by B. C. CHASE
There was silence between them as they watched Doctor Katz in the throes of his trance. He was making strange guttural noises.
“What he said about me was … partially true,” Bertrand said. He looked earnestly at Layla and Doctor Kamil. “I did give them guns to help them hunt, and we did place the children in our schools. But what he said about the little girls … it’s not true. Everything I did was for their good.”
Layla herself didn’t know what to believe. She just stared at him.
He said, “It was a different time back then. We gave them rifles, but some protestant missionaries came and told them that nakedness was sin. They gave them clothes that they didn’t know how to care for. I found some wearing rotting, maggot-infested rags. We, all of us, made mistakes. The missionaries, the government, the anthropologists.” He then raised himself to his feet, “Well, shall we set up our tents?”
“I don’t want to sleep. I want to get David out of here.”
“I fear that is something we will only accomplish through force.”
Doctor Katz had fallen into a deep sleep. They had dragged him into the communal hut. Layla rested on the ground near Doctor Kamil, who was snoring. Cockroaches were scuttling all over the hut, especially in the roof, sometimes losing their footing on the beams and dropping onto whatever was underneath.
Doctor Kamil had seemed to be at increasing ease in the company of the indigenous women the longer she was with them, and her peaceful slumber seemed remarkable to Layla. Besides the obvious physical discomforts, she was deeply alarmed by David’s transformation in the last few hours from a man for whom she felt an almost irresistible romantic attraction, to a near manic. He should never have sampled the drug.
She rolled from her side onto her back, trying to ease the aches she felt from the hard dirt. There was another ache that she could simply no longer ignore, and that was her bladder. She knew the villagers slipped off into the forest to relieve themselves, but she loathed the idea. Should she arouse Fatima to accompany her, for safety? She didn’t dare bring Bertrand: she didn’t trust him. Why hadn’t she thought of going before she lay down for bed? No matter now, it was too late. She had to go, and she had to go now.
Unwilling to disturb Doctor Kamil’s deep slumber, Layla stepped out from under the shelter of the hut, alone. Even the dogs did not seem to notice as she walked across the moonlit clearing. That is, until she stepped on dry fodder that someone had apparently dropped in the space between wooden barricades to alert the village of intruders. One of the dogs briefly growled, but then all was silent and she proceeded into the dark woods.
She didn’t go far, just far enough to be sure she was out of sight of any prying eyes. She dashed behind a giant tree trunk and quickly pulling down her jeans and panties, squatted. She felt extremely vulnerable, and her location had apparently been a popular choice as the stench was nearly unbearable.
When she stood again, she kicked some dead leaves over her urine as a half-hearted tribute to sanitation and stepped around the trunk. There to meet her was Doctor Katz’s imposing frame silhouetted against the moonlight, his beady black eyes shining in the darkness. His countenance had become crazed, wild, like the indigenous’. In a strange voice, he said, “Aten came to me. He showed me everything we wanted to know about Akhenaten.”
“David, Aten does not exist.”
“Oh he does. I have seen him.”
She started to walk around him, saying, “We should be sleeping,”
His hand struck out to grip her arm with the speed of a viper. “Akhenaten was truly the son of Aten. It was an unnatural birth. Akhenaten was half god, half man. An amalgamate of the metaphysical and physical. His mother was Tiye, his father, the sun-god. That is why Amenhotep did not care for him. He was envious.”
“I don’t care!” Layla said. “Let me go!” She tried to sound angry, though all she felt was fear.
He released her arm and said calmly, “What is real, Layla?”
She was silent, not wanting to say anything that might incite him. He was intimidatingly larger and stronger than she, and, pumped up on opioids, there was no telling what he was capable of.
“Is reality what we see and touch? Or is there also reality of the mind?” He shifted his stance, “The physical reality can be changed through metaphysical intention. There is a higher plane of understanding.”
Layla shook her head, “Please go back to bed. You’ve used too much ebene. It is affecting your mind.”
