EXODUS

— by Jeff Karamales

Chapter 6
Misunderstandings
 

Perry Layton had been prepared to die just a few days prior to waking up in the confusing situation he and the others found themselves in. He’d known that getting into the fight with those other boys had been wrong, but they’d goaded him to the point that all he saw was red and that the anger that always lurked deep inside had erupted in a explosion of violence that left all three of them dead, two with crushed skulls, the third succumbing to his injuries and dying in the hospital from where his jaw had been shattered and the shards pushed into the brain cavity. His lawyer had explained why he’d been condemned to death, and the prison preacher, a right good man that had helped Perry get right with the Lord told him that while the law insisted he had had to pay for his crimes, Jesus forgave him, and that was all Perry really needed to hear.

Now, however, the giant of a man was stuck in the middle of a situation that confused and frightened him. It was a fear that was even worse than the scares he got when he watched one of the monster movies that came on the TV in the rare times his mamma could afford a room at a motel as they drifted from farm-to-farm as temporary hands. He knew those shows weren’t real, but they’d surely caused him to have frightening dreams. This was real, though, and as his fingers probed the sore spot at the back of his neck, Perry let the things he’d been told percolate slowly through his brain. Doctor Lesko had told him that she was going to be turning him into something that was both a man and a cat of some kind; that he was going to be one of the first of a new kind of animal-people. He wasn’t sure how to take that revelation. He liked animals of all kinds, especially cats, having found more than his fair share of kittens while working whatever farm his mother could find them employment at, but he wasn’t sure that he wanted to become one. Perry didn’t know if something like that would be acceptable to the Lord in the slightest.

Several of the others held in the chamber that had been assigned to Group 1 with were also scary. He didn’t care for Gino Torrelli in the slightest. The foul-mouthed little man from New Jersey was about as mean and spiteful an individual as Perry had ever met and always seemed to be looking for a fight. Joe Curry also frightened him. From what he’d overheard, Perry knew that Joe had been in prison because he liked to hurt little kids and the police had found all sorts of pictures where the man had made little boys and girls do naughty things before he killed them. Someone had said that he even kept their bodies in the freezer of his garage. Then there was the dark skinned man named Ramad ibn Hassid that he’d seen on television. Ramad had killed some soldiers in the city of Dallas, Texas. As far as Perry knew, Ramad hadn’t really talked to any of the others, sitting quietly in his cell or praying.

Then there were the women. Maddie Simmons, though her real name was Madelyn, was always coming over to try and talk to him and seemed to like touching Perry in ways that made him feel strange and embarrassed afterwards. Gino called her a black widow, but she didn’t look anything like a spider to him. It took a long discussion with Miss Julie for him to understand that the woman married wealthy men before killing them for their money. Maddie did make him feel extremely uncomfortable, though, especially when she talked about the things she’d like to do with him. Tonya Dolens was a little more likeable, but he heard someone say that she’d burned down a church or something and that a lot of people, including a whole bunch of kids, died in the fire. Carla Weems was one of the more frightening women. Perry had heard that Carla had killed no less than five police officers in the city of Los Angeles and robbed banks. Her language was as bad as Gino’s and he thought she was going to try and kill him when he asked her not to take the Lord’s name in vain when she went into a swearing tirade a few days before.

The only ones that actually seemed nice to Perry were Julie Valance, especially when she got the other women to stop picking on him, and Wyatt Renner. Wyatt reminded the giant of a guy that had been on one of the farms he’d been able to work on who’d helped him set up a bank account and treated him like he was a normal person instead of the way people often did.

Perry knew that he wasn’t as smart as the others in the chamber, nor the most mentally agile, but Julie and Wyatt treated him nicely and with respect, like they really were his friends. It was a comfort to have them around.

Or at least it had been until one of the guards had told him that Wyatt had killed his own mother along with a bunch of other sick and old folk.

Perry recalled the previous year when his mamma had died and gone to heaven. He still ached from that, feeling completely lost and adrift and that a substantial part of him was gone forever. That Wyatt would actually kill his own mamma was a completely alien concept and made the large man want to throw up between surges of anger. When the guard’s revelation was added to the strange situation, it was enough to overwhelm the man. When Wyatt stepped up to the opening of his cell, Perry knew that he had to have the truth out of the other man.

“Hey, big guy,” Wyatt said easily, a slight smile on his mouth as he leaned against the concrete form of the door. “You doing alright?”

Perry’s head stayed lowered, though his eyes jerked up from where they had regarded the drab grey concrete of the chamber floor, the anger resurging and settling in the man’s blue-green orbs. “Wyatt? Is it true that you killed your own mamma?”

