by Glen Johnson
Everything was deadly silent.
Nervous that something was seriously wrong, due to the plane being eerily quiet, she slowly unlatched the door and opened it an inch to see if she could see what was happening.
Through the gap, she could see the passengers slumped in their seats, or piled on top of each other in the aisle.
What the hell?
Only one figure was moving. It looked like Eduardo. He was manhandling the unconscious people back into their seats. He was wearing a gasmask.
Jenny quickly pulled the door shut. Her head felt dizzy, and her vision was blurring. She reached up and tried to prize open the oxygen mask panel. She couldn’t get it open. Her head was banging like a bass drum; her eyes started to water.
Everyone has been gassed! Why? It doesn’t make any sense.
Finally, after breaking three nails, she removed the panel and a mask dropped down. She quickly pulled it over her face, sucking in the sweet oxygen.
However, it was too late; the gas was having the desired effect. The small amount that had seeped into the cubicle was making her nauseous and dizzy. She kept falling in and out of consciousness as she sat on the toilet slumped against the wall.
Suddenly, the door swung open and Eduardo stood filling the doorway.
“What have we here? Clever girl,” he said in a muffled mocking tone, as he ripped the oxygen mask from her face.
Jenny’s breathing became more laboured as her hands weakly tried to rise to push him away, instead her eyelids dropped, as she slipped into unconsciousness.
*
Darkness eventually gave way to light as her eyelids fluttered.
I am lying on something.
It felt like she was lying on a metal surface.
Her mind was fuzzy, and her limbs felt like lead.
I am naked!
The light was too painful, so she kept her eyes closed.
Where am I? What happened?
She could not move, and her mind was sluggish and felt like she was hung-over.
Jenny opened her eyes again. At first, everything was just a blur. As her sight slowly cleared, she looked up at a tall ceiling. It looked like another hanger bay, but different from the one they took off from. This one seemed older, less used – dilapidated.
Pain shot through her eyes from the blinding light. She closed them.
*
Jenny realized she had fallen back into unconsciousness. This time she had been woken up by a noise. There was an irritating buzzing and hissing sound. It sounded like someone was cutting something up with an electric saw.
She could hear boot’s slapping the concrete floor, moving around. She could also hear voices.
The people were talking in Brazilian. She could just make out what they were saying as her mind struggled to translate it.
“How many?” It sounded like Mr. Dias, but because she was so groggy, she wasn’t sure.
“Fifty-seven are unconscious. Three had complications and flat-lined from the sleeping gas. We are working on them first, trying to salvage as much as possible before they become unusable.” There was a break, as if the person had to locate information.
“Out of the other fifty-seven left, forty will be used for organ transplants. We have all the orders covered for hearts, lungs, stem cells, small bowels, pancreas, skin, kidneys, livers, eyes, bones, tendons, and cartilage.”
Jenny could hear a page turning.
In the background the sound of saws still echoed, along with a hubbub of noise as if a large number of people were going about their business.
She could now place the other voice; it was Eduardo.
“Five will go to our Argentinean friend, for crash test dummies, in his bio-mechanics lab.
“And the twelve remaining will go to our body broker friend in Chile for use in scientific research. I believe he mentioned something about Huntington’s disease and Trigeminal Neuralgia.”
Jenny felt a hand casually stroke along her naked leg.
“Such a shame.”
Jenny felt the object she was lying on start to move. She felt nauseous again.
Do not throw up; or else I will drown in my vomit.
She felt a pinch as a needle of some kind was forced into her arm.
“Miss. Clark was a lucky find. With her rare blood type, her blood and organs alone will finance the next operation.”
They are draining me dry and will then cut me into fucking pieces! She tried to open her eyes again, but couldn’t; she didn’t have the strength. She screamed inside her head. She could not cry, her tear ducts didn’t work. She willed her body to move, to fight. However, only her inner-voice worked, everything else was paralyzed.
