Billy tabbs, p.21
Billy Tabbs, page 21
“It doesn’t seem so bad from out here,” Billy whispered. “Looks sort of calm, even.”
“Don’t be fooled,” said Jacob. “Something can appear to be one thing on the surface, but in fact be something entirely different when you look a little closer.”
Billy accepted this wisdom, and his anxiety rose accordingly. Each of them looked apphrehensively toward the oppressive structure, perhaps, like Billy, contemplating what dark secrets might lay inside.
“Ah, this world,” said Jacob after an extended pause. He said it to himself more than the others, in a solemn tone and with a heavy countenance. The thought seemed to occupy him for a great while, so Billy left him to his own silent vigil.
There was little movement through the rest of the day. A few people came and went through the front door. Later in the afternoon, one of the black vans exited the rear lot. Beyond that, nothing of significance.
They waited out the daylight, then set into motion the first phase of their plan. Fortunate to find one of the vans parked directly beneath the fire escape, Jacob and Marlon ran in tandem to the vehicle and hid by the front bumper. One at a time, they sneaked up onto the hood, then to the roof of the van. Then, with a hearty jump, Jacob launched his body onto the lowest rung of the fire escape. His landing resulted in a loud clang, and he immediately looked over to Billy, still hiding in the brush. Billy looked around, nodding back that they were still clear, at which point Jacob scampered up to the rooftop. Marlon quickly followed suit, the two generals now in position above.
They searched in vain for some way to access the facility from the roof. Finding it impregnable, they motioned down to Billy and Kinsly that they would remain above as lookouts.
There they waited. First one hour, then two. It was quiet.
So quiet.
Billy and Kinsly remained hidden in the thick brush by the back parking lot. Ears was stationed near the front. Billy felt tight. He looked over at Kinsly, who sat casually in the nearby weeds. He appeared, by all indications, to be calm, even stoic. It was a virtue with which Billy couldn’t identify. The anticipation of the moment had already called on his anxiety; he couldn’t help think that if he were in Kinsly’s position, he’d already be halfway up his tree. His limbs numbed, the crack of the branch having choked away the cool air from his lungs. Even now it was all he could to do control his breathing.
He remembered the gallery, how quickly the calm had turned to bedlam. He’d survived that encounter. Had survived the concert and the attack in the alley. And as he thought back on how he’d survived everything so far, he wondered how many lives he had left—and the more he thought back on his luck the more he felt certain to jinx it.
It was midnight when the van came, the hour when curfew would have been called. When he would have been curled up with Lola, safe and warm. The van rumbled slowly to the rear of the facility, then reversed itself to the large steel door. Billy peeked past the tall green blades that masked him, his eyes wandering up to Jacob, who’d scrunched up against the edge of the roof and was discreetly looking over the side. Marlon, from his position, was doing the same.
Both the driver and his passenger exited the vehicle. The driver, a burly man, lumbered to the loading dock. He fiddled with the lock, snapping it open with a violent tug downward, then rolled the door up and into the building, a steely clang and a rusty squeal echoing into the silent night air. He pulled out a steel ramp and fixed it at an angle against the opening.
The second man opened the van’s rear door and stepped inside. Billy immediately heard the protestations. There were calls for help, then some small commotion before the man gave a yell. Then a thump, as if someone had just been punched or kicked. The driver lumbered to assist, and soon enough the captives were being forced up the steel ramp and into the rear of the building. Rage stirred inside Billy: five of them, just like him, trafficked inside like chattel.
A rustle drew Billy’s attention, shifting his rage back to fear. There was a sound of footsteps to his right. He spun rapidly around to see Ears arrive through a thicket of shrubs.
“Do you see?” whispered Billy, momentarily relieved.
A whisper back said that he had.
