by Alex Myers
“I think we be already.”
A smile of joy came to Murphy’s face as he stared at the ceiling. “It’s Belle and Anna, they want me to come home with them.
Hercules looked at the ceiling, trying to see what Murphy was seeing. “I don’t know what he be seeing, ghosts I reckon, but he been talking to them all day.”
“It’s his wife and daughter. They were killed a while ago.”
“You’re wrong, Jack, they are not dead. I thought they were, I just couldn’t find them, but they are here now. They see you two and approve.”
Hercules looked nervous, but Jack said, “Tell them I said hello.”
“They say that it’s time to go.” Murphy tried to sit up on the examination table. Jack held him and kept him from falling, then gently eased him down onto the table. Murphy held a hand up. “Goodbye Hercules.” Hercules grabbed it. Murphy held up the other and said, “Goodbye Jack.” Jack held that hand. “Please don’t let him… them win. They are bad people… they hurt people.”
“Okay,” Jack said. He wished Murphy would stop talking, he was making it worse.
“Promise me, say the words.”
“I promise.”
Murphy closed his eyes and didn’t breathe for so long, Jack knew he was dead. There was a loud, ripping, sucking inhalation and Murphy’s eyes opened. “Belle wanted me to tell you… said they were going to use Kazmer and Sam, an experiment.” Murphy said each word with effort.
“Who said?”
“Dudley said.”
“What kind of experiment?”
“Yellow fever… like they gave to the coloreds too, before they let them go to the railroad.”
“Underground Railroad?”
“That’s the one. Stop ‘em, Jack.” Murphy looked to the ceiling, and the final human sound gurgled up from his throat. “We need to go.”
And in one long, wheezing exhalation, he left.
Hercules closed Murphy’s fixed and dilated eyes. “Sorry Mr. Jack, he seemed like a goodly man. You be going to do what you promise him?”
“Yes, I am. I am going to save my friends and stop these men.”
“Even if that mean killin’?”
“Especially if it means killing.”
“Good, I be wanting to help. Cause there ain’t never be nobody that need killing quite so bad. He cannot die for no reason. ”
CHAPTER 27
Monday, July 6, 1857
Fire-eater Louis Wigfall
“I’ve talked to Robert Rhett and he will not abide,” Ken Barnett said.
“I’ve talked to Augie Overstreet and he’s pulling out too, unless they head in another direction. I practically had to plead with him to go to the meeting to oppose Adkins and Wigfall. He was ready to completely disassociate himself,” Senator Brinkley said.
“Can we trust them?” Jack asked.
Ken and the Senator looked at each other and said together, “Yes.”
“Hercules, are you sure you want to do this?”
“Never been sure of nothing more.”
“Where are they getting the slaves?” Jack asked Pinkerton.
“Newport News, Hampton, all the way up to Petersburg, Mechanicsville, even Richmond. I checked with the sheriff and there are more than forty reports of either stolen or runaway slaves. My guess is that they are kidnapping them, and before anyone has a chance to notice anything, they already have them cloistered away in the plant.”
“Are you sure about what they are doing?” Jack asked
“Mostly, they experiment on the younger ones and they use the older slaves to look after all the prisoners—the criminals, the mental patients, and the other slaves,” Pinkerton responded.
“Hercules,” Jack said, “from what I hear things are pretty bad in the plant—very dangerous. There is a possibility they might experiment on you. You don’t have to do this.”
“Too bad he can’t read, we could have him unlock the cells.” Ken said.
“He’s been nonstop reading since I met him. I thought you all knew that. That’s why I brought it up to him in the first place.”
“Can you read this?” Ken wrote some instructions out on a piece of paper and handed to Hercules, who so far hadn’t said a word. These are the instructions for opening both cellblocks.” Hercules looked the paper over slowly.
“Yessa, not going to be a problem.”
“Once the explosions start, it probably should get pretty chaotic in there. That’s what we are counting on. The lighting is probably not going to be the best either,” Ken said.
“If’n this is all I be needing to know, I don’t even needs this paper.”
