“She took a terrific blow when the Slick crashed,” he said. “The swelling in her lower spine is very serious. We don’t think her back is broken, but without X-rays it’s impossible to tell for sure. One thing I am sure of though, is if she doesn’t have surgery to relieve the pressure she may never walk again. And I mean within the next three to four days at the outside.”
“If you’re telling me this because you think you need my permission, you’ve got it,” Michael said. “But Ellen could have given you the go-ahead. So what’s up?”
“I’m not a real doctor,” the man admitted. “I’m just a medic. All the real doctors are dead and none of them were surgeons, anyhow. She needs a spinal surgeon. She needs Doctor Garcia or some other real surgeon. Any of us medics try something like that and we could easily do her more harm than good.”
Sara, Michael thought as he digested what the medic had told him. Ellen needs Sara and Sara is God-knows-where.
“Just do your best, Doc. That’s all anybody can do,” Michael offered as he walked out of the hospital.
“What am I supposed to do?” Michael mumbled to himself as he sat on a fallen log at the edge of the camp.
He placed his elbows on his knees and propped his head in his hands. He understood exactly how his friend Jim must have felt. Conflict raged within him. He wanted to drop everything and start tracking Sara. But the logical side of his mind, which he always scoffed at as being the weakest part of his intellect, told him that would be foolish, worse than useless.
For one thing, even assuming Sara was in Nephi and not on a boat bound for California, just getting to Nephi and back on a fast horse, without dodging patrols, would take four days. And he wasn’t fool enough to believe he could get into Nephi without evading enemy patrols. Prince John may have committed virtually all of his army to the attack, but the man wasn’t stupid enough to leave his rear undefended. So, if the medic was right, Michael couldn’t get there, rescue Sara and return soon enough to help Ellen anyway.
No. Michael decided he couldn’t leave. At least not until this fight was over, which, one way or another, would be tomorrow. Until then, his first duty was to remain and fight with Ellen and the Allies. But if Adam’s last-ditch plan failed, Michael decided he would fall back to wherever the hospital was located so he could die beside his wife. He would not retreat one step farther than her cot.
He stood and stretched, lifting his eyes to the thin band of stars that showed above the rim rock. This canyon, with its narrow floor and high, steep, looming walls was an ominous place to fight in. It reminded him somewhat of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, or Royal Gorge, in Colorado--dark, deep gashes in the earth.
His mind went back to the conversation he’d had with Ellen. She’d mentioned Jim had sent Raymond Stormcloud after Sara, but no one had heard from him since the battle began three days before.
My God! Michael was staggered by that thought. It’s only been three days. Then his mind snapped back to the salient point. Where the hell was Stormcloud?
Chapter 48: The House of the Dead
Raymond Stormcloud stood at the mouth of the canyon shaking his head in disgust as he looked down at the tracks in the dirt of the canyon floor. For almost three days now, he and his four-man squad had been in hot pursuit of Doctor Merriman and his captive. Once again, they had failed to head him off.
Raymond spat off to the side. How the hell could anyone so fat ride so fast and so tirelessly? And how could a young Indian buck fail to ride faster and farther?
Against Raymond’s will, the Doctor was earning some respect. They had followed the trail across Hop Creek Ridge, past Pine Springs and down Water Hollow Canyon. They were less than ten miles from Nephi.
The doctor could ride like a bat out of hell, knowing all of the King’s patrols would have been alerted to expect him. Raymond and his men couldn’t. This close to Nephi, they had to proceed cautiously.
“Damn!” How was he going to tell Jim Cantrell that the doctor had slipped through his fingers?
Raymond just couldn’t let it go at that. Sara Garcia was more than a healer, she was Jim’s woman. And the story was well known how Jim and Michael Whitebear rescued her from some of the King’s soldiers. Minowayuh had told him how Whitebear walked like a ghost through the enemy camp and spirited her out, while freeing the Ute and his friends. That Yellow-Eyes was a warrior and this war was making him a legend. Perhaps he, too, could be such a warrior. Besides, he had promised Jim Cantrell he would bring her back and his word was his bond.
