Notes from the Future: Henrietta's Tale, Part VII

"We've found them," the Rachel pants. "We know where he's taken them, and he has all the children there, too."

The room flies into action. Mother Henrietta is on her feet, shrugging off the lavender robey thing she's been wearing in favor of a black vest covered in pockets. She's wearing digitized cammo gear and hiking boots, I had no idea! She looks a bit like Judi Dench in a Bond film, now, only less glamorous and more para-military. Rachels and Ezekiels are moving with purpose, the same way they did when the "Prophet" was going crazy-pants in everyones' face. Within minutes the room is transformed, merely by the stance and clothing of the people in it: every man and woman there is in formation, fully equipped -- and fully armed -- for some kind of mission. 

I realize now that I've stood here watching them the whole time, and that as they stand at attention I am the odd woman out, soft and civilian, no idea where they're going or why. All eyes are on Mother Henrietta, but she turns to look at me.

"Veronica," she begins. "You do not have to be a part of this. You could stay safely here, safely hidden, with no risk whatsoever, and we would all understand. Frankly, I know I would prefer that and I'm pretty certain I'm not the only one here who feels that way."

I glance around the room and see some discreet, flinty nods. 

"One of our better-kept secrets," continues Mother H. "Is that every single man and woman here has had extensive military experience. It is the best form of medical experience available, whether war-time or peace-time, and instills a discipline and understanding of chain-of-command not often found in civilian hospitals. We are not wanna-be military nutjobs. Every one of us is a Veteran. We know the risk we face tonight. And we think you should stay here. But we want you to understand where we are going and why, so sit briefly and listen." She turns to the ... troops, I guess. "At ease. Have a seat."

As one, they relax and sit. But somehow they are each as taut as a bowstring, even reclining on beanbags.

"Our numbers have been dwindling for quite a long time. Not just from the "accidents," but simply from individuals or small groups disappearing. We've been aware of it, but until recently we haven't been able to send people out searching, as Mayberry would call a Reckoning any time a larger group disappeared. We had to be very careful to keep our work as secret as we could. Even now -- you know, we've gotten so deep into our secrecy that I realize there's something you need to see. Come with me, Veronica. The rest of you be outside in seven minutes, ready to go."

She stands and I follow her to the right, deeper into the house, toward areas I've never been; the Rachels and Ezekiels move in the opposite direction, toward the balcony and the steps to the gravel below, to the last place I saw Tad. I'm lost in that thought for a moment before I realize we're going down a set of stairs I've never seen. Mother H. turns to me for a moment.

"There are a few reasons you've never been down here or seen what you're about to see," she says. Then she pushes on a book in a shelf and a panel opens in the wall -- right out of the sheet rock! -- exposing more stairs leading down. She walks through, saying, "The first reason is simply hygiene: we need to keep it clean." I follow her and she pushes a button on an electric wall sconce and the door closes behind us. Heading down these new, bare pine stairs, Mother H. continues: "The second reason is security. We have to control who comes in and goes out, who knows what and why. As Edward appears to be able to teleport or something along those lines, we have been eager to speak to you about his abilities. I want to stress that we would never force you to talk about anything. As you have not disappeared with him in the last few days, and as you have been incredibly, wonderfully helpful in our work, I have decided you should see more -- not all, but more -- of what we have, here."

The staircase has become a spiral one, now, and we're pretty deep underground. It hits a landing and continues to spiral down, but Mother H. opens a door to our left. Inside is an old, Victorian elevator cage. She slides open the gate and steps in, holding it for me. When it closes behind me, I notice symbols all over the metal. The kinds of symbols Tad is always talking about and writing in his journals.

"We call this elevator 'Jules,'" she says. "Push the Crescent-Full-Crescent button, please."

Looking at the button panel, I see no numbers, just symbols. Some I recognize: the alchemical symbol for the sun, which looks like a breast with a nipple right in the center, is familiar to me because of the number of times Tad has grabbed my boobs and said, "He's got the twin sun Solar System / In his hands! / He's got a whole lotta booby-tits / In his hands! / He likes to jiggle-jiggle-jiggle / In his hands! / He's got your titties in his hands!" This would be followed by a brief lecture on alchemical symbolism. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the man I love. Nucking futs, but cute and cuddly. And a Time Traveler, it would seem.

All of this goes through my head in a millisecond as I search for and find the button Mother Henrietta mentioned: two crescent moons flanking the full moon. I push it, and with a clank and a whirr, we are moving swiftly down into darkness broken only by the amber light overhead in the small elevator cage, with similar amber lights in the shaft at regular intervals. They look like mica lamps from Restoration Hardware. Only not sold at a mall. I'm betting they're original. The shaft is quite a bit larger than the elevator cage: the lights look to be fifteen to twenty feet away. Mother Henrietta Continues:

"We've been here a long, long time. We started excavating the moment we arrived. We had several goals, not least of which is secrecy."

