The Birdman Project: Book One

by E. L. Giles

  I nod and turn my head to hide the tears that well in my eyes. I concentrate back on the window, hoping they’ll leave Josh alone.

  A guard pushes Josh further into the room, and he enters the halo of light coming from the fixture in the ceiling. He stops abruptly, his gaze visibly landing on O’Hare, who is now sitting in a chair, his hands cuffed at his back. Josh stands half-naked, bare chest and arms covered with bruises and scratches and dried blood. Now that he has moved his head, I can see that half of his face is covered by a layer of dried blood and one of his eyelids is swollen shut.

  “Isn’t he beautiful?” President Nightingales exclaims, clapping his hands together. “I mean, besides a few little scratches and bruises, of course.”

  “Little scratches and bruises?” I scream at the top of my lungs, my voice breaking at the end. “You have beaten him to a pulp.”

  “Well, he’s quite strong and seems not that inclined to follow orders. Let’s see how he does now. Enjoy the show, my dear.”

  The show… Is that all this is to him? A show? What man can take pleasure in torturing someone else? What man can enjoy such a show?

  The guard who pushed O’Hare inside the room moves away from him and walks toward Josh, a pistol in his hand, aiming it directly at Josh’s stomach.

  “Don’t kill Josh, please!” I cry. “I beg you.”

  “Oh, my dear, it’s not—”

  “I’m not your dear,” I interrupt, then start crying at the window, trying to break the glass with my fist. “Josh! JOSH!”

  “He can’t hear you. No more than he can see you.” He reaches a hand up to my face, wiping away the tears that wet my cheeks. I jerk away from his hand. “Now watch.”

  Josh and the guard with the pistol both stay still for several seconds. I don’t know why it takes so long for them to do something. If only I could hear… I guess the guard must be telling Josh something. The guard finally stretches out his hand toward Josh, handing him…the pistol?

  Josh takes it, abashed, as the guard who now has no pistol moves back a few steps, then turns around and goes to the side wall to the left where the guard who pushed Josh inside stands. The difference between the guards is astounding. One must be Josh’s height but bulkier, while the other one, who gave Josh the pistol, is a little chubby guy with pink skin and deep-red cheeks, no hair at all on his face. He barely reaches the shoulders of the tall and bulky guard. Side by side, they look ludicrous.

  I look at President Nightingale from the corner of my eye. A smile tears his face in half from ear to ear. I stare back at Josh, who still looks puzzled as he holds the pistol loosely in his shaky hand, and then I focus on the guards, who both stare sternly at him. My eyes fall on O’Hare, handcuffed to his chair, and I look back at President Nightingale. Is it possible that…

  “You won’t force him to kill…this man,” I say, almost betraying myself by calling him by his name.

  President Nightingale snorts disdainfully and nods before stretching his free arm toward a third switch on the wall. Instantly, a hissing noise echoes in our room before we hear sounds that seem to come from the room behind the window. I hear Josh breathing heavily. I see him, a blend of rage and terror filling his eyes. Sweat slowly accumulates in his hairline. His breathing becoming faster.

  “Do it,” says a gravelly voice—the chubby guard, I think. I didn’t expect him to be that firm, even less to have such a voice.

  “No,” says Josh, turning toward the guard. He drops the pistol on the table.

  The tall, bulky guard steps out of the shadows, drawing a pistol and aiming it at Josh’s head. The guard steps once and then twice and again until the barrel of the pistol presses against Josh’s temple.

  “Do it! Now!” yells the guard through gritted teeth.

  “Go on, kid, do it,” says O’Hare.

  I’m startled at how surprisingly strong but smooth O’Hare’s voice is, like he’s set on his fate, or maybe he wants to comfort Josh. I stare at this vision of horror—O’Hare strapped to a chair and Josh staring at him through wet eyes while having the barrel of a pistol pressed against his head. The threat is real. There is only one way to end it all. Josh needs to do as ordered and kill O’Hare.

