The Great Thirst Boxed Set

by Mary C. Findley

  “I’m sorry, Keith. My orders are to get you safely out of here. Will you let me take off?” David asked. “I know your ‘save everybody ’policy, but I swear, Angel and the other guy were going to have to stay behind anyway. They agreed to cover us. Veracruz emergency services knows there are people on the roof and another copter is enroute.”

  Keith looked toward the copter and saw Talia and Baby Dan. He watched David take two steps away from him and looked down at the blood leaking out of his leg.

  “Yeah. Let’s go,” he sighed.

  Chapter One Hundred and Twelve – Twisting Everything Around

  “Between the bus and the rest of our vehicles, we have everybody aboard. Taking the scenic route. See you at final.” Talia said, relaying Drew’s message in her headset. Keith leaned back and let Anne dress his leg wound.

  “Ow,” he said as she tightened the bandage.

  “Through and through,” she said. “But it still should have knocked you flat, as deep as it went in,” Anne marveled. “How did you keep climbing?”

  “Young lady, we believe in miracles,” Grandma Bradley said.

  Anne did not even seem to want to risk looking at her. She concentrated on Keith’s injury, giving him an injection.

  “The pain shot will take effect pretty soon,” Anne said. “Let me give you an antibiotic also. I’m sorry I hurt you. You are some kinda hero.”

  “Just a reflex, sayin’ ow. Ain’t the worst pain I ever felt,” Keith said with a laugh. “Not by a longshot. But thanks. Hey there, little wife. How’s that baby, and how are you?”

  “We’re both fine,” Talia said. “I’m so glad you and Mâdarbozorg, your grandmother, are too.”

  “Any way to know the status of Angel and your other guy?” Keith asked.

  “I tried several times to raise them on the radios and phones,” David replied. “Could be they are just too busy to respond. It will likely be several hours before we know anything. I’m sorry, but no one else could have even made Angel’s father pause. No question he saved both your lives by interfering.”

  “Yeah,” Keith murmured. “I feel a whole lot better now.”

  “The good news is that chatter says the fire in the hotel has been contained and they are hopeful the structure will hold up,” Talia said. “We can’t lose hope.”

  The helicopter touched down at the ball court some time after midnight. Plenty of helpers arrived with a wheelchair and blankets for Grandma Bradley. Keith and Talia both hugged Joshua Bradley and Sophie and Naddy.

  “So what were those things Dr. Williams gave you?” Keith asked. “Shoulda been Purple Hearts.”

  “No idea,” Joshua Bradley said. “Mine stayed right there on the table. All of us did the same. I’d have thrown it in the trash if I could’ve.”

  “I’m checking on Angel and our last guy again,” Anne said, pulling out her phone. She listened for a second and yanked the phone from her ear. Everyone could hear a screeching sound. “There’s interference from somewhere. I can’t call out.”

  “What did Dr. Williams give you?” Talia asked Naddy and Sophie.

  “I’m not sure.” Sophie opened her purse and Naddy dug in his suit coat pocket. They opened the boxes and revealed small gold pins.

  “Ahh!” half of Drew’s people almost went to their knees and ripped out their in-ear devices.

  Drew appeared and grabbed the two small boxes from Naddy and Sophie. He held a wand-like device over them and static and squealing erupted.

  “They’re homing devices,” Drew said. “Or jammers, or something. My money’s on them being able to track us.” He threw them, box and all, on the brick pavement and started stomping on them. The noises stopped.

  “So they’ll be coming after us,” Keith said. “We’d better get ready. You’ll have to have your people search everybody to make sure there are no listening or tracking devices still hidden.”

  “”We could move –” Drew said.

  “Move where?” Keith asked. “This is our refuge. Besides, We don’t have to go anywhere. It’s time to make them move. And I think know just how to do it. By the way, is Mrs. Sheldon here?”

  “No, Anne replied. “We’ve had at least five roll calls. She’s the only one missing from the people we had responsibility for.”

  “Figures,” Keith said. “Get all the others of those parents together, except Tim Holden. And somebody set up a conference call with Brad Shannon. I need to scare up a cane again, it looks like. And where’s Jiggly?”

