by LeVar Burton
“Ten, fifteen minutes ago.”
Leon stood up and looked around, frantically searching for something he could use to help free Rene. Only a few minutes until the guards showed up, not nearly enough time to pick a lock. If only he had a pair of bolt cutters, or a hacksaw, something he could use to cut the padlock from the manacles. But there were no tools lying around, nothing but an old terry cloth towel.
He stopped, an idea springing to mind. Grabbing the towel, he wrapped it around the barrel of his pistol.
Rene scooted back from him, her eyes widening. “What are you doing?”
Leon squatted down in front of her. “I don’t even know your name, but I came all the way from Atlanta to help you. Will you trust me?”
She looked at him for a moment, then nodded. “Rene.”
“What?”
“My name’s Rene.”
Leon took her right leg and straightened it out, twisting her ankle so that the manacle’s lock lay flush against the ground. With the towel still wrapped around the pistol, he placed the barrel of the gun against the lock and pulled the trigger. The lock exploded, the towel muffling the gunshot and preventing pieces of jagged metal from flying up and injuring either of them. He smiled. “Pleased to meet you. My name’s Leon.”
He tossed aside the broken pieces of the lock and removed the manacle. Rene was free, but the towel had only partially muffled the gunshot. Someone walking by the building might have heard the report.
“Let’s go,” he said, pulling Rene to her feet. He took her hand and started toward the front door, but she tore free from his grasp.
“Wait,” she said. “There’s something I have to get first.”
Leon stopped, feeling his freedom slipping away. “What?”
“The Neuro-Enhancer.”
“There isn’t time,” he argued. “Someone might have heard the shot. We’ve got to make it under the fence before they discover that you’ve escaped.”
“You don’t understand,” she said. “The Neuro-Enhancer can cure diseases, even cancer. All of them. But there’s only one; it’s a prototype. They stole it from me and I have to get it back.”
Leon could hardly believe what he was hearing. “You’re saying that you’ve got a machine that can cure cancer?”
Rene nodded. “Cancer. Diabetes. Everything. I’m not leaving without it. Not this time. If you don’t want to help me, fine, I understand.”
Help me.
Her words were like a slap to the face, conjuring up painful memories from Leon’s past: Fire. Screams. The distant wail of fire engines. For a brief instant it was no longer Rene that stood before him but Vanessa, his wife, calling to him, begging him to help her. He could almost feel the heat from the flames and smell the stench of burning flesh. Vanessa had asked for his help but he had failed her, and in doing so his life had been cursed to an eternity of loneliness and guilt. But maybe, just maybe, this was a chance to redeem himself, to free himself forever from the failure that haunted him.
He took a deep breath and nodded. “Okay, you win. We’ll do it your way.”
Turning away from the front door, Leon followed Rene to a second entrance at the back of the building. Placing his ear against the door, he listened for a moment, didn’t hear anything, then opened it a few inches and peeked out. Rene squeezed next to him and pointed at one of the other livestock buildings.
“There,” she said. “That’s where I have to go.”
The building Rene pointed at did not sit in darkness, as did the one they were in. On the contrary, lights shone brightly from several of its windows.
“You’re out of your mind,” Leon whispered. “It’s too far; we’ll never make it. Besides, it looks like somebody’s home.”
“I don’t care,” she replied. “The Enhancer is too important to leave behind.”
Leon studied the distance to the other building. It was only about a hundred yards, but all of it was in the open. There were no shadows, no places to hide. But they couldn’t stay where they were either; it was only a matter of minutes before the guards would return to check on the prisoners.
“All right,” he said. “We’ll do it, but not until I say. And once we start running, we don’t stop until we reach the back side of the building. The side facing us is too exposed; we’ll be seen. If anyone spots us, we forget the whole thing and keep running. Head for the fence. You understand?”
Rene nodded.
