Jeffrey stood still for a moment. He didn’t like this at all. By the smug look on Maxine’s face he understood that there was something very bad in that room, and his mind raced to add up what it could be. The baton cracked across the back of his head and he turned to the soldier.
“I’m keeping a count of those, and I’m gonna pay you back double for every one.”
The soldier turned his head side-to-side in a slow “no” and hit Jeffrey in the hip with his baton. Jeffrey winced, and then limped into the room, his left foot dragging. White tile covered the walls and floor of the square room. The floor sloped slightly downward to a drain at the center. Spatters and smears of blood increased toward the center of the room. A stainless steel chair sat directly over the drain, bolted to the floor with chrome fittings. A bloody and beaten body, held in place with leather straps, sat in the chair. The head hung down, and blood crusted the nose, mouth, and eye sockets. Jeffrey estimated that it had once been a man of perhaps fifty to sixty. He wondered who the dead man was just as Stacy let out a piteous scream.
CHAPTER 26
Stacy tried to run toward the body, but the chains around her ankles tripped her. She twisted in mid-air, landing on her hip and shoulder. She sat up, pulled her feet under her, stood, and walked in short steps the rest of the way to the body. She fell to her knees in front of the body, and her shoulders began shaking. Then she cried in long, gasping sobs. Jeffrey looked at Maxine King and saw that she had a faint smile on her face, as if she were watching a well-performed play.
Jeffrey felt fury rising in him, and he checked it, steadying himself. In sincere disbelief, he asked Maxine, “Why?”
Maxine turned her head to him, and her smile faded to derision. “Because she willfully got in the way of the divine process.”
Anger grew in Leif’s face as he said, “You’re insanity is the divine process? Bullshit.”
“Well argued,” Maxine said to Leif. “Your thought processes are obviously well developed.”
Leif lunged toward Maxine, but the soldiers grabbed him and held him back. He twisted, trying to shake them off, but they lifted his arms up behind his back and his face contorted in pain.
Leif stopped struggling and then asked, “So this is your New World?” He looked to the men around him. “What happened to that man is God’s will?”
Roberts walked around to face Leif. He gripped Leif’s neck with his right hand. Leif tried to pull his head away, but the guards lifted his arms up, driving him forward. A guttural sound came from Leif’s mouth.
Jeffrey stepped forward, but a guard pulled him back.
“You do not,” Roberts said, his dark eyes scanning Leif’s face, “understand the reality of the situation.” Jeffrey saw the muscles in Roberts’ arm flex as he gripped Leif’s neck harder. His index finger and thumb dug into the sides of Leif’s neck. Leif’s face turned red and the widening fear in his eyes faded to emptiness. His legs went slack, but the guards kept him on his feet. Roberts released his grip, and Leif’s head fell forward. After a moment, Leif lifted his head in a series of disjointed bobs. His head stabilized, and his confused eyes tracked the room.
Roberts walked over to Maxine and held his hand palm-out, presenting her. “She is the divine mother of the New World. She will bring peace and prosperity to us all.”
Leif opened his mouth, but said nothing, his eyes still foggy.
Jeffrey said to Roberts, “As long as you’re in her good graces. If you disagree with her, it’ll be you in that chair.”
Roberts and Jeffrey looked at the body in the chair. Stacy had placed her head in her father’s lap, and her loud sobbing had calmed to a sniffling. Jeffrey saw that the body’s left forearm was broken so badly that jagged spikes of both the radius and ulna protruded from the skin.
Roberts walked over to Stacy. “You see,” he said, “we do not disagree with Maxine, and we never will.” He planted his boot on Stacy’s hip and shoved, knocking her to the tile floor.
She lay on her side for a moment. Then she rolled forward and pushed off the floor with the side of her head, coming up onto her knees. She sat there looking at the floor. Jeffrey saw her broken spirit in the hollowness of her eyes.
“Why don’t you try that with me?” He said to Roberts.
But Roberts ignored Jeffrey. His dark eyes remained on Stacy. He grabbed her by the hair and pulled her head back. She tried to twist her head away but could not break his grip on her hair, so she turned her eyes, looking off to the side.
