Legion

by Robert Swartwood

  “Who was she?” John asked.

  “Who was who?”

  “My real mother.”

  “That surrogate I mentioned—Beth? She was nearly eight months along when Marta and I learned the truth of what Matheson was doing. We enlisted the help of another researcher, a man named Cameron. If I remember correctly, Marta had him wrapped around her finger.”

  Marta didn’t even smile. Her eyes grew glassy at the name. “He was a good man,” she said quietly. “A good, kind man. I’m sorry what happened to him.”

  “What did happen to him?” John asked.

  Eli said, “He was killed. The night we tried to break Beth and a few of the other surrogates out of the facility, he was shot to death, along with the rest of the women. We only managed to escape with Beth, and she had been shot in the leg.”

  There was another long beat of silence, and then John asked, “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why did you do it? It sounds like you both had a real cushy job. Were making a ton of money. Why did you get involved?”

  Eli and Marta exchanged another glance, this one lengthier, deeper, what could have been mistaken for regret but which Ashley sensed was resolve.

  “Because,” Eli said finally, “it was the right thing to do.”

  “The right thing to do?” John stared off into the valley, shaking his head. “You lied to us.”

  “What would you have had us do instead? We kept the truth from you for your protection. Christ, everything we did was for your protection.”

  “You could have told us. We would have understood.”

  “By telling you we would have placed you in even more danger. As we saw it, ignorance was the only option.”

  Standing with his back to them, still staring off into the valley, John asked, “So what happened to her—my real mother?”

  “She died giving birth to the six of you,” Marta said.

  John turned around, almost too quickly. “But there are only five of us.”

  Ashley could see it hit him a second too late that he had used the present tense, not the past tense.

  “One of them died within minutes of being born. In fact, you were not too far behind. For the first couple hours Eli and I thought we were going to lose you, too. You were so ... small and frail, so much more so than the others. That was why, when we eventually assigned you all names and birth dates, we made you the youngest.”

  John’s lips had gone tight.

  Ashley, having already found the nerve to speak two times, decided to speak again.

  “How were you able to assign them birth dates?”

  Eli took a deep breath. “It wasn’t easy. But it helped that we had a lot of money to play with, the money we had transferred to offshore accounts when we realized what we had to do. We found the right people, people who could fake documents that looked more real than real documents. We got the kids social security numbers, birth certificates, all of it. We knew we couldn’t have all their birthdays be the same day, that that would raise too many questions, so we spread them out over the years. Melissa we made the oldest.”

  “Why Melissa?” John asked.

  Eli shrugged. “Why not?”

  Marta said, “But we couldn’t spread your birth dates too far apart, as you were all basically the same age. So after Melissa, we made Valerie and Paul twins, then a year later, David, then you. Five children born over the course of four years seemed believable enough.”

  “So how old am I really?” John asked.

  “Thirty-two,” Eli said. “All of you kids are really thirty-two.”

  John turned away again, staring off into the valley. Ashley watched him, wondering what he was thinking right now. Before she realized it, she found herself asking another question.

  “Why are these people still looking for you?”

  Eli asked, “What do you mean?”

  “You said it’s been thirty years and that their power has been growing. That they’ve been working toward something. Why spend time and energy coming after you?”

  “Matheson,” Eli said. “He wants revenge for what we did to him. He was always a proud man. He loathed disrespect. What Marta and I did to him cut deep.”

  “Well,” Marta said, a faint smile on her face, “that’s not all you did.”

  Eli smiled himself. “Yes, those top secret files we mentioned? In them were the locations of many of the other facilities all across the country. After we made our escape and the children were born and Marta and I had our fake divorce, I went looking for those facilities. Some of them had already been shut down, but others were still operational. I was just one man, though, so it wasn’t like I could raid an entire facility, especially since more guards would have been added after our escape. What I did instead was wait until the babies were transported out of the facility, and then I stopped those vehicles with any means necessary.”

  John turned back around, a frown on his face. “What do you mean, any means necessary?”

  “I killed the driver and the other men guarding the babies. Yes, John, I’ve murdered before. I’ve taken life. Whatever you want to call it, I’ve done it. I’m not proud of myself for what I’ve done, but make no mistake—those people I’ve killed were not good people. They were not innocent.”

  “So then what?” John asked. “After you killed these men, what did you do with the babies?”

  “I took them to a safe location where I knew they would be protected.”

  “Where?”

  Eli said nothing. Neither did Marta.

  John took a step forward, an edge to his voice. “After everything you’ve just told me, you can’t tell me where you took these babies?”

  “It’s best you don’t know.”

  “Why?”

  Eli said nothing again, and Ashley saw understanding fill John’s eyes.

  “Oh, I see,” John said. “You don’t want me to know in case I get captured and tortured for information, is that it?”

  “All you need to know is the babies were taken someplace safe.”

  “How many times did you do this?”

  “Over the years I managed it four times before I nearly got killed myself.”

  “Why didn’t you take us there,” John asked, “me and the others?”

