Wasted Blood by L. E. Hinson Sr.

Rv:6:8: And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.
Rv:9:6: And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them.

CHAPTER 1

Paul Whither scratched absently at his forearm as he headed down the long hallway to his private office in the corporate complex of United World Investments. His mind was exclusively occupied by the explosive news to come out of his bio-genetic labs earlier in the day. He could now truly envision the solution to the problem of over population in most countries and the resultant mass starvation caused by it. He was almost to his office when he noticed a welt was rising on his forearm where it had been itching and he had previously scratched it. Paul looked down at his arm and froze in his tracks. His eyes widened as he saw to his amazement that the welt was changing to a large sack filled with blood; it burst as he watched. He started to run back the way he had come as his blood spilt on the marble tile of the hallway. Paul knew that something was terribly wrong although the blood had even now almost ceased its flow. He continued his journey back to the labs that he had visited early this morning, hoping that what he feared would not be true. He had never dreamed that the things he had hired a squad of microbiologists to engineer would ever accidentally infect him. Truth was he was worried now about that very thing. Paul had never believed in accidents anyway and he was nowhere close too starting now. First things first he thought, he had to get to the labs, and one of the private staff doctors that was always on duty there. He knew that if what he feared was true then there was no time to waste in thought. He knew that he had very little time, but if he did manage to get there he would survive. Then he would start a search that would bring him the person or persons responsible for his present affliction. There had been many attempts on his life in the past and he knew that there would be more. You could not be involved with the things that he was without making enemies. May god have mercy on his or her souls if he found that this was done by anybody in his own organization. Paul had a standing rule about traitors in the mist, and every man, woman, child would be put to death in that persons household, one as witness for the other and by god he would see to it personally if it was someone close to him! Money could and would buy many things but he knew fear was his most powerful weapon. Paul reached the labs with no wasted time and was immediately greeted by a host of guards. He dismissed them saying. "Quick find me the staff doctor and tell him to get to my office now." He stopped and looked back "Never mind telling him just bring him; by god get a move on." he shouted as he headed toward the door to his private office.
He entered the office quickly and headed like a heat-seeking missile for the bourbon decanter on the built in bar. He took a heavy swallow of the astringent liquid as he seated himself in his black leather chair. Where the hell was that doctor he thought. Even now he could feel the calming effects of the bourbon as he waited. Looking down at his arm his nerve was rattled again as he saw that a new sack of blood was forming this one was a bit smaller than the last, although this time it burnt to beat hell.
The doctor knocked once and then entered the room without waiting for a reply. Paul glared at the slightly built and balding man. "Where the hell have you been? Look at my arm, what is this damn blister on it?" the doctor looked at Paul’s bloodied arm and frowned. "Mr. Whither, please slow down with your questions and let me have a look at it. I have to take some samples of the tissue to be sure but; it looks like a simple case of contact dermatitis or eczema." Paul was surprised by this diagnosis. "Well Doc lets get on with this tissue sample, I need to get about my business." The bespectacled and dignified doctor turned immediately toward the door. A very self-assured man, although he as all the others on the staff was somewhat uncomfortable around the boss of United World Investments. Paul stalked after the doctor as he headed for the treatment rooms in the left wing of the building; he was extremely pissed off at this inconvenient time for some damn kind of eczema if indeed that was what it was. As they entered the treatment room that the doctor had motioned Paul to; he began to worry about the possibility of having been exposed to some kind of deadly lab escapee. "Doc, how long will it take to get the results of this test?" "I want to know exactly what this disease is and how long I will be bothered by it." Paul was brisk, trying to conceal his fear. "I can have the results back in less than an hour, around forty-five minutes, and should be able to cover up the laceration with gauze. I can not tell you how long it will take to heal because I don’t know what you have yet. I am not a specialist in skin disease as you well know. I don’t believe that you would really care to have to come to me for help on anything in my field of expertise, do you?" Paul thought about the truth of this statement and then shook his head in the negative.

