“They let them go,” Zed says in amazement.
“Of course. Those guys are traffic cops. This kind of stuff doesn’t fit their job description.”
“So why bring them to the cops if you knew they weren’t going to do anything?”
“My way of harassing them.”
“The cops or the pickpockets?”
“Both,” Rafa says deadpan.
Their walk to the clinic is event-free. In a matter of minutes, they enter the small clean lobby, where they find Twizzle and her younger brother, Forbes, in conversation with a matronly woman dressed in a medical unicolor uniform–a grey blouse that drops down just below her hips over grey slacks. On her blouse near her shoulder, stitched in small white letters are the words Centre for Reproductive Medicine and Infertility in Spanish. As Zed and Rafa approach, Twizzle breaks from her conversation to introduce them to the woman. Once introductions are made, Zed asks, “No Sonnet or twin?”
“Too short of notice for them,” Twizzle explains.
“Please follow me,” the woman instructs in Spanish and takes them to a waiting elevator. They disembark on the fourth floor and follow her down a plain white corridor to a small, sparsely decorated conference room looking out over the street below.
“Doctor Eloisa de la Cruz will be with you shortly,” she says formally and then leaves.
“Modest digs,” Zed says of the Spartan interior with budget table and chairs. “I was expecting something in an expensive high-rise or a lavish pastoral campus setting.”
From the doorway behind him, an accented female voice says in English, “This is not the United States, young man. I hope you will not hold it against us.”
Zed whirls around to see an attractive actress-small woman standing in the doorway extending her hand. Surprisingly to him, his impression of her is one of a drive in the countryside, with rugged hills and mountains in the distance and uncertain clouds hovering above. She has that kind of look.
“Pardon my appearance, I’m a rag of a woman today. You’ll have to excuse my lack of makeup and jewelry; I just got out of my Israeli martial arts Krav Maga class. I’m Doctor Eloisa de la Cruz, but you can call me El.”
When her eyes meet Zed’s, she is like a slowly moving tempest on the horizon. “And you must be Zed, whom I’ve heard a little about from Ms. Brown.”
Zed takes her extended hand and gives it a perfunctory shake. He guesses from her expression that Twizzle has revealed to El his distaste for her clinic.
She turns to Twizzle and the clouds part and sunlight beams through. “Or is it Mrs. Mundoz, now that you’re married to this handsome beast.” Her face is radiant when she faces Rafa and says, “So nice to see you again, Rafa.”
Rafa bends and kisses air next to her cheeks. Their mutual camaraderie and warmth fill the room.
“And Forbes, always good to see you.” Now she is like toasted sand on a sunny beach, inviting and natural. Forbes lowers his great 6’8” height to her petite slightly over 5-foot tall height and repeats Rafa’s greeting.
She drops her purse on the table, unzips her red leather bomber jacket and strips it off to reveal black spandex beneath, tucked into dark grey Paige jeans. She could be a model under admiring eyes on a fashion runway. With both hands, she pulls her shoulder-length braids from each side of her chest and sets them behind her. All remaining formality falls away and she is farm girl casual, just stepped in from the goats and chickens. She touches beads of perspiration on her forehead, opens her purse, pulls out a cloth and wipes them away.
Looking around the room, she says in exasperation, “No soft drinks or water? I’ll be right back.” She whirls around and disappears through the doorway. In less than a minute, she returns with a tray of orange colored drinks and bottled water. She is the perfect host, attentive and concerned for her guests.
“Do I need to get coffee for anyone?”
“El, sit, please. You’ve done enough,” Twizzle orders.
El takes a seat in the middle of the table and says grandly with a big smile, “So, let’s get down to business. You want a progress report.”
Twizzle shakes her head. “You need to give Zed some background on your clinic before we get into that.”
El looks across the table at Zed and smiles pleasantly. “How extensive were your history lessons in the Congo, Zed? You know that when the Germans lost World War II, there was a mass exodus of Nazis to South America. They fled to Brazil, Chile, Bolivia, and mostly Argentina, sometimes with the help of the Catholic Church and their fellow countrymen already in South America. Many carried fake passports issued by the International Red Cross. False identity cards issued by the Vatican helped. Juan Peron, President of Argentina, established ‘ratlines’ for escaping Nazis to South America.
“Among this mass exodus were people instrumental in what the Nazis called Lebensborn, which was a Nazi breeding program run by Himmler to create the master race of blond-haired, blue-eyed Aryans that Hitler wanted to be the next generation of Nazi Elite. With funding from Peron, they continued their quest in Argentina but took it to a different level than what it was in Germany. They began what could be called the earliest experiments with fetus manipulation. They were crude by our standards and ultimately shut down due to loss of funding and lack of success.
“However, in the 60’s, the studies and experiments were picked up and...” she hesitates and lowers her eyes to the table.
Everyone at the table quietly waits in expectation. After a long moment, she raises her head and looks Zed squarely in the eyes.
