Wounded Earth

by Evans, Mary Anna

  He was tired of being a hostage. The men standing over him used ugly words that his mommy wouldn't let him say. Every time he cried, they showed him their guns. Then he was too scared to cry. The one they called the General wouldn't shut up talking for the cameras. Sometimes Austin saw the cameras pointed at him.

  The General was holding a walkie-talkie thing up to his ear. Austin could feel his mean eyes boring into him. When the General put the walkie-talkie down, he grabbed Austin around the middle, letting his legs dangle free.

  Austin saw the General look hard into the cameras and heard his voice go dark. The General said, “A helicopter is coming across the site border, right about now. It will land briefly, then take off and leave the site. If it is molested, here today or tomorrow in Timbuktu, we will carry out every threat we have made so far. But first,” he said as he laid the barrel of his gun against Austin's cheek, “this kid will die, and the whole world will be watching.”

  When Austin felt the gunmetal against his cheek, he couldn't help himself. He went to the bathroom in his pants, with the whole world watching.

  * * *

  Chao watched the helicopter fly overhead and disappear into the darkness. It flew over the swampy backwoods of the site. Chao had men armed with rocket launchers, set to bring the chopper down if it made a wrong move. The helicopter never came close to a known nuclear target.

  Chao didn't know what the helicopter pilot was up to, but he certainly wasn't carrying the arsenal the General had been expecting. The General didn't look relieved or victorious. He just looked befuddled.

  It was only a hunch, but Chao didn't think the General knew what the helicopter and its pilot were up to, either.

  Chapter 29

  Larabeth watched the darkening wilderness pass below her. The Savannah River Site was 300 square miles of uninhabited nature, centered around a few small specks of poison. The land was peppered with Carolina bays. Their dark ovals stretched, northeast to southeast, across the landscape.

  “I can see why some people think the bays were formed by a meteor storm,” she mused aloud.

  “I think they were dug by aliens, myself. The antimatter theory is attractive, too. Imagine the earth slamming into a swarm of anti-protons and obliterating large pieces of itself. I always find cataclysm compelling.”

  In her lifetime, Larabeth had enjoyed as much cataclysm as she could stand. She looked at the sky, where peaceful stars were emerging one by one.

  He chattered on. “I find stars compelling, too. Hydrogen fuses to form helium and dies, throwing off light to mark its passion. Then helium fuses...well, you know the drill.” He piloted the helicopter straight up and allowed it to hover. “There is nothing so romantic as flying under the stars as they come to life.” He brushed his hand against her cheek and she let him.

  * * *

  Babykiller panned across the countryside with his chopper's powerful searchlight. He saw the BioHeal worksite below them, perched on its bluff above the creek he had polluted. The excavated landfill, surrounded by heavy equipment and work staging areas and parked cars, lay like an old wound across the lush South Carolina lowlands. Nature would take it back.

  He had heard that Vietnam was healing, regaining the beauty he had helped blast away. The Earth was improbably resilient, patiently restoring the things obliterated by humanity, when the smarter defense would be simple destruction of the species.

  Babykiller imagined volcanoes rising from the seas, earthquakes shaking the land, droughts, and floods. If he ruled nature, he would have long since cleansed the world of Homo sapiens. He thought of Hanford and weapons-grade plutonium and of his plans for the General's arsenal, and he smiled. Perhaps he did rule nature after all.

  * * *

  The helicopter settled lightly near the high bank of the swollen creek. Cynthia didn't know if it carried good news or bad news and she sensed that her captors didn't know either. They were moving toward the chopper, but staying out of the illuminated cone of its searchlight.

  Two passengers stepped out of the helicopter and into the light. The first passenger was a slight, middle-aged man with a limp. The second passenger was a tall, patrician brunette.

  “It's Dr. McLeod.” Cynthia was talking to herself, but J.D. heard her and stirred.

