The Fall of Crazy House, page 11
BECCA
NOW THAT IT WAS DAYLIGHT, I peeked through the window blinds to see that this garage was surrounded by trees, large shrubs, and ivy climbing up a fence. Good camouflage. As each member of the team woke up, I directed them to take showers and inspect any wounds they’d gotten. Was it only two days ago? Less than. Levi had died two nights ago. We’d rescued Ansel just yesterday.
There was a well-stocked first-aid kit in a cupboard, and as I slathered on ointment and bandages, I felt about a hundred years old.
All of us had suffered in the wolf attack. I didn’t want to admit it, but my shoulder was killing me. When it was my turn to shower, I looked at the angry punctures with dismay. I was just as likely as Nate to get rabies—any of us were. I’d known people and animals both who’d died of the disease, and it was not a good way to go. I had a quick image of my squad out in the middle of nowhere, killing ourselves one by one.
I didn’t want to die without seeing Tim one more time. I didn’t want to die, period.
After breakfast Nate was listless, dull-eyed, but trying his damnedest not to show it. Silently I prayed to a god I didn’t believe in that the food and rest would pull Nate through. Ansel and the others were patched up and almost back to normal, but I knew my squad was remembering the wolves, remembering little Levi.
Our host told us her name was Kelly, but we knew it was fake, just as she knew the names we gave her were fake.
“How come there’re so many fancy cars here?” Mills asked her.
Kelly laughed, her Afro sparkling with tiny raindrops from the drizzle outside. “This is a manufacturing cell,” she said. “We make cars. There are five different factories here—each one has thousands of employees.”
“In our cell, the fanciest car was the Movolo,” Nate said quietly. “That was for the Provost.”
The Provost, his father.
Kelly made a face. “The Movolo is the lowest level we build.”
I couldn’t speak for a moment. Back home, most people drove little electric Hoppers or maybe a Daisy, if they had more than two kids. Seeing the Provost’s fancy Movolo showed everyone how important he was, how he got the best of everything.
“If a Movolo is the lowest kind of car you make,” I asked, “who drives the others?”
“What could be nicer than a Movolo?” Mills asked.
Kelly laughed again. “I’ll show you nice!” she said. “We ship ninety-nine percent of our cars out, of course, and I have no idea who drives them.” She glanced around the small attic-like room and lowered her voice. “No one’s ever said, but I’ve always thought that they go to the big capital, in the east.” She shrugged. “I don’t even know if it exists—it’s just rumors, really, because we don’t know.”
“Oh, we sa—” Bunny began, but I kicked her under the table. We’d seen that huge city from the scope of the anti-aircraft gun, and Ansel had confirmed what we thought. But that didn’t mean that Kelly had ever seen it or knew for sure that it existed. Bunny coughed and mumbled something, then drank more tea.
Kelly was a foreman at one of the factories, so after breakfast we walked over with her to get a tour. I forced Nate to stay in and rest, and when I say forced, I mean I pinned him down by his shoulders while he struggled uselessly against me. It was pretty fun, actually.
“You will stay here and sleep,” I snarled quietly. “Or I will kick your ass.”
At the factory, Kelly gave us workers’ coveralls and hard hats, then took us to the production lines.
It was… it was… like a dream? Except no dream could have imagined this stuff. My family had had a beat-up, ancient pickup truck and a dinky moped that couldn’t go faster than twelve miles an hour. We were totally normal.
These cars belonged in fairy tales, like the big one painted with shiny blue paint flecked with sparkles. Sparkles.
“This model has heated and cooled seats,” Kelly said. When we looked at her blankly, she explained, “You know, so that on cool days your seat will be warm and on warm days your seat will be cool.” More blank looks.
There was a car that could hold seven or eight people, but it wasn’t a bus. The floors of all these cars were covered with carpet. The steering wheels were wrapped in padded leather.
“If someone wants to pay extra, they can have colored lights underneath the car,” Kelly said, and flipped a switch. We stared at the blue light making the factory floor glow. All I could think was, when Nate finds out he missed all this, he will kill me.