  I have a moment of weakness. One faint moment where my hand releases its grip on President Nightingale’s arm and my sight blurs. One moment where I feel myself disconnect from reality. One moment of pure darkness during which I feel no pain and no fear and I let myself drift into my thoughts. Josh and I are kissing, lying in bed, his arm wrapped around my back and my head resting on his chest. This moment meets its end as brutally as it started. I come back to reality, grabbing onto President Nightingale’s arm before I slam myself onto the cement floor.

  I don’t think President Nightingale notices my moment of weakness. He looks too absorbed by what is happening behind the window. He no longer smiles. He no longer seems amused by this “show.” No. his demeanor is now tense, his eyelids lowered, his eyes still and watchful, like a statue. His jawline, too, protrudes more than it did. He must be gritting his teeth. Things must not be going as he planned.

  I can’t see much of O’Hare except his back, but he and Josh seem highly absorbed in this stare they share. My heart starts to race at a dangerous pace as Josh finally breaks the silence and grabs the pistol off the table. Josh looks down at the pistol in his hand, then raises his head and stares at O’Hare, who nods.

  “Better off you than them, kid. Please, do it,” says O’Hare. I hate how he calls Josh “kid.” I wonder if it’s how he used to call him back home, when he lived with them, or if it’s purely for the sake of hiding the fact that they know each other.

  Josh draws the pistol higher, seeming as unsure as he did with rifle when he shot the drone. His hand shakes, and he brings his other hand to it. The barrel is aimed at O’Hare. Sweat now covers Josh’s forehead entirely, and I notice his eyes are red and his cheeks are wet.

  “Flying Rat feels sad?” jests the tall and bulky guard, who still aims at Josh, but from a distance now. Both guards burst out laughing and start mimicking a crying baby as they rub their eyes.

  “Don’t call me that, you piece of shit!” shouts Josh as he drops his arms to his sides.

  “We could have fun with your girl too. What d’you think, Flying Rat? Is she good in bed?”

  “Don’t touch her!” Josh bellows, angrier than ever, death in his eyes as he shifts to his side, readying to jump at them. I notice then the chain around his ankles.

  “Or what?” asks the tall guard as he moves toward Josh, stopping at nose distance from him. “You’ll kill me?” He punches Josh in the face, right under his swollen eye. “Huh? You’ll kill me? You think you got enough balls to do it?”

  I turn toward President Nightingale. “Please, make him stop. Please.”

  President Nightingale ignores me, a sullen concentration still contorting his face, devouring the confidence that surrounded him earlier.

  There’s an endless moment—endless by my standard—that passes before it all moves on. Time where Josh stares eye to eye with the tall guard. Time during which we can only hear everyone breathe. Desperation conquers every cell of my brain, priming this ache in my body I know too well. Every single inch of skin and bone and flesh hurt seeing Josh defy them at the risk of being beaten down, tortured, or killed. Never has he looked this lost. Never have I been this lost.

  The tall, bulky guard finally backs up. With both hands Josh aims the pistol at O’Hare’s head. His stance is firm. The barrel remains stiff and unmoving. Josh closes his eyes, his finger lingering against the trigger.

  A bang splits my eardrums. Blood spills out of O’Hare’s skull, spraying across the window. Nausea clutches me. Bile departs from the pit of my stomach and crawls up into my mouth. I release President Nightingale’s arm and let myself fall to the floor. I vomit.

  “Obedient,” mumbles President Nightingale as he gets me to my feet and forces me to look at the window through an area of glass th
at is free of blood.

  I get a glimpse of, Josh who abruptly turns toward the guards on the side wall, aiming at the tall, bulky one. Josh presses the trigger again—one time, two times, three times—but only the click of the trigger resonates with no bangs, no blood, and no one else dead.

  “But uncontrollable,” finishes President Nightingale, shoulders slouched and head lowered, as if the weight of his deception weighs too heavily on him.

  Both guards instantly jump on Josh and throw him to the floor.

  “Leave me alone!” Josh cries as he struggles against their grip, his arms and legs thrashing in every direction until one foot kicks the chubby guard in the face, leaving a red mark on his pink cheek. The tall, bulky guard manages to press his pistol against Josh’s head, and the chubby guard gets up, bringing a pair of handcuffs out of his vest. When he steps toward Josh, he kicks him several times in the ribs, making Josh cry out in pain and contort around himself. They handcuff his wrists and drag him from the room. The door closes behind them, and I lose sight of Josh.

