by Schow, Ryan
His watch said 12:38 P.M. The face was cracked.
Damn.
Without a second thought, he grabbed the keys to his Porsche Cayenne, then left the sleeping babies and the lab and all his misdeeds and horrors behind. His destination? The Richmond office of Monarch Enterprises.
The Director was a particularly distasteful man, but such a meeting was necessary, which was why he was driving nearly out of control. The sooner he could get there and conduct his business, the sooner he could get out of there and not ever go back.
The problem was there were so many goddamn safe drivers on the road. So many slugs creep-crawling along at the speed limit, or five miles in excess. He sat on his horn almost non-stop at some points.
When he got a break in the traffic, he thought of Monarch Enterprises, and how he detested the Director. The man’s dealings made his dealings seem sane and humane by comparison. Then again, the procedures Monarch followed were standardized procedures from the pages of his own Auschwitz-based research, processes he had written for them back in his CIA days just after the second world war. Back when he was something diabolical, something much more monstrous.
After the fall of Germany at the end of World War Two, he escaped the fall of Auschwitz only to be thrown into a prison camp for Nazis. With the help of the United States government, he was brought into the U.S. under Operation Paperclip, a secret program by which the government turned a blind eye to his war crimes, and wiped his otherwise filthy dossier clean. Such Presidential undertakings weren’t yet revealed to the public, not until much later when the Freedom of Information Act made such crude and immoral matters available to for public viewing. It was all just official business back then. Then again, the official anything in matters of war and conspiracy are more official lies than official truths.
His life, from then on, became one big false identity.
He forced one woman nearly off the road, tried to push an Asian couple in a Toyota Corolla into oncoming traffic. He drove past a sidewalk café where people were eating, all smiling and cheery, and he thought about driving through them, over them. In his mind, he saw the red evidence of their deaths and it soothed the restlessness in him. His hand twitched, his body itching to respond. He let them live, though. Then some faggot on a bicycle with painted-on bike shorts and an expensive helmet was riding with the flow of traffic, as if he’d personally earned his spot; Gerhard swerved into him enough to catch him with the rear view mirror. It didn’t knock him over right away, but the biker lost control and struck a parked car. The new and maybe not improved Gerhard sighed and almost smiled.
He was more Josef Mengele than Wolfgang Gerhard this time around. Which may or may not be such a good thing. This world was not ready for a beast of his sort.
When he got to Monarch, he announced himself to a guard, then met with the Director who said, “You don’t look like the Dr. Gerhard I know.”
Gerhard opened his mouth, showed the man the gap in his teeth. The saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words,” it was perfectly relevant to that scenario.
“It’s my job to not look like me,” Gerhard said. The Director smiled. There were things about the man’s face that made Gerhard want to end the Director’s life. It wasn’t only the Director, though. Ever since he left the lab, Gerhard was frothing at the mouth to kill just about everything in sight. He could tear out the Director’s throat, toss the slop of it on the floor and stomp it into flattened ruin and not think twice, that’s how much he hated.
“There is something I want,” Gerhard said, “and for what you have put me through, you will give it to me.”
He issued his demand. The Director’s response was disappointing, to say the least.
“You are not a man I enjoy saying no to,” the Director said, clearly uncomfortable with the way the new Gerhard was staring at him, “but for one specific reason, I am unable to fulfill such a request at this time. If you’ll follow me.”
The Director took him to the main warehouse where the two of them looked upon an industrial building filled with stacked metal cages containing nothing but naked babies. There were hundreds of them.
He said, “This was forced upon me, I’m afraid.”
“How many?” Gerhard asked.
“Five hundred, plus or minus.”
Every so often, a bug-zapper sound of electricity snapped sound into the otherwise silent air. He knew the cages were electrified. The lay person would be mortified at this righteous, inhumane act, but electrified cages were tools of control. Tools Gerhard, or Dr. Green as the CIA referred to him in earlier years, had used in the now declassified mind control program he helped refine for the CIA nearly sixty years ago: MK ULTRA.
To create a truly controllable mind control slave, torture should start inside the womb and carry through infancy. The best slaves were fighters. Survivors. Only the toughest would make it through the program. At first, when they were not making babies from existing female slaves, human donations from CPS and local law enforcement, as well as routine kidnappings provided them with their necessary subjects, so long as the kidnapped subjects were under the age of six. The mind is most malleable then. Now, they had babies. Children brought to term, off the grid. You could take these babies, raise them in a culture of abuse, split their minds rapidly, repeatedly and permanently.
These split personalities would then be managed to their core personality’s strengths to become entertainers, clergy, super soldiers, Manchurian Candidates and sex slaves amongst a multitude of other things. Multiple personalities, i.e. dissociation, equals control and control equals power.
In the end, it was always about control and power.
Gerhard looked at the children sitting docile in their cages. They were so quiet. So still. To see something like this, it was a calming sight. Thirty years from now, a handful of men and women would be the ruling puppets, just like today’s controlling “elite,” and most of them would have started out as a child in a cage in a place like this.
