The Last Stand (Book 3) (The Repentant Demon Trilogy) (10 page)

Thinking that she was interested in statuary, since that is where she had been browsing when he found her, the young man directed her to a whole series of figurines by the same artist who depicted fathers fishing with their sons, reading to them, teaching them to build things, and a whole array of domestic scenes.  They were beautifully crafted, and when Abigail learned they could be personalized with an engraved brass plate, she chose one.  It was of a black-haired man teaching his son to pray at the foot of his bed.  She loved it, and they said they could engrave the plate to say “Cal and Jonah” before the afternoon was over.  It would be ready to pick up by five.

The day moved quickly as the women purchased gifts then stopped for lunch at a little cafe where Abigail received the call that Cal was already on his way back to the cabin with the repaired van.  So she didn't need to pick him up from the repair shop after all.

“That was lucky,” said Abigail, “I didn't want him to see the package from the religious store.  Cal would have wanted to know what was in it.  He's probably feeling relieved for the same reason, although he could more easily hide a piece of jewelry inside a pocket.  Wait till you see what I got him.  This statue is fifteen inches tall.  Cal appreciates beautiful artwork, especially the religious kind.”

“So you're both really into all this Catholic stuff,” commented Uma, with reservation, “I would think he might be turned off by religion with all that happened to him.”

“What some people do in the name of religion is tragic,” explained Abigail, “but it's not the fault of the faith, rather of the followers, who probably aren't following their faith in the first place.  No religion—no legitimate religion—advocates sex with children.”

“Really?  What about the priests who molested all those boys?” asked Uma, “I don't want to offend you, but I can't understand that.”

“I'm glad you're telling me about what bothers you about my church,” she answered pleasantly.  “And I agree with you that those men should have gone to jail.  Some did.  It was wrong to try to cover it up.  Some misguided intention to protect the church itself from slander.  But they never should have protected the men who committed the crimes. That was a mistake, and I think the bishops realize that now.  The church survived and is still recovering from those horrible times.  You know, it all happened during the seventies.  The age of “do whatever feels good,” a cultural influence which infiltrated the very church itself.  It was wrong, and makes me angry, too.  But it wasn't the faith who should be blamed.  It was the people who committed those atrocities.”

Uma stared thoughtfully into her cup of tea and nodded.  She seemed to accept that Abigail was making sense.

“I've known nothing but good, decent priests all my life,” Abigail continued.  “It was less than one per cent of all the priests who were offenders, and there were plenty in other churches, too… and in scouting, and in sports.  A pedophile is going to go where the children are, regardless of where that might be.”

“So you're all Catholics,” said Uma, “the whole bunch of you.  Well it looks like I'm going to have to just get used to it.  I’ve never really known any Catholic people, and of course, in the commune, we despised all organized religions.  I see that was wrong, so maybe God has got a lot more to teach me.  Looking back, that crazy belief system we had was sort of a religion.” 

Although it might take more time for Uma to put aside all her reservations about the Catholic church, she seemed somewhat satisfied by Abigail’s explanations.  She was a woman who had put God way outside her life for many years, and though many in prison had found Jesus, she hadn't been one of them.  Her pain and suffering had blinded her to see the love of God in her world.  And in fact, it was only the realization that her Sunshine had been given back to her that made her even consider the notion that she may have been wrong to turn away from God; that he had blessed her in spite of herself.

They finished their late lunch, stopped back at the religious goods store to pick up Cal's gift, and made it to Highway 191 by five-thirty.  Abigail kept a keen eye out for buffalo as she drove.

“We're actually pretty far from where the buffalo roam,” said Uma, “I'll bet that one you encountered had escaped from a nearby ranch.  They raise them out here just like beef cattle. ”

“He wasn't afraid of us, that's for sure,” said Abigail, leery of the dusky sky ahead of them, “and I just have this feeling that he's out there watching for us, even though we're in a different car.”

She saw something on the road ahead of her, but it wasn't a buffalo.  It was flashing red lights blaring and coming toward her at increasing speed.  Two dark-colored SUV's that looked very familiar.  As they approached her going the opposite direction, the driver motioned for her to pull over.  The two vehicles swerved around in the middle of the highway then quickly surrounded Abigail’s car, one behind while the other came up in front of her.  A uniformed serviceman got out and approached her window.

“Are you Abigail Callahan?” he shouted, with a gun pointed at her.  When she answered affirmatively, he asked, “Are you safe?”  She nodded again.  He peeked inside the back, seeing nothing but stacked packages, most of it baby equipment.

“We will escort you back to camp,” he said, smiling, “Hope we didn't alarm you, Ma'am.”

She pulled back onto the highway, following the officer at breakneck speed and arriving through the gates to find an ambulance waiting.  Cal, Brady, Mike, Nathan, and Agent Foley all stood outside awaiting their arrival which had been preceded with much fanfare.  They heard the ambulance siren and witnessed the guards opening gates to the compound as the parade of vehicles entered.  Abigail got out of her car quickly and raced toward Cal, but Agent Foley stopped her with a raised hand.

“Don't touch anyone until you've been examined by medical professionals,” he said.  “Hopefully, this won't take long and will prove to be erring on the side of caution.

Two men in hazmat suits waved the wands of a radiation detector over both Abigail and Uma.  The two passed the test, and things became a little more relaxed.

“What's going on?” Abigail called to the group watching from a safe distance.

“There's been a biological attack on fifteen cities that we know of,” Cal called back.  “The substances vary.  Ricin and cyanide mostly, but we don't know how it was released yet.”

