Night Fear

Chapter 1

Let me tell you about my wedding day.

I can’t remember when so many things went wrong at the same time. My best friend’s Mother was in a coma. There were hundreds of naked young women held captive 1500 feet below the surface of the earth. Hidden labs cooked tons of crystal meth and millions of ecstasy tablets moved seamlessly from place to place. Dead bodies disappearing, corrupt Judges refusing to cooperate, bodyguards with CIA credentials and bloody kidnappings left confusing signals to four different Sheriff’s departments. Convicted felons were cutting organs out of live people and selling them on the open market. There was even a fleeting encounter with a bandit who lived 140 years ago and folks with second sight to deal with.

A killer tornado in Cuba, Missouri started everything.

Cruz turned off the engine of the silver Accord and coasted up to the edge of the gravel driveway. In the trunk of the car there was enough cash to pay Edwards for a week’s worth of product. Wanna have some fun? He asked his junior partner.

Ben said Sure. Wazzup?

Gonna Jew Edwards down and keep some of the cash, Cruz said.

Ben didn’t think too much of the idea. Ben didn’t like the idea of Sam Moroni and Johnny Angel getting all bent out of shape. Cruz expected the concern and said, Nobody gonna know but us. Hell, Edwards don’t know how much Otto give us to give him.

Cruz had tried this skimming scam before. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t. The last time was way before he met Ben and before St. James brought him in. Cruz knew the younger guy would go along if he could play the situation just right.

Both men got out of the Accord and headed for the house. Heavy looking clouds on the horizon were hurrying the remaining hours of daylight. A stray streak of lighting jumped outward from the center of the clouds. Cruz left the money and the new supplies in the trunk and walked around the edge of the gravel, staying in the grass as much as he could. Phil Edwards owned a one-story house at the edge of town. He was sole owner of the body shop next to the house and no other buildings were within earshot.

Cruz eased up to the rear of the body shop and looked in, hoping to surprise the meth cook. There were two labs here, not one. The kitchen in the body shop was empty.

Ben held back while his partner slipped over to the house and peered in a basement window. He found nothing to his liking and tried a second window. Suddenly Cruz jerked back from the window and there was a loud explosion. Fire and smoke spewed from the barrel of a 12-gauge shotgun. Shards of glass peppered the still falling body of Juan Espinosa-Cruz.

It had rained a little earlier in the day and Mark thought he was going to get to leave the job early. He was a finish carpenter and his crew had three homes in the new subdivision. There is enough work for at least the next two months, longer if the weather continues to be uncooperative. "You never could tell about the weather, he thought, A tornado watch was in effect for the entire area yet the job site received less than an hour’s worth of rain." The drizzle this afternoon had fizzled out before the superintendent called off his crews. The downtime was just a couple of minutes less than an hour but Mark would still be paid for eight today, if he worked until five instead of the usual 4:00 PM quitting time.

Mark needed to deposit his paycheck before he headed his pickup to the house. The drive up window at the bank stayed open until 6:00 PM and he wasted no time with his small transaction. The teller was a young girl, scarcely out of high school and she knew Mark by sight. She took his check and returned a deposit ticket and twenty-five dollars in cash to him. Mark didn’t usually ask for any cash when he deposited his paycheck. Doin’ something special tonight, Mark? she asked him with a smile.

I promised Lyle we would get him a new ball glove and then Barb and him and me are goin’ to a movie, he replied.

Twenty-five isn’t much for all that, she said, Are you sure you don’t want me to get you some more?

Nah, Barb’s makin’ me a sandwich and we’re using plastic for the glove at WalMart. Shouldn’t cost more’n $25.00, if we share popcorn, he told her without embarrassment. Mark knew her family and they weren’t any better-off than he was. "There was nothin’ to be embarrassed about," he thought.

