My name is Lisa Montgomery. The reason my name is important is because for the last three years I’ve gone by Janet Matthews and have lived in an entirely different part of the country surrounded by people that have never known my real name or past. I didn’t have a choice.
Three years ago, when people still called me Lisa, I was a sophomore in college on the east coast of the U.S. Like many college students, I was always strapped for cash. My mother had left when I was a baby, and my father had passed away during my senior year of high school. Aside from some distant relatives I had never met in another state, I was all the family I had.
While I had a hard time when my Dad died, by the time I got to college I made fast friends with my roommate and some of her sorority sisters. But missing my father aside, having no family meant I didn’t have anyone to call if I ran short on cash. Which, being a dumbass, I inevitably did.
I was moving past the ramen and cereal phase of frugality and into the water and crackers phase when I passed one of those tables you always see on college campuses. You know what I’m talking about. The metal folding table with the weird sign/tablecloth that is telling you to sign up to protest this or support that, or maybe just join a weird club dedicated to some obscure interest. After nearly two years of college life, I typically just blocked them out. But the sign on the front caught my eye.
On the left side there was a logo of some kind. It was a short triangle atop a square that was missing its bottom side, and inside that shape was what looked like an arrow pointed down. Underneath the symbol it said “Markley Research Group: A subsidiary of Tattersall Global”. Okay, so far, so corporately creepy and off-putting.
But the right side of the sign said, “Be evaluated for participation in a two-week clinical trial. Stay in a luxury hotel for 14 days and nights. Leave with fond memories and $5,000.00.”
Holy Shit.
I would like to say that there was some major thought process or weighing of options that I went through at that point. In reality, the speed with which I rushed over to the table was akin to how quickly and instinctively I would take my hand off a hot stove. Even though it was early in the morning, I saw other people drifting up to the table too. I felt a nervous fear that someone else would get the open slot or slots before I could, so I stuck out my hand awkwardly and introduced myself to the smiling woman sitting behind the table, thinking to occupy her attention before someone else could.
She shook my hand with a quick laugh and told me to have a seat. Introducing herself as Margaret, she told me to fill out the forms she was handing me, and after she reviewed them she could ask follow-up questions and answer any I had as well. I took the clipboard from her gratefully, trying not to stare at the scar that ran past her left eye and back into her hairline.
The questions were extensive, but nothing that seemed overly weird for some kind of scientific experiment. Age, weight, health conditions, mental conditions, phobias, genetic ancestry (if known), family health and mental conditions (if known), that kind of thing. I did notice that there were a lot of questions that boiled down to how crazy was I and any genetic problems I might have, but there was also what seemed like a small personality test and a section on food allergies.
And for the most part, I was honest. Look, I’m generally a very truthful person. But I really was desperate for money, and I didn’t think one little lie on the questionnaire would be a big deal. Under “known genetic disorders” I checked no.
I have what is called minor thalassaemia. It’s inherited, though my father didn’t have it and I don’t know if my mother did or not. Basically what it means is that some of the haemoglobin in my red blood cells is abnormal. Some people have a really hard time with it, but mine has always been very mild thankfully. I really didn’t think it would be a big deal, and I didn’t want to get kicked out of the running for something so stupid.
Margaret reviewed my answers and asked a few more questions. She was an attractive woman in her late forties, and her tone and the scar made her seem severe but not unkind. When she finished her questions, she asked if I had any. Trying to be charming, I jokingly asked, “When do we leave?”
She smiled thinly and gave a low, throaty laugh. “How’s tomorrow sound?”
The next day I was on a small jet along with eight other students from my college. Based on the orientation we had before we got on the plane that morning, we were going to a secluded resort that was actually a highly sophisticated testing facility. We had to sign paperwork agreeing to not leave the resort until the end of the week or we would forfeit our money and be liable for the expenses incurred by our inclusion in the experiment up to that point. A couple of people raised concerns about that, but Margaret was quick to allay them.
