“I’m sorry. I am so sorry.” His lips pressed to the back of my head as he helped me stand.
“What was he thinking?”
Beck’s voice was soft. “I think… he was thinking of the group. The many in the group. I can’t say what was going through his mind, or what he’ll do. I just know we have to go.”
I accepted that explanation. With heartbroken reluctance, I turned to go back into the warehouse.
I would leave as we planned, but I would leave knowing that a part of me would never look at Alex Sans the same way.
With all that I’d lost, he’d taken another thing from me. I wasn’t sure if I could ever forgive him. In addition, I was not sure if I even wanted him to return.
31. ALEX SANS
The minor league baseball stadium was the perfect place to meet. While the parking lot had its share of Sleepers, only a few wandered about inside the small ball field. Some in the stands and several on the field had met their final fate via the ARC people.
The chopper, blades idle, sat not far beyond second base. We made our way to the side entrance and had to be quick about it. Sleepers caught our tail and chased us.
Once through the gate, we secured it. About twenty Sleepers hit the fence. We were safe, but it wasn’t going to be an easy exit for Sonny.
We talked very little in the truck. I couldn’t even convey to another human being how horrible I felt for grabbing the baby. But I knew what I had to do.
I wasn’t leaving the baby, I was leaving the group.
I told Sonny that Randy had a lot of answers and was pretty smart. While they wouldn’t have my medical knowledge, they would have to make do. And whatever he did, he was to leave word where he went. A note at the ranch. Whatever.
I needed to be able to find them when I left the ARC. That was if I left the ARC.
We weren’t late by any means. In fact, I was willing to bet the chopper had arrived early, possibly clearing the stadium if it had been necessary. No one was around when we pulled in.
It wasn’t until I stepped from the truck that the side of the small chopper slid open.
It wasn’t like the first time. Men in black, carrying clipboards didn’t step out. The first person that emerged wore a full biohazard suit and carried a weapon.
He waved his arm behind him and then I saw Randy.
Cleaned up and looking okay, Randy stepped from the chopper carrying his little bag, hopping to the ground. I immediately felt relieved, glad that Randy would be reunited with the group.
Two men in biohazard suits followed him out. Neither man was the pilot; from that, I knew there was a third man on board.
Randy stepped further away from the chopper.
I realized that my intention to take out the two or three men on the chopper would have been ineffective. They were waiting for me to try something, I could feel it.
With that plan scrapped, I went the congenial route and reached into the truck. “Good luck, Sonny.”
“Godspeed, Alex.” He handed me the Moses basket.
I grabbed my backpack and with the basket I walked to the chopper.
Randy crossed the baseline and headed toward the pitcher’s mound. I paused in front of him; the first bio man wasn’t taking chances. He was close behind.
“Take care of them all, Randy.” I reached out and embraced him.
“Alex,” he whispered in my ear, “don’t go. Don’t. I can’t guarantee what will happen with you, but the Phoenix child... he’ll be like an alien experiment.”
Before breaking from the embrace, I told him, “Mera is alive. So is Beck, Jessie and there are others. Sonny will take you.” I gave the man pat to his back. “See you in a few months.”
“Alex, don’t. I beg you.”
I kept walking.
Before we reached the chopper, the bio man reached his gloved hands into the Moses basket. He nodded and pointed at the chopper.
As I neared, the blades began to rotate, and the engine whistled in pre-takeoff. They weren’t wasting any time.
Bio Man stood with me at the door and then he climbed inside.
I took another look over my shoulder and waved goodbye to Randy and Sonny. I didn’t know if I would ever see them again. I could only hope.
I lifted the baby basket to the floor of the chopper, and as I raised my foot to climb inside, all I saw was the butt of the rifle.
With no time to react or understand what was happening, it slammed hard into my face, my nose to be exact. The pain was unbelievable. I had been shot once, and even that hadn’t hurt as much as this did. Perhaps because it was my nose. I didn’t know. It was a hard, direct hit. It sent me reeling back. How far down I went or how hard I hit the ground, I didn’t know.
