A faint, rather sexy hum announced the Scoop’s entrance into the operating theater and its movement along the grooved track in the ceiling.
Cog, anonymous in her cap, mask, and blue cotton scrubs, followed below the Scoop as it made the first leg of its journey.
It finally came to rest above the naked body of Raoul Ramirez, an eighteen-year-old boy from Coral Gables, Florida.
Raoul’s body had been split in a long H: the long incisions cut from throat to groin and across the clavicle and pelvis. Then the gaping cavity had been clamped wide open. The ribs were spread, and the organs, severed from the connective tissue, were laid bare.
Cog reached up and took hold of the Scoop’s two lateral handles, which looked like the handlebars of a bicycle. She tried not to think about the person once known as Raoul Ramirez.
This is science, she told herself. It was important, necessary, and it was happening all around the world, but especially in China and Japan. It was essential that the United States keep up and, ultimately, surpass other countries, wasn’t it?
The Scoop was important, and so was Cog.
She guided the hydraulic Scoop’s jaw to a precise position over the youth’s torso. Checking by eye and correcting by judgment, she cranked open the Scoop’s jaws, then lowered and fitted the titanium teeth under Raoul’s internal organs. She adjusted the jaws so that the enclosed viscera wouldn’t slip or break apart. Then she locked the machine’s glittering maw and flicked a switch in the stem.
With a well-oiled hum, the Scoop grabbed hold of the connected “package” of organs and lifted them out. In medical lingo, Raoul’s carcass was now a “canoe.”
She threw another switch and followed the Scoop as it once again traveled along its track and through an opening, to an adjacent room called the baths.
To Cog, the baths resembled a photo-development lab. A long stainless-steel sink took up one wall, and in the center of the room was a gray metal table. On the table were three rectangular stainless-steel basins, ten inches deep, filled with fluid.
The Scoop hummed along the track until it came to a shuddering stop over basin one.
Cog reached up and lowered the machine so that it was fully submerged. Satisfied with the procedure thus far, she opened the Scoop and inserted tubes into the severed ends of the two major blood vessels. Cog then opened the guillotine clamps in both the vena cava and the abdominal aorta.
Blood poured from the aorta and was conveyed into a waste canister while a short-term oxygen source loaded with a plaque-cleaning enzyme flowed through the aorta to the organs. When the heart and lungs and other organs were shining pink from the infusion of the oxygenated solution, she clamped off the vessels again. She closed the Scoop’s hungry jaws.
The Scoop lifted the organ package and repositioned it over basin two. This container held a different enzymatic solution, a cloudy soup biologically tailored to seek and destroy fat nodules, blood, and any stray strands of connective tissue.
She let the package soak in the cleanser. In some cases she would manually strip fat from the liver and the heart.
But Raoul had been young, and his organs were lean. He’d been a beautiful specimen, actually. A real hunk of chocolate.
Cog watched the Scoop rise out of basin two. This time she lowered it into basin three. As the canoe soaked in a potent solution of saline infused with neural stem cells, ultrasound stimulated the nervous system with high-frequency sound waves. The stem cells, originally harvested from fetal tissue and then cloned, attached themselves to the severed nerve bundles, invigorating the nerve endings preparatory to reconnection.
Kristin Morgan breathed out a sigh of satisfaction. The process had gone well. After “the package” was transferred to the blue room, she would carefully dismantle and disinfect the Scoop. There could be no danger of malfunction or infection in the next procedure, which was to take place not too long from now, actually.
Cog would soon forget about Raoul Ramirez, just as she’d forgotten about all the others before him.
Hundreds of donors.
All of them murdered in this very room.
46
DAWN HADN’T YET BROKEN through the thick tree cover in the woods around Bear Bluff, Colorado. The air had a bracing crisp chill.
Dr. Ethan Kane leaned against a tree trunk and cursed. He had to stop to massage the bruise on his right thigh where the little bitch girl had dared kick him. He had another deep bruise on his forearm. He was sure it had gone to the bone.