  “This is kidnapping and theft!” Mrs. Holden screamed. “You give us back our clothes and jewelry right now and let us out of here!”

  Drew and Anne had taken Mr. and Mrs. Gregory, Mr. Sheldon, and Mrs. Holden and segregated them in a room next to the waterfall cavern. The bug detector alarms went off with ferocity and Drew and Anne were forced to remove every item their detainees had, include pierced earrings, before silence fell. They currently wore hospital gowns.

  “That is not going to happen,” Talia said. Keith and Talia sat on camp stools and Drew and Anne stood in the hallway looking in through a grating in the door. “Your things are headed down that 200-foot waterfall you can hear beside you. We found all the bugs and homing devices. The question is, what will happen when the people who planted them get here?”

  “Homing devices?” Mr. Sheldon sat on the floor with his head in his hands. “I need a drink. I think I’m having a spy movie nightmare.”

  “We can wake you up,” Talia said, “All we have to do is open up that side wall grate, and the water will start pouring into your little room.”

  “You wouldn’t dare!” Mrs. Gregory said. “That’s murder!”

  “Since there’s a grating in your floor too, all that will happen is that you will get plenty wet and miserable, if that’s what’s needed to get you to do some thinking,” Keith said. Naddy and Sophie had concluded these rooms were made for livestock, and Naddy had said this was an ingenious washout system. All the outer rooms on this level connected to a system of piping and watertight doors.

  “How could you put your children in danger like that?” Talia demanded. “Or didn’t you know about their plan to set that fire at the hotel?”

  “No one set the fire. It was an accident!” Mrs. Gregory insisted.

  “Ask your dear friend Carol,” Talia suggested. “Oh, wait. She ran out before it started.”

  “They’re trying to get us fighting among ourselves,” Mrs. Holden snapped. “They don’t dare do anything to us. Just stay strong. Carol, Jenny, and Lydia are coming, and they’ll take care of everything.”

  “Did you know Jenny Kaine sent a drug cartel boss to kill me and my grandmother?” Keith asked. “He shot me as I was carrying her up the stairs to the roof.”

  “Are you crazy?” Mr. Gregory asked. All of them had started to pace except Mr. Sheldon, who leaned against a wall and moaned. “This has never been about hurting you people! We only wanted you to stop interfering with our children’s education!”

  “I’ve got the bullet holes to prove it,” Keith said. “Do I have to bring my grandmother down here as a witness?”

  “How about the way all the elevators quit working at once?” Drew asked. “And people in gala staff uniforms trying to send us back into that burning room?”

  “Roy, were Mrs. Bradley’s aunt and uncle telling the truth about all the terrible things that happened to them?” Mrs. Gregory asked Mr. Sheldon. “Stabbings and kidnappings and explosions? Just because they wanted to find a Bible translation?”

  “How should I know?” Mr. Sheldon stood up but kept holding his head. “God! Do you people have anything to drink here? That rumbling … my head! Carol insisted these people were trying to poison our kids’ minds. She said we all needed to agree we were going to stop them! Look how they’ve torn our families apart!”

  “Seems to me like you’ve torn your own families apart,” Keith said. “All my wife and I did was teach a state-approved class.”

  “But yo
u took our children away! You got us arrested!” Mrs. Gregory said.

  “Adam made the decision to lock himself and Stephen out of the house,” Talia pointed out. “He panicked because he didn’t know where you were. Officer Johnson couldn’t locate either of you. He pressed charges, not us.”

  “You helped my husband take our children away from me,” Mrs. Holden shouted. “People saw all three of them leaving town with that security guard.”

  “My wife took your children to a safe location,” Keith said. “Legally, they couldn’t stay at our house. Zoning forbids that many people in one dwelling. The security guard was hired to protect them. Dr. Rita Ewing and her son Sam, both highly respected members of the community, personally inspected the campground for safety.”

  “Mr. Holden came to us injured and he lost consciousness before we could find out what happened to him,” Talia added. “We had no records of custodial issues and no reason to prevent him from being with his own children. We took him with us because we didn’t know how else to help him.”

