by Dan Alatorre
Maya administered another injection and inspected the IV drip. “What about your strength? How are you holding up?”
“Good.” The Greyhound stared at the tubes carrying drugs into his arm. “And so is my attitude. If I didn’t lose it on that pervert Bruner, I’m not going to.”
“Did you want to?” Dominque looked into his eyes. “Was there any inclination toward rage?”
“Are you analyzing me, Doctor? I was focused on the job. I already knew—”
“It’s important to understand.” Maya stood, crossing the room to the bag of bottles. “As these treatments get more frequent, the inclination to react harshly will increase.”
“I can keep it together.”
“Tristan,” Dominique leaned forward. “She’s trying to say you might not realize you’re going too far. These drugs affect your emotions and reactions.”
He chewed his lip. “I . . . I was dispassionate. I knew what I was there to do, and how I was going to do it. I knew Bruner wasn’t going to suffer much, so when I saw the girl, I wanted to get her out of there and get it over with.”
“No feelings of rage?” Dominique asked.
“No.”
“Any feelings at all?”
“Not like before.” Behind him, the sun touched the tops of tall buildings in the distance. “Look, I know what you’re thinking. You’re worried I’m getting de-sensitized to it, to the killing. Well, I am. And I think I need to be. If I thought too long about what my task is at any given moment, I’d hesitate—and then I might make a mistake. That could cost all of us. But if you want to know how I sleep at night, well . . . not very good.” His eyes went to Dominique. “And not all the vomiting is from the sequence breaking me down, okay?”
She nodded. “Okay.”
Maya pulled the IV tape from his arm and removed the needle, pressing a ball of cotton to the injection site. She tore a short piece of white tape and pressed it over the cotton.
“Tonight, I can get several of them here in the Viceroy. The rest, I’ll get tomorrow at the facility. I’ll wear one of their moon suits, and whenever any of them separate from the group, I’ll be ready.”
* * * * *
“Come. You can see.” The little woman hobbled toward the second set of buildings—the ones marked Processing. “Come. I will show.”
“Hamilton.” Lanaya grabbed his arm, wiping the tears from her eyes. “I heard rumors about this—I read about it on the black screen site. But . . .” She swallowed hard, looking out over the masses of children. “I—I don’t think I really ever conceived that they’d . . .”
He took her hand, squeezing it gently. “I understand.”
“They’re . . . they’re children.” Her words caught in her throat. “Little children. Babies. And they’re chopping them up.”
“And we’re going to stop it. All of it.” He leaned forward, frowning. “We’re going to make this madness end.”
She nodded, drying her eyes.
DeShear handed her his phone. “Can you take pictures? And maybe some video? Let’s focus on finding things that will get the newspapers to help us end all this.”
She took the phone and stared at it, her voice a whisper. “Yes.”
DeShear glanced at the old woman.
“Come.” She walked toward the processing building. “I will show.”
An eighteen-wheeler truck was parked at the rear of the second facility. Behind it, in the distance, stood a bulldozer and a back hoe.
Breaking ground on their latest building.
The nearest side of the building was lined with oval tanks. Pipes ran from them and into the building. Red warning signs had been mounted on the front of each one.
DeShear pointed. “What do you think those are for?”
“It’s a surgery facility,” Lanaya sniffled. “Those will be gases for operations and medical functions. Oxygen, nitrous oxide, carbon dioxide, nitrogen. That sort of thing.” She lowered her voice. “Why do you think she’s showing us all this?”
He lifted the ID card from the lanyard around his neck. “It’s an executive level pass. She probably does this all the time for the big wigs.” DeShear trudged along, glancing over his shoulder. “Probably figured that’s what we were doing all the way down here. To her, we’re VIPs.”
The processing facility had no airlock. They opened the doors and went right in.
