by Greg Dragon
“I’ll get them for you.” Brent started to rise.
“That’s too risky. We don’t want the feds cracking down on us if they catch you.”
“So you want me to sit by and watch Karla die?”
“Of course not.” He opened his desk drawer and pulled out a 102-year-old .38 caliber revolver. “It has two bullets. Either you shoot Karla in the head and heart, or she dies a slow, agonizing death.”
* * *
Offered an alternate plan, Dr. Farrington relented after an hour of argument and reflection. Brent’s alternative included a third bullet and the doctor’s promise not to try and find their bodies.
“Don’t worry. We’re going somewhere that no one will come across us. How long do you figure the germs can survive on a dead body?”
“Probably a few days, maybe a week at the most. That’s how long they lived when I cultured them on a cadaver.”
“Okay. Just make sure no one goes looking for us for at least a week.”
* * *
Once again, Brent’s sister-in-law drove, this time under cover of night. Gretchen delivered Brent and Karla to a place unknown to her. It was 300 yards from Brent’s favorite cave, the first he had explored as a child.
“You sure you’re doing the right thing?”
“There’s no other way. Besides, when the feds never find any trace of me in that cave up at Big South Fork, they’ll probably declare me dead. I have to stay off their radar.” Brent placed his FSIN card in the waste disposal opening of the dashboard. A laser vaporized it.
Karla was encased in a protective suit, its oxygen tank down to a one-hour supply as Brent thanked his sister-in-law.
“Do you want me to wait, in case you change your mind about using the third bullet?” Gretchen asked.
“No. If I chicken out, I’ll walk back.”
“But it’s ten miles.”
“I’ll need time alone.”
Brent lifted Karla out of the 4-wheel drive truck. His daughter stirred and wrapped both of her emaciated arms around his neck as he held her 74-pound body and cradled it. She hung limp and semi-conscious from a last dose of pain killers administered twenty minutes earlier.
Gretchen wept. She tapped the switch for the truck’s eight high beam lights to illuminate the trail and watched until darkness swallowed her brother-in-law and niece.
17
Tim did not remember the note for Bud he had found on his apartment floor until their train was halfway to San Diego. He wiped the blue envelope on his pants before elbowing Bud, who was reading emails from his ring computer.
“This was in my apartment when we got back from visiting Dr. Graves.” He handed it to him. “Sorry about the dirt on it. I didn’t notice it at first and stepped on it.”
Bud smiled as he read it.
“Good news?”
“Just something from June.” He tossed the envelope on the floor near an open vent. Its sensor activated a vacuum that sucked it to the trash storage compartment underneath the rail car. Bud folded the rose colored stationary and slid it into his pocket.
“So what did she say?”
“She thanked me for our church finding her family a place to stay.”
“Oh. That’s real good of you.”
“Pastor has been preaching a lot about loving our neighbors like ourselves and…” Bud blushed.
Because it was Friday afternoon, the express train’s riders filled it to capacity. After a five-minute stop in San Diego, it continued on to Mexico. When it slowed to a stop at the border station, an announcement caused Bud to punch the seat in front of him.
“We have a temporary imbalance of travelers to and from Mexico. Therefore, only passengers who are age thirty and older can continue on across the border at this time. Those under age thirty must depart the train and wait in the station until border crossing equilibrium has been restored. We apologize for any…”
Bud stepped into the aisle. “Wait for me in Ensenada. I’m afraid what might happen if you wait in Tijuana for me.”
Tim saluted him and nodded off into a nap. His dream of Bethany ended when a robot conductor’s metallic cold touch woke him. “Sir, a Mr. Lee instructed me to have you exit the train here in Ensenada.”
Tim hauled his twenty-pocketed suitcase from the rack above him and joined three others at the door. A blast of hot, dry air greeted them, followed by the station’s vendors competing for customers.
“Get your map of Baja California here.”
“Taxi, senor? Taxi, senorita?”