  “At the time Marta and I weren’t positive it was a safe location. Having just escaped, we didn’t want to invite trouble elsewhere if we didn’t have to.”

  “How thoughtful,” John said tonelessly.

  “We did what we could,” Eli said.

  “Sure. And meanwhile, me and my brothers and sisters grew up living a lie.”

  “You have nothing to complain about. Marta and I made sure you children had as many opportunities as possible. We even saved enough money to put you all through college so you could make something of your lives. Don’t be angry because you decided to waste yours.”

  John’s face was stone. He glared straight back at his father, completely silent. Finally he said, “I was happy when I heard you had died.”

  “I’m sure you were.”

  “Why did you fake your death?”

  “For the past thirty years I’ve been looking for Matheson, and, as I told you, Matheson has been looking for me. Quite recently he and his people somehow learned my new identity and location. They came after me. I had no choice but to kill myself.”

  “But you didn’t really kill yourself. Whose body was in the coffin?”

  “Remember those two men with us today?”

  “You mean the ones who then tried to kill us? How could I forget?”

  “I hired them to find a body, one that I could trade off as my own. They did. Let’s just leave it at that.”

  “Whose body was it?”

  “I don’t know, and quite honestly, I never want to find out. But it worked. At least it did until word got around to Melissa and she contacted the rest of you kids to come out for a funeral. That wasn’t part of the plan.”

  “How d
id Melissa find out?”

  Marta sighed. “We don’t know. But once she learned what happened and contacted me, it wasn’t like I could deny it. I tried talking her out of getting everyone together. I even went so far as to tell her I had recently had a stroke and it would be too much. But that made her even more determined to have a proper funeral. So she contacted the rest of you kids and had you come out, and that ... that was where they were waiting.”

  “Who?”

  “These people,” Eli said. “They must have suspected I hadn’t really killed myself. We made it look as real as possible, but again, these people are powerful. They either got hold of a blood sample or what was left of the dental samples or something. They knew it wasn’t me. Or maybe they knew it was me and just didn’t care. But when you kids all came for the funeral, they were waiting to follow you back to your individual homes.”

  “If they wanted us dead,” John said, “why not just kill us all at the cemetery?”

  “Because they want me. They want Marta, too, but I think they were willing to risk letting her go for the time being. Until then, they had no idea where the rest of you lived. They didn’t know your names, what you did, any of that. But now they did. And they knew that once they started killing you off, one by one, it would draw me out.”

  Everything happened too quickly then. Before Ashley knew it, John was charging forward, throwing his weight into Eli and sending them both into the hood of the Buick. Marta cried out in shock. Eli exhaled a large gulp of air as all of the wind was knocked out of him.

  John, leaning over him, wrapped his hand around his throat. “You fucking bastard, you set us all up! You made us the fucking bait!”

  Eli didn’t fight the hand gripping his throat. He just stared back up into John’s face.

  Marta took a hesitant step forward. “John, please, let him go.”

  John didn’t move, glaring back down at his father.

  “Please”—Marta’s voice was near tears—“we didn’t want it to be this way. We never wanted it to be this way.”

  Finally John relented, releasing his grip on Eli’s throat and stepping back. He said to Marta, “Yeah, and how did you want it to be?”

  Eli lightly touched his throat as he pushed off the hood. “Had we done nothing, you kids would have become brainwashed soldiers. Either that or these people would have used you in some other way I can’t even begin to imagine.”

  “You let Melissa die. You let her family die.”

  “What would you have wanted us to do?”

  “I don’t know. Warn her. Protect her. Anything than just let her die.”

  “That wasn’t a viable option,” Eli said. “Besides, we didn’t think she would be the first one. We ... we thought it would be you.”

  Ashley expected John to charge his father again, this time with even more rage and fury. She expected him to throw a punch, to draw blood. But he just stood there, completely motionless, his hands balling into fists at his sides, before turning around and facing off toward the valley.

  For the longest time no one spoke.

  Marta said, her voice hesitant, “John?”

  His back still to them, his voice soft and low, John asked, “Why did you even bother saving all of us in the first place if you were just going to let us die?”

  “We didn’t plan for this,” Eli said. “We didn’t know what was going to happen thirty years ago. We did everything we could to save you. The rest of it ... it’s all out of our hands.”

  “But it’s not,” John said, turning back around, his eyes glassy with tears. “You could have done something. You could have warned Melissa. You could have warned all of us.”

  “We can’t worry about the wrongs we’ve made. We can only focus on how to make those wrongs right.”

  “By doing what? Melissa and her family are dead. Paul and David and Valerie and their families are either already dead or they’ll soon be. So now what do you suggest we fucking do?”

  “Fight back,” Eli said.

  “Who?” John looked at Ashley, then at his parents. “Us?”

  “Do you see anyone else?”

  “What about David?” John asked. “He’s only a couple hours away. We should call him. We should call everyone and warn them.”