  I can’t hold on anymore.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  President Nightingale helps me back to my chair. My legs don’t want to cooperate anymore. They feel numb, liquefied, unable to support my weight. As I sit, President Nightingales snaps his fingers twice, and a guard with a platter instantly enters the room. The platter holds two steaming plastic cups and a pile of files and papers that threaten to fall off the edge of the round, metallic plate. I notice the guard has some battle scars on his face—deep scratches and bruises that remind me of Josh’s—and as he drops the plate on the table, right in front of President Nightingale, and puts a plastic cup in front of me, I notice the thick white cloth that bandages his left ear.

  “Your little friend isn’t really cooperative, is he?” President Nightingale says, gesturing at the guard to leave with a disdainful grin. “Thank you, soldier.”

  The guard turns and walks back to the door, slamming it closed behind him. President Nightingale takes the pile of papers and files from the plate in front of him and spreads them in perfect alignment along the table.

  He exhales in exasperation. “So stupid,” he murmurs, mostly to himself. I suppose he refers to the guard who left. “Do you know, my dear Lisa—you don’t mind if I call you Lisa, right?” he says as he browses a thick file. He can call me whatever he wants. I don’t care anymore. All I want is to get back to Josh, but I fear that won’t happen, and this reality threatens to send me back into the numbness of my unconsciousness. “Do you know, Lisa, what’s even harder than keeping a whole population obedient?” He pauses, and I shake my head. “Come on. Take a guess. Anything.”

  “Looking at yourself in the mirror,” I say bitterly. His game doesn’t amuse me, but my comment seems to trigger him.

  “Nah. Keeping a presidential chair.”

  I frown. “What?”

  “Don’t be surprised, my dear Lisa,” he says, “You don’t know how many times my opponents have tried to remove me from this chair I’ve kept for nearly fifty years now. And year after year, you need to keep the threats of another rebellion down to a safe minimum.” He reaches for his cup and brings it to his lips. “Drink, while it’s hot.”

  “Thanks, but no thanks,” I say.

  He lowers his eyelids. “That’s not very polite of you. Come on, it’s tea. I’m sure you will love it.”

  I obey. If I stay obstinate, I’ll spend the rest of my life in this room enduring this game of sickening courtesy he seems inclined to play. I bring the cup to my lips and sip a little. It tastes strong and bitter with a sugary aftertaste that doesn’t blend well.

  “So?” he asks. “Isn’t it the best thing you have ever drank in your life?” he asks.

  “Yeah,” I say. It is nothing compared to what Dolores used to prepare.

  “Oh, come on, Lisa—you sure I can call you Lisa? I don’t know, it feels strange to me,” he says, concerned, and I nod, exasperated. “Splendid then.” He claps his hands together, and the moment his hands drop to the table, his demeanor darkens. “But I hoped—I had so hoped we could remain honest with each other. I mean, you and me. I ask you again, isn’t it the best thing you have ever drank in your life?”

  I shake my head, as I quietly respond, “No.” I don’t get where he’s going with this. It’s all useless blabbering and small talk that weighs on my nerves. I fear I’ll jump across the table and beat him to a pulp. I don’t dread that thought though; it’s precisely what I want to do.

  “Wonderful. Now you’ve been honest with me. Seriously, who could drink such piss?” He empties the contents of his cup straight onto the floor. “Because to date all you have done is lie to us. But I’m an amiable man and won’t hold it against you. Let me be totally honest with you, and you will see, being honest is SO easy.” He takes a file, opens it, and turns it around for me to see what’s inside.

  Paper, paper, and paper again. Only sheets of paper filled with small lettering that make no sense to me.

  “What you are looking at is what helped me win the presidential chair fifty years ago,” he says, breathing a melancholic sigh. “I used to think I looked quite handsome too. Anyway, within all this boring stuff lies the foundation of what still exists today: the unificator squadron.”

  He brings out a pile of pictures depicting a tight line of soldiers walking down the main street near the execution square. Another picture shows a dozen prisoners, chained and lined-up on the execution stage, waiting to be hanged.