“Could it be this easy?” Maxine asked, and walked over to Stacy, kneeling in front of her. “Could a Special Warfare brat be this easy to break?”
Roberts released Stacy’s head, and it dropped down.
Maxine now took Stacy by the hair on the right side of her head and pulled her head to the side.
Jeffrey heard Stacy mumble something to Maxine.
“What’s that?” Maxine asked, leaning in.
Louder, Stacy said, “You’re so pretty.”
A sincere smile came to Maxine’s face. “Why thank you. I didn’t imagine—”
Stacy bolted forward and, as it looked to Jeffrey, kissed Maxine full on the mouth. The intimate position of the two women confused Jeffrey for a moment, until Maxine let out a muffled scream, and he saw her trying to tug her head away, pushing on Stacy’s shoulders. Stacy jerked back, and Jeffrey saw a strip of Maxine’s lower lip ripping away. Soldiers ran up and pulled at Stacy. She yanked herself away from Maxine and then spit the chunk of Maxine’s lip back at her. Jeffrey’s stomach flipped. He was not sure if it was in pride or disgust.
He looked at Maxine and saw her pearl white teeth showing through a hole where her lower lip had been. She brought her hands up and covered the half-skull smile; blood spilled through her fingers, running like wine down her white silk shirt. Her eyes darted from one face to the next, asking each what had happened.
Maxine said through her hands, the words coming wetly over her destroyed lip, “Kill her.”
“You’re a funny looking bitch now,” Stacy screamed at Maxine, her eyes wide and spit flying from her lips like a wild horse, tied and fighting crazy.
“Kill her, now!” Maxine screamed through her hands. She turned and ran out of the room. Roberts looked down at the floor, picked up the chunk of flesh, and followed after Maxine.
As he left the room, he said over his shoulder, “You heard her.”
Jeffrey’s mind had not attached to the reality of what was about to happen until the first soldier walked toward Stacy. He saw Leif struggling, yanking his shoulders and shoving with his legs. A soldier swung his baton and caught Leif on the side of the neck. Leif went limp. The soldiers holding him let him fall. He struck his head on the tile floor and came to rest in a prostrate heap, unconscious.
The soldier nearest Stacy drew his baton and hefted it. Stacy spat Maxine’s blood at him. The soldier dodged, the spit catching him on the shoulder.
Jeffrey twisted his shoulders, fighting the guards who held him. A baton struck his lower back. What he had before considered intense pain now bloomed into a horrendous fire, locking up his hips and legs. His legs folded under him and the soldiers, still holding him up, wrenched his arms backward as he fell to his knees. Jeffrey gritted his teeth and growled, willing himself through the pain, but now nothing he did could make his mind push through that fire. His back and legs had shut down.
The soldier in front of Stacy whipped his baton toward her skull. At the last moment she fell to her back and kicked with both heels into the soldier’s knees. Jeffrey’s heart leapt as he saw the soldier’s knees bend backwards. The soldier fell to the ground, screaming. His baton clattered away, and he rolled onto his belly and clawed at the floor, his body making a primal attempt to get away from the pain.
“Who’s next?” Stacy said, with a bloody grin.
A soldier to Jeffrey’s right aimed a tazer and fired. The voltage clicked through the weapon. Stacy fell backward, and her body went rigid, only her skul
l and heels touching the floor. Three soldiers ran up and rained their batons down on her. The nylon clubs clacked off bone and thumped on muscle. Horror, grief, and rage all fought for room in Jeffrey’s heart as tears welled up in his eyes and rolled down his face.
The soldiers beat her far longer than necessary. When they were done they stepped aside. The soldiers holding Jeffrey dragged him forward on his knees. His back felt as though someone had cut it open and driven salted nails into the exposed spine.
Stacy lay there, peaceful enough, her half-open eyes staring off over Jeffrey’s shoulder. As the soldiers dragged him closer, however, he saw that the lower portion of her right eye socket and her cheekbone, where the bandage was now torn away, had been crushed into her sinus.
“You’re next,” one of the soldiers said, pointing his stick at Jeffrey. Jeffrey jerked at his handcuffs, but again the fire in his back stopped him. The soldiers tried to pull him to his feet, but he could not will his legs to move.
