It was a difficult and delicate job to push the pallet out of the attic. With the skill of an ex-air force pilot the chopper slowly lifted. The attached ropes went taut and everything swung out dangling underneath the chopper. Standing at the gaping hole in the wall, everybody watched as it lifted high and flew towards Copper Mountain and the Factory.
The spectators across the street watched as the truck and all the black Cadillacs pulled away to disappear down the street. The last car to leave the house was the one at the back. It simply drove over what was left of the attic wall on the driveway, turned onto Jasper Street and also disappeared. Deputy Grant Lloyd yelled at the crowd across the street,
“Okay, go about your business. There is nothing to see here.”
There was nothing to see except a gaping hole in the upper portion of the house and an open front door in Ruth Albright’s house.
Chapter 33
While Warric was at the house and pulling Gary’s electronic gadget out of the attic, both Sam and Robert were being tortured by electrical pulses shooting into their brain. Both mouths were impossibly wide open as if screaming at the top of their lungs but no sound escaped their brutalised bodies. Gary’s eyes were bulging as if trying to pop out of their sockets. He could not look over and see that Sam was in the same predicament. It was well that they could not see each other for it would have greatly added to the cruelty of their dire situation. Despite the horrific pain and their physical contortions, all was quiet in the lab, not a vocal scream escaped tortured bodies.
While floating in mid-air and bodies contorting to the great inhuman testing, the scientists had their backs to them watching computer read-outs. They were looking for a signal merging with the synergy of the mysterious crystals that would amplify the frequency. They wanted to know if they could hook Sam and Gary up in a series to the other three children to increase that power. Nobody seemed to care that two innocent children were suffering indescribable suffering.
The only woman scientist in the laboratory was no doubt the head of the project. Also dressed in a white smock with long brown hair done up tight in a hair net, she went from computer to computer looking at the analysis while hoping for successful results. All hardcopy printouts were handed to her as fast as the computers could spit them out. However, it soon became apparent that the two test subjects did not possess the much needed EEG brain wave patterns. Results showed that they were simply ordinary kids, at least when it came to brain wave patterns.
She flipped a switch and the humming in the lab stopped. The second it did, Sam and Gary rudely crashed down onto the gurneys. Wires attached to their bodies bounced and tangled from the sudden fall. Still comatose from the inhuman ordeal, neither of them could move. The neurons commanding muscles to move were stunned to exhaustion by the massive electrical overload to their young brains. Ignoring the horrified children on the table, the scientists simply returned to their computer duties.
Sam was the first to recover, at least to the point that her eyes could focus. After three deep breaths, she was able to turn her head and see Gary on the gurney looking as if dead. That was what she thought until he convulsed as if his whole body had violently hiccupped. She wanted to vomit but when she tried, nothing came up. As terrible as the pain in her head was when the humming started, now that it was turned off her head quickly cleared. It was the same for Gary. When he opened his eyes and gathered his thoughts, it was as if nothing had happened to him. He thought only Sam had suffered the pain.
Gary wanted to sit up but although his brain wave functions might have recovered, his body had not. After struggling to get off the gurney and stand, he discovered that his legs would not support him. It was as if they were not even there and collapsed to the floor in a heap. When seeing Gary crumple to the floor she decided to stay put and gather her strength. A guard at the door watching everything came over and like a sack of potatoes Gary was lifted up and plopped back onto the gurney. Considering his physical state, he thought this might be a better place to be for a little while.
When recovering from something as traumatic as this, the brain becomes incapable of tracking time. Neither of them knew how long they were on the gurney. Gary thought he might have fallen asleep and Sam watched the scientists move about the lab ignoring her. Her shifty eyes darted in all directions looking for an escape, a place to run. She frequently tried to test the mobility of her legs but couldn’t even feel them.
It was just as well for she saw no place to run and hide. The door they had been pushed through was to her right but guarded by two burly men. Like Gary, she thought it best to stay where she was until strength to escape returned.
Eventually Gary heard a noise and looked toward the door. It flew open and a mean looking tall man barged in and marched right up to Sam. After a hard stare down at her, she closed her eyes and hoped it was all just a really bad dream. He barked at the female scientist,
“I have disposal orders for these two, when can I have them?”
Holding a syringe high, she turned to face him and said,
“I was just waiting for you. You can have them right now.”
Marching up to Gary, she stabbed the needle deep into his neck and pressed the plunger hard. Sam suffered the same fate.
As if by magic the drug that immobilized them now did the opposite. Both were able to hop off the gurney and stand without faltering. They were then rudely pushed toward the door. Gary was still weak but managed to stagger along. Sam was the stronger one and held Gary by the arm, helping him out of this terrible dungeon. Filled with fear, Gary whispered to her,
“Is everything going to be okay? Are we safe now?”
