“Shhh. It’s okay.” I feel for her in the darkness of the moonless night. “There you are, baby.”
“Owwie,” she whines, grasping her forearm.
I look back. The officers have apparently not seen me jump.
“Shh.” I hold her close, feeling her arm carefully. There does not appear to be any break in the skin. Now it’s her shoulder she’s holding. “Dear Jesus, help my dear little Mary Nell’s arm feel better. Keep us safe. Keep us together.”
She whimpers pitifully as I climb over the edge of the dune, out of the view of the officers who are now shining their bright flashlights on the sand below the boardwalk. Fortunately, the gentle crashing of the waves is sufficient to drown out Mary Nell’s whimpering.
Several small boats are anchored in what looks to be just a few feet of water offshore, dimly lit by propane lanterns. They must be fishing or gigging. Maybe one of them will be sympathetic and help. At this point, I am desperate.
Seeing no other alternative, I run through the shallow dunes and cattails toward the sandy beach of the Chesapeake Bay. Hoping one of the boaters will help, I run toward them along the sandy bar, holding Mary Nell. Their faces are dimly lit from their lanterns.
“Help me!” I cry out, softly lest I startle them. “Can you help?”
A bearded man in the middle turns toward me, a frown on his face. He raises a high-powered flashlight toward me. Others in the nearby two boats do the same, shining their flashlights at us for the guards behind us on the boardwalk to see. Mary Nell squints and turns away from the bright lights. I stretch a hand toward them. “Please, turn your lights off. ”
“Who are you?” the bearded man inquires. He has a beer in one hand as he sits before a fishing pole that is affixed to the bow of his boat. By the light of the flashlight, I can see their fishing lines taut, angled toward the ocean. Two younger men come walking on the sand bar toward us, one with a cast net and one carrying a bucket of baitfish, curious as to who we are. I walk closer to the boat.
“I’m Ray. This is my granddaughter Mary Nell. I need your help.”
“How are you dry? You had to walk through six feet of water to get to this sandbar.”
“I need your help.” I look back. A dozen flashlights are coming through the cattails towards me. “Those men want to take my granddaughter back to a place where they will kill her.”
“Why?”
“She’s got Down Syndrome.” I turn to Mary Nell. “Look at them and say ‘Hi.’”
She does so, and they appear surprised at her unusual facial features. The middle boat, with the bearded man, has thick black letters on its side—“Lucy.”
The boat to my left has been given the name “Little Mag” in an elaborate font on its hull. The third boat drifts around Little Mag, thankfully obstructing my view of the officers that chase us. It has the name “Laodicea” on its hull.
“What’s wrong with your face?” A man on Laodicea holding a beer has a snorkel mask around his neck.
“Please, I don’t have time. Will you take us away from the shore?”
The sound of the waves barely obscures the shouts of those who pursue us. Two vehicles are speeding down the beach toward us.
“Where ya think we can take ya?” The woman in the driver’s seat of Little Mag is wearing a halter-top and has a beach towel around her waist.
“Anywhere. Please. It’s a matter of life and death.”
“I know you!” The bearded man announces. “You were on the news. You’re wanted for something.” He snaps his fingers, looking around at the others.
“That doctor that kidnapped his granddaughter,” the woman in the halter top reminds him.
The others moan their disapproval.
“He’s a terrorist,” the woman behind the steering wheel of Little Mag adds.
“There’s a reward for catching this guy,” says an obese man on the Lucy.
The bearded man twists his flashlight until the beam is tightly focused on our faces. Mary Nell shuts her eyes and presses her head into my neck. The two youth, who are about ten feet away in ankle deep water, set down their cast net and bait bucket and walk closer toward me.
“Come on in,” the bearded man smiles, nearing the edge of the boat and extending a hand toward me. “I’ll get you to safety.”
His invitation is about as sincere as cheese on a mousetrap.
My heart throbs with a mixture of adrenaline and grief. What can I do now? I feel like I need to say goodbye to Mary Nell, but that seems like giving up. But what else can I do? The armed pursuers are rushing through what sounds like thigh-deep water toward me.