Barb was right there at the door when he got home. The engine in the truck continued to run as he waited for his son and his wife to climb up into the seat beside him. He and Barbara had married right out of high school. His building trades classes had done good for him and he went right to work as a carpenter’s apprentice. They lived with his folks until Barb finished nursing school and found a job as a licensed practical nurse. They had managed to buy this place before Lyle was born and had been living here for thirteen years. It wasn’t much, but it was something he was proud of.

He backed out of the drive and headed to State Road 19, on the way to Cuba. Barb handed him a steak sandwich and opened a small travel thermos of Pepsi. He shifted his left elbow to the steering wheel so he could unwrap the sandwich. He took a bite of the sandwich and then handed it back to his wife. She offered him the thermos. I know which one I want, Lyle told him. Mark just nodded and kept his eyes on the road. His son continued, It’s an Eason Black Magic, if it’s all right, he said as a question.

Mark was proud of his son. Mark knew Lyle really wanted a Wilson A 1000, 10 ½ glove, but it cost $98.00, pretty pricey for the Bell family pocketbook. The Black Magic was a nice glove and only would add $27.00 to the charge card. He and Barb had talked it over and agreed to surprise Lyle with the Wilson, but they would wait until they were in the store to tell him. Sharing popcorn wouldn’t be too bad for Lyle, after he had his new glove," thought Mark.

Mark took another bite from his sandwich and handed the food back to his wife. He sipped a little Pepsi to help the meat and the bread go down. Did you get paid today? she asked.

Yeah. I went by the bank to deposit it on the way home. The showers this afternoon put us about an hour behind at the job site. Sorry about that, he replied.

Did you get in eight hours? Mark realized she worried about paying for a $100 baseball glove.

I though we would be going home early, but the rain let up and we got in the eight, he winked at her. She smiled and patted Lyle on the knee.

What? Lyle squirmed in response to his Mother’s touch.

We’re proud of you, that’s all, she said.

Lyle stretched out his arm in front of Barbara. He was still an adolescent but the arm invading her space was at least as long as her own. Lyle made a fist and extended his thumb upward. He could not see the bottom of the sun for the dark clouds forming on the western horizon. He guessed where it was from the bright orange orb descended into the expanding gray fluff. The boy sighted over the top of his thumb, being sure too not take enough time to permit the rays of the sun to damage his eyes. It looks like it will be about an hour until the sun sets, he told them proudly.

The little tidbit of information had been passed along in the Bell family for generations. When the sun sits on the top of your extended thumb, there is an hour until sunset, Mark could remember his Great-Grandmother telling him when he was about Lyle’s age. Mark never made a connection between the observation about how things worked in the universe and the well-worn phrase a rule of thumb.

Mark fixed his gaze on the heavy clouds seeming to be getting angrier by the moment. Then he glanced over his shoulder and into the bed of the pickup. Something the matter? asked Barbara.

I threw my tools into the back when I left the job awhile ago, he answered, "I better cover them up when we get to WalMart. I don’t like the way those clouds are acting. He nodded to the west and they all watched the active formation bubbling outward and upward from a darkening center. The sun was not visible by the time they reached the access road to the big shopping center and turned to their right, into the parking lot. Barbara and her son turned their heads to look at the strong striations emitted from either side of the gathering storm. It was daylight on both the north and south sides of the storm and vivid oranges and yellows highlighted the cool gray color of the smooth bulges. The strongly colored streaks close to the clouds were like a soft rainbow on both sides of a great black hole. They watched until after mark turned off the engine and got out of the truck.

Barb continued to watch the clouds expand as Lyle jumped up into the truck and helped his Father to cover the hand tools with a tarp and then they weighted the tarp with concrete blocks. They didn’t pay any attention to a long handled shovel or a pair of wooden sawhorses also laying on the bed liner. Let’s get inside, Barb told them with an edge in her voice. She turned and started for the main entrance to the superstore. Mark hustled to catch up while Lyle jumped down from the vehicle and trotted to join them.

