Fresh Flesh (11 page)

"But you're here now, so they didn't go
through with the execution. . .?" Jessica said, puzzled.

"No," he replied. "Just before they flipped
the switch they stopped the process. They told me that they had
something, and this is a direct quote, 'something
better
'
for me."

"Better?"

"Yes. I thought maybe it was some kind of
experimental method of execution. It was five days later when they
finally told me what their plans were."

"They changed your mind about your
sentence?"

"No. Oh, God no. I told you, they had
something 'better' planned for me."

"And what was that?"

He struggled to find the right words. It
really bothered him.

"They sent me here."

He had just begun his first term as President
of the United States and there were already very few jobs he
enjoyed. He liked living in the White House; it was not exactly how
he'd imagined, but then again, what was? All the work on the
campaign trail, his governor days were nothing compared to sitting
in the oval office chair.

He liked the security the job provided. He
liked the way he was treated; the utmost respect, honor,
dignity.

He hated the way the newspapers twisted
everything he said to fit their story. He hated the lies he
sometimes had to tell. He hated the eyes that watched him, waited
for him, the endless trivial things discussed in his private life
(he wondered humorously when the following headline would hit the
streets: NATION SHOCKED! PRESIDENT USING A SURPRISING AMOUNT OF
TOILET PAPER!). He hated the cloud of guilt that hung above him
like the dirt cloud always surrounding Charles Schultz's
Pigpen.

But more than anything to date, he hated
Project ADP1982.

While still a governor he heard about a
classified program, held in the highest confidence and being tested
at the federal level, working with several pro death penalty state
governments. Even after gaining the proper clearance and reading
the classified file he didn't know every player involved with
ADP1982.

He began his political career a moral
opponent of the death penalty and reluctant to carry out executions
permitted in his state. Prosecutors pushed, prodded and poked until
he signed a policy that set dates almost automatically for him. He
set 70 people free, 38 whom were convicted of first degree murder.
Then a Republican who labeled him soft on crime during the campaign
trail, ran against and beat him.

His soft days had ended.

His revised platform included being an
advocate of capital punishment and apologizing for freeing convicts
in the past. His new criticism involved waffling on the issue. They
always found a way to beat you down in politics.

When he ran for President last year and won,
beating his Republican opponent, his tougher stance on capital
punishment helped. Very little difference on the issue could be
argued between his position and his opponent.

"Mr. President?"

The President looked up from his desk in the
oval office. The report sat on his desk, mocking like a clown's
grin. He closed it with tired, arthritic hands.

"Mr. Secretary," the President said.

"You have read the report."

"Many times."

"And your evaluation?"

The President wondered for a moment how his
predecessors handled ADP1982. How could they carry the burden of
knowing about this experiment? How could they greet conversations
when capital punishment arose and not think about ADP1982?

"I read the report."

"No new subjects introduced in the last five
years."

"I said I read the report, Mr. Secretary."
And he thought 'introduced" was a cold way to put it. Why not just
state the truth:
we haven't sent anyone to that island hell in
the last five years
.

"The state of California has tested this
convict, Wally Adamson, and deems him not to be insane. The
families of the victims have been pushing for execution. California
feels that ADP1982 would be a more adequate solution for this
disturbed criminal."

"Enough. I said I've read the report."

"Sorry, Mr. President. I just felt I should
emphasize some of the more important aspects of the report."

"You have carried out that task quite well,
thank you." the President said. He thought about apologizing for
his short temper. "I have evaluated the situation."

The word evaluation was a kind, discreet way
of stating he'd made a decision.

The power. I have the power to send this
man to a terrible place. As President and ruler of this great
nation, I am also the executioner. I am playing God on earth, able
to cast men to the unknown land beyond. Beyond rusty iron gates
swimming in hungry flames. I have the power
.

The power.

"Yes," The President said at last.

"Yes?"

"Yes, if the state of California feels this
sentence is appropriate, I won't stand in the way of the process.
However, I'm not happy with this decision or the project. Let it be
known that I don't want any more candidates coming across my desk
from any states as long as I'm in this office. This is the last
one."

"Not happy, sir?"

There many things around the world that made
him unhappy. Recently he'd ordered 23 cruise missiles to bomb
Baghdad over an attempted assassination of the former President
while visiting Kuwait. Three residential houses were struck and
nine civilians killed. Operation Southern Watch left 12
wounded.

Casualties made him unhappy. Innocent people
killed by the maniac, Wally 'Torque' Adamson, made him unhappy. The
whole damn job at times—unhappy.

"I don't want to discuss this any further.
What's the next item on today's agenda?"

The Secretary looked down at his array of
multi-colored notes. After a brief moment he carried on.

The Secretary of Defense said: "Testing for
the new Tomahawk missile. . ."

"
Beyond
the death penalty?" Jessica
said. "What does that mean?"

"I know it's hard to accept." Dick stood and
started to pace. "When it comes to capital punishment the camps are
strongly divided. Some are in favor and some passionately against.
Then there are the extremist camps. A camp that believes it is
wrong condemning any human being's life for any reason. And another
camp that thinks that life in prison isn't
enough
punishment
for the worst criminals."

"And what about the death row convicts who
either can't be locked away or the authorities don't want to be
locked away in an asylum? The ones they know are crazy but can't
prove it in court. What do they do with these evil convicts?"

Dick said the word 'evil' with very little
emotion but Jessica had seen the look in Bobby's eyes. Some human
beings are evil. She'd seen the proof.