People, real, actual people, would drive these cars.
It was truly hard to believe that they existed, that this factory existed, that people would own these cars and drive them.
More than ever, I knew that my mission was to head for that city, no matter what.
61
BACK UPSTAIRS AT KELLY’S GARAGE I found Nate sitting up, showered, and cleaning his handgun. But his face was flushed and damp with sweat, and his expression was the kind of resigned misery I’d seen on animals that had to be put down.
I sat down next to him as he wiped lubricant off the barrel, then pushed a clean cloth patch through the barrel itself.
“How you doin’?” I asked, though it was obvious.
“Fine,” he said tightly, then met my eyes. “We should move out today, as soon as it’s dark.”
Yep, I thought. And I will have to leave your ass here. I rubbed my forehead, then realized how much it hurt my shoulder to move it. Sighing, I pictured Cassie’s face when I told her about what had happened to Nate. She’d be heartbroken and furious. I was glad Cassie wasn’t a yeller, or at least, she didn’t used to be. Then I pictured Cassie’s face full of disappointment. That would be awful, and unfortunately I knew that face all too well.
I sighed again and gave him a very brief rundown of the factory, omitting all of the most fabulous, outrageous details. He asked enough questions that I could tell his brain had some battery power.
Still, he wouldn’t be able to hold his own on the trek east. The big city had been what, fifteen miles away? One by one, I took the others aside and let them know that we’d be moving out tonight, and that he would be staying here. They were all upset, but no one protested. They’d been trained too well.
Right now my plan was vague, involving zip ties and duct tape. I’d work out the details later, but we’d be on the road by midnight.
At dinner that night, Kelly sat with us while we once again ate like starved, socially challenged bears. Nate asked her some questions, nothing too specific. What was he getting at?
If he noticed our squad casually packing their gear, he didn’t mention it. But when I was rolling up my clothes in the bunkroom, I looked up and saw him standing there, watching me.
“What’s up?” I asked casually, and he came to sit across from me on a bunk.
“I know you’re going to leave tonight,” he said, “without me.”
62
I STOPPED ROLLING SOCKS FOR a second but didn’t look up.
“I can’t blame you,” Nate said. “I’d probably do the same thing. However.”
Then I did look up, and for a second hardly recognized him. Yeah, the whole wolf attack had left him looking like shit on a stick. But part of me still expected to see Nathaniel Allen, Provost’s son. The last year had changed him, marked him permanently. He was no longer groomed and smoothly good-looking. He looked older than his age, rougher, his face more angular and his muscles more sinewy.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said. “Did you hear Kelly at dinner tonight? Those fancy cars get shipped out every three days, on big tractor-trailers.”
“Yeah,” I said. “They have to be going to the city we saw through the scope.”
“I wouldn’t know,” he said with exaggerated politeness. “I myself didn’t see it.”
I put on a face of mock sympathy. “I’m sorry I kept you from bleeding to death, or from fainting halfway up a tree and falling twenty feet down. It was selfish of me.”
“Yeah, and you’ll pay later,” he said. “But the next shipment is tomorrow night.”
It took .08 seconds for me to see where he was going.
“We could… hitch a ride on those trailers,” I said, and he nodded.
“Better yet,” he said, “we could maybe help ourselves to one of the cars.”
It would mean waiting an extra day, but if I was honest with myself, which I hate, I could use a day of rest. We all could. Plus, it would give me time to get information out of Ansel and formulate a real plan to get into the city. Maybe even contact Strepp if I could borrow a mobile phone. My brain flew through the ramifications, pros and cons, and I looked up again.
“I…” I said slowly. “I am not seeing a flaw in this plan.”
He grinned.
63
CASSIE
I LEANED OVER TIM ANXIOUSLY. “Can you see anything?”
Tim was peering out the window through a child’s ancient toy binoculars. The sun had just come up, and we were hoping to see signs of life. We’d spent a long, hungry night waiting and hoping someone would call us back, bring us food—anything. I’d even take Ms. Strepp yelling at us for being slackers.
