Desperate Times Three - Revolution (8 page)

“Doctors will have more lives to answer for in this next world than even we generals.” ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Patty

Dr. Simon Botch surveyed his classroom and glanced up at the clock with anticipation. Today was a big day, not only for him, but for the entire country. He forced himself not to smile as he waited to break new ground in the name of humanity.

She had been strapped into a wheelchair and dressed in a clean hospital gown for the occasion. Patty Dahlgren was pushed into the triple-tiered classroom of the Monroe Institute by a dark-skinned man dressed entirely in white.

“That will be fine,” Dr. Botch said. “Just park her there, and I’ll let you know when I need you to return.”

The man nodded and quietly walked out the door at the back of the classroom.

Botch was one of only a few remaining transplant surgeons west of the Mississippi and had been selected to train the new crop of fresh faces that sat before him. Times had changed, and medical science needed to put old idealisms behind it and forge ahead. Those who had refused to renounce their Hippocratic Oath had been systematically eliminated by the new regime.

The large classroom was well lit, smelled strongly of disinfectant, and nearly a hundred medical students sat in the tiered sections that had been laid out in a horseshoe design. Botch walked over to the unnamed woman in the chair and placed his hand on her shoulder. “Good morning, class,” he said. “Are we ready to harvest some organs?”

There was a stunned silence in the room, and Botch had been expecting that. He smiled and moved in front of the donor. “This woman is catatonic and is already showing signs of significant atrophy. Part of this class is learning to let go of what we practiced in the past. The organs inside this woman’s body will soon start to fail, which is the medical equivalent of watching fruit rot on the vine. Many lives can and will be saved by adopting this new code of ethics. We are dedicated to saving lives, not preserving natural death. Does anyone have a problem with that?”

Dr. Botch’s question was met with more silence, which he had also been expecting. These students had been indoctrinated with the new teaching materials which relied heavily on following orders and keeping with the herd. Failure to do so had serious, permanent consequences. Botch smiled and nodded his head. “Good. Now, what can you tell me about this woman? Who would like to step forward and give her a brief examination for the class?”

Nearly a hundred hands shot up in the air, and Dr. Botch smiled again. He pointed to the center of the first tier of students to one of his favorite students, Haley Bend. “Haley,” Botch said, “come on down, and I want you to speak up and give the class your medical opinion of our patient. I’ll give you the floor for five minutes.”

Haley Bend smiled; she and Botch were in the middle of a torrid extramarital affair and had actually spent the previous night together. She was young and beautiful, but also a gifted student with steady hands and no misgivings about the new direction medical science was heading. She stepped down to the floor of the classroom and confidently made her way to stand next to Patty Dahlgren. She and Botch exchanged a brief smile before the blonde beauty turned and faced the class. “This,” she said, pointing to her patient, “is a perfect example of what we now know as a
useless eater.
Am I wrong?” she asked, turning to Botch.

“Indeed not,” Dr. Botch said. “Please continue. You’re doing fine. Just pretend that I’m not here.”

Sonya Chen sat in the upper tier and felt her stomach roll as Haley Bend continued on with her examination. Sonya had been railroaded into the organ harvesting program by her uncle who worked for the Institute, and she had regretted it for weeks. Sonya knew in her heart that there was no way she could follow along with this new trend in medicine. She was hoping to hang on just long enough to save a few lives before being weeded out.

Sonya stared down at the poor woman in the wheelchair and pretended to be interested in what the teacher’s pet was spewing to the class. She despised Haley Bend, who was certainly sleeping with their instructor, another person she hated with a passion.

Sonya had just turned 27 and had graduated at the top of her class from the now defunct University of Minnesota. She wore her black hair cut stylishly and turned heads with her trim physique and Asian good looks. She sat in her chair with her laptop computer open to divert her attention. They were about to kill someone today, and she was being forced to sit and watch it. Sweat trickled down her armpits as she nervously went over her options. She had been prepared to make her stand right there and then, but something told her that now wasn’t the time. She didn’t know why she felt that way; she only knew that she could feel it growing inside of her. She watched as Haley Bend concluded her examination and sauntered back to her seat at the front of the class. She watched as two orderlies unstrapped the woman from her wheelchair, stripped her naked, and callously placed her on the cold steel of the operating table.

“I want you all to get up now and come down here to the first tier. You’re going to want to see this first-hand. What you have to remember is that this woman is our medical hero. She is going to save a lot of lives today. We’re going to begin by harvesting her corneas.”

