The Undoing, page 14
part #1 of The Reckoning of Anecor Series
“Lucky for you, one is all we need,” said Selby. “I set it to locate a tracker. You just have to be standing within ten feet of the device for it to pick it up. Once it locates one of your trackers, I push a button, it pairs with that tracker, and, bam, you’re undetectable until I break the link. It can handle up to ten pairings, so we’re good.”
Looking around the room at everyone’s surprised and relieved expressions, Selby added, “See…you shoulda brought me into this from start. Would’ve saved yourselves a lot of grief.”
“How was I supposed to know you had this miracle gadget sitting in your house? You never told any of us anything about this!” Cassidi said, taking Selby’s remark as a direct affront to her since it was her decision to ask Troy for his help.
“I’m glad you’re here now,” said Rebecca, wanting to steer the conversation away from a possible confrontation that couldn’t lead anywhere good. “Okay,” she exhaled, “we’ve got that covered. Now, who goes in with Cass and who keeps watch outside?”
“I can go in,” said Troy. As soon as the words escaped his lips, he wished he could stuff them right back into his mouth. What possessed him to say such a thing? Unfortunately, he didn’t see a way to back out gracefully once the words were out there.
“Becs, where do you want to be? This is your gig,” said Cassidi.
“I should go inside. It should be me. At least those of you outside can run if you need to. Troy, are you sure you want to go inside? You were pretty much dragged into this, and you’ve already put yourself in a lot of danger.”
“I can go. I haven’t had a chance to do anything yet,” said Selby. “I don’t mind a little danger.”
“Are you alright with that, Troy?” asked Rebecca.
“Sure. Fine. Whatever you want, Becs,” Troy scowled, but breathed a sigh of relief, glad he had sidestepped that one.
“Troy and Bendi, you two will serve as lookouts on the outside. Any ideas how to communicate between us?” Rebecca brought up the point no one else so far mentioned in this brilliant little plan until now.
“Leave that up to me, too. My folks also have these old 2-way radios. They’re just for communicating over pretty short distances between only the people who have them turned on and tuned in to the same wavelength,” Selby said.
“Anything your parents don’t have, Selby?” Cassidi asked.
“Probably not. You’d be surprised what my folks have in their storage compartment. They might seem like normal government folks to you, same as your parents, but they’re what people used to call survivalists. They’re prepared for anything. Stayed holed up all during The Reckoning. Had their own food, supply channels, secret communications, the works. No one knew about it except those connected in the same system. When it all ended, they crawled out of hiding and joined in the new system. They play the part. Just like everyone else. But, man, they sure kept all their goods. They’d be able to do it all again if it all hits the fan again. And so would I.”
For the second time, four pair of eyes stared at him, four mouths agape in awe and disbelief. In the bushes, Daniel noticed that the group got awfully quiet. He hadn’t been able to pick up on much. A few words here and there. He could tell they were definitely planning something, and now they all grew silent. He’d heard someone say that this was Rebecca’s gig. Heard something else about SMALS, but he couldn’t make out exactly what it was.
And now there was silence. He shifted from his current position to see if he could manage a peek through the branches. The leaves were too full to get much more than a glimpse of someone’s clothes or a hint of skin or hair, but it wasn’t enough to really see anything of use. He didn’t dare move the branches aside for fear of making a noise. Frustrated, he sat back again to wait and listen.
Selby laughed. “Man, you all look like someone could knock you down with a feather!”
“I’ve never heard of such a thing,” said Bendi, the only one, strangely, capable of finding her voice at the moment. “Aren’t your parents afraid of getting discovered? That wouldn’t be good for any of you.”
“Nah. I kept it all from you guys until now, didn’t I? No one knows about this except the other survivalists in the group. It isn’t something anyone goes around spoutin’ off to whoever they want. I never would have told you guys myself if it didn’t seem like something you needed to understand right now. And I expect you all to keep this to yourself. Understood?
“This could mean bad things for my family if any one of you says something to anyone outside of our group. I’m only trusting you now because we all have to trust each other right now. This thing we’re doing is big. We need what my parents have if we have any chance of coming out of this alive. And I’m not kidding.”
“Are you holding out on anything else we should know about?” asked Cassidi.
“Like I said. You’d be surprised at what all my folks have. I’ll poke around in there to see if I can find anything else useful. Right now, we’ve got ourselves a scrambler and 2-way radios. I’d say that’s a good start.”
“It is,” said Rebecca. “See if you can find anything that might help us get into locked doors. Something that can work on security doors. We need to go back to the restricted area Cass saw. But we need a way in.”
“Can do, can do.”
“When are we doing this?” asked Bendi.
“I’m not keen on another night like Sunday night. I vote we wait for the weekend,” suggested Cassidi.
“I agree,” said Rebecca. “Selby, will that give you enough time to get everything together?”
“Yep. Not a problem. I’ll do it on the sly, but if we ever need my folks’ help, I know they’d be safe to go to. For now, though, I can acquire the goods without them knowin’. We only do drills every couple of months now that I’m up to speed. We used to practice all the time when I was growing up. My parents wanted to make sure I knew what I was doing. In case something happened to them.”
