Under the Beetle's Cellar

by Mary Willis Walker

  The second was a tiny dark-haired boy in shorts. He was holding an agent’s hand and carrying a white doll. Bucky DeCarlo, the youngest, the boy with the cowlicks. His hair was much longer now, the cowlicks flattened down. “Two.”

  The third to emerge was Kim Bassett, her face pale as skimmed milk, her pink hair darkened with dirt. She stopped in the barn door, seemingly stunned by the lights and commotion around her. The agent next to her put his arm around her shoulders and encouraged her to keep walking. “Three,” Molly said.

  The next was a black-haired kid with huge dark eyes talking animatedly to one of the agents. His hands moved rapidly as he talked. Hector Ramirez. “Four.”

  The next three came in a group and her view of their faces was blocked by the beefy agents surrounding them. She continued to count aloud: “Five. Six. Seven.”

  Two more came out. A thin dark-skinned girl wearing glasses and carrying a book clutched to her chest. Sandra Echols. “Eight.” Next to her walked a shorter boy who was covering his face with his hands, crying, Molly thought. She wasn’t sure which one he was. “Nine.”

  And the last one—a small pixielike girl with curly brown hair. Lucy Quigley. “Ten.”

  Molly let out the breath she didn’t know she’d been holding.

  All of them accounted for. All alive and walking on their own. All except Josh Benderson, of course. And Walter Demming.

  Molly had seen Demming rushed out on a stretcher. By the light of the flames of the burning compound, she’d glimpsed the face of the man on the stretcher speeding by—a man with scraggly gray hair pulled into a ponytail, a grizzly beard, and a blue headband.

  They had whisked him off in the Star-Flight helicopter that had been standing by with its engines running.

  The report she’d pried out of Bryan Holihan was that Demming was critical, with a gunshot wound in the back. He was in shock from blood loss. They were flying him to Brackenridge Hospital in Austin, which was equipped to deal with serious gunshot wounds.

  Molly watched the children gather and stand huddled together in a tight, silent group behind the ambulances.

  The plan was to take them to Memorial Hospital in Georgetown, where their families were waiting. Molly wondered what the families would find when they finally took their children home. Whatever it was that had happened to them during these past forty-nine days, these children would not be the same children their parents had sent off to school on February 24; they would never be the same children again. Of that she was certain.

  Molly squinted to try to see better. There seemed to be a problem at the barn door. The kids were not getting into the ambulances. They were standing around, and it looked like they were arguing with the agents and the EMTs. Molly was too far away to hear their voices, but she could tell from their body language that they were arguing.

  Lattimore spoke into his radio. “Tell them it’s just a ten-minute ride. And there’s an attendant in each ambulance.”

  Molly tugged his sleeve. “What’s going on?”

  He kept the radio pressed to his ear as he answered her. “Oh, the kids want to ride together in one ambulance. But it’s against the ambulance service’s policy, so they’re arguing about it.”

  Molly felt hot indignation rising in her throat; it was the first time all night she’d been warm. “Pat! Those kids have been crammed together like puppies in a litter for weeks. To separate them so suddenly is outrageous. You’re the ASAC. Use your power. Tell Kroll to let them ride however the hell they want.”

  “Molly, calm down. It’s being taken care of. Kroll is trying to work out a compromise to divide them into two ambulances. They won’t fit in one. Poor Stan. I’ve never known him to get rattled before. He’s used to handcuffed bank robbers at the end of a maneuver, not opinionated little kids.”

  After a few minutes, three of the children climbed into one of the ambulances, but the others seemed to be hanging back. And they were arguing again.

  Lattimore said into the radio, “But their parents are waiting at Memorial Hospital. Do they know that?” He listened and then said, “He’ll be going right into surgery. They won’t be able to see him anyway. Tell them that.” He waited.

  Molly watched Stan Kroll leaning over and listening to Hector Ramirez, who was shaking his head forcefully.

  “Okay, okay,” Lattimore muttered. “Hold on, Stan. I’m coming in. I’ll talk to them.”