Then more movement directly ahead…
…Kinsly. Billy watched him step from the brush and signal up to Jacob and Marlon. Kinsly suggested he advance and the generals motioned back their agreement. Kinsly snuck forward out of the brush, then darted quickly to the building, positioning himself just under the loading dock. He peered back toward Billy, who’d stepped halfway from the brush.
Billy looked into the loading room, watching as the two men carried their prisoners deeper into the building. Then he looked beneath the opening and saw Kinsly huddled down next to the steel ramp. Billy couldn’t help but marvel at how small Kinsly looked against the van, against the opening—against what he was about to attempt.
The men were now nearly out of sight, their backs to the opening. Billy gave Kinsly the signal and watched him leap up and start to follow. Kinsly slunk slowly behind the men, ducking behind boxes, bins, and other large objects; and then he, too, vanished from sight. Silence took root once again.
And then they waited…and they waited.
And they waited.
For Billy, this wait was even more unbearable than the first.
How long had they been there?
It seemed like hours.
Seemed like seconds.
The area fell eerily quiet, save for the creepy soundtrack of stridulating crickets, and the occasional rustle of a bush or snap of a twig that nearly caused Billy to jump from his skin. All the while he wondered what horror Kinsly might find inside—wondered how many of their kind might be trapped and what their condition might be.
He looked up to the roof, where Jacob waited patiently near the fire escape, Marlon on the other side pacing anxiously back and forth. They were to wait only so long, then assume that Kinsly had been discovered.
And then what?
Only it didn’t come to that. In the next instant Billy heard frantic footsteps and looked up to see Kinsly run toward the unmanned opening, then leap from the building to the ground. Billy and Ears rushed from the straggly weeds to meet him.
“We have to get out of here,” screamed Kinsly. “I was discovered! They’re right behind me!”
“Where?” asked Billy. “How many?” Billy looked through the opening but still didn’t see anyone. It was both still and silent.
“They’re not far behind,” he gasped. “Come on, we’ve got to get out of here!”
Billy signaled retreat to Marlon and Jacob, then turned back to his frightened colleague.
“How many?” Billy asked again.
Kinsly didn’t respond.
“What was in there?” cried Billy. “What did you see?”
“Oh, it’s horrible…horrible.”
It was Kinsly’s sole response. His thoughts then slipped somewhere far, far away⎯to some dark place Billy was fortunate not to visit. He wondered what could possibly have thrust his colleague, previously so calm and cool, into his present state.
Now is probably not the best time to discuss things, he thought. “Let’s get out of here!”
They had turned to run when Billy’s attention was pulled to a loud scream from above—an awful sound born of fear and surprise. Billy drew his eyes skyward just in time to see Jacob tumbling over the side of the building. The fall seemed eternal, but it was, in all likelihood, not even a few seconds.
He can survive this…
Down he plummeted. Mercilessly down to the parking lot below, his limbs searching for solid ground.
He can survive this…
An odd sound rang through the air as Jacob touched down.
SHUNKT!
Billy hurried to where Jacob had landed and found him flat on his stomach, limp atop a short pile of rusted scrap.
“Jacob…”
His eyes rolled up and found Billy’s, but his head hardly moved. He twitched and tried to speak, but no words came out, just a thin stream of blood out the left side of his mouth and a sad gurgle.
Only then did Billy notice the slash across Jacob’s throat and the blood that poured freely from the gaping wound, his eyes wide and moist as his gaze held Billy’s.
“Jacob…”
Just another sad gurgle, another attempt to move, but in the next moment he was gone, his wide eyes beseeching Billy with sadness and panic.
Billy fumbled back a step, then looked up to see from where Jacob had fallen, finding Marlon peering intently over the edge of the building. Their eyes connected for a fraction of a second before Marlon pulled his head back and out of sight.
“Come on, Billy, let’s go!” screamed Ears, who’d already pushed Kinsly into motion at the sound of footsteps within the facility. Ears screamed again, snapping Billy sufficiently back to reality to get his legs moving. In his peripheral vision he saw Marlon scurrying down the fire escape.