It only took a brief, huddled conference with his men. They turned back to rejoin the relief army. Raymond headed on toward Nephi, alone. He checked the sun: three o’clock. He should reach the town by nightfall.
Later that evening, Raymond, disguised as one of Jacques Lachelles’s slaves carrying several pieces of band equipment, entered the Governor’s mansion. Ostensibly he was there to help set up for the concert later in the evening, but Jacques, whose duties had been expanded to include Propaganda, had learned Sara Garcia was being held there.
Jacques’s idea to use the music of the Troubled Land Band to promote the King’s agenda had received enthusiastic approval from King Joseph. It also gave Jacques total control over the programming that aired on K.I.N.G. radio. That had helped immeasurably when they’d sent the Allies word of Prince John’s attack from the north. Both Jacques and Denise intended to continue to forward vital information to the Allies, via the King’s radio.
Unfortunately, the information filtering back from the front wasn’t so much vital as it was depressing. First had come news of the Prince’s victory at Bloody Lake and then, just this evening, they’d learned the Allies had lost Springville. Neither Jacques nor Denise were masters of military strategy, but they both believed it was a mistake to try to hold Provo when the guerrilla tactics had been working so well. It looked to them like the Allies had played right into Prince John’s hands.
Jacques was afraid the Allies were going to lose and if that happened, he and the Band would end up spending the rest of their lives in California. While there were certainly worse fates than being permanently stuck in a Ministry level position in the King’s government, he and Denise valued their freedom higher than that. Stinking slaves with a title, was the way Jacques had put it, subject to the whims of a man Jacques believed to be a psychotic lunatic at best. Besides, Jacques now knew he would be replaced as soon as the King grew tired of him and he had learned retirement benefits for the King’s employees consisted of a cemetery plot scheduled for immediate occupancy.
When Stormcloud showed up earlier that evening with news of Sara Garcia’s capture, Jacques had set the wheels in motion to discover where she was being held. It hadn’t taken long to find she was in the Royal Inquisitor’s workshop, in the basement of the Governor’s mansion. He and Denise gave Raymond a crash course in acting like a slave. Everyone was wondering why Prince John wanted Sara Garcia so badly, but that piece of information was buried so deep not even Jacques could dig it out.
Raymond finished setting up the gear under the subtle supervision of Denise. He then slipped out and began his search. The concert would begin in less than one hour. He would tell anyone who questioned him that he was running errands for The Honorable Sir Jacques Lachelle, Minister of Art, Culture and Information. He actually had a note in his pocket for the Royal Inquisitor, inviting that nameless functionary to the concert. That should make any lowly guard mind his own damn business. And if that doesn’t work I’ll kill the SOB, Raymond thought. He really didn’t have much to worry about, though. Nobody paid much attention to slaves.
The only thing that concerned him at all was the possibility of running into Doctor Merriman, who would certainly recognize Raymond and give him away. Of course, if the Doctor was alone…. A predatory smile flicked across Raymond’s face and he erased it immediately. Slaves didn’t smile.
He walked down the central hallway toward the enormous closed doors at the other end, trying not to
stare. The Governor’s mansion had been under construction for the past year and was still not entirely finished. It was a huge, imposing structure, covering an entire city block. The north wing contained the totally remodeled Nephi City Hall, whose function was still to house so-called civil government offices. The ground floor of the south wing was one enormous ballroom, which was divided almost in half by a centrally located raised stage. It was one of those rooms in which acoustics were remarkable. The footsteps of a lone person echoed hollow, threatening to overwhelm. But when the room was filled with party-goers and musicians, such sounds were absorbed.
By one of those tricks of sound of which such rooms are capable, a person standing in a certain spot on the stage could clearly hear whispered conversations from the Governor’s alcove across the room. Denise had told him it was, “like having a peep-hole for your ear”. It had taken Denise and Jacques over a week to figure out what was happening and take advantage of it. Now Jacques’s drums were stationed on one side of the peep-hole and his piano was on the other.
