The Age of Hysteria

by Ryan Schow

  “What about the nerd?” Benny said.

  “They’re off limits,” Okot warned them. “You can have the boy, though.” Both men frowned. Neither of them were into boys, so basically it was hands off.

  “What about him?” Talon asked, referring to Charlie.

  “Take his keys and his smokes, if you want, then toss him outside. It will start snowing soon, then it will freeze. By the time this is over, either Chicago will have survived this war, or the city will have fallen completely. Either way, we’ll be gone, back in the heat of Africa.”

  As they were getting in the two vans, to Okot, Diaab said, “It’s going to get really nasty out there. Just keep an eye on the skies and don’t get the merchandise killed.”

  “No problem, sir,” Okot said, ever the vigilant soldier.

  The dash clock still worked, and though the van’s air filters were new, the microscopic particles from the burning city still managed to get inside the vehicle. The smoke mixing with a horrible, noxious odor coming from the children in back left him nauseous. In the rear view mirror he saw them: mongrels, every last one of them.

  Eyes back on the road, he knew they’d wash up nice and fare just fine on the open market. Most of them were white, almost all of them underage. This was the cornerstone of his operation. The thing that put him on the map back home.

  They traveled through the abysmal landscape for nearly an hour before they hit W. Lawrence Ave. As they left the congestion of the suburbs and cut through the wooded forest preserve, they spent much of the time traveling on the shoulders of the four lane road.

  That’s when he spotted the drone bearing down on them from ahead. He laid on the horn, but Okot was already zig-zagging the vehicle as best as he could. They’d just passed the Robinson Woods turnoff and were now over the Des Plaines River, which looked like a wide, brown swamp. There was nowhere to go.

  The drone lit Okot’s van up, but Diaab managed to swerve in time to avoid direct fire. Looking in his side view mirror, he saw the drone continuing on, not bothering with them.

  He told the kids to stay put, got out of the car, hurried to Okot’s van. The back doors had been shot open. Kids were now peeking out the back. One of them pushed open the door and nine or ten of them jumped out, saw him and started running up the street.

  “Okot, dammit!” he screamed.

  He raced to the front door of the van, pulled it open and looked at his best friend. He’d been riddled with gunfire and was dead. The devastation hit him with physical force. He slid down the side of the vehicle, sat down hard on his butt and buckled under the strain of loss.

  For his dead son, he was angry; for Okot, he was sad.

  Just then a little girl, not four years old, ran past him barefoot and scared. She looked at Diaab as she ran by, her soul barely there, the trauma of being held as human cargo apparent. This got him moving.

  “Where do you think you’re going?!” he roared at the little girl.

  She never looked back. Like the others, she just kept running. He got up and hustled back to his van. He started it, put it in gear and floored it, speeding right for the pack of kids. He could not fit one more child in his van, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have plans for them.

  As he bore down upon them, the big engine revving hard and loud, he saw every single one of their deaths in his mind and he smiled. For the loss of Okot, which he still couldn’t fathom, he ached to hear their little bodies tumbling and squelching and breaking under the van.

  He was given no such reward.

  The four year old girl managed to get out of the way in time, but he’d swerved hard for her, setting him slightly off course from the other kids. Swerving back toward them, the entire van started to tip, so he corrected back and missed them all.

  The torrent of obscenities that left his mouth had every single kid cringing and moving as far away from the front of the van as possible.

  With nothing left to do but stew in silence and continue on to O’Hare, he tried to put this monumental setback behind him.

  But Okot…

  He didn’t realize he was crying, but when the tears began to run, he started pawing at his eyes. He could not have this kind of emotion etched on his face when he met the pilot. Don might not agree to a flight, and if this became the case, he’d need to be persuasive. He couldn’t do that if he was crying like a child.

  He saw the man at the tarmac. Don was with his wife, his infant daughter and his dog. Diaab drew a sharp breath in through his nose, then tried to settle himself. They had the room now that Okot was gone, along with his half of the cargo. Seeing Don with his family meant there would be no pushback.

