Painless

by Derek Ciccone

  Upon entering the forest through Gate C, the first thing Jordan noticed was a modern picnic shelter that sat about a hundred feet inside the gate. He walked to the third rustic picnic-table just as he was instructed, and reached underneath. He peeled off the instructions that were taped beneath. It instructed him to walk Shepherd’s Nature Trail, a one-mile self-guided trail that was popular with hikers.

  Gradually the wide, graveled road became a narrow dirt trail that could only be traveled on foot. The rhythmic pounding of a woodpecker was the only break in the silence. Jordan’s feet crunched brush and blackberry tangles as he walked deeper into the forest, passing imposing oaks. The trail was empty and he felt a huge bull’s-eye on him. He thought about turning back, but knew that wasn’t an option.

  The sun began to set in fast-forward as he crossed over a stream, using a manmade bridge. The forest grew thicker, the many oak, maple, and sycamore trees appearing to grow larger before his eyes. He followed the wooden directional signs that were nailed to the hulking trees, just as the caller’s instructions indicated, and then the path started to look familiar. He realized he had looped around to the picnic area where he started.

  The sinking sun was hanging directly in Jordan’s sightline. He shielded his eyes with his hand, and what he saw through his squinting eyes was the army veteran in the wheelchair, holding a gun directly at Jordan’s head.

  “Why should I not shoot you right now?” the man asked angrily, still sitting in the chair.

  “I think we can work something out,” Jordan nervously stammered, now recognizing the man as the caller.

  “There is nothing to work out.”

  “If you shoot me, then you will never see your mother again.”

  “You are going to take me to her right now!”

  “I don’t have that kind of power.”

  “Make a call and find someone who does...or you die. And if you try anything funny you will die in a more brutal fashion.”

  Jordan didn’t doubt him—the man was a trained killer. Jordan showed his hands. “I’m just going to slowly reach into my pocket and pull out my cell phone.”

  The man nodded approval, but monitored the process with suspicious eyes. Jordan unzipped his pouch pocket and slowly reached inside. He gradually maneuvered his fingers around the trigger of his gun. He knew he had to be quick.

  In one quick motion he pulled it out, ready to fire…

  He was too late.

  Chapter 77

  Sunday morning, they concealed themselves along the entry road to Jordan Plantation and waited for Jordan to leave. They didn’t have to wait long. By six a.m. he was on the move. They followed at a safe distance in the Camaro. Jordan arrived at his children’s hospital and remained inside throughout the morning.

  Carolyn was incarcerated in the backseat. They couldn’t let her out, or even out of the car seat, in case they needed to bolt at a moment’s notice. And no matter how hard she negotiated to “play” in the children’s hospital, that wasn’t happening. Billy had rediscovered his resolve during another sleepless night, no longer willing to surrender to the relentless Operation Anesthesia. If they were going down, they were going down fighting. He knew that’s what Beth and Chuck would want when it came to Carolyn.

  In mid-afternoon, Jordan returned to his office at Duke. This was much better for Carolyn because it allowed them to leave the car and mingle among the many students filling the festive campus. When they came across a “face painter” who was providing her services in honor of something called Midnight Madness, Billy saw it as the perfect opportunity to meld into the background. While Carolyn saw it as the final nail in her decision to skip kindergarten and attend Duke. All three of them had their faces painted blue and white.

  At quarter past five, with the sun beginning to set, Jordan was on the move again. He strutted across campus until he came to a park-like area just west of the college called Duke Forest, and entered a parking lot that was practically empty. Billy noticed a sad-looking man in a wheelchair who was dressed in army fatigues. He held a sign that proclaimed himself as a war veteran, and begged for money.

  Jordan walked past the vet without even a look and entered Duke Forest. Billy could tell by Jordan’s body language that he was distracted by something. Mr. Cool as a Cucumber was now a cat on a hot tin roof. He stopped at a row of picnic tables near a pavilion, reached under one of the tables, and removed a piece of paper. You didn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out it was planted for him. Jordan hastily digested its contents and began to hike up a dirt path.

