Painless (41 page)

Chapter 94

Beth and the other mothers were packed flesh-to-flesh in the “security room.” Their existence was no longer comparable to plantation life in the 18th century. It now resembled the concentration camps of Nazi Germany.

The majority of the captives showed little emotion. But Beth wasn’t a member of the “living dead club,” so she gravitated to someone she knew still had some fight left—her mother. They hugged and cried the way they should have at Beth’s wedding and her father’s funeral.

Nobody was sure what was happening, but it wasn’t good. Smoke streamed in from the vent. Within minutes, it encompassed the area like a morning fog in San Francisco. A symphony of coughing filled the room. Beth’s worst fears were coming to light through the haze of smoke—it was going to be death by gas chamber!

As her lungs were contaminated with the poisonous fumes, she became lightheaded. She reached for her mother and held on with all her remaining strength. But as the smoke thickened, she could no longer fight it off. Then she lost consciousness in her mother’s arms.

* * *

Chuck was disoriented. The property was huge—five hundred acres, he remembered that bastard Jordan saying on their initial tour. And with fires burning everywhere, he wasn’t sure where he was headed. The horror and chaos reminded him of a movie he saw about Pearl Harbor. He just kept running. “Beth!” he shouted, hoping she would magically appear. It wouldn’t be the first time she came out of nowhere to save him. He kept screaming it, “Beth! Beth!”

He arrived at the stone-built kitchen. Flames had taken it hostage, black smoke jetting out of its windows like an oil tanker ablaze. He tried to bypass it, but then he heard a woman’s voice. It was soft, and he wondered if he was hearing things. He listened closer to make sure. He had no idea if it was Beth, but he rushed into the dilapidating building, doing his best to avoid flaming objects falling from the roof.

He looked to the floor and saw a woman. It wasn’t Beth—it was her friend Miss Rose. He ran to her and checked her vitals. She was still alive, but couldn’t survive much more smoke. He attempted to pick up the heavy-set woman and carry her out. Chuck was a strong as an ox, but she was testing his strength. The thick smoke blinded him as he attempted to navigate his way out of the inferno. By sheer luck he found the doorway out of the burning structure and they collapsed on a patch of grass, gasping for air.

“What’s going on?” Chuck asked frantically.

 “I don’t know,” she said in a constricted voice. She could barely talk. She took a look at the grounds, watching Rome burn. “Holy Mary mother of God,” she muttered.

“Do you know where Beth is?”

“Probably in the tunnels under the manor house.”

“Which way is that?”

Miss Rose forced herself to stand, continuing to cough, but showing surprising strength. “I’ll take you there, but first we have to get André out of the stockade.”

“We don’t have time, we have to get to Beth,” he pleaded. He would make no apologies for his selfishness.

She rose from the ashes, literally, and waddled down a tree-lined path toward André. “He told me he saved your daughter.”

Chuck followed, the tug of her guilt trip too powerful. The stockade wasn’t far, maybe a few hundred feet from the kitchen. It was a small, run-down shack, once used to store farming equipment.

André was constricted in a medieval-looking contraption in which his head and arms were locked to the device. They were popular in the US during the 18th century as a source of public humiliation for lawbreakers, the townsfolk often lobbing rotten tomatoes at the shackled culprit in the town square.

“Get me out of here,” he squealed.

“I’m here, baby,” Miss Rose said. She walked over and gave him a sloppy kiss on his trapped face. Then after another coughing fit, she turned to Chuck.

“What are you waiting for? Shoot!” she ordered.

Chuck looked at her with shock. “Eh?”

“The only way he can get out of the stockade is to shoot the locks off. Hurry, we have to hurry!”

“But they’re right by his head.”

André interjected, “You’re Chuck Whitcomb.”

“How’d you know that?”

“Billy Harper described you perfectly.”

It was like they knew each other. “How’s my daughter?”

“She needs you—so hurry! Hit me in the limbs if you have to, I can’t feel pain. But you need to shoot off the locks.”

Chuck aimed and fired at the locks. Sure enough, one shot skipped off the rusted lock and lodged in André’s shoulder blade. He didn’t even twitch. But the bullet also shattered the locks.

Miss Rose helped raise the contraption off of André, freeing his head and hands. She once again had helped him to freedom. He couldn’t feel the discomfort that a non-CIPA person would feel from being locked in the same position for days, but his body appeared in need of a good chiropractor. He couldn’t lift his head up straight, and despite his best efforts, his arms wouldn’t raise.

André and his mother then had an intense moment. It was like they were saying goodbye, Chuck thought.

* * *

André ran off as fast as he could, which wasn’t that fast. He fell numerous times, but kept going. He ran all the way to the burning slave quarters that housed the CIPA kids. He first ran to his brothers’ house. Many of them were already gone, but some were still alive. He pulled them out, one by one, with every ounce of energy left in his body. Then he moved his attention to the others. Some were on fire, some weren’t. Those on fire he rolled in the grass. Some actually fought him off, trying to carry out their orders.

He went house by house, saving as many as he could until his body finally gave out. To nobody’s surprise, André sacrificed his own life to save others.

