Aftermath

by LeVar Burton

  Jacob shook his head in an attempt to free himself from thoughts of food. He would not give up, dared not give up. His people depended on him. He had to put aside all thoughts of bodily comfort and concentrate instead on his reason for being there. “Think only of the shaking,” he told himself. “Think of how little time is left.”

  To focus his attention, he watched the hawk circle in the eastern sky. With wings bronzed by the sunlight, the majestic bird soared lazily over the valley, gliding on invisible updrafts of air. The wind carried the hawk’s piercing cry to Jacob. A hunting cry. The bird was searching for his breakfast

  He shook his head and smiled. “Breakfast. You’re thinking of food again.”

  Jacob turned his attention back to the valley below, but he could no longer see the rabbit. The warmth of the sun had embraced the remaining chill of the night, covering the narrow valley in a thick layer of mist. He watched as the mist slowly curled along the valley’s floor, moving like a herd of—

  He blinked and looked again, not believing his eyes. The mist was changing shape, growing darker, turning into something else. Horns and heads appeared. Creatures with fur and hooves. Spellbound, he watched as the mist slowly transformed into a herd of buffalo.

  Jacob sucked in his breath. What he saw was impossible. All the buffalo were gone. The white man had killed them long ago. Even those protected in the national parks had been slain by poachers for their meat when food became scarce. The buffalo were gone, extinct, yet below him in the mist he saw a herd of the great beasts. A spirit herd. His vision had come.

  No sooner had Jacob realized that he was receiving his vision than all the buffalo in the valley below began to change back into mist and disappear. All except one.

  One solitary brown buffalo cow remained, slowly walking up the hill toward him. As the buffalo approached, it dropped to the ground and rolled over, the color of its fur magically changing from brown to red. Halfway up the hill, it rolled over again, changing from red to yellow. The spirit buffalo was only twenty feet away when it rolled over once more and changed from yellow to white.

  Jacob’s hands shook uncontrollably; it was all he could do to hold on to his pipe. Tears of joy streaked his cheeks. His prayers had been answered. The Great Spirit had sent him a vision, the greatest of all visions. He had sent His personal messenger, the white buffalo, guardian of the north and bringer of wisdom.

  The ground shook with each step as the white buffalo cow approached. Her breath was like an arctic blast; where she stepped the ground froze. Trembling with both fear and excitement, Jacob raised his pipe before him and offered it to the sacred spirit. The white buffalo rolled a final time. This time, however, the buffalo didn’t just change color. It changed form.

  Jacob Fire Cloud’s heart burst with joy as his eyes beheld the vision standing before him. She had returned to save her people, the woman who had taught the Lakota how to pray. She had returned, her voice carried upon the wind. The White Buffalo Woman had come home.

  She had returned once before, coming back in her animal form. In 1994, a white buffalo had been born in Janesville, Wisconsin, bringing great prosperity upon the Native American people. Many tribes had grown wealthy from their casinos, buying back some of the land stolen from them by the white man.

  Now she was back to unite the four races, bringing all of mankind together as brothers and sisters. She alone could stop the third shaking. She alone could save mankind.

  Jacob wept openly as he gazed upon the White Buffalo Woman. She stood no more than ten feet away, dressed in white buckskin, her face as radiant as the sun. She looked at him and smiled, her voice and thoughts filling his head. And then she snatched Jacob’s spirit from his body, carrying him high into the sky.

  They danced among the clouds, their spirits touching as they sailed over the earth on the wings of eagles. As they soared over the distant mountains, Jacob heard a voice like thunder and knew it was the Great Spirit who spoke.

  The Creator told him what had to be done if his people were to be saved. Jacob listened carefully, setting each word to memory. When the voice ended, so too did the vision. He was again on the hilltop. Alone. The White Buffalo Woman had gone.

  A great happiness filled the heart of Jacob Fire Cloud as he slowly placed his pipe back in his medicine bag. His body still weak, he somehow found the strength to stand and walk. It was a long way back to his home, a very long way, but he would make it. He was sure of it.

