The Last Safe Place

by Ninie Hammon

  He must get to her quickly, before she has a chance to move on. He must find her and then … and then summon the rain.

  There is a buzz and a voice issues from a black box on his polished cherry desktop.

  “The chopper is on the roof, ready to take you to the airport, sir.”

  “I will be there in two minutes.” He picks up his cane and his sunglasses and starts for the door. He barely breaks stride when he pauses to snatch his jacket off a hook by the door. It’s hot in Chicago in June but it will likely be chilly in the mountains.

  On the way across the city to the airport where his private jet is gassed up and ready for take-off, Yesheb confirms the sequencing his minions have set in motion. He will arrive at Chicago Midway Airport in ten minutes. The flight across four states will take about two and a half hours—that’s with all the stops pulled out. Another chopper will be waiting when he lands to take him to a small town at the base of the mountain. By then it will be dark—and stormy weather is in the forecast—so he will travel by car the last half hour from the town up into the mountains to the little berg where he will find Zara.

  “I’m still trying to locate a car rental on short notice in a place as small and remote as—”

  “Then don’t rent one.” Yesheb’s voice is as cold as liquid nitrogen. “Buy one. Buy a whole car lot full of cars if you have to. There will be one waiting for me when I arrive. With the engine running!”

  “Yes sir!” Former military. Most of the men Yesheb has hired over the years were once soldiers—who fought a great cause and lost, or who were bloodied in a futile war on some nameless, forgotten battlefield. Evil is the petrie dish in which the cells of war divide and multiply; hatred is the soil in which it grows. Both have fueled battles uncounted in Yesheb’s realm, where he has led legions of demons to victory. And one day soon he will rule supreme over a kingdom without end. He and Zara.

  “How many operatives will you require, sir? I have my two closest men en route now and six more—”

  “Call them off.” Yesheb’s voice is stern. “There is to be no one else there. Is that understood? I require no assistance. I will do this alone.”

  Yesheb sits tense on the sculpted leather helicopter seat and watches Chicago fly by below him.

  A thousand miles away, Gabriella sits tense on the flat leather jeep seat and watches the mountains fly by above her.

  CHAPTER 11

  WIND THAT SMELLED OF PINE AND CEDAR, DAMP EARTH AND coming rain slicked Gabriella’s short yellow curls back from her face as she roared down Chalk Creek Canyon Road.

  A storm. A full moon.

  She brushed the thoughts out of her mind like a housewife sweeping dust bunnies out from under a bed. She had far bigger concerns right now than the Lord of the Flies.

  She turned for a quick glance into the backseat. The look on Theo’s face frightened her almost more than the sight of Ty limp in his arms. The wind bore away the sound of the boy’s labored breathing. If he was breathing at all.

  She stifled a sob and tried to shove her foot down harder on the accelerator. But the jeep was going full tilt now, as fast as it would go. Gratefully, this remote stretch of road was empty. If anyone had gotten in her way, Gabriella would have run them off into a ditch.

  When she rounded the final curve and spotted St. Elmo up ahead, she could see the Mercantile. Dr. Calloway’s Libyan terrorist, lotions-and-potions van sat with a handful of other vehicles off to the side but the parking spot in front of the building was vacant. She slid into the empty space and stirred up a cloud of dirt that hit the steps like a spray of snow from a skier stopping at the bottom of a downhill run.

  Gabriella jumped out of the jeep and found Steve leaning into the open back of the van.

  “Ty got stung, it was a bee, I think,” she said. “And he swelled up. He can’t—”

  She turned to Ty, really looked at him. He was gasping for air but he was breathing! His hand where the bee had stung him was puffed up like a boxing glove.

  “I have what I need for an allergic reaction,” Steve said, then stepped quickly past her and climbed up into the back of the jeep, wordlessly wrapped a rubber tourniquet around the top of Ty’s arm and felt around on the inside of his elbow for a vein.

  “He got stung once before, last summer, and it swelled up a little bit—” Pedro appeared beside her. “It made a welt, but nothing like …”

  She realized she was babbling and clamped her jaws shut. She was vaguely aware that a crowd was gathering on the porch of the Mercantile and that Pedro had put his arm around her shoulder.