  He drove right up to the plane, a headache spreading across his forehead, then down around the base of his skull.

  All along the runway, planes were burning. Several of the hangers even looked like they’d been hit with missiles.

  His time here had definitely come to an end. He would leave Farhad behind, and Nyanath as well. She was a woman, worth nothing now that she had her independence, her freedom and a voice. The plane could be filled with other, more precious cargo.

  He got out of the truck, shook Don’s hand and said, “Are we ready?”

  “The plane is fueled and ready to go. And the skies have been clear for the last thirty minutes, with the exception of a Reaper drone that just passed through here.”

  “I saw it,” he grumbled.

  “Where is Okot?” Don asked, as if he didn’t want to wait another minute to get this bird off the ground and up to forty-one thousand feet.

  “He didn’t make it. The Reaper drone, it…it…”

  Don frowned, then nodded solemnly and said, “The wife and kids are okay going with me then?”

  “I take it this is a one way flight?” Diaab said.

  “I’ll drop you off in Sudan, then make my way to the EU,” he replied. “My wife has family in Romania. The beagle will be happy.”

  “That’s fine,” Diaab said, exhausted, the many setbacks and disappointments of these last few days exacting a toll. “Where’s Jack?”

  “Fueling the jet. He’s not as certain as me. Truth be told, he thinks this whole thing is crazy.”

  “The drones aren’t trying to kill people at forty-one thousand feet,” Diaab heard himself say. “They want what’s on the ground.”

  Don nodded in agreement, then together they loaded the cargo aboard. When they were done, Don handed him a card with writing on the back, then said, “Contact me when you’re home, then you can wire me the funds where it’s safe to receive them.”

  “Thank you, Don,” Diaab said, shaking the man’s hand.

  The plane taxied down the runway, avoiding burned out fuselages and scattered debris. When it turned and hit full throttle, Diaab watched it lift smoothly into the air. In that plane was his lifeblood, his way back into the Sudanese lifestyle, this time as a prince returning home to be king.

  Just as the plane lifted off the runway, however, a Predator drone hit it with missiles and the craft exploded into a huge fireball that went crashing back down to earth.

  He sunk to the tarmac to his knees, a sob hitched in his throat, the might of God’s hand pressed down upon him. A stark and restless pain thundered through him, smothering him for his wicked ways, his ill gotten gains, his lust for power at the cost of thousands of stolen children.

  “Why are you doing this to me?!” he screamed into the sky.

  A peel of thunder shook the skies, the approaching clouds made more harrowing by the blankets of black grit sitting just off the earth’s battered surface. He didn’t realize how cold it had become until he lost everything.

  “Get up!” he screamed at himself, spittle flying.

  He was not going to quit. He still had some of his family left, and another passenger train filled with kids. If Jack hadn’t seen Don and the plane blow up, there was still a chance they could get out of there.

  But what about the drone?

  Don said he
hadn’t seen a drone for thirty minutes, and that wasn’t the drone that killed Okot. Were they just waiting for planes to take off to shoot them down?

  Who the hell were “they” anyway? Who controlled the drones? Who was killing anything and everything that dared to move? He felt his eyes filling with tears once more. Pawing at them relentlessly, angry at himself for these unwanted emotions, he thought, who in the name of Allah is turning America into fields of ash and death?

  Standing up, he had an idea. If he could get back to W. Lawrence Ave. where Okot was killed, maybe he could round up a few of the kids.

  He felt his body stabilize, his surety returning. He had a mission. A way to clean up some of this mess. Diaab returned to the van, put it in gear and headed back to salvage what he could. Unfortunately for him, the kids he’d tried to run over on W. Lawrence Ave. were nowhere to be seen. He checked the back of Okot’s van one last time and found half a dozen dead children inside, all shot by the drone.

  He slapped the side of the van, the impact sounding like a gunshot in the night.

  These damn drones!