The pain served as a lesson to remind him that he had underestimated the girl. She was a superior being, wasn’t she? Well, now he knew.
He sucked on a brutally refreshing Altoids as he watched Frannie O’Neill’s cabin through the best of the new German-made binoculars.
He was more than two hundred yards away, but he could clearly see the veterinarian. It was as if he were standing just outside the bitch’s window.
He wondered if she got up this early every morning, or whether maybe she’d had a premonition that this was the day she was going to die. It was, Dr. Kane knew. She was a dead woman; she just didn’t know it.
He could read the time on the stove clock: 4:22.
His own watch, a Breitling Aerospace #270, read the same. Dr. O’Neill was careful about keeping the precise time. Probably careful about a lot of things.
All quiet on the western front, he chuckled to himself. Soon I can get back to my important work at the Hospital.
His two-man teams were deep in the woods, positioned to watch the doors on the north and south sides of the cabin. Each member had a Motorola handheld radio, infrared goggles, a tool with assorted blades and cutters, and a GPS locator that could pinpoint just about any spot on planet Earth.
Dr. Ethan Kane mentally reviewed his game plan. The team would not break into the cabin, because it left too much room for confusion and failure. That much he’d learned. The children were frightfully strong, fast, and clever. They seemed to combine all the best characteristics of human and avian life.
Instead, they would stay in the woods. At the ready. This time there would be no painful mistakes.
When the children eventually left the house, the teams would simply grab them.
One bird-brat at a time.
47
I THINK I SLEPT for about half an hour, but I really couldn’t be sure. Maybe I was down for a whole hour. Suddenly, my eyes were wide open. And I knew there was trouble.
Nine-year-old Matthew was beside me, shaking my arm, staring at me in total horror.
“What is it, Matt?”
“There are some creepy sickos outside in the woods. Even Pip doesn’t hear them. They’re the ones who broke into our house in Pine Bush. Yes, I’m sure, Frannie. I can smell them. They smell of death. They’re bad to the bone. Trust me on it.”
Terror flooded my body. If adrenaline were rocket fuel, I’d have been halfway to the moon. We were totally exposed, vulnerable. My cabin had a dozen or so windows, no curtains at all. I now knew that I had been stupid. Instead of a reunion with the kids last night, I should have called for help. Or I should have run with them. We should have run!
“Stay right here,” I whispered to Matthew. “Stay here, you superscout. Don’t stand up or go anywhere near the windows.”
“Do I look that dumb?” Matthew retorted.
“Nope. So stay down.”
I sat on the floor and hurriedly dressed in yesterday’s clothes. Then I heard Pip’s toenails click on the hardwood floor. In a second, he located me and danced around on his hind legs.
“Hush,” I admonished him. “You blew it, bub. Some watchdog you are.”
We crawled together to the kitchen. I went directly to the wall where the cordless phone was mounted.
I walked my fingers up the Sheetrock and patted around the cradle. Then I went into denial, unwilling to believe what my fingers were telling me.
The phone was missing!
The cradle was empty!
Where
the hell was the phone? Where was the damned phone? What the hell? Were they in the house right now?
I held in a scream, but a tiny moan escaped from my mouth. Then I crawled along the floor, reached up and touched the countertop with my hand.
I found the sugar bowl but knocked over the saltshaker. Damn it!
Then my fingers closed on the cordless—right where I’d left it after talking with Kit. Talk about relief.
I pressed a button on the receiver.
There was no dial tone. Nothing at all.
Maybe the batteries were dead. It really didn’t fucking matter. I was up shit’s creek without a paddle. Six little kids were in the badly leaking boat with me. I was in the panic room, wasn’t I? I wasn’t Jodie Foster.
That’s when I stood up in the kitchen.
And that’s when I felt a hand on my leg and nearly screamed.
“Try this.” It was Max, pressing a cell phone into my hand.
I heaved a sigh of relief—the battery light was green—a full charge. “Thanks,” I whispered.