Groomed for success, these puppet babies would be molded in secret so they may one day rise to the upper echelons of power and society. There, under the perfect control of the ruling elite, they would be used to whatever means deemed necessary. What Gerhard knew, what the Director knew, and what the very upper crust of power knew was that these children had been born with the sole purpose of being controlled by the factual elite, that their lives would never truly be their own. What a curious thing, he thought, all of these babies. So many possibilities.
“How many have died since arriving?” Gerhard asked. Babies without love were always dying. The ones who survived, he knew, would receive exactly eighteen months of love bombing, followed by years of the worst kind of torture one could imagine. All to fracture the brain. All to create controllable multiple personalities. All to make a slave.
“The usual,” the Director said. “Half a dozen or so. But the week has just begun.”
“Do you have the programming support for a batch this size?”
“Oh, they aren’t mine,” the Director said. “Distribution out of here takes place this upcoming week.”
“Don’t they usually handle this in Vegas?”
“Yes, but Vegas is getting some heat from the FBI, so they diverted this batch here temporarily. After next week, things will quiet down and I should have four or five adults, tops. I can help you then, if that’s still what you want.”
Gerhard thought of Arabelle, about that thing he felt for her, about the madness in his head that only seemed to fall silent with activity and distraction.
“I need someone now,” he said, restating his demands. “Right now.” His tone was abrupt, very direct, not the way he wanted it to sound. Still, it had the desired effect: compliance, cooperation.
“I showed you this so you would know I can’t get you that here.” The Director straightened his brown hair, which already seemed entirely too straight, then squared his shoulders. “I know someone, though. Remind me again exactly wha
t you have in mind.”
“No more than twenty years old, athletic build, at least five six, no more than five foot nine. I prefer a girl of American descent, if possible.”
“The Salt Lake City office will have what you need.”
“Great, just give me a number.”
“Manners are all the rage these days, Dr. Mengele.”
He hated that name, yet the Director insisted upon using it, as if to say, I know you, and I know what an awful human being you are. Not that the Director was any better. He wasn’t.
The name, however, started the niggling in his brain again. A light sweat broke over his brow and under his arms. Scratching the back of his head like a crazy person, he belted out his next words: “Jesus Christ, man, just give me the number!” He fought to control himself, but it was going to take a monumental effort.
“As you wish, doctor,” the Director said, his face visibly pale. “Follow me, and I’ll make the call for you.”
“And Josef Mengele isn’t my name anymore,” he blurted out.
“What is your name these days? Surely you aren’t still going by Wolfgang Gerhard now that”—he made a circling motion around the doctor’s new face—“well, you’ve changed again.”
He made a good point. What was his name?
“I’m afraid I don’t have an immediate answer to that question.”
“So you really are brand new,” he said with the slightest tone of amusement in his voice.
“Fresh out of the wrapper,” he mumbled.
3
The Director made the call to the Salt Lake City branch of Monarch Enterprises from his very sterile looking, very nondescript office. The only item of significance was the lingering smell of a cigar he smoked maybe a day or two ago. Gerhard discretely sniffed the air.
Cuban.
One leg crossed over his knee, sitting across the desk from the man, he knew the conversation wasn’t going well. Gerhard picked his teeth. Ran his tongue over them to make sure they were clean. It was a bad habit. A habit born from impatience. He made a finger sign that said to the Director “wrap it up,” which frustrated the man enough for him to exclaim, “For Christ’s sake man, my client is Dr. Josef Mengele.”
Gerhard’s eyes flashed wide. He sat up straight, incensed.
The Director had the good sense to look away. After a brief explanation of what he needed, the Director received the cooperation he hoped for. Within moments, Salt Lake sent a cluster of photos via secure email.
“I’ll call you back in a few minutes,” he said before hanging up the phone.
“That’s the last time you use that name,” Gerhard hissed.
“No name you’ve had since then carries the same weight as Josef Mengele. I assure you, it was a necessary tactic.”
Gerhard ached to retort, if anything to pacify the invisible mice chewing holes in his brain, but he couldn’t deny the results the Director received. Instead of decapitating the man—as he desperately wanted—Gerhard scrolled through a dozen images of girls sent by the Salt Lake City office before he found one he liked: a young blonde with bright eyes and good bone structure.
“She will do,” Gerhard said, putting his finger on the girl. The Director made the phone call, and without a hint of reluctance on Salt Lake’s end, Gerhard agreed to the one hundred thousand dollar sales price. The transaction complete, he stood to leave.
The Director, still seated, said, “You’re welcome,” as if he had the right.
Gerhard looked back, swallowed hard and said, “Your boy killed Savannah Van Duyn. He’s dead, too. The boy.” He watched the Director’s face, saw the slight twitch in his lip—the tell—then said, “If you ever send someone after one of my girls again, I’ll pull your fucking intestines out your asshole, then cram them down your throat and watch you choke to death.”
“By your threat, I’m assuming I can finally close out Ms. Van Duyn’s contract?” the Director asked, trying to look bored by the turn of conversation, if only to save face.