  He lowered his radio and said, “The kids insist on going to the same hospital where Demming is. I need to talk to them. Come on, Holihan. You’ve got kids that age.”

  Molly stepped to his side. “I’m coming, too.”

  He shook his head. “No. It’s better—”

  She said in a low voice, “Pat, you owe me. Big time. I’m coming.” The intensity of her need to see the children up close surprised her. Now that she was involved, she wanted to know everything about them.

  Lattimore shrugged, and walked through the gate. Holihan followed. It was not a graceful acquiescence, but Molly took it as a yes. She had to jog to keep up with the two men as they strode across the weedy packed-dirt path that led to the barn. Stan Kroll was still leaning over talking to the kids. As Molly neared them, she could see he was looking red-faced and unhappy. Lattimore was right: Apparently this was proving more stressful to him than the assault.

  The three kids inside the ambulance were crowded into the open rear door with their heads sticking out. Bucky DeCarlo had his thumb stuck in his mouth. The other seven were huddled around them. They were very thin and very dirty, and they kept blinking at the lights. Surrounded by black-clad agents, they looked as pale and vulnerable as featherless birds fallen from a nest.

  Hector Ramirez took a step to meet Molly and the two agents. “Who’s in charge?” he asked, raising his chin aggressively.

  Lattimore looked down at him. “I am. Patrick Lattimore, assistant special agent in charge.” He smiled. “You must be Mr. Ramirez.”

  Several of the kids giggled.

  Hector glanced back at them, then turned to Lattimore. “Yeah, that’s me. We want to go to the hospital where Mr. Demming is. They said he was going to Austin and we were going to Georgetown. We want to go where he is.”

  “Your families are waiting for you ten minutes away from here,” Lattimore said gently. “In Georgetown. They’ve been waiting for you and worrying about you for forty-nine days. Let’s not keep them waiting any longer.”

  Hector turned around and looked at Kim. She set her lips tight and gave a single shake of her head.

  Hector turned back to the adults. “Mr. Demming might need us. We want to go there.”

  From behind him, Kim said, “Our parents can come there—to the hospital where Mr. Demming is. That way, we can see them and be there for him, too. You could call them now and tell them to meet us.”

  Several of the kids nodded at that.

  Molly studied Kim Bassett’s dirty, freckled face and the firm, stubborn chin that was so similar to her mother’s. She felt a flood of relief. Terrible things had happened to this child, but she seemed to be … intact.

  “But everything’s set up for you in Georgetown,” Lattimore said. “The doctors are all ready to take care of you there. We just talked to them on the phone.”

  “Man,” Hector said, with a dismissive wave of his hand, “we don’t need no doctors. We ain’t sick. Just hungry. Sandra has the runs, but she’s okay.”

  “Well, I—we need to have you looked at,” Lattimore said, appealing to the whole group. “It’s all—set up. You can’t just—” He stopped when he saw the kids’ lack of response. This was the first time Molly had seen him not in control of the situation. She looked at Hector with admiration—a formidable person, standing his ground against the awesome authority of the federal government.

  “Come on now, kids,” Lattimore said. “Just hop in the ambulances, and we’ll talk about this some more when we get to Georgetown.”

  Bryan Holihan, who had been watching the intercha
nge with his radio to his ear, suddenly tensed and moved away several yards. He turned his back and said something low into his radio. Alarmed by his expression, Molly walked back to join him. He listened with his eyes closed. “Okay,” he said. “Ten-four.” He lowered the radio and looked at Molly. His eyes were wet with tears.

  She put her hand on his arm and whispered, “What is it, Bryan?” But she knew.

  “Demming. He died before they could get him on the operating table.” A tear broke loose and trickled down his cheek. He used his radio to swipe it away. “Goddamn. If we’d gotten in just a minute faster—”

  The news sucked Molly’s breath right out of her lungs. Her whole body felt deflated with loss and disappointment. She didn’t even know the man, had seen him only once, as he was dying, but the loss felt huge and very personal.