I was out.
* * *
Engine noise and a wet cloth were deciding factors in my coming to, but not as much as the pain.
It shot through my face and to my temples. I didn’t even want to open my eyes because I could tell the sun was bright and knew the how terrible it would feel.
I expected to see a man in a biohazard suit. I didn’t expect to open my eyes and see Randy’s round face staring down at me.
Was I …resting on his lap?
Oh my God, I was. In the back of a pickup truck, speeding down the road, I was cradled across the big man’s lap.
I tried to sit up, not having a clue why that disturbed me.
“Hey, hey, easy,” Randy said. “Easy. Stay down.”
I didn’t oblige. I inched from Randy and sat up on my own. One of those shake and cool bags flopped to my lap. At one point, it must have been on my head. I lifted it. “Where did this come from?”
“We uh, stopped at Walgreens. It wasn’t hit too hard. We needed to get some first aid stuff for you. Sonny wiped out a lot of things. We have some good supplies for the winter and for cold and flu season.”
My head spun, not to mention hurt like hell. Cold and Flu season? I wasn’t out that long. It was only the end of July.
“How long was I out?”
“Long enough for me to think you had brain damage.”
I tried to look at my watch, but it was blurry, so I peered at the sky. It looked like an afternoon sky. I could see the sun to my left, and we were headed south.
My stomach churned and flopped. “Can we stop for a second?”
“Yeah, feel sick?”
I nodded.
Randy reached out to the cab window, gave a couple of knocks, and pointed. I felt the truck pull over and then stop.
I thought I’d make it. I moved to my knees, began a crawl to the back of the truck, but my stomach had other plans.
I leaned over the side of the pickup, unable to stop myself from throwing up, and my head and face throbbed.
I heard Sonny. “Everything okay?”
“He’s sick,” Randy stated.
“Man,” Sonny said. “You were right. Head injury.”
“He hit his head pretty hard when he hit the ground. Then again, it could have been the morphine.”
Morphine? my mind screamed. I stomached being sick long enough to sit up straight. “Morphine?”
Randy nodded. “We gave you a shot of morphine. We had to. We didn’t want to take the chance that you might wake up when we set your nose.”
Lifting my hand to my face, I felt the bandages.
Sonny said, “It was pretty bad, Alex. He hit ya on the side of your nose and sent it almost to the other cheek. Never seen a nose that bad, and I used to box.”
No wonder I couldn’t breathe. “It was that bad?” I tried to focus.
Randy pointed to his own face to demonstrate, “The rifle hit you square on the side of the nose and face. Caught your eye.” He winced. “Not pretty. And your cheek bone. I think that may be busted. Hard to tell.” His tone changed to an optimistic one. “But, we set your nose straight.”
“How long was I out?” I grumbled. “Obviously long enough for you guys to shop and perform minor surgery.”
“I did,” Randy said. “Nose injuries can cause brain injuries. Plus, you lost a lot of blood.”
“Oh my God. From one hit?”
Sonny looked at me with an eye closed. “It was a good hit. Hey, we picked up Zofran in case you got nauseous. Want one?”
I shook my head. “I’ll be fine.”
“Yeah,” Sonny said, “you may need it later after we get Beck to stitch ya. Neither of us wanted to attempt that.”
“I need stitches too? Just … just get us back. Thanks.”
Sonny left me and Randy in the back of the truck.
I don’t know why I was in such a hurry. I had totally screwed up everything. Nothing went as planned. I was supposed to be on that chopper. I was supposed to be with the baby, so I could keep watch over him. The pain in my face and head paled in comparison to what I felt in my soul.
How would I face them? How would I face Mera? She was going to hate me. I didn’t blame her. I hated myself.
I sank against the side of the truck. “Randy, why do you think they did this to me? Why didn’t they take me along?”