  “Get her out of here.” His voice was barely audible. “—supposed to keep her safe. I'd do anything—”

  He was unconscious again, but he had said enough. Cynthia knew that her mother had sent J.D to save her. J.D. himself had said that he had done it for love. And his love for Larabeth McLeod could hardly be more obvious. Cynthia drew the only obvious conclusion. Her mother had stopped sending emissaries. She had come, herself, to save her long-lost daughter.

  And Cynthia was, in that instant, finally positive that she had found her long-lost mother. Even from a distance, she could see that Larabeth had her hands, her long slender arms, her narrow shoulders attached to a narrow ribcage.

  She rose to her feet, preparing to rush to her mother's side, to just hold her. She could save her questions for later.

  The helicopter pilot was speaking to the leader of her personal band of thugs, perhaps negotiating for her release. Larabeth hadn't left his side. Cynthia suppressed the urge to run to her mother, because something weird was stirring in her brain.

  The body language was all wrong. Larabeth stood too close to the pilot. She held her arms too stiffly. When she scanned the crowd standing at the edges of the chopper's searchlight, she located Cynthia and J.D. immediately, but she just stared. She didn't rush to their side, urging the pilot to load J.D. on the chopper and fly him to a hospital. And the pilot looked blandly sinister, not at all like a knight in shining armor who had come to whisk them all to safety.

  The pilot nodded at J.D.'s supine form and said, “I see you followed my orders. I suggest you get rid of the body.”

  He cupped Larabeth's elbow in his hand and kept talking. “We've just come to pick up a small item, then we'll leave you to carry on with your mission.”

  Cynthia felt like an abandoned child. Her mother hadn't come to carry her away from her captors. Her mother was a prisoner, too.

  Cynthia considered her situation. The odds that she could free herself, armed with nothing but a pocketknife, were infinitesimal. Even if she could break free, she would never leave J.D. alone with a band of terrorists who'd been ordered to kill him. But this strange man was going to pick up a small item and get back on his helicopter, alone except for Larabeth. Armed with nothing but a pocketknife, her mother might have a fighting chance to overcome a single, smallish man with a noticeable handicap. She made her decision quickly.

  Cynthia looked into the bright searchlight. She could barely make out Larabeth's silhouette but it was important to reach her. She had something that Larabeth needed. And she had something to say that Larabeth needed to hear, just in case one of them didn't survive the evening. It was time to tell her mother that she knew the truth, and it was time to let her know that the past didn't matter at all.

  She whispered, “Hold still and play dead,” to J.D., then she took off running.

  * * *

  Larabeth watched Cynthia run past Babykiller as if she didn't see him, with her arms flung wide. She threw her arms around Larabeth and cried, “You came to rescue me. I knew you would.” She pulled away, took Larabeth's hand and said, “I thought I would die out here, Mother, just like J.D.”

  Larabeth flinched at the words. Die, like J.D. Mother. Then she felt the cold steel in her hand and understood that Cynthia knew everything. She knew that the man she was calmly ignoring was a murderer. She knew that the woman she held by the hand had given her away and had never come back to make amends. Knowing those things, she had still rushed into the bright circle cast by the helicopter's searchlight and handed her mother hope. It was only a purse-sized pocketknife, but it was open and Larabeth had defended herself with less.

  * * *

  Cynthia was startled to feel the pilot's hand on
her back, urging her into the helicopter. She had not realized that she was the “item” he had come to retrieve. He was forcing her into the rear seat when Larabeth spoke.

  “No, let Cynthia ride up front where she can see. As you said, it's so glorious to fly right under the stars as they come to life,” Larabeth said, hopping into the seat directly behind the pilot.

  The pilot frowned, but he let Larabeth make the seating arrangements. Cynthia sat in the great glass bubble of the cockpit and watched the ground recede.

  “It will be pleasant to watch tomorrow's entertainment as a family, just the three of us,” the pilot said.

  Cynthia twisted in her seat to study the man at her side. ‘A family,’ he had said. She studied his face for a resemblance to her own and found none. Surely he wasn't her natural father. If she and Larabeth survived the evening, her mother would have a great deal of explaining to do.