“The plane is being stripped and we will be able to sell most of it for parts. All in all, a very profitable adventure, more so than the last four put together.
“We have rented the hanger here in Jatai Airport for three more days. By that time, all the organs and bodies will have been shipped. We will keep the bodies drugged until it’s time to cut them up, saving the risk of losing any organs due to time delays.”
Jenny could feel hands moving over her body. She was feeling even weaker as her lifeblood started draining away, and her thoughts were becoming confused.
“I will deal with Miss. Clark personally,” Mr. Dias said.
Mum! She screamed inside her head.
Please no! Mum, I love you! Help me! Please, please, no! I do not want to die! NO! Mummy!
Her screaming and ranting started to become incoherent. Fear was robbing her of rational thought.
Not once did she think about Luciano, and how he would deal with her going missing. All she cared about was her mother, how she would never know what happened to her daughter.
Then a searing pain sliced down her chest, making the Y incision for organ removal.
“Move the container closer, and have the ice ready.” Mr. Dias said. “I think I shall start with the heart.”
-6-
The Last Cake
You shall eat it as cakes, and you shall bake it, using human waste. Ezekiel 4:12
“I can’t believe it Grace, another first prize!” Eleanor said. “At this rate you’ll need a bigger bungalow for all your medals and trophies!”
Eleanor had the rosette in her hand, turning it in the light. “It’s so pretty Grace.” She held it up closer to her eyes. “Looks like gold!”
“I wish,” stated Grace. “If they were all gold I would’ve retired years ago!”
“Get on with ya; you love your job, being the first to hold them beautiful little new-born babies.” Eleanor lay the rosette down on the table and picked up her china teacup.
The kitchen smelt of baking. A sponge cake sat cooling on the metal rack. Not one of her signature red cakes, that she won all her awards for, this one was simply for a poorly friend.
“I don’t know how you do it, a full time midwife and an award-winning baker?” Eleanor took a sip of her earl grey. “I have trouble simply boiling an egg!”
The two women, in their early sixties, laughed over the joke, as they sat at the round table in the middle of the kitchen. China rattled as they settled their teacups down onto the saucers. A ginger cat brushed up against their legs, seeking attention. A large grandfather clock ticked in the hallway, slicing the seconds from their lives.
The sound made Grace Spindler check the watch pinned to her dark-blue midwife’s uniform.
Twenty minutes and I leave for my last shift; she thought sadly.
“It keeps me busy, what with Jim passing away,” Grace stated as she repositioned the spoon on her saucer.
Both women nodded at this.
Grace’s husband Jim had been dead eight years of a heart attack, but it was still talked about as if it happened mere weeks ago. She picked up cooking as a way to fill the gap.
“Jim loved my cakes, as you know. He always said I could have won prizes.” They both looked to a big grey urn that rested on a little table by the kit
chen window.
“He loved to sit next to that window and watch me bake,” Grace announced, as her hand smoothed down her white-pinny. None of the other, younger midwives wore one, but she felt bare without it.
They both just nodded their heads at Grace’s statement.
“Shame this will be your last competition. You’ve got years of baking left in you!” Eleanor stated as she reached for a rich-tea biscuit from the china plate, her eyes never left Grace.
“It’s time I tossed the oven-glove in. Time to let someone else have a chance.” Grace reached for a biscuit, but just held it, as her eyes scanned all the rosettes on the wall behind her friend, and a collection of trophies on a shelf.
“For eight years I’ve won every competition I have entered. It’s becoming boring to be honest with you.”
Eleanor sat up a little straighter. Here could be a little gossip to spread around. She nodded to show her support, as her hands gripped the china cup a little tighter.
The ginger cat had become bored with seeking attention and jumped up to sit in the kitchen window. It took position like a century, checking anyone walking by the garden fence.
“But you’re retiring this week, too; surely, you’ll have more time to bake?”