Sonya stood up and felt her stomach churn in protest. She was about to be sick, and she had to get out of that classroom. She held her hand to her mouth and charged out the back door behind her, unnoticed, as everyone else was already moving in the other direction.

Thankfully, the women’s restroom was just outside the door, and Sonya barely made into the stall before her breakfast exited her stomach. She hung her head over the toilet and retched. Just then, in the middle of her second wave of nausea, Sonya knew what she had to do. She forced her stomach to expel what remained and wiped her hand across her pouting lips. She quickly flushed the toilet and charged back into the empty corridor outside the classroom. She looked to her left and then to her right. There, fifty feet from where she stood was the fire alarm. Without stopping to think, Sonya sprinted to the little red box mounted to the tiled wall and quickly threw the switch.

Red lights flashed and the alarm rang loud enough to wake the dead. Sonya only hoped that she was in time. She ran back to the door of the classroom and like a shadow quietly blended in with her fellow students as they nervously filed out into the hallway.

Patty Dahlgren, lying helplessly naked on the cold steel of the operating table, breathed a heavy sigh of relief. Although she could not speak or use her limbs, her mind was clear and sharp. She felt as if she had been asleep and that if they’d only give her time, she would regain the use of her body. She was now a prisoner inside that body, and she knew that she had just cheated death by the barest of margins. Patty silently thanked God and continued to pray.

“Morality, like art, means drawing the line someplace.” ~ Oscar Wilde

Thrill Melbow continued to stare across the room at Jimmy as if he could read his mind. With the cameras in place and the room wired for light and sound, the technicians quickly tested their equipment one last time as Thrill seated himself across from Jimmy and Ken.

“Thirty seconds,” called a voice from behind Jimmy.

The room was hot, and the air had grown stale. The smell of sweat and disinfectant was almost enough to make Jimmy want to vomit. He was nervous and felt exactly as he had before a fight. Thrill Melbow was the sharpest knife in the drawer; Jimmy knew that much about the man. There would be no winning a battle of wits with this man; he would have to wait for an opening and take a shot. Ken might never speak to him again, which was a risk Jimmy was willing to take. He wasn’t going to go on national television and lie to the American people. Not today.

“Ten seconds.”

“Off the record,” Thrill said. “I wish this wasn’t necessary.”

Jimmy sat back in his chair and thought about that. The comment had blind-sided him, and it suddenly put things in a different light. He checked himself and decided to follow Ken’s lead and see where it took them.

“Good afternoon, America,” Thrill said, staring into the camera with the utmost sincerity. “I’m Thrill Melbow, as if you didn’t already know that. We’re here today with Ken Dahlgren and Jimmy Logan, who I am certain you are familiar with. I’ve been summoned to help set the record straight, and for the next hour, we’re going to hear these men tell their story in their own words. Those of you with small children might want to get them out of the room. This is not a story for the young or the faint of heart.”

Jimmy watched as Thrill sipped from a glass of water. He looked down at his notes and sat back in his chair. “President Richter has pardoned these men, these hardened killers who have admitted to murdering over two hundred people over the course of twenty months. How can this be, you ask? That’s what we’re about to find out. Tell me, Ken, do you mind if I call you Ken? Of course you don’t. How long had you been planning your escape from society, and what on earth were you thinking when you went on your killing spree?”

The fire was suddenly back in Ken’s eyes, and he gritted his teeth as he spoke. “Thrill,” he said, pointing his finger across the table. “You don’t mind if I call you Thrill, do you? Of course you don’t. My wife, Patty, and I saw the collapse coming years before it happened. We owned a business, and we were fortunate enough to have the means to set some things aside in case of a worst-case scenario.”

“Things like
illegal
automatic weapons and hand grenades?” asked Thrill, interrupting Ken.

“I was getting to that,” replied Ken, the thick vein pulsing in his neck. “We planned for a time where we might have to defend ourselves against an attack from outside forces.”

“You mean your neighbors, is that right?”

“I mean against
anyone
who wanted to take what we had. These people had other options. They could have gone along with the National Guard and rode things out in a relocation camp.”

“Just like yourself. Let’s be clear about that. You and your friends were breaking the law by not turning yourselves in and reporting to a local camp. Have you always felt as if you were above the law, Ken?”