  Patrick Lattimore appeared behind Molly. “What is it?”

  Holihan glanced toward the children. “Demming’s dead,” he said in a low voice.

  “Oh, dear God,” Lattimore said, “what are we going to do about these kids?”

  Molly glanced over at the children, who were whispering and arguing among themselves. Kim Bassett broke away from the group and walked toward them. “Is it about Mr. Demming?” she asked.

  The three adults looked down into her pale, smudged face without answering. Molly felt her mouth dry up. She was relieved to leave this to Patrick Lattimore.

  Kim’s shrewd, calm glance moved from face to face. “It is about him, isn’t it?”

  Hector hurried to join them, his black eyebrows raised in alarm. The other kids started to drift forward.

  Kim turned to Hector and said, “Oh, Hector, he died and they don’t want to tell us.”

  Hector looked up at the adults. “He died? Is that right?”

  Patrick Lattimore nodded. “He died just now, at the hospital. I’m so sorry to have to say it. I know that you kids—”

  “Is there someone there with him?” Kim asked, dry-eyed. “Or is he alone?”

  Bryan Holihan said, “His old friend Jake Alesky is there with him.”

  Kim nodded and turned to the other children. “Something bad has happened,” she told them. “Let’s go back to the ambulance, y’all.” She pointed to where Sandra, Bucky, and one of the other boys were still hanging out of the back. “Then we can hear it all together.”

  Lattimore turned to Molly with a look of anguish. “What do you think? Should we leave them alone? I wish one of the psychologists was here. I want to get them to their parents.”

  Molly watched as all ten children huddled together at the back of the ambulance. Kim put an arm around Bucky and started to talk in a voice so low Molly couldn’t make out the words. The kids leaned forward to hear.

  “I think it would be an intrusion for us to interfere right now,” Molly told Lattimore. “Let’s give them some time alone.” She lowered her eyes, feeling that it was an intrusion even to watch.

  One of the children let out a wail, and others began to cry.

  Lucy and Heather leaned together weeping on one another’s shoulders. One of the boys sat on the ground and wept soundlessly.

  Molly watched them hug and comfort one another. Whatever horrors they had endured during their captivity, she realized, something remarkable had happened down there underground to knit them together.

  After a while, Hector called out to Lattimore. “Okay, man. We’ll go to your hospital now.”

  Kim stood at the back of one ambulance and Hector at the other. Quietly the children divided themselves into two groups and climbed in.

  Then, with no sirens or lights, the ambulances drove out of the smoldering compound and headed west toward Memorial Hospital in Georgetown, where the children’s families and a team of doctors and social workers were waiting for them.

  Molly looked at her watch. It was forty-two minutes past midnight, April 14. The fiftieth day, the day Samuel Mordecai had expected the world to end. She glanced at the ruins of the Hearth Jezreelite compound. He had certainly inflicted a great deal of damage on the world, this abandoned infant turned angry prophet. And the damages hadn’t all been reckoned yet.

  But life on earth was pretty resilient. She recalled the stubborn expression on Kim Bassett’s face. Lord, wasn’t Thelma Bassett going to be glad to see that expression again. The thought made Molly smile and, at the same time, it brought hot tears to her eyes.

  Back at the command post, lights were blazing. Grady Traynor threw an arm around Molly. “We caught the three Sword Hand of God perps.”

  “Oh, Grady! How?”

  “Your friend Addie Dodgin, in Waco, helped. She’s been calling, Molly, and wants you to call her, no matter what the hour.”

  “Tell me,” Molly demanded.

  “They were in a stolen van outside her office, waiting for her to come out. She spotted them and called the feds. They’d told her to call if anything didn’t look right. They swooped down and caught them with all the paraphernalia for turning people into blood statues. We’ll need you to take a look at them, Molly. Tomorrow will do.”

  “Okay. I need to talk to Rain Conroy. Where is she?”

  “Long gone,” Grady said.

  “Gone?”