A moment later two men had leapt from the loading dock to give chase, one of them wielding some sort of wooden club.
Billy had never run so fast in his life. Fear, adrenaline, and anger fueled his steps like thunderclaps. He ran with his colleagues through a field and over a small brook. By then the skies had released a slight drizzle, the ground growing slow and muddy beneath their feet. They ran until they could run no longer, stopping for a reprieve beneath a thicket of tall trees, the facility safely behind them, their pursuers out of sight.
Billy immediately approached Marlon, his feet caked with mud, his chest heaving. “What happened?” he said, the vision of his bloodied friend still seared into his mind.
There was no response. Marlon didn’t look up, keeping his face tilted slightly toward the ground. Billy inched closer.
“I said, what happened?” he demanded.
Marlon, still looking down, replied plainly, “He got too close to the ledge, some loose cinder gave way and he lost his footing.”
“I didn’t see any loose cinder,” said Billy.
“There was loose cinder,” replied Marlon, again without affect.
“His throat was cut,” said Billy.
No answer.
“Did you hear me?” pressed Billy. “I said ‘his throat was cut.’”
“Must have been cut by some scrap,” said Marlon.
Heard Billy.
Doubted Billy.
He tried to play the scene back in his mind. To Jacob’s limp form. Tried to see through the flood of red and to the area around him. Where had he fallen? What had he hit? The effort was useless. He saw only red.
“Very unfortunate,” added Marlon, his stare downward.
“Come on,” said Ears, before Billy could say anything more. “We have to get back.”
And so they did, starting their long journey home. All the while, Kinsly moved robotically. The light that was in his eyes before entering the facility had been extinguished, and he wouldn’t utter a single word their entire trip home.
Kinsley’s muteness wasn’t the only silence among them. Billy and Marlon were equally quiet.
They arrived to a hero’s welcome.
Rufus was the first to greet Billy, wagging and carrying on and nearly knocking over his weary frame, one in desperate need of food and rest.
He saw Lola wash up in front of him, watched her lean in, felt her forehead against his own. When he heard Ears call his name, he separated from her and convened in Darrow’s office with what was left of the others.
By the time Billy entered the room, Darrow was turning away from them, a tear welling up in his eye. “My good friend is dead.”
Billy had never seen Darrow get upset, certainly never cry. He didn’t think it was even possible. They sat in silence for some time before Darrow turned back to face them; by then the nascent tear was absent.
“How?”
“Slipped,” said Marlon, as Billy percolated.
“Must have leaned out over the ledge too far,” Marlon added, and the percolation increased to a boil.
“Liar!” screamed Billy. “You’re a damned liar and a murderer!”
Only he screamed it in his mind, where the same words had been crashing about for hours. He kept them bottled up under a nugget of uncertainty, and more than a nugget of intimidation. Marlon, quite simply, scared him.
“A damn shame,” capped Marlon.
Billy looked to Ears; saw his expression was flat and resigned. He hadn’t seen, thought Billy, and so the burden fell squarely on him to expose it.
Only then Billy looked at Darrow, caught his glance to Marlon and Marlon’s glance back; saw something in Darrow’s eyes—some vague level of recognition. Billy couldn’t tell for sure, not at that moment, his exhaustion being what it was. Either way it turned him mute, and before Billy could consider it further, Darrow had asked for Kinsly’s report.
“Speak, my child.”
Kinsly, nearly catatonic since the facility, had not yet spoken of his findings. His stare held blankly forward until Ears tapped his shoulder. It stirred Kinsly from his trance. Slowly, the words started to tumble out. “It was horrible,” he muttered, “…horrible…”
“Take your time,” Darrow said. His voice was calm and reassuring. “Now tell us,” he said. “Tell us what’s in that facility. For them…for Jacob…for all of us.”