  He willed himself to check on Okot. He didn’t have the courage, though. No, he did. Okot was his friend! The driver’s side door stood open where he’d left it. With his heart in his throat, he approached the front of the van. When he saw Okot, he stopped, drew a deep breath, then turned and returned to his van, leaving the scene as far behind him as he could.

  He was on W. Montrose passing through an uninspiring neighborhood just before the backside of the Ridgemoor Country Club and golf course when his phone rang. The sound startled him. He fumbled through his pockets, but by the time he got it, it went to voicemail.

  A second later the voicemail indicator chimed.

  He brought the van to a stop, pressed voicemail, then turned about five shades of white when he heard the voice on the other line. It was Fiyero Dimas. When the message ended, he dropped his phone, gathered his bearings, then began screaming and pounding the steering wheel until his hand threatened to break from the abuse.

  Chapter Thirteen

  When it rains, it pours. And sometimes, when it rains so heavy, a person can literally drown standing up.

  I wonder if I’ll be that man.

  Adeline is holding the hand of a stranger, a Guatemalan woman she does not know, because woman to woman, this kind of thing cuts with a different knife.

  Eliana understands because she just went through the ninth circle of hell getting Carolina. If Adeline knew who she really was, how she just shot a man point blank in the head after kneecapping him, would Adeline really forge this kind of bond?

  These are the sorts of thoughts running around in my head as I stand here, unable to be useful, or comforting to my wife. She’s sobbing over our stolen children and I’m here looking at the back of Eliana wondering what kind of a state of mind she had to be in to travel two thirds of the continent for a person. Would Adeline do that?

  Was she even capable?

  Looking at Eliana, seeing her move, listening to the tenderness in her voice, this same voice she used to threaten me with earlier, I marvel at her chameleon-like behavior.

  Maybe I could be that way. Maybe I could be nice when I feel cruel. Patient when the impatience wants to have its way with me. Now my eyes are on Adeline and I can’t decide if I hate her or love her so much I can’t live without her.

  I’m not going to make it.

  I smile, pretend I’m not losing it, pretend like my kids aren’t gone. And then I stand up straight and soften my face to the fears I have, the anger churning through my guts, the notion that won’t leave me alone: I will not survive this life.

  The first thing you do in a situation like mine is ask yourself if your heart can withstand this type of agony. It can’t. But you have to make it. As a father, you can’t fall prey to the weakness inside you. You have to be bigger than that.

  You have to persevere.

  The second thing you ask is, did they hurt the kids? You start to wonder, are they dead? Are they cold or hungry or uncomfortable?

  And your mind…oh, the places it can go!

  But it can’t go anywhere productive because you’re right there, drowning where you stand, and you’re looking at the mother of your children and not wanting to let her drown, too.

  Adeline is a wreck.

  She’s going to make matters worse, I know.

  It’ll be the fits of rage, the blind hysteria she’s feeling at having her children stolen from her, the safety she’ll never again feel in her home.

  All of this will compound the problem. All of her craziness, matched with mine, will only serve to make matters worse.

  Beyond that, I’m pretty sure my heart will explode, because as I stand here, looking at Adeline, listening to her, I know one thing and one thing only: when I get my hands on Diaab Buhari, not even God Himself will stop the massacre.

  Until then, however, the questions will continue. They’ll roll around in my head non-stop, and they’ll do the same to Adeline. I can keep my mouth shut, use this uncertainty, this agitation, this rage, for fuel. Inevitably, though, Adeline will verbalize her mania, and I’ll end up using all that precious fuel to keep myself calm.

  It’s like that with men and women some days.

  Or maybe it’s not and that’s just how I justify my tumultuous relationship with Adeline. Maybe everyone is normal, and things are easy, and everything is just freaking roses for someone else. Maybe Adeline and I are just an awkward fit, a circle stuffed inside of a square, both people too dumb or too stubborn to move on.

  Whatever.

  It doesn’t matter.