  With Dana at his side, and Carolyn on his shoulders in piggyback position, Billy followed Jordan at what he hoped was a safe distance. As they moved deeper into the forest, the thick trees blocked out the setting sun. The darkening sky became their friend, conspiring to help them remain stealthy. It was nice to have one thing on their side. Billy clutched his other friend in the pocket of his jeans—the gun.

  Things then began to look familiar. Billy noticed that the path had looped back around to where they’d started. And up ahead near the picnic area, Jordan was engaged in a heated conversation with the man in the wheelchair. Billy couldn’t make out what was being said—the deep forest muffling their shouts—but he clearly saw the wheelchair guy pull out a gun. Billy handed Carolyn to Dana, urging them to get back, and then found a safe perch so he could watch the action.

  Suddenly Jordan reached in his pocket and pulled out a gun of his own. The man in the wheelchair beat him to the punch. A gunshot echoed through the forest and Jordan fell in a heap onto the ground. The man killed Jordan!

  Dana and Carolyn scurried back to Billy’s side, looking relieved he wasn’t the recipient of the loud gunshot. He put his finger to his lips to quiet them. It worked for Dana, but not Carolyn.

  “Why is that silly man sleeping in the woods? Doesn’t he know he could get the lime?” she asked, referring to Jordan’s lifeless body.

  Shhh.

  “Whoa—a wheelchair. I really like wheelchairs!”

  Shhh.

  The man spun his wheelchair in their direction and locked his sights on them. Billy thought of running, but it was too late. The gun was already pointed in their direction. He didn’t even contemplate pulling his own gun—he’d seen what happened to Jordan when he tried that.

  “Put your hands up over your heads and walk very slowly to me,” the man coldly stated. They followed his instructions. The man looked at them with unsure eyes, as if he couldn’t compute what or who they were. Since their faces were painted blue and white, he might’ve thought they were some form of aliens.

  “This man,” he pointed at Jordan’s body laying on the ground, “just died for freedom. Do you want to be next?”

  Unfazed, Carolyn pointed at the man in the wheelchair and asked, “Who is that?”

  Billy had never met the man, but recognized him. He looked just like his brothers. “Carolyn, this is Calvin and Bronson’s brother, André.”

  “Who are you?” he demanded, his voice filled with surprise.

  “My name is Billy and this is Dana,” Dana actually smiled and waved at the gunman upon the introduction, “and this is Carolyn. She has the anesthesia and Jordan was after her. Calvin and Bronson tried to help us.”

  “You saw them?” he asked, letting down his guard. “How are they?”

  Their glum faces told the story. Reading their expressions, André threw down his gun in disgust, knowing his brothers were dead. Then he stood, not very well, and limped to Jordan’s body. He struggled with each step—the wheelchair was not a prop. He kicked Jordan as hard as he could, before his wobbly legs gave out. He fell to his knees and started throwing punches at the dead man’s chest.

  “Wake up you sonofabitch so I can kill you again!”

  Billy could feel his agony filling the forest.

  Dana bravely approached André and tried to console him. She then helped him limp back to his wheelchair. He slumped into the seat and planted his face in hi
s hands. He spoke in muffled a tone, “I warned my mother about getting them involved, they didn’t even know the outside or freedom, it was just a fairy tale to them. Operation Anesthesia was all they knew. But my mother believed that freedom was worth any risk or sacrifice.

  “Bronson had the knowledge base. He always hung on my stories of the outside, and soaked up knowledge like a sponge. But he didn’t have the mental makeup to handle it. Calvin was just a pup in the woods. He was lost in this world.”

  “I can tell you, André, that their short time in freedom gave them life for the first time,” Billy said.

  He nodded, his regret temporarily soothed. He then seemed to regain his sense of purpose, and stated, “We have to get out of here before anyone discovers the body.”

