The Sixth Station(77)

Please let me wake from this nightmare. Oh, God! The dying girl—what is she holding? Is it a baby? Yes. A tiny infant—can’t be more than a few hours old!

“Help me … please … help me,” the girl tried calling to the strangers in the doorway. They immediately began to move forward toward her, arms extended.

I willed myself to open my eyes all the way.

Move, dammit! Nothing.

“Help me! Save me. Save my Baby,” the girl implored. The men looked as helpless as she was.

How could she have given birth? She is just a baby herself!

“I’m a prisoner,” she cried, her voice barely above a choked whisper. And then revealing what a child she still was, she implored with her last bit of strength, “Can you call my mother?” She looked to be twelve, or at the most fourteen.

The soldier stood between them. It was obvious that the rescuers were never going to get to the girl or the baby as long as he was alive.

Am I dead? Is this hell? Why don’t they do something?

With the rifle still trained on the doorway, and the pistol on the priest, the soldier spat out, “Snap out of it! Gifts, you fool? Biological weapons, chemicals. Goddammit.”

The priest answered him by bursting into a high-pitched laugh—ridiculous, absurd, and uncontrolled. He then threw his head back and sniffed the air like a wild dog. “That’s a good one,” the young cleric snorted hysterically, while the soldier shot concerned glances at the terrified girl. She was still holding on to the baby, still whimpering. He then turned to the woman in the burqa. As soon as his eyes met hers, she threw her head back, too, but so far back that it was nearly perpendicular to her shoulders. She let out an equally high-pitched laugh and also began sniffing the air in quick, rapid snorts.

The woman jumped and clapped her hands together like a schoolgirl.

Meantime, the young cleric, taking the soldier’s momentary pause for weakness or confusion, it seemed, tried to move forward. The soldier, in a movement so fast the priest didn’t see it coming, aimed the laser directly between his eyes.

“Stop where you are.”

He was squeezing the trigger and was probably a thousandth of a millimeter away from contact, when the priest said, “No, see? I’m putting them down,” as he lowered the boxes and gestured toward the wooden shelf a few feet away.

The soldier let him put all three boxes on the altar, and with his gun, gestured for the priest to move away from the boxes as he moved toward them.

But as the soldier neared the table, the woman in the burqa literally leapt across the room and snapped up one of the boxes—the one made of silver. In a split second, before he could even shoot, she ripped off its lid, and, giggling again like a teenager, scattered the powder inside the box. It flew everywhere—toward me, toward the girl, and toward the poor, very, very still baby.

“What have you done?” the soldier bellowed. My own eyes burned terribly. I could still see the baby—it was in the girl’s protective arms. It didn’t seem possible that it was even still alive.

While he furiously rubbed his eyes with one hand and pointed his rifle in at her with the other, the three men in the doorway stood as still as the poor little baby on the floor.

With his gun still on the woman’s temple, he pushed her to the floor and flattened her with the sole of his combat boot. With his free hand he whipped out a pair of handcuffs and cuffed her tightly behind her back. No one else moved.

“Against the wall!” he ordered the rest of them. “Move it!” The three men gingerly stepped in. I was shocked to see their clothing—it was all clerical, or at least religious, garb. One wore a hooded galabia, the next a Buddhist robe, and the third a huge fur hat and a white, fringed prayer shawl that extended to his knees over a black suit.

The solider commanded, “Hands up against the wall. Now!” They did as they were told, and with his rifle trained on them, he frisked each one in turn. Nothing.

“What was in that box?” Again, nothing. The lack of response so infuriated him that he struck the man standing closest to him, the Jew, with the butt of the pistol, drawing a gash from mouth to ear. Still, the man stood calmly, not even reaching to stem the blood gushing from his cheek.

The girl screamed, but still no sound came from the infant. Then in a coordinated move that looked rehearsed, each man turned his head to the left to stare at the newborn and its terrified child-mother, huddled, shaking, and soaking wet under the altar, where she had scampered.

The Jew opened his mouth to speak to her, but in a movement so quick it was almost unseen, the soldier put the pistol right up against the man’s temple. “Who are you and what the hell are you doing here?”