Ken balled his hands into fists and thumped them down on the table. “We did not break the law. No one has the right to imprison me, my friends, or family, without just cause. We had every right to be where we were.”

Thrill smiled smugly and sat back in his chair. “That’s where you’re wrong, Ken. You did not have that right. An Executive Order was issued to all Americans to report to these camps. They were created for the sole purpose of protecting people from men, such as you and your sidekick. How many people did you gun down, anyway? Don’t worry; you’ve already been pardoned. I think America has a right to know.”

Jimmy held his hands up. “What type of government jails all of its citizens? Tell me, Thrill, where did you spend the last twenty months?”

“We’re not here to talk about me,” Thrill said, dismissively. “Jimmy, are you saying that you no longer wish to be an American citizen?”

“I never said that,” Jimmy spat. “What Ken and I are trying to say is that we did nothing wrong. We simply defended ourselves when we were attacked.”

“At last count they had dug up over two hundred bodies. How can you possibly justify that? President Richter may have pardoned you, but don’t expect to be forgiven so quickly by the American people. Tell me about the automatic weapons and hand grenades, Jimmy. Did using them against your fellow man make you feel superior to them? Did you enjoy killing your neighbors?”

“Jimmy had nothing to do with those weapons,” interjected Ken. “I purchased them, and I’m damn glad that I did. Where was our protection when we needed it? We were attacked by people who tried to take what we had. Can’t you see that?”

“You shouldn’t have been there in the first place,” retorted Thrill, pointing a stodgy finger across the table and waving it at the both of them. “You were there illegally, in direct defiance of an Executive Order, because you thought you were above the law! You had no right to murder your neighbors when they came to you for help. My God, gentlemen, what part of that don’t you understand?”

“They weren’t asking for help,” Ken shot back. “They wanted everything we had, and they wanted us dead. Quit spouting off about Executive Orders. No man has the right to imprison me without just cause! This is America, damn it!”

Thrill nodded and stared into the camera. “Don’t move away from your television sets, America. We’ll be right back after these commercial messages from our sponsors.”

The lights dimmed, and Jimmy watched as a big smile crept across the face of their host. He nodded to the room with unabashed arrogance and stood up from his chair. Jimmy started to say something, but Ken stuck his finger in his chest. “Don’t,” he hissed. “Save it for the cameras. I can’t believe this. What a bunch of bullshit.”

Thrill leered at them from across the table. “You may be right, but its damn good television.”

“We have before us the opportunity to forge for ourselves and for future generations a new world order, a world where the rule of law, not the rule of the jungle, governs the conduct of nations. When we are successful,
and we will be,
we have a real chance at this new world order, an order in which a credible United Nations can use its peacekeeping role to fulfill the promise and vision of the U.N.’s founders.” – George H.W. Bush

Bill

Bill awoke early that morning to the sound of hushed voices. Something told him to keep his eyes closed and listen, which is just what he did.

“They called her a
useless eater
,” whispered the voice of a young woman. “I couldn’t let that animal dissect her alive. That’s why I pulled the fire alarm.”

“Have you lost your mind?” asked the distinctive voice of Dr. Chen. “You could have gotten yourself in serious trouble by doing that. Times have changed, Sonya. We have to change along with them.”

“But I went to her room last night. She was able to answer questions. She responded to me. That woman is not brain dead. She knew exactly what was about to happen.”

“You must have been imagining that. I have examined her myself. She had no detectable brain function.”

“Maybe she didn’t when you last saw her, but she’s coming out of it. Uncle, don’t you see? We have to save her.”

There was a long period of silence as Bill heard footsteps pacing inside his room. “There is nothing we can do for her. I’m sorry, Sonya. We can’t get emotionally involved in this. I have told you thousand times—this is a new world we live in. Things aren’t the same. We have to follow along or else we will find ourselves out on the street.”

“I don’t care about what happens to me. The time has come to fight, and with or without your help, I’m getting that woman out of here. I have a place we can go while she gets better.”

“Sonya, will you listen to yourself? This is crazy talk and I will not listen to it.”

“Her husband is a hero. Doesn’t that count for something? This world needs more men like Ken Dahlgren.”

Bill shot up in bed and pointed a finger at Sonya. “Tell me all you know,” he hissed. “By God, I’ll do anything I can do to help you. Get in my way, Chen, and I’ll snap your goddamn neck. Do you understand me? Those people are my friends. We’re going to get Patty out of this hellhole and we’re going to do it,
now.
”