"One of these groups of people, or maybe a
combination of several of them, I don't know, created this
government experiment."

"In 1982 twenty-seven death row convicts were
sent to this government owned, uninhabited island. The rumor is
that the capital punishment states involved with the experiment
were given a choice. Since cop-killing was considered a despicable
crime in Washington State my name had risen to the top of that
state's list of candidates for the program."

Jessica asked: "So there are twenty-seven
people on the island?"

"No, not anymore. That's what we started
with. Now our numbers have dwindled. I'm not sure exactly how many
of us are left now."

Jessica thought of Bobby's recent demise and
shuddered.

"Under the tightest security measures I've
ever seen all twenty-seven of us were flown to a special government
facility in Kentucky. There, we were briefly given lessons on
parachuting and survival, because if we couldn't parachute out of
the plane right, or not know how to live off the land then. .
."

"That type of execution is not what they
wanted. At that same well-guarded place, we were executed on
paper."

"On paper?" Jessica interrupted.

"Yes, we all have death certificates. They
showed me mine. Officially we're all dead here. They told all the
computers and papers and had bogus witnesses sign affidavits. I
doubt most of those people even read what they swore to have
seen."

"They had this project so tightly sealed that
there were maybe only a couple dozen people who knew we weren't
executed. And of those people, only a handful—up to and including
the President I've heard—knew we were coming here. There were
technicians and teachers who knew about us, but only knew what they
had to know, nothing more. Like I said, it was the most tightly
secured operation I've ever seen. Imagined, even."

"But what about your families?"

Dick shook his head. "The convicts chosen for
this experiment don't have families. At least family that cares
what happened to us. Our families are distant memories. We were
easily thrown away."

Jessica tried to imagine any human being ever
being deemed 'easily thrown away' and the concept only saddened
her. She couldn't imagine being that dispassionate about another
member of the human race to think that discarding them somewhere
alive but dead to the rest of the world was any kind of good idea,
much less a humane experiment.

When Jessica looked back up a minute later,
Dick continued.

"After two very short weeks we were flown in
groups of five to this island. I'll always remember watching
America slide away beneath me. It was then that I was executed,
Jessica. You know, I was actually more scared about coming to this
island than dying. Death would have been quick."

"The island looks very different from above.
I can't get the unusual image out of my head. It looks like a. .
.face. I know that sounds strange but it does."

"So we parachuted one-by-one when we reached
the island. I don't think even one of us parachuted without two
hands pushing us first. Everybody knew there was an island below,
but nobody knew what the island was like. Fear of the unknown.
That's the worst, I say, fear of the big question mark."

"Out of twenty-seven, only nineteen
parachuted safely to the ground. Three men got their parachutes
tied up in the trees and hung themselves. Three were too scared to
pull the rip cord. Two just. . .never made it. We figured that
maybe they landed in the ocean somewhere, panicked, and drowned.
But nobody ever saw them again."

"So we started out as nineteen, eleven years
ago. Oh, we were quite a bunch too. You would never have been able
to believe that most weren't raving lunatics. To this day, I think
I'm the only convict sent here who isn't insane—or hasn't been
driven insane since arrival. My sanity test was extensive, and if I
had acted like some of the others here I can't see how I would have
ever made it. It's like I said before, they didn't want the people
selected to come here being declared insane. Like part of the
experiment was to send criminally insane away from psych wards and
here instead."

"Maybe one of the convicts killed some
politician's family member in some terrible way? Maybe that's how
this got started," Jessica said.

"You might be on to something there," Dick
replied. "Anyway, we were equipped at first with only what we had
in our backpacks. Some of the men brought pictures of women in
their lives. Some brought magazines to, um, jack off. Most brought
personal mementos. But everybody brought knives. We were allowed to
bring knives. I know, crazy, huh? We didn't get the knives until we
were on the ground, of course, and by separate drop. I'm sure they
were concerned that we'd use the weapons to try and escape."

"After the first week we were down from
nineteen to twelve. I often wonder if the government knew that this
would happen to us. Back there, we were all robbed of dying at a
date and time we knew was coming. And here we formed our own penal
colony. One convict chewed off his fingers before finally slitting
his wrists. Several tried to swim for it. But swim for what? We
were all told that the closest island—our closest link to
civilization—is over four hundred miles away. But several swam
anyway. And they've never returned since."

"We were all equipped with enough food to
last for the first month. They explained to us that a plane would
come every six months or so to drop us 'necessities.' Water namely,
since we can't drink the ocean water and, as you've already
learned, there is limited fresh water supply on the island. We
would have to learn to find our own food. They wouldn't guarantee
to keep feeding us."

"So far the drops have provided things like
matches and sometimes around holidays, we've thought, they will
drop a pig or a cow. We need to dress it. They dropped an empty
crate one time. Messing with our heads doesn't stop."

"So that's the plane you saw yesterday. The
government's infrequent drop to their lab rats. I didn't want you
to see it because I didn't want you to lose hope. It wasn't there
to help us, only to do its job then forget it ever flew over this
miserable place. That's the truth I kept from you."

"Do you get along with the others?" Jessica
asked. "How often do you see them?"

"I don't interact with them much. Shortly
after we got here I laid claim to this side of the island. I put on
a show that made the others think I was crazier than them. I
searched around and preferred this side of the island. I made my
home this cave and have done a little excavating over the years as
it wasn't always this spacious. You've seen the traps I created for
rain water and have stored in bottles and jugs which I can now
share with you."

"Great, have been getting tired of coconut
milk," Jessica replied.