The Returned. Jason Mott

Lord,” Lucille said, going pale.

      * * *

      Outside, far away on the highway, the trucks were coming. Lucille and Harold could not see them, but that did nothing to make them any less real. They carried change and irrevocability, consequence and permanency.

      They rumbled like thunder over the asphalt, bringing all these things, rumbling toward Arcadia.

      Gou Jun Pei

      The soldiers helped him from the back of the van and led him silently into a tall, alabaster-colored building with deep, square windows and an overall impression of seriousness about it. He asked them where he was being taken, but they would not answer him, so he soon quit asking.

      Inside the building, the soldiers left him in a small room with what looked like a hospital bed in the center. He paced around the room, still tired of sitting from the long ride to wherever he now was.

      Then the doctors came in.

      There were two of them, and they asked him to sit on the table and, when he was seated, they took turns poking and prodding him. They took his blood pressure and checked his eyes for whatever it was doctors check one’s eyes for. They tested reflexes and drew blood and on and on, all the while refusing to answer his questions when he asked, “Where am I? Who are you? Why do you want my blood? Where is my wife?”