May 14, 2014 Pisgah National Forest, North Carolina

The vulture pushed off of the pine needle floor of a stretch of the Pisgah National Forest that opened onto a meadow. The bird rose upward upon the fifth downward thrust of its wings. Holding its wings at a slight upward dihedral angle, it was borne aloft by rising warm air. Tipping and righting its wings, it drifted slowly in wide circles, easing southeastward. Solemn choruses sang below, given voice by breezes fanning through the bald stone corridors of North Carolina's Smoky Mountains.

After gliding above the French Broad River for several miles, the vulture's acute sense of smell picked up fetid odors that hung above the Homeward Angels skilled nursing complex near Marshall. The bird's shadow drifted across the red-tiled roofs of the facility's two brick buildings and its expansive green lawns.

One year ago the vulture had fed in a garden below, where the perfumes of marigolds, salvia, cannas, impatiens, hydrangea, magnolias, and shrub roses floated upward in the morning air, mingling with the miasma of despair and death.

It had been then that Homeward Angel resident Edwina Elliot, in a drug-induced contortion of time and space, had wandered from her room at the rear of the skilled nursing building and into the garden. Sheena Moore, the eighteen-year-old resident assistant, who was charged with Edwina's personal care, had not been aware that Edwina had been missing from her room. On the morning of her charge's departure, Sheena had been outside smoking. She had been engrossed in a conversation with her stud, a boy named Melvin who wore baggy pants that hung below his knees and a baseball hat, the visor of which pointed to the rear, a metaphor for the direction of his life.

As Edwina had shuffled down the pebbled garden path, she lost her footing and had fallen backwards, hitting her head upon a rock. She had lain on her back, benumbed, unaware, eyes closed.

Before the accident, Sheena Moore had given Mrs. Elliot two doses of Seroquel, an antipsychotic drug. Mrs. Elliot had been a bother to Sheena—a troublemaker, a handful, uncontrollable.

During breakfast Edwina and the Cherokee Indian sculptress, Kamama Jones, another troublemaker, had laughed too loudly. They had complained that the scrambled eggs were too dry, and that the hashed-brown potatoes had contained saltpeter to tame the resident men's desires. Such disruptions were not tolerated at Homeward Angels. Calmness and monotonous routines ruled.

An antipsychotic drug pacified one of every three residents of the home. Very few were schizophrenic or suffered from bipolar disorder, conditions for which the drug was indicated. No matter. It was the drug of choice to keep the peace.

No one had seen the vulture fall upon Mrs. Elliot. With its short, hooked beak, it had torn and swallowed her stomach's flaccid and wrinkled flesh, and innards. Nor had anyone seen the ravens gather at the feast, pecking and pulling at Mrs. Elliot's eyelids, coveting the delicacies beneath.

Nor had any one shed a tear when Edwin Sevrin, the groundskeeper, discovered Mrs. Elliot's ravaged body. Edwin had chased away the feeding birds with his shovel, undaunted by the vulture's menacing hisses and grunts, and the horrid odor of Mrs. Elliot's barely digested flesh that the raptor had regurgitated to repel him.

The staff agreed that Mrs. Elliot had been close to death, if not already dead, when attacked by the birds. Furthermore, even if alive, in her drug-induced comatose and nerve-shattered state, Mrs. Elliot would have felt nothing as she gave up her flesh to the vulture, her eyes to the ravens, and her soul to God.

Edwina would no longer be a burden to her family, who had been spared a report on the true circumstances of her demise and the sight of her remains. What sort of death could have been more natural than to be snuffed by a creature of nature, chuckled Sheena Moore, a nature lover.

The birds had left to Edwina's apathetic son and daughter only vague memories of their detached relationships with their mother, and the quiet desperation of their mother's self-imposed martyrdom for her family, self-sacrifice to which she had been addicted.

For $8,000, the mortuary had prepared Edwina for a modest casket burial next to Mr. Elliot, the family's first victim of Homeward Angels. The cost of Edwina's burial had been covered mostly by the proceeds of her $10,000 life insurance policy that she had purchased to save her children of her burial expenses. Her son had attended a three-minute graveside service that had been performed by a minister who had never met his mother. Edwina's daughter, Wilma, whom the deceased had not seen in four years, had a Pilate's lesson and could not attend the service. The minister had said a few of the usual things that are said about the dearly departed.

Edwina's son and daughter had spent six months squabbling over their mother's meager worldly remains. The son had relented in disgust to Wilma's claims, never to see his sister again.

Only the Cherokee Indian, Kamama Jones, had mourned Edwina's passing. They had been kindred souls, bound by their humors that mocked their fates, and by their stoic acceptances of the madness of the home.

