“The same thing will happen now. The first thing the college professors will do is to tell their students. They’ll explain what the data means in layman’s terms. I asked Wayne to tell his professor friends that the government is perpetrating two evils. They’re not only keeping this vital information quiet. But they’re also killing and kidnapping scientists to keep their secret. He will mention Hannah by name and will include her photograph. He’ll tell his colleagues she was kidnapped from Norwood, Missouri a week ago and we want her back.
“Within a couple of days, unless I miss my guess, millions of college kids will be protesting on every college campus in the country. They’ll be carrying signs with Hannah’s face on them. Word will get out about the others who were killed or are missing.
“Their photos will be on signs as well.
“They’ll move from the campuses to the streets of every major city. They’ll be demanding answers from their government.
“It’ll make the Vietnam protests look amateurish by comparison.”
Tony was stuck on “Hannah’s face.”
“Wait a minute. Where are they going to get a photograph of Hannah?”
“From Geo-Dynametric’s web site.”
“You’ve been on their website? But when?”
“Certainly. I used one of the computers at the Office on the Go while they were processing the paperwork for the mailbox I rented. They’ve got a section under ‘Human Resources’ called ‘Our Rising Stars,’ and it has her photo in it. Beautiful woman. I can understand why you fell in love with her.”
It was something Tony never knew. Hannah wasn’t the bragging sort and would never have told him she was featured on her company’s website.
Still, he should have known.
All of a sudden he felt like a louse.
Chapter 12
Hannah was awake now.
But she was in terrible shape.
She was beaten and bruised, and had been in and out of consciousness for days.
And the callous bastards holding her prisoner didn’t care.
Not at all.
As much as she hurt on the outside though, her inner turmoil was much, much worse.
“My baby, my baby! What have you done with my baby?”
She was being held prisoner in a plywood box.
It was totally dark, except for the dim light from several air holes drilled on each side just below the ceiling.
Air holes too high for her to peek through.
When she stood she could easily reach up and touch the ceiling.
Standing in the center of the box, her arms extended, she could easily touch both sides.
Turning ninety degrees, arms still outstretched, she could easily touch the front and the back.
She was a bird in a cage.
A very dark and dreary cage.
A cage which apparently was built specifically for her.
She guessed that from the smell of freshly cut wood. And from the sawdust shavings on the floor beneath the air holes.
She surmised the box was hastily built to house her before she woke up and tried to run.
And that the air holes were perhaps an afterthought. Perhaps drilled close to the ceiling after she was already a prisoner inside.
The first time she came to she instinctively reached for her stomach. She was shocked at its flatness. Her baby bump was gone. Just gone.
She’d screamed in agony. She clawed the walls. She bawled her eyes out and begged… whoever had done this to her, to let her have her baby back.
She’d prayed. Prayed it was all a bad dream. Prayed she’d wake up in her nice warm bed, feeling the little one inside her squirming and kicking in an effort to get comfortable.
Then she’d passed out again.
The second time she came to she was a bit clearer-headed. She felt a need to crawl around in the dark. Desperate to find the baby she now accepted was no longer inside of her.
And at the same time terrified of finding her.
For if the baby was there, she’d made no sound to that point. Hadn’t cried out. Hadn’t even whimpered.
What kind of baby makes no sound?
A baby who is…
She couldn’t bring herself to say the word, or even think it.
On hands and knees she searched the tiny cage.
And then she found it.
In the corner of the cage, pressed up against the wall.
That explained why she hadn’t found it before. She’d pretty much stuck to the center of the cramped enclosure. Had no reason to stand or sit against the walls.
There it was. When her fingers found it she desperately drew back her hand and screamed.
She sat there, alone in the dark and in desperation, praying she was mistaken. That it wasn’t her baby.
For it was cold and lifeless.
It took her a long time to get up the nerve to reach out again.
This time she held her breath and actually felt it.
She looked for her baby’s head, and didn’t find it. Yet at seven months along she (or he, if Tony had gotten his wish) would have been almost fully formed.
He or she would have been in the easily-identifiable form of a baby. Two arms, two legs, twenty fingers and toes.
And the face of an angel, no matter the gender.
There was none of that.
It was the hardest thing she’d ever done to poke and prod… whatever it was which lay in the dark before her.
When she finally figured it out she caught her breath.
And didn’t know whether to scream out in joy or in pain.
The pitiful mass of human tissue she could feel but not see in the corner of her cell was afterbirth. The placenta and fetal membranes that are expelled after delivery.
It meant her baby was likely born alive.
And that possibility was enough to give her a glimmer of hope.
If the baby was born alive, even eight weeks premature, there was a chance.
A chance he or she was still alive.
She went in and out of consciousness. The blackout periods were obviously easiest on her, for it was then she felt no pain, no sadness. It was then she had no memories, no questions.