“Look for these stairs, just inside will be these levers,” Ken said, showing Hercules a copy of the map and then the diagram with the instructions written in them. “Once the explosions start, get up these stairs, open the doors, and then get up here and meet up with Jack.” Ken pointed to the top of the stairs on the second floor. “Jack, once you get Kazmer and Sam, this is the same shaft you all will take to the roof.”
“Shut that door to the shaft once you get in there, we don’t need any of those whack jobs following us to the roof. This is going to mean hooking back up with Brose and Bolton…” Jack said.
“I do it for Mr. Kazmer and for Mr. Murphy.”
“Ken, have you practiced with the bow and arrow?”
“It’s not really a bow or an arrow, more like a sling shot. I can lob it about seventy-five feet. Accuracy is another thing,” Ken said.
“Pink?”
“The same, had a problem keeping them lit at first, then I started packing the rags tighter.”
“If plan ‘A’ doesn’t work, you two have to set that bridge afire. It would probably be a good idea anyway. First the bridge then the receiving area, we need to create bedlam in that loading dock.”
“I wish my aim was better,” Ken said.
“It just has to be close. Frank, are you ready? You are the only person here that Brose and Bolton have never seen,” Jack said. “I hope they don’t recognize Hercules.
Hercules winced at the mention of their name and ran his hand over his freshly shaven head. Jack had him shave and even cut off his bushy white eyebrows. Hercules looked completely different, enough, Jack hoped, that he wouldn’t be recognized.
“Shouldn’t be a problem,” Frank Sanger said.
“I think we’ve thought of everything,” Jack said.
“Except where my daughter is.”
“We’ve been here two days, we haven’t seen her here in town, at the plant, at the residence. We’ve got to assume she left town.”
“I pray to God with all my heart.”
“Me too,” Jack said.
CHAPTER 28
Tuesday, July 7, 1857
Jack hid in the bushes alongside the road as the slave wagon came by in a ramble. Brose was driving and Bolton sat next to him, with the gun laid across his lap. They were spouting crude snatches of conversation about women and not paying attention to their surroundings. Hercules sat portentously in the back with the other slaves, looking older and frailer than ever.
Jack still had to wait two hours before the cart with the mental patients came by at exactly one o’clock.
Last night, with only the light of the waning moon, they’d moved the bows and arrows, air wing, and ladder into place at the top of the ridge. While Ken, Jack, and Pinkerton did the moving, Frank Sanger sold Hercules to Bolton and Bose for twenty-five dollars. No papers were needed, no questions were asked, and no receipts were given.
There was still no word from Frances.
The slave wagon with Bolton and Brose came thirty minutes later. Jack fingered the semi-automatic pistol in his pocket and had a near uncontrollable urge to pull it out and murder these two dealers. Surely, no one would miss them and the world would be infinitesimally a better place—but he couldn’t. Ten minutes after they arrived, Bolton and Brose and the empty slave wagon exited the factory gate and left on the road
to Williamsburg.
Jack glanced up and saw movement at the top of the ridge, it had to be Pinkerton. He hoped.
Fifty minutes to go and it was time to drag the tree across the road. It was a giant dry ash that only looked heavy.
Thirty minutes to go and he pulled the limpet mine out of a canvas backpack and unscrewed the top cover. He removed the slow burn match fuse and tested his homemade lighter that lit on the first turn. Once lit, he would have fifteen to twenty minutes to attach it to the wagon and get to the top of the ridge. When they had twice timed the wagon, it had only taken eight minutes for it to get into the gate and be put away under the walkway bridge.
Damn. Five riders were approaching quickly from the direction of the factory. If they stopped and moved the tree, he would have to think of another way to get the wagon to slow enough to attach the bomb. The men got closer and Jack recognized Dale Dudley, Robert Rhett, and Augie Overstreet, plus two men he didn’t know. The riders all took the tree in stride, without slowing down, and leapt easily over it at full trot. As Augie Overstreet cleared the tree, he turned in his saddle, facing Jack’s direction, and gave him a thumbs up signal. He had no idea how the man had even seen him or knew who he was.
