Body by Blood

by Patrick Johnston

  “There are many government agencies besides the FBI.”

  “But why would they be following you? They can legally put GPS tracking and listening devices in this hover-limo, in your home, in the very jacket you’re wearing. They can see your heat image through the roof of this limo from a satellite in orbit. Why would they waste time and resources having two agents follow you around?”

  “The capacity of the federal government to waste the taxpayers’ funds is certainly not new.”

  He nods. “I haven’t put all the pieces of this puzzle together, but something unusual is definitely afoot.”

  “My secretary just notified me that the threats against my life are at an all-time high.”

  He snickers. “Congratulations.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re as safe as you can be, Dr. Verity.”

  “For a man who’s been so adamantly opposed to firearms his whole life, I never thought I’d be so appreciative of being protected by one.”

  “My greatest concern right now is that my weapons may not be able to give you the help you need the most.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “A trained federal agent could have you killed and leave no trace of evidence that you died of anything but natural causes. They could poison you and make it look like a heart attack. They could gas you to unconsciousness and then slit your wrists to make it look like suicide, complete with a suicide note in your handwriting. A radiated noodle in your lunch or biological-warfare-agent-embedded multi-vitamin tablet could kill you within a few days, and no civilian physician would ever be able to figure out what happened to you.”

  After a pause, I say, “Well, that’s unnerving.”

  He sighs noisily. “Yes, it is. Maybe they just want you to know that you’re being followed.”

  I roll down the window, stick my half-filled mug of coffee out and give the liquid a toss into the air. I look back. “Bull’s-eye.”

  Jim laughs. “You did not do what I think you just did.”

  “Ah, Jim, sometimes you’ve just got to grow down.”

  I turn around to watch the black Lincoln’s windshield wipers try to clean off the coffee. The driver increases his distance behind us.

  When I arrive at my office, I feel like a hypocrite logging in my hours, powerless to do anything because the federal government’s team of bureaucrats is managing the business. I feel worthless going through the slow, tedious process of arguing legalese at weekly meetings with pro-life leaders exalting informed consent measures as the best recommendation worthy of our historic effort. But every time I see an unfamiliar employee roaming the halls, and feel my pulse quicken in my temples, I realize my fear of persecution for my hypocritical, worthless measures almost adequately compensates me for the stab of my hard-to-please conscience. Almost.

  At the end of the day, Jim and I are speculating once again about the black town car that follows us. Jim turns off the interstate and the sedan follows closer around the off-ramp.

  “Man,” Jim complains, glancing in the rearview. “Back off, already.”

  “Got any soda or coffee in your cup up there?” I ask, looking back. “Something sticky?”

  Before Jim can answer, a flash shines through the grate in the radiator of the sedan, coinciding with an audible “pop” in the rear of my limo. One of the four hover-engines has blown and the limo swerves to the right side of the road.

  “Hold on!” Although Jim is driving a safe speed, losing an engine on the sharp turn causes him to lose control and take the limo over the small shoulder of dirt beside the road. I am buckled in, but the base of the hover-limo colliding with the dirt at 25 miles per hour causes me to lurch toward the roof. My head bumps the ceiling. I wrap my arms around my head to try to protect myself from injury. Jim manages to keep the vehicle from flipping down the steep embankment, and he brings the limo to a halt before it drifts over the drainage pond.

  Jim unbuckles and tries to exit, but his door has jammed. He reaches across the front seat to try to open the front passenger door as I look back to see two men with ski-masks crest the hill and come running toward us, holding handguns with long barrels, which I assume are silencers.

  “Jim!” I point. He opens the passenger door but before he crawls out, he reaches behind his back and brings his handgun up to aim at the oncoming assailants through the rear window.

  “Duck!” he shouts.

  “It’s bulletproof.”

  “Not from the inside.”

  A sharp, raspy gunshot—Blam!—precedes the shattering of what I thought was bulletproof glass. Jim never got to pull the trigger.

