Authors: TJ Moore
Mind Games (34 page)
Still raised, Jen’s body fell for a moment, and her feet touched the ground. But the next pulse raised her back up again, whipping her against the railing as if she were a marionette puppet with lightning bolts for strings. Eye rolled back, Jen’s face was paralyzed into a silent scream. Then her eyebrows turned white and pale foam bubbled from her lips like an upside-down smile.
Amy felt an ever-increasing static charge from the generator building more and more. Keeping her face covered, she crawled away, trying to leave more distance between the generator and her own body.
Cameron ducked back behind his elbow and rolled across the floor, dodging a shower of glass as the lightning shattered a second panel.
Like crashing ocean waves, the sounds from the generator became ear-deafening. Then, in a sudden surge, the lights flickered above.
The generator shrieked, spraying sparks over Amy and Cameron. It buckled once more, sending one last jolt of power through the Tesla coil. The final bolts of lightning were the brightest yet, reaching further than before. And with a sputtering cry, the generator stopped completely, leaving behind an echoin
g
*Cruuuuaaaaaannk-tink*!
Jen’s body stayed stiff for a moment longer, then slammed onto the floor of the balcony. But in the fall, she didn’t let out so much as a yelp.
The lab lights flickered a few more times before going out.
There in the darknes
s
, Amy and Cameron stayed low.
When they got up, Cameron called up to Max.
Amy shined up her flashlight to the medical gurney. Although he suffered from a severe anxiety attack, still trying to catch his breath, Max waved down, lifting the corner of his mouth in a weak grin.
Then Cameron and Amy climbed up to the balcony.
Amy pointed her flashlight towards Jen’s body. She was lying face-up. One of her arms was still clutching the railing, fingers tightly clasped. Cameron pried them off one at a time, receiving a sharp zap when he first touched her. Jen’s eyes were open, staring straight up, her face still frozen in a ghastly wince. Veins in her neck and face turned blue under the skin, and a series of purple bruises were scattered under her jawline. Her hair appeared to be crimped, and the white foam dribbled down her mouth, ending just below her ear.
Her chest was moving. She was unconscious, but still breathing. Amy examined the rest of her with the light. The tips of Jennifer’s fingers had blacked, and the capillaries on the tops of her hands showed green under her skin.
Cameron slid a lab table underneath the suspended medical gurney and helped loosen the straps from Max’s arms and legs.
When Max spoke, his voice was weak.
“Thanks for saving me, Frosty.”
Amy found a cell phon
e
near the security monitors at the entrance into the lab. While Cameron stayed with Max and Jen, Amy followed the tunnels up and out until she was at ground level.
Then she called Jones for rescue vehicles, an ambulance, extra fuel for the helicopter, and some hefty rope to fish Wilson from the subterranean well.
SIDE EFFECTS
When the busses of workers returne
d
to their regular lives in the city, the story broke across national news.
Many of the hostages went on TV to describe their experiences living underground. Some of them talked about the fear they experienced under the shadow of “The Leader” while others explained how thankful they were the whole nightmare was over. Several of them visited chiropractors to aid with the injuries they accumulated from the hundreds of hours digging dry dirt. One of the men developed pneumonia from breathing in the underground air. He was sent to the hospital to receive intensive care.
Melanie Garcia, Cameron’s neighbo
r
who’d been captured four months prior, was interviewed in her home. She spent the entire interview with her arms around her twin boys. She told the reporter she had a whole new appreciation for her life as a teacher and a mother; but after the first few questions, Melanie asked the camera crew to leave. Now that she had her life back, Melanie just wanted her space. She even got phone calls from daytime shows, requesting special appearances where she could “tell all”, but Melanie turned them all down.
Captain Jones arrange
d
a special funeral service for Vince Hogan and highlighted his contributions to the case; including his efforts towards tracking down Derek Hansen, Wilson Gentry, and helping locate Max Parsons.
The San Francisco police force used the documents Amy and Vince collected from Wilson’s garage to find and arrest 169 illegal weapon owners locally. Then, the senior analyst digitized the U.S. map of addresses and sent the valuable information to the cities where Wilson’s other clients lived. (Over the next few years, more than two thousand people were arrested for possession of illegal weapons based on th
e
Red Dot Map.)
At her trial, Jennifer Fros
t
was charged with forty-one counts of kidnapping, twenty-five counts of grand theft auto, theft charges/embezzlement totaling twelve million dollars, animal cruelty, child abuse, destruction of state forests, and the murder of Vince Hogan.
Unable to defend herself, Jennifer plead guilty to the charges. For her bizarre and manipulative crimes, she was sentenced to life in prison at The Rock: Alcatraz.
Her underground lab was highly documented and photographed. Although discarded as obsessive scribblings, Jennifer’s research provided fascinating fodder for criminal psych classes across the country. And the remaining deranged wolves found in her lab were put down since their blood contained traces of toxic cyanide.
Jennifer was forced to pay settlements of half a million dollars to each person she held hostage, totaling twenty-one million dollars in damages. (More than double the amount she stole from her previous employer: The Empire Bank.)
Wilson Gentry was also sentence
d
to life in prison without parole for selling illegal weapons, bombing the Italian restaurant
:
Hector’s Meatball
s
and Vince Hogan’s apartment, and killing many of his weapons clients with a string of mail bombs. He was sent to the California State Prison in Sacramento. Regarding his plan to demolish the Golden Gate Bridge, many news networks referred to Wilson as
a
Homegrown Terrorist
.
And through their coverage, they explained how he, along with Fred Stefani and Derek Hansen, operated one of the largest illegal weapon businesses in United States history.
Cameron and Amy set u
p
a public event in Garfield Square along 25th Street for all the people captured along highway 17.
Following an unspoken forgiveness from the captives, even Sheri was invited.
And the turnout was incredible.
The majority of the underground troop brought their families. Captain Jones helped Cameron grill pork chops and hamburgers for everyone. Each family brought a salad or dessert to share as well. Sheri, of course, brought the most desserts.
Sarah invited a group of friends to organize lawn games including beanbag toss, foursquare, capture the flag, and volleyball.
Max, thankful to be reunited with his father, brought Dan to the potluck. And even though it was almost a full year until the Fourth of July, the father-son duo handed out fliers advertising their revamped fireworks business.
As Cameron stood under one of the picnic shelters in the park flipping burgers, he watched the men and women who’d been so confined at the forest cottage finally have a chance to let loose.
They could run again.
They could taste the fresh air again.
They could be with their families again.
Max and Cameron set up a barrel fire in the park where people could burn their ankle trackers from what now seemed to be a distant past life. Everyone gathered around the barrel to watch the electronic devices crackle in the flames.
The festivities went until sundown, and as the last golden beams of sunlight reached across the park, each family left one by one, ready to enjoy their freedom.
AUTHOR INFO.
TJ Moore has written and directed several feature films including Special Delivery, Slick and Vector. In order to bring realism to his fiction, he studied Forensic Psychology and interviewed local detectives.
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