 As Wyatt stood there silently Perry saw the guilt manifest in the other man’s eyes and could tell by the way his shoulders sagged under the covering of his strange clothing that it was true. He suddenly hated the man that he’d come to view as a friend and felt the ever-present anger flare in his chest. Moving faster than he ever had before, Perry leapt up, his right fist rocketing ahead of the rest of his body as he caught the other man square on the jaw.

Wyatt only had time to widen his eyes at the sudden, violent outburst before he was flying backwards with the punch, grunting as his lower back collided with the long bench that sat in the middle of the chamber. No sooner did the flashing stars clear from his vision then he felt his head rocked back a second time. Dazed, Wyatt only heard an inarticulate roar of rage from the large man as yet another strike addled him even further. He was barely aware of the feeling of electricity passing from Perry into his own chest where the larger male held him by the front of his one piece jumper as guards applied shock batons and Tasers in an effort to control the enraged prisoner.

The rest of the chamber’s occupants watched as Perry shrugged off the attempts of the guards to subdue him, ignoring the jolts of current that should have stopped him, even ignoring the darts that crackled with bright blue sparks as one guard fired two sets of Taser darts into his back. Then it was as if the accumulated electricity hit him all at once and he toppled to the side, his eyes rolling up in their sockets while thin wisps of smoke curled in the damp air of the chamber. As soon as Perry succumbed to the nonlethal force, the guards were on him, his wrists and ankles bound with industrial strength plastic straps while a gag that would prevent him from biting was fit into his mouth. Looking like a holiday turkey trussed up and ready for the oven, the mercenaries hauled the twitching, nearly unconscious man from the Group 1 chamber as per Lesko’s orders given over hidden speakers.

Once the guards and Perry were clear of the chamber’s door, Julie stepped forward to help Wyatt, the beaten man barely aware of his surroundings as blood trickled copiously from slack, swollen lips. He took several deep breaths and shook his head to clear it, instantly regretting the action as it felt as if his brain sloshed with the gesture. He spat a gob of spittle and blood from his mouth as Julie hauled him into a sitting position. “Did I do something wrong?” Wyatt muttered, his tongue finding the cut inside his cheek as well as two loose teeth.

“I don’t know,” the woman replied as she waited a few moments for his equilibrium to reassert itself.

Wyatt eventually stood with a grunt, using both the bench and Julie for support before staggering to his cell and the sink. It took two tries to place his hand on the spigot, his vision doubled and swimming with reaction to the blows and stuck his face under the flow of cold water. “I guess I’m lucky,” Wyatt muttered as the water soothed the laceration and washed the coppery sweet flavor of blood from his tongue. “He killed the last guys he hit…though maybe they got off lucky. I think I might have a concussion.”

“At least you still have a head to get concussed,” the girl quipped with a sarcastic expression. “Something sure set him off.”

Before Wyatt could respond or Julie add to the situation a pair of guards escorted a medic and wheelchair into the chamber. “Doctor Lesko wants you in medical for an examination,” the green and grey scrubbed woman said perfunctorily. “We’ll escort you.”

Wyatt would have protested but he felt too unsteady on his feet and let himself fall into the wheelchair, his fingers wrapping tightly around the ends of the padded armrests as it seemed the world around him had just tilted ninety degrees from what he was seeing. “Sure,” he agreed readily, still too addled with the pummeling to care if it meant another of the insane doctor’s experiments. 

*** 

“One of the guards told the large one that you killed your mother,” Ramad said as he sat down next to Wyatt and Julie for their evening meal, Wyatt’s own supper comprising a series of cups that held gelatin and watered down soup broth. “Apparently he is still disturbed by the death of his own mother and took the revelation of your particular crime a little more personally than he should have.”

“How do you know this?” Julie inquired for the other man who was having trouble consuming his liquid meal.

“I simply listen to what is going around. As there aren’t many that would actually talk to me…” Ramad smiled ironically. “Everyone here has committed some form of heinous crime, but I was on death row for threatening the ‘American Way of Life’. It is all very fine to be in a den of thieves, murderers, rapists and defilers of children, but I am hated by all for attacking US soldiers.”

“Did you?” Wyatt mumbled through swollen lips.

Ramad smiled again and shrugged. “Does it truly matter at this point? I am in the same situation as everyone else in this room.” He tore the Styrofoam cup his water had been in into small irregular shapes and dropped them on the table. “I was convicted of a terrorist act because I am Muslim and was protecting my sister against soldiers that came into my parents’ store and were harassing her for her head covering. I was sentenced to death because I pushed one of them away when he grabbed at her and pulled her scarf off, making my sister Salema cry out in pain. He hit his head on a rack of donuts and eventually died. There was a fight, and in the end I and two of the soldiers were the only ones still standing. That it was seven on one was not an issue. What was an issue was that I am American-Arab and struck a man that was in the military, thus my actions were obviously of terrorist motivation.”

