling on the other end. Then it sounded as if someone picked up the phone and he heard a voice say something that he did not understand. What language was that? Then the line went dead.
Nate looked at the screen on his phone and it told him what he already knew, the call had ended. He tried dialing back several times but, it went to voicemail every single time. Nate began to almost panic and debated what to do about this. He finally pulled over in the emergency lane, just past the I–285 interchange, and did the only thing that seemed reasonable. He made another call and when the operator picked up he told the woman, "no, the emergency is not here. I'm in rush hour traffic but, I was just on the phone with...” Nate waited for the 911 operator to ask him a few more questions and when he finally related his story to her they finally got down to details. Nate had to think about it as he stumbled over his words, "yeah Orlando, Florida. No wait a minute, Forest City, I think that's it... Wait a minute let me think, yeah, the address is 7320 Admiral Drive.”
Before Nate reached his exit his phone rang again. He jumped at it so fast that he did not even bother to look at the number which was why he was surprised at who was on the other end. He was a bit confused as he asked, "just out of curiosity, how did you get this number?"
He should of have figured. He also did not have time for this call right now, even if he was wondering how bad of a career move it was to hang up. Still he said, "look I'm turning into work right now, can I call you back? We're dealing with a little bit of an an emergency here." That seemed to be good enough to get him off the hook for now. Even so, as he parked his car in the little gravel lot next to the cinder block building, in the back of the Atlanta zoo, Nate was wondering how he got himself into these kinds of things. If the first call wasn't trouble enough, the second one was a bundle of dynamite. The single biggest lesson that Nate had learned about handling explosives, in the army, was don't.
His mind was still rambling, and wondering what in the hell had happened to Dana, as he waived at the military policeman stationed outside the door. Like everyone else here, the guy was not in uniform but, Nate did not think the big colt 45, that was strapped to his hip, went with his Atlanta zoo outfit. As Nate entered the building his mind had completely focused on Dana Thompson. He seriously started to wonder if he should call Sarah but, what did he tell her? The thought did cross his mind that the teenage girl would suspect this was a trick to elicit a phone call. Nate was not sure he would blame Sarah for thinking that, because, if there was one thing that he learned in his short time with Dana, it was that the word tricky could easily be applied to her.
When Nate strolled into Didi's office, she was on the hard-line and practically pulling out her frizzy blonde hair. When she slammed the phone back down, in its cradle, she looked up at Nate and with no small degree of frustration told him, "General Garrett gave my direct line number to this clown over at TRADOC. He has not stop calling since I got back."
Nate was browsing over some of the clipboards as he replied to his boss, "TRADOC, I know I'm supposed to know what that means. I know it's an army thing but, if there was one thing the army was not short of, it was long and meaningless anagrams."
Didi rolled her eyes and stated for the record, "training and doctrines command. Apparently, somebody over there is trying to write a field manual on orcs. You know, you would think somebody like General Garrett would understand what words like classified and project mean?"
What Nate did know was that somebody like General Jim Garrett was the guy that decided what the definition of classified was. Nate simply shrugged it off and asked, "so what kind of questions was this guy asking?"
"Oh," Didi was trying to come down on her frustration level as she tossed out the first thing that came to her mind, "things like how much does Tigger and Pooh eat? How much sleep do they need? Stuff like that."
Those seemed like perfectly reasonable questions to Nate. When he was back in the Hurt, and those things were chasing him down, he had wondered about a few of those questions as well. Such questions might seem small, and even stupid, until you see a fully grown orc with his staff weapon. They are even more important when that same orc wants to kill you with it. Even so, this was not the subject on Nate's mind at the moment. It was not why he had come to see Didi as soon as he got here.
"Didi, I kinda had an emergency come up this morning," Nate began with.
Didi snapped and cut him off with, "no, you just got back. We were away too long."
Nate pointed at her and said, "and that was your idea, if I recall."
"Well it was important," Didi huffed back. "I know you have nothing to do with the politics of this little project of ours but, if we want to keep it going a little ass kissing is required."
Nate only heard one word of her sentence, "our?”
Didi ignored his question and pointed to the monitors on the wall of her office. They were on all of the time and showed the subjects of their project. Nate looked at the monitors and noticed that the two orcs, Tigger and Pooh, looked to be rather excited. Didi added, "I knew when you got here, before you ever even walked into my office. They started acting like that. Nate, they know you're here."
There was no way that either orc had seen Nate walk in. He had gone nowhere near the cages since arriving. He rubbed at his chin and asked Didi, "hearing? Smell maybe?"
"It's almost like they're dogs," Didi replied. "We have to find out how they know. You're my army guy, so tell me Nate, you think that General Garrett might want to know something like this?"
"Forget General Garrett," Nate replied. "I want to know." After Nate thought about that for a second he then looked to Didi and said, "uh, can you do me a little favor and not tell him I said that."
Despite the fact that it was obvious that Nate was not getting out of work today, his personal business was too important to put off. He walked a small break room and pulled out his phone. He hit the number on his contact list several times but, after a few minutes, it was quite obvious that Sarah was not going to pick up. Maybe Dana had already called her? It would certainly explain a lot of things.
None of this stopped Nate from worrying as he got to work. He went straight for the cages and stood on the other side of the glass wall from their two subjects. It was very clear that he really was the source of their excitement. Both Tigger and Pooh ran to the glass and began licking it with their tongues. Nate thought that it was gross but, he could not act that way. They had figured out some time ago that the orc, at least these two, seemed to get human body language. No one was sure if it was because of the fact that Tigger and Pooh had been seeing these things since they were born, or, if all orcs could.
There were a lot of things that they would be unsure of until Mike Green returned from Feyland. Nate was no scientist but, that did not mean he was stupid. He understood that they needed to compare notes on observations from orcs in the wild, if you could call it that, to the ones they had here in the zoo. That seemed rather unimportant when that thought led him to another. He did not have to get Sarah to pick up. There were other phones where she was an Nate knew who had those numbers. He went to find Didi again.
She was in the small conference room that Nate suspected had once been a gorilla cage. Naturally, it had been remodeled but, it had the telltale signs of its former use, not the least of which were the reinforced walls. It was also far too small for what they were using it for and, no matter how much they had disinfected it, Nate could not get past the lingering odor even if it was just slight.
Didi looked up from the papers on her table and ignored the other doctors who were shouting at her when she asked Nate, "what's going on?"
"Oh it's nothing big," Nate told her, "it's about that little thing that was in my hotel room back in DC."
Didi was looking past Nate to the monitors up on the wall. They were basically the same as the ones in her office. She pointed past him and said, "not with you. I mean with Tigger and Pooh. They just went nuts. Nate! What the hell did you do when you are down there?"
"Me?" Nate looked up at the monitors and found that he was confused by what he was seeing. When he looked back to Didi he was quite defensive and just said, "I didn't do that. They were just fine when...”
The dull popping sounds stopped the conversation right then. Everyone in the room stopped shouting and the sounds only grew louder. The next pop was anything but. It was loud enough to make Nate wonder if his eardrums had been blown out. That was only a secondary concern when Nate realized that he was on the floor and coughing from the smoke in the air.