  “I suppose next you’ll twist everything around and say it was our fault that Gail went on a shooting rampage!” Mr. Sheldon said. “Please! Can’t I get something – just to steady my nerves?”

  “The judge who awarded custody of Gail to Lisa said Gail felt unsafe,” Keith said. “Your wife kept telling your daughters about that loaded gun and constantly told them people could hurt them.

  “Don’t forget that Gail came to my house and shot up my living room window. It’s not like, in my wildest dreams, I would somehow brainwash her into doing that. My pregnant wife and two other school kids were inside.”

  “All I wanted to do was help my children,” Mrs. Gregory said. “Carol told us all your religious teaching would make them outcasts. People would bully them and they’d never have a chance in college.”

  Mrs. Holden added, “Look at what you people have been through! Who would want their children to fantasize about saving the world with golden Bibles or whatever you’re trying to do? Who would want them to face all those disasters?”

  “They’re not going to tell us anything,” Drew spat. “This is a waste of time.”

  “Agreed. I say we turn on the water,” Anne said.

  “Who are those people?” Mrs. Holden shrieked. “What right do they have to threaten us? You need to let us out of here right now!”

  “If we aren’t going to turn on the water, I say we take them out in the jungle and drop them someplace. They don’t want to be here,” Drew said. “And for what it’s worth, ma’am, we ‘people’ are the hired help, paid to try to keep you and your kids alive while somebody else tries to kill them.”

  Anne said, “Speaking as another of the hired help, so far we’ve done okay, but if your three harpy friends show up, someone is going to get hurt, and then I wonder how important sticking by their plan, whatever it is, will seem to you.”

  Chapter One Hundred and Thirteen – “We Just Want Our Kids Back.”

  “We just want our kids back,” Roy Sheldon sobbed. “That’s all I ever wanted. Carol said all the things they did were necessary to stop this crazy Golden Testaments thing from turning our kids into cult members. She and Jenny and Lydia had to show the kids what happens to people who brainwash our kids.”

  “If you want to help, keep talking,” Keith said, standing up and leaning on his cane and the brick wall. “What happened the night of the school board meeting?”

  “My head!” Mr. Sheldon groaned. “We got the Gregorys and Holdens over to our house. Jenny and Lydia were there too. They’re my wife’s sisters, and they’ve been working with us on this all along. They told us we had to have a meeting.

  “Tim kept arguing with us. He would not shut up. Julia was afraid he was going to cause trouble, so Carol said we should lock him in our pool house to get him to cool off.”

  “I remember that,” Mr. Gregory said. “Seemed like a reasonable idea. We did that, and next Lydia Williams said she had booked some retreat time for us at the place we’d gone before, to plan this in the beginning. I remember I said, ‘Now? What about the kids?’”

  “‘We’ve made arrangements for them,’ Carol said. I said, ‘What arrangements?’” Mr. Sheldon said.

  “I remember that,’ Mrs. Gregory said. “And I remember asking, ‘What about Tim? Somebody’s got to let him out eventually.’ And Julia said, ‘I don’t care if he rots in there. In fact, I wouldn’t mind if someone accidentally set a fire and –’”

  “Shut up, you bitch!” Mrs. Holden screamed. “Don’t you understand that these people just want us to lose our kids forever? The only reason we got to be part of this is because we had kids we could put in that stupid school! Without them, Carol and Jenny and Lydia will cut us off! We’ll be nobodies and have nothing!” She lunged at Mrs. Gregory.

  “Leave my wife alone!” Mr Gregory snarled, pushing Mrs. Holden to the floor. “What have we gotten out of this? Nothing! Our kids can’t stand the sight of us. Maybe you don’t know what jail time is like, but this place is a picnic compared to that. For all we know you did try to kill your own husband. I know everybody had to wait for you when we were ready to take off for the retreat.”

  Mrs. Holden sprang up and dug her nails into Mr. Gregory’s face, obscenities pouring out of her mouth.

  Anne whipped inside and pulled Mrs. Holden, shrieking and kicking, out into the hall. Drew locked the door again but had to help Anne push the woman into another room by herself. Both of them were breathless and had nail marks before the other door’s bolt shot into place. Mrs. Holden screamed and beat and scratched on the door, incoherent with rage.