Nigel pulled Heather gently into his strong embrace, as he placed his left hand on her firm bottom and pressed her hips to the hardness of his manhood. He placed his mouth on hers and felt a slight quiver run the length of her body as a low moan escaped her. "Nigel I think I will explode with passion if we do not get somewhere private quick. I can not wait any longer I need you, I want you now." Heather exclaimed quietly. They ran hand in hand consumed by their rising passion. Down into a secured entrance of an office complex on the lot of United World Investments, one of many that Heather and her husband Paul Whither owned. At the door the guard made a motion as if to stop them until he saw whom it was and stepped quickly out of the way. "Where are we going?" Nigel breathed to Heather lustily. As they headed deep into the bowels of the complex Nigel wondered exactly where he was being led. Only moments earlier in the cooling twilight, he had been excited by the heat of lust he felt for this woman; but now he began to have an eerie feeling that all was not well. Faster Heather ran a destination in her mind, a nagging worry building in the back of his. Nigel had a problem trusting people and was not good at doing things that were not carefully planned. This spontaneous act with Heather was a real break from the norm in the routine of strict planning that Nigel was used to. Nigel had meet Heather two years earlier at an American Freedoms conference and became enraptured by her instantly. Heather had come to him after the meeting and asked him some hard questions on his stand against the Federal Reserve System. Nigel used this as an opportunity to get to meet her again later that week for drinks and an open discussion of his beliefs on the direction that the country was heading. For Nigel it was the most intense case of passion he had ever experienced. One thing had led to another and all of it had been but a precursor to his being here, now.
Suddenly Heather stopped outside a massive carved oak door; this door too was guarded. This guard was a bit more reactive than the other was; his hand was on the butt of a colt model 1911A 45-auto pistol. He projected his willingness to use it at the first opportunity with a cold hard stare. The guard looked Nigel head to toe and then opened the massive door for Heather and Nigel. Heather holding Nigel’s hand drew him through the door into a Hugh room.
The vaulted ceilings had huge hand hewed six by six wooden beams, true braces instead of the prevalent plastic look alike that could be found in many homes. The ceiling was thirty feet high and painstakingly painted with what can best be described as beautiful although strange, misshapen creatures. With a closer look it was easy to see that these painting all represented animals in different stages of some sort of painful transformation. Although the ceiling paintings were the first things to attract the eyes, it soon became apparent that no expense had been spared on the walls as well. The room had set in its lushly paneled walls small almost hidden doors, Nigel could see at least three of these and the lust he had felt for Heather was deserting him. "What is this place Heather?" Nigel ask with some uneasiness. Heather gently stroked the front of Nigel’s jeans where the prominent bulge had been only a short time before. "This used to be Paul’s retreat from the rigors of day to day business. You know Paul was a Billionaire when he was only thirty-five and is known as one of the worlds most astute businessmen. I have heard people say he could buy a chicken for 25 cents and make it the goose that really could lay golden eggs." She continued to stroke the returning hardness under the palm of her hand. Nigel with his eyes half closed, looked down at her and allowed himself a slight smile then said. "Heather how did Paul amass such a fortune?" "You have told me how much you loved him and I can’t help but wonder why you here like this with me?" Heather looked longingly into the eyes of this man she thought she knew and loved. "Nigel my love, you are the light of my life and I don’t want us to have to keep secrets from each other. But there are some things you do not need to or even have a right to know. I love you and I think you love me but I have a lot of baggage that can only hurt us. Trust me Nigel, the why of things may not always be what we expect or hope to hear. I will tell you even so, how Paul and I made such a fortune if you wish. I had money long before Paul ever made his fortune." She suppressed a tear.
"Nigel it makes me sad that you would have to ask me why I want you with me. I would have thought that was obvious by now, and I am not talking only about sex." Nigel still was feeling that little nagging sensation in the back of his neck.
Heather her soft blue gray eyes seemed saddened as much by the question as by the timing of it. "Nigel, Paul and I met at high school and you might say it was love at first site, Paul was a senior an I a freshman, even back then Paul had a golden touch when it came to money. I knew he was destined to great success in the business world. Paul and I often talked of what we were going to do when I finished High School. I was going to go on to college as my parents wished and he was going in business, the world of high finance. Paul had said that he would be one of the richest men in the country and I knew even then that he would succeed. Nigel, I have never talked of these things because I did not want anything to stand between our love for one another; but you have asked and I love you enough to tell you everything." She hesitated as if thinking of where to begin. "Let me tell you something about my parents first, you must understand them to understand some of the things that have happened since Paul and I met and married. I really thought that I loved Paul and he loved me but I was only fooling myself. Our marriage has been a farce from the first; only I was the last one to know. Paul keeps secrets very well himself, and has many from me."