“Did you eat or drink anything while in town?” asked Agent Foley.

“Yes, we had lunch at a small cafe,” answered Abigail.  “We feel fine, though.”

“We need you to undergo some tests,” he said, “but you can go home as soon as we collect blood and urine samples.  Your husbands can drive you to the medical facility, wait while we do our job, and then take you home.”

Angel started yipping from Brady's arms.  He had been dog-sitting since both Cal and Abigail had been away on errands.  As soon as Cal arrived back, that's when the news broke. 

Uma climbed to get into the jeep with Brady while Cal, holding Angel, took the driver’s seat in Abigail's car.  They all drove through the woods to the facility inside the mountain about two miles down a gravel road.  Abigail noticed as she made a U-turn parking that the huge entrance gates hidden by foliage were now closed behind them. 
It has begun
, she thought approaching the enormous metal doors imbedded into the hillside.  Only Cal, and Abigail briefly that very morning, had ever been inside this place.

An elevator nearby took them down to the third level where the doors opened into a sparkling clean and bright medical facility.  It was where Abigail had come earlier for her physical.  She hoped this one would be equally as successful, for both of them.

“Why does the government always lie to us?” she complained, seeing the attendants approach with folded gowns for them to wear.  “We wouldn't need to undress just to give a blood and urine sample.”

“We just want to be thorough,” said a nurse pushing the blood extraction equipment on a cart, “an X-ray, a CAT scan, these are just precautions.”

“I'm pregnant!” protested Abigail, “I can't have those kinds of tests, especially at this early stage.”

The other nurse looked alarmed.  “Does Dr. Cory know this?” she asked, “He personally gave these orders.”  She began punching numbers on her cell phone.

“I just saw Dr. Cory this morning and had an ultra-sound,” Abigail fumed.  “I don't care who ordered it.  I'm not getting any of that.  No X-ray, no CT scan, no MRI.  None of it.”

“You're right ma'am,” said the nurse, snapping her flip-phone shut.  “When Dr. Cory got the news of the two patients, he wasn't told their names.  You won't be getting those tests.”

“Well we were together everywhere,” argued Uma, “and we ate at the same restaurant.  So if she doesn't need tests, neither do I.”

The nurse dialed the phone again, turned her head while she spoke, then announced that these ladies did not need to undress.  “Blood and urine samples only,” she proclaimed.  Then she came forward to speak confidentially to the two of them.

“Dr. Cory is so fed up with government authorities giving him orders about how to proceed with his patients,” she said.  “If you don't mind, I'd just like to write down everything you both ate or drank while in town.  Then pee in the cup, let us draw some blood, and you can both go home with your husbands.”

By the time the women were finished, they decided to gather at the cabin and watch the news together.  The entire country was panicking. 

“Never had anything like this happened before in U.S. history,” newsmen reported.  “These outbreaks have been reported over several states; from Boston to Los Angeles, in twenty-four cities spaced sporadically across the nation.”

The announcer on the television screen stood before a hospital as ambulances behind him parked with red lights still flashing. 

“Victims continue to trail into emergency rooms with varying symptoms such as severe vomiting and diarrhea as well as seizures and breathing problems.  Both ricin and cyanide had been identified as contaminates in yet unknown food sources.   The attacks had to have been perpetrated with precise planning.  Cyanide acts within minutes of ingestion, but ricin could take hours before symptoms appear.  So far, authorities had not been able to identify the exact sources of the contamination, but it is believed to have been through food or water, and it could have been done at restaurants, grocery stores, or food processing plants.  With such a wide range of victims, it didn't seem like they would find a common denominator among them.  Cities across the whole nation have been hit.”

“It's amazing how they can go on and on,” said Brady during the commercial break, “when they don't even know anything.  They don't know who did, how they did it, or what's happening next.”

“The news talk shows are going to fill the empty space with everything but news,” added Abigail.  “They've already lined up an hour-long special documenting the history of biological warfare, past incidents involving ricin and cyanide, both successful and unsuccessful.  We're going to hear hours of speculation since they don't have any real news to report.”

“They're telling everyone to seek medical help if they have any symptoms,” Uma said, with agitation, “that's only going to confuse everything even more.  Everyone with any vomiting and diarrhea is heading to the nearest emergency room.  Even those with just a simple cold.  Cal just told me there is no test to detect either one of these agents.  So what are they doing with our blood and urine?”

“I was looking online,” said Cal, “and that's true.  Either they were trying to make you feel like they're doing something when they're not, or you've just contributed your bodily fluids to medical research in some way.”

“I've been told that terrorists have mostly abandoned the idea of biological agents,” said Mike Edwards, “because they can't kill enough people with them.  Usually after the first few cases appear, the source is quickly isolated, and that's the end of it.  But here it looks like they’ve used so many sources they are multiplying their odds of increasing the number of fatalities.  Of course the fact that the perpetrators may die in the process doesn't bother these extremists who view themselves as martyrs.”

Their attention returned to a breaking news bulletin and all eyes and ears were riveted to the screen as Neil Echols of CNN announced, “Boston Regional Hospital has reported seven deaths in the past hour from suspected ricin poisoning.  Five deaths have occurred at Barnes Hospital in Saint Louis, Missouri from similar symptoms.  We have ten deaths at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, Illinois; fourteen at Baptist Memorial in Memphis, Tennessee; nine at Thomas Jefferson University Memorial Hospital in Philadelphia; five at Mount Sinai in Miami; twelve at Riverside Methodist Columbus Ohio.  Eight different New York hospitals reported a total of forty-two deaths.  And the reports are still pouring into the newsroom.