“Seriously, Selby. Who are you?” Troy asked, to which Selby responded with a shrug and a grin.
The gang settled on getting together first on Friday after school, out behind Rebecca’s barn, where they would not be seen by prying eyes. Selby could show them all the gear and how to use it. They’d finalize their plans, what little there was to finalize, as it was all pretty straight forward. After that, they’d all go home for a few hours before meeting up again to execute the plan that night. They all stood up to leave.
Finally, thought Daniel. He had long grown bored and his rear was sore from sitting on the hard ground. He had very little information to go on. The group was maddeningly quiet when they talked, though he did hear a day. Friday. He didn’t know what was happening on that day, but it seemed something was. He’d just have to keep his eyes peeled Friday, watch Rebecca and the others to find out what they were up to. At least now he knew the day.
CHAPTER 21
I
t was Friday. The group was gathered out behind Rebecca’s barn. Selby heaved a pack heavier than usual off his shoulders. It landed with a thud and a jangle of metal and plastic. The anticipation was palpable. The intrigue of the gadgets was overriding the fear of their precarious situation, at least for the moment. Just seconds before, everyone had been shifting and moving, rubbing hands together or blowing on them, doing what they could to keep warm in the shadows of a day turned chill and damp, but once Selby began to unzip his pack, all movement came to a halt.
Selby first pulled out a device that resembled their phones, only a little smaller and with buttons sharing the space on the face of the device with the readout screen. This was the scrambler. Troy was a little disappointed in how simplistic it looked. He was hoping for something more futuristic looking and, well, cooler.
“I thought we’d just take care of this business right off the bat,” Selby said as he held out the scrambler for everyone to see. “Get it outta the way now, and we don’t have to worry about it tonight. Sound good?”
“Sure. But is it okay that our signals are scrambled for so long? Will they stay scrambled even when we all go home?” asked Rebecca.
“Good questions. Yep. I’ve had my tracker scrambled all day and all night before. No problem. You have to be ten feet or closer for the scrambler to pair with your tracker, but that’s just because otherwise it would be pickin’ up trackers all over the city. Once you’re linked, though, you’re all good. Like I said, you’ll stay scrambled until I unlink your tracker from the device.”
“Why would anyone ever want to unlink? That thing is freedom,” said Cassidi.
“True enough,” replied Selby. “But my folks don’t want us messin’ with our safety supplies too much. We’re supposed to be just like everyone else, unless we need it. Not sure what it would take for them to replace this baby, if something happened to it, and I don’t wanna find out.”
“How does it work?” asked Troy.
“Let me show you. You wanna go first, Troy?” asked Selby.
“Oh yeah.”
“Okay, step right up.” Selby motioned Troy over so that he could see what Selby was doing. With a couple of presses of a button, and Troy’s confirmation of his tracker ID, he was linked.
“Not much to it,” Troy commented.
“Nope, that’s the beauty of it,” Selby responded.
Selby continued with the rest of them, one-by-one. Each was curious to see how the thing worked, so each of them took their places next to Selby as he linked their trackers to the scrambler. They could see their IDs show up on the monitoring screen: a simple display that showed tracker ID connections and green lights indicating a functioning connection. Once they were all connected, Selby pulled out the 2-way radios.
“Whoa, those things are huge!” Cassidi said.
“They’re big, but they’re handy. They’re strong enough to work even when we’re inside and Troy and Bendi are outside. We shouldn’t have any trouble gettin’ in touch when we need to.”
“Did you bring enough for everyone?” asked Bendi.
“Sure did. That way, if something happens to any one of us, the others will still be able to communicate. Just seems the smart thing to do, right?” replied Selby.
“Yes. Very smart,” agreed Bendi. “Can I see one?”
“Suuuure. Here.” Selby handed the one he was holding over to Bendi and then pulled the others out of his bag, giving everyone one. He showed them all how to tune into the same channel and demonstrated how to send an SOS signal without talking.
They spent the next half hour trying them out, having a bit of fun with the novelty of them as they all moved to different locations around the barn to test them out. They all practiced sending an SOS signal as well. Several times. If the signal was needed, then the situation would be dire. Selby thought it would be a good idea if they could send the signal without having to think too hard about what it was.
“I’ve got one more thing for us,” Selby told the group once they’d all reconvened. “I was thinking that we needed at least a little something for physical safety. No heavy hitting weapons. None of you could handle that. But I got these.”
Selby held up the object for them all to see. It looked a bit like an electric razor. When he turned it on, Bendi, Rebecca, and Cassidi all jumped back in surprise. Troy moved in for a closer inspection. “What does it do?”
“It temporarily immobilizes a person,” replied Selby. “It sends an electric current through their body and makes it so they can’t move. It buys you a little time if someone catches you. The downside is, you have to be up close and personal for it to work. But it’s better than nothin’.”
“Up close and personal? How close is that?” asked Cassidi.
“You actually have to press this against the target, on someplace like the arm or the back. The back is best, but any muscular area will do,” Selby replied.
“How much time do we have after we use this on a person?” asked Bendi.