  We have bigger problems than this. Bigger problems than us.

  So now I’m wondering about those problems and I’m wondering about the kids. Adeline will want to know the same things soon enough. She’ll want to know, are the kids sleeping on beds, blocks or floors? Do they have a bathroom to use? Will there be food for them or will they be made to starve?

  Those will be the kinds of questions she’ll ask because she won’t be able to ask the really hard ones, the ones you dare not give voice to in the hopes that they will never come true.

  I can’t blame her. I’m wondering the same thing, too. And then I’m trying to tuck those thoughts away, not let my mind go there. Rape, torture, murder. Those kinds of things.

  If I let my mind wander these rocky roads, all I’ll end up doing will be obsessing over Diaab Buhari. I’ll wonder what a man like him is doing to my little girl, to my only son.

  What I can’t afford to do is burn all my fuel on rage. To do this, I’ll need temperament, good judgement, and enough gas at the right time to finish this thing and not get dead along the way.

  “There was a man who kidnapped an Italian girl earlier this year,” Adelina says, wiping her eyes. I’m not sure if she’s talking to me or to Eliana. I listen just in case. “He was in court where he had to answer for her death. I read a lot about it, although I’m thinking about it now and I can’t tell you why I was so interested.”

  “Don’t do this to us,” I hear myself say.

  She doesn’t even look at me. She’s looking up at Eliana, seeking comfort from her.

  “The details that came from that trial were beyond gruesome. These were the kinds of things that really ripped and tore at my heart, not just as a woman, or a mother, but as a human being.”

  “I understand what you are saying perfectly,” Eliana says. “I thought so many things when Carolina went missing.”

  “Our situation is not their situation,” I say, trying to stop this train before it leaves the station. “Or Eliana’s situation.”

  Eliana looks back at me; it’s not a pleasant look. Then she turns and says, “I’ll let you two be.”

  “No,” she says, tightening her grip on Eliana’s hand. “I’m not done with my story.”

  Eliana stays.

  “The parents of the girl who was killed?” she says. “They got their answers. But more qu
estions came up, as they always do. The parents couldn’t ask them, so their lawyer did. He asked those impossible questions because it wasn’t his daughter that was killed and mutilated. You’d never let those questions even leave your mouth if it was your own daughter! Questions like, when they dismembered her, was she alive? If she was alive, was she conscious or did her body let her pass out first? Did she scream for her daddy, her mommy? Was she violated, abused repeatedly before her death, tortured to the point where her mind had no choice left but to break?”

  At this point, Adeline is sobbing through her story, unable to stifle these sad, dangerous emotions.

  “That’s enough,” I say, not wanting to raise my voice, although I did it anyway because I feel myself rolling too quickly into rage mode.

  Fear will do that to you. Fear will make martyrs of us all. Me? I’m a slave to my emotions, and everyone I know is about to pay the ultimate price.

  “Thank you, Eliana,” Adeline says. Looking at me, she says, “I appreciate you not yelling at me as I try to process all this.”

  I shake my head, let my face fall into a frown.

  “You’re welcome,” Eliana says.

  “You and Carolina are welcome to stay as long as you need,” she says. “Ice, too.”

  “Oh, we’re not together,” Eliana says. “I mean, we traveled here, but we’re not like that. He’s a good man, though. Good to have around if things get out of hand.”

  After seeing what I saw back at Sergio’s house—all those girls, abused, neglected, locked in a cage—guys like me start to wonder just how deep a person’s depravity can travel before it hits rock bottom.

  Maybe there is no bottom.

  Maybe the wickedness of humans is simply an abyss that travels into the dark ends of the deep space of evil.

  I know the case Adelina is referring to.

  When I read about this man who mutilated this lovely girl, I began to wonder just how far the edge of horror stretched. In my line of work, that curiosity has had room to grow. The things I saw on a weekly basis were enough to leave even the most optimistic of men jaded. The girl’s parents sat in that courtroom in abject horror as their worst fears were realized.