  His prayers had been answered. The vision he had prayed so long and hard for had finally come, answering questions and offering guidance for him and his people. She had returned; he could still hear her voice deep inside his head, calling him.

  Jacob smiled. The White Buffalo Woman had returned, only this time she was black.

  Chapter 9

  A voice woke him. Thinking that the thieves who robbed him had returned, Leon put his hands out to protect his face. Always protect the face, protect the head, that was the rule of the streets. It was a lesson learned in the school of hard knocks. Those who didn’t follow it sometimes ended up as mindless, drooling zombies, or dead. He had been beaten twice before: once by cops, and once by two men who wanted what little money he had. Neither was a pleasant experience. This time, however, there was no one around. He was alone.

  Leon sat tensed, listening, making sure someone wasn’t sneaking around the humble wooden crate he called home. But he heard nothing to alert him that danger was near. No footsteps. No voices. The only sound was the plop-plop of raindrops hitting the roof. He must have been dreaming.

  Lowering his hands, he breathed a sigh of relief. For once the danger was only imagined. He rubbed his eyes and sat up, pushing open the makeshift plywood door. A new day had dawned, but it was overcast and raining, draping a blanket of gray over an already gloomy city. The rain gave a sickly, slimy look to the surrounding buildings and caused the sour odors of garbage and urine, long since soaked in and forgotten, to be released again from the pavement. Oily rainbows formed where the rain gathered in puddles.

  Leon watched the rain, his soul as gloomy as the day. He had been right last night; he knew it was going to rain. But the rain wouldn’t last. Patches of blue sky were already poking their way through the gray. By mid-morning the rain would stop, and by afternoon the sun would be out in full force to suck up the puddles and turn the day into a humid steam bath.

  The pleasure he took in knowing he could still accurately predict the weather was overshadowed by what had happened the night before. He had been robbed, his blankets and provisions stolen. There would be no breakfast, no lunch or dinner either, unless he managed to find work somewhere. That sometimes happened. If he was lucky, Leon got hired to do odd jobs for food. A sandwich or two. A bowl of rice. Nobody had much money nowadays.

  If he wanted to work, he needed to get moving. It was a long walk to where the jobs were, and there were a lot of other hungry people out there.

  Putting on his new shoes, Leon slipped on the same shirt he had worn the night before. He had just finished buttoning it when he spotted the photo of his wife and daughter on the floor beside him, looking like a badly assembled jigsaw puzzle. He had managed to piece the picture back together, but he had no tape or glue to hold it in place. He must have bumped the picture during his sleep, for several of the fragments were out of place.

  Afraid the thieves might return and steal the picture out of meanness, he scooped up the pieces and placed them in his pocket. As he did, his fingertips brushed two micro computer disks.

  His mind occupied with his own troubles, he had completely forgotten about the incident in the alley. He wondered what had happened to the woman, feeling a twinge of guilt for not going to the police. She had been in trouble. No doubt the men who chased her had been intent on robbery, or something far worse. Still, he knew the police wouldn’t have done anything. Nothing at all.

  Leon had just crawled from his wooden crate when he again heard a voice. A woman’s voice.

 
Help me.

  Startled, he stood up and turned around quickly. No one was there. Odd, he thought. It sounded as if a woman had been standing right behind him. He circled the crate, thinking she might be hiding. Still no one. The alley leading to the street was also empty.

  Leon relaxed a little. Voices had a way of traveling in the concrete canyons of the city. The voice he heard could have been coming from a roof, from inside one of the warehouses, or from several blocks away. He stood and listened for a moment, but didn’t hear it again.

  He shook his head. “You’re hearing things. That’s all. Keep it up and you’ll be talking to yourself like the old winos down at the park.” He closed the front door of the crate and fastened it with a piece of rope. Again he heard a woman’s voice.

  Help me!

