Under the Beetle's Cellar

by Mary Willis Walker

  Josh let out some deep, desperate gasps for air.

  Walter got up and went to him. Samuel Mordecai gestured for him to sit down, but he pretended not to see it. He bent down over the boy. “Water, Josh?”

  “No—can’t—” Josh bent forward abruptly and put his hands on his knees. He threw his head back and gulped for air.

  Walter picked the inhaler up from the seat. He held it up to Josh’s mouth. “Use your inhaler, honey. It helps.”

  Josh took it and squeezed. Walter had grown to love the poof sound it made because he associated it with relief. Josh handed it back to Walter and began to draw some ragged breaths.

  Samuel Mordecai took a few steps down the aisle to look closer at Josh. With each step he took, Josh wheezed louder. After a few seconds Mordecai backed up and said, “We’ll do the lesson later. Give sonny here a chance to get himself together.”

  Brandon Betts stood up. “Wait, Prophet Mordecai!” He ran to the front of the bus and grabbed Mordecai’s hand. “I want to come with you. I don’t belong with them. I believe you, and they don’t. They aren’t listening like I am.”

  “I believe you, too.” Sue Ellen stood up.

  “Now, now,” Mordecai said, slapping the rolled-up paper against his leg in a nervous flurry. “We’ll all be together in the millennium. But you need to stay here until Friday at sundown. Then you’ll have your fifty days. Fifty days for the earth to purify you.” He swept his hand toward the black windows. “See the earth all around you. It is rebirthing you. Can’t you feel it happening? It makes you worthy to be Lambs of God. You have to stay here. That’s where our name comes from. Hearth Jezreelites. See hearth is earth with an H, which stands for heaven, heaven in earth. And Jezreelites because Jesus trod the valley of Jezreel and I am His, His son, His prophet, His descendant.”

  He disengaged Brandon’s hand from his arm. “You’ll come with me on Friday.” He pulled the X-acto knife out of his hip pocket and leaned over to the window. With a flick of the wrist, he scraped off a Band-Aid. There were three left now.

  Josh’s breathing had quieted, but Lucy and Bucky had begun to sob. Brandon was pleading and praying. Samuel Mordecai backed out the door. “Tend to this, Mr. Bus Driver.”

  Seeing him leaving, Walter was stabbed with panic. With Josh’s inhaler in his hand, he bolted up the aisle. “Wait! Mordecai. You see how Josh is. This is nothing. He gets much worse attacks at night. We just need some more of his medication, an albuterol inhaler, like this one.” He thrust it up in front of Mordecai’s face. “And maybe a steroid one for emergencies. That’s all. When I talk to the negotiators, I want to ask them. I know they’ll want to send one in, leave one at the gate maybe. If I ask for it, it won’t be like you’ll have to give up anything for it. Please let me. When can I talk to them?”

  Samuel Mordecai turned around and pushed his wild curls back off his forehead. “There will be no asking for anything, Mr. Bus Driver, but here’s something—the Lambs can send messages to their parents—one sentence per Lamb. Tomorrow. We’ll come get you.”

  “Can I send a message, too?”

  Mordecai laughed. “You’ll have a minute. If you can fit it in, send a message.” He turned, but Walter grabbed his arm and held up the inhaler to show him again. He opened his mouth to make another plea, too, but Samuel Mordecai reached out and took the inhaler from him. Then he stepped out the door and pulled himself up and out—quickly—a fast escape.

  Walter stood stunned. He had taken the inhaler. Did that mean he was going to get it refilled? Or was he confiscating it? The one thing that actually seemed to give relief?

  Walter turned back to face the chaos of the bus: Several kids were crying; Brandon and Hector were screaming at one another. Josh was gasping. Bucky was curled up into a ball, his hands pressed over his ears.

  Walter stood at the front of the bus, trying to regulate his breathing. He didn’t know where to start, what to do, how to calm all this down. It was chaos, total breakdown. Then Hector gave Brandon a shove that sent him reeling against one of the seats. Brandon started to scream.

  “Hector, please come here,” Walter barked.