  “Jim!” He has taken one bullet in the chest and falls out of the open passenger door onto the wet ground, his body shaking.

  I scramble to open the door, and step out to face my attackers. We are in a recess in the landscape. This location has obviously been carefully chosen to conceal this event from the eyes of passers-by. With the limo to my right, the muddy retention pond to my back, and a steep hill to my left, there’s nowhere to run and nothing I can do but die bravely.

  I straighten my back and stretch out my hands toward the two masked men. They wear black clothes and wool facemasks, so I fix my gaze on the white of the eyes of the nearest assailant. “You won’t get away with this.”

  My lips speak the words, but in my mind I hear my sister Tamara speaking those words across the bulletproof glass of her prison.

  The first man to reach me chuckles at my admonishment, raises his handgun to me, and my heart squeezes painfully. I can’t believe this is happening again. The same nauseating fear seems to possess every cell of my body and consume every nerve cell in my brain. I close my eyes and try to imagine what will happen to me in the next few moments.

  I swallow hard, and hear two gun blasts, but feel no projectile penetrate my body. The sound of the blasts knocks me on my heels, and I stumble two steps backward. I am ankle-deep in muddy brown water when my two masked assailants fall to the ground, face first. The mud in which I stand is speckled with maroon-colored drops of warm blood.

  Stunned, I look up the hill to see silhouettes of four men crest the orange-yellow sunset back-dropped horizon, rushing toward me. “Dr. Verity!”

  My mouth is dry, but my palms are as wet with sweat as my feet are with rainwater runoff. They reach me and a man wearing a black cap with bold “FBI” white letters on it steps into the water beside me. He puts his arm under my shoulders to guide me out of the mud. “Dr. Verity? Have you been shot?”

  “No, no. I’m fine, I, I think.” They set me down beside the two corpses, who bleed out on the dirt beside me. I fix my eyes on Jim’s pale lips and gaping mouth. His eyes are open slightly. “Is he dead?”

  A second agent checks Jim’s carotid artery. “Yes. It was quick.”

  The agent who helped me out of the mud takes a knee beside me. “You’re in shock. Everything’s going to be fine.”

  “Who are you? Who were these men?”

  “We’re agents assigned to protect you from the flood of threats aimed at you. I don’t know who these men were, but we will soon.”

  With night falling fast, two agents help me up the hill and offer to give me a ride home, while the others commence an investigation beside the limo. I stand in front of the black sedan by the road, the one my attackers drove, as a pretty female agent interviews me, holding a recorder. I duck to look through the radiator grate where I saw the flash, and see two thick black barrels aiming forward.

  “We saw that. Please, give me your undivided attention for just a few minutes, Doctor.”

  I walk to the rear of the town car to examine the license plate. It’s an Alabama license tag. “Alabama?”

  “So?” She follows me with her hand-held recorder.

  “This is not the same vehicle with the tag Jim searched for me.”

  I walk toward the rear of the vehicle the federal agents drove, which is also a black sedan. Something’s not right. I see the stick
y coffee stains on the hood of the vehicle.

  My interviewer follows, asking questions I continue to ignore.

  A police officer with flashing blue lights drives up and parks behind the train of black cars on the side of the road. An agent steps out of the rear vehicle, speaks to the officer and, momentarily, the officer turns off his lights and leaves.

  “Dr. Verity?” the interviewer tries to call my attention back to her. “Just a few more questions, please, sir, and then we’ll get you home to the best cold dinner with your wife you’ve ever had.”

  I spurn her attractive smile and continue to walk back to get a look at the tag on the second black sedan.

  She calls after me. “Dr. Verity? Where are you going?”

  I turn and look at the tag. Here is the license tag Jim had searched for me.

  The interviewer reaches me. “Dr. Verity? Are you all right?”

  I study the white FBI letters on her wind-breaker. “May I see your ID, ma’am?”