"My father was Frank Nelson and had little formal education. He had to go to work at a factory when he was only 13 in order to help his family make enough just to survive on. He lived a life of squalid misery until his brothers grew up and left the family when he was 24. My mother Susanna Nelson was a sickly woman and died when I was only seven; now I hardly remember her at all. I recall mostly that my father was always apprehensive about having to leave her and go to work, although my aunt Jane would come by and check on her and me while my father worked. Jane is a strange woman, she never married and from listening to her talk, you would think that eliminating the male population could solve all the trouble in the world.
My father although not formally educated had a penchant for things mechanical and everyday after work; he would retire to a little room he had built off the main house to tinker with some invention or another. This was of course after my mother had died. I did not see much of my father while my mother was alive and I saw even less of him after she died, until the last year or so of his life. I watched him then, a young man although already broken by life and tragedy, old before his time and with drawn. He was sullen at best and sometimes cruel, though he never was malicious in his cruelty. He was only fifty-seven when he died and he looked seventy." Heather stopped to catch her breath; Nigel waited patiently.
"My father, the great inventor Frank Nelson, the man who had to go to work at 13, was also the man who invented the textile process that put over 200,000 people out of work in five years and made him a multi-millionaire. I sometimes think that it was the suffering of the people he helped to replace with a machine that finally caused his death. Of course when he died he left most of his money to me, just a little over seventy million dollars and, I still get royalty checks from the company that manufactures the machine for textile factories all over the world."
Nigel interrupted Heather. " Heather do you feel guilty about having so much when many others have so little" Heather seemed not to hear him and continued on where she had left off. "I had not seen Paul except for the occasional trips I would make home during semester breaks although we wrote to each other often. Looking back on that time I can see the fire we have for each other had cooled, even then. Paul had never introduced me to his family and I knew nothing of them until three weeks before we were married." She smiled up at Nigel. "You know it seems strange to me even now that I didn’t wonder why I had not met them. Paul never spoke of them and I was only concerned with my love of him, so I never asked. One evening Paul asked me if I would go to meet his mother and I gladly accepted. Heather looked as if she were lost in a dream. "You see I had often asked him about them but Paul never said much in reply. We arrived at Paul’s parent’s house late in the evening, however I did not get a very good look at the place, since it was almost dark. I do recall that the drive was lined with shrubs of one sort or another that seemed to grow in every which direction. The house was large, half brick and half wood with a look of general disrepair about the place. I remember thinking that with Paul making what he related as a good income; he would have done something to help his parents. Nigel watched Heather carefully, it almost seemed as if she were in pain as she related this story. "Paul’s mother was a droll little woman, self centered and shrew-like, just barely over five feet tall with stringy gray to white hair. She greeted me with a limp damp handshake, instead of the normal embrace that a soon to be mother-in-law was supposed to have for the future wife of her son. I disliked her at once!" Heather trembled as she remembered the meeting. "The woman doted on Paul and treated me with thinly veiled contempt as if I was attempting to rob her, and I guess that in her mind I was a robber. The thief that would take her son away from her, although, that was not my intention. I learned later that she had no life of her own and lived within her son accomplishment.
Later in the evening during a poorly prepared dinner she and Paul chatted about his business and left me out of the conversation entirely. While she and Paul talked I looked around the sparsely furnished dinning room. Certificates of one type or another that Paul had received in school covered a large portion of the walls. One thing that struck me as odd even then was the fact that although there were certificates on the walls, there were no photographs of any kind. Strange that I recall that after all these years, but it is still vivid in my memory. I could not help wondering how this ugly little woman could have had such a handsome son. Paul was over six feet, with collar length dirty blonde hair and pale blue eyes. The contrast between the two was truly startling. I did not meet Paul’s father that night nor have I meet him since." "You never meet Paul’s father?" "No." "I only know that he travels a lot in his business but I do not know what kind of business he is in. I ask Paul a couple of times but he always changes the subject so I didn’t push it. I married Paul during semester break. That was during my senior year at West Virginia State University. We married in a simple ceremony attended only by his mother and my Aunt Jane since Paul’s father was traveling on business. Paul and I stayed a week at a cottage in the beautiful Appalachian Mountains in the New River Gorge area of southern West Virginia. Paul retreated back to Maine, after our brief honeymoon and I stayed and finished my senior year. I loved the mountain area of West Virginia where we stayed; we fished during the morning and dined on trout and pan fish, I think they were called Bluegill, in the early evening. Ah, the nights, the nights were a marvel to me. Paul was a brilliant lover, a teacher in the art of pleasing a woman, and me a willing partner, eager for each new thing he was willing to teach me in bed." Nigel don’t look at me like that, you ask me to tell you this, do you want me to stop?" "No," was all he replied. "I think back with a joy and a sadness of that week, a time of love and hope for the future that was not to be then or now, at least, not for Paul and me.