Cool air swept over his face. A few overhead lights were on in the massive building, illuminating the glass rooms below. Each was about twenty feet square, and maybe twenty feet high, with an operating table in the center and a rack of lights over it. Several tray tables were nearby, and a long row of gurneys lined the corridor.
DeShear walked up to one of the operating rooms, his footsteps echoing through the empty facility. Beside him, the old woman smiled. “It is here. Very good, they take bad parts out of the children.”
“I—I can’t believe it,” DeShear’s shoulders slumped, his breath fogging the glass. “They tell them they’re sick, and then . . . they chop them up and sell off the pieces.”
The faces of the children, asking for candy, clouded his vision. Their scars and deformities blocked his view of the surgical machinery in front of him. “That’s why they look jaundiced.” He turned to Lanaya. “They’re not underfed. They can’t process the nutrients.”
She stared at the operating room, her eyes unfocused and vacant. “You take out a liver, or a section of intestine, or some knee cartilage . . . I’m not sure the recipient asks where it comes from. They’re told cadavers, for some of it. Recent car crashes and the like.” She inched closer, placing her hand on the glass. “They . . . they have no idea.”
“How many organs can a—” DeShear exhaled sharply.
The back hoe.
His heart raced as rage welled inside him. “Where’s the back exit?” he shouted, running down the aisle. “How do I get out of this place?”
He sprinted past room after room of operating tables, fear growing in his gut, his eyes scanning the walls. When he found the exit sign, he didn’t slow down. He threw both hands into the door’s crossbar and slammed it open. Racing across the short span of asphalt, he hurled past the truck and up a small hill. When he reached the top, the bulldozer and back hoe were visible again.
The ground was churned and uneven, like a recently plowed field. The wind shifted, bringing the smell to him, assaulting his nose and making him choke—but he forced himself to keep going.
At the bulldozer, he stopped, panting as he gazed over the big hole. To his right, the back hoe rested silently, its shovel posed in midair, ready to continue its work the next day.
Below it, the tiny faces.
Gasping, DeShear sank to his knees, almost unable to speak, the breath going out of him. “No. Please, no.”
Row after row of small bodies lined the hole, dusted with lime to kill the smell and speed decomposition.
Blank eyes stared up at him. Their young faces were empty and gray. Some had been wrapped with a loose sheet; others were nude, their play clothes probably saved for another child.
He stood on the edge of the hole, shaking his head, unable to fathom the minds that could do such things. There were so many bodies stacked in the rows, they seemed not to be real.
But the smell made it real. The stink of rotting meat, and the buzz of the flies. The half-buried bodies, some with dirt resting on their open eyes and mouths, next to the feet and hands of their little playmates, that was all too real.
“Hamilton!” Lanaya made her way up the small hill. “What is it?”
“No.” He jumped up, the soft brown dirt sinking under his feet. He fell to his knees. “Stay there. You don’t need to see this.”
“I have to take pictures.”
He got up and ran to her. “Don’t. I’ll do it.” He took the phone. “Go. Go now.”
She stared at him for a moment, then nodded, backing away.
He faced the hole in the distance, then looked at the
mud under his feet. This, too, had been recently filled. He was standing on the graves of other children.
He winced, stumbling backwards, looking for an unturned patch of ground, not wishing to further desecrate the burial site.
For hundreds of yards in all directions, there was none.
Chapter 33
DeShear paced back and forth in front of the tanker truck as the old woman looked on. “How can you be a part of this, smiling and walking around like it’s not happening? What is wrong with you?”
She shook her head. “Not to understand.”
He gritted his teeth, pointing at the play field. “Those children are being slaughtered. Killed. Don’t you care?”
“Killed?”
“Yes. Those kids, right there. Aren’t they your responsibility?”
“They die, you say. I make them alive.” Her tone was calm and even, her hands held in front of her. A teacher, teaching. “When I come here, they not play. They not sing. They sit, like dog, in rooms. I make this.”
DeShear shook his head. “You . . . you . . .”
