Blown for Good - Marc Morgan Headley [38]
“You’re heading in the right direction. We’re almost there,” one guy said as we walked toward the buses. He told me that he knew who I was and that I was supposed to stay in his dorm. His name was Tom Pope. He told me that Jesse Radstrom was in the same dorm and that was how he knew me.
We got to the buses. Three old white school buses were lined up and had herds of people climbing onto each. He motioned to me that we needed to get on the last one.
“Does it matter which one we get on?” I asked.
“Yeah, they all go to different places,” he said. “If you get on the wrong one, you won’t end up at your berthing.”
“How can you tell which one is which?” I said, noticing that there wasn’t signage on any of the buses.
“Well, all the people getting on this bus live where we live, so this is our bus,” he said as we jumped on the bus.
The bus looked even worse on the inside, it really was a school bus and the seats were very close together. It seated around forty people but there were at least sixty people jammed in. Tom and I were standing because most of the other people had bars and tags that said they were from Commodore’s Messenger Organization International. Since I was a newbie, I figured that standing was probably my best bet and most of the guys standing up were from Golden Era Productions. At least 30 guys were standing in the aisle. I could see the other buses were just as packed. When I saw this, I remembered how the buses in LA were packed out the same way. Then I remembered a joke that we used to tell when we were kids before I ever joined the Sea Org.
It went something like this – “How many Sea Org members can you fit on a bus?”
“All of them!” Cue howls of laughter. I always thought that joke was hilarious since it was totally true. If a Sea Org bus pulled up, it did not matter how many Sea Org members were standing there, when it pulled away, they would all be gone. Sea Org buses were like magic portals that swallowed them up and it seemed that it could fit any number of them in any configuration no matter what size it was.
It was definitely the end of the day, and most of the people on the bus smelled like they had put in a full day’s work. The bus was ripe and every window was opened.
As we were getting ready to pull out the gate off the property, a list was being passed back through the bus and each person had to write their name on the list and pass it along. A security guard also got onto the bus and walked through looking at each person. When he got to me, he asked if I was the new guy. I told him I was and he walked past.
“What’s up with that?” I asked Tom.
“Everybody has to be accounted for. There is a record of every person that comes and goes from the base,” he told me as the bus made its way to the gates.
All the gates were remotely operated from the main security booth Tom told me as we saw it open and the bus drive out.
“Where are we going?” I asked Tom as we turned left out of the gate.
“We are going to a place called Devonshire in Hemet. There are a bunch of apartments where a lot of base staff live,” he said.
We drove down mostly one road for the entire 15 minutes on the way to the Devonshire. At one point during the drive, the most noxious smell filled the bus and I appeared to be the only person reacting to it. As I looked around the bus, my eyes met with Tom and he smiled and simply said, “Turkey farm.”
“Where do the other buses go?” I asked Tom. I noticed a bus in front of us as we drove down the road.
“Well, there is Devonshire, the one we are on, then there is Kirby, Hillside or ’Hill Slide’ as we call it, then you have the Religious Technology Center berthing. Then there are a bunch of places that are next to the Base where people live. Oh, and there is the Ranch, or Happy Valley, as it is sometimes