The east wing contained regional military offices and K.I.N.G. radio. The floor above the east wing housed the Governor’s living quarters.
But it was the west wing and more specifically the prison below the west wing, that interested Raymond. For the west wing housed what Jamal Rashid proudly called the largest and best equipped Inquisitorium this side of the King’s. Jamal had insisted on giving Jacques and Denise a tour soon after they had arrived in Nephi. What they had seen in that hellish house of horror had been more than enough to convince them they must not be taken alive if they were discovered.
Denise had forced herself to divulge a few details to Chris Herrera before she set out for Provo and it was enough to convince Chris to die fighting. Jacques and Denise still occasionally shared haunted looks. They suffered from nightmares for weeks afterward.
So potent and terrible was the reputation of the west wing that mere mention of the Inquisitorium was often enough to make a prisoner talk. It was the only area of the Governor’s Mansion that was soundproofed. No one went there of their own free will. That was enough to guarantee any guard would assume Raymond was there on business, though he had to show his note to gain admittance.
Once inside, his nerve almost faltered. There was such an aura of pain, suffering and death it was almost overwhelming. Every conceivable instrument of torture, from knives and pliers to torches and bowel hooks, hung in racks from the walls. Some of them were quite ingenious, Raymond admitted. But the ones that frightened him most were the ones for which he could discern no obvious purpose. Most of the tools were bloodstained, no one down here being overly concerned with maintaining sanitary conditions, though here and there one gleamed from recent cleaning.
Tables, chairs and benches, many with gynecologist’s stirrups, were placed seemingly at random throughout the room. Most were befouled with human feces, blood and urine. The stench was overpowering. At the other end of the room, a pair of badly mutilated slaves moved from table to table, cleaning up the mess. The slave with eyes, but no arms, told the one with arms, but no eyes, where to clean. From the looks of things, it had been a busy day.
Raymond couldn’t repress a shudder as he walked the length of the room and passed through an unguarded door to the chamber beyond. As the door closed behind him, he stopped in shock, rooted to the spot, unable to believe his eyes. Nothing Jacques had told him could have prepared him for this.
Iron barred cages lined the walls. Inside were naked human beings undergoing torture by various methods. The remaining portions of their burned, flayed, mangled, acid-etched bodies were suspended within, on, or over, various instruments of pain. He now saw demonstrated some of the devices from the preceding room whose functions he hadn’t been able to guess.
No one cried out in pain. No one moved. They were stuffed, mounted by a taxidermist whose extreme attention to detail could not be ignored. The room was an altar to agony, supercharged with stillborn screams.
Stormcloud swallowed the taste of bile. If he started puking now he might not be able to stop. Whoever did this was EVIL! He was suddenly glad he had come into Nephi after Sara. After seeing this, he knew that if he couldn’t get her out he should at least kill her. If his Susan was ever in a similar situation he would hope someone would do the same for her.
He forced his feet to move toward the doors at the end of the room, narrowing his eyes and focusing intensely on them so as to better ignore the new horrors each step revealed. The right hand door bore a legend. DOWN, it read. Raymond passed through, noticing an empty desk just inside the door and started down the stairs. The sound of moaning wafted up the stairwell.
He had never been so scared in his life and he wasn’t at all sure how much more of this he could take. Courage, his father had told him, is fear used for a purpose. Raymond exhibited great courage as he descended into the depths.
His footsteps rang loudly in the hollow stairwell. He rounded the landing and there below were two guards eyeing him suspiciously. One sat behind a desk, the twin of the one above, toying with an M16. The other man stood beside the desk, one hand resting on his pistol. They could tell by his dress he was a slave.
The guard behind the desk spoke up. “What do you want down here, maggot?”
Savoring the anger roused by the insult, Stormcloud conquered his fear and snapped, “Nothing that concerns you.”