“Have it your way,” the solider said, and pushed Jeffrey backward. He landed on his back, his arms pinned beneath him. Clarified pain flashed through his body. The soldiers grabbed his feet and dragged him out of the room. As the hallway ceiling slid by, Jeffrey’s only thought was gratitude that Leif had not had to watch Stacy die.
CHAPTER 27
The soldiers dragged Jeffrey into his cell, flipped him onto his belly, and left him face down, his arms still cuffed behind his back. Jeffrey lay with the side of his face on the floor trying to focus on the cool concrete on his cheek rather than the pain in his back. His head spun with endorphins, and he realized that he was hyperventilating. He took as deep a breath as the pain would allow, held it, let it out, and repeated that in measured time for awhile. As he did this, he felt sorrow build in his chest. The memory of Stacy’s crushed face kept pushing into his mind. He tried to push it out, but each time it came right back in on him. His heart felt broken, and tears dripped sideways off his cheek and the bridge of his nose.
Soon, he heard Leif stirring in a cell further down the hallway.
“Stacy?” Leif called out.
Jeffrey dreaded what must come next.
Should I lie to Leif to keep him going?
Leif called out again, a higher, worried tone coming into his voice, “Stacy?”
“Take it easy, Leif,” Jeffrey said.
“What happened, Dad? What did they do?”
Jeffrey wanted to lie to him. He wanted to say to him that nothing had happened, to tell Leif that Stacy was all right. He wanted to believe it himself.
Leif’s voice sharpened with frustrated anger as he asked, “What happened?”
“Stace–” Jeffrey began, but he stopped, not wanting to expose his grief.
The anger left Leif’s voice. “Tell me what happened.”
Jeffrey took a deep breath and imagined himself going empty. He saw all the emotion running out of him. He imagined himself as a hollow shell, dark, stretching off into nothing. The choking sensation of tears faded, and he felt able to think.
“Stacy’s dead, Leif,” Jeffrey said. “They killed her.”
“How?” Leif said, his voice breaking, “What did they do to her?”
“Knowing she is gone is enough right now.”
A quiet sobbing came up from Leif’s cell, and Jeffrey felt sorrow rolling up in his own heart and mind again. He remembered what it was like when he first started fighting in the war. The first few friends to die were just as painful as the second and one hundredth. But there was a dreadful shock with the first few. When experienced the first time, the reality of death and the emotions that rush in can be terrifying. Jeffrey equated it to the first time he parachuted out of a plane and felt the sensory horror of weightlessness, unexpected and overwhelming.
Later.
He brought himself back to the vision of himself as a hollow core, cold and dark. After a moment, the visualization brought him emptiness, and he said, “Leif, I know this is a terrible moment for you, but you need to think about the decision before you.”
The grief in Leif’s voice choked his words. “What decision?”
“You can decide to fight, or to grieve. You can’t do both at the same time. You can grieve later. Unfortunately, that will always be there for you. But you can’t fight later.”
Only the sound of Leif’s crying came up the hallway.
“What’s your decision?” Jeffrey asked. “You have to make it right now.”
“I don’t–” tears interrupted him, “know how to fight.”
Jeffrey said, “I don’t know what to do yet either, but the fight starts in your heart, in the decision to move ahead.”
“I don’t want to give in.”
“Good.”
Silence surrounded Jeffrey. After a moment, he heard grunting and scraping, then the clatter of a bed frame and a shout of pain. Another moment of silence, and Leif said, “I can’t get my hands free. Maybe I can break these cuffs off.” Jeffrey heard a loud clank, then another, and another. The door down the hallway opened and slammed against the wall. Heavy footfalls came down the cell passageway, and a soldier walked into view and stared at Jeffrey. He then walked farther down the passageway.
“What the hell are you doing?” the soldier asked.
A loud clank rang out.
“Stop that, right now.”
Another clank echoed up the passageway, then Jeffrey heard the brush of a holster and the click of a tazer. Leif growled as the tazing locked up his body.
“You try to break those cuffs and I spark you again. Got it?”
Leif said, “Yes,” and the clank rang out again. Even though Jeffrey was worried for his son, he smiled. The click of the tazer sounded again, followed by Leif’s grunting.