“You’re right.”
She nodded, relieved at this admission.
“It has affected my mind. I am illuminated. When you think something, it is as real as the action that you take on that thought. Akhenaten was able, through thought, to change his physical manifestation. That is why he first appeared as a male, then acquired the form of a female. He did this for Smenkhare, his lover.”
“David—”
“Christ!” He swore. “Christ was another son of Aten! He told us that to be angry was to murder. To lust was to commit adultery. It is the thought that is the reality: the action is only an expression of the truth that already exists. He was trying to show us the way.”
“You haven’t eaten since we got to the village. Come have some food, David.”
He shook his head in frustration, “I have to go back. They haven’t taught me everything.” He cocked his head, eyeing her strangely, his black eyes shining in the darkness. “You should come with me.” He grasped both her arms with surprising pressure.
“Let me go!” she said fiercely. She tested his strength by trying to move her arms, but he held her firm.
He steadily pushed her backwards, growling in a low voice, his hot breath in her face, “You will see everything I have seen! You will no longer question the truth! You will be mastered by it!” He pressed her against the tree trunk, and she now writhed her whole body in an effort to escape. She screamed, “David!” as he forced her down onto the ground.
With one hand on her neck, straddling her midriff, he slipped a tube from his belt and painfully jabbed one end into one of her nostrils. “DAVID PLEASE, NO!” she cried as he leaned down to blow into the other end.
Before he had a chance to do so, a strong voice erupted from behind him, “In the name of Jesus of the Holy Scripture I command you to depart!”
Doctor Katz leaped up from Layla and stood to face the speaker: Doctor Kamil. She stood there looking small and frightened, closely clasping a small, maroon-covered book.
David spoke in a heart-stopping, horrifying voice, “Jesus we know, and we have heard of the Scripture, but who are you?”
The whole village had awoken and was rushing up behind Doctor Kamil, Bertrand and the dogs leading the charge.
“I … ” she faltered. “I am Fatima Kamil, a believer in Jesus who takes away the sins of the world.” Her voice gained confidence and power as she spoke, “And I beg you Jesus, to take away these spirits of evil, and leave this man! Please!”
Doctor Katz’s eyes rolled up into his head and he fell to the ground, a spine-tingling shriek emitting from him. Where he lay, he inhaled deeply, opened his eyes, and then rolled over to unsteadily raise himself to his feet. “Doctor Kamil! Thank you!” he said with meaning. “I no longer had any control.” Then he pulled her hand back to look at the book she held. It was thick, and had a design with a cross on it. He eyed her quizzically, “I thought you were Muslim?”
She bowed her head, “I tell very few, but I am truly a Christian.”
Doctor Katz then turned and took the wooden tube that Layla was now holding and threw it with all his might into the forest, much to the disappointment of the villagers. He offered Layla a hand, which she accepted. “I am so sorry,” he said, looking deeply into her eyes.
The trauma was still too fresh. She did not feel like trusting him, but did acknowledged his apology. They all proceeded back to the huts.
The next morning was pure misery. When she awoke, no one else was still sleeping, and some wo
men were in the hut busily flattening the white doughish substance by rolling fat sticks over it.
Layla was amazed that she had, in fact, slept some. But she was covered in bug bites, she was exhausted, and her entire body ached. She felt as if she had spent the night being flattened like the dough. As she unpacked her personal effects from her backpack, she tossed her makeup mirror aside. Though skeptical that she could possibly look any worse than she felt, she didn’t dare take a glance to find out. Besides, the thought of applying makeup in this icky heat with no fresh water to clean her face was extremely unappealing. How in the world did these primitive people carry on with this miserable existence? No wonder they were known for their violence. Such conditions would no doubt drive anyone to distraction, she thought, slapping away yet another insect.