Grace looked towards the urn holding her husband’s ashes. The ginger cat’s tail swished back and forth, looking like it was dusting the top.
“I will still cook. Maybe some cakes for charity events and the like, but my days of entering competitions are almost over. Just one more red cake – one more competition and I’m done.” Her hands gripped the fragile cup. The biscuit lay uneaten on her saucer. She looked sad, as if the choice wasn’t really hers to make.
Grace was famous throughout the area. Her cakes were legendary.
“Rich, silky, almost meaty in texture,” one critic had stated in the local paper.
“Everything will work out in the end,” Eleanor stated, while eyeing the last rich-tea on the plate.
Grace obviously doesn’t want it; she hasn’t eaten her last one yet! She swooped up the biscuit. With one quick dunk, it was in her mouth.
Eleanor noticed her friend check her upside-down watch again.
“Time I should be going.”
Eleanor took one last swig to empty her cup. Rising slowly – arthritis giving her no choice – she started collecting the cups and plates on the silver tray.
“No need for that Eleanor, I will sort that out.”
“Fiddlesticks! It’s no trouble at all.” Eleanor carried the tray three steps to the sink and laid it on the work surface. One at a time, she rinsed the china cups out and laid them on the drying rack.
“How about joining my bridge club?” Eleanor asked.
“I’m not sure cards are my cuppa tea dear.”
The clock in the hallway sliced more seconds.
Eleanor wiped her hands on the apron that she wore everywhere, giving the illusion that she was always busy, and headed for the door.
“You have a great last day, midear, and I will pop over later with something a little stronger to celebrate.” With that, Eleanor slipped out the door and shut it without a discernable click.
Grace could afford to retire a little earlier because of her husband’s life insurance.
My last day at work. The last red cake ever! Grace thought. She checked her watch again.
She was due to take over from Mrs. Edwards at 9 AM. Miss. Octavia Mercy Took, a fifteen year-old who has been in labour for fourteen hours would be her last home visit.
Strange names they have these days.
Grace was the first at the scene yesterday, when Miss. Took’s contractions were one minute long, with five minutes rest in-between, and yet the baby was still being stubborn.
Grace suggested she went to the hospital, but Miss. Took was adamant she was going to have a home birth, in a cheap multicoloured paddling pool she had picked up from Asda.
Grace didn’t like to judge, even though she has seen her share over the years of teenage mothers, but she was taken back by how completely unprepared Miss. Took was.
Just a child herself really.
Grace thought the mothers name was strange; the baby would be called; Winter Juniper Tallulah Bree Took.
Poor child! As if life wasn’t difficult enough already. With that thought in mind, Grace grabbed her car keys from the hook by the door and headed to work for the last time.
She just hoped the young girl hadn’t given birth yet, because there was something Grace needed from Miss. Took.
*
The day was uneventful; there were no surprises for her last day.
Grace waited around the small front room while Miss. Took shouted in pain. After another four hours little Miss. Winter Juniper Tallulah Bree Took was born into the world at six pounds and seven ounces. A little below average, but then again, the mother continued smoking all the way through the pregnancy.
Grace cleaned the newborn and put the placenta in the yellow bio-container, to drop off at the hospital – the mother did not want to keep it. The teenager was grossed out at the suggestion.
The fifteen-year-old Miss. Took celebrated the birth of her daughter by lighting up a Lambert and Butler, and updating her Facebook statues.
Grace filled out the paperwork with the teenager’s mother, while the baby cried in the cot, and the exhausted new mother went for a lie down.
Grace returned to the hospital for the last time, to fill out paperwork and drop off the bio-container.
There was no big send off. None of the doctors or the managers from upstairs came to say goodbye. After forty years of working at the hospital all she had to show for it was a bunch of cheap flowers from a service station, that a few of the nurses had pooled together to buy, and a forty-nine pence card that still had the price sticker on the back.