He inched the door open farther and stuck his head out, looking quickly left then right. He didn’t see any guards, but that didn’t mean that one wouldn’t show up at any moment. “Okay,” he whispered. “Let’s do it.”
They opened the door and ran toward the other building. Leon was fast, but Rene was faster and reached the building ahead of him. She slipped around to the back side, waiting for him in the shadows. He joined her a second or two later, his heart pounding.
Staying in the shadows, they crept along the wall until they reached a narrow door. Leon tried the knob, but it was looked. Pressing his ear against the door, he listened carefully. He didn’t hear anything, but that didn’t mean the building was unoccupied. There was only one way to find out.
Stepping back, he raised his right leg and kicked the door near the latch. Even with tennis shoes on the sound of the kick was loud. Too loud.
“What are you doing?’ Rene whispered, alarmed. “Someone will hear you.”
He stopped and looked at her. “Would you rather I ask one of the guards for a key?”
She shook her head. Leon smiled and kicked the door again. A crack formed in the wood near the latch. He threw his weight against the door. The wood splintered and gave; the door opened.
Leon dropped into a crouch as he entered the building, trying to make himself as small a target as possible. Arms extended in front of him, he gripped his pistol tightly in both hands as be scanned the room for occupants. Rene followed him like a shadow, closing the door behind them, peering over his left shoulder at what he saw.
The first thing Leon noticed as he stepped across the threshold was how cold the building was inside. Extremely cold, almost freezing. The frigid temperature was the result of a row of air conditioners mounted along one wall. The second thing he noticed as he entered the building was the bodies.
Dear Jesus. Leon lowered the gun, his hands beginning to shake.
Eleven naked bodies lined the wall opposite the doorway, seven men and four women. They hung from steel hooks like sides of beef in a slaughterhouse. And like sides of beef they had all been gutted, their internal organs removed. They had also been skinned, all but one. Leon stared in shocked disbelief at the naked, pink bodies, suddenly realizing the purpose behind the farm and wishing he was anywhere else in the world but where he stood.
The farm was not a prison camp, nor was it a slave plantation. Those chained within the building were not prisoners or slaves; they were livestock, waiting to be butchered for their skin and internal organs.
“Skinners,” he whispered, his throat constricting with fear.
Directly across the room from the bodies stood three stainless steel mortician tables. The tops and sides of the tables had been wiped clean, but the wooden floor beneath them was covered with splatters of dried blood and tiny pieces of flesh. Under each table sat a white plastic bucket. Leon didn’t know what the buckets contained, nor did he want to find out. He had already seen enough to turn his stomach.
“You knew about this?’ he asked, turning to Rene.
She tore her gaze away from the bodies. “I knew. There was skin and body parts in the truck they brought me in.
“No wonder Randall Sinclair doesn’t want the Neuro-Enhancer to become public knowledge,” she added. “He’s making a fortune.”
“Randall Sinclair. Why do I know that name?” he asked.
“You may have read about him,” Rene replied. “He developed a skin fusion process to treat skin cancer.”
Leon’s mouth dropped open. “The zebra man? He�
��s behind all this?”
She nodded. “This must be his source of donor material.”
Leon was stunned. He had read about Dr. Sinclair in numerous medical journals. The man was highly respected in the scientific community, having performed hundreds of successful skin fusion operations. A chill marched down Leon’s spine as he realized that for every Caucasian patient the “highly respected” doctor treated a black man or woman had been murdered.
Leon had seen a lot of injustice in his life. There was no way to grow up as a black man in America without being exposed to it. Racial prejudice was a painful reality that he, like every African-American, had to learn to deal with almost from birth. Vanessa and Anita had provided Leon with a true sense of belonging in this world, an island of peace in an ocean of anguish. The love that Leon had for his family was what had sustained him, and when they were taken from him on that fateful night, it was as if his soul had been ripped away. Since their deaths he had been protecting himself the only way he knew how—by disconnecting from the world.
