The Realm of the Drells
Page 19
Debbie hardly noticed the tall woman who had been roughly escorted into their presence, at least not at first. Yet, when she did glance in the stranger’s direction, she was surprised. The new slave was much older than the others, mid-twenties at least. Debbie quickly turned away as the stranger’s eyes met hers. Somehow she looked familiar. She was convinced that she had seen her before. Who was she?
The morning progressed, and the mysterious woman frequently glanced in Debbie’s direction, a look of recognition upon her face as well. It was hours later that a brief respite in their labors brought the new woman to Debbie’s side. Her gaze met Debbie’s for nearly a minute, as she stood over the exhausted girl sitting on the cavern floor.
“Debra Langmuir?” she asked in a whispery voice.
A wave of fear and astonishment swept through Debbie’s soul as she stared into the woman’s face. “How could you know me?”
The woman didn’t reply, but turned toward Leslie, who sat but a few feet away. “You’re Leslie Cosland.”
“What’s going on?” asked Leslie, reaching for Debbie’s hand.
“I’ve known Debbie for nearly a month, but you, Leslie, just a few days,” replied the stranger. “My name is Claudia West, I’m a night nurse at the Martin Neurological Institute. Both of you are there, patients in the long term unit.” Her eyes grew big as she gazed at Debbie, as the paradox confronted her. “But how can this be, how can I possibly be talking to you? You’re in a coma, both of you are. You’re there, not here. It’s just like you said it was when you told your story.”
Suddenly Debbie knew where she’d seen this woman before. She’d been a face in the crowd that had gathered when she told her story, but she remembered her. “Then it wasn’t a dream!” said Debbie. She rose to her feet, tears streaming from her eyes. “God, I was there, I was really there.”
“You were. I mean you are. I mean, I don’t know,” said Claudia. “I remember, I came into your room, during my shift. One of those things, a drell was standing over you. I attacked him but it did no good. He did something to me!” She hesitated. It was then that the terrible realization hit her. Maybe she had suspected it for some time but was afraid to acknowledge it. “God, no, it can’t be! I’m here with you, I must be in a coma too!”
Claudia’s terror seemed poised to plunge toward a mindless panic. Debbie placed her arms around her, trying as best she could to comfort the terrified woman.
“All of the times I took your blood pressure, your temperature, and I never realized what you were going through. We’ve got to get out of here!” The line at the edge of sanity was crossed, Claudia gazed upward, crying as loudly as her damaged vocal cords would allow. It was like a nightmare, screaming in a whisper. “Dr. Wilson, you’ve got to get us out of here! Help us!”
“No one out there can hear us,” replied Debbie, holding Claudia tightly. “You’ve just got to hold on.”
“It’s back ta work, wench!” hollered the task drag, thrashing Claudia across her side.
Claudia turned from the drag, only to be tripped by her own shackles. She fell to the floor face first, weeping mournfully. The drag placed his hands on his knees, laughing hysterically.
“Ya won’t last long here!” he roared, “I’ll wager we’ll be hauling ya away ta da drells fore da week is through.” The drag drew back his whip to strike again, yet his hand was stayed by one mightier than he.
“Enough!” yelled Lukor, spinning the drag around by his arm. “I’ve told ya about this before, and I’ll not be a telling ya again.” Lukor turned to the humans, who had all risen to their feet. “Back ta work!”
Lukor reached down to help Claudia to her feet. “Yer here ta work, not ta socialize. The sooner ya realize that, da longer you’ll live. Now ta work with ya.”
Although she was still shaking, Claudia managed to return to her assigned task, and the rhythm of the work detail returned. The day progressed, and additional opportunities to speak to the newcomer presented themselves.
“Those demons abducted me, threatened me with torture if I didn’t tell them everything they wanted to know,” said Claudia, shoveling stones into a large pile. “But it wasn’t enough. I hardly know anything about FENS. They tortured me in ways I can’t even describe. They made me feel and see things that weren’t even there, but at the time they seemed so damn real. I was so scared, I told them anything I could think of. I told them the names of the doctors and engineers who developed the treatment that brought you out of your coma. I told the demons where they could find them.”
