Shock!. Donald Ph.D. Ladew

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      —Lewis Carroll

      The sounds of traffic from the 101 Freeway barely rose above the three A.M. white noise of suburbia. Woodland Hills was just another bedroom in the tattered mansion of Los Angeles.

      To the west and south are the Santa Monica Mountains and beyond the mountains the Pacific Ocean: For most of the year, the Valley, as it's called, is a sink for whatever weather the seasons bring. In the spring, the fog settles in the western end of the San Fernando Valley.

      Occasionally the fog is so dense the freeway is turned into a battlefield of broken automobiles. The road warriors of the night enter the lists filled with Seagram's Seven and faith, faith that no one will decide to take a nap in the fast lane. That hope is often misplaced and the destruction of Fords, Chevys, Toyotas and semi-trailers can be heard for hours.

      Highway Patrolmen, weary medical interns, ambulance drivers, firemen with the night watch, do not love this time of year. For others, however, it's a good time. Perhaps they secretly yearn for this seasonal madness.

      West of the freeway, in a group of low hills, isolated from the surrounding homes by tall hedges and a chain link fence, the battered inhabitants of the Cabrillo Springs Psychiatric Clinic slept the quasi-death of the massively over-drugged.

      The single story buildings, five of them, interconnected by enclosed walkways, had been constructed in the Spanish style thirty years before as a rest home for a forgotten order of nuns, called The Sisters of Mercy.

      The sisters had been gone for many years. Living in the middle of hundreds of post-war housing tracts wasn't restful, and mercy left the day the psychiatric exorcists arrived with their low-tech engines of torture.

      Except for a night duty staff, the prisoner/patients had been drugged deep into dull narcotic dreams. The staff, each in his or her way, fought the boredom.

      Four of them slept; one picked listlessly at the LA Times Crossword; another was reading a Regency Romance novel, her lips forming the words; and yet another read a magazine whose prurient and violent content, featuring leather and chains, would have made a chapter in Kraft-Ebbing—typical of psychiatry's curious obsession with the genitalia of the world.

      The last worked in a large paneled office more appropriate to his exalted station.

      Outside of the buildings the cotton-wool atmosphere filled the Valley like the head of a giant, drugged madman. It was still, but at the edge of the long sloping lawn was a point of interest, a focus of intention and purpose: a shadow on the shores of hell.

      The shadow moved. Wearing a dark blue windbreaker, soft slacks of the same color and an old navy watch cap, a slender figure moved across the lawn swiftly and silently toward the center of the low buildings.

      Visibility in the fog was less than twenty feet, but the figure had no trouble finding the way.

      On the corner of the middle building about four feet up the wall was a metal box, a foot square. The man removed a ring of keys from his pocket and selected one. All but the tang had been coated in soft acrylic plastic.

      He inserted it into the lock near the bottom of the box. The box opened to reveal a small keyboard, like a calculator, and six colored indicators, three red, three green.

      Where the cable entered the box, he quickly peeled back the acrylic coating that covered the wires with a small penknife. It didn't take long to connect the 'interrupter' into the line. Now, no matter what happened on the building side of the box, all would look normal to the security service that monitored the location.

      The intruder entered a code using the keyboard and all three of the green lights lit. Should anyone trip an alarm, no bells would clamor, no electronic messages would be sent, either to the security service or the local police services. He closed the door to the alarm box and locked it.

      When the current owners took over, they cut a doorway into the passageway between the middle two buildings. Another key, covered with a fine film of machine oil, entered the lock noiselessly. The intruder opened the door in one move and stepped into the passageway, closing the door behind. He stood motionless, absorbing the environment.

      To the right, the building contained administrative offices; he turned that way. His movements were precise, certain. The door to the building was not locked. He went through, walked down the empty, night-lit hall toward an office on the left. A faint light shone beneath the door.

      All the other offices were dark. The intruder paused outside the door, took a deep breath and tried the knob. It wasn't locked. When it reached the limit of travel, he pushed lightly and eased it inward.

      It was an unusually large office. Opposite the door, behind a heavy desk of dark colored wood, an older man with gray hair and a Van Dyke beard bent over some papers on the desk. Now, a hundred years later, psychiatrists were still trying to emulate Freud: Strange heroes.

      The intruder stepped inside the office silently. In one hand he held an odd bulky-looking pistol. Still the man behind the desk didn't notice him.

      The intruder stepped forward a pace at a time until the older man looked up. The man behind the desk started to open his mouth and the intruder brought up the bulky-looking device and pulled the trigger. The gun made a low 'chuff', like a muffled cough, and a dart appeared in the bearded man's throat just above the collarbone. He stared; eyes wide like a frightened rabbit. His mouth hung open, but no sound came out.

      The intruder watched the slow-motion tableau until the man's eyes rolled up and he slumped forward onto the desk.

      The intruder hooked the pistol to a web belt at his waist, moved around the desk quickly, and removed the dart from his neck. He grasped the man under the armpits, lifted him upright then dipped down to the man's waist and threw him over his shoulders effortlessly.

      Before he left the office, the intruder settled the unconscious man on his shoulder, holding him with one arm. When he moved back into the hallway, he did so without once banging the one hundred and fifty pound dead weight on his shoulder against the door jam.

      The hall was empty. He closed the door, glanced down at the luminous dial of his watch, took the pistol in his left hand, and moved along the hallway toward the rear of the complex.

      Considering the weight, he moved rapidly. He headed for the fourth building. He reached it without seeing anyone until he got to the entrance.

      The door had a double glass panel with steel mesh woven between the panes. Beyond it a large man in the uniform of an attendant, sat in a comfortable chair about twenty feet down the hallway.

      Even sitting, the man was massive. The intruder stepped back away from the door and quietly put his burden down. He relaxed his body. There might be action. He went back to the door.

      He transferred the pistol to his right hand. The door didn't have a knob, just a brass handle and a metal kick plate at the bottom. He pulled on it with a steady pressure. It stuck, so he jerked it open and stepped swiftly into the hallway. He moved directly toward the seated figure.

      The man looked up, his expression not alarmed, more curious. He hadn't seen the pistol held by the intruder's side.

      His lips were just forming the word, "who..." when the second dart caught him in the neck just below the ear.

      He started to pull it out when his whole body went limp and he slid out of the chair to the floor.

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