Dire Means (41 page)

Pop paused the video. “Keith Mendalsen was the first fodder we obtained. Once selected, we begin a regimented process that leads to their obtainment. Not all of the fodder are elevator-delivered, but it is easiest for us. On this day, we were fortunate to catch Mendalsen on a solo ride to the lobby.”

Mark watched Keith turn his head at the sound of the elevator door closing before he rushed back feeling his way along the soft, foam-lined wall.

“They’re always disappointed that the elevator buttons are missing,” Pop said, laughing as Keith’s fingers probed the hollow holes where the elevator’s call buttons should have been.

The lights of the vestibule came on and the camera adjusted, removing its infrared filter and the eerie glow on Keith’s flesh that it produced. Keith turned his head to the side and listened as Morana, Raphael, Teddy, and Nanette approached him from the other end of the vestibule. Raphael had a roll of foam under his arm. Teddy pushed a gurney. Nanette carried a small bag, and Morana led the four with a Taser gun held behind her back, out of Keith’s sight.

They stopped walking, lined up a few feet from Keith, blocking his way. Morana said, “Please lay on our gurney.”

Pop paused the video. “There is no reason for Mr. Mendalsen to suffer any physical pain at this point. Mo gave him a simple request.”

The video continued. Keith asked about exit signage and Morana revealed the Taser gun and aimed it. Keith looked down at the quivering dot on his chest and then asked if this was some kind of joke. Morana fired and Keith stiffened like a limp fire hose that had been blasted with full pressure. As he fell, Raphael stepped forward and flung the rolled foam out and under him catching Keith’s body.

Two more times Morana asked Keith to lay on the gurney until he complied, begging her not to Taser him again.

Raphael and Teddy made quick work of securing Keith to the gurney and gagging him while Nanette tended to his wounds.

Pop stopped the video and Morana said, “We also control the security footage provided to law enforcement in all four buildings. Bracks splices in what we want them to see.”

“What about their cars? And their mobile phones? How do you handle tracing?” Mark asked.

Pop smiled at Morana as if he was proud of Mark’s intelligent question—proud of having selected Mark for their mission. “We rush fodder’s mobile phones to an area a distance from the building, yet a place frequented by the fodder. We dial 911 and then discard the phone nearby. We drive fodder’s cars to random locations. Bracks applies a current time stamp to pre-shot footage of fodder driving their cars from our garages. Tracing fodder’s last movements is impossible.”

The efficiency of it amazed Mark. If their maiden abduction had gone this smoothly, how much improvement had the Trail Bladers realized since?

Obedient elevators made special deliveries of victims to a place of total privacy where the Trail Bladers exercised complete control over fodder. The ingenuity of it explained why a city chock full of law enforcement and terrified citizens still could not produce a single solid lead. And if a lead came from any of the buildings in which they controlled elevators, they could ruin it with doctored security video footage.

Mark needed to get to the computer console that controlled the elevators and the Nest. He needed to meet Bracks.

The camera switched to the interior of an adjacent room bathed in fluorescent light. As they wheeled Keith through the room toward the freight elevator door, Nanette walked beside Keith, her hand resting on his shoulder. She stroked his hair a few times, but said nothing to him. At one point she walked sideways and backwards beside Keith, slipping her fingers under the straps to check their tightness.

“What is she doing?” Mark said.

Pop paused the video and gestured for Morana to explain.

“We don’t want to damage fodder. We want them to be in pristine condition. Any physical scarring at our hands is a distraction to those who will examine the fodder. We want their cause of death to be clear when their bodies are found.”

“But we Taser them,” Mark said, satisfied that he spoke as if he were one of them.

Morana answered, “The Taser leaves tiny pin holes that fully heal in less than four days on a healthy person. As you can see, we are always prepared to cushion the falls of uncooperative fodder. We prefer that they show no bruising.”

“Have we accidentally damaged any fodder?” Mark asked.