The Homeward Angels staff had gone on without remembering the name of the 83-year old woman who had died in the garden on that May morning one year ago, or the way she had died. They had been too bewildered, absorbed, and exhausted by the demands of the half-living, drugged-up carrion that lay muttering and shouting for them from beds with iron safety sidings. Yet, they could not help but share some of the depression and ennui of these residents.

As they always did, residents slumped in wheelchairs and worn imitation leather chairs in the halls and common areas of the home, heads bowed, eyes open, but almost unseeing. Some stared at televisions, potted plants, beige walls, threadbare oriental carpets, and dusty windows, devoid of will, emotion, or purpose. They inwardly cursed the sponsors and caretakers of their creeping passages and begged visitors to take them from the home. The grandfather clock in the reception area ticked on, measuring the residents' remaining days. Like all past spring seasons, this spring held no promise of rebirth for them.

* * *

This spring, the revisiting vulture sensed that there would be no feast in the garden as there had been a year ago. It circled above the home once and then rode thermals to 500 feet. Flying west toward the soft hazel nebula from which spread a final golden flush above the silhouette of the Smoky Mountains, the bird had returned to its forest home, where it was revered for its age, and sometimes eaten by hungry young.

* * *

Kamama Jones lay in her bed, remembering that spring morning a year earlier, imagining the garden where Edwina had been taken from her.

She put her legs over the side of her bed, stood and moaned, wincing from sharp pains that knifed through her back, ribs, knees and hips.

She chanted her friend's name in lamentation. To honor the one-year anniversary of Edwina's death, Kamama had carved a likeness of Edwina in ash wood and wrapped it in a shroud that she made from hemp threads dyed with black ink. She had laid the carving in a miniature casket that she fashioned from tree bark and glue and left a note for Bill Jenkins, an orderly she had befriended, asking him to bury the casket in the place in the garden where Edwina had died. Bill would, as the note instructed him to do, bury the casket in the earth facing to the west, and cover the grave with rocks. Over the next seven days, Kamama would mourn for her friend and, on the seventh day, bid her good bye.

Kamama returned to bed and slept.

Later, she was aroused by a knock on her door. Sheena Moore opened the door and said, "Kamama, wake up. You have a visitor, Mr. Molar, our ombudsman."

Ombudsman Simon Molar said, "Good evening, Kamama. I apologize for interrupting your sleep."

Turning to Sheena, who lingered at the door, Molar said, "That will be all, Sheena. Thank you."

Pulling a chair up to Kamama's bed, he said, "I know that you are not feeling well. However, I need you to listen carefully to me. Have you been having unsettling dreams?"

Kamama, lying on her back, turned her head to Molar. Grimacing from pain when she shifted her position, she said, "Yes, a doctor visited me in my sleep and made a prophecy of my liberation and final victory. I did not understand."

Molar said, "Kamama, your dream was of Doctor, who arranged your stay in Homeward Angels."

"He must be evil."

"No Kamama; he wanted you to feel first-hand the agony suffered by millions of your brothers and sisters in places like this. Tonight, Doctor will revisit your dreams. He will tell you that tomorrow he will transport you to a place called Azrael. This has been arranged with Homeward Angels' management. Doctor will say that, at Azrael, he will reinvigorate your quality of life before you pass on. He will also tell you of his plan for you to join two of your Azrael sisters in carrying out a mission for him. They, like you, are terminally ill, but will be rehabilitated enough to enable you to carry out your mission."

Kamama said, "Mission?"

Molar said, "I do not know the nature of the mission, except that you will accomplish much for the sake of humanity."

"Tomorrow morning a Homeward Angels orderly will pack your things and assist you down to meet the car that will take you to Azrael."

"Kamama raised her head. Grimacing, she asked, "Out?"

Molar stood and said, "Yes, for as long as you live from tomorrow onward you'll be cared for and live in peace and comfort before you die. Remember, the orderly will come for you tomorrow morning. Good night, and sweet dreams."

May 20, 2014 Chemical Materials Agency, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Edgewood, Maryland

Col. Mark Reason, Activity Commander of the Blue Grass Chemical Activity Depot in Richmond, Kentucky, sat in the anteroom of the office of General Edward Miller, Commanding General of the U.S. Army Research Development and Engineering Command of the Chemical Materials Agency.

The Blue Grass Activity Depot researched, developed, and tested technologies for the non-incendiary destruction of assembled chemical weapons stockpiles. The focus of the facility's research and development were blister and nerve agents, the deadliest nerve agents of which were VX and sarin. Stored in the Blue Grass Depot were about five hundred tons of nerve and mustard agents for use in rockets, projectiles, and bombs that are fully assembled with fuses, bursting charges, shipping and firing tubes, rocket propellants, motors, and igniters.

Miller's aide, Master Sergeant William Arndt, came out of the general's office, and told Reason that the general was ready to see him.

