CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Hawk knocked on the hotel room door, a silver tray covered in a white linen napkin.
“Who is it?” cried the voice from inside.
“Hotel hospitality, sir. We have a VIP gift for you,” he said with a cheerful voice.
“Really?” Jericho said excitedly. He opened the door and waved him inside, sliding the lock so the door was ajar. “Just place it over there. This is exciting and completely unexpected.”
“I’m sure it is,” said Hawk. He lifted the linen cloth and the notebooks were beneath, staring up at Jericho. He looked back at him, then down at the tray again.
“Wh-where did you find these? They’re my personal journals,” he said.
“We found more than your personal journals,” said Trak.
Jericho whipped around, staring at the other men in the room. His breathing began to come rapidly and he clutched at his chest. Zeke gripped his throat.
“Oh, no. You’re not getting off that easily. We’ve got some folks that want to speak with you.” He jammed the needle into his arm, slowing his heart rate enough to calm the panic attack but not kill him. Not yet anyway.
“Who are you? What do you want?” he demanded.
“We just want to give Sutton and the other kids a chance to say goodbye,” said Nathan. “You do remember Sutton, don’t you? Clever, bright, what did you say, oh yes, sneaky little girl.”
“Sh-she was sneaky. She probably stole these journals. You don’t understand, you can’t possibly understand the depths of this research. It’s complicated and highly desirable. We’ll save millions of children.”
“No you won’t,” said Joseph. His father continued to glare at the man, staring straight through his black soul. It made even the strongest men squirm and Jericho was anything but strong.
“Your sick, perverted, twisted serum dumped into formula and milk was meant to give deaf children gifts they couldn’t possibly understand,” said Kiel. “Gifts that the world may never know or may never see.”
“No! No, you must show the world! You must. They need to see my discovery,” he said with passion.
“Your discovery?” frowned Zeke. “I don’t believe it was your discovery at all. In fact, I know that it wasn’t. It was Colonel Weston Moore and the sick son-of-a-bitches who worked for him. You simply figured out how to get his daughter to give you the notes she possessed and you went from there.
“No. No, you’re not nearly smart enough to figure all this out on your own. Your colleagues are all gone. Judy and, what was his name? Oh yes, John are dead.”
“Did you kill her?” he asked quietly.
“With great pleasure,” said Trak still staring at the man.
“Where is Madsen, Benjamin Madsen? I won’t be charged alone for this,” he said defiantly.
“You don’t get it,” laughed Zeke. “There will be no trial. At least, not in the traditional sense. You’ll be tried by a group of people better than you could ever possibly be.”
With a hood placed over his head, his mouth stuffed with a rag and his hands tied, they gave the signal for the cameras to be disrupted and made their way to the service elevator.
In the basement, they tossed him in the back of the SUV and casually drove toward Belle Fleur on the bumpiest road they could possibly find between New Orleans and home.
They parked across the bridge to the animal sanctuary, then tossed Jericho into a wheelbarrow, pushing him over the bricked, bumpy bridge to enter the zoo.
“How ‘ya doin’, Charlie?” asked Zeke to the watchman.
“Doin’ fine, Mr. Zeke. Looks like you got yourself a fine catch,” he chuckled. “The others are all waitin’ for you.”
“Thanks, Charlie. Close the gates, please.”
“Yes, sir. Happy to.”
Jericho yelled for help the entire way, in spite of being kicked and punched by the men pushing him.
“Bastard needs to lose some weight,” said Nathan breathing heavy.
The little girl, Sutton?” asked Eric. “She’s normal?”
Nathan let the handles go, the cart ramming into the ground, jostling their visitor. Hawk picked them up, tossing them up and down a few times to get a feel for the weight.
“Yeah, he’s a heavy bastard,” said Hawk. “Well, I hope he enjoyed the meal last night. It was his last.”
“Let me go! Please! I have money!”
“Damn, the gag came out,” frowned Kiel. “Oh, well.”
Suddenly he was dumped from the cart, landing hard on wet ground. The hood was jerked from his head and he blinked, trying to cope with the brilliant light of the summer sun.
“Wh-where am I? Who are you?” he asked shading his eyes.
“You are in hell,” said Eric kneeling to face him. “And this is where you will remain. But first, there are some people that want to speak with you.”