When she was awake the misery returned in great waves. She was a pitiful lump on a hard floor in a terrible place.
She felt no pity for herself, though. When she was awake her thoughts and worries were of others she loved.
The baby she’d never even had the chance to hold. Whether he or she was alive or dead. Whether he or she was being cared for at all. Whether someone was holding her baby and keeping it warm and showing it affection.
Her thoughts also went to Tony, her husband, who she’d dragged into this whole mess. She hadn’t seen him since he left that night on a beer run.
Was he laying in a ditch by the side of a road somewhere, wild animals eating his flesh?
Or was he lying in a morgue somewhere, all alone in the world, in need of a loved one to mourn for him?
What about Gwen, whom her captors kept asking about? They seemed to have a desperate need to find her friend. But they’d get no help from Hannah. Hannah knew that if they found Gwen she’d suffer the same fate.
Her periods of consciousness were marked by an endless stream of worries and thoughts and pain. Yet she only really wished for one thing.
She wished she’d finally wake up from this horrible nightmare and realize it was nothing but a very bad dream.
Chapter 13
Hannah had blacked out again at that point. She wasn’t aware of it, but she had a concussion.
As she passed out again she fell to the floor, overturning one of the few other things to occupy her cell with her: a simple blue bucket, made of plastic. A child’s bucket one would normally expect to find at a beach rather than such a horrible place as this.
She’d found the bucket on the second day, in the opposite corner from where the sad afterbirth lay.
At first she wasn’t
sure why it was there. Her mind was too foggy to recognize the obvious. Then, when her bladder needed to be emptied and she searched for a place to relieve herself, she realized the reason for the bucket’s presence.
That was all she’d placed in the bucket thus far. Sometimes when people are put in extremely stressful situations they develop severe constipation. Other times, when the body senses nourishment is in short supply, it’ll shut its own digestive system down to retain as many nutrients as it can.
In Hannah’s case, in her current situation, both instances applied.
The overturned bucket soaked her body in urine, but she didn’t care, or even notice. She’d lost consciousness again and wasn’t even aware of it.
The only other things occupying her cell with her were empty plastic water bottles and empty paper plates. Every six hours, round the clock, the door had opened and a plastic plate of cooked, drained and unseasoned Ramen noodles had been shoved in for her to eat.
And three plastic water bottles.
No effort was made to ask how she was feeling. No effort was made to empty her waste bucket or to replace it with a clean one. No effort was made to take away the horrifying entrails left behind by the birth process.
No effort was made to answer her pleas to know where her baby was.
Or even to acknowledge them.
No effort was made to take away the empty water bottles, the empty plates.
Or her pain and suffering.
Even in the foggy state of mind she was in, it was apparent they were only interested in one thing.
For each time they opened the door and bathed her in a bright light which burned her eyes and caused them to tear they demanded of her:
“Are you ready to talk yet? Are you ready to tell us where Gwen Lupson is?”
Her first inclination, when her head had finally cleared just a bit, was to tell them to go to hell.
But the words didn’t come out.
She’d been aware of the severe pain at the base of her neck. It was tender to the touch, but then again so was most of the rest of her body.
The source of her neck pain had puzzled her. She couldn’t understand why it was there or how long it would last. She’d been beaten unconscious when one of the thugs kicked her in the throat.
He’d certainly had no reason to. She was helpless and wasn’t resisting. Wasn’t even aware of his presence.
He did it because he could. He’d been a bully all his life, and couldn’t pass up the opportunity to kick a defenseless woman.
Her first efforts to tell them to shove their questions about her friend Gwen went unheard. Gradually, as she’d recovered her ability to talk, she’d been able to squeak out a few terse words to them:
“I don’t know,” “Go to hell,” “Even if I knew I wouldn’t tell you.”
Now, after what seemed like forever in her cage, her voice was pretty much back to normal. It still hurt her to talk, but she didn’t let that keep her from making her position known. If they wanted to hunt Gwen down and kill her or imprison her, they’d do it without Hannah’s help.
She’d been brutalized in a variety of ways. She was covered in bruises, her elbows and knees scraped and tender to the touch. Her entire body ached from being forced to sleep on the hard wooden floor of her box without either a pillow to support her head or a sheet to cover herself.
But that wasn’t the worst of it.
The worst part was that her lower body and the floor of the box were sticky and incredibly so.
At first she couldn’t understand why. When she determined it was dried amniotic fluids from her own body, she cried anew.
To make matters worse, the afterbirth tissue in the corner of her box was now decaying. Covered with flies and beginning to put off an awful and heartbreaking stench.
Another heart-wrenching reminder of her baby.
The baby she knew was out there somewhere. Perhaps dead, perhaps alive and in danger.
She kept going in and out of consciousness. For days now she was out of it more often than not.