She said that for all intents and purposes, we were just getting two weeks of paid vacation at a deluxe hotel. The main differences were that we would be under surveillance at all times and that there would be a low-level infectious disease introduced at points around the hotel throughout the week. This, of course, raised more questions.
Margaret smiled and nodded as she listened, and she responded with the smooth and placid tones of a polished politician. She understood the worry, but that was the entire point of the experiment. They were using a very mild form of the cold virus and just needed to track its spread throughout the hotel over the course of the two weeks. Very slight symptoms that would be a runny nose and slight cough at most. They would start introducing the virus after the first twenty-four hours, and they would stop introducing it after the first week, so that by the time everyone left, they should be “fit as a fiddle and $5,000.00 richer.”
This calmed people down some, but you could still feel a palpable tension that hadn’t been there before. Margaret went on to say that this experiment could give her organization vital information to help see the effects of a terrorist biological attack on a populated area and how such an attack could be combatted. That by participating, we would not only be helping ourselves and their research, but helping our country as a whole. They never specifically said they were working for the government, but you could tell they wanted us to have that impression. Anything to make it look and sound official and safe, I guess.
In the end, the sales pitch worked, and we all got on the plane. Three days later, the killing started.
The first couple of days were weird but fun. The hotel really was great, and while I got a very strange feeling when I first saw the twenty-foot security fence that surrounded the edge of the grounds, you kind of got used to it after the first day or so. The thought occurred to me more than once that I really had no idea where I was, which meant no one else did either. There were trees all around, and I know we were in the plane for several hours, but beyond that I had no clue. Still, I told myself, there was too much going on here for it not to be legitimate.
We get into the mindset that if someone is open about something, it is likely safe. That if something is backed by a lot of money and planning, it is going to stay within certain guidelines. Because they have too much to lose, right? If you’re in a strange city, you go to the franchise restaurant or store that you know. Even if it’s not somewhere you like to shop, there’s a comfort in knowing they have established products from giant corporations and uniform ways of treating their customers. If you go to the hospital for surgery, there’s that part of you that eases your worry by the idea that if they messed up somehow, you could always sue them because they have so much money. But the real point of that thought isn’t the money. It’s the idea that they are established, they are authority. They have too much to lose and they know better than you what you need. So you trust, and the world goes on.
It’s the same way with the hotel. They don’t hide what they’re doing. They go to campuses, talking about the hotel and the organization they work for. They have the resources for jets and staff and this wonderful hotel that would probably cost a grand a night in many parts of the world. So they have to be on the up and up, right?
But what if they’re crazy? Or what if they have enough money and power that they just don’t give a fuck?
These are the questions I started asking myself when Sam, a freshman who wanted to become a political science major, started laughing uncontrollably at the poolside restaurant, slamming his head repeatedly into the bar where he was eating lunch.
I had heard him laughing for a couple of minutes, but I tried to ignore it. I was reading a book while I ate a delicious club sandwich and drank a mimosa, just enjoying the sun and the relative tranquility only slightly broken by his increasingly loud titters. There were a total of thirty “guests” at the hotel, and over the last two days we had mingled enough for me to know that they had recruited from three other schools like ours. I had hung out with larger groups both evenings, but during the days I planned on just sticking to myself a lot of the time. Even with spring break taking care of the second week, I was missing a week of classes for this trip, and I wanted to make the most of my break from real life. That didn’t include getting caught up in reality show friendship drama with people I didn’t know and would never see again in a couple of weeks.
Still, Sam was one of the people I had actually talked to a bit. He was from Arizona and seemed like a very nice, normal guy. So it was weird when he started laughing like that, but I just tried to tune it out. Then I heard the first loud thump and somebody start screaming.
When I turned and looked, I could only see part of his face from my angle, but it was already a bloody ruin. He was leaving teeth imbedded in the wooden bar with each hammerfall of his head, and his laughter had become a wet caw that sounded more like raw hamburger meat thrown against a sidewalk over and over again. After a few more seconds, the bartender and one of the other guests tried to stop him, but it was too late. He was already dead.