  “Why?”

  “I’m curious.” I take out my handheld computer to get a picture of her ID.

  The agent sitting in the last car, as well as one of the agents down the hill, where they collect evidence by flashlight, approach me. “Is there a problem, Agent Penny?”

  “I want to see her ID—and yours.” I point at the agent coming up the hill. The agent from the last car draws near and stands behind me. I turn 90 degrees, to keep my back to the car. I give the third agent a careful stare. “And yours.”

  “Why?”

  “Yeah, why do you want to see our IDs?” Agent Penny asks.

  “My curiosity is stimulated by your reluctance to show me your ID. Now, please, show me your identification. I’d like to confirm you are who you say you are.”

  The man from down the hill flashes his badge toward me. I get it on my video app. I look at the woman. “And yours?” She shows me hers, and immediately they both try to put away their badges. “Not so fast.”

  I adjust the light-gathering capacity of the camera to better visualize their facial features in the low light. Agent Penny stiff-arms my handheld and knocks it away.

  “Why did you do that?”

  I bend down to grab my handheld at the same time as the agent behind me, and we bump heads. I pocket the handheld, and the agent threatens to forcibly take my device. I tap my nanophone to call a cab. Soon, I’m surrounded by three men and one woman claiming to be federal agents but who refuse to let me leave and refuse to let me document the details of their badges. Even the investigators at the bottom of the hill have abandoned the crime scene and come to the top of the hill to try to persuade me that I’m being paranoid and unreasonable, and I should be thankful that they have saved my life.

  The cab arrives and I hop in and leave, much to their dismay. Thankfully, they do not try to prevent me.

  “Where to, Dr. Verity?”

  I am surprised by his lack of inquiry into why I appear to be leaving the scene of an accident, and I am puzzled as to how he could possibly address me as Dr. Verity. “How did you know I was a doctor?”

  “You’re Raymond Verity.” He twists and swings his arm over the back of the front seat, thrusting a ballpoint pen toward me.

  “Whoa!”

  “Sorry. Do you mind giving me a signature?”

  “What?” I cautiously take his pen.

  “When you called for a cab, headquarters told me your name was Raymond Verity.” He then hands me a business card. “You’re famous.”

  “Oh.”

  Maybe I am being paranoid.

  30

  I WAKE UP TO THE sound of our cleaning lady rapping her knuckles on the door of our bedroom. “Dr. Verity? Morgan?”

  I sit up in bed, but Morgan remains motionless beside me. The half-drunk bottle of wine on the nightstand enlightens me to the fact that her drinking continued long after I dozed off. “Yes?”

  “There are media personnel gathering outside your gate. I thought you’d want to know.”

  I grab the remote and turn on the security feeds to confirm her observations. I flip to several news stations, but cannot discover what has drawn these talking heads to the sidewalk in front of my property.

  When I filed the police report late last night, I was assured that this attack would not be publicized, at least until the investigators could confirm the identity of the four people posing as federal agents at the crime scene. Fortunately, I did have sufficient video footage on my handheld for them to commence an investigation. So how could the media have possibly heard about the attack on me and the killing of my bodyguard last night? I hoped to learn at the edge of my driveway exactly what had attracted these parasites.

  I’m a little nervous about driving the hover-sedan, as I rarely have an opportunity to drive it. But it’ll take me a few days to find a new driver/bodyguard.

  The media personnel obstruct the passage of my vehicle with shouting, bright lights shining into my car, and extended microphones. “Dr. Verity! Dr. Verity!”

  I roll down my window. “Yes?”

  Three or four questions are thrown at me all at once, but I catch the words of a thin woman with long, straight black hair, and wearing a short black miniskirt. “How do you feel after the attempt on your life last night?”

  I raise my eyebrows. “How do you know about that?”

  “What do you think about the findings that agents of the vigilante Alabama government are responsible for the attempt on your life, and the murder of your bodyguard?”