“Monsters. Horrible monsters. They used the Mapuche people as test subjects for their inhumane experiments. They impregnated young women, manipulated their embryos and created death and bestial creatures. Most died, but not all. From the survivors, they bred more poor creatures, misshapen, and freakish.
“This went on for years, all under the guise of infertility research and funded by occasional infertility successes. These experiments remained secret for decades. Some of the experiments escaped to be hunted down and killed, but a few were never located. They either blended back into society or died natural deaths.”
“So why are you telling us this? What does this have to do with your clinic? Or, I guess that’s a stupid question, isn’t it? You’re saying that those people that did those experiments are now making artificial fetuses to create another super race, only this time, instead of Nazi stupidity being the goal, it’s beings made for interstellar travel, humans made in tubes, that will be able to withstand radiation that would kill a normal human. That’s what you’re going to tell me, correct?” Zed asks.
“No,” El says.
“No, what?”
“No, those people are not part of our Clinic.”
“So why the background on them?”
“Because the technological advancements, the discoveries that they made are allowing us to perform the work we’ve been doing here for over the last 12 years. We are the vanguard of a new people,” El says.
There is something about El’s emphasis on the word ‘we’ that strikes Zed. He frowns as it rolls around in his brain. Finally, it dawns on him. In awe, he says very quietly, “You’re a result of the early experiments. Is that what this is about? You’re a monster baby?”
At the word “monster” El flinches.
Twizzle is almost out of her seat in anger, “’Monster baby!’ Are you kidding me, Zed?” Her face is beet red. El never takes her eyes from Zed’s face as she gently dismisses Twizzle.
“Yesss,” she says so quietly, the words almost don’t make it across the table. “Yes, I am one of the creatures from those Frankenstein experiments. My mother was a young Spanish actress enticed to South America and unwillingly impregnated by an older rich Chilean ranch owner, who then wanted her to disappear when she became a problem. He sent her to the clinic. Yes, her fetus was experimented on. I am a result of those experiments.” She stands, pushes her chair back, grabs the bottom of her spandex top and lifts i
t to just below her bra, to expose striped and mottled skin with blotchy areas of different hues of orange and brown. “And I’m one of the lucky ones,” she says calmly. “Zed, come stand next to me for a moment.”
Zed reluctantly rises from his seat, rounds the table and stops next to her.
“Place your hand anywhere on the colored skin,” she orders softly.
“El, this isn’t necessary,” Twizzle says.
“No. I disagree.” She looks up at Zed, who stands a foot taller than her, and she indicates where he should put his hand. “Place your palm here, flat against my skin.”
Zed’s curiosity far outweighs any sense of political correctness or decorum he might have. He gently lays his hand on her skin and feels her warmth.
“Feels normal,” he says, then lets out a yelp and almost jumps out of his shoes when his hand is stung by what could only be described as the stings of a thousand bees. He instinctively tries to jerk his hand back away from her, but to his dismay, finds that it is firmly attached to her skin. In the next few moments, numbness travels from his palm up into his hand. The pain recedes and he is finally able to withdraw his hand from her side. She steps away from him with a coquettish smile.
“What happened? First, there was only you, then sharp pain, then numbness...” he is shaking his hand, trying to get feeling back into it. “You made my hand go to sleep. How?”
“Think of a cat’s claws, Zed. They retract until they are needed, and then they are extended. In the colored areas of my skin, my hairs are not that much different than a cat’s claws. Retracted, my skin is smooth. Pushed out, the hairs act as little needles, curved to hold whatever they pierce. Then comes the venom, numbing the victim into complacency.”
“I’ve been poisoned? How long before it wears off?”
“An hour or so. Are you in pain?”
Zed shakes his head.
El lowers her spandex and reseats herself at the table.
“Ready to go on, Zed?” she asks, looking up innocently at him.
Zed glances around the room. Rafa is staring blankly at him, Forbes is shaking his head and curling his mouth in admonition, and Twizzle is simply pissed. He takes a deep breath, swallows his pride and retires back to his place at the conference table across from El.
El continues. “Where was I? Oh yes, my statement that we are the vanguard of a new people. Let’s go on from there.
“Over twelve years ago, we discovered that all we had to do was make a slight genetic alteration to a fetus to achieve the desired effect. Our people’s tools work at the atomic level. We modified the fetus, grew it to a certain point of development and then inserted it into pregnant volunteers to continue development alongside their current fetus. Each volunteer was housed in a cloistered facility, carefully monitored and, when the time came, both babies were delivered successfully. We have had zero casualties in the program. Our start rate was just a few the first year, but we increased the number of births exponentially.” El opens her purse, pulls out a small black wallet that contains photos, opens it and shoves it across the table to Zed.
“Our first success,” she says with pride.
Zed takes the wallet, flips through the pictures, looks up at her, flips through more and then finally says, “Your daughter? She looks like you.” Both have the same full lips, same intelligent eyes, same forehead and same jawline.
“Esmeralda. My pride and joy. Twelve years old and going strong.”