Five minutes till one and Jack heard the wagon from the asylum approaching. As the crusty old driver got closer, it became apparent that he wasn’t going to stop for the tree limb. Jack lit the fuse, screwed it into the limpet mine, and waited. The two horses pulling the wagon high-stepped quickly over the dead tree.
Jack rushed out of his hiding place, carrying the twenty-pound incendiary device with both hands. The front wheels of the wagon hit the fallen tree and nearly upended it. It came to a complete stop when the driver slapped the back of the horses and they tried to pull the wagon over then tree. The slowdown gave Jack enough time to dive under the wagon and attach the magnetized mine to the steel plated bottom of the wagon. Jack was still underneath when the back wheels hit the tree. Without the forward speed this time, the wagon came to a halt.
Jack rolled to the brambles on the far side of the road. The driver was supposed to dismount and move the tree not run it over. The driver slapped the leather straps even harder on the backs of the two animals and once again, the wagon failed to move. The wagon was stuck with a burning time bomb attached.
The driver tried to get the wagon rocking back and forth to get it over the log but he wasn’t having any luck. A full minute had passed.
Jack did the only thing he could think of: he scrambled back out into the road, got behind the wagon and pushed. He had a hold of the back bars that covered the window area at the rear of the wagon where the passengers rode. With all the strength of his legs, he pushed driving the wagon forward. The two back wheels climbed up and over the log. Then someone from inside the wagon grabbed Jack’s hands.
Jack was arm’s length away from a growling woman and the wagon was moving forward and picking up speed. The woman—Jack was only partially sure it was a woman and not some creature—was baring her yellow crusted teeth and snorting snot as she used her unnatural strength to pull Jack closer. He could feel her stinking, putrid breath blowing into his face like hot steam. She had shrunken, bloodshot eyes, greasy matted hair, and was pulling him closer. Jack was face-to-face with insanity and she wasn’t letting go. He was being pulled behind the wagon and in less than two minutes would be at the guarded gate. The woman started to scream, or cry, or yell, he wasn’t sure, but it sounded like a car alarm and every bit as loud. There was only about an eighth of a mile to the guard shack when she let go with one hand, perhaps figuring she had him close enough to grab his face.
Jack raised his arm and came down full-force, using his elbow on the arm the woman had through the bars. There was a snap as the woman’s arm broke. The car alarm scream got even louder, her grip released, and Jack found himself rolling on the road.
The driver, still oblivious to Jack, pounded on the roof of the wagon and told the ‘stinking sot’ to be quiet.
Jack climbed the fifty feet to the top of the horseshoe ridge. He saw Ken Barnett on the far side and gave him a thumbs up signal. Pinkerton, on the nearside ridge-end, mouthed the words ‘what the hell?!’ and Jack shrugged, saying he didn’t know. He started reassembling the air wing. He wished he would have had the chance to test fly it first, but at least it looked correct.
Jack was in the harness and ready. The ridge ran in a U-shape around the prison part of the SAC factory, and Jack was on the top middle part of it. He was also on the highest part of the ridge, twenty feet over the roof of the building and about forty feet away.
The fat, unmoving guard sat at the far end of the roof, overlooking the open loading area in the exact same position as last time. Ken Barnett raised the only repeating rifle they had and took aim at the guard.
Pinkerton raised a hand, signifying that the wagon was through the gate and in the storage area under the sky bridge. Jack wasn’t wearing a watch, but it had to be getting to the end of the fuse in the bomb.
Nothing.
He waited what seemed another five minutes and was thinking of taking off the harness when the whole world shook.
The fireball from the bomb rose two hundred feet above the top of the factory. It rose up with the red of fire at its center and the black support of smoke roiling, churning, and mushrooming around its edges. The sound came a split second later first, as an ear-splitting bang then as a subsonic rumble.
Bits of detritus and debris came raining down afire as far back as the ridge-line. The roof was covered and partially on fire. Jack stood and balanced the wing; he would have less than twenty steps to get airborne. The guard on the roof still hadn’t moved as they hoped he would. He saw Ken Barnett fire the rifle at the guard.