  That news surprises me indeed. “Who told you that?”

  “The FBI just gave a press conference on the steps of your Research Center.”

  “Oh? I didn’t see any press conference on television.”

  My nano buzzes and informs me Redd Cranton has left a message for me. I tap it twice, and the message plays. “Did you know that the government is giving a press conference in the foyer of NBRC?”

  The media personnel and cameramen press into my car on every side, vying for the better image.

  “Do you think,” the black-haired woman asks, “the President should issue sanctions against the radical Alabama government if it is proven that they knowingly attempted to assassinate you?”

  I am immediately suspicious. I feel like I am being scammed—and the public—in some elaborate government campaign to malign those resisting the New Body science. These media puppets clogging my driveway must have obtained this information before it was actually given at the press conference. Like an expert in chess, the puppet-masters make a move predicting what I will do next, all the while planning on me to be predictable and move my piece as they have foreseen. They count on me being distracted about what’s going to happen in the immediate future, but they are several moves ahead.

  I should be unpredictable and throw them off.

  “The Alabama agent tried to save my life,” I assert with confidence.

  “What? Excuse me?” A tall, stately man pushes back against the mob of media personnel that press against him. “Did you say that the agents from the state of Alabama were actually trying to save your life last night?” The surprised look on their faces gives me a twisted sense of entertaining satisfaction.

  “Yes, the Alabama agents are heroes. The ones that threatened me were falsely posing as FBI agents. They were actually impostors trying to cover up the crime. The Alabama agents saved my life. I wish they could have intervened to protect my driver and bodyguard, Jim Keppler, a war veteran and my friend. He’s the one that deserves your honor and respect, not the FBI, and certainly not me.” I rev my engines and the reporters and cameramen in front of me move aside and let me pass.

  The thrill I experience in playing with their heads soon dissipates, and I begin to doubt the wisdom of what I have done. Yes, it was immensely pleasurable to contradict the government’s official story, knowing that they are unlikely to offer evidence to confirm their version of events, but I do not want to hurt anyone who is innocent any more than I want to praise
someone who is guilty. Those two masked agents clearly are responsible for the death of my limo driver, and they were driving a car with an Alabama tag.

  I find it difficult to wrap my mind around everything that has happened. I detour and drive back home the way I came the previous night. I pull over to the side of the off-ramp where we went off the road. Besides several tire tracks in the soft shoulder, and huge divots in the softer mud down by the retention pond, there is little evidence that what happened last night ever took place.

  Down by the pond, it appears some sort of rake has been applied to try to obscure the location of the spilled blood. From the spot where my feet sunk into the soft mud, I am able to pinpoint right where Jim fell down dead with a bullet in his chest. There is an elusive, pillow-sized area of darker soil, where his blood poured out on the ground through his wounds. The edge of the blood puddle appears to have crusted and has turned maroonish-brown in the morning sun.

  I carefully investigate where the two masked attackers were shot down, supposedly by federal agents cresting the hill. I again find evidence of a rake application to obscure the evidence. However, there’s one unmolested spot where what looks like their blood spilled. It does not look the same. It has not turned maroonish-brown like Jim’s blood, but is still bright red.

  What’s going on?

  The masked agents clearly killed Jim, but I begin to wonder if they were ever truly shot by the men and the woman posing as my FBI rescuers. Perhaps I am a deluded victim of some kind of Hollywood trickery, some kind of Copperfield stunt.

  The sound of an approaching helicopter raises my eyes toward the blue sky overhead. I can hear it faintly in the distance, but cannot see it. Jim had commented that the government has the ability to see me and eavesdrop on me any time they wish. I make my way to my hover-sedan, and leave before I ever see the approaching copter.

  Fear grips my heart as I drive home. These are powerful people toying with me. I seriously consider simply disappearing, driving straight to the airport and purchasing a one-way ticket to Nassau with nothing but the clothes on my back.