Lyle walked fast from excitement. He put a few feet of distance between his parents and himself and turned around and walked backwards. He started to say something but then he bumped into a loose cart in the edge of the isle. His Mother frowned at him and Mark just smiled as they watched him struggle to halt the erratic flight of the cart. Lyle pushed it, hard, into the corral and caught up with his parents again just as they entered the building.

The senior citizen in charge of handing out carts to other senior citizens was busy helping an iron haired woman into an electrically motorized half-cart/ half-wheelchair. Mark noticed his wife seemed agitated. He couldn’t believe it was the old folks who were setting her off but he didn’t want to start something by asking her what was bothering her. They walked directly back to the sporting goods section. Mark wondered why big-ticket items like guns and fishing equipment or even computers and televisions were always the farthest away from the entrance in WalMarts. It seemed more logical to Mark the big, heavy stuff should be closer to the door. The customer wouldn’t have to lug it all over the store to pay for it and then get it back to their car.

Lyle ran around the end of the display rack and out of sight. He was back around the end of the display in seconds and had the ball glove on his hand. He looking intently at the glove punched his fist deep into the pocket a couple of times. He looked back at his patents and smiled with glee. Let me see it for a minute, Mark asked his son. Lyle handed the new mitt to his Father. Mark took his time and appeared very serious. I don’t know, his voice trailed off, Maybe we should look at something else to compare it with.

Lyle’s expression went quickly from one of joy to one of surprise and then to one of concern. He waited beside his Mother while Mark went back to the other side of the display and then returned with the Wilson A 1000. The boy’s expressions rewound from concern, through surprise and freeze framed at ecstasy! Mark handed him the glove and smiled proudly at the surprise he and Barbara had managed to pull off. Lyle accepted a hug from Barb and a Fatherly grin from Mark then he headed off for the fast lane at the front of the store. Barb managed a weak smile at Mark and then walked grimly behind her elated offspring.

Mark immediately thought something had happened and Barb hadn’t told him. It troubled him the $100 might be too large a purchase to put on their credit card. Do you think it is too expensive right now? he asked hesitantly.

No, she answered, I just feel all agitated inside. I’m nervous and I don’t know why. Let’s just get out of here and go get a seat at the movie theater.

It relieved mark to know her mood wasn’t about money. They would be able to sit and talk about it at the movie. "We will be very early, at least half an hour before the first movie," he thought. Barb didn’t even stand in line with them. Mark and Lyle waited patiently behind two customers before they paid for the glove and joined Barbara next to the cart man at the entrance. She was practically forcing them to hurry up.

A shocking thought flashed through his mind, "She’s pregnant!" The mere idea sent electrical shocks through him. He shivered involuntarily.

Lyle, he said to his son, Why don’t you take my keys and go get into the truck. I need to talk with your Mother for just a minute? He tossed his keys to the boy and Lyle caught them in his brand-new, super-duper, $100 baseball mitt. Lyle ran to the pickup and unlocked the passenger door and got in.

Mark turned to his wife as they walked slowly to their three-year old vehicle. His mouth opened to ask her if she were pregnant but he noticed her eyes were looking all around the parking lot. She sent furtive glances at every shopper who was getting into or out of a vehicle. She studied an expensive camper coach parked away from the rest of the vehicles on the lot. They reached the truck without Mark ever asking her the dreaded question electrifying him only moments before. Lyle opened the door and hopped out onto the pavement so his Mother could get in the middle of the front seat. The boy interrupted the nervous silence by saying, Are those the kinds of clouds tornadoes come out of? He pointed slightly south of west, in the general direction of Cuba’s Municipal Airport.

Mark looked in the direction where his son was pointing. He was still worrying about whether Barbara might be pregnant and was not really focusing on the question. Are they, Dad? He rephrased his question in hopes of an answer this time.

Mark blinked a couple of times and focused his eyes. No, those clouds are too fluffy, he answered back, Tornadoes come out of smoother clouds rotating high up. Mark studied the massive formation to his west and then nodded at the northern end of the airport.

