Chapter 15: Interrogation
Thomas Garter
When Thomas gazed into the face of the man they had been searching for, he almost didn't believe it. He never had good luck. It looked as though Parker felt the same way. The other men and women in the room seemed confused by the reunion, but they could see all four of them had the same confusion.
For the most part, Parker looked the same as he always did, with a toothpick jutting out of the right side of his mouth, except his smooth blonde hair hung down in disarray, and what had been his confident face could now be seen slightly more afraid. There was a white strap wrapped around his head traveling over his right eye. The glasses that sat on the bridge of his nose were bent.
"Who are you?" The man standing by the door asked. Though he looked older than life, he had no trouble lifting a shotgun to Will's head. "Tell us how you found this place."
"God, Cecil, put your gun down." Parker barked at him. He frowned and lowered his gun to his side. "Where the hell have you guys been?"
Thomas walked up to the man, right past Cecil's gun and extended his hand. Parker took it and shook hard. "Good to see you too, man."
"Would you mind telling us what's going on?" Will asked, in an irritated fashion.
"Come inside first." He sighed, flicking the toothpick around his lips. "We can't have the door open for too long. Could let a draft in."
"And a couple hundred dead guys." Smirked one of the other guys standing in the semicircle. He had curly dark red hair and piercing blue eyes. Every word he said put a certain echo of uneasiness in Thomas' mind.
"Trevor..." The woman with the same shade of red hair standing beside him sighed in distaste. Thomas assumed she was his sister.
Usui closed the door behind them and Cecil walked out to grab something from the floor. He noticed it was a tiny lasso tied tightly to the wall. When Cecil hung it around the door handle, it kept the door shut as tightly as the rope would hold. It was a good defense. "Why don't we just invite everyone in then? That would be a good idea! You know, Parker, we only got so much food. So much space. All our beds are full. Where are they gonna sleep?"
"Wherever there's room." Parker replied. "We're military. Sleeping on the ground ain't exactly beneath us."
"We're in an enclosed space, for God's sake." The old man exclaimed. "The more people we cram in here, the worse our living conditions are going to get."
"They're staying." Parker spoke definitively. "You all agreed I was calling the shots around here. Now let me fucking call them." Some of the people standing around shook their head in agreement. Cecil only looked angered. "Yeah, I thought so."
Thomas gazed past the crowd of people in front of him and saw a few other people sitting around in the lounge area beside the service desk. The hallways ran for a hundred feet on either side of him with doors to the rooms scattered evenly throughout them. There were a number of different types of people in the room, some of them doctors, and some of them patients. Some were only there to visit their loved ones. When Thomas did a head count, he estimated there were at least thirty people in the room.
"Listen...Cecil..." Will started. "We'll leave you alone if we can bring Parker with us. He's on our squad."
"It's fine with me." Cecil barked.
"I ain't leaving, Doc." Parker sighed. "That's just the fact of the matter. They are staying. This is not negotiable." He gestured to the three of them. "Now give us some space. I need to talk to them."
