The senator looked down at the floor and said nothing for what seemed like an hour, though it was probably only a minute. Finally, clearing his throat, but still having the gravelly sound that only comes from years of cigar smoke and hours of bourbon, the senator spoke to the floor.
“I have run out of time, Miss Philips.”
The senator took a long thoughtful pause and then looked at Jane with an expression completely lacking joy, as if he hated the fact he was in the room with her.
“And because I have run out of time, Miss Philips, you also have run out of time. There will be no more offers made. There is no deal to be struck. You will be executed for your crimes.”
Jane felt the urge to vomit at the thought of being executed but sat as still as she could.
“Your father—that sonofabitch—will also be executed for his crimes against the people.”
Jane’s urge to vomit grew, and she felt herself wobble in her seat at the thought of her father being tortured and killed. The horror of her situation was becoming more real with each passing second.
“Your brother—another sonofabitch and a damn tough one at that—will also be executed. Unfortunately for him, our scanners have detected some remarkable technology in his head, so that will have to be removed first, in what I imagine will be a very long and excruciatingly painful process for him.”
Jane felt her heart and will sink for a second, the feeling being quickly replaced by a spark of anger at the thought of her brother, the priest, being tortured to satisfy the perverse curiosities of a group of government scientists.
“But you, Miss Philips,” the senator continued, now wagging a finger at her and slurring just enough to confirm Jane’s suspicions about him being knockout drunk, “you are just a stupid … little … girl. Why couldn’t you just eat the food we gave you?” the senator rambled, flipping his hands up in the air. “Or drink the water? Why? Almost everyone else does, and even when they don’t, the caretaker has his ways … He makes people drink … If we had more time, he’d make you drink too … You may not think so, but I’ve seen him work. The man’s a degenerate … a sociopath … I’m not even sure he’s human. Believe me, princess, you’d be begging for the water before he was through with you.”
Jane suppressed the shudder that desperately wanted to run up her spine, and she thought again about the caretaker’s leathery gray hand. She couldn’t get the image out of her mind, and she couldn’t get the tune out of her head. She felt like she was watching some perverse horror movie unfold before her eyes, and she couldn’t turn it off.
“And when people drink the water, they tell us exactly what we need to know. And they’re too doped up to even know what’s happening to them. It’s humane when they die, because they don’t even realize it. Don’t you see?”
The senator swallowed hard, and Jane could see his expression slowly transform to one of hatred toward her. She had a hard time keeping her mouth shut but listened to him rant anyway.
“But not you, you stupid, stupid girl. Oh no—you’re too good for that. You and your whole damn family. None of you would eat or drink what we gave you. If it wouldn’t have been for your dad slipping up and eating the apple—I guess he figured no harm could come from that—we never would have discovered that Evelyn works for you.”
At this, Jane’s stomach flipped, afraid her dad might have given in or given up. Her mind raced. Did he tell them how to find Evelyn? Did they have her now? Is she even listening through the earbud, or am I hopelessly lost and on my own? The questions flooded her mind.
“Now, I don’t have a clue what that means—” the senator shouted, slamming his hand down onto the table. Jane jerked upright in her seat. Not a second later, and faster than Jane imagined possible in his current condition, the senator rounded the near corner of the desk. His face had grown red and swollen, his blood pressure redlining. The senator easily weighed three times what she did, and towered over her while she sat, and now, with his finger raised and pointed in her face, he was charging at her like a bull.
Startled at the enormous raging beast coming quickly toward her, Jane jerked her head backward, started to lose her balance in her seat, and felt her bowels go weak. Quickly she caught the underside of the table with one hand and stiffened every muscle in her body to straighten herself up. Bracing herself, she winced, still with her eyes wide. She couldn’t look away.