“No skin condition like you?” Zed asks.
El squirms uncomfortably in her seat and then says, “No, no skin like mine.”
Zed reads her unease. “But there is something beneath that attractive exterior. Problems?”
“Not problems, just differences. She is a new breed. Just as you would expect a Cro-Magnon man to be different from you in more than just appearance, so she is different.”
“Genius? Defective? What?”
“She is psychically linked to every other new breed person.”
Zed’s focus immediately shifts to Twizzle, who slowly nods her head.
“Bangala Elongó?” he says to Twizzle and assumes that El will know nothing of what he means.
“You mean like me?” El asks casually.
Zed is surprised. He has no psychic sense of her the way he has with the Bangala Elongó. How can she be Bangala Elongó?
El continues. “I felt your entire family the moment they arrived by plane in Santiago, but you don’t feel me, do you?”
Zed looks to Twizzle once more. “Twizzle how is this possible?”
El answers, “Zed when you and Sonnet became infectious, I was introduced to you by Twizzle. You were pretty young so I’m not surprised you don’t remember. I am Bangala Elongó just as you are, but slightly different. My Daughter is Bangala Elongó, only very different. And so are all the new people. They gain strength from each other’s company. They live as a whole.”
“How many new people are there?” Zed asks.
Over 1,000. All living in Chile, spread from north to south, but most here in Santiago.”
Zed mutters an expletive. “All still children. Who takes care of them? What do you do for parents?”
“Some stay with the family of the birthmother. Some are raised in a large facility we have on the north end of Santiago. Others have been adopted by people of the Bangala Elongó who reside in Chile.”
“They stay mostly in one village like we did in Kinshasa?”
“They do. Just as your people found it convenient to group together, so do our people.”
“And yet I feel none of them. So they are different, aren’t they, just like you.”
El nods her head.
Zed looks around the table. “You all knew this, didn’t you? This meeting is for my benefit, not yours.”
Twizzle speaks. “Better to hear from the source’s mouth, don’t you think, Zed? I wanted you to have a chance to ask whatever you needed.”
Zed looks back to El. “You hear the scream today? The scream that we all psychically heard more than an hour ago?”
El frowns. “What scream?”
Zed sits back in his chair. “You would know if you heard it. Took place right after Rafa and I had lunch and had just uncrated his new motorcycle. It was a scream of terror, like a child’s scream.”
El slowly shakes her head in the negative and frowns. “What do you think it means?”
“Good question.” He looks to the others at the table: “Good question.”
Chapter 7
Day 1
Santiago, Chile
Pablo listens in as Carlos, using his phone, apprises Roberto’s brother of their location. When Carlos pockets his cellphone, Pablo asks in Spanish, “How long before he gets here?”
“Says he’ll be here in five.” He gazes across the cobbled narrow street at the graffiti-coated building where they saw Isabel disappear through a broken doorway.
“What you think she’s doing in there? Think maybe that’s where she stays?”
Carlos shakes his head. “Who knows? I never track her before. I avoid her until now. I don’t think anybody lives there. Maybe she just sleeps there at night. I think junkies go there to shoot up.”
“How do you know that?”
“It’s what I hear. I stay away from there.”
“You don’t go there to party maybe sometime?” Pablo smiles and punches Carlos in the shoulder as emphasis to his tease.
“No but...” he stops when they see Isabel come out of the doorway of the building. She walks over to a pile of trash, throws something on the pile, and then stops to study a shiny red car parked in the space between the buildings. She touches its front grille with her finger, traces its lines and walks around it to the driver side, where she peers in, bringing her face within inches of the glass. After a minute, she continues on around the car, admiring the rear, sliding her finger along its glossy paint, then to the other side. She peers in once more, studying the interior.
“You th
ink she sees us?” Carlos asks, ducking down below the window of the older car they are hiding behind.
“Does it look like she sees us? She’s too busy with that car. Maybe she wishes she had something that nice.”
“Maybe I wish I had something that nice. Maybe we boost it when we through with her.”
Pablo punches Carlos in the shoulder again and laughs.
Isabel exits the space between the buildings and then disappears back into the building.
Minutes later, Pablo is elbowing Carlos in the side to get his attention. Ambling down the street’s cracked sidewalk is a tall, dark figure wearing a long, filthy trench coat. With hunched shoulders and head bent down, he appears oblivious to everything around him. In his hand, he carries something the boys are unable to identify.
“Check it,” Pablo says, “it’s Skunk Mountain.”
Carlos pulls out his cell phone and records the big man as he shuffles down the sidewalk, slow and deliberate. “What’s he carrying? Is that a doll? Looks like a blond-haired Barbie doll.”
Pablo sniffs the air. “Good thing the wind is not towards us. He stinks when you get close.”
“Butt Hole Mountain,” Carlos says.
“Yeah, I heard him called a lot of stuff.” He rattles off a number of nicknames that all start with an obscenity and end with “Mountain.”
Girl with all the Pain Page 5