  The voice came loud and clear, sounding like she was standing right next to him. Someone had to be playing a trick on him.

  Leon looked around, searching for a hidden speaker or tape player. He checked around the wooden crate, under the pieces of wood and trash inside the fenced enclosure, even behind the garbage can, but found nothing.

  “You’re not fooling anyone,” he shouted. “I know you’re here. Somewhere.”

  There had to be a speaker, maybe one of those tiny ones. No other answer could explain it … unless he was going crazy. Leon touched his head, as though he could tell by the shape of his skull whether or not he was losing his mind. Nothing seemed out of place; his head felt the way it always did. No abnormal, tumorous growth. No bump. He didn’t drink or take drugs, so he wasn’t hallucinating. What else could it be? Unless …

  Help me.

  His mouth dropped open in surprise. He wasn’t hearing the voice with his ears. On the contrary, it came from somewhere deep inside his head, drifting up from the darkness of his subconscious like tiny air bubbles from the ocean’s depths. They were words never spoken but heard all the same. Words meant only for him. A woman’s voice. He knew that voice.

  “Oh, dear God,” he whispered.

  Chills danced up and down his spine as he recognized the voice that came from deep inside his head. It had been so long, so very long, but there was no mistaking it. The voice he heard could belong only to Vanessa, his wife, speaking to him from the grave, calling him as she had done the night someone firebombed their house.

  It had been September 21, 2012, one year after Scientific American published his article about shuttle launches affecting global weather patterns, six months after he had been fired from NASA. He had been in his study, typing up a résumé, when a firebomb crashed through his living room window. The flames spread quickly, racing across the carpeting and up the walls. A second bomb followed the first. More flames. The smell of gasoline heavy upon the air.

  Leon hadn’t heard the window break, but he heard Vanessa calling him from the bedroom, and the horrified screams of Anita, their three-year-old daughter. He rushed out of his study, only to find a raging inferno in his living room. He was cut off from his family, separated by a solid wall of flames.

  He tried to reach them, but the flames licked his skin, burned him, drove him back. The fire in the living room spread down the hallway toward the bedrooms, sent crackling tongues of flame in search of his wife and daughter.

  Terrified, Leon retraced his steps and ran out the front door. He raced around to the side of the house and used a brick to break out the glass in the bedroom windows. Even then he could not get to his wife and daughter. The security bars, installed only a few months earlier for protection against burglars, trapped them inside their bedrooms. The bars were bolted to the outside of the house, impossible to remove without tools.

  Though he was not a particularly strong man, Leon tried his best to spread the steel bars to free his family. But no matter how hard he strained, the bars would not bend. He watched, helpless, as the hungry flames entered their rooms. He heard their screams of agony. His daughter, overcome by smoke, had fallen to the floor and could no longer be seen. His wife, her hair and clothing on fire, stretched her arm through the bars and gently touched his hand. And then she too was gone.

  The bars grew hot, glowed red. Leon refused to let go. Only when the flames sprang from the window, singeing his hair and eyebrows, did he release the bars and step back. He did not feel the pain in his blistered palms, nor did he hear or see the fire engines racing toward his house. He felt nothing, and saw only the image of his wife—etched forever in his memory—reaching out for him, calling him.

  “Help me!” Those had been her last words. He had failed her, failed his daughter, but he would not do so now. Somehow Vanessa called to him from beyond the grave, called to him for help. He had to go to her.

  Leon Cane pushed himself away from his wooden crate and began to run.

  Chapter 10

  They stopped moving.

  Rene Reynolds had been dozing, but came fully awake when she realized the truck had stopped. The gentle swaying that had been with her for so long was gone, as was the sound of the vehicle’s tires humming on the road.

  She tensed. Why had they stopped? Was it only for gas, or was this the end of the line? Either way, it might be a chance to escape, maybe her one and only opportunity for freedom.