The next few hours were a blur of fear, anger, and panic as word spread and we tried to find someone to talk to. There were a handful of “hotel staff” present, but we quickly found out they were recruited just like we were, except their recruitment had been done more selectively from a variety of resorts and cruise ships around the world. The bartender that had tried to stop Sam from beating his own brains out was named Jeff, and he was clearly just as shit-scared as the rest of us.
Administrative offices, security office, outbuildings, all were empty beyond the normal “staff”. No phone calls outside the resort and no internet. And we figured out quickly that the fence that surrounded the resort was electrified with just enough juice to make you piss yourself and black out for a few seconds if you tried to climb it.
There was no one in charge, at least that we could find. And there was no way out. We were trapped.
Over the next few days, people fell into three camps. There were the doomsday preppers. These were the ones that had decided this was some Lord of the Flies shit and they weren’t going down like that. They stockpiled some supplies and holed up in a couple of spots in the hotel the rest of us avoided. Then there were the ostriches. We just kept our heads down and pretended like everything was cool. It was just an experiment, and we just had to play our part and it would be okay at the end. Nevermind that we had just watched a man murder himself.
Then there were the crazies. Sam was the first of these, but he was far from the last. On the fourth day, Jeff the bartender stabbed a girl from Louisiana he had been hanging out with a lot since we all arrived. He used a small knife he had been cutting limes with, and as far as we could tell, he did it without any warning or provocation. We didn’t get to ask either of them though. They were alone at the other pool’s bar when it happened, and Jeff had followed three deep stabs into her neck with another two into his own. By the time anyone noticed, they had been baking in the sun for half an hour and the pool had taken on a pale, pinkish tint from the blood that had sluiced across the patio from their dead bodies.
The small wooden house that housed twenty bikes for riding around the resort had now become where we hid the bodies, and half the ostriches became preppers overnight. That wouldn’t have been so bad, but by the end of the fifth day, seven more people had gone insane.
Between “guests” and “staff”, I think there were a total of 53 people staying in that resort. By day 12, there were 4. For the last week I was there, I stayed holed up in a room on the top floor, barricaded in with a croquet mallet and a dwindling supply of candy I had swiped from the gift shop. I slept very little, and every scream or thud made me jump, but I was left alone for the most part. The crazies didn’t seem to be hunting for other people to hurt as much as just taking targets of opportunity. If you stayed out of their way, they left you alone.
Still, I wasn’t taking any chances. I stayed in the room, ready to fight someone off if I had to, and I had a makeshift rope out of bedsheets already tied to the balcony railing if I needed to escape to the next floor down. I was holding onto the dim hope that when day 14 came, I would somehow be freed, but I knew it was highly unlikely. Despite my fear and worry about getting sick and going insane, I seemed fine so far as I could tell. But that just meant they would kill me at the end, not free me.
But I was wrong. On day 12, I heard a new sound. Gunshots. Going out on the balcony, I saw several people in black biohazard suits standing in the middle of the croquet field. Two of my fellow guests already lay dead on the ground, and as I watched, they put a bullet in the head of the last as she charged them with what looked like the two-prong fork from the roast beef station in the dining room. Then they looked up at me.
The one who had done final shot had an electronic bullhorn in the other hand. She raised it to her mouth and called for me to come down, that it was over and I wouldn’t be harmed. I couldn’t be sure between the suit’s microphone and the bullhorn, but it sounded like Margaret.
I debated my options. I could refuse, and they would just come get me. Possibly they could just gas me up here. I had tried to destroy any cameras I saw in the room, but I felt sure there were others that were better hidden. Who knows what other nasty surprises they may have for non-compliant guests?