“Everyone die. You, me. I cannot stop the bad. But I can make better, this.” She waved her hand toward the playground, a thin smile on her lips. “For some good, for them. Do you understand? I help them come from baby to now, and know some joy of the world.”
“Babies? Where do you have babies?”
“We have. Come. You can see.”
She led them back to a building near where the milk truck had been.
“I don’t know if I want to see anymore.” Lanaya shuddered.
“Well, you have to.” DeShear scowled. “And so do I. We’re in this thing. With the pictures I just took, we have enough to bring this whole place down, but the people at the top have a plan for that. They’ll deny, they’ll obfuscate. They’ll say some low-level person in charge went rogue. I want proof that they knew all along, so there’s no escape for the freaking monsters who did all this.”
The sister hobbled past the sign demanding everyone wear cleanroom suits to enter, pushing open the door. She held it for them. “Come. Here is.”
DeShear checked the battery on his phone. More than fifty percent. Hopefully, more than enough.
The room beyond the open door was dark. He looked at the old woman. “The babies are in here?”
“Yes. Come.” She brushed past him into the dim room. “You can see.”
DeShear took a few steps into what appeared to be a library or warehouse, pausing as his eyes adjusted to the dim light. It was almost as hot inside as it was outside. That hadn’t been the case in the operating building. Lanaya entered the room and let the door close, shutting out most of the light.
Rows of shelves were visible, but not much else. A steady, low hum filled the air. He scanned the ceiling, where large circulation fans turned slowly, their massive blades black against the fading light of the sunset sky. A gear engaged somewhere in the back, with the whir of an electrical motor, and the concrete floor under his feet vibrated.
Pumps. Fans.
He walked down the center aisle, between the shelves, and opened his mouth to ask the sister where the babies could be in such a place. It was sterile and dark, but warm.
A fine bead of sweat formed on his lip. As he went to wipe his shoulder across it, Lanaya turned on the flashlight from his phone, shining it downward to light the floor.
The glint off the glass was the first evidence he had that anything was even in the room but the shelves. Clear, rectangular containers rested end to end, with hoses running across the tops, each diving down to the shadow floating inside.
He stepped forward, his mouth open and his guts in a knot, as he reached out to touch the container and convince himself that what he saw was really there.
Inside the glass, attached with surgical tubes, was a human baby. They floated, not fully formed, looking part human, part fish, with large, round heads and curled, translucent bodies, floating in a silent pool. Their eyes, formed but not seeing. Tiny organs were visible through the undeveloped skin. Hands with fingers reached outward at him. Tiny feet pulled close, as if to offer protection from whatever might come in the darkness.
He panted hard, his hands shaking as he moved to the next container. It held another fetus, as did the next. They were like aquariums, spanning as far as he could see. The shelves went to the ceiling, and from front to back in the room, with just enough space to step in between them and maneuver.
He shook his head, his gaze going down the row as far as the light from the phone allowed, shimmering off dozens and dozens of containers.
Babies. They’re growing fetuses here.
He looked at Lanaya. She stood by the first row, staring at the glass. They were larger there. Farther along, maybe by a few months. The ones by DeShear were smaller. He walked down the aisle in silence, peering at the smaller and smaller residents of the containers.
Pictures.
“Lanaya,” he said.
“I’m on it.” She wiped away a tear and held up the phone, hitting the video record button. The front light came on as the phone started recording. She gasped, quickly aiming the beam at the floor. “What about the brightness of this light? Will it hurt their eyes?”
“I don’t know,” DeShear said, swallowing hard. “I think it might. You figure, these would normally be inside some layers of skin and muscle.”
He leaned back, scanning the ceiling, forcing himself to concentrate. There might be special lighting. He didn’t want to gather evidence and blind thousands of victims in the process.
Thousands.
They grow them here until they’re big enough, then take them to processing and start carving them up.