Paul following in the footsteps of his elusive father was on the road a lot, going to business meetings in other states, towns and even other countries. I was disappointed when Paul called and told me he would not be at the graduation ceremony and I cried but he never knew; you see I can be a very private person too.’ Nigel interrupted Heather here again. "Heather I don’t know why you stay with him, it’s not for the money, you have money of your own, is there something else I don’t know?" "Something that perhaps I should?" Nigel waited patiently while Heather chewed her lip as if thinking what she should reply. "Nigel I told you I could be a private person about some things. What do you think of the retreat?" She asked. A little wistful as if she was somewhere else. "The what?" Nigel replied looking a little confused. "Oh, I mean this room, the high ceilings and the paintings, the Queen Anne furniture and the showcase of uncut gem stones that Paul and I have collected. Come and look at these Nigel. I have a sixty-carat ruby from India that was listed as the largest of stone of this quality to come from the Petrie mine. A thirty carat diamond from Africa and the most beautiful almost flawless 73 carat emerald from Columbia." Heather stood quietly watching Nigel as he examined the stones and then continued her thought. "I call this the retreat because I can get away from everything outside when I am in here." She explained "I have a guard outside the door, he has orders not to allow anyone into this room unless I have sent for them. He is my private guard and he works only for me. Not even Paul can get into this room unless I have left a pass for him. The guard then checks with me to be sure that I have approved him." Nigel stood frowning, Heather had not seen the door in the far wall move a fraction; he had nearly missed it himself. "Heather my love, do you retreat here often?" Nigel inquired of this beautiful woman; a troubling thought occurring to him. Nigel was a little awed that a woman such as Heather found him to be the man of her dreams. He often felt as if he was walking on eggs around her, and this caused him much concern. Heather a woman as beautiful as any Nigel had ever seen and he had seen many. Nigel a man who had been deceived many times in the past and then always by the people he though were closest to him. A man trained to be distrustful of others by his experiences and his country, always looking for the motive of why someone would find him likable. Nigel was a man of hidden depths, it took a long time for anyone to strip away the person he would let you know from the person he really was.
Nigel was the only person who really knew Nigel; and some things about Nigel, he would not even let himself know. Heather was talking to Nigel, although he just now realized it. "Nigel don’t you want to make love to me now?" Heather asked with a pouting voice "I brought you here so we would not be disturbed by anything, there are no phones in this room and no one will interrupt us here." Heather had a pleading tone to her voice. Nigel was still peering intently at the door at the end of the room and now Heather noticed where he was looking. Time and passion had deserted them both in a few brief moments of explanation and were not to be recaptured for now. "Nigel what are you looking at?" Heather asked. Nigel for the moment did not answer; but watched as the door closed silently at the end of the room. Nigel bent over and whispered in Heather’s ear. "Where does that door at the far end of the room lead, Heather?"
"I don’t know I have never seen it unlocked, maybe it goes down to the labs; but I can’t say for sure. I forgot to tell you about the labs under the building, they are very large and well supplied. Paul had them built below ground 5 years ago after he came back from one of his buying trips out of the country. I think he had just returned from India, I know he brought an engineer back with him to build a place with a constant temperature. I am told that at a certain depth in the earth the temperature remains about the same all year around, even in a power failure, although we have generators just in case. The only person who goes down there now is the man Paul and I hired to do the maintenance on the generators." "Why?" Heather asks.
"Can you get a key for that door? I would like to see the labs if it is possible." Nigel was wondering what could be so important that it would require the expenditure of such large amounts of money and these special conditions. Nigel was sure that behind that door was the key to the mystery of a beautiful woman and the things he needed to know about her and the husband she was betraying. This is where the story really begins...