Sam was not hopeful and so replied in the same whisper,
“It all depends on what you think the word ‘disposal’ means.”
Gary responded,
“I don’t think it means anything good.”
“Me either.”
Once past the door and back into the tunnels, the guard rudely pushed them to the right and said,
“Hurry up. I got better things to do than this.”
After many turns they eventually saw a strange fluctuating light far ahead. As they got closer, to her horror Sam saw that they were being marched toward the cave of crystals. It bolted her alert. Disposal meant killed. According to her dad, copper miners who wandered into that cave were never seen again and now that fate was going to be theirs. Mesmerized by the light, Gary was unaware of the cruelty quickly approaching. Sam’s eyes darted left and right desperately looking for an escape. With a burley guard right behind them and the cave of crystals dead ahead, desperation engulfed any hope of escape.
As the colorful sparkling lights grew brighter and they got closer, Sam tugged Gary by the arm to slow him down. It was as if the crystals had him in its power and drawing him closer. The guard was not pleased to see the obvious stall and rudely pushed Sam forward. It was not a deliberate trip and fall to the ground, it just happened. However, it was a stumble that saved their lives. While struggling to get up, her hand felt a rock the size of her fist. As she grabbed it and shielded it from the guard, she whispered to Gary,
“Can you run?”
Gary might not have known what the fatal cave of crystals was but he did understand the great feeling of doom hammering into him the closer he got to it. Vibrations of terror pulsed into him. Confused, for he really didn’t want to run into the cave and the only other direction was past the guard, he nevertheless whispered,
“Yes, I think so.”
Then, with all the accuracy and form of a major league baseball pitcher, Sam snapped around and hurled the rock straight into the guard’s right eye. His head snapped back, yelled in pain and swore in some kind of foreign language. Both hands shot up to his eye and blood oozed between his fingers.
Quick to take advantage, both darted around the reeling guard and were now behind him. With both hands to his eyes, without realizing it, he had staggered closer to the entrance of the pulsating cry
stals but luckily stopped short. That is until Sam took advantage. She turned, ran up behind him and with a mighty heave pushed him forward. He tripped into the cave and as if struck by hundreds of lightning bolts, he disappeared in a flash of bright red light.
Gary had felt the sting of death before. He was still filled with lingering and devastating memories of a police officer standing in front of his house telling him his mother was dead. Cruel memories like that can burn into memory cells as sure as tagged with a sizzling hot branding iron. They never go away. However, memories are not as stark as visuals. This was the first time Gary had actually seen somebody die. It was different and he felt the shock of it run through him. Sam was different. She did not see death but rather an opportunity to save themselves from a similar fate. She snapped Gary out of his stunned state and yelled,
“Run!”
Running was the easy part but where to run was a problem. They were deep in the copper mine and lost in a maze of tunnels. Picking one and following it at a dead run only led to more options. She cursed herself for not remembering the impossible twists and turns leading to the elevator. Her biggest fear was somehow turning around and coming back to the cave of crystals. Because she was the faster runner, Gary followed what he hoped was a route to safety. After so many turns it eventually came to him that they were lost. He was sure that this was where they would lay down and die. The deeper into the tunnels they ran, the darker it got. Now, only in dim light, Sam came to a grinding halt. They had reached the end of another tunnel.
While struggling to catch his breath, Gary sat down and pressed his back against the tunnel wall. Sam, seeing the frugality of running around in circles sat beside him. In the distance from where they came from, they heard yelling. It was a man’s voice giving orders.
“They could have run either way. Two of you go that way and I’ll check this tunnel.”
Sam looked up and from around a corner saw the dark outline of a guard coming toward them. When he got closer and saw the exhausted children sitting on the ground, he yelled to the others,
“They are over here. It’s a dead end. They can’t get away.”
With three guards ominously approaching, Gary looked over to Sam and asked,
“What do you suppose it feels like?”
Confused and defeated, she looked at him and asked,
“Do I suppose what feels like?”
“Death. Do you think it will hurt?”
However, Sam’s defeated thoughts were not on death but rather on her parents. Would they miss her? Of all the times that she needed her dad, this was the time. She needed him now.
Gary wanted to show Sam that he was just as brave as she was. He struggled to stand and with determination, courageously faced the approaching guards. If he was going to be reunited with his mother, it did not seem like such a bad thing after all. Sam, seeing his resolve also stood. That was when she heard a voice from behind.
“Sam. Sam, run this way.”
She thought it was Gary saying it but when looking at him she realised his mouth was clenched tight. Moreover, it didn’t sound like him. With the trick of the echoing tunnels, it sounded like her dad. Her back was against a dead end tunnel. How could he have gotten behind her?