The elevator stops, Mother Henrietta pushes the gate open and follows me out. As the gate slams shut, she pushes a series of buttons on a pad of symbols and I hear the clunk of a door unlocking. She turns a large steel handle on the door before us and it swings in. We step inside.

We are in the antechamber of an all-white cleanroom environment. Like something from a movie about epidemics. There are suits with hoses attached and I start to freak out a little, but Mother Henrietta points to scrubs and elastic footies. "Pull a large set on over what you're wearing, put on some footies. Nobody's got bird flu."

I follow her instructions and follow her lead, and in minutes we are standing before a high-tech door with another pad, but on the other side is a nurse Rachel. At a nod from Mother H., she pushes a button and the door slides open. We step through.

It is a gigantic hospital ward. And on every single bed is a wounded but healing Rachel or Clean Zeke. 

"Holy shit!" I blurt. "I totally forgot about them!"

Mother Henrietta smiles slightly. "It would be easy to do, in the wake of what has occurred. These are most -- not all -- of Torvald Mayberry's followers. These are the ones injured in the fight you witnessed. We are caring for them physically; once their wounds are healed, we will focus more on their mental and emotional state."

Looking closely, I see that each one is hand- or ankle-cuffed to her or his hospital bed. Mother H. watches me seeing these people bound in their care as we walk down the long, long room. She says, quietly, "Many of them are in a state of shock, denial and cognitive dissonance. The hold Mayberry had over them is still present, and very strong. We've had to intubate the ones who refused to eat, and there are others -- there, that one -- who have intentionally injured themselves in our care, prompting slightly more extreme measures."

The man in question is in a full-body cast and traction. He is still cuffed to his bed, but he couldn't get up and run now even if the cuffs were off.

"What was his injury in the battle?" I ask.

"A minor concussion. But he threw himself down the stairs coming in, breaking several ribs and one arm. Then he stole a scalpel and slashed his wrists and after that he tried to tip his bed over and crush his skull. He is under the impression that we mean to kill him, and he's going to beat us to it."

"I don't know why, Mother Henrietta --" I begin.

"Henrietta, please. For better or worse, you're not a Rachel -- yet." She smiles and I feel oddly flattered. "Go on, Veronica. You want to talk to him. I understand. Be careful. Eye contact, for some reason, can be troubling."

I approach his bed and he's watching me, no expression on his face. I pull up a small stool. 

"Hi there," I say.

"Fucking whore," he tries to spit at me. "Fucking Devil Whore!" He shouts this and several people look our way. For a second I am pissed off and I think about poking him in the eyes. Just as quickly, I'm calm and collected. I've endured worse that this shit-in-a-bowl asshole.

"How are you doing today?" I ask. "Are they treating you well?" I look and sound genuinely concerned. I can bring out the acting chops when I'm angry enough. He's clearly unsettled by my kindness, it's not what he expected. I go a little further: "What's your name?"

"So you can whisper it to Satan's ball sack?" he sneers at me.

Call me old-fashioned, but the picture of me whispering, "His name is Charlie," to the giant red scrotum of the Lord of Darkness is just too funny. I laugh out loud. And I kind of can't stop. For at least a few minutes, all I can do is laugh. And every time I see this guy with his eyebrows all screwed up, like he's constipated, staring at me so angry and confused, I only laugh harder. For a minute there I can't breathe. Now I know how Tad feels -- felt? -- when I would get mad at him and he would just laugh and laugh and laugh at me. Asshole. But even that is funny, now, and I let fly with another good, long bout of the laffy-laughs. I'm very aware that all other sound has stopped in this room.

When I can finally catch my breath, I wipe tears from my eyes, breathing deeply and still chuckling. "Charlie," I begin, but it's just too funny. I'm lost in laughing again. A couple times I gain control, but the minute I say that name, it's all over. I try to explain this to him. I can't, I just laugh, tears streaming down my face, though I do manage to get out the phrase, "Charlie ... ball sack ..."

"That is not my name!" He's indignant, now, and the idea that he thinks I think his name is Charlie Ballsack is, again, waaaaaaay too much for me to resist.

"You thinkIthink --" peals of laughter, gasp "You think --" more laughter, silent, bent over toward him, fanning my hand in front of my face trying to catch my breath. His face is beet red, then white, then red again. He's like a Ballsack Popsicle. Everyone's flavorite!

I'm not really sure how long I'm there laughing at the invalid in the body cast and traction. But it's a good long while. When I can finally get ahold of myself he tries to speak a couple times, but I wave him to silence. The last round of laughter was painful. Good, but painful. I need a break.

I stand. "Well, it's been lovely chatting with you," I say. 