His strategy of isolation had served him until this moment. Standing there with Rene, he knew he was a witness to something unspeakably evil, some dark force that had at its core the malignancy of hate and intolerance that had ultimately destroyed a nation. He was being confronted by an evil so unconscionable that its manifestation was powerful enough to bring Leon back from the dead.
“There’s got to be a way to stop him,” he said, feeling his face become flushed with the rage of a lifetime.
“There is,” Rene replied. She passed between the mortician tables and hurried to the other end of the building. Leon followed close behind. The back side of the building was sectioned into four small rooms, two on each side of a narrow hallway. They had probably once been stables, but someone had boarded them up and added doors.
Leon tried the first door, but the room was locked. The second door opened, but the room contained only cleaning supplies, empty buckets and stacks of plastic sheets. The third room contained similar items. He was about to give up when Rene opened the fourth door and found what she was looking for.
The Neuro-Enhancer sat safely in its padded case, in the middle of a large wooden table. Leon watched as Rene opened the case and removed the Enhancer. She turned and held the device up for him to see.
“This is it,” she said proudly. “This is the cure for the human race. Think of it. No more sickness. No more disease. And no more Dr. Sinclair. With this device a person can train their mind to heal their body.” She smiled mischievously. “This is also how I got inside your head.”
“I knew it wasn’t anything mystical.” He looked closely at the Enhancer. “Were you wearing it when you called me?”
She shook her head. “No. It isn’t necessary.”
A troubled thought suddenly crossed Leon’s mind. If the Neuro-Enhancer did everything Rene claimed, it was worth millions. No one would leave something so valuable just lying around unguarded, not unless there was a good reason to do so. Not unless it was a …
A trap.
A soft click was the only warning they had. It was the sound of a latch being turned, a door slowly opening. Rene must have also sensed something was wrong, for her eyes went wide with fear.
“Danger,” she said, her voice barely a whisper.
All the rooms were unlocked, all except the first one.
Leon lunged across the room and grabbed Rene around the waist, pulling her down behind the table. He didn’t have to hear the footsteps to know they had been set up. They had walked into a trap as blindly as an insect flies into a spider’s web.
Two guards, both armed with pump shotguns, appeared in the doorway at the same time. Neither one bothered to aim. Instead they held their weapons at waist level and fired, filling the air with buckshot. Had the guards been a few seconds quicker, Leon and Rene would have been blown to pieces.
Shielding Rene’s body with his, Leon returned fire from beneath the table. He could see the guards only from the waist down, but it gave him all the target he needed. His first shot missed, but his second and third struck the guard standing to the left of the doorway in the groin, tearing a scream from his throat and knocking the man’s legs out from under him.
The second guard lowered his aim and fired again. The shotgun’s deadly pellets clipped one of the table’s legs and struck the floor about a foot in front of Leon. Splinters of wood bounced off his shirt and embedded themselves in his hands.
Damn. Leon aimed at the guard’s legs and squeezed the trigger three times, emptying his pistol. Damn. Damn. Damn.
The .45 slugs ripped through the guard’s knees, causing his legs to crumple beneath him like an accordion. Leon was up and moving before the guard hit the floor. He dove at the man, striking him in the head with the barrel of his gun, knocking him unconscious.
Leon dropped the pistol and grabbed the man’s shotgun, turning to aim the weapon at the other guard. He needn’t have bothered, however, for the man had passed out from the pain of being shot twice in the groin.
“That was close. Too close,” Leon whispered, speaking to himself. He picked up the other shotgun and turned around, motioning for Rene to come out from under the table. He knew the gunshots had been loud enough to be heard. They had to get away while they still could, before an army of guards showed up to stop them.
Grabbing the Neuro-Enhancer, Rene stepped over the wounded guards and hurried from the room. Leon followed her down the hallway toward the front door. They had just reached the mortician tables when the piercing wail of sirens split the night.