… Like those at the northern end of the airport runway, he continued, As a matter of fact, there is one right there, Mark couldn’t believe he said it so calmly.

Barb snapped her head in the direction Mark had indicated. It took her only a second to take in the meaning of his words and to associate the word tornado with what he was saying. She stared with horror at the formation throwing out sprigs of debris from the thick funnel shaped cloud. Mark, let’s go, she said with some emphasis in her shaky voice.

Mark believed this was a teachable moment. He had read where tornadoes always came from the southwest and traveled in a straight line to the northeast. It appeared to be a mile and a half to two miles away from where they were standing. Tornadoes always move in a straight line starting in the southwest and goes to the northeast, Mark told his son with some confidence. He thought they would be safe in watching it for a few minutes as it traveled along a path safely away from where they stood.

Now! Let’s go now! Barbara’s sense of urgency left no room for uncertainly. She climbed up into the front seat and shouted at the men in her family once more for emphasis, I mean right now!

Mark walked deliberately around the front of the truck and kept his eyes fixed on the undulating funnel as lightning strikes now streaked from the edges of the storm. In just a few seconds it had cut the distance from WalMart in half. He jumped up into the seat just as sirens started going off all over the town. A siren located at the back of the superstore screamed so loudly it drowned out the simultaneous slamming of both of the truck doors. The Bells did not always buckle up when they went the short distance from Steelville to Cuba, but they all buckled up without saying a word. Mark reached over and turned on the radio. There was a lot of static on the radio and Barb spun the dial, searching for a clear signal. The reliable pickup sped out of the parking lot and turned left onto the access road. They were facing the on-coming monster and Mark went faster than he should have down the two-lane road. Mark looked both ways then floored it through a red light at the intersection with State Road 19 and headed due south. A wall of cold air blew hard against the side of the truck as they made the turn and Mark had to fight the steering wheel to maintain control of the truck.

Barb located the clearest signal on the radio. It was on the AM dial at 1320. Sounds from KBLC Christian Radio filled the cab. "Brothers and sisters we have just learned there is a tornado warning in the greater Cuba area. Someone reported a funnel shaped cloud at the airport and it is headed in an east of southeasterly direction. If it is true, then it will go right through our community. Let us pray. Our Father…" Lightning boomed loudly from a nearby strike. The radio hissed and crackled but the words stopped. Lyle and his Mother had turned completely around in their seats and were watching the funnel spew off debris and undulate in their direction like a giant snake.

Suddenly the sirens stopped and all the neon lights along the street went out. They could hear a giant roar behind them as the heart of the storm raised its skirt and slipped over the interstate. The sound varied slightly in strength as it met some resistance from hills and valleys in the landscape. Buildings in its path merely exploded and construction materials added to the texture of the quickly rotating funnel. Electric transformers shorted out with a loud explosion and lots of sparks, but the explosions were too faint to hear over the roar of the tornado. Mark could make out a direct hit on the WalMart where they had just been. The funnel kept coming, as if it were intent on capturing their truck in the massive vacuum at the base of the funnel. Mark streaked on through the town and went at least two miles toward Steelville. The tornado gave up on the Bells and continued on a track directing it toward the Onondaga Caves.

Mark parked the truck on the side of the road and got out. Lyle joined him back in the bed. Mark righted the sawhorses and he and his son sat on them while they watched the tornado play itself out. The tornado passed through the town on the north side. Most of the major devastation occurred at the WalMart. It continued a little south of east and went through a residential subdivision. Homes just poofed into splinters and were gone. What had been homes to friends and neighbors sucked high up into clouds and mixed with moisture beginning to fall as hail. Mark rose from his makeshift seat and started to get back into the cab. Hail banged and clanged on the truck.