  “You wanna try to cast something out of her?” Drew invited, blowing out a blast of air and staring at Keith and Talia in disbelief. “The two of us, to get control of that pipsqueak?”

  Talia slid her chair over by the door of Mrs. Holden’s cell and started to talk through the grate in a low, soothing tone. Keith could hear snatches of singing, prayer, and Scriptures, but had to turn his attention back to the other group.

  Mr. Sheldon approached the grate at the door of the group cell. “Please, help us,” he said. “I’ll tell you anything I can, but this has got to end.”

  “We agree,” Mrs. Gregory said, and her husband nodded. “What can we do to help you?”

  “You’ve heard some of what’s been happening to us since all this started,” Keith said. “More of that is coming, if those women find this place, and your kids are all here. I don’t know if we can protect them unless you give us some idea of what to expect.”

  “Everything we’ve heard is true?” Mrs. Gregory quavered. “Those attacks? All of you being injured? Did Jenny Kaine do that? But why would she hurt our children? She said doing all this for them! She’s making a documentary about the dangers of religious extremism and how it hurts children. Carol and Jenny and Lydia said everything they did was for their protection.”

  “Jenny Kaine’s in it for a byline,” Keith spat. “She’s trying to make her reputation as a newscaster, and your kids are just pawns to her. We just talked to a young man raised by a drug lord who’s abused him for years. Jenny Kaine convinced that man his ‘son’ betrayed him and we had to leave the two of them in the middle of a gunfight. Jenny Kaine uses people for her own purposes. We’ve had witnesses tell us she’s responsible for many, many deaths around the world, and she helps criminals and murderers just to get herself on camera.”

  “But Carol?” Mr. Sheldon rubbed his head so furiously it looked to Keith like skin would come off. “She’s my wife! Those women are my children’s aunts. Carol knows I would never agree to people being hurt or killed. How could they have kept all of this stuff from me? Have I been that blind and stupid?”

  “It’s possible that those ‘retreat’ times were used to drug you or for conditioning therapy,” Drew offered. “My security contacts have said there’s a big surge in cases where people have done crazy things but claim lost time, voices telling them to do things – an
d there are so many designer drugs making new addicts who don’t even know they’re addicts until the tests come back at the lockup. These people swear they’re clean but display signs of a long-term addiction.”

  “So what’s the plan?” Keith asked. “What will they do if they come here?”

  “They’ve been spinning everything that’s happened –” Mr. Sheldon broke off, but made himself continue. “The claims about these Golden Testaments, those evacuations where you’ve suddenly left town, the times when nobody knew where you or the kids were – and all the acts of violence –”

  He stopped again, seized his head, groaned, and went on. “That legal organization, the Civil Rights Defense Association, was helping us draft papers to get Principal Bradley and at least you and your wife thrown in prison. They’ve put the worst face on every action you’ve taken and kept a record of whatever ‘evidence’ they could get against you. If all else failed, they were going to claim our children were kidnapped by a cult.”

  “Lydia said a few weeks ago that the paperwork had almost made its way to the top of the chain,” Mr. Sheldon said. “She wasn’t sure if they could pull it off here in Mexico, but she was pretty sure the US and Mexican governments would cooperate if they could convince people children were in danger.”

  “A cult?” Mr. Gregory demanded. “Someone could be coming here to gas and burn us out?”

  Mr. Sheldon sank down, scrubbing along the wall with his shoulder. He curled up into a fetal position, moaning.

  Keith ignored the pain in his leg and pushed past Drew and Anne.

  “This can’t be happening,” Anne said.

  “Not sure I can follow you through the fire if it means fighting against the US and Mexican governments,” Drew said. “I don’t have enough guys – or gals,” he added, glancing at Anne.

  “Not gonna ask you to,” Keith said. “Talia, we got big trouble.”

  “I heard,” Talia said. She rose. “Call Dr. Cornell. Mrs. Holden just passed out, I think. I can hear her breathing, but she’s not responding anymore. I’m afraid we are going to have to evacuate, Keith. Drew’s right. We can’t fight, if Mr. Sheldon’s right about who’s coming.”