“Had enough?” the soldier said. Jeffrey heard the click of a new cartridge being loaded onto the tazer.
“For now.”
“Good.”
“Great.”
There was a pause and Jeffrey imagined the soldier, furious at his inability to cow Leif, aiming the tazer and fingering the trigger. Jeffrey expected, at any moment, to hear the spark again, but instead he heard the brush of the tazer going into its holster. Footfalls sounded, and the soldier came into view in front of Jeffrey’s cell door.
The soldier pointed at him. “What about you? You want a spark?”
“Why, no thank you.”
“Now, there’s someone smart enough to know who’s in charge.”
“You come in here, take these cuffs off, and put down that tazer. We’ll see who’s in charge.”
The soldier scowled at Jeffrey. For a moment, Jeffrey thought the soldier would come into the cell. But the soldier gave a dismissive sweep of his hand, and walked back up the hallway. The chair in the front room scraped on the floor, and the soldier’s ass thumped into the chair.
Jeffrey lay with the side of his face on the floor for some time. His eyelids grew heavy, and he closed them. It seemed that he opened them only a moment later. He moved his lips, and his dry tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. As the confusion of awakening subsided, he wondered how long he had been asleep. His hands tingled with numbness. He rolled to his right side to allow his hands to get blood, and his back spiked at him. He rolled the rest of the way onto his back and then, through searing pain, sat upright. He tapped his left heel on the ground: totally numb.
Then he heard a distant thump.
The solider at the desk said, “What the hell?” and his chair scraped back. Jeffrey heard the door open. Someone walk into the room. The soldier asked, “Who are you? Do you have authorization to be down here?”
“No.”
Something whipped the air, followed by a soggy crack. A body hit the floor. Now silence. Jeffrey closed his eyes, listening into the stillness. He heard the door open and metal clanked. Boot rubber squeaked on the floor. Footsteps left the room, but the door did not close. The soft sound of fabric dragging along the floor entered the room. A thump like a sack of wet
sand being set down followed. He heard the footsteps go back out of the room. The fabric dragging repeated and then the dropping thump. After another silence, a chair scraped along the floor, and the door clicked shut.
Jeffrey heard footsteps coming down the passageway. A young man, a kid really, came into view at Jeffrey’s cell door. He had brown hair combed straight back and wore military-issue, black-rimmed glasses. His BDU’s fit loosely on his thin frame. Jeffrey felt as though he knew the young man’s face but could not lock down why.
The young man took a small, pink object out of his pocket, fumbled with it, and then pressed it on the thumbprint reader. The lock clacked. He slid the door open and entered the cell. Jeffrey shifted his body to keep his legs between him and the young man.
“No,” the young man said, “don’t hassle me. Move so I can undo your cuffs.”
Jeffrey leaned back and rolled to his left side to expose the cuffs. The young man fumbled at Jeffrey’s wrists. With a click, the cuffs came loose. Jeffrey lay on his back and rubbed his wrists. The young man twisted at the cuffs on Jeffrey’s ankles. It took a moment for him to get the key to turn.
Jeffrey asked, “Who are you?”
“You don’t know me,” the young man said, “but you’ve met my brother.”
“You’ll have to refresh my memory.”
The young man unlocked the last cuff on Jeffrey’s ankle, saying, “When there’s time.”
Jeffrey noticed sweat on the young man’s forehead. The young man stood and took the pink object from his pocket: a severed thumb. His hand trembled slightly. He left the cell, walking down the hallway. Jeffrey heard a lock clack and a cell door slide to its stops.
“What the hell do you want?” Leif asked.
“Don’t struggle,” the young man said, “I’m here to help.” Something hit the cot with a clang. The young man had frustration in his voice, as he said, “Stop.”
Jeffrey rolled over onto his hands and knees, and then crawled to the bars. He pulled himself up to standing. The fire in his back ran down his right leg. His left still had no sensation. He tried a few steps and could walk as long as he only dragged his feet. With each step, an electric jolt ran down his right leg. He heard the sound of chains falling to the floor, and then the young man came back up the corridor followed by Leif.
Hammerhead Page 21