"Sam," he says. "My name is Sam."

All the giddiness drains away in an instant. All this time, I've forgotten about our friend Sam. This is not the same Sam, but he makes me think of our Sam, who lives maybe five miles from where I am right now. Just below the ridge of hills that leads to 580.

"Sam," I say, looking him directly in the eyes. "Do you really think I'm Satan's Whore?"

His eyes seem to fog over for a second, then he shakes his head, blinking, and his eyes are clear. "No," he says. "That's the thing, Miss. I really never thought that. I know you're not. But ... it's like there's something ... inside me. And all it wants to do is get out. I dream that I'm sneaking into a village, like an old fashioned village in the Dark Ages or something. I'm sneaking in at night and I'm tying girls to rafters to cut them open and spill their insides on me." His eyes are terrified.

"Do you ... often have these thoughts, Sam?" I ask, quiet.

"No, never. I never had dreams like this until the earthquake. And even then, they were vague, unclear images. Now, since the Prophet has fallen, it's like I'm in a daydream. Everyone I see I have an impulse to cut, to maim, to slicey slice, cut cut cut!" These last few words are delivered with a giddy grin. The eyes looking out at me are no longer Sam's.  I back up, knocking over the little stool.

"I will slice you, I will cut you, I will I-don't-know-just-what you!" Sam screams and I hear something in his voice break, like he's snapped a vocal cord. 

Mother Henrietta is between us, I'm backing up, Nurse Rachels are converging with medical equipment, but also with books. I see a Quran, a Bible, other books that look old and sacred. The Nurse Rachels with books are reading from them, murmuring, watching Mother Henrietta, who stands over him speaking some language that sounds ... unfamiliar. Nothing like Spanish. She's gesturing, making shapes in the air with her hands, and the Nurse Rachels are doing what she does. One will spin in place partway through a gesture, then continue with the gesture when she stops, facing wherever she ends up. Another Nurse Rachel is dipping basil in some liquid and flicking it on Sam the Invalid.

Where the liquid lands, it boils off like water scattered on a cast iron stove.

Mother Henrietta gestures and an older Nurse Rachel steps in, taking her place. Mother H. leads me to the far end of the ward, through a door, up some stairs, through another door, into a gigantic old-fashioned library that would have Tad shitting himself in envy, then through a door that leads to a slightly larger-than-Jules old-fashioned elevator. This one is plated in brass. The keypad is old typewriter keys with strange symbols on them, unlike the symbols in the other elevator. These are totally foreign to me.

Mother H. pushes two keys and the elevator shoots upward, fast. My ears are popping. It slows and comes to a gentle stop, the gate opening automatically. We step out and there is a door that looks like a submarine door, nestled in a gigantic wall of sandstone, covered with strange carvings. Not quite hieroglyphics. She turns the wheel on the door, pushes it open, we go through, she closes it behind us. After a moment, there is a thump. She opens a second door and we step out.

Into the barn. Right next to my blue Honda. Tad's blue Honda. Our Honda.

I stop, shocked, but Mother H. just marches ahead, out the barn door.

I follow her. 

Assembled outside are all of the Rachels and Ezekiels from earlier, but their numbers have grown, now. There are about three times as many.

"I don't remember asking this number to join us," says Mother Henrietta. "But under the circumstances, I think it may be best."

They all seem to be standing up a little taller after she said that. Which is hard to imagine. There are a lot of very erect people here tonight.

"I took Veronica down to level six to show her what we're dealing with. Somehow, and I'll save details for later, she provoked Samuel Brace into leaking his darkness," and here she turns to look at me with her unsettling, familiar gaze. "I think we need to take her with us. I didn't get to tell her exactly where we're going. Cody? Share while she gets suited up."

I am surrounded by grimly smiling Rachels with digitized cammo, boots and gear -- all in my sizes. Something tells me they knew or planned or wanted me to come along. I listen as I get undressed, then re-dressed in the circle they've formed around me.

"Our objective is four miles Northwest, in the far back acreage of a sizable ranch. It is easily reached by road, but all roads are being watched.  We'll be traveling on foot. Two miles from our objective, I propose that we split into four groups: one to make a direct assault on our objective, two to flank, and one to approach over the top of the hill as a surprise, effectively hitting them from behind and above after the main force has hit and the flanks engage. Ma'am?" Cody is the Ezekiel who came in bruised and cut up earlier; he's cleaned up a bit. And he's kind of cute with his full beard and his muscles. Like Tad, if Tad were fit.

I'm sad for a moment, then Mother Henrietta is talking.

"We hit them hard, we hit them fast.  Rachels, use the Neurovascular Dynamics at close range. Non-force, non lethal where possible. Firearms are a last resort. I repeat, firearms are a last resort. Now move out!"