  “Hey, big guy, you’re going to feel better real soon,” Steve said. “This will sting a little big, but you need to lie still—okay?”

  Steve wiped the skin on the inside of Ty’s arm with an alcohol rub and deftly inserted the IV needle. Ty didn’t even flinch. Then the doctor reached up and loosened the tourniquet.

  “Keep this up above his head,” he told Theo and handed him a bag of fluid attached by a coil of plastic tubing to the needle. Holding the needle steady with one hand, Steve pulled a roll of white tape out of his shirt pocket and held it out to Gabriella. “Tear me off two pieces about three inches long.”

  With trembling hands, she ripped off a piece and Steve stretched it across the needle and around Ty’s arm.

  “I should have known,” Gabriella said as she handed him the second. “When it swelled up the last time, I should have known that—”

  Steve cut her off. “There’s no way to know a reaction like this is going to happen until it does. Bee sting allergies fire up fast. But you got him here in time.” He smiled. “Your boy’s going to be just fine now. See?”

  Ty’s gasping eased with every inhalation; the rasping sound grew less and less hoarse. Inside a minute, he was breathing almost normally again. He took a long, deep breath and let it out in a slow sigh and tried to sit up. Theo held firm.

  “You rest here a bit. Doctor says you gone be fine, jess fine.”

  “I’ve given him a corticosteroid IV,” Steve said. “As you can see, it relieves the symptoms quickly.” The doctor turned back to Ty. He put in the ear-tips of a stethoscope and placed the chest piece on Ty’s shirt. He listened, moved the silver disc to a different place on Ty’s chest, then to the another. Gabriella noticed that the crowd of people on the porch in front of the Mercantile was quiet, as if they were listening, too.

  The doctor removed the stethoscope from his ears and hung it around his neck. He patted Ty on the knee. “Feeling better now, son?”

  “Uh huh,” Ty said, his voice gravelly. “I can breathe.”

  P.D. barked—just “Woof! Woof!”—but it was so like he understood and was voicing his relief that it broke the spell of silence in the crowd. People let out the collective breath they’d been holding and chuckled, and began to talk among themselves in animated, cheerful voices.

  This time when Ty tried to sit up, Theo didn’t stop him. With his free hand, the boy reached over and petted Puppy Dog, who grinned back at him with his perpetual golden retriever smile.

  Maybe P.D. did understand; you never knew with that dog.

  Steve got down out of the jeep and told Gabriella that after the IV bag was empty, he needed to keep an eye on Ty for a while.

  “Sometimes after the first dose wears off, the symptoms rebound. I need to watch him for several hours to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

  “Gabriella was planning to spend the evening here anyway.” Pedro said. He seemed to become aware for the first time that he had his arm around her shoulders. She was immediately uncomfortable but he wasn’t. He just gave her a reassuring squeeze, let go and stepped back. “You were planning to come to the party, yes?”

  Actually, Gabriella had no intention of attending the party. Not before she came roaring down the mountain and certainly not now. She’d just thrown on an old shirt and a pair of jeans when she got up this morning—but she wasn’t worried that she was underdressed. What did concern her was
that she wasn’t wearing a speck of makeup. Her scar was naked, exposed!

  Pedro picked up on her reluctance.

  “Surely, you do not intend to miss the most festive event in the St. Elmo social season. Actually … it is just about the only event in St. Elmo’s social season. But what community celebrations here lack in frequency they make up for in intensity.” With his thick mustache, it was hard to see the small smile on his lips but you couldn’t miss it in his eyes.

  “Wouldn’t miss it,” she said with as much fake enthusiasm as she could muster. She had no choice. She couldn’t very well sit out here in her jeep until Steve was sure Ty was going to be all right.

  She turned to Steve.

  “How can I … thank you, Steve,” she said, embarrassed by the emotion in her voice. But he shrugged it off.

  “Let’s go find this young man somewhere to sit quietly until the IV’s done. I’ll give you some prednisone—can he take pills?”