  “On her way back to Quantico. She got debriefed by Andrew Stein, grabbed an ice pack for her face, and was on the way to the airport less than fifteen minutes after you two came out.”

  “She didn’t stay to see the kids,” Molly said.

  “No. But she left you a message.”

  “What?”

  Grady grinned. “She said, ‘Tell Molly Cates she’s the only stand-up writer I ever met.’ ”

  Molly’s face felt flushed with pleasure. It was a compliment she would carry with her to the grave.

  Molly watched as Patrick Lattimore released the evening’s final tally to the press:

  In what he referred to as a highly successful tactical maneuver, all ten of the remaining hostage children had been rescued from the buried bus where they had been kept during the forty-nine days of their captivity. All were alive and apparently healthy, although two of them, Sandra Echols and Philip Trotman, were being kept overnight at Memorial Hospital in Georgetown for observation. The rest had been released to their families.

  Eleven cult members had been killed in the assault, including Samuel Mordecai, who was shot in the head by the HRT entry team while he was in the act of firing on them.

  Fifteen cult members had been wounded.

  Two federal agents had been killed in the line of duty, and three had been wounded, one critically.

  One hundred and twelve cult members, including sixty-three women, had been taken into custody and charged with murder and attempted murder. Other charges were under consideration. A search of the compound revealed forty-two neat graves, believed to be the forty-two infants murdered by the Hearth Jezreelites.

  The bus driver, Walter Demming, had been shot by the cultists during the assault. He had died of his wound shortly after arriving at Brackenridge Hospital.

  Patrick Lattimore did not mention the existence of Special Agent Loraine Conroy, who had killed Samuel Mordecai and three other cult members.

  He did not mention Molly Cates.

  When questioned about the two women seen entering the compound twenty minutes before the assault, Lattimore said he had no comment.

  It was a version of the events that stunned Molly. He had turned the story of the devastation at Jezreel into a football score, a cool postgame recitation of dry statistics. He had managed to censor out of it all the juice—all the fear, all the loss and tragedy, all the loyalty and devotion, and all the courage.

  The press, of course, would sniff out the drama. Herself included. She was already thinking about the story she wanted to tell. It had been taking root in her brain for days without her knowing.

  It was 3 A.M. before they were finished at the command post and Molly and Grady could head home. Molly rested her head on the seat back, beyond exhaustion. They passed
the compound, which was still ablaze with lights. The acrid smell of charred wood still hung in the air. But only one fire truck, three DPS cars, and a small group of agents patrolling the fence remained. It was over.

  “So, Molly. How do you feel?”

  “Awful. Wonderful. Exhausted. Weepy. Seeing those children walk out alive was a high point of my life, Grady.”

  “Mine, too. How about your own adventure tonight?”

  Molly closed her eyes and thought. She hadn’t had time yet for summing up. “I would never do it again. I used up whatever luck I have allotted to me for this lifetime. From now on, I’ll have to be careful.”

  He grinned at her. “I know that feeling.”

  “How about you, Grady?”

  “Given the odds against us, I think we pulled off a miracle. Those kids were as good as dead. We dragged them back from the underworld. With Walter Demming’s help. And yours, Molly.”

  He might have said more. There was lots more to say, but she didn’t hear any of it because she was asleep.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-FOUR

  “We should be living like persons who don’t expect to be around much longer.”

  HAL LINDSEY, THE LATE GREAT PLANET EARTH

  Grady Traynor was waiting when Molly and Jo Beth walked out of the Sports Spa. He was sitting on the tailgate of Molly’s repaired pickup drinking a beer. Copper was lying at his feet.

  Jo Beth leaned over to give her father a kiss, but she stopped halfway when Copper lifted his head and growled at her.

  “He’ll get over that,” Grady said.

  Jo Beth stood back and studied the dog. “Maybe you should send him for retraining.”

  “Military school,” Molly said. “He could board.”

  Grady stroked the dog’s head. “Don’t pay any attention to what your mother says. Actually, she’s smitten with the animal. This morning she bought him a bed.”