Reason saluted Miller, who returned his salute and shook the colonel's hand. "Good to see you, Mark. Please, have a seat. I assume that you have received my memo informing you that the latest daily materials inventory audit discovered the disappearance of certain highly toxic materials. Should we be concerned about this?

"Sir, I received your memo three days ago. I ordered an internal investigation of the matter. As you know, we've been testing the degradation of weapons-loaded sarin over time and under varying storage conditions. To construct a sarin weapon contained in an aluminum casing, in addition to the sarin, we had to store quantities of two precursors, principally methylphosphonl difluoride and a mixture of isopropyl alcohol and isopropyl amine. We also had to store refrigerants, stabilizers and transfer agents. Small quantities of all of these components were among the missing materials."

"Mark, how much sarin is a relatively small quantity? I mean, in theory, how lethal would a weapon with this sarin payload be?"

"Sir, it would not be enough to do serious damage. If dispensed in a vapor over New York City, maybe one or two casualties. Otherwise, there would be a few hundred people with flu-like symptoms. A lethal situation would be if an aerosol canister containing less than few milligrams of sarin were vaporized in a room, subway or railroad car of, say, 50 people. If they were not immediately treated with atropine and pralidoxime, only about five percent of them would survive. Some of the survivors would suffer temporary or permanent neurological damage."

"Good God, Mark; all of the security measures we have in place at your facility, and this happens. Do you have any clues as to how security was breached?"

"Thus far, our investigation has not turned up a clue. The material was removed from a very secure, windowless, sealed, temperature-controlled nerve-agent storage room within our research lab. The door to the room is made of three-inch-thick reinforced steel. There was no sign of forced entry. There are two full-time research scientists, who have clearances to enter the storage room and electronic keys to gain entry ... Doctors Wield and Goldfarb.

"There is one unanswered question," Reason continued. "At 3:23 p.m. on February sixteenth, one of our research scientists, Goldfarb, entered the toxic materials storage room accompanied by an outside consulting scientist, Dr. William Simon."

Upon hearing Simon's name, Miller got up from his desk chair and walked to his office window that looked out over rows of 'igloos,' in which were stored tons of chemical weaponry.

After a moment of contemplation, the general turned and said, "Col. Reasons, you have been with us for about two months. Is that correct?"

"Yes, sir"

"Have you familiarized yourself with the backgrounds of all of our scientists, both those fully employed, and also any consultants?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then you have read the file of the consultant, Dr. Simon?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then, Mark, you know that Simon retired as head of the Chemistry Department of Duquesne University in 2000?"

"Yes, sir. In 2012 we hired him as a part-time consultant for his expertise in nerve agents."

"You also should know that he is beyond reproach—above suspicion. The man was a two-time winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He was essential to the development of the Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternative program.

"The government flew him to Khamisiyah in 1991 to look into the detonation of the chemical weapons depot there. Over 130,000 troops downwind of the plume ... unprotected, were exposed to low levels of sarin. At least that is what the Duelfer Report said. The Duelfer Report; what bull shit!"

Miller asked, "Mark, Simon is 79-years-old is he not?"

Reason said, "I do not recall his age or where he lives off-hand, General. One moment, please."

Reason, after referring to notes, said, "According to our investigators, Simon's last known address was the William Penn long-term care home in Norristown, Pennsylvania. We contacted the home. They confirmed that Simon had been a resident there. He voluntarily checked out of the home at 7:14 the evening of July 18, 2013 He had left a forwarding address that was bogus. All of his personal and health records had left with him, along with his wife's. As to his age, he is 79.

"He had departed the home voluntarily in a limo. No one at the home had recalled the license plate or anything else about the vehicle, or the man that had arranged his release. The home did have a release form signed by Simon and the gentleman who had arranged his release and left with him, Charles Simon, had claimed to be the doctor's brother. Charles had said he was taking the doctor to live at his home with his wife and him. Simon had seemed happy to see his brother. The brother had taken care of all of the paper work and other arrangements for the doctor's release. Afterward, he had driven away with the doctor in a limo. The limo driver had been invisible behind the car's tinted windows.

"Eventually, it had been discovered that the release was bogus. The party who had claimed to be the doctor's brother was not his brother. He had used a phony home telephone number and address. We don't know of Simon's whereabouts."

The general, concern deepening on his face, said, "The fact that the home had not retained his personal and health records smells to high heaven. I should think that this would have been required by law, or, at the very least, the home would have wanted to retain the records to protect it against lawsuits down the road."

"Yes, sir. The director of the home had been extremely upset when the ruse was discovered. Someone obviously had gotten into their paper and computer files without the employees' or the home's knowledge."

"I am sure that there is a logical explanation for this whole affair. Is Simon's wife still living?"