Kinsly’s pupils slowly dilated. His focus returned just enough. Again he started to speak, and the words droned out. “I followed them to the back of the building,” he said. “Stayed out of sight and followed them into a large room. There…”
They briefly lost him again. It took a few moments but he managed to find his tongue.
“They were…there. Some strapped down to tables…others locked up. I even recognized someone I used to hang out with. Things had been done to him…things. Maybe tests, or experiments. I don’t really know…” He stopped again to collect himself, clearly replaying the scene in his mind. They left him alone now. To work through it. He did, after a short pause. “One had no foot. One had no eyes. Some looked like they’d been burned. Many had been cut. I think there were a few that were dead…”
Billy couldn’t tell how long he’d been holding his breath. He looked over to Ears, whose mouth gaped open.
“…I watched…from a distance, as the new ones got locked up in big cages…like rats…just like bloody rats…” He was sobbing now, but struggled onward. “There was moaning…so much moaning…and screaming…loud screaming as they locked up the new ones. It wasn’t just us. There were others. I can still hear the screams. They’re everywhere. Can you hear them?” he asked, trembling.
Again Billy glanced to Ears, who returned his look of concern. There was little doubt Kinsly meant what he said. They had, thought Billy, lost more than just Jacob at the facility.
“I hear them,” Darrow said softly, trying his best to nudge Kinsly along. “Now go on. Tell us what else you could see.” It worked, and like a record, Kinsly’s needle shifted mechanically forward to the next track in his memory.
“There was a woman in blue scrubs, she was ordering them around. They…they sort of repositioned some of the others. I managed to reach the far side of the room and whisper to one of the captives through the bars. He told me what’s being done to them. The torture. The experiments. I can’t repeat it, and some of it made no sense to me. He’d been operated on. They had injected something inside him…drugged him maybe, and I think now that he’d been blinded…” Kinsly’s voice trailed off again softly, as if he was speaking as much to himself as to any of the rest, “Yes…blind, I think. The way his eyes looked at me…or didn’t, as it was. He saw enough through his ears, though…knew the sort of things that were going on. Going on all around him. He was confused and in pain. Great, great pain…”
“And then?” Darrow prodded.
“Then…then I told him I had to keep gathering information. He…he must have thought I was there to rescue him, because he started to scream when I moved away. I told him to be quiet, but he was out of his mind. Why wouldn’t he stay quiet? Why wouldn’t he…I…I was discovered, and they chased me. I got a good head start. I was lucky they’d left the doors open.”
“It’s unfortunate you were discovered. Any element of surprise that we had is gone,” said Marlon. “No doubt they’ll raise their security. It’s going to be harder to mount a rescue or attack the facility.”
“Rescue?” Kinsly scoffed, his voice trembling. “There can’t be any rescue for them. The condition they’re in. Just let ’em die, and hope they die quickly.” He collapsed again, this time to a place from which he wouldn’t be so easily roused. Darrow didn’t push him, only stood in apparent disbelief with the rest.
It was Ears who spoke next. “How could this happen? In a civilized society?”
“Civilized?” screamed Darrow. He repeated the word even louder, his long hair bouncing angrily around him. “And what makes you think this society is civilized? The presence of decadent structures? The laying of long roads and wide bridges? Civilization doesn’t flow from these things. It flows from a kindness of the soul, from empathy, from looking after your weakest constituents and facilitating their prosperity. Only then do you have a civilized society, and not one moment before.”
They all saw it: the fire in his eyes, the hate, the righteousness.
The truth, thought Billy, before adding, “What are we going to do?”
“I can’t believe it,” said Ears. “Can’t believe this is happening.” As far as suggestions went, it was wanting.
“Believe it,” said Marlon, flatly.
Ears tried again. “Maybe we should try and find some people to help us?”
“Help from society, is that what you’re suggesting?” said Marlon sharply. “They’re why we’re in this position in the first place. I’d rather die in that facility than beg for their damned help!”