Nausea gripped him. He shook it off and counted the shelves he could see. There were more than a dozen and a half on each side of the aisle, reaching to the ceiling. Each had an occupant, as far as he could tell. There’d be no reason to have hoses going into a container if there wasn’t. There had to be tens of thousands of fetuses, possibly more. Maybe a hundred thousand.
“Sister, are there any lights in here? One that won’t hurt the eyes of the babies?”
“Light, yes. Here. I will show.” She walked past him in the nearly-dark room. DeShear followed, with Lanaya behind him, cupping her hand over the phone. Only part of the light went past her fingers, but it was enough to act like a small flashlight.
At the back wall, the old woman turned. About ten feet down the aisle, a panel of knobs and switches was mounted on the wall. “Here is light.”
Lanaya raised the beam, still covering it, allowing the reflected light to illuminate their way. Her hand glowed red, showing the bones within, like the skin of the fetuses.
DeShear studied the panel.
The front door opened, and the room was bathed in orange light from the setting sun.
“This way, gentlemen.” A gravelly man’s voice boomed forth into the room, accompanied by a sharp, intermittent clack of hard wood hitting concrete.
DeShear crouched, grabbing Lanaya’s arm and pulling her downward. He put a finger to his lips and nodded at the camera. She held it to her chest and shut off the light, snapping the side button down to “mute.”
The old woman watched with an expressionless face, not moving from the panel. She curled a wrinkled finger at her two guests, tiptoeing further down the row to the corner.
Several men could be heard in the room. DeShear took Lanaya’s hand and slinked toward the old sister. She rounded the corner and stepped into a small wooden closet—mostly empty, but big enough to house all three of them, and unable to be seen from the front of the room.
“Haskins, get the lights.” The gravelly-voiced man said. “My friends, here is where the real magic of our facility resides.”
Footsteps came down the aisle, toward them. DeShear held his breath, hoping the man found the light panel and nothing else. Next to him, the sister stood, unwavering.
A figure rounded the corner. DeShear eased his head bac
k, balling his fist as the silhouette neared. The man stopped halfway down the row and snapped some switches. A dim, pink glow washed over the room as the assistant went back to the others.
The man with the gravelly voice spoke again. “The room will get slightly brighter over the next few minutes, but your eyes will quickly adjust. We also have still images we can show you of any specimens, and I can bring infrared and ultrasound equipment in if you should so require.”
DeShear crouched, inching out from the wooden closet and peeking at the group that had entered the room. There were six total, three facing him and three facing away.
Two of the men appeared to be Asian, with black hair and dark eyes. A third man was tall and blonde. Of the people facing away from him, two wore cleanroom suits. The other had gray hair and was hunched over, dressed in a dark business suit. He gestured with a cane as he spoke.
“We call this the Fetal Development, Retention and Obstetric Nutrition Enclosure,” the old man said, his gravelly voice rumbling over the glass containers. “Its nickname is the drone room, because it resembles a beehive—and we have been so very busy. Each human embryo here has been developed from our stock, genetically selected to be free of almost every form of human suffering, and housed in our proprietary synthetic amniotic fluid, much like that of a real human womb. We have four such buildings on site, and each contains over a million live specimens in various stages of growth. As your eyes adjust to the special lighting, feel free to look around.”
“That’s Dr. Hauser,” Lanaya whispered. “The one with the cane.”
“There are concerning rumors,” one of the short, black haired man said. His accent was decidedly Asian, possibly of Chinese descent. “I have heard they die early.”
A man in a cleanroom suit waved a hand. “All developmental sciences have challenges—”
Hauser stepped in. “Any of these specimens not developing adequately are terminated. Fetuses determined to be inadequate for any reason can be selected for terminus prior to introduction into the synthetic utero habitat you see here, while others are terminated in infancy. We have very strict standards. By age five, we will have completely purged these lines of any deficiencies. We are, of course, working on those challenges, but my understanding was you required stock that was already beyond childhood.”