John Hawks - The GoldenCity

“I have moved on,” Boone said. “I’m going to make sure that that kind of incident will never occur again.”

Ruth touched Boone’s hand, but let go when he flinched. “I don’t know what you’re doing with the Evergreen Foundation, but it’s not going to give you what you want.”

“And what’s that?”

“You know…”

“No, I don’t!” Boone realized that he was shouting. A young man glanced at them before he entered the coffee shop.

“You want Jennifer back. She was our angel. Our precious little girl.”

Boone stood up, took a deep breath, and regained his self control. “It’s been nice seeing you again. Incidentally, my insurance policy still has you down as a beneficiary. Everything is in your name.”

Ruth fumbled with her purse, pulled out a wad of tissue, and blew her nose. “I don’t want your money.”

“Then give it away,” Boone said, and marched back to his car.

When he was in his twenties, he had gone through a six-week army reconnaissance course on an island off the coast of South Carolina. At the end of the training period, you had to catch a wild boar with a snare, stab the squealing animal with your commando knife and butcher it on the spot. That was just a test, one more way to show that you could deal with any problem. Thirty years later, nothing had changed. He was compelled to take one last step to prove his strength and invulnerability.

Boone punched in the address on his GPS, but it wasn’t necessary. The moment he turned off La Cumbre Road, he remembered the way. It was about five o’clock in the afternoon when he arrived at his destination. School had been out for several hours; only a handful of cars were in the parking lot.

Valley Elementary School was over forty years old, but it still looked cheaply made and unsubstantial. Each of the six grades had their own brick building with an asphalt roof. Covered walkways connected the buildings. Everywhere you looked there were planters filled with ivy and the spiky orange flowers called Birds of Paradise.

Boone strolled past a classroom with drawings of rainbows taped to the windows. Some of the rainbows were scrawled across the construction paper while others displayed the different colors in distinct bands.

Jennifer drew rainbows and everything else with wild loops and curves. Her cows were red. Her horses were blue. When she drew her father, Boone became an assemblage of lines and circles with crooked eyeglasses and an up-turned grin.

The children ate lunch in a central quadrangle surrounded by the class buildings. A lost sweatshirt was on the ground and a thermos bottle with a unicorn had been left, sad and lonely, in the middle of a picnic table. This was where she sat. This was where she and others had died. There was no plaque or memorial statue to acknowledge what had happened here.

Boone was ready to test his toughness and his bravery, but his body betrayed him. He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. It felt as if his head had exploded and a scream of sadness and pain had finally been released.

Maya and Gabriel stood in the auditorium of Playa Vista Elementary School and watched a class of eight year olds receive their Guardian Angel.

A medical area had been set up on the auditorium stage. Folding screens blocked a direct view, so Maya went to the front of the room and stood against the wall. First, a nurse injected each child with a local anesthetic in their right forearm. When the children lost sensitivity, a second nurse led them over to a doctor wielding a silver device that resembled a dentist’s drill. A spurt of compressed gas injected the RFID chip between the skin and the muscle, and then a bandage was placed on the wound.

Each child received a button that said: I got an Angel watching me! A handful of parents sat quietly as a teacher’s aide led the students back to their friends. Maya wondered what the mothers had told their children. Some of the eight year olds looked frightened, and one little boy was crying. All they knew was that they were being forced to walk up some steps and receive a quick jab of pain. The true lesson was implicit in the matter-of-fact behavior of the adults. We know best. Everyone is doing it. You don’t have a choice .

Maya rejoined Gabriel in the rear of the auditorium.” Seen enough?” she asked.

“Yes. They’re well organized. Josetta said the plan for the injections was announced three days after Michael made his speech.”

Maya nodded. “The Evergreen Foundation was already using the Protective Link tracking device with their employees. The Guardian Angel is just the same chip with a different name.”

They left the school auditorium and walked back out to the street. Josetta Fraser, Vicki’s mother, was waiting for them in a car decorated with Isaac T. Jones bumper stickers. Josetta was a heavy-set woman with a broad face who hadn’t smiled since picking them up at the Los Angeles Airport. “You see them doing it?” she asked when they got back in the car.

“They’re processing a child every two minutes.”

“And that’s just one elementary school.” Josetta turned the car back onto the street. “They’re doing it at clinics and at some churches, too.”

“But not at your church?” Maya asked.

“Reverend Morganfield preached against it. He said Isaac Jones warned us about the Mark of the Beast. But it’s up to the parents, and most of them are going along with the plan. People get angry if they don’t see a bandage on your child’s arm. It‘s like: ‘What’s the matter with you? Aren’t you a good mother? Don’t you want to stop this killer?’” Josetta sighed loudly. “You could argue with them, but there’s no point to that. The Prophet wrote: ‘Don’t waste time singing songs to the deaf.””

They were traveling north, passing through an area where massive cinderblock walls had been placed on both sides of the freeway. Maya guessed that the walls were there to block the sound from the traffic, but the design made her feel like she was trapped in a corridor with surveillance cameras attached to every road sign.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“I’m taking you to the safest place I know,” Josetta said. “There aren’t any cameras in the area, and nobody is going to check your ID. You can spend the night there. Tomorrow morning, I’ll bring you a car with a clean registration.”

“What about a handgun or shotgun?”

“The Prophet wrote that the Righteous should not touch the Machinery of Death and-”

Maya interrupted her. “Gabriel is a Traveler and the Tabula are trying to kill him. A Harlequin died trying to protect your prophet. I thought that some of you believed in ‘Debt Not Paid.’”

“The debt was paid, and my daughter paid it. Everybody in the church knows about her sacrifice.” Josetta’s face showed pain and anger as she touched one of the heart-shaped lockets hanging from her neck. “I’m helping you because Mr. Corrigan was kind enough to call me up and tell me that my daughter died.”

At the north end of the San Fernando Valley, they turned off the freeway and drove into low foothills dotted with coastal oak trees. The two-lane road followed a serpentine route up a canyon as signs began to appear: Rancho Vista -A Planned Community .

“I’m a loan officer,” Josetta explained. “Pacific Vista was going to be a new subdivision, but the builder lost his financing. Now my bank owns the property, and I’m in charge until the lawyers stop yelling at each other.”

Josetta pulled up to a gate house where a young security guard sat listening to a baseball game on a radio. He recognized her face, raised a gate, and the car turned onto a private road.