“Yes, several times, poor things. In fact, today, the scratcher,” Morana said, holding up her wrist. “We Tasered it several times and it developed a nasty egg on its head from jerking into the gurney handle during resistance. We’ll give medical attention to this fodder to heal its body. We may have to nourish it too, if healing isn’t complete within our timeline.”

“So you’ll feed—it?” Mark said.

“We offer the fodder scraps of our leftover food to aid in their healing,” Morana said. “When we can estimate a complete recovery date, we then discontinue the food.”

Pop seemed satisfied with her explanation and pressed the remote. The video continued. It showed Morana and the other Trail Bladers wheeling Keith onto the freight elevator. Nanette stroked his head and dabbed his mouth with the cloth she still held, but did not answer his muffled grunts. Raphael unfolded a black tarp and snapped it open. They draped it over Keith’s body to conceal him.

The short loading dock spanned less than twenty feet from the freight elevator door. A shiny red and black Trail Blader truck was backed to it, and its large rear doors swung out from the center, blocking any view of the bound and gagged Keith Mendalsen from the street. The lights on the loading dock blinked off. In less than five seconds, they wheeled Keith from the freight elevator into the back of the dimly lit armored truck, labeled “Trail Bladers Subterranean Data Destruction.”

Inside the truck, they pulled the tarp off and slid Keith and his gurney into the chute. Keith heaved and struggled under his restraints. They closed the lid of the chute and wheeled in several large metal containers on top of Keith’s temporary tomb before closing the truck’s heavy rear doors. The diesel engine coughed and then rumbled to a deep growl that drowned out the faint thumping of Keith’s body inside the hatch.

Pop stopped the video and turned up the lights. His PDA beeped from inside his pocket. He pulled it out and made his usual strained look at it from about twelve inches. He touched the screen and returned it to his pocket.

“That was our first obtainment, Mark,” he said. “And it took a mere two-hundred-forty seconds from the fodder’s entry into our vestibule until the truck pulled away from the loading dock. Our obtainments have since become more polished. In fact, we’ve improved so much that we can obtain fodder from any of our buildings quicker than the elevator buttons cool from the fodder’s touch.”

The screen retracted into the ceiling and then Morana stood to take a phone call. She turned toward the wall and said, “Great, I’ll let him know.” She turned back to Pop and said, “I have to go or the fodder may damage itself.”

“Fine. Mark, your timing is good. Come, we are going to show you the very next phase of fodder processing.” Pop led them out.

Mark’s nervousness grew as they walked toward the now-familiar garage foyer. He was possibly going to see fodder—dying fodder. As they entered the foyer, Pop stopped a few feet from the mural of Mark and gazed at it with hand on his chin, smiling. “What a night. I want to thank you for autographing our image of you.”

“I wish I could say it was my pleasure,” Mark said.

Pop laughed.

Again, Mark noticed the red door on the opposite wall of the foyer. It had no knob, handle, or console. He was about to ask what it was for when Pop said, “At the conclusion of the video we watched in my office, you saw the fodder transported by truck. They arrive here as our guests.”

Just then, the garage door swung opened. Raphael entered, wheeling a chubby man—bound, gagged, and tilted back on a red and black hand truck. The man wore a chef’s uniform and his mouth was stuffed with a ball gag. His terrified eyes shot from Pop to Mark and then attempted to look back over his own shoulder.

Pop said, “What’s cooking, fodder? Welcome. We’ve been waiting for you.”

Morana went to the handle-less red door and waited.

The bound man yelled something, but the gag wrestled his tongue, mutating his words into drivel.

“Who are we? We’re Trail Bladers. And you’ve cooked yourself up a vacation at our resort.” As with Ty, Pop answered, having understood every word the chef squeezed out from under the gag. “By the way, you’ll be happy to know you won’t need to tolerate the homeless while you’re on vacation. We’ve arranged for a suite with no unpleasant sights and no needy people nor their smells.”

The man hummed six syllables.

“What do we want from you?” Pop said.

The chef nodded.

Pop stepped closer to the chef and lowered his voice. “We want to know if you could find it in your heart to help us execute our mission.”