The tornado shifted and slipped back up into the clouds as if it through for the day but then it popped back out as a smaller tornado unraveling itself all the way back to the ground. Lightning continued to strike all around the area. One tremendous burst of light and a deafening sound signaled one had hit very close to the pickup. A second tornado ejected from the same cloud and reached the earth a few seconds after the first. A third funnel tumesced from the cloud, larger than either of the first two. You two get back in here! Barbara ordered. The funnels were about a mile away and were distancing themselves from the pickup with every passing minute. Still, Mark and Lyle obeyed her command.

Mark reached for he door handle and did a double-take. The largest funnel had passed over a farmhouse about two miles distant and the house did not just poof into the aggressive funnel. Instead it exploded into a ball of fire temporarily breaking the funnel shape into halves. The tornado hesitated, jerked itself back into shape and then followed the smaller funnels on a journey of destruction. Mark searched his mind for anything relating to tornadoes causing fiery explosions. He couldn’t recall ever having heard or seen such reports. His curiosity prompted him to see if it might happen again.

The hail stopped and a pounding rain continued in its place. Mark took a chance Barb would not divorce him if he watched the tornado from a distance. He started up the engine. The sound of the engine broke an eerie silence pervading the area. The radio was not working and there were no sirens or horns or anything, only the sounds of thunder and of the diminishing roar of the funnels.

I am going to follow the monster from a distance, he said it as a request, not as a statement. Barb gave him a stern look but did not voice an objection.

He turned east on Lindberg and drove slowly and parallel to the funnels. The windshield wipers streaked through the heavy rain. He opened his window far enough to be able to see the funnels on his left, but not enough to drench his visibly annoyed wife. The smallest funnel shank up into a wisp and disappeared into the clouds above. The other two funnels began a dance of rising slightly into the air and then dropping back down, like a game of hopscotch. They drove only a few minutes when another fireball mushroomed into the center of the smaller tornado. The lower pressure inside the funnel sucked the fire high within the funnel and produced a glowing effect. Before the glow had completely died out the largest fireball of all exploded. Mark remembered another rule of thumb from his Great-Grandmother. He started counting to himself, "One thousand one. One thousand two. He got to One thousand eleven, when he heard the sound of the explosion. He started to say out loud it was about two miles away when Lyle burst out with Two miles. The explosion was two miles away." Mark was again proud of his son for remembering his lessons well.

The last of the tornadoes tore off at the bottom. It resembled the top half of a broken ice-cream cone. Debris dropped out of the center instead of spinning off into the surrounding area. A flood of water fell in a torrent between the last explosion and the pickup. The last thing he noticed before the deluge was a forked tongue of lightning coming out of the mouth of the weakening opening. Mark looked for a place to turn the truck around.

They drove in silence back to Cuba to see if they could be of any help to the folks who were victims of the tornadoes. Barb was a nurse and would be needed there. He was sure he and Lyle could assist the first responders in doing something helpful.

He also decided questions about Barb being pregnant could wait until tomorrow.

Chapter 2

There were four beds in the room. The beds were all similar except one had someone asleep in it. Three beds were empty. The beds were triflex bariatric hospital beds, motorized and each had a stainless head and footboard. Bariatric beds are slightly wider than normal hospital beds and the extra width allows the mechanism to be housed within the structure of the bed. The empty beds were made with white linen sheets, square corners and a triangular turn down where a new patient could be easily inserted between the sheets. All walls were a bright white, high-gloss enamel, as was the ceiling of the room. Windows were conspicuously absent in the room while a single thirty-six inch wide door occupied the exact enter of one of the long walls. The door was unusual for a hospital room. It featured a lock keyed from outside the room. Two large fluorescent lights in the ceiling directed a glaring light down on the woman in the bed.

When Aprille came full awake, she was angry. She was still groggy from the drugs and she instinctively fought the intense light keeping her from sleeping. She squinted her eyes tightly and tossed her head from side to side in an attempt to avoid the glare. "If this was somebody’s idea of a joke, it wasn’t very funny." She thought. The light wasn’t going away but she didn’t want to open her eyes to see who was causing the problem. She willed her body to be still and tried to focus her thoughts. She tried to remember but the recollection came like an out of focus picture. She could visualize laying on a hard metal surface and lights even brighter than these were searing into the back of her skull.

