Past Prologue: Where are our Children (A Serial Novel) Episode 4 of 9

by Gary Sapp

eyes. “What has happened to you since we last saw one another? I know about the attempted sexual assault…but something else is troubling you.”

  “I am not the unfeeling woman you think I am, Thomas.”

  “I don’t know who you are, Serena.” He faced her. “Are you the woman who would order innocent people killed and follow that with another order to have children kidnapped in the name of furthering this Caretaker’s cause? Or are you the woman who could be heard crying long hours from her cell after being nearly raped by two Black policemen who let their grief of a fallen friend overwhelm them into such a devious undertaking?”

  She wrinkled her nose at what he had said.

  “Oh yes, Serena, I have my sources as well.” He bit back a smile. “But you haven’t answered my question, who are you?”

  Serena shrugged. “I can justify everything I’ve done so far. I’ve seen it all in the—“

  “In your flames,” He interrupted her. “Everything in your world revolves around this belief system with your Dragon.”

  “It would be unwise of you to mock my faith, Thomas.” Serena’s tone warned him that he would be unwise to ignore her words. “I use what I see materialize in the Dragon’s flames to guide me in every decision I make. What do you use to guide yours?”

  “Truth,” He replied just as quickly. “I’m not interested in taking sides here in this cold war between Pandora and a House in Chains. I’m only interested in keeping my word to Mayor Ernestine Johnson and telling the truth about what I discover. And furthermore, I’m going to tell this truth to the world about what I’ve learned and will learn, Serena, unless you plan to have your people kill me. Or perhaps you will kill me yourself?”

  “I guess we’ll have to see, Thomas,” She said evenly. “We’ll both do what we must.”

  Their conversation had drawn a few curious glances from both staff and parents walking it and out of this area. Thomas took a deep breath and now realized that his voice had must have risen well beyond a conversational tone. Endangering these people’s lives was the last thing he had intended to do.

  “I guess we need to go. Is there anything else, Serena?” he asked. “You wanted to know what I knew. You wanted to know where I stood with my investigation…but I still feel that you wanted something more. What did you really call me here for?”

  She told him that she called him here because she thought he was the lone person outside of her organization that she could talk to. She told him that she could show her real face to him.

  “I flew to Memphis yesterday.”

  Thomas frowned at that proclamation. Pandora must have had its own private jets. It was no way this woman was getting through security checks in any international airports in this country.

  “Memphis,” He searched his memory banks and found a record. “Memphis, Tennessee is Louis Keaton’s hometown.”

  “Yes,” She nodded, impressed that with his knowledge of her operative. “I saw his mother, a woman named Lisa Healy in the flames.”

  Thomas pulse thickened in his ears. “Did you kill this woman?”

  Are those real tears in your phony blue eyes, Serena? “That was my intention, yes, Thomas. After I had questioned her about whether her brother Templeton still lived and his whereabouts I was going to do just that for her crimes of…neglect of her son, Louis Keaton.” Serena gave Thomas a brief synopsis of what circumstances led to the continued sexual assaults of the boy Keaton by his uncle. The story twisted knots in Thomas’ belly. “I made her strip down after I had the information I wanted. I intended for her to die with as much indignity that her own son had been forced to endure when he was repeatedly raped by the monster that was her brother.” Serena folded her arms, fighting against the cold. “And yet, I was shown something that I won’t soon forget, so I was compelled to spare her.”

  Thomas itched under his collar to learn what that information was, but didn’t want to bite off more than he could chew. So he asked her this instead: “Lisa Healy’s brother wasn’t dead was he? He would have been a very old man by now.”

  Serena shook her head…and then nodded a yes at his second question. “He was very old, very feeble. He gets around in a wheelchair.” She said carefully. And then the shadow of the woman who he found sitting in his living room returned in all of her glory. “However, my justice has no statute of limitations.”

  “He was old and defenseless, Serena.” Goddamn you, Thomas, you have to get your tone under control. “Tell me you didn’t do this.”