“You spineless coward. You’ve doomed those people, your friends, to God only knows what,” scolded Marci, who had to exercise all of her restraint to prevent herself from grabbing hold of Claudia.
“Ease up,” said Camron, staying Marci’s hand. “She was frightened, confused, the drells would have gotten what they wanted from her, one way or another.”
“Then are we all in a hospital somewhere, in a coma?” asked David, in a weak murmur.
“We must be,” replied Debbie.
“I can’t believe that Dr. Wilson and the others would abandon us,” sobbed Claudia. “They’ll try to bring us back, they’ve got to.”
“If they’re even still alive,” lamented Marci, looking toward Claudia with contempt. “What she did might just have doomed them and us.”
“We have to believe,” insisted Debbie. “God hasn’t abandoned us.” Marci didn’t respond. It would take more than gentile words to convince her that there was hope.
It was a quarter till one as the orderly wheeled Claudia West down the hall towards the FENS lab. Carlos watched without comment as Claudia was wheeled past him, yet his eyes never left her. He walked toward Dr. Wilson who stood by the open door leading to the FENS lab.
Carlos hesitated, “Level with me doc, what’s going on here? What really happened to Nurse West.”
Wilson seemed surprised. “You know I can’t comment on the specifics of her case except with her immediate family.”
“Yes, doctor I know all that,” confirmed Carlos, “but there’s been talk, real strange talk, about what you’ve been doing in this lab.”
“What kind of talk?” asked Wilson.
Carlos seemed nervous. “Some are saying that it’s not natural, what happened to Mr. Lund, that the thing that killed him wasn’t human. They say it had something to do with this project.”
Wilson nodded but didn’t reply.
“Doc, I don’t want to seem like I’m poking my nose in where it doesn’t belong,” continued Carlos. “I mean I’m not smart like you. I have a high school diploma and a little bit of community college. I’m just a security guard.”
“A security guard that might very well have saved the life of Nurse West and two of my patients by his timely arrival,” noted Wilson. “That makes you a hero in my book.”
Carlos seemed to relax but just a bit. “Just a few days ago, after the better part of a year, Miss Langmuir comes out of her coma, just like that, right here on the FENS table. I wasn’t in the room, but I heard that she spoke about really weird stuff, ya know? I mean, you were there, you saw it. Then, all of a sudden, she’s back in a coma again. That kind of stuff just doesn’t happen. And what about Claudia, I mean Nurse West? I turned the corner just as she stepped into that room. I tell ya, there was someone in that room with her, someone other than the two patients, someone who did that horrible thing to her. But by the time I got there he was gone. He couldn’t have gotten by me without being seen, no way, and he couldn’t have gotten out of the window. So where did he go?”
Carlos paused before letting it all out. Right now he didn’t care what anyone thought of him. “She was my friend, Dr. Wilson, closer than a friend. If you’re onto something, I want to be a part of it. I want to help. I don’t care how dangerous it is.”
“Thank you Carlos, I appreciate your offer but we can handle it from here,” said Dr. Wilson. “Could you stay here by the door and see that we’re not disturbed?”
“I’m sorry to have been eavesdropping, but we might have been able to use his help,” suggested Connie.
“No child,” replied Sybil, “Dr. Wilson is right. The fewer people we drag into this thing the better. There are enough lives hanging in the balance as is.”
“Let’s get on with the next step of the plan,” said Wilson. “We haven’t much time.”
Debbie watched Claudia load another large rock into the hopper. She faltered, didn’t seem to be fairing too well. Debbie knew the type. She suspected that Claudia wouldn’t last long here in the tunnels. What she didn’t expect was to see Claudia fall lifelessly to the ground a moment later.
A crowd gathered around her as her skin turned unnaturally white then translucent. Debbie could see her blood vessels, even her bones, below her surreal exterior. She remained that way for about a minute, then she dissolved into nothingness as though she had never even been there. All that remained were her clothes and her chains.