I walk toward the bearded man in the boat until I am in waist deep water beside his outstretched hand, but I do not reach for him. I keep walking, toward the blackness of the open ocean. They shout for me to come back, but I ignore them and continue away from them until my feet can no longer touch the bottom.
Mary Nell clings to me tightly, her teeth beginning to chatter. “Cold.”
I glance back. The guards and officers have reached the boats. Several officers board the larger boat Laodicea, start the engine, and turn it toward me.
Exhausted and shivering, I begin to tread water, fighting a fearful dread of what they are going to do to my Mary Nell.
I do not say the words, but in my heart I begin to pray for the Lord to take us. Let us die here in this cold ocean, together. That is so much better than our endless suffering apart. This world is so dark and evil. Take us, Lord.
The boat slows and their flashlights focus on me. As the boat circles me, I am so tempted to get mad at God. Why won’t He help? I’m doing everything I can.
The engine idles as the boat nears. The other boats have raised anchor and they near us slowly.
“Get in the boat!” a gravelly voice orders. The man’s handgun stretches past his light, so I can see it. Another person lowers a ladder into the water.
I turn and begin to swim away.
“Just shoot him,” someone on the boat urges.
“The sharks’ll get him,” the woman with the halter top complains.
“Get in the car or your girl will drown,” one of the younger people respond.
“Who cares?” the young man behind him exclaims. “She’s a defect.”
“Get in the boat, Dr. Verity!” the man carrying the beer urges me. “They just want the girl. Trust the system. With a good attorney and a sympathetic jury . . . ”
“Gwanpaw,” she whimpers in my ear. “Don’t weave me.”
“Get on my back, Mary Nell.” I begin to swim as fast as I can with Mary Nell clinging to my neck. “I’m never going to leave you, baby. Never.”
An engine revs, but the sound is eclipsed by the rotors of an approaching helicopter.
An explosion makes the night sky as bright as day.
I turn towards the source. Flames leap from the boat’s engine. Several officers exchange gunfire with the helicopter.
“Gwanpaw! Gwanpaw!”
An officer on the boat, apparently realizing that they cannot win this exchange with a fighter copter, turns his weapon on me. Bullets strike the water around us. Mary Nell squeals, clinging tightly to me.
“Hold your breath!” I sink under the waves. She struggles against me, and I am forced to the surface, worried that she will drown. No sooner do we get a breath of air than I am hit in the chest with what feels like a bolt of lightning. My mouth fills with hot liquid. I gasp from the excruciating chest pain and a sudden breathlessness. I feel weighted down as if by an anchor. I sink under the waves, with Mary Nell clinging frantically to me. I struggle to return to the surface.
Her hands claw my hair and face. I try to keep afloat, but my arms feel heavy. Exhausted. I cannot catch my breath. I cannot hold onto her. My consciousness wanes. I kick with my legs as hard as I can, trying to keep her above the waves. A man jumps out of the helicopter and, from the sound of his splash, lands nearby. Mary Nell grasps tightly to my neck and hair, and will not let go.
My vision dims as I sink again below the waves. I kick with my legs, but I cannot feel them.
She claws at me for another moment, and then she’s gone. I open my eyes beneath the surface, searching the green salty water, dimly illuminated by the bright lights aimed at us from the hovering helicopter. I cannot see her. I see a stream of blood pulsating into the water from the right side of my chest, and I catch the glimpse of a pale shape of a man-sized shark just a few feet below me. Where is Mary Nell? I am sinking down to the depths. I have not the energy to kick to the surface. I feel an extreme urge to cough, and can hold my breath no longer. I breathe in the salty water, inviting my end.
God, save her.
51
“WE COULD HAVE CAPTURED HIM alive in the Chesapeake Bay,” the FBI director informs President Sayder through her encrypted video-call connection. She’s alone in her Oval Office, getting an update on the conclusion of the manhunt. “It was probably an Alabama Guard stealth copter, but we cannot be sure.”
“Are you sure he is dead?”
“There was a pool of blood as big as your desk, Madame President. The place was crawling with sharks.”
“And his granddaughter?”