The chef nodded hard and said, “Um hmm, um hmm, um hmm.” Even Mark could understand that. The man’s eyes lit up with hope.

“They all want to help,” Pop said to Mark. The chef’s face regained some of its worry.

“You are going to help us in a way that the whole world will see. But for you, it might take a while longer,” Pop said as he thumped the back of two fingers on the chef’s belly and pointed to the red door.

The chef screamed through the gag as Raphael leaned him back and then rolled him toward the door. Morana had her phone to her ear. When the chef came near she said, “Now—open it now.”

Mark heard a series of five metallic sounds like that of electronic deadbolts unlocking in sequence followed by a hiss, then the door slid open. Pop motioned for them to enter a small hallway, painted red, with a small sign on the inner wall that read, “The Sty.”

The first thing Mark noticed was the smell. It rushed out the door and filled the foyer before they could enter—grilled meats and BBQ. He thought perhaps they had entered a kitchen of some sort, but he knew the diner was in a distant area of the Nest. “What is that smell coming from?” he asked.

“We employ some of the best chefs in the west,” Pop said.

“We’ll explain the delicious aroma shortly,” Morana added.

The heavy red door slid shut behind them and dead bolts locked into place. Mark noticed a security console inside the door, but not outside.

Raphael wheeled the chef into a small room off the side and closed the door behind him.

“I’m so sorry you had to observe that fodder,” Pop said to Mark. “In the future we’ll try to keep them out of sight—they are such an eyesore.”

“He didn’t bother me,” Mark said.

“Well, their begging is embarrassing and sometimes fodder can be downright intimidating in their demands of us. I didn’t put them in their situations. They made choices that brought their lives to this,” Pop pointed back at the red door through which they had entered, “and suddenly we’re supposed to help them out so they can do it again? Ha! It’s ridiculous!”

“I get your point,” Mark said.

“Good. We simply prefer not to see them or smell them or, God forbid, touch them. Just as the public relocates our brothers and sisters on the streets, we occasionally move our fodder to cleanse our environment. It makes our living space so much more aesthetically pleasing.”

“Is there no way that fodder can convince you to spare their lives?”

“Obviously you are new to dealing with fodder,” Pop said. “You see, Mark, if you give them anything, they linger—on and on and on.” Pop made a rolling gesture with this hand. “Our goal is to end their need for help. And so far we have succeeded with every fodder—eventually.”

Raphael laughed and Pop continued, “Who knows why they get themselves into such a predicament? They’ve had the same opportunity as I’ve had to be responsible and to avoid the trouble they are in. I’ve maintained my freedom my whole life. I don’t know why they can’t just do what I did.”

Mark couldn’t tell if Pop’s comparison of fodder and homeless people was sarcastic or simply the warped logic of insanity. “What is happening to the fodder right now?” Mark said, pointing to the door where the chef had disappeared.

“He’s being dressed—put into something a bit more comfortable,” Pop said. “He’s almost ready. Meanwhile, I’ll show you the heart of our fodder sty.”

Pop led them around the corner from the small red outer room into a bigger room a hundred feet long. The low lighting made the room feel like an unlit warehouse interior at dusk. A narrow walkway split two rows of chrome manhole covers the size of automobile tires. The covers faced up on the dirt floor and each had a two-foot arm handle protruding up at an angle. Small LCD monitors stood waist high beside each cover, their screens faced, and illuminated, the narrow walkway.

Darkness shrouded the high edges of the room. Morana spoke into her phone. “Light please,” she said. Floor lights came on and revealed the faint shapes of rods, wheels, and pulleys tucked in the high ceiling.

Two long leather straps hung from the ceiling a few feet away. The bottom of each strap had a silver hook. Morana said, “A-17,” into her phone and a motor in the ceiling whined. Long straps glided beside the walkway, their bottoms lagging behind at an angle like ghostly drapes. They moved with robotic precision to a place over a distant shiny cover. The straps and hooks swayed back and forth before stopping directly over the cover.