“You gave them what they wanted.” Randy handed me a bottle of water. “Maybe they didn’t want to chance any more trouble with you.”
The water was good. My mouth was dry and tasted like blood. “Are they going to kill him?”
“Not intentionally, but they will after they are done,” Randy answered with a somber tone. “It’s not what we thought. In fact, it’s not what they thought either with Phoenix.”
I sighed heavily. “What do you know about this Keller in the doctrines?”
“Keller?” Randy cocked back in surprise. “Really? Keller? I didn’t think you read that far.”
“I didn’t. Michael did, and he—”
“Michael?” Randy smiled. “He’s alive?”
I nodded.
“Like the Doctrines said. He rose from the ashes. He is the Son of God.”
I winced. “That’s debatable. And, well, talk to him about that. He took notes and didn’t understand them. Who is Keller?”
“According to the Doctrines, Keller is equivalent to the Antichrist. Doctrines state he couldn’t speak, hear or see, yet, he was so extraordinary he communicated using his mind. But he did so with the Pale… I mean Sleepers,” Randy said. “That was the part I thought was metaphorical. Why are you asking about Keller?”
“Because…” I took a sip of water, wetting my dry mouth and lips. “It wasn’t Phoenix in the basket. The ARC took Keller.”
32. ALEX SANS
“I swear to God, Alex,” Beck’s deep voice was grim as he hovered over me, preparing to fix my wounds, “if this face wasn’t as bad as it is, I’d deck you.”
“If I didn’t feel so bad already, I’d let you.”
“I should just let this gash stay open and get infected, at the very least look bad.”
I hadn’t even made it to the ranch house yet. Sonny had brought me into the heavy equipment shed and sought out Beck. I didn’t see the Randy and Mera reunion, or Danny’s reaction, or even Beck’s.
Lying on that work bench, I waited in the shed, like a criminal. And it was by my choice, because that’s how I felt. Like a criminal.
Beck was less than gentle with his sutures. He was so angry that he grunted in disgust.
“Come on, Beck,” Sonny said, “ease up, okay?”
“Do you know what he did?” Beck asked.
“Yeah, I was there, remember?”
“And you condone it?”
“Let me ask you this,” Sonny said. “What choice did he have? I was there when we arrived at the field. The original plan would have failed. Big time. They had four armed men, at least from what I saw. Three of us came back. Had we proceeded as planned, none of us would have.”
“It was a baby, Sonny. An innocent baby he turned over to them for experiments.”
“He didn’t plan on handing him over, he planned on going with him. They did this to him so he couldn’t go.”
I exhaled loudly. “I’m here you know, I can defend myself.”
“Then why don’t you?” Sonny asked.
“Well, Son, I’m a little busy right now,” I replied. “Plus, what I did was wrong.”
“I knew that baby as long as you guys did,” Sonny said. “Yeah, you know what? It was heartbreaking to hear Mera. It was heartbreaking to take him. But how much more heartbreaking would it have been if we’d gone without a baby, got shot up on that field, and Beck and the kids were defenseless when the ARC came looking for the child? How many kids then would have to die?” He looked at Beck. “How would you feel then, Beck, if they came, started shooting and Mera or Jessie got hit? All because we failed to give them what they wanted.”
“It wouldn’t have come to that.”
“Then I think you need to talk to your friend Randy. From what I got from him, the ARC is for continuation of life, at all cost.”
“I don’t believe that.” Beck snipped the sutures and stepped back. “I don’t believe they’d shoot or chance that with Phoenix, why would they take a chance on killing their cure?”
As I sat up, Randy’s voice entered the shed with the answer to Beck’s question.
“Because Phoenix isn’t the cure, he’s the hub.”
Both Beck and I looked at him with surprise. “He’s like a queen bee, he exudes something. They say the only reason I was born, that everyone in the future was born, was because the Phoenix child died. He was never able to keep the virus alive. As long as he lives, so does the virus in its active, current form. Any child born, anyone with a latent form of the virus … done. They believe if he lives, man dies. He’d have to die or be locked away airtight for his entire life.”