  Larabeth's voice emerged from the darkness behind them. “"What entertainment?” she asked. “What happens tomorrow?” To Cynthia, Larabeth sounded as casual as someone asking what type of sandwiches she should pack for a picnic.

  “Tomorrow, the rest of the Army of the Resurrection and all its weapons arrives in D.C. Their long list of targets begins with EPA headquarters.”

  Cynthia had vowed only to speak when spoken to, but she forgot herself. “You're going to blow up the EPA?”

  “For starters. After that, who knows? The Army of the Resurrection has truck bombs and grenade launchers, and fun stuff like body armor and booby traps,” he said. “Even I don't know what I'll do with freeze-dried bubonic plague bacteria, but I'll think of something.”

  Larabeth's voice came again from the rear seat of the helicopter. “You are a piece of work, Babykiller.”

  “You are precisely right. I am your government's piece of work. I am dying an emasculated cripple, poisoned by Agent Orange and Agent White and Agent Blue and all the others. Although our government claims otherwise. I am what they made me. A babykiller.”

  Cynthia heard the name “Babykiller” and remembered J.D.'s feverish ramblings. So this man beside her was the instigator of this mess. She wished somebody would take her aside and explain to her what was going on. It was taxing, trying to figure it out all by herself.

  * * *

  Every muscle in Larabeth's body was contracted, waiting for the moment. And there was only one moment—when the helicopter touched the landing pad, while Babykiller's hands were still busy guiding the chopper safely to rest. She shifted the pocketknife in her hand and felt the helicopter lower itself. When it touched the tarmac, she sprang forward.

  She screamed, “Cynthia, open your door,” planted her foot in her daughter's side, and kicked her onto the pavement. Babykiller's head was turned slightly toward Cynthia and the cords in his neck stood out. Larabeth picked her spot, the hollow just beneath the jawbone where the pulse is so close to the skin, and she struck. She raised the knife high, seeking leverage and power for her quick overhand thrust. Her aim was true.

  She yanked her daughter's little knife from his throat. Then she reached in his shirt pocket, grabbed the cell phone and threw it toward Cynthia. She would have had time to jump out after it before Babykiller reacted, had the phone cleared the doorway.

  The cell phone clattered to the floorboard and slid under the passenger seat, and she paused to retrieve it. She had no choice. It represented rescue for her and Cynthia, and for the thousands of souls the General held hostage. As she bent to snatch it, Babykiller drew his scalpel from its sheath.

  He raised the weapon and she remembered the taste of unreasoning fear. One night in the neurology ward, a scalpel very like that one had nearly ended her life. She reflexively curled her head toward her lap, shielding her vulnerable abdomen.

  Babykiller's initial slash opened her up from the nape of her neck to the small of her back. The pain was a visible thing, bright as lightning.

  “I thought of bringing tear gas or a stun gun to control you, dear, but I knew this little implement would do the trick with so much more elegance.” He grabbed her hair and threw her across his lap where she lay, still clutching Cynthia's pocketknife in one hand, while he lifted the helicopter off the ground.

  Larabeth looked up at Babykiller's throat. It was bleeding, but not enough. She had apparently missed his trachea and all the major blood vessels. She hadn't killed him; therefore, he was going to kill her. But not before she told the FBI where the General's arsenal was. To do that, she had to be away from Babykiller, on the ground with the cell phone.

  Kicking the phone toward the open passenger door, she grabbed his wrist with one hand and used the other hand to stab his arm with Cynthia's knife. She kept stabbing at him, but he refused to drop the scalpel.

  Larabeth, like any Vietnam veteran, had ridden in her share of helicopters, and she knew that a pilot needed both hands during take-off and landing. She grabbed at Babykiller's bleeding arm and held on tight.

  Babykiller was a good pilot. With one hand—the hand she hadn't stabbed, the hand she wasn't gripping with both her own hands—he struggled to regain control of his craft. He jerked against her grip, time and again, as the chopper tilted crazily to the right. Holding his arm with everything she had, she kicked at the phone until it cleared the open door and dropped to the ground. It was time to follow it, but she had a question.