Rene froze, the Neuro-Enhancer clutched tightly to her chest. Suppressing a shudder, Leon slipped between the hanging bodies to a small window on the opposite wall. Looking out, he saw that the darkness was now lit by several floodlights. In the glare of those lights he could see the hurried movements of armed guards.
“They’ve got us,” he said, racing back to Rene’s side. He offered her one of the shotguns. “I don’t know if you can shoot, but now would be a good time to learn.”
She shook her head. “Give me the code disks.”
Leon was confused. “What?”
“The disks,” Rene repeated. “You said you had them. Give them to me.”
“Why?”
“There isn’t time to explain, but it might be our only chance of getting out of here.” She held out her hand. It was shaking.
Leon glanced back toward the window, and then turned to face the door. There was no way they could make it to the fence without being caught or shot. It was only a matter of time until the door opened—a matter of minutes, or seconds.
“Okay, okay.” He laid one of the shotguns on the table and pulled the computer disks out of his shirt pocket. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
Rene took one of the disks and slipped it into the Neuro-Enhancer. Taking a seat on the table, she carefully placed the copper headband on her head. “Five minutes, that’s all I need.”
“Five minutes!” he exclaimed. “Are you crazy? We don’t have five minutes. We may not have five seconds!”
She ignored him and switched on the Neuro-Enhancer, turning the power all the way up. The instrument hummed like an angry bee as it sent hundreds of tiny electrical charges to her brain’s neurons. She looked at Leon, smiled, and then closed her eyes.
“Damn,” he said, turning back toward the door. Five minutes. They didn’t have five minutes. They would be lucky if they had two minutes before the guards found them. He had only the two shotguns, a few shells in each, not nearly enough firepower to make much of a stand.
He took a deep breath and braced himself, waiting for the door to open, ready to shoot anyone who attempted to come inside. Leon knew he was about to die. They were terribly outnumbered and outgunned. He should have been scared, but he wasn’t. Death held no fear for someone whose life wasn’t much worth living, someone whose spirit had already died a long time ago. If anything, it offered the hope of eternal rest and the chance
to again be with those he loved.
Leon heard the sound of running footsteps coming closer. Shouts. He placed his index finger lightly on the shotgun’s trigger, thinking how he was about to rejoin his family in the hereafter. He smiled. It won’t be long now. Not long at all. Daddy’s coming.
He was still facing the door, his back to Rene, when he felt a strange tingling sweep up his spine, causing the tiny hairs along the base of his neck to rise. Curious, he turned around to see what was happening.
Rene sat on the edge of the mortician’s table, her eyes closed. The muscles in her arms and legs quivered, and her skin rippled. He watched, spellbound, listening as the Neuro-Enhancer’s hum rose in volume until it sounded like the battle cry of a thousand angry hornets.
He started to take a step forward when a mental scream ripped through his brain like a fiery meteor. With the scream came a barrage of emotions so powerful, so terribly over-whelming, that they tore a cry from his throat.
“Noooo …!”
Anger, hatred, rage; the emotions slammed into him like a fist, staggering him. He dropped the shotgun and stumbled back, almost falling, clamping his hands to his head in a vain attempt to block out the attack.
Images flashed through his head at high speed like a demonic slide show. Mental pictures of wars and murders, mutilated bodies and mass destruction.
Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God … The images came faster, blurring together into a vision of what hell must truly look like, filling him with the unquenchable desire to lash out at someone, anyone, seeking revenge for a thousand atrocities, a million shattered and ruined lives.
And then it was over, the assault on his mind ending as quickly as it began.
Leon slowly lowered his hands. Rene’s arms and legs no longer twitched; her muscles no longer rippled. A feeling of awe settled over him as he realized that she had just used the Neuro-Enhancer to send a message more powerful than one ever sent before. But the message was not for him; he was but an eavesdropper. Who the message was for he did not know, but Leon thanked God that he wasn’t the recipient. He had just taken a step toward Rene when she swooned.