The agent shrugs. “The Alabama authorities could have her in their custody, or she could have drowned. It matters not. She’s no threat to us.”
“I want her dead anyway, if only to spit on her rescuer’s grave.”
The FBI director, even with his long history of callous disregard for human rights for the sake of a superior’s order, flinches at the President’s spite.
“Find her, Bill. And I have decided that we should go ahead and commence Operation Red Tide.”
The FBI director’s eyeballs bulge momentarily. “What? Red Tide?”
“Wipe Alabama’s leadership off the map. Black ops.”
“I know what it is, Madame President. They have stacked up their defenses. I beg you to reconsider.”
“This isn’t up for discussion!” It’s as if she predicted the FBI director’s objections, and decided beforehand that his opinion was irrelevant and she was going to cut him off every time. “Pinning it on a power struggle between FAM and Personhood radicals will help win the minds of the religious right, especially down south. Hurry up, because Mississippi’s next.”
“But we have no evidence whatsoever of any attempt to resist us violently, nor have they ever justified violent resistance against us.”
The President leans into the camera, frustrated. “Bill! I can’t believe what I’m hearing. When do the facts have anything to do with what we do? We create the facts we need, Bill, to get the job done.”
“And we aren’t even sure that the helicopter was controlled by the Alabama authorities. Raymond Verity was a billionaire with multiple international connections with some very powerful people. He could have ordered a stealth fighter copter created from scratch with the cost of his wife’s jewelry. Even if we do succeed with Red Tide, we may not be able to sell our version of events, especially to the citizens of Alabama. They have an alternative press with a deep-rooted distrust of our version of any event, and predictably will be fighting mad after an aggressive invasion of their soil to kill or capture their democratically elected leaders.”
“We can justify Red Tide based on the explosion that took out Aaron Little, pinned firmly on the Personhood contingent that’s entrenched in Montgomery and ever-present in Governor Whetley’s inner circle.” She smiles. “You’re getting worked up over nothing.”
“But Madame President.” The FBI director pauses, hesitant. “You personally ordered that bombing yourself to take out Aaron Little—”
The President explodes in a rage and leans toward her laptop camera. “Don’t you think I know that, you moron? This isn’t about truth; this is about winning! It’s about putting these religious fanatics in their place, and putting their God under our feet once and for all.” She takes a deep breath and leans back into her chair. “When the nation’s at war, presidents can bomb and murder anyone they want to. It’s unpatriotic to challenge the wartime decisions of commanders-in-chief.”
“But Congress will doubtless—”
“Would you quit! This is not up for discussion. What’s the matter with you?”
The FBI Director grimaces at constantly being interrupted. “Yes, ma’am.”
“At least Raymond Verity’s dead.” The Presidents puts her hands behind her head and lets out a long sigh. “What a relief.”
“It appears so.”
“Oh, I wish I could have seen the horror on his face when he dropped below the water the last time, knowing that cursed genetic mutant of his was probably going to the grave with him.” She laughs sadistically. “The greatest threat to the federal government’s intervention into the New Body science has finally been eliminated. It’s smooth sailing to paradise from here on out . . . ”
* * *
Lips crack a mischievous smile from a penthouse on the other side of the Potomac River. Jeremy Porter sits in front of a digital camera at a table of computers running a program that has altered his voice and facial appearance to imitate the FBI leader conversing with the President.
“Perfect.” Porter flashes a toothy grin.
“Tell me when it’s done.”
Jeremy Porter meditates for a moment upon one of his favorite passages of Scripture from Psalm 37, and utters it aloud.
The wicked plotteth against the just
and gnasheth upon him with his teeth.
The Lord shall laugh at him:
for He seeth that his day is coming.
The wicked have drawn out the sword,
and have bent their bow,
to cast down the poor and needy,
and to slay such as be of upright conversation.
Their sword shall enter into their own heart,
and their bows shall be broken.
President Veronica Sayder appears confused at this unwelcome and unlikely commentary from the FBI Director. “Excuse me?”
Jeremy Porter types a command on his keyboard and the President’s laptop goes black. With a wide grin, he places his hands behind his head and turns his gaze heavenward. “Perfect.”