“I-I don’t know any of you. I don’t know you!” he yelled.
“No,” said Kane in a rumbling voice. “No, you don’t know me, but I know your kind and I know from whence you came. You see, I knew Colonel Moore. Better than I would have liked. In fact, we all did.” He swept his arm behind him, his entire family of strange, gifted people staring at the man.
“I am embarrassed to say I am his daughter,” said Fiona.
“No. No, that can’t be. They’re all dead. I mean, all except Judy and now she’s dead.”
“Sorry to disappoint you,” she said staring at him. Nat stepped closer, her fingers dancing with flames at her fingertips. Jericho cried out, scooting backwards.
“People like you will never learn,” she said softly. “You fucked with God. You fucked with us. But you really fucked with those children.”
“I didn’t know any of you!” he cried out. “I was just trying to help those children!”
“Help them? By cutting open their heads and examining their brains?” asked Luke. “That’s not helping them. That’s not helping anyone. You killed those children without remorse, without thought, without any consideration for their lives.”
“They had no lives! They would all have been a burden to society! I would have made them famous,” he said proudly.
The kick to his ribs came so swiftly, he didn’t even see it.
He didn’t see that it belonged to an older man, wearing a size fourteen boot.
A man that had enough of children being abused and taken advantage of.
“Let me kill him now,” said Ghost.
“P-please,” he gasped. “I can explain.”
“There is no explanation for what you’ve done. You brought that pink dust shit back to life,” said Adam. “You brought it to life in a liquid form and you put it in the children’s formula and milk.”
The shock on Jericho’s face told them everything they needed to know. He never believed anyone would guess how he’d done it.
“Your buyers have been notified that you were mistaken. You have no formula and your experiments were not a success,” said Ace. “They are disappointed, as you can imagine, but it’s interesting to note that they all said they didn’t believe you anyway. Things like this could not have happened.
“What you didn’t count on, what you weren’t even aware of was what you did to Sutton. The stupid, interfering, sneaky child you attempted to kill drank some of the milk you left for her brother.
“See, she was starving and her parents were out looking for work. She’d fed, Pip, but she was hungry and just wanted a little.
A few sips out of each gallon of milk over several months.
But she wasn’t hearing impaired. She had no detriment in her brain.
Instead, it gave her a very, very special gift. ”
Gaspar stepped forward and called for their friend.
“Bella? Come out honey,” he said gently.
“Bella? I’m supposed to be afraid of someone named Bella?” said Jericho.
“Not someone. Something,” said Gaspar. The massive boa constrictor wound her way around Gaspar’s feet, sidling up his leg to rest her head at his hip while he stroked her.
“Bella? Sutton said you had some very interesting ideas on what to do to this man. You have my permission, just this once, to proceed.”
“Wh-what? No! No, you can’t do this!” he cried.
Bella didn’t care. She knew what he’d done to the children and she was going to make sure it never happened again.
“You see,” said Eric, kneeling to look in his eyes, “A boa constrictor kills its prey through constriction, hence the name. Neat, isn’t it?
It’s a process that causes immediate circulatory arrest. That means blood flow and stuff.
Instead of suffocation or crushing bones, the snake wraps and coils around the animal, or human, although we’ll leave it at animal for now, and squeezes tightly, cutting off the flow of blood and oxygen to the heart and brain, causing unconsciousness in seconds. ”
“And there. He. Goes,” said Nine. “Bella, you can either give him to Alvin to take to the swamp or share him with your friends.”
Gaspar and Luke laughed.
“She says she doesn’t eat junk food,” smirked Luke. “Alvin? Can you take out the trash?”
Alvin, Oscar, Mabel, Penelope, and Hank scampered toward the body, dragging him away. Trak stepped forward, calling out to them.
“Don’t leave a mess that the children will see!” he cried. The others all stared at him with a disgusted look. “What? We don’t want them to find pieces of him out here. Have some decency.”
“Well, do you feel like you got some closure?” asked Gaspar of Kane.
“In many ways, yes,” he nodded. “I think it scares the fuck out of all of us that there’s still someone out there that might have access to this shit. How do we stop that?”
“I don’t think we can,” said Nine staring at their old friend. “I hate to say that, Kane, all of you, but we have no way of knowing if someone else has it.”
“There might be one way,” said Luke.