Jericho

Chapter 7 Professor Ben

We looked around at the hundreds of crates, filled with who knows what, meth, cocaine, you name it. They maybe didn't make it here, but it was all brought here for a reason. Maybe a drop spot before the major disruption began.

    Isabella looked like she was gonna be sick, Kat looked pretty disgusted too, and Ben? Well, he just looked flat out angry. Without a word he marched out of the room.

    Kat rolled her eyes, singing, "Du du da, and Anger Management has already lost it."

    I hastily placed the lid back on the crate as best I could and motioned for the girls to follow me. "Come on."

    Ben had already triggered the lights in the other room, the one directly across from the one we were in. We found him standing inside another cavernous room, but instead of crates this one had cardboard boxes, stacks of them, towering to the ceiling in some spots. White shipping labels proclaimed the addresses and names each box was heading to. And there was the missing forklift, just waiting to make this job even easier. Among the labels, I spotted a few names of schools in the area, most likely headed to dirty staff, ready to make a quick buck off some naive kids.

    I walked up beside Ben. He wouldn't stop staring, his intense gaze boring holes into the boxes as if he could see right inside them.

    When he finally spoke, his words were drenched in a restrained fire. "These will go out to adults and kids alike all across California, if not further."

    "Are they really all filled with drugs?" Isabella asked, struggling to come to terms.

    "No, just one crate." He simpered. "The rest are filled with puppies and kittens."

    I didn't think the image of pets stuffed into these boxes was much of an alternative.

    Isabella turned to Kat. "Is he always this mean?"

    "Pff! You think this is bad?"

    I needed to say something before this escalated. "Seriously, guys? We all need to take a breath and chill out. This is no time to let our emotions get the best of us."

    "Chill out?" Ben asked with a cold chuckle. "You're kidding right? Do you even get what we just found? I've seen what this stuff does to people. This is the end of the line for some kids. One minute they're here and the next they've already fallen off the face of the earth. Have you ever seen someone throw away their life... Lose themself, all because they stepped into something they told themselves they could control?" He grew quiet then and I knew this was tearing him up. "Have you ever watched someone disappear all because someone else thought they'd make a buck off their suffering?"

    The silence that settled around us was almost reverent, an unspoken grieving for all those destroyed by this monster.

    "No," I finally said. "I haven't. But that doesn't mean I feel any different than you."

    Kat spoke up next. "I have. And it's enough to turn your stomach when you think of the dependency this industry thrives off of, the kind of sickness they capitalize on."

    "We have to destroy it." The gentle strength in her voice had us all turning to Isabella in shock. "I don't see any of us going back to our lives with clean consciences if we don't do something about this. If we don't destroy it."

    Kat didn't leave too long of a gap of silence. "And how do you suppose we do that? Blow it up?"

    The little fires in her gaze snuffed and she looked a little embarrassed. "I don't know... Maybe?" Her eyes pleaded with us, big pools of swirling color and emotion.