* * *
She frowns and wiggles the mouse.
“Greetings America,” the white words on a black background appear on her laptop screen, and an artificial voice reads the words aloud. “The President of the United States, Veronica Sayder, just moments ago conversed with FBI Director Bill Columbia, and spoke these words . . . ”
The President’s face flushes. She reaches for the mouse to her desktop computer and taps the mouse to revive the screen. The words are also up on her PC screen.
The last three minutes of her conversation, complete with the video of her speaking into the camera on top of her personal laptop, is broadcast publicly over the world wide web.
The President puts a call through to Homeland Security, but before the Director can answer, her personal phone starts buzzing. The caller ID announces that it is Bill Columbia. She hangs up on Homeland Security and hits a button on the phone to answer it. “Is Jeremy Porter doing this?”
“We don’t know who it is, Madame President,” he responds via speakerphone, “but I did not just have a conversation with you. This video has completely taken over the whole net and we can’t shut it down. We don’t know how. This has never happened before. This kind of technology does not exist.”
She gasps, and hangs up.
She clenches her fists around the armrests of her chair as she watches herself informing the whole world of her crimes. The planned invasion of Alabama’s Statehouse to kill Alabama’s leaders, the intent to kill Mary Nell simply to spite Raymond Verity’s memory, the admission that she ordered the bombing of the NBS television studio to kill Aaron Little and falsely blame the Personhood leaders—all of it is broadcast to the whole world, and there is nothing she can do to stop it.
* * *
“And that’s how your Grandpa saved
your life.” Mary Nell sits attentively in Tamara’s lap, hanging on her every word. “He sacrificed his life for you, just like Jesus.”
Tears come to Mary Nell’s eyes. “Gwanpaw.”
“I miss him, too.” Nellie sits on the couch beside Savannah.
“You’ll both see him soon,” Savannah smiles. Mary Nell gets off of her Aunt Tamara’s lap and leaps into the couch to snuggle in between Savannah and her new sister.
* * *
When I twist the doorknob to our townhouse in downtown Montgomery, I am ecstatic at the joy that fills my home.
“Gwanpaw!” Mary Nell runs to me as fast as her skinny legs will take her.
I set my crutches down and ease to my knees. “Wait, wait. Give me a second.”
Savannah comes around the couch, smiling, enjoying her daughter’s affection for me.
Mary Nell throws her arms around me. “I wuv you, Gwanpaw.”
I brush her brown hair away from her eyes with my fingers and gently kiss her eyelids, a tradition showing my appreciation of the distinguishing features of her Trisomy 21. I grab her hands and turn them palms up to kiss her simian creases—the lines in her palm that are unique to Downs. Not to be outdone, she comes up to the paralyzed side of my face and kisses my cheek.
“Thank You, God, for my Mary Nell.” I hug her close.
“Tanks,” she repeats.
Nellie also comes close to share in Grandpa’s affection, as Tamara and Savannah, from their relaxed posture and easy smiles, take pleasure at the tradition that has characterized our greetings ever since I was discharged from the hospital.
“I wuv you, too.” Nellie imitates Mary Nell’s lisp as she tries to wrap her arms all the way around both of us.
“How was your P.T.?” Savannah asks me.
“Less painful. I’m getting stronger. Slowly.” I stand to my feet with the help of my crutches. “Thanks to Frankie.”
Frankie—my clone—steps in from the garage, and grins as he sees the affection I share with the girls.
Frankie was freed from the Verity Wing when the elusive Jeremy Porter exposed New Body science’s corruption to the world and elicited enough rage to nearly bankrupt the industry. The releasing of clones to their genomic donors was a remedy freely agreed to by industry leaders in order to try to salvage their reputation and decrease the likelihood of government sanction or prosecution, which every day looked more and more likely. Frankie—named so because it sounded similar to his birth name of Fifty—became my assistant at my Montgomery New Body Research Center, where I have begun work on improving health by way of ethical therapies. Frankie freely donated some tissue to correct the gunshot damage to my right lung and esophagus, a fragment of which remains lodged in my seventh thoracic vertebrae.
Body by Blood Page 36