“How do they know this?” I asked. “He was the only one of us that they didn’t test.”
“Because every single person that came within fifty feet of him in there breathed his air,” Randy explained. “If the people in the ARC had the dormant virus, they were Sleepers the next day, the President included. It wasn’t me, you or Danny. Everyone was okay until Phoenix showed up.”
I blinked several times, my head spinning. The news just delivered was mind-boggling and a little unbelievable.
“What else is screwy?” Randy went on. “Days later, the germ is still lingering. He carries the purest form of the virus, from what they said. Then again, they didn’t tell me as much as I wanted to know.”
Beck asked. “How come?”
“They told me that they were preserving mankind’s future. And I and the others were a threat. I knew too much, I don’t know enough, germs I carried, I don’t know. They kept me locked away, like a prisoner. Barely fed me. My friend died.”
“Well, really,” I said, “no disrespect, Randy, but if you think about it, you’ll remember you didn’t come here to protect our time, but to protect the future, meaning your time.”
“Agreed.”
“Wait,” Sonny called out. “Why are you still here, Randy? I’m confused. If Phoenix died in these Doctrines, and they’re saying that Phoenix can cause mankind’s extinction, why are you here? That has to be wrong. Theoretically, if that’s true and Phoenix is man’s ruin, you would have never been born; therefore, you wouldn’t be here.” He scratched his head. “I think.”
Not that I was a science fiction aficionado, but that made sense. “Maybe Phoenix does die. We still have to arrive at the real New Jerusalem.”
“Perhaps, like Alex said,” Sonny commented, “the doctrines are fiction.”
"I take offense to that,” Randy said. ”The Doctrines are very sacred teachings to my people.”
“Yeah, so is the Bible in this time,” I said, “but man has doctored it up a lot.”
“It’s conceivable that Phoenix never died,” Sonny remarked. “That maybe the events written
by this guy actually took place, but to protect Phoenix from this exact scenario, he wrote that Phoenix died to protect everyone. Write that everyone who has the baby died.”
“I’d think that in order for Bill to fictionalize on purpose he would have to know about the time travel stuff,” Beck said.
“The Doctrines are written from the perspective that Logan had no prior knowledge of time travel or Project Savior.”
“Doesn’t make sense,” Sonny said.
“Maybe Keller is the Phoenix child,” Beck suggested.
“No, Keller is in the Doctrines.” I said. “The Antichrist or something. Maybe he battles with Michael.”
“That isn’t funny, Alex,” Randy said sharply.
Tossing a cloth to the side, Beck gathered his things. “I’m going to the ranch. Mera still isn’t good. And Antichrist or not, you handed a human being over to the ARC. An innocent helpless baby. It sickens me to think what they’ll do to that baby. And worse, what the ARC is going to do when they find out it isn’t the Phoenix child.” Beck moved to the door. “When you are done hiding your balls you need to join us to come up with a plan. Come on, Randy, I’m sure Mera is waiting to see you.”
I looked up surprised to learn that Randy hadn’t seen Mera yet. “You haven’t seen her?”
“I wouldn’t be here, Alex, had you not gotten me out. I thought it was right to wait on you.”
“Go on. I’m not quite done hiding my balls.”
That was actually putting it mildly. I insisted on being alone for a little while longer. I needed to draw up the courage to face Mera and everyone else I hurt by taking Keller.
Inwardly, I felt what I did was morally wrong, and I never intended it to end up the way it did.
When I grabbed the baby, I thought I’d just stay with him.
Every time I thought about my actions I felt that lump in my gut. I didn’t have a clue as to how to make it right.
I kept thinking of that poor baby who craved loving arms and just as he had them, I took them from him and handed him over to a cold lab. He couldn’t see, he couldn’t hear, he could only feel, and I’d condemned him to a life of feeling pain instead of love.
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