Chapter 95

Chuck followed Miss Rose to the manor house. The good news was that it was about the only thing on the property that wasn’t swallowed up by flames.

“They probably are locked in the ‘security room,’” Miss Rose said between coughs.

“Let’s go!” Chuck shouted out, his voice desperate.

“First we need to get the key card.”

“Where’s that?”

“Dr. Jordan used to keep it in his bedchambers on the second level.”

They ran into the house via the English basement. It appeared empty. Chuck had the gun ready just in case. They moved to the first floor, into the empty saloon, and then ascended the grand staircase where Carolyn had performed her “gotchya” joke during their earlier visit.

“I’ll go get it, you stand guard,” she instructed.

“Hurry,” he urged.

Chuck waited outside the room until his patience grew thin. “C’mon, c’mon,” he mumbled. When what seemed like minutes went by, he got jumpy and burst into the room. What he saw was Miss Rose laying on the bed, a man about to inject her with a syringe.

It was the Pakistani doctor from the plane, the one who paralyzed him and Beth. The doctor must have been hiding in the room. Chuck’s eyes filled with revenge. He moved behind the man and surprised him with a gun handle to the head. The doctor toppled to the floor.

“I’m on your side—I am undercover,” the doctor groaned, looking up at his assailant.

Chuck didn’t have time to investigate. “Do you have the key?” he asked Miss Rose.

She nodded her head, but she wasn’t moving. Chuck realized it was because she was tied up. He quickly untied her, then gave Doctor Paralysis another kick to the head, which would put him in a deep sleep for a while. They then sprinted to the elevator that he hoped would bring him to Beth.

The hallways of the underground caves were full of smoke. They covered their mouths and noses the best they could and fought through it. Chuck followed Miss Rose like a halfback behind his pulling guard. She used her twenty years of experience to guide them through the hazy fumes. In the distance, they could hear medical supplies exploding like fireworks on the Fourth of July. They reached the “security room” and Miss Rose used the key card to open its heavy door.

What they found was horrifying. It was a pile of death. Bodies on top of bodies. It was Auschwitz.

“Oh my God—no!” Chuck shouted as he dashed in. He pulled people out—some alive—some he wasn’t sure—some were already gone. He wouldn’t stop until he found Beth.

He located her, barely conscious, clinging to an older woman. He slung his wife over his shoulder and ran out, stepping on bodies. It might’ve been selfish, but he didn’t care—the only thing he cared about was Beth.

He laid her on the ground and checked her pulse. It was slight, and her breathing shallow.

“Stay with me, baby!” he shouted, tapping her cheeks. The ones she passed on to Carolyn.

Her eyes struggled open and he gave a “thank God” gesture to the sky. Miss Rose continued dragging people out. The woman, the one Beth was clinging to, also tried her best to help between ferocious coughs, but was too weak to make a difference.

Chuck couldn’t leave Beth. He looked deep into her eyes. The eyes she passed on to Carolyn. “Are you alright?”

She smiled. “I am now.”

He always knew when she wasn’t telling the truth.

Chapter 96

Mitchell Jones was never one to stay down on the canvas. He tore off a piece of his bloodstained T-shirt and tied it around his wounded forehead, Karate Kid-style. He then maneuvered around the plantation, completing his mission. Nothing remained standing as he eliminated any remaining evidence. Well, not all of it, but he would keep the part about Chuck Whitcomb beating him to a pulp and disappearing with his gun to himself.

When he finished torching the barn where the stallions were kept, he took care of his own men. Everyone and everything was evidence. One by one he executed all of his men, including his long time confidants, Regan and Poindexter.
Survival of the fittest
, he proudly thought.

He then returned to the Plantation Office and prepared it for a torching of biblical proportions. He drenched it with gasoline from a can he found in a rusted tool shed behind the office. He was ready to set the place ablaze when a man in a formal military uniform walked in like he owned the place.

“Has the mission been completed?” Kerry Rutherford asked in his intimidating voice.

“All secure,” Jones replied, leaving out the part about Chuck Whitcomb. He probably tried to escape over the wall anyway and was now nothing but charcoal.

“You got rid of
all
the evidence?” Rutherford double checked.

“The place is nothing but a big barbecue,” Jones boasted.

“So it is safe to bring in Senator LaRoche?”

“Yes sir.”

“But I think you missed one piece of evidence, Jones.”

Did he know about Whitcomb? He didn’t ascend to the head of US intelligence by not knowing stuff.

“What’s that?” Jones attempted to play dumb.

Rutherford pulled out a pistol and coldly said, “You.”

Jones actually smiled with admiration as he stared down the barrel of the gun. This was survival of the fittest in its purest form. He had taken his mind off the quest—seeking credit, just like Stipe—and he knew it. It went against the laws of nature. His last thought was how proud he was to serve under a man like Rutherford, who was a true survivalist like himself.

Chapter 97

Billy sat in the back of Senator Oliver LaRoche’s stretch limousine, parked safely outside the gates of Jordan Plantation. LaRoche sat to his right, with Dana and Carolyn on his other side. LaRoche was dressed in what all politicians wear when they want to be filmed looking like the “common man”—the dreaded flannel shirt. Dana and Carolyn were dressed to impress, robbing Kelly and Maddie’s respective closets. Billy was not going for the dapper look. He wore a ragged, scarlet and gray Ohio State sweatshirt that Kelly had stolen from him years ago.