The senator didn’t stop his charge a comfortable distance away. He plowed through her personal space, bearing down on her, and stopped only inches from her face. Jane had never seen this man up close, and she didn’t like what she saw. His finger was shaking, he was so angry, and he had practically stuck it in her nose. His eyes were so inflamed, she could only see pupils and blood-filled capillaries, and she swore she saw traces of smoke coming from his nostrils.
He opened his mouth to speak. Recoiling at the putrid stink of coffee, bourbon, and cigar smoke on his breath, Jane jerked her head back again and would have lost her balance again had it not been for the table she clung to desperately, it being her only source of strength in the moment.
“But I do know this,” the senator continued through clenched teeth, in a terrifyingly even tone. “You have the answers that I need.”
Jane was rigid, fearful to move even a little. The senator stared at her, saying nothing for what seemed an hour, and then finally lowered his finger, stood, and looked away. He swallowed hard again.
“You know, your dad actually came here willingly,” the senator said, wandering back to his side of the table. “Can you even imagine that? He came here because he thought your mom might still be alive—that she might be in here, of all places. He said so—he told me—after he was doped up from the apple. I mean, really! Only your dad—that sick sonofabitch—would concoct such a delusion as to think that his government could be capable of such a twisted thing as to keep your mom alive, for leverage, in a place like this.”
The senator paused for a second and then continued with a glazed look in his eyes, almost speaking more to himself than to Jane. “Most people would never want to believe something like that. They couldn’t believe it. They trust us.”
He pulled his chair into the corner of the room and straddled it backward to face Jane. As he sat, he reached into his back pocket and pulled out a silver flask, and unscrewing the top, he took a big swig.
Looking at Jane, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and offered the flask to her with the other.
“Want a drink? I promise there ain’t nothin’ in this baby but good old-fashioned alcohol.”
Jane shook her head and still said nothing.
The senator shrugged his shoulders and rested the flask on the table. “Suit yourself,” he slurred.
Reaching into his shirt pocket, he pulled out a small device, squinting at it as if he were seeing three of them. He started poking at it with his finger.
Jane saw the two-way glass behind the senator flicker momentarily, and then an image from inside one of the cells appeared. In every respect, the cell was the same as hers. Lying on the cot, in similarly disgusting prison clothes, was a man, and in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen, in white, was the number 91973. It was the cell right next to hers.
“So, here’s your dad, Jane,” the senator said flippantly, now getting more casual by addressing her by her first name. “He’s going to die. He’ll get a bullet to the head before his body is dumped into Purgatory—that’s the name of the pit where we throw people away—but I guess you already knew that, didn’t you?”
Jane didn’t respond, but her heart skipped a beat at the sight of her dad. The revelation that he was still alive and that she at least knew where he was provided her with a touch of comfort.
“Want to know a secret?” the senator asked, a queer questioning look forming on his face. “I didn’t even know about Purgatory. No, really, it’s true. You knew something I didn’t, and after you left, I spent hours calling in all kinds of favors, trying to
figure out what the hell you were talking about. But I figured it out … and you know what? Now I know more than you,” he added, slapping his hand firmly on the back of the chair. “Don’t believe me?”
Jane sat still, even though she felt sure a shiver was going to run up her spine any second, unsure what the senator’s grotesque display would yield next.
Not waiting for a response, the senator cocked his head and his eyebrow. “How about this little tidbit … Did you know that Purgatory isn’t the only human landfill we have? Hmm? No? You didn’t know that, did you? Well, Jane, that’s not even the shocker … Would you believe it’s actually our twenty-third?”
Jane couldn’t contain her surprise. Her eyes widened and she felt herself sway in her seat.
“I know—I know!” the senator agreed excitedly. “I mean, that’s got to be some kind of record! To have exterminated—oh, sorry, I meant executed—executed—almost fifty million people.”
Jane couldn’t believe what she was hearing. The bodies she had seen strewn across the mountain valley were bad enough, but to realize that she hadn’t seen hardly a fraction of the number of people killed and dumped sent a shudder up her spine. The senator was correct the first time—people weren’t just being executed, they were being exterminated.