  “We can’t. As soon as a call would be made, these people would have our location. They’d be here within minutes.”

  “So what do you suggest?”

  “We go to David next.”

  Even in the morning shadows, Ashley could see John’s face flush.

  “But not to warn him, right?” When nobody answered him, John shook his head. “Of course not. Why would you warn him? He’s the bait.”

  thirty-seven

  By eight o’clock that morning, we learn that Valerie and Paul and their families have died.

  Valerie, who lives with her husband just outside of Houston, became victim of a fire that mysteriously started sometime during the night. Fire crews were dispatched, but by the time they arrived on scene, the house was in blazes. Hours later, when the flames were extinguished, Valerie and her husband were found in what was left of their bed. It was believed there was a gas leak which caused the fire, and which probably stopped their breathing before the hungry flames managed to consume them.

  Paul, who lives with his wife and daughter in Rochester, Minnesota, died in a car accident late last night. They were coming back from Paul’s daughter’s ballet recital. The roads were icy, and they hit a patch of black ice that sent them spinning through a guardrail and down an embankment. Their car rolled several times and landed upside down. Despite wearing their seat belts, all three passengers died before police and medical crews arrived on scene.

  We learn this news from Marta, who has a jail broken iPhone and has been scouring the Internet ever since we got back on the road headed for Massachusetts. It’s where David works at the Medford Medical Center.

  “If they’ve killed Paul and Valerie already,” I say, “what makes you think they haven’t already killed David?”

  Marta says, “I haven’t seen any news on his death yet.”

  “He and his wife split up, what did you say, earlier this year? As far as we know he lives alone. He could be dead and just waiting for someone to find the body.”

  “He’s not,” Eli says.

  “How do you know?”

  Eli just gives me a look in the rearview mirror, and like that, everything falls into place.

  “Oh, that’s right,” I say, disdain loud and clear in my voice. “You’re not the only one using him as bait.”

  • • •

  An hour later we pull into a truck stop. They have a Burger King inside. Eli suggests if we get anything, we take it to go.

  I’m starving, but I can’t bring myself to eat. Still I do go in to use the bathroom, and come back out to find Ashley buying a pack of cigarettes. She’s upgraded this time to a pack of Marlboros.

  She gives me a sheepish look and shrugs. “I figure at this point, dying from cancer wouldn’t be so bad.”

  We head outside and she tears open the pack and then turns back to the truck stop, exasperated. “Forgot to buy a lighter.”

  “Here”—I pull the gold-plated lighter from my pocket—“use this.”

  She has to shakes the lighter a few times for it to produce a flame. She hands it back to me but I wave it off.

  “Keep it. Eli told me it’s a good luck charm and that I need to hold on to it, but quite honestly he can go fuck himself.”

  Currently Eli is gassing the Buick, Marta in the backseat.

  Ashley turns her head to exhale a puff of smoke, her gaze never leaving me. “Despite what you may think of him and Marta, they saved your lives.”

  “Did they?”

  “You’re honestly going to act like it’s not true?”

  “Do you have any siblings?”

  “No.”

  “Must be nice, being the only child. You get all the attention, right? In my family—and I’
m using the word family pretty loosely—attention wasn’t so easily doled out. You heard Eli—he was never around, so Marta basically raised us the few times we were all together. Maybe once or twice a year we’d get together, otherwise we were shipped off to boarding schools. I was the youngest—at least, that’s what they told me, but obviously it was a lie—so I didn’t get nearly as much attention as the rest of them. I mean, Christ, they named me John Smith. Just how fucking generic is that?”

  Ashley doesn’t speak for a long beat. She just stands there, smoking, studying me, until she finally shakes her head in disgust. “That’s complete bullshit. You realize that, don’t you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just because you messed up and made bad choices in your life, you can’t blame your parents.”

  “They’re not my parents.”

  “Of course they are. So what if they didn’t actually give birth to you—they were still the ones who raised you. And so what if your father wasn’t around much—you know now he was keeping his distance to keep all of you safe. Christ, can’t you be thankful for anything?”

  She’s right, of course. I am being unreasonable. Fact is, I’m being a fucking douche bag. But it just blows my mind, thinking about how much different my life may have been had I been the oldest, or even one of the middle children, and not the youngest. Would I be any different? Would I somehow have, I don’t know, tried harder in school and in life in general? Look at what Melissa accomplished. Had she done all that because she was the oldest? No, probably not. Even if she had taken my place as the youngest child, she no doubt would have accomplished the same very thing, and that’s what really pisses me off. That in the end I have no excuse for the shitty life I’ve led. Always wanting to blame my parents, my father especially, or whoever there was for not being happy, when in reality it’s always been my fault. Not that this is a newsflash. I’ve always known it, or at least suspected it, but it’s not until now that I finally swallow the truth. And the truth, well, it tastes like shit.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Ashley waves it off. “Don’t worry about.”

  “No, I mean about this whole thing. I’m sorry you got in the middle of this. I’m sorry that your friend was killed.”