  She nodded.

  “Good. Liquid prednisone is nasty, tastes really bitter. I’ll give you a six-day dose pack—gradually decreasing amounts.” He gestured toward the store. “I’ll tell you all about it over tacos.”

  He reached up and took the bag from Theo, handed it to Gabriella and helped Ty out of the back of the jeep. Then he extended his hand to Theo, who took it wordlessly and climbed carefully down to the ground.

  The doctor held onto Theo’s hand, eyed him up and down.

  “You okay?” the tone of his voice edged the words out of superficial/perfunctory into semi-clinical.

  “Fine, now!” Theo pulled his hand out of the doctor’s grasp. “But it’s a miracle of God any of us made it off that mountain. That trail has potholes so deep I seen Elvis down in the bottom of one of ’em.” He looked around. “I need a bathroom, got to make water—’less my plumbing’s been shook so hard the hose is disconnected.”

  Gabriella had never been past the saloon doors that separated Pedro’s home from the store. What lay on the other side was a large room with log walls and a high ceiling. Since all the buildings in St. Elmo were wood frame, with rusted metal roofs, the outside walls must have been built over the original log structure—probably a one-room cabin. The chinking between the logs had been replaced in spots, but most appeared to be original.

  The room was windowless, lit in artsy fashion with lanterns and candles on tall stands, and the dim light made Gabriella feel fractionally less exposed. It was definitely better than standing in the bright sunshine outside. There was a long, wood-slat table in the center of the room with benches on both sides instead of chairs. Another table stretched the length of the side wall in front of a huge, unlit fireplace where a gun rack with four rifles hung above the mantle. The aroma of jalapeños rose on ribbons of steam from dishes on the table and a small army of women were assembling tacos as efficiently as a manufacturing plant. Pedro excused himself and disappeared out a door that must have led to the kitchen.

  It took Gabriella’s eyes a moment to adjust. As the room gradually emerged from shadows, she noticed what was inarguably the most prominent feature of the room. A hospital bed rested against the back wall. An occupied hospital bed with a machine of some kind on a table beside it.

  Though no one paid it particular mind, neither did they ignore it. Or the person stretched out on it. The woman Gabriella had seen the first day in Pedro’s store, the one who looked like a bag lady, was standing next to the bed chatting with another woman—clearly including the bedridden person in the conversation. A teenage boy—Joaquin, she surmised; he looked like his father—was perched on the end of the bed in a deep, rapid-fire Spanish dialogue with another young man who stood beside it.

  When the bag lady shifted position, Gabriella got her first look at the person lying in the bed. She was asleep. No, she was Sleeping Beauty.

  Even from a distance, Gabriella knew instantly that the little girl in the hospital bed was Anza’s little sister. Her face, expressionless in sleep, had a fragile, haunting quality that left Gabriella breathless. She had believed Pedro’s older daughter was the most beautiful girl she’d ever seen, but this precious child was even prettier. Her long black hair lay in a braid that stretched over her right shoulder and all the way down the front of her lacy white nightgown to her waist. It was tied at the end with a red satin bow.

  Steve stopped beside her and followed her gaze.

  “That’s Angelina, Pedro’s youngest daughter,” he said, then took the IV bag attached to Ty’s arm and walked the boy over to a comfortable chair. He continued to chat as he suspended the bag from the edge of a floor lamp next to the chair. “You’ve met his other daughter, Anza, right? She’s the birthday girl.”

  “Oh, I assumed … I thought it was Pedro’s birthday.”

  “No, he throws a big party every year on his children’s birthdays. Anza turns eighteen today. Joaquin’s birthday is in the spring. And Angelina …” He turned and looked at the still child lying on the hospital bed. “Angel will be nine on Christmas Eve.”

  Christmas Eve. That’s when Smokey had died.

  Yesheb has sat motionless for more than two hours staring out the window of the jet at the ground below. It is a featureless expanse dappled with shades of brown and green, bisected by sewing-thread strands of rivers. None of man’s precious creations, art or architecture, is visible from this height—a perspective with profound significance, though he doubts that one in a thousand, one in a million of the globe-trotting lemmings racking up frequent flyer miles ever chances to glance out the window, much less understand the import of what he can see.