When the swarthy man looked up the smile fell.

“It really didn’t matter to the judge or jury that I was born in this country or even put in time in the Air Force as an interpreter. Despite all of what came before I am of Jordanian decent, so I must obviously be one of those that sees the West as the ‘Great Satan’. It was enough to make my family move back to the Middle East.”

Wyatt nodded slowly, even that small amount of motion causing everything from the neck up to throb painfully with every beat of his heart. “Yeah, I remember reading that in the paper,” he muttered while regarding the bowl of green gelatin with a grimace. “The reporters barely mentioned your service time. It was more of an afterthought than anything else.”

Ramad made a dismissive gesture with his hand. “It is of no consequence. It is done and over with. I know the truth, as do my parents and my sister. My greatest regret is that my actions have caused me to end up here.” He smiled wryly. “Wherever here is.”

“Near the ocean, I think,” Wyatt said between gulps of the jiggling green mess. “Whenever we go by that large door I get the smell of saltwater.”

Ramad smiled. “Ah, yes. Before your own imprisonment you ran a boat service of some sort, didn’t you?”

“Charters,” Wyatt answered. “Mostly fishing parties and stuff. Maybe a diving group every once in a while, but I’ve spent my whole life on the water and boats. We’re near the sea. What sea I can’t say, but we’re real close to ocean water.”

“I think we’re pretty far north,” Julie added to the conversation. “It’s always damp and too cold to be anywhere south. I swear I haven’t been warm since we all woke up here.”

“Sounds about right,” Wyatt agreed. He wanted to say more until his eyes flicked upwards and he caught the sight of one of the many cameras located throughout the chamber in its protective bubble. When he spoke again it was with his head lowered and his voice hardly louder than a whisper. “We probably shouldn’t talk about it. There’re cameras everywhere and I’m pretty sure Lesko is listening as well.”

The other two agreed silently and resumed their meal. It wasn’t long before Julie set her packet down, her mouth twisting into a frown as she forced the reconstituted food down her throat. “Is this really what the guys in the military have to live off of? It tastes like crap! I’ve seen roadkill that’s been baking in the Southern California sun for a week that had to have taste better!”

“At least your dinner is sort of solid,” Wyatt said as he finished his broth.

Ramad grinned. “When you’re deployed, you’re normally so tired that you don’t care what the food tastes like, just that it is hot and plentiful,” he informed the young woman with an amused tone. “Though I would give much for a plate of my mother’s roasted lamb with herbs followed by good, strong tea. That and my true weakness of cheese. Good goat cheese served on fresh baked bread and a touch of hummus. Or figs. I’ve always loved fresh figs.”

Wyatt looked at the other man with a pained expression, the empty ache in his belly barely sated with the liquid meal. “Ramad, please,” he begged. “It’s bad enough being on the ration packets, but thanks to Perry I can’t even do that.”

“My apologies,” the dark skinned man said with a sympathetic expression. “You truly are suffering more than we are.” 

*** 

Perry was returned to the chamber the next day cycle, the large man refusing to look at Wyatt as he made his way to his cell with his head hung low. The refusal to acknowledge the other prisoner didn’t hide the fact that his left eye was swollen shut and bruising spectacularly, or the rest of his face which bore the signs of further violence. When he winced as he lay down on his bunk, or the manner in which every motion was carried out with a slowness that indicated his entire body hurt, Wyatt couldn’t help but make his way across the chamber to find out what had happened to the other prisoner during the course of the night.

“You okay?”

With a start and chagrined look in his one good eye, Perry nodded silently before turning over on the mattress, presenting his back to the other man.

“Look, Perry. I don’t know what those guys told you, but…well, what I did wasn’t easy. My mom was really sick, and instead of letting her suffer, I did what she asked me. My mom and those other folk…they wanted to die. They really did. They were that sick.” Wyatt watched as the man on the bunk took in a deep breath before letting it out in a trembling sigh. For some reason he felt that it was important to explain the situation to the other prisoner, though he stayed close to the door, ready to bolt in case there was another outburst like the day before.

“You see, my mom had what they call Alzheimer’s. It’s like…well, it’s a sort of sickness in the head that makes the person that has it forget things. Sometimes they forget whole years, sometimes even more. She didn’t remember my dad most of the time. Sometimes she didn’t even remember me. There were other problems, too.”

Perry rolled back over and looked at the other man with confusion. “Your mamma forgot who you was? Really?”