  Hector gave Brandon’s arm a final twist and stalked up the aisle. “What?” he said, looking up into Walter’s face.

  “This. If Brandon believes what Mordecai is saying, that’s his right. Religious freedom.”

  “He’s like a …” He searched for the word. “Traitor.”

  “No. We’re all under lots of pressure. Don’t give Brandon a hard time. He’s doing what he feels he has to do.”

  Hector lowered his voice. “I’m afraid he’ll tell about our emergency plan, our rehearsals. We can’t let Brandon or Sue Ellen tell him about it. Don’t that worry you, man?”

  “Yes. It worries me a lot. But I think Brandon’s really torn apart. He’s afraid Mordecai might be right.”

  “Mordecai’s a bag of hot air. Here’s what I want to do.” Hector put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a red Swiss Army knife. He held it close to his chest, his back to the rest of the bus, so only Walter could see it. He opened the largest blade and whispered, “I’m sick of this shit. Why don’t I stick him. Before he kills us, man. That’s what he’s going to do, ain’t it?”

  “Shhh.” Walter put a finger to his mouth. “Don’t scare the other kids. I don’t know.” He looked at the knife with keen interest. He took it from Hector and examined the blade. He ran his thumb against the cutting edge and moved the blade back and forth to see how strong it was. Then he closed it carefully and slipped it into his own pocket.

  “Hey, man,” Hector hissed. “It’s mine. It’s all I got.”

  “I know. But, Hector, I need to have it for the emergency plan. I’ve used a knife before, when I was in the army. I’ve used it against men. It’s best for me to have it. If there’s any stabbing to do, I will do it. How did you manage to hold on to it through the search?”

  Hector leaned over to study the three Band-Aids. “In my Jockeys, man, and it hurt like hell.” He touched one of the Band-Aids. “Three more days. Why haven’t they tried to rescue us? When you talked to that FBI guy the second day he said he’d get us out, right?”

  Walter nodded.

  Hector’s huge black eyes filled with tears. “Well, why don’t they, man? Don’t they know he’s gonna kill us?”

  It was a subject Walter had thought about endlessly. Now he squatted down, and motioned for Hector to do the same so they could talk in some privacy. Walter told the boy, “He also said our safety was the most important thing. I think they want to come rescue us, but they don’t know where we are. Remember when we drove here, how big the property is, and there are lots of different buildings. I think for a rescue they need to know where we are. And from all I can figure, I suppose Mordecai threatened to kill us if they come in.”

  He studied the boy. At twelve, Hector Ramirez was the most mature of the boys, and the savviest. The oldest of a family of seven, he’d had responsibilities beyond his years. His voice was already deepening and a wispy growth darkened his upper lip. Walter had found him to be quick-witted and dependable. It was probably inexcusable to burden a child with this, but he needed someone to talk to and Hector seemed like a good bet, a sturdy kid. “They probably worry that if they attack, we’ll get hit in the cross fire. Or that it would take so long to find us after an attack starts that—”

  Hector finished it for him: “That that scumbag will kill us.”

  Walter nodded. “I’m trying to think of a way to let them know where we are.”

  “When you talk to them tomorrow?”

  “Uh-huh. Maybe try to give them some message that the Hearth Jezreelite guys wouldn’t know was a message, but was.”

  Hector’s dark eyes gleamed. “Like some secret code or something.”

  “Yeah, exactly. I’m working on some ideas. Hector, are you willing to let me use your message to your parents as a way to send a message?”

  Hector thought for a minute. “Sur
e thing, man. How would you do it?”

  “I’m not sure. But what would your parents do if they got a message from you that made no sense to them?”

  Hector grinned. “My dad is not … well, not fast to see things that are new. But my mom, she’s something else. She’d know right away what we were trying to do.”

  “Okay,” Walter said. “But what I want to do now is get ready for what’s going to happen. I need you to help. I want to practice our drills so that when it comes, we can all do our parts really fast.”

  “Yeah,” Hector said, “I think we can do better than old Jacksonville is doing. What a dim bulb the guy is.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Walter said. “He may come out of it okay. Slow and steady wins the race.”