The man behind the desk rose, his face flushing red with anger. But before he could say anything, the guard with the pistol spoke.
“Your master should teach you better manners, slave,” he said with a sneer. He smacked a fist into his palm for emphasis.
“I’ll tell the Minister you disapprove,” Raymond replied casually, with only the lightest emphasis on the title.
Poof! The guard behind the desk deflated. The other guard looked at Raymond warily. Shit! It figured. Only a valued slave with a powerful master could afford to be such a pain in the ass.
Instantly, the atmosphere shifted as the two guards considered that neither one of them wanted to get a full-fledged Minister ticked off at them. However, they worked for the Royal Inquisitor and that, of itself, inspired terror in most people. And they did have their duty to perform.
“Be that as it may,” said the man behind the desk, “no one is allowed through that door without a pass from the Royal Inquisitor.”
Raymond drew himself up to his full height and glowered at the guards. He called up his best diction and pulled a C3PO.
“Somehow I doubt Prince John requires a pass, or Governor Rashid, for that matter. I even doubt Minister Lachelle requires such a pass; but as I am only his slave and here to serve his interests by contacting the Royal Inquisitor, I shall return to him and let him know his wishes were thwarted because you said I needed a pass.” Raymond leaned forward, peering at the man’s nametag. “Jeffers, is it?”
Raymond turned and started up the stairs.
“And when I get back,” he threw over his shoulder at the guard with the pistol, “you had better be at your assigned post.”
The man paled slightly.
“Wait!” It was the guard at the desk, capitulating. “I can call the Inquisitor’s office and see if he’ll pass you through.” He sat down and pulled out a drawer with a telephone in it.
No, thought Raymond, not a phone. He knew they didn’t have phones working yet. Must be an intercom system.
The guard spoke for a moment, listened briefly, then held out the phone toward Raymond.
Stormcloud stepped forward and took the receiver, placing it against his ear and thinking how odd that once familiar gesture now seemed.
“State your business,” the voice said.
“Through some unspeakable mishap,” Raymond began, in his best protocol-droid voice, “the Royal Inquisitor was left off the guest list for this evening’s concert. This grievous oversight was noticed only a short time ago. My master, the Honorable Sir Jacques Lachelle, Minister of Culture, Arts and Information
, at once dispatched me here to remedy this error. I bear a personal note of apology from my master and his most cordial invitation to attend.”
There was a pause as the gist of Raymond’s carefully rehearsed speech was relayed to someone else.
“Enter.”
An electronic buzzer went off, reminiscent of those used in security-conscious apartment buildings before The Dying Time. The guards both looked mildly surprised he was being allowed in. Raymond opened the door and stepped into a nightmare.
Once more, the room he was in was lined with iron cages. But these contained living prisoners, all of whom bore marks of torture. Moans, howls and whimpers came at him from all sides as he walked the length of the room. This time he had to look into each cage, for he had to find Sara. His gorge rose, but he fought it back down. Some tough Indian, he scolded himself. What he saw went beyond brutality, beyond mere mutilation; it defined the word obscene. He heard an odd noise.
He rounded a corner and stopped. A thing bumped and scraped its way along the floor toward him, mewling as it dragged itself closer. It was so horribly scarred, Raymond couldn’t tell if it had been a man or a woman, in spite of the fact it was naked. It was bald and from the acid-etched condition of the scalp, no hair would ever grow there again. Its eyes were charred, empty, holes, staring from a face that appeared to have been partially melted. Its ears and nose were gone, though whether they’d been cut off or burned off was impossible to tell. Snot ran downwards from one of its nose holes. A heavy iron collar encircled its neck. Its legs were stubs of such unequal length it had to drag itself along the floor. Its arms ended in fingerless, thumbless, hands. Ridges of scar tissue covered its body. Its mewling whine made it obvious the thing had no tongue.
The Dying Time (Book 2): After The Dying Time Page 49