Pinkerton ran along the ridgeline back to Jack’s position. “It’s all gone, there’s nothing left of the loading area. The sky bridge has collapsed and everything’s on fire. There must have been a lot more of that astrolite than we thought.”
“What about him?” Jack asked, pointing to the fat guard still overlooking the loading area.
“He’s not real. It’s a mannequin and Ken’s about shredded it to pieces.”
“And what about those?” Jack was referring to the guard tower and two guards at the riverside of the factory in between the two buildings.
“I can’t tell,” Pinkerton said looking through a spyglass, “I’ll go over and help him though. Maybe I can lob a few firebombs over into Creed’s old office in the other building, where they were having their meeting today.”
Ken used the slingshot-like device to lob whisky bottles filled with paraffin oil at the now burning guard tower.
“Here I go,” Jack said as he ran to and pushed off the top of the cliff. Jack felt a drop as he stepped off the cliff, then felt the assurance of the wing filling with air. He crossed the span almost instantly and had to dodge burning areas of the roof to land. He hit the roof harder than he planned and was dragged along the gravel roof on his knees. It wore through the reinforced knees of his canvas pants. He found a fire-free area of the roof and got out of the wing.
He ran toward the rooftop stairwell. He opened the trapdoor of the stair-shaft and heat and hell hit him in the face. He heard impossibly loud, long screams rising from below. The hole into the building was without light and smoke, only the latter giving Jack any hope. He started down the ladder and the shouts of terror and fear-edged shrieks increased ten-fold.
It was near pitch black as he descended into the hellhole. He could hear breaking glass, clanging metal and cries that stopped as abruptly as they started. He picked his way down the iron ladder until he saw light escaping around the edges of a door. He hoped it wasn’t locked.
It opened. Jack stepped out of the airshaft. There was fire glowing from the both ends of a very long tiled hallway. The near end of the hallway led to the destroyed bridge and the factory side of the facility. The far end of the hallway was a stairwell leading below, where five or six inmates
or patients or prisoners were fighting with fire-tipped boards.
Jack turned to the near-end that once led to the sky bridge and found the last room on the riverside. What he thought was fighting from the far-end of the hallway were actually people very methodically setting anything flammable afire. Smoke was starting to fill the hallway, stinging Jack’s eyes and burning his lungs.
He passed rooms filled with zombie-like men, neither disturbed nor upset by the cacophony or the smoke from the fire. They sat, stared, and drooled. Where below violence and insanity reigned supreme, up here the people were like the living dead.
He got to Kazmer’s cell and could see his friend sitting with his back toward him. Sam Clemens was pacing the room and saw him first. “Sam, Kazmer, it’s me, come on, let’s go.” No response. Kazmer didn’t move.
“Thank you to every last angel in heaven, Jack, I’m so happy to see you. I don’t know what they’ve done to Kazmer, what they’ve given him, but he’s been like this since I got here,” Sam said.
“I’m here to get you guys out,” Jack said. “Get him up and ready.”
Jack checked the heavy steel bar door—locked. Something had happened to Hercules. He was unable to get to the master switch for the doors.
Jack heard someone coming up the stair shaft from below and it didn’t sound like Hercules. Jack turned to the door that led to the shaft as it was kicked open. A deranged woman hit the hallway, looking directly at Jack. She was growling like a dog and a broken forearm dangled from her sleeve.
“Oh great,” Jack said, “they didn’t get a chance to lock you away before the explosion?” Jack moved out of her way in case she just wanted to pass through. She moved lightning quick, and with her one good hand grabbed Jack’s neck and started squeezing. She pounded Jack’s head against the bars of Sam and Kazmer’s cell.
It all happened so unbelievably fast, Jack was near helpless. He was feeling weak and starting to see stars. The woman was inhumanly strong. Her tongue was lashing side to side and Jack was sure she was going to try to bite him with those gnashing yellow teeth. She pounded and pounded, and the teeth and the hot, fishy breath got closer and closer.