She snapped around and to her shock, saw her dad standing there with waving hands indicating for her to run toward him.
“Sam, trust me, run this way.”
However, there was no place to run. The end of the tunnel was solid rock. When the shock of seeing her dad in an impossible situation had slightly diminished, she realized that she could see right through him, as if he were made of glass. Plus parts of him were sunk in the solid stone wall.
“Hurry Sam. Trust me.”
It was time to trust in the impossible. Would running headlong into solid stone be worse than caught and pushed into the crystal cave? She grabbed Gary by the arm and with a great leap of faith, jumped into her dad’s waiting outstretched arms. Gary had no idea what was happening and did not even realize that Sam had dragged him backwards into the wall. His eyes were to the approaching guards and all he saw was how they strangely faded from view as if a dimming light.
Surprisingly, they were now standing in a different tunnel. The light was brighter and to both their delight, there were no guards chasing them. Gary looked back to where they had come from and only saw solid rock. Confused, he touched it with an outstretched hand and felt the coolness of solid stone. He turned to Sam and asked,
“How did you do that?”
It was clear by her stunned expression that she had no idea. Gary had not seen Sam’s dad and she wasn’t even sure she really did either.
Regardless of how it happened, they took advantage and followed the tunnel. What else was there to do? With Sam taking the lead, after a few minutes Gary called out her name.
“Sam?”
More interested in what was happing in front of her, she continued to look straight ahead and simply replied,
“What?”
“Why are our feet not touching the ground?”
Confused, she looked down and realized that she appeared to be walking on air, about six inches off the tunnel floor. When she stopped to investigate, only her feet stopped. Like floating ghosts both kept drifting straight ahead.
From behind, Gary heard yelling voices.
“They have to be in this tunnel somewhere.”
Sam heard from far ahead,
“We are coming toward them. We should trap them between us.”
Gary saw guards running toward them from the back and Sam saw two more coming from the front. They were trapped. In desperation and hope, Sam pressed her back hard into the tunnel wall but all she got from her effort was pain. Hoping for the same, Gary tried to stomp his feet looking for a soft spot in the ground to sink through but his feet, like Sam’s did not reach the ground.
The guards were quickly closing the trap. Gary said,
“Sam.”
Looking in the other direction, away from Gary, she snapped,
“What?”
“Is that your dad?”
Sam snapped around and saw the same ghostly apparition of her dad standing facing them. He held up his hands in a halting fashion indicating for them to stay right where they were. She thumped her back onto the tunnel wall numerous times but desperation did not pay off. The phantom of her dad shook his head and mouthed the words, ‘no’. Again holding out his hands in a halting manner, Gary was the first to understand the signal. He said,
“I think he wants us to stay right here.”
The words, ‘trust me’ kept echoing in her head. It was a difficult choice, trust her dad, or make a mad dash for it. But again, to where? Like before in the other tunnel, there was no place to go. Trust prevailed and Sam gently pressed her back into the wall. Gary, thinking that she was trying to make room for the guards to pass, did the same. The trap closed and all the guards now stood right in front of them. Frozen by both fear and hope, Sam’s eyes drifted off the guards and over to her dad who was standing behind the guards. Again, his hands were out in a halting fashion. He mouthed the word ‘stay’.
The lead guard, the one holding the pistol said to the other,
“Didn’t you see them?’
“No, nothing got past us.”
“Well they sure didn’t get past us either.”
He turned around and scanned the tunnel with searching eyes. When his face was practically touching Gary’s, he whispered to Sam.
“I’m scared Sam.”
She was quick to understand their strange situation and whispered back,
“Don’t be. They can’t see us.”
The guard snapped around to his men and asked,
“Did you hear that?”
Another man replied,
“It came right out of the solid wall.”
Curious, the one with the gun reached out to touch the wall. To Sam’s shock, his hand went right through her chest to the wall behind her. It felt as if
being stabbed with an icicle.
Her eyes drifted to her dad who was still signalling for them not to move. The guard withdrew his hand and gave orders.
“All right, let’s retrace our steps. They have to be in here somewhere.”
When the cramped tunnel was clear of searchers, once again Sam and Gary stood alone and confused. Sam looked for her dad but like the true abilities of a ghost, he had disappeared. Gary asked,
“Why couldn’t they see us?”
“I’m not sure but I remember dad once told me they could hear the lost miners calling for help as if they were right in front of the searchers.”
“Do you suppose that’s what happened to them? Maybe they were right there all the time but nobody could hear or see them?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
Sam then pointed and said,
“Let’s continue in the same direction we were going.”
She led and again Gary followed. She had only taken a few steps when she suddenly fell to the ground. When Gary came to her aid, he too tripped and fell on top of her. After a short struggle to get him off her, she stood and helped him up. He asked,
The Factory Page 19