Wyatt nodded. “She really did. It got to the point that she didn’t remember anything at all about me or sometimes who she was. It was pretty bad.” He moved further into the cell. “When I went to see her that last morning, I saw just how much being sick had cost her. She was strapped down to her bed so she couldn’t get up. Not even to go to the bathroom. She knew that there wasn’t going to be any getting better and asked me to end her suffering. She wanted to keep what little dignity she had and for me to end her life for her.”

As he spoke, Perry sat up, caught up in the story.

“Because she couldn’t get to the bathroom, my mom was a mess. Her bed was all but ruined, but no one had come by to clean her up or change the sheets for a while. No one did anything to help her at all. That and she was in a room where there were other patients that were in the same condition, or worse, than she was. It smelled terrible. I did what I could to clean her up, got her clean blankets and brushed her hair for her.”

Wyatt looked at the other man while tears ran down his cheeks, soaking into the thick stubble.

“Then I helped her with what she wanted. I sat with her until she was gone, holding onto her hand until she took her last breath. When I finally got up and covered her with the blanket, the other people in the room asked if I would do the same for them. So I helped all of them with their final wishes. So many of them had been sick for years and to live a day longer in those conditions was worse than any hell I could imagine. So I killed them. I killed them all.” Wyatt stood straighter, still convinced of the rightness of his actions that had landed him on death row. “Perry, have you ever been so sick that you wished it would all just end so you wouldn’t feel bad anymore?”

The big man nodded slowly. “I had the pneumonia once. I remember thinking that I wish’t it woulda just ended,” he admitted quietly.

“Yeah. That’s pretty sick. Now picture being that way for years, but knowing you wouldn’t get better, ever. That’s why I killed my mother. She was much more sick than just pneumonia, but there wasn’t a chance for her to ever get better. And those other people wouldn’t get better, either.”

“Did any of those folk have the cancer? That’s what my mamma had. They gave her medications that made her hair fall out and she threw up a lot before she died.”

Wyatt nodded. “All of them, including my mom had cancer of one kind or another or some form of terminal illness. You know what terminal means, right?” He watched as Perry shook his head. “It means they would never have gotten better and would have stayed sick until they died.”  A sardonic smile twisted his mouth into a humorless expression. “Sure, there’s the McEwen process that can cure cancer, but no one in that place could afford it. I know I couldn’t pay for the treatment for my mom. I wasn’t exactly swimming in money, you know. The treatments are the same as the price of a large house. ”

“That’s…that’s terrible!”

“It surely is,” Wyatt agreed. “That’s why I did what I did. Believe me when I say that if there had been another way, I’d have done everything I could’ve to get my mom better. But I did what she asked because I loved her. Can you understand that?”

“Uh huh,” the man agreed. “I…I think I can.” He rubbed at the moisture in the eye that wasn’t swollen and rocked slightly where he sat on the edge of his bunk. “I found a puppy at one farm we was workin’ at and mamma said I could keep it. It got hit by a car when it got offa the rope I had it on and ran for the highway. It got hit by a truck and was so messed up that there weren’t no fixin’ it and I had to put it down.” The tears flowed more freely and Perry sniffed loudly as he wiped his nose on the sleeve of the jumper he wore. “Mamma said that it was the right thing to do so it wouldn’ suffer no more an’ that it would get to be with Jesus.” He sobbed once before looking back up at Wyatt, the anguish clear on his face as he related his own story. “I guess he and mamma are both with Jesus, aren’t they? And your mamma, too.”

“Yeah,” Wyatt said with a small smile, unable to bring himself to admitting he’d lost his faith long ago. “Maybe.”

Perry stood and fidgeted like a small boy being punished. “Hey, Wyatt? I…I’m sorry I hit you. Really sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“But I do!” Perry wailed. “You and Miss Julie are the onliest friends I got anymore and I don’t want you to not be my friend!”

Wyatt couldn’t help but smile and clapped a hand on the other man’s shoulder, unused to having to look up to other people, though Perry was easily a head taller than he was. “Don’t worry, big guy. I’m still your friend.” The words were hardly past his swollen lips when the other man caught him in a fierce embrace, squeezing Wyatt with enough force to pop several vertebrae as huge arms wrapped around him and flexed. “Careful!” he grunted. “You’re a lot stronger than you realize!” 

“Sorry!” Perry gushed as he set Wyatt down, a concerned frown on his face until he winced with the pressure on his damaged eye. “I forget sometimes!”

“Don’t worry about it,” Wyatt informed the other man as he took an experimental breath, relieved that nothing more than a little bruising had occurred. “Why don’t you come out and join us. It’ll make Julie happy that we’re all still friends.” As much as we can be friends in this situation, he thought silently to himself as they stepped into the main portion of the chamber.

— NEXT CHAPTER —

Unless otherwise noted, all material © Ted R. Blasingame. All rights reserved.