  Hector snorted. “Slow and steady! That don’t win nothing. Don’t you go to the movies, man?” He smiled his big flashing smile. “Fast and mean wins the race. That’s how we gotta play it—fast and mean.”

  CHAPTER

  EIGHT

  “As a young man I was recruited into a communal cult where we were brainwashed into following orders without thinking. They forced us to stay there and stripped us of our identities. This cult was heavily armed and very violent—the United States Army.”

  LIEUTENANT GRADY TRAYNOR, AUSTIN POLICE DEPARTMENT

  Seeing Grady’s ancient green Mazda parked in her driveway made her pulse quicken. Molly hadn’t seen him for five days, and she’d missed him—lots. Too much. She didn’t bother with the garage, just pulled her truck in next to his Mazda. As she got out, she heard whimpers coming from the fenced yard at the side of her town house. She walked around toward the gate. Grady’s low voice floated out to her. “That’s right, Copper. Good boy.”

  “What’s he doing to be a good boy,” she called over the high wood fence, “peeing on my grass?”

  The gate opened for her. Grady Traynor, dressed in a gray suit that looked as if it had been slept in for several lifetimes, stood there smiling at her. His white hair and mustache looked limp and slightly greasy. The circles under his eyes had darkened alarmingly and his tan was fading fast. After forty-seven days, the standoff at Jezreel was taking a toll on him that twenty-eight years of police work, eight of it in homicide, had somehow failed to do.

  He opened his arms wide and Molly stepped toward him, her heart quickening.

  Before they could embrace, however, a low growl made Molly step back hastily. An enormous black dog snarled up at her, his lips drawn back to show large yellowed fangs. The coarse hair on his neck bristled and his legs were spread aggressively. His amber eyes were slits of malice.

  “Goddammit, Grady. That scares me.” The dog had repelled her from the start, when Grady had brought him by for the first time three months ago. He was a Belgian Malinois, Grady had informed her, though to Molly’s eye he looked exactly like a German shepherd. It was an ancient working breed, Grady explained like a proud parent, bred in Europe to herd sheep and kill predators, now used almost exclusively for police and guard work.

  This specimen was mostly black, but with a dusting of reddish tan on his muzzle, neck, and front legs. His long narrow muzzle had a downward bend in it about midway between the eye and the nose, and the ear on his left side had a ragged notch torn out of it.

  “Sorry, Molly. I keep forgetting that he sees close contact as something he’s supposed to do something about. He doesn’t mean anything personal by it.” He squatted down to pat the dog. “Okay, Copper. It’s all right, sweetie.” He rubbed his black head and chest vigorously. The dog quieted down. “See. He’s a real pussycat. If you’d get to know him, you’d—”

  “Grady, don’t start that.”

  “Okay. But if you’d just keep him here for a few days, you’d see that he’s—”

  “No. Not for a few days. Not even a few minutes. I don’t want a dog. And if I did, this dog would definitely not be the one I wanted. I think he’s dangerous, a time bomb. He shows too much tooth for my taste.”

  “This disappoints me, Molly. I would think you’d see the challenge here.”

  “I’ve got plenty of challenges in my life. The answer was no two months ago, and it’s still no. This is your reclamation project, Grady. I predict you’ll regret it. When this animal bites someone and you get sued.”

  “But look at him,” Grady said, still scratching the dog’s chest. The dog had his eyes closed in ecstasy and his left rear leg was thumping reflexively.

  “Well, you certainly have the touch.” She laughed, thinking how much she’d like to get Grady upstairs in bed for a few hours. “That’s one thing Copper and I agree on. When do you have to be back at Jezreel?”

  “Tomorrow, six A.M. We’re still doing twelve hours on and twelve off.”

  She walked over to one of the rickety lawn chairs on the little brick terrace and sat down. “Killer schedule. After six weeks of it, it’s amazing you’re still standing. How’s it going?”

  He sat down next to her. “It’s not. It’s not going anywhere. It’s a bust.”

  “Tell me.”