My other choice was to obey. It was very unlikely, but maybe this time they would keep their word, and I had no better options. So I went down. Margaret met me with the others in the lobby and congratulated me on surviving. She said that they were going to take me now to get tissue and blood samples, decontaminate me, and then send me back home on the jet. And, she entoned with all the patronizing mirth of a game show host, a suitcase containing $50,000.00.
It only seemed fair given all I had been through, she said, and I nodded numbly. I didn’t care about the money or anything else other than getting away from these people. I went with them into a part of the hotel I had never known existed, through several metal doors to an elevator that took us deep underground. I was poked and prodded, given an extremely thorough scrubbing and chemical bath, and then Margaret was back before me, a clipboard in hand.
“This is a NDA. A non-disclosure agreement. By signing it, you agree you will never discuss any aspect of your time here. Standard legal stuff, and I think we both know you’re smarter than to talk to anyone about this anyhow, right?” She gave me a thin smile and I quickly nodded, my stomach in knots as I signed and initialed next to little yellow tabs at various spots throughout the thick document. “Good girl. Off you go.”
I was dropped off outside my dorm building, and I didn’t even bother going inside. There was nothing in there I couldn’t replace, and I dreaded running into my roommate or someone else that might ask me questions I would have to avoid or lie about. Better to just make a clean break of it.
I had already decided on the flight back what I needed to do. I ran to the parking lot, pulling the suitcase full of money behind me. It was the only suitcase I had left. Margaret had said that the rest of my belongings had to be left behind and burned, including my old suitcase, but they had furnished me with clean clothes and shoes in my size before having me sign the stupid NDA. Tossing the suitcase in the trunk, I headed for the bank.
I deposited $45,000.00 into my bank account and kept the other $5,000 out in case I need cash, which I would. I threw away their suitcase and drove to the airport where I said good-bye to my car in long-term parking and got on a plane to Cincinnati. I paid cash for an extended-stay room there and a rental car, and over four weeks I used one of the local branches of my bank to take out various amounts of cash until I had the money back. Then I bought a cheap car for cash and drove southwest.
From the time I made my last cash withdrawal from the bank, I never went by Lisa Montgomery again except for when I filled out the paperwork to legally change my name in Nevada. I answered only to Janet Matthews, and those first few months were terrible. I was super-paranoid, always looking over my shoulder and waiting for a van to pull up and snatch me or to wake up to someone standing over my bed. But that faded some with time, and over the next three years I built a new life. I have a good job, a boyfriend who loves me, and I’m looking at buying a house in a few months.
A lot of times I eat lunch in a park near my office. This past Friday, I was walking to my favorite spot, a bench frequented by curious squirrels and hungry geese from the nearby pond. That’s when I saw the table.
It was set up along one of the main paths through the park, but near a curve thick with shrubbery from the direction I was coming. When I rounded the corner I was only thirty feet from it, and I felt my body wanting to freeze like a deer scenting a hunter. I forced myself to keep moving, trying to look normal and avoid eye contact. It was probably just some random cause or sales pitch, but I wanted no part of it either way.
“Hi there, Lisa.” It was Margaret’s voice, and now I did freeze. I cut my eyes toward the table and saw the woman smiling at me. “Good to see you. Hope we see you again soon.”
I’m sitting here writing this, less to try to save myself and more as a cautionary tale for others. I don’t have it in me to run any more, not that it would do any good. I’m going to post this and then talk to my boyfriend Nick about it. Tell him that I love him, but that he may not want to be around me anymore. They could leave me alone forever or come get me tonight. I just don’t know.
In some ways that’s the worst part. Whatever immunity I had to their murder virus, they infected me just the same. I can see it every time I look in the mirror. I can feel it whenever my heart stops at a sudden noise. They’ve infected me with this fear and dread, and I don’t know how much longer I can take it.
So I’ll end with this. Don’t take your life and your safety for granted. Don’t trust people just because it’s convenient to do so. And if you get an offer to go stay at a luxury hotel for a couple of weeks as part of some mysterious experiment, don’t just say no. You fucking run.
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