A miffed woman held up her left hand and let the sun glint off her gold wedding band.
“Ay, carumba. Forgive me, por favor, senora. You look too young and beautiful to be already married. My taxi is your taxi, si?”
“Welcome to Mexico. Cold drinks for your thirst,” said a third vendor, the only one with something Tim wanted.
Tim finished a lukewarm soda by the time he exited the station’s front doors onto an unshaded veranda. In every direction the city seemed deserted. The sole movement came from an old man shooing flies away from his fruit stand or taxi drivers loading their fares’ luggage into the trunks of their gold or red colored cabs. Tim bought a guava from the thankful vendor.
“Always this dead here?”
“No, no, senor. It is noontime and summer. Siesta time, si?”
Tim felt a tug on his sweaty shirt sleeve.
“Hombre. I give you best tour of Ensenada, okay?”
“No thanks, kid. I’m just waiting for Bud…” The boy’s hurt expression reminded Tim of a similar look on his son Charles’ face. “How much?”
“For you, only fifteen American credits if you also eat at my mama’s café. Thirty credits if you do not.”
Over the next three hours, Tim learned more about his tour guide than Ensenada. His name was Manuel, age eleven, and he had two sisters and a brother. Tim concluded that the United Nations’ policy of two children per family did not yet affect most Mexicans’ loyalty to their church, which remained headquartered in Rome.
Manuel first took Tim to a museum featuring displays of Mexico’s two revolutions. The boy seemed enamored by his heroes of the first one, Poncho Villa and Emiliano Zapata Salazar, and told him tales of their exploits. He said the second one, which began in 2033, had been too bloody.
At the zoo, Manuel described each creature, most of them reptiles, from the nearby desert. Noticing Tim’s slowing pace, Manuel brought him to a beach to cool off from the day’s peak temperature of 109 degrees. When Tim refused to join the boy in the warm waters, Manuel ferried buckets of water and dumped them on Tim’s overheated body while he lay in the shade of a yucca plant.
“No mas, no mas,” Tim said after his fourth dousing with salt water.
Manuel returned the empty plastic bucket he had borrowed from a friend who built sand castles nearby. Tim once again dreamed of Bethany until a hand shook him awake.
“My tour now ends, Senor Tim. Now you can pay me thirty credits American or…” He bobbed his head toward town.
“Or I can eat at your mama’s café and get a discount.”
“Si, senor.”
Mama Corina’s café proved to be a welcomed break from sun and sore feet, which Tim propped up on the chair next to his. He ordered the special, a plate covered by a tostada, enchilada, rice, and beans. When a pepper burned his tongue and throat, Tim ordered a bottle of Barumba Beer, alcohol content unknown. He asked for it ice-cold, but it arrived lukewarm.
Manuel joined him after eating in the kitchen.
“So, do you give a lot of tours?”
“Only if a nice gringo like you visits our town.”
Tim slid dessert, a basket of Mexican pastry, to his new friend. “What does your father do?”
“He is on the mainland working at the marijuana plantation. The weed does not grow so good here in the deserts of Baja. My papa says Mexico cannot grow enough marijuana for your country.”
“Marijuana plantation?”
/> “Si. You know the song.” Manuel danced while he sang:
La cucracha la cucaracha
Ya no puede caminar
Porque la falta, porque no tiene
Dinero para
Marihuana pa’ fumar
Ya murio la cucaracha va la
Llevan a enterrar
Entre cuartor zopilotes
Y un raton de sacristan
Tim clapped. “What’s it mean?”
“That the cockroach cannot walk because it has no marijuana to smoke. My papa says anyone who smokes it becomes a cockroach.”
“So why does he work on that plantation?”
“There is no other job for him.”
Further conversation with Mama revealed how a Mexican family survived in a dusty, little city most tourists seemed to have forgotten in their rush to get to Cabo San Lucas.