The senator raised his finger in the air, as if he had another point, and continued.
“I have another one for you, Jane. Did you know that at one point, the gray wolf was all but extinct from the mountains in Colorado? Terribly sad, isn’t it?” the senator asked, shaking his head dramatically. “Today, though, the largest population of gray wolves in all of North America is right here—in Colorado. And do you know who you have to thank for that incredibly benevolent act of stewardship? Hmm? That’s right—us!” he added, thumping his chest. “Why, if it weren’t for the thousands of bodies we’re dumping up there every month, those poor critters might be starving.”
At this, the senator burped, though Jane could tell from his expression he was closer to vomiting, as he contemplated the sickening reality Jane had actually witnessed. He took the flask off the table and had another drink.
Poking his finger again at the device, the screen in front of Jane divided into four boxes, with the video of her dad’s cell moving to the upper left. In the upper right box, a video appeared of another cell with the number 91971 in the lower corner. In it she could see her brother leaning against the wall, with his hands together and his head bowed. He looked like he was praying, and for a moment, the sick feeling she had in her stomach and the simmering anger she felt in her chest both seemed to melt away.
“So, here’s your brother, Jane. He’ll be wolf bait, just like your sonofabitch father, but we won’t have to put a bullet in his head. We can’t, really. His head is worth too much. He’ll be dead, though, before we throw him away,” the senator mused, flailing an arm into the air as if he were throwing trash over his shoulder.
The peace Jane momentarily felt vanished as quickly as it had come over her, and she could feel her pulse quicken. Jane was feeling she would like nothing more than to jump over the table and smack the senator’s drunk, fat face, but she gritted her teeth and balled her fists instead.
“And now, Jane, I have one last little surprise for you.”
The senator, still sitting, put his hands on the back of the chair and leaned as far forward as he could manage, smashing his fat belly into the back of the chair and starting to resemble a toad on a rock more than a man on a chair.
“Your sonofabitch dad is going to die without knowing the truth. After everything he went through, after all the pain he endured, he’ll be wondering right up to the last second if he was right about your mother. He will die a sad, confused man, and he deserves that because of his crimes.”
The hair on the back of Jane’s neck bristled, and she could feel her neck and shoulders stiffen, the rage building inside her.
“But you … you deserve worse. Your unwillingness to cooperate is making me do horrible, unforgivable things. So I am going to make you suffer—by knowing the truth.”
The senator stood from his chair, grabbed the flask, and drained the last of its contents.
“So here it is. The shuttle your mom was on didn’t just crash. We shot it down. But because everyone in your family is too stupid to file a flight plan, we thought it had your dad on board.
“Our plan was simple, really. Shoot down your dad. Make it look like he died in an accident. Bring him in here and force him to give us everything—all of his technology and discoveries—everything we need to rebuild the society of our dreams,” the senator added, waving his arms with a grand and somewhat mocking flourish.
“Actually, it wasn’t so much our plan as it was my plan. I mean, we might as well give credit where credit is due, right?” the senator said, mocking himself and puffing out his chest.
Jane’s teeth felt like they might break under the weight of her bite, and she could feel the tears forming in her eyes, making the senator a little blurry even though he was only a few feet away.
“But then your stupid mom got in the way. And she was the one we shot down. Well, naturally, I wanted to make lemonade out of lemons, so I had her sent here. Stupid of me, really, because she didn’t know anything about anything. I mean, what a total waste. And she’s a cripple, which has been nothing but trouble, especially after the drugs in the food turned her brains to mush.”
At the thought of her mom suffering even beyond her worst imagination, Jane couldn’t help the tear from rolling down her cheek, though she tried to cover it up by brushing her hand across her face. She had a fleeting image in her mind of pushing the senator out of the shuttle over the pit of wolves to his own grim death.