Before leaving for the plantation, Billy did what he should have done hundreds of times over the past couple years—he kissed his daughters good-bye, hugged them the best he could with the sling on his shoulder, and then went to work. LaRoche called off Wednesday’s Senate hearings due to “important and confidential” information he received last evening concerning the Iran hostage situation. They then drove to Clarksville and waited for the sun to rise over Buggs Island Lake, but it never showed.

 But the gloomy, overcast morning was soon ablaze, a volcano of fire erupting throughout the plantation. They couldn’t help but stare with stunned silence from the safety of the limo. Billy made eye contact with Dana, who communicated back her fear for Chuck and Beth’s safety.

Billy could tell LaRoche had other things on his mind, perhaps debating a fast getaway as the place went up like Waco. Another government invasion into a cult compound that ended up in disaster, filled with an inferno of death and fire. Billy had to admit that LaRoche was good at his craft. He knew that when potential political fires swirled, you don’t go back in to save people or stop-drop-and-roll, you run like hell in the other direction and never admit you were there.

Carolyn was mesmerized, as if she were watching Fourth of July fireworks. “That’s a big barbecue,” she said in typical do-ra-mi.

“It sure is,” Billy said, his distracted thoughts still squarely on Chuck and Beth.

“Is all that fire because the dragons live there? They shoot fire, ya know.”

“The fire is because the fireflies have all joined together to make one really-really big firefly that is beating up all the dragons.”

“Dragons are mean,” Carolyn added. “I’m glad a really-really big firefly is beating them up.”

So was Billy.

LaRoche finally received the call they’d been nervously waiting for. Likely wanting witnesses to cover his rear, he allowed everyone in the car to listen to the call through a Bluetooth hands-free device built into the vehicle’s stereo system. Rutherford described an epic battle that confirmed that the plantation was the headquarters of Operation Anesthesia. It had been secured by his men and was now safe to enter.

The limo drove down the long driveway, trying to avoid the sights, sounds, and smell of what looked like a war-torn nation. They moved under the arch-like entry and pulled right up to the front of the manor house.

LaRoche walked with hesitance. Politicians like certainty. Not the hero or goat potential of an athlete. Carolyn walked with a similar hesitancy, stating that all the dragons hadn’t been removed. But there was no turning back now. Billy reached his hands out to his “Bonnies,” who grabbed on for safety as they walked through the open front door.

“In here,” echoed the voice of Kerry Rutherford. It was his “I’m in charge” voice.

They passed through the empty dining room that smelled charred, but was still intact, including the guillotine-looking fan over the table. The next room was the impressive saloon that contained the grand staircase Carolyn joked she was going to leap off during Billy’s last visit. It was only a few weeks ago, but seemed like a different lifetime.

Rutherford stood by the staircase. He appeared most ready for the photo op, decked out in a military uniform for the occasion.

“There were many casualties,” Rutherford grimly informed.

“How many?” LaRoche asked with concern. Billy figured he was still pondering an escape. Casualties never look good in tomorrow’s newspaper, even if the cause was just.

“No way to tell right now. We are still searching the grounds,” Rutherford stated with a quiver of emotion in his voice. “We’re dealing with five hundred acres.”

“What about my sister and her husband?” Dana blurted out.

Rutherford ominously lowered his head. “Operation Anesthesia began trying to burn all the evidence and all those who were enslaved here. And when my men tried to stop them, they were fired upon.”

“You didn’t answer the question,” Billy stated angrily. He was still not getting a good vibe from Rutherford. He looked to Carolyn, who was a savant when it came to vibes, and he could tell she was no fan either.

“Fireflies didn’t get all the dragons,” she muttered, her eyes searching for an escape route.

“No, we haven’t found them yet. And I’m going to be straight with you—I fear the worst. We’ve found underground tunnels containing piles of bodies. People were murdered like those in a concentration camp,” Rutherford said.

Billy put an arm around Dana. She lost all the color in her face and looked on the verge of collapse.

LaRoche was more pragmatic. “What about the evidence? Were you able to save any?”

“We are actively searching.”

“Then how can you be so sure this was Operation Anesthesia?” LaRoche squealed in a high-pitched voice, constricted by the tightening political noose.

“Because I know it is,” Rutherford barked. “My men just died to find this deadly truth, so don’t you attack my integrity, Senator!”

“What about your inside source? We need him to validate your claims.”

“We haven’t located him yet. And my
claims
don’t need validation.”

Just as Rutherford’s words vaporized into the air, a rumble could be heard from the top of the stairs. They looked to see a woozy looking man who appeared to have taken a blow to the head. He began to gingerly descend the stairs

“Dash—you’re alive,” Rutherford exclaimed.

The man didn’t reply. He appeared dazed, looking around the room like he was trying to get his bearings. So Rutherford spoke for him.

“This, Senator, is the brave and heroic doctor who was so willing to risk his own life for the greater good. He was able to infiltrate Operation Anesthesia.”