Within half an hour, Grace had changed from her midwife’s uniform and stood in front of the mixing bowl.
The only sound within the house was her weighing and sifting flour and the ticking of the old clock in the hallway.
After measuring everything up, and putting it in her orange, thirty-year-old Kenwood cake mixer, she lowered the tilting mixing head and turned the knob. As the machine started to blend, Grace took the lid off a small Tupperware container. Inside was a portion of Miss. Took’s placenta, which she had removed from the bio-container on the way back to the hospital. With a pair of blue rubber gloves, Grace proceeded to squeeze all the blood and juice from the portion of placenta into the cake mix.
Funny, Grace mused; the word placenta comes from the Latin word for cake.
What was left was put into the cat’s food bowl.
Pulling off the rubber gloves and dropping them into the bin, Grace walked over to her husband’s urn. She carried it to the mixer. Inside was just enough ashes left for one more cake. She sprinkled the last portion of her husband into the mixture.
“Life and death, the secret to an award winning recipe,” Grace said proudly, while looking down at the ginger cat as it chewed on the clotting placenta.
“First prize, here I come!”
-7-
Lockdown
I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come against you. Revelation 3:3
It was 5 AM on Saturday, and Donald Colt was up and doing what he did every day at 5 AM – he was prepping.
Don was wrapped up against the summer’s chilly morning in a Ghillie suit, a camouflaged set of clothing that blended him perfectly with his surroundings; Don had twenty-five different Ghillie suits, one for every type of weather condition and foliage.
Don headed out into the darkness to check his snares. At five foot six, his small, muscular frame disappeared into the darkness.
At forty-nine, he had short black cropped hair and a clean-shaven face, with a body that suggested rigorous exercise and a healthy diet. He could move silently and swiftly through most types of terrain, and knew every inch of his fifty-six acres of land, and wher
e every trap and pitfall were located.
Don is a doomsday prepper, someone who strongly believes that change is coming. Something is brewing that will completely cripple America, and the world, and he is determined to survive at whatever cost.
Unlike most prepper’s, who concentrate on one main scenario, Don believes there are many catastrophic situations that could play out, and it’s simply a matter of which one was going to happen first.
One scenario, Don believes, is America’s debt, which could create a financial collapse of the economy. At present, America’s national debt stands at sixteen trillion dollars. Just less than five trillion is owed to the Social Security Trust Fund and federal pension systems. A staggering eleven trillion more is owed to foreign and domestic investors and the Federal Reserve.
China owned most of Americas debt.
In Don’s opinion, because China had not won the war, they were slowly buying up Americas Debt. A subtle takeover strategy, which was working.
Don believes that if China called in their tab, then the country would fall apart, creating widespread panic and violence. Inflation would skyrocket – everyday items would become too expensive to purchase; looting would break out in every city and town across the country as people tried to horde food and water.
What is happening in Europe with the banks, especially Greece and the Euro, strengthens Don’s belief that change is coming.
Don’s second fear is war.
America’s army is spread too thin throughout the world, fighting a war on terror on many fronts, from Afghanistan, Iraq, the Philippines, the Horn of Africa, Trans Sahara, Pakistan, Yemen and Kashmir, just to name a few. America was trying to be the world’s big brother, with the American government spending billions each year on weapons.
After 9/11, Don believes it will only be a matter of time before a nuclear device is set off on American soil, and when it does, America will have no choice but to retaliate. World War III would rage between America and the Middle East.
Don’s third fear is solar flares. One massive solar flare – a coronal mass ejection, or CME for short, would send a vast wave, larger than earth soaring through space. On contact with earth, the electromagnetic pulse would destroy all electrical devices. There would be no more utilities, water, gas, or power. No telecommunications, no satellites, no computers, and no operational vehicles. No one would be able to access their bank accounts. Billions would be sent back into the middle ages. Experts believe there is a twelve percent chance that massive, earth crippling solar flare will happen within the next decade.