“That really depends on the person and where you hit ’em. If you get ’em in the back, you get more time than in the arms or legs. But, best guess, you get anywhere from 20 seconds to almost a minute.”
“In other words, not much time,” said Troy.
“Nope. Not much time, but enough time to give you a head start in a foot race,” said Selby. “But if you need to use it more than once, you can. It’ll recharge repeatedly until the battery dies. I’ll make sure they’re fully charged before we head out tonight, but these batteries are good ones; they can last up to around 50 jolts. It used to be that these babies would only give enough of a jolt to cause some pain. Some tinkering by one of the crew boosted their output enough to temporarily immobilize a person, but not for long. We’d be needin’ the big boys for that, and I don’t have time to train you on those. Don’t want anybody takin’ any one of our own out.”
“Selby, did you find anything that might come in handy for opening the freezers and the security doors?” asked Rebecca.
“Yes, indeed, I did,” Selby said with another of his grins. “I was gonna surprise you with it once we got inside if you hadn’t remembered to ask.”
Selby dove into his bag one final time. He pulled out a simple card that looked like any other access card. “That doesn’t look like it would do much,” Cassidi commented.
“Doesn’t look like much, but it’ll do the trick, assuming they have nothing fancier than a standard electronic lock on the door,” Selby responded.
“They didn’t look like anything special,” said Cassidi. “At least not from what I could tell. Just looked like a regular, electronic pads that use a card to open.”
“How does this work?” asked Bendi.
“It has a special chip in it. It’s able to read the program on a lock pad to decipher the necessary code to unlock the door. Then it just supplies that code,” Selby explained.
Selby passed the card to Bendi, who looked it over and then passed it on so that the others could also have a look. Absolutely nothing extraordinary about the card. It looked just like the cards they all had for their homes. “Are we splittin’ up inside or sticking together?” asked Selby.
“I think we should stick together if we can. Two people can look around and one can keep watch at the door, just in case someone is on the inside that we don’t know about,” said Rebecca.
“Sounds like a good plan to me,” Cassidi responded. “I’d feel much better if we had someone standing watch. We might not get as much done as fast, but I think it’s a safer route.”
“You want the safer route? You?” scoffed Troy.
“Yeah, well, it wasn’t you who went in last week. After what I saw, I’m a safety first kinda girl now. At least for this,” Cassidi responded, with just enough derision in her tone to let Troy know what she thought of his efforts that last trip over the mountains. Troy glanced away, his cheeks and neck turning slightly pink, and said nothing further.
Selby cleared his throat, “Yeah, well, I think that’s it. We’ve gone over everything I have, now we just have to do this thing.”
The shuffling of feet started again, much as it had when they all first arrived. Except this time, it was a nervous energy rather than an attempt to keep warm. It was 5:30. They had about 6 more hours before they would be meeting back up at this same spot to take on something that felt much bigger than any of them other than Selby could possibly handle. But handle it they’d have to.
“Anyone have any questions before we take off? About the plan or about the stuff Selby showed us?” asked Rebecca.
Everyone glanced around at one another, trying to size up where the others stood and what they were feeling. All four shook their heads, though not a one looked entirely confident. At that, the band of five broke apart, to spend the next several hours resting as much as they could and fortifying frayed nerves in preparation for tonight.
CHAPTER 22
I
t was 10:30. She knew she should be trying to sleep, but instead Rebecca found herself in Jonathan’s room, on the floor, propped up against his bed, and looking at a framed photo of him after his first free climb on a challenging route. His look was triumphant and carefree, yet still carried the etchings of focus and control needed when climbing. Rebecca always thought this photo captured the whole of Jonathan, as she thought of him. Strong and confident, driven, but with a sense of humor and lightness to him as well.
“Well, Jonathan, you were right to be suspicious of BRO and the light. Even if this has nothing to do with the virus, whatever it is, isn’t good.” She spoke the words out loud, but half under her breath. “And I’m scared. Really scared.”
Rebecca sighed, dropped her head back on the mattress, and closed her eyes. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. She took in deep breaths to calm her elevated heart rate. Behind still-closed eyelids, she played out the gang’s plans for the night. She felt responsible for everyone’s safety, though she knew each of them made the decision to participate. She knew her friends. They were doing this to help her, yes, but also because they all felt it was important for their city. And because they were a naturally curious bunch. Even Bendi. As timid as she appeared, she had a fierce desire to know things.
This was perhaps the trait that linked them all into such a tight group, in spite of the differences in their personalities, and in spite of the friction that sometimes appeared because of those differences. They all understood that need to know things, the need to understand. Up until now, the school curriculum and Council-approved information about the world limited the horizon for what could be known. There was an innocence about the group. A naïveté about what it was they didn’t understand.
They might not have liked the Council or anyone in authority for that matter. But never did they imagine it possible that there could be the level of deception and potential harm that they seemed to be witnessing with BRO. How far did this extend? Was it possible that Council was behind it? Could someone really be killing so many in their city? These were questions every single one of the friends now needed to answer. The need to find the answers would override their fears. The time of innocence was ending.