  “Why? Why did you choose me to torture?”

  He said it between clenched teeth, with blood dripping from his jaw. “Because, darling, you are the nexus of everything I love and hate.” He pulled hard, again, trying to shake her grip on his arm, but he kept talking. “Your success reflects the life I could have had, if Vietnam hadn't destroyed me. Your tenderness, so long ago, gave me the will to live, but I hate my life. I need you, Larabeth. I need to destroy you.”

  She had her answer.

  The chopper tipped even farther. Gravity was calling her. She let go of Babykiller's hand.

  The helicopter pitched further to the right. Every instinct told her to fight her slide toward the door yawning below her, but she resisted until gravity reached up and took her and she fell free. She had no idea how far it was to the ground.

  Chapter 30

  Babykiller was a good pilot. It was the best part of him, and he knew it. He let his Larabeth slip away from him, because he wasn't ready to die quite yet. And if he hoped to survive the next five minutes, he needed to gain control of his craft. He needed altitude, because his chopper was damn close to dragging its blades across the ground. It was time to let this whirly-bird know who was boss. Then he could land it right beside Dr. Larabeth McLeod and her precious daughter. If they were still alive, he would make them very, very sorry for rejecting his devotion.

  * * *

  Cynthia crouched, as if being a foot shorter would protect her from the flames and far-slung metal of a helicopter crash. She rushed toward the crumpled form on the ground and was relieved to hear the straining motor rise above her.

  The moon was up and, praise God, nearly full. She could almost see. Cynthia was glad to hear her mother groan. She parted the heavy grass and started checking for broken bones. She drew back a wet and sticky hand.

  When Cynthia identified the source of the blood, she paused to curse Babykiller, then set to work trying to stanch the bleeding from an open wound running the length of Larabeth's back while trying to keep that same back immobile. Larabeth was stirring—Cynthia had seen her move both legs—but who knew the condition of her spine?

  One bone chip in the wrong place could mean life in a wheelchair, and Cynthia had harbored some fantasies for a long time. She wanted to hike the Appalachian Trail with her mother. She wanted to stalk through shopping malls with her mother in search of the perfect pair of shoes. She wanted all the scary people with their guns to go away.

  Larabeth said something and Cynthia leaned closer. It sounded like “phone.”

  “Yeah,” Cynthia said softly as she tried to get a look at Larabeth's eyes, “when
we get to a phone, I'm going to call in an order for some kung pao chicken.”

  She quickly gave up trying to check her mother's pupils. It was too dark to see them and, since it was dark, they would have been dilated anyway.

  “No,” Larabeth's voice was quite clear for someone descending quickly into shock. Cynthia held her down, but she couldn't keep her quiet. “’Phone. I. . .threw phone. Down.”

  “Okay. Okay. I'll look for a phone if you'll lie still.” Larabeth lay still so abruptly that Cynthia would have laughed under other circumstances.

  For lack of a better plan, she felt her way toward a white object draped across the grass. It didn't look like a phone, but it was all she could see. She held it up to the moonlight. It was an airplane navigation map. Then she remembered.

  She remembered the helicopter canting to the side until a rain of objects, probably everything that had been lying loose in the cabin, pelted the ground. Then Larabeth had dropped through the air. Finally, the searchlight, swaying wildly, had silhouetted a piece of paper in its light. First driven by the blades and their wind, then drifting slowly from side to side, this map she held had fallen to earth.

  Cynthia could hear the whapping helicopter blades as Babykiller returned to kill them. She longed to run into the dark woods, but she couldn't leave her mother, so she groped in widening circles until a cell phone, its digital face gently illuminated, stared up at her through the grass. She dropped cross-legged in the grass and dialed 911.

  The sound of a ringing phone was so civilized.

  * * *

  Babykiller grieved as he circled over the dark trees, heading back to set the chopper down and put an end to his dream of perfect love. His Larabeth was probably dead and she deserved her fate, because she had disappointed him. He had planned to kill her, to take her with him when he went, but not this way.