“Shades of darkness!” gasped one of the wulver guards.
To Debbie what had happened became only too clear. She was happy for Claudia. “Oh yes,” she whispered.
By now Lukor had joined the circle of humans and wulvers who stood about the place where Claudia had fallen. He listened to the reports of the new slave who had simply dissolved away into nothing before the eyes of some three dozen witnesses. He turned to Debbie even as she began to notice a strange buzzing in her ears.
Debbie’s legs seemed to collapse from under her as she fell lifelessly to the floor, yet she never felt the impact.
David rushed to her side, straining at the ankle shackles that slowed his progress. He wouldn’t let the taskmaster’s whip touch her, even if he had to shield her with his own body. He fell to his knees before her, turning to discover that the taskmaster had not moved against the prone youth. He gently propped up her head on his lap. “Debbie, what’s wrong?”
He was joined only a few seconds later by Lukor, whose expression of concern mirrored his own. “What’s happened ta her?”
David glanced at Lukor, then back at the one who had been the source of his strength for months. “I don’t know, she just collapsed.”
Debbie’s body grew strangely white and translucent, a mass of blood vessels, half seen organs, and shadowy bones. She seemed more illusion than reality.
“By the Code of Torin!” gasped Lukor, drawing still closer. “Tis magic.”
Debbie, could hear the voices of David and Lukor fading into the distance as her surroundings grew ever brighter. She was not afraid; she had been this way before.
She opened her eyes to behold Ron, Sybil, and Dr. Wilson gazing down on her. “You’re real, not a dream, I’m really here,” she said in a weak voice.
“You’re really here,” confirmed Ron.
A terrible thought crossed Debbie’s mind. “To stay?”
Ron hesitated, not quite sure how to respond. “Yes, if you want to. I think we’ve figured out how to keep you here, how to keep the drells from pulling you away. It is as simple as an injection. We administered it to Nurse West.”
“Her body on the other side turned this weird white color,” said Debbie. “I mean, you could see right through her. Then she just evaporated away.”
“Then it worked,” proclaimed Sybil. “They won’t be able to pull Claudia back into their world again. When you administered that chemotherapy drug to Claudia you broke their hold on her. The silver thread that joined her body in the other world to her body here was cut. That’s why her body over there ceased to exist. We can bring them all home.”
“But what about the drells?” asked Debbie.
Dr. Wilson hesitated. “We’ve been attacked by them several times already during the past few days. They killed our chief engineer.”
“And just an hour ago we killed one of them,” said Ron. “Payback is a, well, you know.”
Debbie’s eyes grew wide. “You killed a drell?”
“Ripped him apart at the atomic level,” confirmed Ron. “That had to really hurt. He won’t be coming back, I’m sure of it.”
“Lukor said they couldn’t be killed,” said Debbie.
“He’s wrong,” announced Sybil, stepping forward, “they can die.”
“Yeah, but we only had one of them to contend with this time,” noted Ron. “I’m afraid that next time the odds won’t be so good.”
Debbie nodded. “Where are my mom and dad?”
“Home, I imagine. It’s well past midnight,” Ron replied. “I think they’re safe for the moment. But if we can’t come up with a more permanent solution to our drell problem, I fear a lot more people are going to be put in jeopardy.”
Ron brought Debbie up to date on their frightening encounters with the drell avenger, and the battle they had just fought.
“Believe it or not, you might be safer where you were,” Sybil said, gazing sympathetically toward Debbie. “We could bring you and Leslie back home tonight. We will if you wish. We could track down the others, Dr. Wilson knows where they all are.”
Dr. Wilson nodded. Understand, we’d do our best to protect you, but you’d end up spending the rest of your lives running from the drells, living in fear. They’re not beyond going after your loved ones to get to you. What we really need is someone on the other side who can feed us information. You’re not alone, we’re behind you all the way.”