  They ventured back toward the parking lot. Dana offered to push André’s chair, but he insisted on doing it himself. Billy figured it was the same intestinal fortitude that helped him escape Operation Anesthesia. You would think that leaving the scene of a murder would quicken the pace, but they all remained calm. They were numb to the whole thing at this point. And being an unofficial expert on numbness, this worried Billy.

  André drove them in his van to a nondescript, one-room apartment in the neighboring city of Raleigh. It was a mess, but not in the unsanitary way Bronson’s was. It was the mess of someone doing work, sort of like when Billy was in the thralls of writing. André was already one step ahead of them.

  He was planning on breaking into Jordan Plantation.

  Chapter 78

  Billy closely analyzed André during the drive over. The first thing he noticed was the rose tattoo on his bulging bicep, similar to his brothers. But one thing differing from his brothers was the cadence of his voice. More human, and less robotic. Billy remembered Calvin mentioning that André had come to the camp from the outside world.

  Physically, André’s face was lined with experience. He carried the same burden under his eyes as his brothers, but while they appeared apprehensive and almost childlike, André seemed eager to plant his feet and fight the monster.

  “I want to show you something,” he said to Billy, as he dead-bolted the apartment door behind them.

  Billy turned to Dana. “Maybe you can get Carolyn something to eat. She hasn’t eaten anything since breakfast.

  “That’s a good idea,” Dana said, catching on.

  “I have peanut butter and jelly,” André offered.

  “Between you and me, I’d rather eat than hear one of Billy’s stories.”

  “No, the sandwich,” Dana explained.

  “Now you’re talking. I love the PB and J!” Carolyn endorsed in do-ra-mi style, and then trailed Dana into the small kitchen.

  Billy followed André’s wheelchair into the lone bedroom. It looked like a stalkers room, photos of Jordan were splashed everywhere. Like those long distance shots of a celebrity on vacation taken by the stalkarazzi. Jordan leaving the plantation—Jordan at the children’s hospital—Jordan on the Duke campus.

  André had constructed a map of the plantation on what looked like an architect’s workstation. The drawing was amateurish, but his knowledge was anything but. He had marked areas where cameras and security stations loomed.

  “My plan wasn’t to shoot him, it was to use him to get me inside,” he said, his eyes never leaving the map of the plantation. “I don’t have much time. With my knowledge base of their operation, I’m a lethal weapon to them. They won’t stop until they get me.”

  “Why didn’t you go to the authorities?”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Because they believe I kidnapped Carolyn. And if I’m arrested, then there will be nobody to protect her from Operation Anesthesia.”

  “What do you know about Operation Anesthesia?”

  “I know the camp is located at Jordan Plantation, at least I think it is. I know they are after kids with CIPA, or the anesthesia, as you call it. I know they are trying to capture Carolyn. Calvin told me they train the kids to turn them into some military unit, and that’s what went down in Iran.”

  André nodded, appearing impressed by Billy’s knowledge level. But his troubled eyes said there was a lot more to the story. “There are two parts to Operation Anesthesia. One is as you said, a military aspect that trains the children, turning them into relentless soldiers. Their painlessness might be a disadvantage in the civilian world, but it turns to an advantage when it comes to covert military operations.”

  André continued, “The other part is a breeding center. They capture those who carry the mutated gene that causes the anesthesia, and breed them.”

  “That’s why Calvin understood horse breeding terms like dam, foal, and stallion.”

  “And why you are wrong to think Carolyn is the sole focus.”

  Billy felt acid gather in the back of his throat. Beth and Chuck aren’t being used as collateral—they’re being used to breed!

  “Breeding is the key to the operation. That’s how they get the numbers,” André confirmed his thoughts. “And speaking from experience, Carolyn’s initial role will to be used as psychological blackmail to make sure her parents accept their fate. She will then be trained as a soldier, her memories of the outside world washed from her brain. And once she reaches her teenage years, she will be sent on dangerous missions. Eventually, she will become a breeder herself.”