“So, here’s what happens next, Jane. You get to make a choice. If you will finally open your damn mouth and tell me how to get Evelyn, I’ll make sure your mom gets a bullet in the head before I have her body dumped in Purgatory. But if you don’t,” the senator added, now cynically wagging his finger at her, “your mom will be dropped into Purgatory from about thirty feet—high enough for her to be severely injured, but low enough for her to live—that is … until the wolves get to her.
“So, what’s it going to be?”
Jane finally mustered the courage to speak, trying to keep her voice as even as possible.
“You mean, my mom is still alive?”
“Well, of course she is, you stupid girl! Haven’t you been paying attention?” the senator exclaimed, throwing his hands up in the air in apparent frustration.
Squinting at the device in his hand, he poked at it again. “See for yourself!” he added, and instantly a third cell appeared on the screen, which showed the body of a woman lying in a somewhat contorted position on the cot. In the corner of the screen was the number 91977.
That was it. Jane knew where her mom was. Without letting the senator return his gaze to her from the screen, Jane stood, and in one fluid, twisting motion, turned around, grabbed the chair she had been sitting on, and hurled it at the senator’s head, channeling all her rage with it as it flew across the room.
The chair smashed into the senator’s face and sent him crashing back into the two-way glass, shattering it, and causing the senator to land awkwardly on the floor in the corner of the room.
Without hesitating, Jane dove for her pistol, which was still on the table, and quickly pointed it at the senator, allowing her thumb to click off the safety as she did.
The senator, dazed and blubbering and bleeding from his forehead, looked up at Jane and saw the pistol pointed at him. Not a second later, he slumped back against the wall, bringing his hand up to his forehead at the realization he was bleeding and about to be shot.
Through eyes made blurry from salty tears, Jane aimed at the senator’s head and felt herself squeeze the trigger.
The crack of the pistol was deafening. Jane’s hands and the pistol flew up toward the ceiling, and she was momentarily surprised that the pistol could have that
much recoil, until she realized that someone else was beside her. Turning her head quickly, she realized it was Marcus who had knocked her hands upward just as she had pulled the trigger.
“What the hell are you doing?” she yelled at Marcus over her ringing ears, quickly glancing back at the senator, who was clasping his hands over his ears but otherwise appeared unharmed.
“You may want to kill him now, but there will come a point when you’ll regret it.”
“I’m not so sure about that.”
“Trust me on this, Jane,” Marcus added.
The senator started squirming and sobbing in his corner. “Just let her kill me. You—you have no idea what he’s going to do to me. Please, just let her kill me.”
Jane quickly grabbed her other holster. Drawing the pulse gun, and completely ignoring Evelyn’s earlier warnings about not shooting anyone in the face, she aimed it at the senator’s forehead.
“Not a chance, you sonofabitch,” Jane said through clenched teeth as she gratefully pulled the trigger.
The smack of the chemical bullet against the senator’s bare fat forehead made a sickening sound, but it wasn’t as sickening as watching the senator convulse on the floor from electric shock. Even so, Jane stared at him for a second, unbothered by his suffering, given all he had said.
The senator flopped on the floor, eventually flipping onto his side, and he started drooling. Jane raised her pulse gun again and shot the senator a second time in the back of the head, just for good measure.
“Nice shot,” Marcus said, looking from the senator to her and then out the door of the interrogation room.
“Thanks,” Jane said, fumbling for a second as she pulled the earbud from the belt, quickly tucking it into her ear.
“Evelyn, we need your help. Now would be a good time to hack back into their system,” Jane said, starting to grab a pistol in each hand, only to have Marcus gently take the real pistol from her. Jane furrowed her brow at him, but he didn’t notice as he had already started pulling on her arm, leading her toward the interrogation room door and into the hallway. Walking quickly, they headed away from the elevator, toward the other end of the hallway.
Jane and the Exodus (Stargazer Series Book 1) Page 19