Tim became so inspired by the family that he finished writing a story featuring it after returning to the train station while a full moon replaced the sun. He pressed the Send command on his smart watch. “Tell the editor to send payment for story to Bethany Beheard, FSIN Z1C-B5-A7N9,” he said to the device.
Exhausted by his day of touring, Tim fell asleep, one of the train station’s hard wooden benches serving as his mattress. Bud shook him awake at 5:30 the next morning.
“I thought I’d never get here. This is crazy. Whoever came up with the One for One Exchange?”
“I heard it was Mexico’s idea.” Tim yawned. “Sort of makes sense. Only one person can come north across the border for every one going south.”
“Our train doesn’t leave until 7:10. I’m starving.”
“Let’s go get some rancho huevos. I know just the place. Wait until you see Mama Corina’s daughter. She’ll take your mind off of that woman your old man wants you to marry.”
18
Two hundred and five miles to the south, Ramon Zappista’s 1963 woodie station wagon bounced along the rutted dirt road leading to his favorite haunt. Before joining The Club, he had spent a few hours a month at the beach. But since his return from the Cheyenne River Standing Rock Reservation, his time with sand and surf increased. Today would be his eighth consecutive day of surfing.
When the breaking waves came into view, he floored the gas pedal, which sent his car’s wheels off the ground for part of the last quarter mile to the beach. He stomped the brake pedal and the woodie slid sideways. Two wheels sank into sand, the other two continued to smoke from the rubber left on the asphalt parking lot.
Ramon jumped from the car and said, “I love the smell of burning rubber in the morning.” He admired the fresh 100-foot long skid marks and then tugged on his eight-foot, six-finned surfboard and yanked it out through the frame of the woodie’s missing back window.
Only a beachcomber using his metal detector had arrived earlier than Ramon. He shouted a greeting, but Ramon ignored it, the ten-foot waves breaking 150 yards from the shoreline mesmerizing him.
Lying flat on the board, Ramon paddled over six waves before straddling the board and turning it toward the beach. He waited for his definition of “the perfect wave” and rode an eight-foot one until it dissolved into the foam being sucked backward from the beach.
By his fifth ride, he was one with the Pacific. Nothing could take him from the rhythm of the currents, tides, and waves. Sure, his phone in the woodie and the one back at his house were ringing, desperate calls from clients trying to connect so they could complete their projects. But who cares? Manana, manana.
Even the appearance of the lifeguard drone meant nothing to Ramon. It hovered by his face.
“You, on the surfboard. You must get to shore immediately. You are surfing outside posted hours.”
Ramon pretended not to hear the drone’s order. The hovering mechanical lifeguard repeated the order before issuing a final warning. “A detention drone has been summoned. If you are not on shore by the time it arrives, you will be arrested.”
Ramon laughed and repeated the warning and then pulled his swimming trunks down and pointed his bare buttocks at the drone. The antic caused him to fall, but the elastic tether tied between his ankle and the board bobbed him to the surface. He climbed back on his surfboard and rode the biggest wave of the morning, a twelve-footer.
Five minutes later, the whirring blades of a much larger drone snapped his head skyward.
It swooped above him and dropped a net over the violator. As he was lifted above the water his surfboard followed, still tethered to his ankle. A single laser blast from the drone severed the tether and Ramon watched his board break into two on the beach 200 feet below him.
Ordinarily, such a loss would have grieved him.
“Ha ha ha ha ha ha…wipeout!”
The net swung in wide arcs while Ramon thrashed about playing air guitar and then air drums. He was still pantomiming to the instrumental song by The Surfaris playing in an endless loop in his head when the drone set him down in the detention center’s receiving yard fifteen minutes later.
* * *
Bud pushed his empty plate to the center of the small round table. “Best Mexican food I’ve ever tasted. Hope you plugged this place in your article.”
“Of course. So tell me about this source of yours that we’re going to see.”