  “So your mother and father are at the camp?” Billy asked.

  “My father died years ago. He was a jazz musician who had come to America from France. He couldn’t handle being confined in that place, it was like prison to him. He stopped eating, and slowly withered away until he died. But yes, my mother is still there, along with fifteen of my brothers and sisters.

  “They created a so-called utopian society. Families raising children without any financial worries or competitive stress. Most people give in, able to rationalize their loss of freedom.”

  “But not you?” Billy asked, still trying to get his head around the number fifteen.

  “I was already thirteen at the time I was captured. I’d been exposed to freedom. I’d rather live as a peasant with freedom than a king in shackles.”

  Billy noticed a copy of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address tacked to the wall like a poster.

  André caught his glance. “My mother made me memorize it when I was a kid. She told me it represented the universal fight for freedom. She’s a big fan of freedom.”

  Billy nodded as he read: A new nation conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

  “So how did you pull off the escape? Calvin began to tell us—said that he and Bronson followed your lead—but as he liked to say, time was limited. ”

  André smiled with pride. “A lot of things came together. First off, like I said, my mother was one of the three original women brought to the camp. She sired almost twenty children with Operation Anesthesia, and once even had six at one time. She built up so much trust with Jordan that he made her his personal chef when she could no longer breed. But he underestimated my mother.”

  “But you escaped in Iran. I doubt your mother went with you on a mission.”

  “There was no way to escape from within the camp. They can talk about all that utopian society stuff all they want, the reason nobody leaves is that the place has more security than the White House. I knew I had to get off campus.”

  “So it wasn’t a coincidence that the three of you ended up on the Iran mission?”

  “That’s correct. Because of the trust level my mother developed, she was able to learn how to manipulate the listening devices they implanted in everyone at the camp. She knew the camp had become arrogantly lax, overlooking certain security steps, which allowed us to talk freely and hash out our plan.”

  Something clicked in Billy’s mind. “Did Jordan refer to your mother as Miss Rose?”

  He looked surprised. “Yes, surnames at the camp are the first names of the mother, or dam, as they call it. My real name was Andr�
� Boudreaux, but I hadn’t used it in so long I almost forgot it. My mother’s name was Rose Caldwell-Boudreaux.”

  “I met her when Jordan had Carolyn over for dinner. She served the meal.”

  His face filled with concern. “How long ago was this?”

  “A few weeks.”

  “Was it after Iran?”

  “Yes.”

  He blew out a slow sigh of relief. “I was worried they’d harm her after our escape.”

  Billy got back on track. “How did you involve Calvin and Bronson?”

  “We taught them to remove the listening device. They were hesitant at first—the camp was all they knew—but Mom convinced them. She was a great storyteller and without the restraints of the device, she could tell them stories of the miracles in Montreal. She made getting to freedom sound like they would be going to heaven. But there was still a big problem: I had already gone on my last mission and was scheduled to begin a life of studding.”

  “Good work if you can get it. Sounds like they underestimated you, just as they did your mother.”

  “I asked for one last mission in Iran. I played it up to the trainers that I was from the outside and knew the threat of nuclear war and what Iran could do with those potential weapons. I told them I wanted my legacy to be putting an end to the threat. Luckily they bought it, and I was able to get on one final mission with Calvin and Bronson. Then all we had to do was wait for our opportunity.”

  “They never suspected you beforehand?”

  “I put my life on the line for them for twenty years. And my experience on a difficult mission like Iran could’ve meant the difference between success and failure. I was their most loyal soldier and have the debilitated joints to prove it. I had no idea the damage I was doing to my body because I couldn’t feel a thing,” he tapped his wheelchair to make his point. “They trusted in my loyalty. But what I’ve learned over the years is that loyalty will put you in harm’s way.”