After she had brushed her teeth, the smell of someone’s fresh feces combining unsavorily with the minty aroma of the toothpaste, she joined Doctor Kamil in helping the women with their mundane physical labor. (Doctor Katz and Bertrand went off with the majority of the men to hunt and fish). They worked to harvest plantains from the ground in a garden near the village, cooked, and in the afternoon went off to harvest giant grubs that looked like mouse-sized maggots from the trunk of a fallen palm. The women bit the writhing grub behind its head and pulled its bulbous tissue off, exposing its entrails. They then spit the head and entrails away, tossing the bulbous piece onto a leaf-woven plate. When they had collected a plentiful supply, the plate was wrapped up and taken back to the village to store for later. They then spent hours upon seemingly ceaseless hours hunting for dry wood suitable for the fire. They loaded this onto their backs in baskets and finally returned to the village.
In the insect-clouded twilight of the evening, they had just finished setting all the wood down and were cooking leaf-bundle of grubs when a crazed-looking man with large scars on his forehead and the characteristic green mucus of the ebene approached the women, shouting angrily. He gripped a young, pregnant girl by one of her large earrings and jerked her by it so forcefully that her ear lobe tore as she sprawled backwards on the hard dirt. A surprising amount of blood gushed from the wound as he kicked her, screaming in a rage, forcefully prodding her belly.
Layla was in shock. The other women voiced some opposition to the man’s behavior, but he quickly silenced them. A number of other men gazed at the spectacle with idle interest from the far side of the clearing. They had been using the drugs and also had the green mucus running from their noses. The hunting party with Doctor Katz and Bertrand had not yet returned.
Layla’s shock quickly gave way to anger and, without thinking, she jumped up to try to stop the man. He easily knocked her back, snatching a thick piece of cut firewood and striking her in the head with it. Doctor Kamil rushed to Layla’s aid and she saw stars as Doctor Kamil softened her fall.
Meanwhile the man turned back to the girl and began to violently beat her with the firewood, she thrashing on the ground before him. He focused most of his blows on her stomach. Seemingly unsatisfied with the results, he pulled a smoldering piece of wood from the fire and thrust the hot end against her groin. She screamed in agony.
Doctor Kamil sat Layla up and walked away from the scene, apparently unable to watch and unwilling to intervene.
Coward, Layla thought as she unsteadily raised herself to her feet and lunged at the man again, trying to knock him off balance. He handily struck her, this time with the smoldering wood, and she was knocked off her feet. He looked down at her with disgust where she landed on the hard ground, then tossed the wood and struck off toward a hut.
Layla was in a daze, seeming to drift into unconsciousness. But the writhing and screaming of the girl roused her. A small bloody head was protruding from between her legs.
She was having a miscarriage.
Layla crawled over to her, and cradled her head in her lap. The other women gingerly gathered around. Doctor Kamil returned, armed with Bertrand’s. At the sight of the emerging fetus, she made an exclamation and dropped to her knees to receive it. Within moments the tiny, premature fetus was out, flailing in her arms. She was wiping it with her shirt when the man returned, ominously armed with his bow and arrows. The women quickly cleared away.
He summarily jerked the fetus by its leg from Doctor Kamil’s arms and thrashed it on the ground repeatedly until it was still. The mother was screaming in horror, raising weak arms of protest. Regarding her with pleasurable scorn, he mightily flung the corpse into the woods, then nocked an arrow, aiming directly at her.
… or at Layla.
Keelung, Taiwan
Chiang-gong nodded up toward the tall PLC building, “How you think you get in?”
Gary shook his head, inhaling deeply, “We haven't figured that out, yet.”
“I think you go parking garage on back side. Maybe you get in there.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Gary said, lifting the machine gun from the ground where he had placed it.
They made a wide arc through the alleys to the rear of the 20-floor glass building where there was a three-floor concrete parking garage. While they had not spotted any guards anywhere, even at the front entrance of the building, they were very cautious as they tried to enter the garage, climbing a wall in an alley to slip in. Once inside the garage, it did not take long to spot the entrance to the building on the ground floor.