She shifted her hips to stretch her sleep inactive muscles and winced at a sharp pain in her side. Her right hand slipped across her body and her fingers lightly brushed along the tops of several stiff bristles protruding from the left side of her stomach. Aprille’s face scrunched up with intense concentration, but she could make no sense of the bristles. Her fingers played at the sides of the bristles and she could make out the sensitive edges of a cut or wound. "The bristles must be stitches, she thought, Have I been wounded?"

Her focus shifted as she sent both her hands searching the rest of her body, seeking out other cuts or injuries. Something connected to her left arm caused a jingle beside the bed when she moved. She rolled her head to the left and looked though a slit in one eye. The sight of bag of water attached to a stainless steel hangar was unsettling to her. A tube connected the water bag with her arm. She jiggled her arm and watched the bag bounce on the hangar. She listened to the jingling sound the metal eyelet on the bag made when it hit the stainless rod. Her arm involuntarily came out from under the sheet and she tried to make sense of the needle in her arm. "I never did hard drugs, and certainly never injected anything."

Her body lay very quiet and she reconstructed her most recent memories. "They had come for me while I was in the dorm, she remembered, a little. I know they were trying to do something to me I didn’t want them to do, but what?" She tried harder to remember.

"Gracie. They came for Gracie about an hour before they came for me, she opened both of her eyes and looked around the room for the first time. She searched for any sign of the other young woman. Three other beds were in the room with her, all empty. The other girl was not in the room. Gracie was not pregnant," she wondered if it made any difference? Gracie had put up quite a struggle and the nurses had to call in orderlies to help them move her to surgery.

"Surgery? That was it. Surgery was what Gracie had been fighting. She had confided in Aprille she was afraid she would never come back from the surgery. Aprille had resigned herself not to fight with the nurses and to make an attempt to escape.

On the right side of the bed there was a handheld electric control for the adjustable bed. Aprille punched one of three buttons on the control device and the upper end of the bed began to rise, slowly and steadily. She stopped the progress when the bed had elevated about halfway. The sheet fell from off her shoulders down to just underneath her immature breasts. "They have taken my clothes!" She was naked and the thought made her angry again. She pulled the plastic tube from the catheter and left it hanging free in the air. She slowly pulled the tape off of the catheter and the slipped the needle like device out of her vein and from under her skin. She stared at the device and then dropped it onto the vinyl floor. The next several minutes were spent giving her body a complete once-over. The place with the sutures was on her left hand side. The area where it was most painful was on her lower abdomen, below her belly button. Is seemed to be about three inches long and did not hurt if she did not move around very much. She could not find any more wounds.

Aprille slipped off the bed and bounced down to the floor. She was not a big person. She had never gotten taller than 5’-3" and had never weighed more than 110 pounds. The pain in her stomach stabbed her when her bare feet struck the floor. She fought through the pain and started to make a plan.

The first thing she did was to go to the door and check the lock. The door was locked from the outside. There were no light switches on the inside of the room, either. A deliberate inspection of the room provided her with no weapons or tools to get her through the walls. "I will have to resort to subterfuge," she thought.

She went back around he bed and picked up the catheter and the tape. A small amount of her blood remained on the catheter. She placed the tape and the metal device between the mattress and the springs on the bed. Next, she detached the saline bag from the hangar and then dis-assembled the hangar by screwing the stainless rod out of the base. She forced the hangar and the base under the mattress of a second bed and hung the saline bag out of sight behind one of the other headboards. The motor on her bed was reversed and the mattress was put back, flat. She made up the bed, complete with square corners and a triangular turn down, then she went to the bed closest to the one she had been sleeping in. She sat down on the floor. It was cold, very cold to her skin. She was shivering by the time she heard voices outside in the corridor.

Aprille lay in the deep shadow cast when the high intensity lights shown down over the hospital bed. "The stronger the light, the deeper the shadow, she reasoned, Maybe they won’t see me or miss me at all."