Another shadow crept into the kitchen. Ozymandias the Brave. Looking as if he were ready to do war.
“They’re moving on us, Frannie,” he reported. “The cowards are coming closer to the house. We can fight them! We can win, too! Don’t doubt it for a nanosecond.”
“Max, get all the kids together. You too, Oz. Get your coats. Take everyone and go down to the cellar quietly. And crawl. Don’t fly. Do not fly.”
Hiding in the cellar was only a stopgap. If we stayed there, we’d be rounded up. And killed? I had another idea, though. It’s been said that pressure makes diamonds. If so, my idea was a real gem.
And like all good gems, the price would be dear.
48
I KNEW what I had to do, and I hated it more than drinking a quart of castor oil straight up and full to the brim. It made me unbelievably mad, and also inconsolably sad.
Maybe a little nuts, too.
This had to be one of the worst moments of my life, and it hadn’t even happened yet.
I was also angry at Kit for not being there to help me. Maybe he could have come up with another, better plan. Damn you, Kit.
I crouched low behind the children as they filed down the stairs into the cellar. The twins were wild-eyed and hooting, distressed at being roused so suddenly from the comfort zone of sleep.
Max put her hands on each of their heads to silence them. “Chill,” she whispered.
“I’ll be right there!” I told Max. “Don’t do anything crazy. I’ll join you guys in a couple of minutes.”
I hoped it was a promise I could keep.
The brilliant, early-morning sun was slanting through the windows. My hands were shaking some. Before sentiment could get its tenterhooks into me, I did the unspeakable.
I took a sharp carving knife to my sofa. I slashed the cushions until the frame was covered with feathers and goose down.
Next I piled the magazines from the coffee table on top of the ruined sofa. Shit, shit, shit. This hurts. It really sucks.
I looked around the living room, at the books and mementos of my marriage to Dr. David Mekin: the model boat he’d constructed, signed, and dated; our wedding photo on the mantel. I couldn’t stop the flood of memories: nest building, long evenings spent before the fire, lovemaking, and even fights that we worked through.
I pulled myself together and crawled to the hall closet. I swiftly stood and pulled down sheaves of my murdered husband David’s old medical journals from the top shelf. I hadn’t been allowed to throw them out while he was alive, and I hadn’t wanted to throw them out after he died. David had been a medical researcher, and a good one. He had found out too much about the School, and the bastards had killed him. They did that sort of thing, and right now, someone appeared ready to pursue me and inflict mayhem. Poor David, I thought. Poor kids. Poor me.
Tears automatically welled up in my eyes. I remembered seeing David’s sheet-covered corpse on a stainless-steel slab. The horrible pain of his loss. After he was murdered, I’d moved out of the cabin we’d shared and into a spare room at the Inn-Patient. It was too painful to live with his artifacts and my memories. Then I discovered Max in the woods. After I gained her trust, she took me and Kit to meet the other kids. When the bastards from the School found me, they burned down my animal hospital. Nothing remained but charred timbers. I was able to rebuild with insurance money. I’d reestablished tenancy of my old cabin in the woods.
Well, it looked as if it was time to move again—only this time I was pretty sure Nationwide wouldn’t be picking up the tab.
A dozen Duraflame logs were stacked high next to the wood-burning stove. They would do just fine.
I tossed the logs onto the mountain of magazines and feathers and added a kitchen stool for good measure.
I steeled myself to do what had to be done.
I touched a match to the pyre. The flame sputtered innocently enough, then caught with a flash.
I watched tendrils of smoke curl up toward the peak of the cathedral ceiling, and when the fire was burning well, I took the cell phone from my pocket and made the call.
“Please help me,” I said with genuine urgency. “There’s a house on fire in the woods behind the Inn-Patient Animal Hospital. Yes, right on Highway Thirty-four. Please hurry!”
I put on my jacket, tucking a whimpering Pip under my arm. I was crying as I got ready to leave my burning house.
49
I WAS ALSO mad as hell, absolutely furious, bent on revenge somehow, someway. There was always a way.