They sneaked around the cars, fearing that the absence of any guards at the door meant there was surveillance somewhere else. Then, with about ten yards between the cars they were hiding between and the door, they waited. It seemed unbelievable that one of the entrances to the building would have been left so vulnerable. But there it was, a single door with a thin glass window, and not a single guard to be seen.
“Shall we go for it?” Stacy whispered.
Gary shook his head. “Patience. Let's watch for a while.”
Stacy echoed with a nasally voice, “Patience, patience.” Then she took a long breath and folded her arms.
Gary grinned. Patience was not his wife's strong suit.
After about an hour and a half of anxious crouching, a worker with a lab coat emerged from the door. Gary nodded to Stacy and Chiang-gong. They watched the worker, a twenty-something girl with a short pony tail and a round face. She walked down the aisle closest to the door carrying a backpack closely to her body.
They carefully shadowed her, keeping between the vehicles. Then, when she turned to a small, cheap-looking car and grasped the door handle, Gary quickly sneaked over and leaped up behind her. Clasping her mouth with one hand, he held the machine gun against her body with the other. When she saw the gun, she didn't struggle, but clutched the backpack closely.
Chiang-gong was staring in horror from his crouched position nearby. “Tell her I won't hurt her, I just want help to save my son.”
Appearing relieved by the declaration, Chiang-gong repeated the information in Mandarin.
“Are there children in there?” Gary asked.
She nodded.
“Where are they?”
She spoke, followed by Chiang-gong's translation, “On floor six.”
“How do you unlock the door?”
The girl motioned with her hand, saying something. Chiang-gong looked up, dismayed, “She have something in her hand. She hold hand to sensor.”
“Will she help us get in?”
The reply was “no.”
Gary said, “Well, maybe my biochip will work. Ask her if I can borrow her lab coat.”
The girl agreed and Gary decided to leave Chiang-gong and Stacy with the girl in her car. “Drive out of here if you have to, but if you do, meet me where you found us before, Chiang.” Chiang-gong refused to hold the girl at gun point, but Stacy obliged.
With the girl's small lab-coat squeezing around his large body in such a way that Gary thought he looked ridiculous, he strode up calmly to the door and held his hand up to the sensor.
It didn't unlock.
This wasn't going to
work. He couldn't get into the building.
Then the door clicked unlocked. He easily pushed it open. He was inside. He couldn't believe it. And then, he couldn't believe what he heard.
Echoing from two dozen doorways lining a spartan gray hallway were the sounds of animals. The screech of monkeys, the barks of dogs, the cry of birds, the bleating of sheep, and the howl of a cat. Gary cautiously stepped across the floor and peered around the corner of the first door. There, rows of stacked cages, each cage about three feet tall and three feet wide. Most were empty, but in one sat a black-skinned, wrinkled hairless ape with a face that looked something like an orangutan’s. Its head was drooped listlessly to the side. The expression conveyed a deep and horrible despair. At its sagging breast, it held a similarly hairless infant, although the infant's skin was much lighter in complexion and smooth. The fingers with which it dispiritedly grasped the infant had yellowed, overgrown fingernails, though each finger was an extravagantly different length.
When it saw Gary, it immediately tensed and the skin of its entire body flashed into a grayish color, closely matching its environment. The baby, having not changed color, was now dramatically contrasted against it, and it was then that Gary noticed something so horrific his whole body recoiled with revulsion.
As the infant twisted its stubby neck around, it peered at him with the unmistakable eyes of a human. In fact, the whole face was human. And he believed it to be human, until its large, bat-like ears flipped out over its head. Then, reinforcing the impression that it was distinctly nonhuman, its large innocent eyes suddenly blackened, the face transformed into an angry glower, and its mouth opened to expose fangs with the release of a vicious hiss.
Gary literally fell backward with an audible cry. He turned and made his way down the hallway, cringing at what he might see in the other doorways.
When he reached the next one, he felt he would rather do anything but look, but the fear that someone was inside who would know that he shouldn't be there forced him to peer in.