  “There’s nothing to tell. Forty-seven days, Molly—a month and a half—the best negotiators in the country working round the clock, and we have gotten fucking nowhere. Andrew Stein’s the guy who wrote the book on the subject. He’s got thirty years’ experience in talking perps out of doing insane things to hostages. He talked the Iraqi bombers out of the synagogue in Chicago; he negotiated fifty hostages out of that Colorado survivalist commune without a drop of blood getting shed. From Samuel Mordecai he can’t get one kid on the telephone for ten seconds. You know what we’ve accomplished in forty-seven days? We got one minute with the driver on the second day. And this morning—big breakthrough—we got him to agree to let us speak to the driver again. Tomorrow, he says. For that, we give him ten minutes on KLTX radio to play his sermon tape, plus we sent in some newspapers. We also stuck some inhalers in the bag with the papers in the hope that once they’re inside, he’ll give them to Josh Benderson.”

  “Did you put listening devices in the inhalers?”

  “Oh, God, Molly. We debated it all night, but if Mordecai found them, it would kill all chance of getting medication to the kid. So we didn’t.” He ran his hands through his hair. “That kid is seriously sick. Assuming he’s still alive. For all we know, they’ve all been dead from day one.” He said it fiercely.

  “I don’t think they’re dead,” Molly said.

  Grady sighed. “Me either. Not yet.”

  “Have you figured out what he wants?”

  “Sure. He wants an hour on network television. That’s what he’s really after, Molly—a worldwide satellite TV broadcast before Friday night. He wants to preach to the world.”

  “So let him.”

  “We will. Gladly. But he needs to give something in return.”

  “All eleven kids and the bus driver?”

  “That’s what we say. And they’d have to come out first.” He leaned over closer to her and whispered, “Just between us, we’d settle for six kids.”

  “What does he say to it?”

  “He doesn’t answer. He rants. He says we—the negotiators—are part of the military-industrial, computer-corrupted group of world leaders he’s marked to be made into blood statues. Didn’t he once threaten you with that?”

  “Yes. When my cult piece came out.”

  “So you may be wondering what blood statues are.” He raised his eyebrows at her, always a dramatic gesture since they were jet black and met in the middle.

  “No. But I can see you’re going to tell me.”

  “I think it’s important for you to know this. Because we—the negotiators—have not acted on his message, Mordecai has marked our souls with bar codes that emit a blue glow that can only be perceived by angels. We are not talking about just any angels here, but a team of military attack angels led by the Archangel Gabriel. When the trumpets blow on Friday, they will swoop to earth and cut our throats with heat-sealing laser knives. Then they
will hang us upside down in such a way that with our arms and legs outstretched we will resemble pentagrams. And we will remain blood statues, rotting and stinking through all eternity.” Grady watched her for a reaction.

  “Does he—” The words stuck in Molly’s throat. “Does he talk about the kids and the bus driver as being part of that corrupted group of world leaders?”

  “No. He refers to them as Lambs. Damn, Molly, I’m so damned sick of his sermonizing. One of the things you count on in long hostage negotiations is the perps getting tired, but this madman shows no signs of it. We, on the other hand, are zombies. Listen to this: He says we’re the captives, not him. He says we’re caught between Gabriel’s attack angels and his legions of cult members on the outside, what Mordecai calls his Sword Hand of God.”

  “Is there truth to that?” Molly asked. “Legions of cult members on the outside?”

  “Not legions, but there are some and they are damned effective. It’s been hard to get much intelligence. The ones we can locate who have left are terrified of talking about it.”

  “Are you thinking of letting some parents talk to him?”

  “Mrs. Bassett. Actually, he’s requested her. Saw her on television, Channel 33 news. He says he’d like to talk to her. We’ll probably give it a try. She’s a real persuasive lady, and we don’t see how it could hurt. He also says he might let her come in and see the kids.”

  “Would you allow that?”

  “No. An ironclad FBI rule—no one enters a hostage situation, ever, for no reason, period. But we are out of ideas, Molly, running on empty. He’s just been stringing us along, buying time. I don’t think he ever had the slightest intention of letting any of those kids go. I think he’s got other plans for them.”