  “Would you care for something to drink, sir?” A voice speaks at his elbow but he doesn’t turn, keeps his gaze fixed on a distant nothing out the window. “A cup of coffee? A glass of wine, perhaps? We have a lovely—”

  “When do we land?”

  “Half an hour, sir.”

  “And everything will be set up when we get there?”

  “Absolutely. The helicopter is waiting.”

  Yesheb nods approval and dismissal.

  They don’t get it down there. And they label those who do crazy.

  All at once, a single, imprisoned memory makes a break for the fence, with searchlights circling, zeroing in.

  The walls of the room are not padded, but of course, they wouldn’t be in a facility such as this. A single room here costs more than a whole suite at the Ritz-Carlton in Paris—but without the view. Yesheb will not be here long enough to miss it. The school will have called his grandfather. Yesheb will be set free as soon as they reach the old man—which could be a bit tricky sometimes. The hands-on director of the family’s oil fortunes, Yasser Al Tobbanoft is old school, spends most of his time at oil rigs in the desert and pipeline pumping stations. After Anwar Tobbanoft’s unfortunate and untimely end in the bathtub, their pathetic mother was certainly incapable of caring for Yesheb and his sisters so the old man assumed responsibility for them—fiscal and moral responsibility, certainly not emotional. He pays others to look after them, packs them off to boarding schools all over the world, sees them infrequently—at Ramadan or other holidays. Some years.

  His absence suits Yesheb perfectly. He needs no one to “raise” him. He is directed by the voices. No other authority is necessary nor would be tolerated.

  Which has gotten him into the situation he finds himself now. The voices were too loud, shouting in his head. They did that sometimes to torment him, to toughen him. But he was tired. He cried out, answered them, argued with them and they set off bombs of pain in his head in retaliation. Unfortunately, even with a private room, his schoolmates next door heard his voice. They came to check on him, found him writhing in the floor in his own excrement, foaming at the mouth. They called the headmaster and …

  Yesheb’s grandfather’s absences are convenient until his presence is necessary. And it is necessary now. Yesheb can’t stay here. This is a place for crazy people and he is infinitely sane, confidently, proudly sane. It is the others,
the rest of the herd, whose minds are clouded. But not by insanity, by stupidity.

  Then the buzzing starts again in his head, the gnawing sound, like creatures inside are using chainsaws to get out. And he starts to scream again. He can’t help it. He screams and screams and …

  Yesheb’s mind locates the escapee, trains machine guns on the memory and shoots it down. The frothing water of his soul slowly becomes smooth again. Glassy.

  He stares undistracted now at the empty expanse below his private jet and understands what mere mortals cannot fathom. He can see the unformed fetus of mankind, deep in the forever dark of the immortal womb. Its eyes are blind. And it yearns to remain eternally sightless. It doesn’t want to know. It wants to curl up safe and snug in ignorance, fears the razor edges of truth and the pain of existence.

  But inevitably, birth and life demand a choice. Open your eyes, recognize goodness and evil and choose your side. Or keep your eyes closed and see neither. The current state of the world is testimony to the cowardice of the many and the futile courage of the few. Everywhere on the globe, evil thrives in the soil of denial, pruned by cynicism, fertilized by disbelief, watered by inaction.

  Yesheb smiles a rueful smile. In the great apocalyptic battle to come, his forces will prevail, of course. He and Zara will reign supreme. But he wonders how many of the others, the shuffling turtles on the other side, will even pick up weapons for the fight.

  Yesheb’s ears begin to pop. The plane has begun its descent.

  “My little Angelina is beautiful, is she not?”

  Theo jumped. He hadn’t heard Pedro come up beside him as he stood at the foot of the hospital bed. The tumor he’d dubbed “Cornelius” had got shook real good by that jeep ride and it was payback time. His temples throbbed relentlessly. He held onto the railing around the bed because if he let go, the dizziness would turn him upside down and drop him face first on the floor.