I ran down the steep stairs before second thoughts could slow me. It was totally dark in the cellar.
It took me several seconds to get my bearings.
I could hear scraping and dragging, and I went toward the sound. Scraping, scraping, scraping.
The kids were working, lifting and moving heavy boxes and furniture. I mean incredibly heavy stuff.
With shock, I realized there was all sorts of old junk piled up in front of the cellar doors—our exit was blocked. And it only got worse. I looked back toward the stairs and saw smoke starting to seep under the door to the cellar. I hadn’t expected the fire to get there so fast.
What a trap I’d set for us!
We would all die down there.
We’d be burned to death.
I had started the fire!
I waded into the fray and helped Oz, Max, and Matthew move a bed frame and dozens of cartons of books away from the cellar door. We moved a couple of old dressers as well.
“Stronger than you look, lady,” Max said, and smiled encouragement my way.
A bolt locked the door, but I was able to bang it off with a couple of blows from a sledgehammer.
Suddenly, an alarm went off upstairs. Then another.
Really loud. Screeching.
“It’s just a fire, don’t worry about it,” I told the kids. “I’m burning down my house.”
50
I LISTENED TO THE PIERCING WAIL of the smoke detector with a mixture of sadness and satisfaction. When the timbered walls caught, it would create a smokescreen outside, the diversion we needed. At least, I hoped so. But God, at what cost!
The cellar doors were of the hatch type, and the hinges were rusted. We put our shoulders and backs into it and pushed. The doors creaked open. I’d forgotten how incredibly strong Max and Oz were, especially Oz, who was really impressing me in all ways.
The hatch doors lay nearly flat to the ground on the east side of the house, about fifteen yards from a ravine. The ravine was about ten feet deep, lined with dramatic and striated rocks dripping with moss; under normal conditions, it made a nice little nature walk.
Now I saw the ravine as a long chute to safety. That was my prayer.
There had been no way we would escape—but now there was. The fire, the smoke, all the distractions had worked so far. Now if we were just a little lucky.
Wendy was scared and crying. I couldn’t blame her. I wan
ted to cry, too. I slowly stuck my head out the hatch doors and looked around. I listened. No footsteps. No gunshots. I ducked back in and took Wendy in my arms and hugged her tightly.
“Mama!” she wheezed.
Damn it. See? I was their mother. The only mother they would ever have.
“It’s okay, baby,” I whispered against Wendy’s ear. “We’re going to get out of this. Somehow.”
Then, with Pip racing beside me, I sprinted to the lip of the ravine and slid down to the bottom on my butt. The children followed, Oz guiding Ic, Max shepherding Matthew and Peter.
I counted noses.
The kids were scared, but at least we were still together, and unharmed so far.
Now, what to do, what to do?
Hot smoke clouded the cold morning air, and I thought I’d done as good a job as a girl could do under the circumstances. I’m no commando or superwoman, I’m a veterinarian!
Before I could fall over from patting myself on the back, I heard a sharp pinging sound and rock fragments scattered.
There were bullets ringing out around us. We’d been spotted again. Oh my good God, or bad God, or some kind of God, we were in big trouble! Then we got a little break. Not much to cheer about, but it was something. The wind shifted. The smoke from the fire gave us some cover.
“Now fly! Keep low. Very low. Meet me at the car. Go! Run!” I yelled to the children, and for once they didn’t question me; they actually obeyed. It was probably a quarter of a mile to the road where my car was parked at the Inn-Patient lot.
At least, I hoped to hell the car was still there. I didn’t have a plan B!
The kids flew away as I clambered over rocks and logs and twisted bunches of fallen branches. I kept the smoke from the fire between myself and the armed men.
Just when the ravine became too shallow to hide me, I saw a large blue shape I had always loved.
Like a rock. The Suburban was there. And so were the kids, all of them. Thank God.
I leaped ahead and opened the doors for the children and Pip, who all piled in without any extra urging from me.