He shook his head. “Not a goddamn thing. No one’s moving or marching or digging or anything.”
I took the Captain America binoculars from him and tried to angle out farther. If I craned my neck to its most uncomfortable position, I could see the mess hall.
“The mess hall is dark,” I said in wonder, looking up to see the alarm on Tim’s face. “Open this stupid window.”
The window had been painted over a hundred times and hadn’t been opened in forever. Tim got a big wrench and took several hefty whacks at the lock, breaking paint off and finally snapping the lock itself. Then he kicked the small window open and looked out.
“The recruits should be having breakfast,” he said. “I can see the edge of the training field—the barbed wire, the climbing wall, the muddy ditches.”
“And nothing?” My stomach rumbled as if it was outraged that this was happening. “This is too weird. There are a few lights on, but no shadows of people passing. Let me see the binoculars again.”
I leaned out the window so far that Tim held on to my belt. Very slowly, I scanned from left to right, trying to see in every window, looking at every doorway. Then I saw it. Or them.
I tossed the binoculars at Tim. “On the ground, eleven o’clock, right at the corner of dorm five.”
“Boots,” Tim said, sounding grim. “With legs in them. Not moving.”
“What the hell is happening?” I cried. “Maybe they’re on an overnight training mission and forgot about us?”
“So whose feet are those?” Tim asked. “Why are they still?”
I looked out the low window again. Once more I scoured the scene for any clue, any sign. Something like a big poster saying, SIT TIGHT, CASSIE AND TIM, for example. And I did see a sign. “Oh, crap,” I breathed. I pointed, and he didn’t need the binoculars to see the clue we had missed before: a hand. A small brown hand, draped over an open doorsill. Completely still.
Tim grabbed an old magazine and rolled it up. “Hey!” he shouted through his megaphone. “Hey! Anybody!” He really bellowed, almost hurting my ears, and I watched tensely, hoping to see someone running to us.
“What’s going on?” Tim shouted as loud as he could. “Is anyone there? Help!”
The hand didn’t twitch, the feet didn’t shift.
“We have to go see,” Tim said. “Even risking infecting everyone. Some weird shit is going down.”
“I… agree,” I said. “But we didn’t hear a battle, you know? No alarms or shooting or yelling. And we don’t have weapons.”
“Yeah,” Tim said, looking around. “It’s not like we can antique them to death. We just have… hand to hand. Like at the Crazy House.”
Yeah, that had been super fun. Tim stuffed the book he’d found in his jacket pocket, but I went first, opening the trapdoor, then climbing down, all my nerves on high alert. I waited in darkness until Tim climbed down and joined me. Together, we listened. The complete silence was bizarre, eerie. I nodded at Tim, and he put his hand on the lever that opened the secret door.
64
BECCA
IT WAS TRUE. ANOTHER TWENTY-FOUR hours of rest, food, and healing, and we were all in much better shape, even Nate. Kelly had provided antibiotics for the infections, but she couldn’t get her hands on rabies meds. So that was still up in the air. I hadn’t mentioned that to Ansel. Let it be a surprise.
It was close to midnight and all lights in Kelly’s house were off. We hadn’t told her about our plan, of course, but left an unsigned note of thanks in the bunkroom.
We went downstairs in the dark and filed silently out of the garage, closing the door with a barely audible click. Sticking to shadows, we headed to the factory. Even in the dim light I saw that Nate was moving better, with more energy. Ansel was blending into the team as if he’d always been one of us. He was especially good with Jolie’s deafness, making it no big deal, like we all learned to. I can admit I was wrong about her. She didn’t just look like a total badass, she was a total badass. My shoulder felt about 40 percent better. Waiting a day had been a good decision.
