Gabriel's Stand by Jay B. Gaskill Read Free Book Online Page A

eloquent and varied string of expletives.
    â€œI’m guessing, that means, ‘Thanks, but no thanks’?”
    â€œCall me when you get back, Ed,” John said. “I hope you find the experience…fulfilling.”
    â€”—
    A week later, Ed Gosli was dropped off by his driver at the Fowler Enterprises Building in Boston. When Ed spotted an empty seat in the small auditorium, he smiled as he thought of John Owen. He watched in bemused silence as the remaining CEOs were seated. Better me than you, old friend , he thought. When Knight Fowler gave the sign that the informational video was to begin, the room darkened.
    The screen remained blank as the soundtrack began softly with a remote, pitiless tattoo from snare drums, pedal notes from trombones, and muted snarls from the French horns. In total darkness, the music swelled menacingly on all sides. Suddenly, in huge, blood red letters, the words “EARTH AT RISK” glowed against the black screen. Drums beat a march to the gallows as the red words dwindled, fading out as the screen was filled with a brilliant, electric-blue sky.
    An instant later, the sound of rushing air replaced the music. A spinning, blurred horizon followed as the camera tracked a dizzying fall from the sky. Then the image froze. Silence followed.
    Ed Gosli’s eyes had adjusted to the dim light and he took the moment to survey the audience, recognizing several other top executives. Helluva lot of industrial players here. Looks like every drug maker except John Owen is here. What is Knight Fowler up to? I didn’t come here for some damn movie.
    Fading in, the unmistakable whump-whump of helicopter blades heralded the approach of a shoreline. Gosli turned his attention back to the screen. The noise became deafening, as a suspended camera carried the audience over acre after acre of blood-red sand, a charnel beach captured in horridly exquisite detail, the sand stained and blotted. Grotesque images of squirming, dying and dead creatures passed relentlessly below. The camera scanned heaps of dead fish, clouds of flies, sprawled, fat, pale carcasses of whales, some still twitching slowly in agony. Other creatures, less identifiable, lay still, like Dantesque cartoons.
    The helicopter stopped in the air, hovering at thirty feet, its camera savoring the image of a single human limb. Then a black screen and sudden silence. After a moment, ocean sounds accompanied a remote shot. Zooming in, the remote camera panned carnage tossing in the surf—a sea lion, the body of a small child, and other bobbing things expelled from the deeper waters. Finally, a wide angle took in the wounded chemical barge, the Tong 334, floundering a mile off-shore. The infamous Chinese vessel was bleeding into the water, listing to the stern. Taking water, it sank further, its contents boiling into the sea, steaming as from some superheated cauldron.
    The barge disappeared. The camera conducted a 200 degree pan, showing death clotting the sea all the way to the horizon. A stranded fishing boat bobbed alone in the midst of the debris, a man waving futilely from the deck for help.
    A voice-over proclaimed, “This was the Tong Shipping disaster, the underwater explosion and toxic waste spill, just ten years ago. This section of the Australian coastline—all four hundred and fifty kilometers of it—remains a deadly health hazard today. There is still no fishing industry in Western Australia.”
    The percussion returned, picking up pace, a heavier bass drum beat, accompanied by sharp, dissonant chords from the brass, a steady drone in the high strings.
    Like insects , Ed thought.
    Then the camera’s eye visited a long supermarket line in Toledo, Ohio. As snow began to fall, the queue of women, men and children had surrounded the entire building and folded back on itself. Someone screamed. The eye zoomed in on a disturbance near the side supermarket door. A fight had broken out between