  “You’re looking at the premise of the rebels’ uprising,” he boasts. “It started at the time of my election as the thirteenth president…and the one to have lasted the longest too.” He smiles, showing a row of gapped yellowed teeth. “The unificators responded—and still do—to a need we had to crush back the newly formed rebels and the rising amount of action taken against us. An uprising that my predecessor was unsuccessful in defeating, I fear. But training these soldiers and searching for every rebel’s hideout required a tremendous amount of time and resources. And by that time, the rebels kept on growing like a plague, no matter the fierceness of my soldiers.”

  He brings out a new folder and opens it, and then he lines some papers side by side. “This war against the rebels has lasted nearly twenty-five years, you know. And it almost cost me my chair—twice—but every time I managed to prove to them I was the man for the job.” He lowers his head and looks at the new file, his face suddenly beaming. “This was my most promising project.”

  He pushes his chair back, gets up, and walks a few steps to a sink I hadn’t noticed before. He reaches a hand to the soap dispenser, puts some in his hand, and then scrubs them clean under the faucet that automatically releases water. I can’t stop remembering Marcus washing his hands as I waited for him to answer my question. The difference is that this time, I don’t even need to ask anything. President Nightingale seems in a strange mood for nostalgia as he reveals everything he wants me to know. Why does he do so? I can’t say. I feel weaker and weaker as time passes and I’m not in Josh’s arms. This need grows intensely and it devours everything else inside of me, burning me alive to only leave the ashes of my wrecked body.

  “The Birdman Project,” says President Nightingale. This instantly gets my attention. “It was supposed to be a wonder of genetic advancement, created to respond to the need to watch over my citizens and locate every rebel. The unificators lacked effectiveness, and what’s better than a soldier as fierce and fearless as a unificator, but capable of flying so he can spot anything and anyone? You might say drones, but where today’s drones lack intelligence, maneuverability, and usefulness, the Birdman would have shined. That was the plan.”

  Horror contorts my stomach as I browse the papers in front of me—pages and pages of reports, tests, and things I can’t understand because they are too technical. And then I happen upon a bunch of records with pictures pinned to their upper-right corners—pictures of women, all titled “Patient” along with a specific
number. There are one hundred of them, and among them is one that I recognize. Patient 100: Dolores.

  “You’re looking at the surrogate mothers. We tried raising the fetus clinically in our laboratory first, but it proved to be a total failure. We then decided to try and clinically inseminate twenty-five surrogate mothers, with specially modified human semen. It resulted in miscarriage and sudden death of every woman.” He pauses, counting out the first twenty-five records off the pile and throwing them over his shoulder. “We got back to the labs and tried several other combinations of bird genes, blending them with human genes, and tried them on another batch of women. They lasted longer; one of them almost brought it out of the first trimester…until she miscarried, like the others. Their bodies kept rejecting the samples.”

  He reaches for the next batch of records to simply discard.

  “This is where Marcus Ruther entered the equation. He suggested that he supervise the process but outside the laboratories. In his words, ‘In their natural environment in order to reduce the stress and help the fetus to develop naturally’ he touted.” President Nightingale snorts and shakes his head as he recounted Marcus’ words. “We tried the semen on the remaining fifty women—all supervised by Marcus. I must admit he played his role well. Never had I expected that one specimen had survived. So, you can imagine my stupefaction when they brought me your little friend.”

  He picks up every remaining file one by one and says, “Patient fifty-one: miscarriage. Dead, poisoned by the semen. Patient fifty-two: miscarriage. Dead, poisoned by the semen. And so on until we reach number one-hundred. Ten years lost in vain, when in fact, at least one of them survived.” President Nightingale stares at me with daggers in his eyes. Suddenly he loses his calm and slams his closed fists on the table, yelling, “Do you know what it feels like to lose that much time, to finally finish betrayed?”

  I sustain his gaze, tears clouding my eyes, but I won’t give him the satisfaction of allowing them to fall. I respond to him with venom in my voice, “Yes I know what it feels like to be treated like cattle, sent to death for not serving your orders well. You’re just a disgusting piece of shit. How can you even look at yourself in the mirror?”