All in all, though, that wasn’t a bad thing. She found the merciful blackness of unconsciousness was the only friend she had now.
At least then she didn’t have to think.
She didn’t have to ponder her fate or that of her newborn.
As Hannah lay in a heap on the floor of her cell, blissfully oblivious to the world around her, a spirited conversation was going on a few short feet away.
Three men, just outside the torturous wooden box, were debating their next course of action.
“We need to try something new. We haven’t gotten a damn thing from her with what we’ve done so far. How long do you think Gannon is going to stay this course before he fires us and gets someone else?”
“Gannon knew how badly damaged she was when she came in here. He won’t fault us for the time it takes. He’s already punished the extraction crew. He understands it’s not our fault.”
“Sure. Now. But he’s not exactly known for his patience. At some point he’s going to come in here and ask us what in the hell we’ve been doing and what’s taking so long.
“Look, all I’m saying is that what we’ve been doing hasn’t been working. We’ve got to try something different.”
Chapter 14
It was late morning, although Hannah had no way of knowing that. From her cell, day and night looked exactly the same. Except for occasional instances when the door suddenly burst open and bathed her in brilliant light, it was dark all of the time.
Dark save the meager light coming in the ventilation holes in the top of her cage.
She always responded the same way each time the door was open. She’d sit in the back of the box, knees drawn up to her chin, arms wrapped around her legs, in a futile effort to hide her nakedness from the sadistic animals who’d taken her prisoner.
Sometimes they’d make crude comments, offering to take her out and clean her up, then to make her “feel like a woman again.”
God only knew what they meant by that, but she had her suspicions.
On this particular day, it was obvious they were ready to try another tactic to make her speak.
The men were gone.
Instead, three women appeared at the doorway.
Three women dressed in scrubs and white lab coats.
Medical personnel? Doctors or nurses?
No. It couldn’t be.
Perhaps Hannah was hallucinating.
One of the women spoke in a kind voice.
Or more likely a voice carefully designed to sound kind.
“We’ve brought your lunch, Hannah. And we wanted to tell you your baby boy is doing fine. We don’t know what to call him, I’m afraid. Have you selected a name for him?”
It was an easy question. But Hannah’s eyes grew moist at the mere thought her baby might be alive, and the question never registered.
It wasn’t that she ignored it, not really. It just flew right on by.
Instead of answering she asked a couple of queries of her own.
“My baby is alive? Can I see him? Can I hold him?”
“I’m sorry, dear. That’s not possible right now. He’s still in the incubator. He was born two months premature, as you know. He’ll be okay, but his tiny lungs just aren’t strong enough yet to let him breathe on his own.”
“When can I see him?”
“I’ve been told you haven’t been very helpful in telling my colleagues what they need to know. Your baby is nearby, in a very well equipped hospital. He’s being well taken care of, I assure you.
“My colleagues tell me that as soon as you provide the information they’re looking for, you’ll be transferred to the same hospital. You’ll be given your own private room, and your baby will join you while we nurse both of you back to health.”
“What have you done with my husband?”
“I’m afraid I have no information about your husband, dear. I’m sorry.”
“Why do you want Gwen? Sh
e’s done nothing to you. What do you plan to do with her? Kill her? Place her in a cage like an animal, as you’ve done to me?”
“I’m sorry, dear. I don’t know what you’re talking about. All I know is what my colleagues have told me. That a woman named Gwen has been declared an enemy of the State and a threat to national security. That they have to find her immediately and that you’re the only one who can help them. That’s all I know about that.”
Hannah started to argue with the woman. To call her names and perhaps even to curse at her.
But she was still confused.
The woman was trying very hard to win her trust. To convey she was friend, not foe.
Perhaps she was. Perhaps she was merely a part of a medical team tasked to care for her baby, and not one of the brutal thugs who’d beaten her and taken her prisoner.
“Look…”
“Mary.”
“Look Mary. I don’t know where Gwen is. I haven’t seen her since we spoke in Phoenix a couple of weeks ago. And even if I did know, I wouldn’t tell your ‘colleagues’, whoever they are.”
“Why not, dear?”
“Because Gwen is a wonderful woman and a very dear friend of mine. I don’t want to see her treated as I’ve been treated. I don’t want to see her killed just for doing her job.
“I don’t care what you’ve been told. Gwen is neither an enemy of the State nor a terrorist, or whatever they say she is. They’re lying. And they’ll get no help from me.”
It was clear to both of them that Mary wasn’t getting any more information regarding Gwen.
She reverted to her original question.
“Can you tell me your baby’s name? We’d like to know what to call him.”
“His name is Samson.”
“Oh, that’s a delightful name. And he’s such a handsome boy. Someday this ugliness will be just a distant memory and you’ll be with Samson, doing all the best things a mother and son can do together.
The Yellowstone Event (Book 2): A National Disgrace Page 5