Bud tapped his ring and a hologram of Ramon Zappista floated above the basket of warm tortillas. Tim thought he looked like a cross between soccer star Enrique De Soto of the Tijuana Tigers and Emilio Zapata, the rebel leader of almost 200 years ago.
“This guy is numero uno in the music business for Central and South America. And since half of all Americans are now of Latino heritage, he’s real big there, too.”
“Huh? Never heard of him.”
“That’s because he’s not a singer or in a band. He’s a producer. All the top acts and labels use him to produce their songs.”
“Okay. So how is that supposed to help Dr. Graves take over the world?”
“Through music. Weren’t you listening?”
“Music? How? By putting subliminal messages in the songs?”
“Who knows? What I do know is that he influences almost a billion listeners of music in Spanish. And check this out. Billboard says he’s going to open an office in Los Angeles to produce records in English. That means at least another two billion listeners. That, plus the Spanish speakers, is almost half of Earth’s population.”
“That’s your realm. I need to back up your story about The Club. At least part of it anyway.”
“You’ll see, once we get to his villa.”
* * *
The El Rosario Detention Center required a full time psychiatrist for those deemed loco en la cabeza.
Dr. Tito Bacero scanned the list of new detainees since his last shift. Two descriptions next to the names interested him.
One was an American tourist brought in last night suffering from “hallucinations and disorientation.” Dr. Bacero visited him first. After a one-way conversation, he ordered the lab results and saw that the man’s blood sample contained organic mescaline, the kind from cactus.
“Purge his system and release him with a prescription of these.” Dr. Bacero handed the chart to a nurse. She started an IV solution to speed the peyote’s removal from the tourist.
Next, Dr. Bacero went to the isolation ward and peered through the glass pane on the two-inch think steel door of a padded cell. He read the patient’s chart aloud: “Ramon Zappista. Age 27. Arrested for surfing during unauthorized hours. Uncooperative. Drug and alcohol tests were negative. No history of mental illness.”
Inside the cell, Ramon paced. Seven steps, turn, seven steps, turn; over and over. Nonstop words gushed through his mouth. To Dr. Bacero, they seemed to be a stream of consciousness dialog about anything and everything – the weather, surfing, music, women, money, and life in general. After he ordered a nurse to administer a large dose of sedatives, she summoned two orderlies to hold Ramon so the needle might not end up piercing her instead.
> Dr. Bacero spent the rest of the morning visiting twenty-two other patients confined in the psychiatric wing of the center. He transferred three of them to the general wing and sent two to a hospital in Tijuana. By noon, the doctor’s stomach growled. As usual, he ate alone in his office and read medical journals. He drifted off into a nap until his computer interrupted it.
“Dr. Bacero, there are two visitors here for you.”
“What do they want?”
“They say they know Ramon Zappista.”
He took his feet off his desk and straightened his tie. “Bring up Ramon’s cell, computer.”
The monitor displayed Ramon, acting as he had four hours earlier.
“How many doses has he been given so far?”
“Two of 2,000 milligrams each.”
“Okay, have the visitors brought to my office.”
* * *
After introductions, Dr. Bacero asked how well Tim and Bud knew Ramon.
“He’s someone I met through my former employer,” Bud said. “When we couldn’t find him at his hacienda, his neighbor told us he had seen him flying by in a net hanging from a drone.”
“Do you know of any problems he was having? His mania is off the charts. It’s the worst case I’ve ever seen in my thirty-six years of practice.”
“Ah…if I tell you, is it confidential? Or will you want to lock me up too, as an accessory?”
Dr. Bacero leaned forward. “Accessory to what?”
Bud unfolded his tale of working for Dr. Graves and ended with a diagnosis. “He’s possessed by his evil intentions for The Club’s members and the world. I think the implant is making Ramon act crazy.” Bud nodded and waited for affirmation but received none.
Dr. Bacero raised his hand to stop the words he thought were pregnant with paranoia. “Computer, scan patient in Room 17 for any foreign objects inside him.”