“You want me to go back, don’t you?”
“Yes,” said Sybil, placing her hand on Debbie’s cheek. “It wouldn’t be like before. You’d not be returning as a slave, but as our representative, to negotiate with Lukor. We can defeat the drells, if we only work together. But we need time to get ready, to make plans. I’m going to bring all of the children affected with Hobart’s right here to this facility. I know where every last one of them are. The wheels are already in motion, we just need time.”
“The drells already have plans for us,” said Debbie, telling the group about the mission to the crystal cave. “Lukor is certain that the drells are setting us up. They want to get rid of me and anyone who knows what’s going on.”
“After this I suspect the number of persons the drells will want to get rid of is going to grow considerably,” said Ron.
“I think the drells are on to us!” Connie’s voice echoed over the speaker. “I’m detecting a growing magnetic anomaly. I think they realize what we’ve done. I think they’re trying to pull Debbie back.”
Ron turned toward the control room window, “Is there anything you can do to keep them busy?”
“I’m generating a magnetic interference pattern right now,” she replied, a worried look on her face. “It might blind them to Debbie’s location, keep them from getting a lock on her, for a while anyway.”
Ron turned quickly to Sybil, “We don’t have much time.”
Sybil looked deep into Debbie’s eyes. She knew what she was feeling, how could she ask an innocent child to return to that realm of the drells? Yet there was so much at stake. “If we’re to recover the souls of the other young people the drells have abducted, we’ll need your help. We’ll need to get the drells fighting a two front war. We can’t strike them where they live, you and Lukor can. We have to strike at the very heart of the drell’s power. I’m convinced that the drells have an Achilles heel, a point from which their power flows. It might be as simple as a crystal of quartz, whose depths gathers and focuses cosmic energies.”
“It could be a fusion generator, maybe even a matter antimatter reactor for all we know,” interjected Wilson.
“No, that’s not the way they operate,” said Sybil. “Their technology is totally alien to ours. They don’t rely on machines like we do. They use their minds like we use tools.”
“Do you think that the drells would just leave a thing like that out in the open for wulvers and humans to grab?” objected Debbie.
“I don’t kn
ow, but this Lukor of yours might,” said Sybil. “From what I’ve seen, the drells are pretty arrogant. They might be so certain of their power that they’ve become careless.”
Debbie thought back to her vision of Jesus. Didn’t he say something about her being like Moses? “Alright, I’ll go back, but on one condition; bring David home instead of me, bring him home as soon as you can. He can’t last much longer, I’ll survive, help Lukor if I can.”
“We will,” confirmed Wilson. “It will take at least three or four days but we know exactly where his earthly body is.”
“You do?” asked Debbie.
“The information was given to me by a guy by the name of Aberdeen,” said Wilson. “But maybe I should call him Abaddon. He saved my life, but I still don’t know exactly who he is. He could be an alien or even an angel for all I know. All I know is that he isn’t human.”
Debbie looked at Wilson with a puzzled look but said nothing.
“I can’t hold them off for very much longer,” warned Connie.
“Are you ready to go back?” asked Wilson, taking Debbie by the hand. “You know you don’t have to.”
“You’re wrong, I do have to,” replied Debbie, gazing toward the doctor, a tear in her eye. “If I don’t come home again, tell my mom and dad what happened, that I love them very much.”
“You’ll have time to tell them yourself,” replied Wilson, trying to remain strong for the brave girl before him. “I’ve never been too good at conveying messages.”
“Promise,” repeated Debbie, taking the doctor’s hand.
“I promise,” said Wilson.
Debbie’s grip relaxed, her hand moved to her side, her eyes focused upon the ceiling. She seemed strangely at peace.
“We’ve got to do it now,” warned Connie.
“Stand by to reverse magnetic polarity,” announced Ron, stepping back from the couch, glancing toward the control room.
Debbie’s eyes closed as she sank back into the sleep that had claimed her for so long. She was gone from the gentleness of this world, returned to the cruel reality of the realm of the drells.