Gerhard looked deep into the Director’s shit brown eyes for a long time, his brain more bled dry than ever, then turned and left without a word. All the way home, he thought about Arabelle, and Abby and the boy, and he seethed.
He wasn’t done with the Director yet. Not by a long shot.
Back home, he packed an overnight bag, collected Alice, then gassed up the Cayenne. At the Chevron station, he punched an address into his navigation screen, then headed out of town on the way to Salt Lake City, Utah.
Alice said almost nothing the entire trip. She merely watched the passing scenery of cars and mountains and desert landscape. Every so often, she asked a question, but a minimal response seemed to be all she needed to once again fall back into silence. For whatever reason, the girl kept his insanity at bay. Knowing she was mutated by nature rather than science left him with a feeling of reverence.
He admired her, envied her.
In Salt Lake, Gerhard checked them into the Hyatt, turned on the Nickelodeon channel for Alice, then got himself eight hours sleep. When he woke, Alice was still in front of the TV, her clothes barely even wrinkled. He didn’t ask if she slept. The five year old could take care of herself.
After checking out, they drove to the nearby office of Monarch Enterprises where the blonde was packaged and ready to go. The lazy wobble of her eyes told him she was drugged. Good.
Being in the Salt Lake office was not much different than being in Richmond’s office. Instead of an old airplane hanger, though, Salt Lake was a converted warehouse. There was a lifelessness to both buildings that prickled his scalp and made his skin itch. Like the place gave him emotional scabies. It wasn’t mites burrowing under his skin as much as it was the feeling that awful things were taking place under this roof that left him on edge. This made no sense to him considering doing awful things was his specialty, the thing he loved most.
Alice looked at the girl and said, “She’s not pretty.”
Gerhard offered no reply because Alice was not talking to him as much as she was just talking. The Director’s contact, a meek man named Neal with thin bones and big glasses, stared at him in awe. Like he was Jesus Christ.
Or God.
“So you’re really, I mean, you’re really him?” Neal said, adjusting his glasses up his nose. This man was the antithesis of power.
“In the flesh,” Gerhard said as if the compliment were a nuisance. He wanted to wave the man off, tell him to go and blow entire herds of goats, but he didn’t. The man was doing him a considerable favor. Besides, he learned eons ago that in the moments of greatest aggravation, he should smile. So he smiled. Neal looked at his teeth, at the gap, and the very sight of it took his breath. He seemed thrilled.
“My God, it is you.”
Gerhard smiled wider, spread his hands out in an I-told-you-so gesture. Behind the smile, the squirming in his brain was starting up again. Instead of wanting to break things, he was in the mood to break people. First the Director, now this nitwit Neal. The urge was like an electrical current surging down his arms, tingling in his fingers.
Alice took his hand into hers. What a delicate thing she was. Gerhard looked down at her; she was already looking up at him, as if she knew. The discomfort in his head slowed to a crawl.
“You are a inquisitive thing,” he said. She looked back at Neal. What a sight the two of them must make: the Angel of Death and his little devil child.
Neal cleared his throat, regained his composure, and said, “Please excuse my wonderment, I did my senior thesis on you. On your work at Auschwitz.”
“Not at all,” Gerhard said. He was feeling better, being connected to Alice. She had a taming quality he seemed to have overlooked earlier.
He quietly wondered, how many other undiscovered qualities does this remarkable child have that I don’t know about?
Neal gave him a box containing two needles and instructions on how to keep the nameless girl unconscious the entire way home. Gerhard handed Neal a cashier’s c
heck for one hundred thousand, which seemed to please the man immensely.
“Next time I require your services, and there will most likely be a next time, I expect to procure a subject under less…exorbitant terms. It’s only because I’m suffering unreasonable time constraints that I would overpay you for a pye-dog of her sort.”
“But, she’s American.”
“And I’m German, what’s your goddamn point?”
The graciousness fell off Neal’s face, leaving behind something like disgust, or shame. Perhaps he was smart enough to be embarrassed. Either way, if Gerhard weren’t worth several hundred million dollars and flat fucking manic, he would have bought the slave for twenty-five grand.
“I trust you know the way out,” Neal said, none of the earlier warmth left in his voice. It seemed his admiration lost its luster.
4
Gerhard, Alice and the blonde made the return trip to San Francisco in record time. He drove straight to the lab, prepared her canister. On the steel gurney, Gerhard undressed her, careful not to stare too long. Even asleep, he felt it best to preserve one’s modesty.
Alice, however, stared at all her parts.
“When am I going to get these?” Alice said, touching the girl’s smallish breasts. She cupped her hand over the girl’s right breast, squeezed. “I like how soft they are.”
“In due time,” he said, pushing Alice’s hand off the girl’s breast.
“Why is there hair right there?” Alice asked, pointing to the stubbled patch of growth coming in around the girl’s vagina.
“I don’t know. Because it catches the sweat,” he said. “Makes the vagina stink less, I guess.”
“You don’t know?”