She was wrong about being missed. The first words she could make out after the door opened were, Hey Sam, isn’t there supposed to be someone in this room? It came from the raspy top of the lungs of a man who had smoked heavily for a lot of years. The voice of Sam replied, It looks empty right now. The staff must have moved her back to the dorm for some reason. The raspy voice seemed satisfied. Sam continued, We’ll just leave this one, then go back to the operating room and bring back the donor.

Aprille could only see the legs of the men and the wheels and supports of the gurney. She noticed the men were not wearing the white trousers characteristic of the orderlies in this place. Water dripped from the bottom of the gurney and pooled on the floor. The men struggled with the unconscious body on the gurney. The labored breathing of the smoker was noticeable to Aprille. He gasped for air as he attempted to move the body from the gurney to the bed. He lost his hold on his end and the head and shoulders of a young woman bounced off his knee and tumbled onto the floor, in a heap. The young woman was about the same age as Aprille. She guessed fifteen or sixteen years old. The girl was fully dressed but her wet jeans and soaking tee shirt did little to disguise the advanced pregnancy of the young woman. She was taller than Aprille and a lot heavier. "Hell, her boobs outweigh me by ten pounds," Aprille thought.

Damn it Johnny, watch the fuck out, said an exasperated Sam. Both men leaned over to get a better hold of the girl and hoisted her up to the level of the bed, then unceremoniously shoved her on top of the sheets.

Johnny asked Sam if he wanted him to undress her and put her under the sheets. You wish, you sick fuck. Just leave her and we’ll go get the one from the operating room, Sam told him.

What about this gurney? Johnny wanted to know, Want me to bring it along?

Nah, replied Sam, Leave it. We’ll take both of them back to storage when we bring the other one back. It will save us a trip.

The men left the room and Aprille held her breath. She counted to sixty and then slid out from under the bed. She rubbed her hands up and down her body to help warm up her skin, being careful not to get too close to the cut. She went cautiously to the door, carefully avoiding the pools of water along the way. She checked the lock. The men had not relocked the door when they left. Aprille slowly opened the door and peeked her head outside. The long corridor was empty in both directions. She had no experience in this part of the complex and didn’t know which way was the way out. Small wet spots along the corridor to her left suggested the way the men had come. "I will follow the water and find my way out of here," she hoped.

A naked young young woman with the build of a gymnast moved lithely down the corridor, her bare feet scarcely touching the floor. She hesitated at the end of the hallway and looked both ways for more signs of water. She didn’t need the water as a guide any more because at the end of the hall on her immediate left was a bank of elevators. There were two elevators. One elevator stood with its door open and waiting for a customer. The second elevator door remained closed. The floor indicator above the door showed it was on the same level with the open elevator, but the door defaulted to a closed position while waiting. Aprille did not know how many floors there were between her and the surface, she just knew she wanted to go up in the worst way.

She bounced into the cab and smashed the first button she could find. The lights in the cab turned off and she hit the button again. The light came back on. She pressed a different button and heard an audible hum from the door closing mechanism. She watched, anxiously as the door closed in front of her. No one was in sight when the door finally closed all the way. She began to worry about how she would escape once she reached the surface. "Naked white girls are pretty easy to spot," the thought worried her. She noticed this elevator cab was a little different from most. There was a mirror on one sidewall and hooks for hanging clothes on either side of the mirror. Opposite the mirror was an upholstered bench. The side panels were rosewood and the ceiling translucent glass with soft fluorescent lighting behind. Deep plush pile carpeting covered the floor of the elevator. Aprille could make out several pools of water seeming to float on top of the fibers.

The elevator had been moving upward for half a minute when the lights in the cab went out and the cab lurched to a stop. She tried not to panic and sat down on the carpeted floor of the cab. It felt warmer to her skin than had the vinyl in the recovery room. All her rising hopes evaporated when she felt the elevator moving again. She