  Serena pulled her hands out of the trench coats pockets for the first in minutes. Curious; and there, he saw it for the first time since they’d come in this hallway. There was dried, bruised blood underneath her fingernails. There were two scratches on her wrist and that ran half way up her arms. Were these the last ditch efforts of Templeton Healy’s attempts at saving himself?

  “I did.” And Serena looked as if she relived the entire episode of the man’s final moment’s right here, right now, where all of this new life was as its beginnings. “I looked into his gray, lifeless eyes, ran my fingers through his liver spotted scalp…and avenged Louis Keaton.”

  Thomas stomach turned. “Why should I believe any of this?”

  She leaned forward and dropped something with weight into his coat’s pocket and whispered in his ear. “If you doubt my work then you really don’t know me at all.” She began to back pedal away from him. “I advise you to retreat to the rear of this building. It’s the only way that you’ll escape both a House in Chains and FBI Agents who are following you. I left another package for you back their on the floor near the exit door that you won’t be able to miss.”

  Serena looked as if her eyes were full of tears, but as she became one with the shadows it became entirely impossible for Thomas Pepper to be absolutely sure. “We’ll speak in person again, Thomas.”

  “Serena…Serena,” He called out to her. “Where are you going?”

  “We’ll speak again…before the end…before the Whirlwind is unleashed upon the world.” She promised.

  “Serena,”

  He had awakened three babies with his yelling. One woman told him to be quiet. But it was too late for all of that now. And he needed to know something from Serena…before she left him behind for good.

  “Have you seen me in your flames?”

  Serena stopped her retreat only long enough to say: “We are all given to the flames eventually, Thomas, even I will be someday.” She said and disappeared out of the side door that led to…he had no idea where the door led.

  Several babies were crying in earnest. More than a few onlookers were giving him a wide berth as he followed Serena’s advice and angled towards a rear outlet. Nurse Helen had returned to question him. The frown on her face hadn’t improved her overall looks any. Whatever Serena had dropped in his pockets was rattling around and was weighing him down some, but he dared not stop and look to see what it was right now. He heard one of Helen’s assistants say to her that maybe they should summon security.

  He walked…and finally ran out of the first door that he could find. He heard Helen yell at the others to let him go, not to worry about, at least the creep was leaving.

  Thomas found a sign above a door that said, “Exit to back entrance and parking area.”

  There was something wrapped up in a knapsack on the floor next to the door.

  Thomas scooped it up, took one last long look behind him and ducked through the door. He found himself standing next to a dumpster once he was outside…but the dumpster wasn’t where the worst of the odors was fumigating from.

  He walked a little further down the alley to make sure that no one was tracing his steps. When he felt he was clear he sat the package down and reached into his left pocket first. Ouch. Whatever it had been it cut him.

  He pulled out a man’s seared hand.

  He threw it down in disgust. He was breathing hard by then. The man’s sharp fingernail is what had cut into his own skin. It took a moment for Thomas to
gather himself and reached in his other pocket.

  He pulled out a man’s burned foot this time.

  He bit down into his lip and tossed the foot in the general location of where he had thrown the hand on the ground. He tried to breathe in deeply and control over his emotions. He still had one item left to investigate, and memory served him that it was the heaviest of the items that Serena wanted him to see.

  He squatted down and carefully…methodically untied the knapsack.

  And Templeton Daley’s head darkened head rolled out onto the pavement.

  Thomas Pepper lost his dinner of sautéed lamb chops and green beans. He cried tears of desperation and disgust. And just as suddenly…fatigue rushed upon him and pushed down on his big shoulders and sat his big frame and a thousand dollar suit in the muck and the grime in this alley. And he knew that Serena Tennyson had provided him with all of the proof that he needed of her exploits in Memphis.

  He looked out at Templeton’s severed head…and the head seemed to look up at him and some of his curiosity peeked through the holes where the disgust and desperation in his heart and soul existed only moments before.

  You bastard, Templeton…you poor, miserable bastard; he thought, which torture did Serena impose on you first, was it the cutting or the burning? And then his mind questioned: And why did she burn you at all? Somehow I don’t believe that given you to her flames is enough of an answer? What else did Keaton