  Her heart pounded as she stood up and slowly inched toward the back doors. She took several deep breaths, but could not shake the fear that dug icy claws deep into her guts and threatened to turn her body numb. The muscles in her legs quivered as she stood crouched and listening.

  She heard the driver’s door open, and felt it slam. The passenger door also opened and closed. Footsteps. Muffled voices. Scraping at the back of the van. A lock was turned.

  The back doors swung open and light entered, the artificial glow of fluorescent bulbs. Rene started to lunge, but two white men blocked her path. They were not the same men who had broken into the Institute, but it didn’t matter. Each was armed: one with a pistol, the other with an electric stun gun. She froze. Even if she made it past them, she could not outrun the weapons they carried. The men must have seen the position she was in, noticing that her hands were now in front of her, and guessed her intentions. They both took a step back. The man holding the stun gun, who was muscular and covered with tattoos, raised his weapon and smiled.

  “Don’t even think about it,” he said.

  His partner, a tall man with dirty-blond hair and a goatee, gestured with the pistol he held for her to get out of the truck. “Climb on down out of there.”

  Rene stayed where she was. “I demand to know why I’ve been kidnapped.” She tried to keep the fear from her voice but failed. “I’m a scientist, damnit. What do you want with me?”

  “You’ll find out soon enough, sweetheart,” answered the tattooed man. “Now get out of the truck.”

  She shook her head. “Not until I know what’s going on.”

  The tattooed man’s smile melted. Rene was pushing her luck, but she hoped she was more valuable to her kidnappers alive than dead. “Lady, we were paid to bring you here alive. That’s all I know. But no one said we had to bring you here undamaged.”

  Acting on cue, the man with the goatee cocked the hammer on his revolver.

  “Now, are you going to get out of the truck? Or do you want my friend here to put a round through your kneecap?”

  Rene looked from one man to the other. She found no compassion in either of their faces. No warmth. Their eyes were cold, deadly, like those of a snake. They would not hesitate to shoot her if necessary.

  “Okay, you win,” Rene said, giving in. The tattooed man’s smile returned. He stepped forward and helped her down out of the truck. Once she was down, he grabbed her by the left arm and shoved the stun gun against her ribs.

  “This thing fires two hundred thousand volts,” he said. “Try anything funny and I’ll light you up like a lamp.” He led her away from the truck, his partner falling in several paces behind them. Rene held back, giving herself a little extra time to look around. They were in a parking garage, proba
bly in the basement of a large building. Unfortunately, there were no signs on the walls, nothing to tell her where the building was located. They could have been anywhere.

  An idea suddenly struck her. She turned and looked at the vehicles behind her. There were two cars and three trucks in the garage, including the one she had arrived in, each with a vehicle license tag registered to Cook County, Illinois.

  I’m in Chicago!

  Rene was stunned. What was she doing in Chicago? Why had they brought her here? She could think of no reason for being taken so far from Atlanta. She had no enemies in Chicago; she had never even been to the city before. If her abduction was for the purpose of ransom, wouldn’t it have been simpler for the kidnappers to keep her hidden somewhere in the South?

  At one end of the parking garage were two elevators. The man with the goatee stepped past them and pushed the button on the wall, summoning one of the cars. Entering the elevator, Rene saw there were buttons for only four floors. If the building wasn’t tall, then it had to be long, because the garage had enough room for over a hundred vehicles. The goateed man pushed the button for level four and the elevator door slid shut.

  When they arrived on the fourth floor, Rene was led down a long, narrow corridor. On first impression, she thought she was in a hospital. The walls were painted a creamy white, absent of any kind of decorations, and there was a lingering smell of chemicals and disinfectants. But if they were in a hospital, then they were on a floor that was no longer used. Cobwebs hung from the ceiling like delicate chandeliers, while dust covered the moldings and the door-knobs of the rooms they passed. The beige carpet they walked on was also soiled, and there were brown stains on the ceiling where water had leaked through. Overlapping the smell of disinfectants came the sour, musty odors of mold and rat droppings.