In the factory’s outside lot, three tractor-trailers were waiting, their engines idling, headlights super bright in the night. We hid behind a large stack of empty wooden pallets and watched as those amazing cars were loaded, one by one. Each trailer held ten cars, five on the upper deck and five below. Some were backed on, some were loaded frontways. I peered through my binoculars to see how each car was fastened down by straps through its wheels. There were four straps total, and a worker ratcheted the webbed cables tight.
Two of the trailers loaded up and drove off—it had taken more than an hour. When the third trailer was almost full, I turned to my squad.
“Okay,” I whispered. “We split into two groups, each flanking the trailer, out of sight. When the last car is loaded, the factory workers will go back inside. The truck driver will get into the cab. As soon as his door closes, get yourself up on the trailer. We’ll reconnect once we’re on the road. Got it?” I looked at Jolie’s face, and she nodded firmly. Nate, Ansel, and Bunny went to one side, and Mills, Jolie, and I took the other.
The truck driver signed some paperwork, the factory person went inside, and best of all, she shut off the outside lights. The second the driver’s cab door closed, I ran over and leaped up onto the trailer. It had no real floor—just the two tracks for the car wheels and a support structure underneath. I slid beneath a car and found some good handholds to cling to. Peering around, I checked to make sure everyone else was on board.
“There’s no freaking bottom,” Mills whispered, working his way through the supports to me.
“Yeah,” I said. “Don’t fall.”
When the truck lurched into gear, it shook all of us and I clung to my car chassis. The truck driver drove through the cell gates and out onto the unlit highway—not knowing that there were six kids flattened beneath the bellies of five luxury cars.
65
AS SOON AS WE WERE out of sight of the cell, I climbed out of my hiding place and made my way to the first car, the one closest to the road. Or was it the last car? Anyway, I was thrilled to see its key fob in the cup holder, and I climbed in and pushed the Start button.
Mills had climbed up next to me and pointed to what I had already seen: the battery showed almost no charge. I got out and the six of us had an almost soundless meeting, using a lot of hand gestures.
We could just jump off and walk the rest of the way to the city.
We could push that first/last car off the trailer and use the next one in line.
Jolie shook her head and pointed upward, and for a second I thought she was saying that God didn’t want us to do that.
She wasn’t. She was saying, “Use the first car on the upper level.”
Huh. I climbed up and checked it out. Its battery was full, its key fob in the glove compartment. I’d never pushed a car off a twelve-foot height and didn’t know if it would just fall apart or its engine drop out or what.
I’d driven Pa’s truck, of course, but had never driven a car, much less a fancy car. Nate at least had driven a Movolo. We climbed to the top level and sat in the last car. Nate examined the control panel.
“Can you do this?” I asked him. He definitely looked as if he’d pulled one foot out of the grave, but the walk and the wait and the climb had taken their toll. He was pale and pasty beneath his tan.
“Of course,” he said smoothly, but his hand trembled as he adjusted the mirrors. I pressed my lips together tensely. His future was in no way certain. Which meant mine wasn’t, either. No one’s was—not even Ansel’s. If rabies didn’t get him, something else probably would.
I took a deep breath, then got out of the car and looked at the team.
“Okay, here’s the plan,” I said over the road noise.
“There’s a plan?” Mills asked, and I made a “screw you” face at him.
“Jolie, Ansel, and Mills will get in the backseat,” I said. “Bunny will get in the passenger seat. Nate will drive.”
W-H-A-T-A-B-O-U-T-U-? Jolie spelled into my hand.
“Someone has to sever the straps, pretty much at the last second,” I explained. I’d thought about this while we’d waited back at the factory, and that sentence didn’t begin to cover all the certain- or near-death possibilities facing us, and especially me. “So everyone get in now, and for God’s sake, fasten as many seat belts as you can find.”
“But where will you be?” Bunny asked.
“In the trunk,” I said briefly. “Everyone ready? Nate?”
“Wait,” Ansel said, taking a deep breath. “You guys rescued me—the United guys killed the rest of my squad and definitely would have killed me. But you don’t need to keep saving me. I can head off on my own. You have your hands full.”
I thought about it—did I need him?
