The Fall of Crazy House, page 13
“I’m trying not to cry or throw up,” I said, dizzily locating the map. “Uh, yeah, um, it says she’s going to meet the Loner. The Loner? Who the hell is the Loner?”
“I don’t know,” Tim said grimly. “But we’re going to take that page with us, and we’re going to find him.”
“Wait—what do you mean, we’re going to find him?” I asked. “Where are we going?”
“To find Becca,” he said. “We’re going to the capital, and we’re going to see what the Loner has to say.”
72
IT WAS MY TURN TO drive. My years of driving Pa’s combine made me okay with a vehicle this big, but right now I was so freaked about Becca that I’d have trouble driving a Hopper.
Becca. My twin. She’d been so proud and happy to be chosen squad leader, scouting out the unknown. I’d been so bummed to be separated from her and condemned to a freaking attic. Now I knew that Ms. Strepp had deliberately sent Becca to her death, and I’d been the lucky one with Tim, somehow avoiding the plague the rest of the compound had fallen victim to.
And Nate! Was he going to die with Becca? The two people I loved most in the world—the only people I had left—and Ms. Strepp had sent them off to die?
Ms. Strepp had done so many horrible things to me, Becca, Nate, Tim—everyone we knew. She’d made us fight, pretended to kill our friends, had starved and scared us—but we’d learned that she was training us for the apocalypse. That the dark and awful things we’d learned would help keep us alive.
But how would Becca’s death help anyone? How would Nate dying get us any closer to answers?
I brushed an angry tear from my eye and downshifted to handle this curvy mountain road in the dark. Becca couldn’t be dead. I would feel it. But goddamnit!
CRASH!!!!
It was like getting struck by lightning and running into a brick wall at the same time. Though we didn’t roll, my ears filled with the sounds of buckling, scraping metal, breaking glass, the sound of Tim slamming against the dashboard, our belongings flying everywhere. The front windshield shattered, and my vision darkened as something huge burst through the broken windshield right at me. A shocking, searing pain shot through my shoulder as a hot, furry mass snapped my head backward. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move.
And just as fast, everything was quiet again. No engine noise, no breaking sounds, nothing except my muffled attempts to breathe and Tim groaning in pain.
“What the fu—” Tim began. “Oh, no. No, no, no!”
73
“I CAN’T MOVE,” I MUMBLED into the—it was fur. Warm fur. “Can’t breathe.” Every breath brought the sharp scent of wild animal into my nostrils. My shoulder hurt so much that it had gone numb, as if my nerves had been like, Nope, too much, we’re shutting down.
I heard Tim moving, but couldn’t see anything.
“There’s a huge animal face in here. Looks dead. You okay? Anything broken?” he asked in a shaky voice. I heard him climbing out his window.
“I think maybe so,” I managed. “You?”
“No. Maybe some ribs.” Now his voice came from outside the vehicle.
“You hit a—an elk? It’s huge. I’ve never seen one in real life.”
“It hit me,” I said, turning my head. Even that movement brought a keen pain back to my shoulder. “I didn’t even see it. Can you—get it off me? I can’t breathe.” Hot blood ran down my arm and I hoped it was from the elk.
Tim managed to open my door with a jerk. He saw me smashed against my seat, something pinning my shoulder. His eyes met mine soberly. “Shit,” he said.
I was trying not to cry. Tim’s nose was bleeding a bit, and a pink blotch on his face would soon turn into an ugly purple bruise.
“His antler is in your shoulder,” he said.
“No shit,” I said, my voice wavering.
“Okay, let me think,” Tim said. “This thing must weigh… like a thousand pounds. Goddamn.” He went to the front of the ATT and I heard him groaning and muttering. He came back around and said, “That was me trying to shift this thing. I grabbed its leg and pulled as hard as I could. But I have an idea—hang in there.”
Like I had a choice.
He opened the back of the vehicle and came back with the jack. He wedged it between the elk and the steel beam of the window and started cranking. For a minute nothing happened. Then the animal shifted a bit and I bit back a scream of pain.
“I’m sorry,” Tim said. “We gotta get you out. But this is going to hurt like a sonofabitch.”
Tim cranked the handle as fast as he could, but it was torturous agony an inch at a time. I’d figured the antler was three or four inches in, but as Tim cranked, the pain went on and on. Blood flowed down my shirt. As soon as I could move a little bit, I pressed my other arm against my mouth. Tears ran down my face and I felt faint and sick.
It seemed to last a week. My head hung limply by the time he was finished, and I still couldn’t move. All I knew was pain, a pain that radiated out of my shoulder and reduced the rest of me to a weeping kindergartner.
“It went right through you, through the seat.” Tim’s voice seemed to come from a distance. I felt him lift me, walk with me, lean me against a rock? A tree?
He cut off my shirt with a knife. I didn’t care. “Holy shit,” he breathed, leaning me forward so he could use the car’s headlights to see my back. When he poured alcohol into my wounds, front and back, I sobbed. Then he pressed one large, cool hand against the hole in front and his other hand against the hole in my back. He kept pressure on them for a long time, till I knew his arms, though ridiculously strong, must ache. Finally he gave me some pills to swallow, packed the wounds with gauze, and bandaged them the best he could. He buttoned one of his shirts around me, keeping my left arm pressed against my body. Slowly I leaned over and slept.
74
BECCA
ON BUNNY’S STOMACH WAS WRITTEN “They will.” In blood, a dark red against her dark skin.
On the back of Mills’s neck: “the Loner.”
I ran back to the car where Nate was stowing everyone’s gear.
“Ansel is gone,” I said abruptly. “But he seems to have left a message.”
Nate tried to pull away as I started lifting his sweatshirt, pulling his collar. When I pulled the neck of his sweatshirt down, in small letters below his collarbone were the words “take you,” in blood, already drying and flaking off.
“They will,” I said, pointing to Bunny, “take you,” I pointed to Nate, “to the,” that was Jolie, “the Loner.” On Mills. “They will take you to the Loner.”
“You don’t have anything written on you?” Bunny asked.
Last night I’d been asleep in the car with Nate, apparently clinging to him like lichen. Somehow Ansel had opened the car door, lifted Nate’s shirt and written on his chest, and closed the door without waking any of us. The thought made my face burn. Slowly Jolie started looking at the back of my neck, pushing up my sleeves, finally tugging my raggedy sweater up to show my belly, white as a trout’s. Nothing.
Suddenly Mills crouched and pushed up my pants leg. “Chip? Sorry,” he read.
On my leg. My leg. While I slept. “‘Chip? Sorry’? What the hell does that mean?” I practically snarled. “What does any of it mean? God! Let’s just get in the freaking car! I’ll drive!”
Later that day, we found that Ansel had been right: This big city was the capital, and its name was Chi-cah-go. How did we know? There was a huge sign a couple miles outside the city that said WELCOME TO CHICAGO: CAPITAL OF THE UNITED.
That had been an important clue. But what did “They will take you to the Loner” mean? What did “Chip? Sorry” mean?
The road we’d been on had gotten slowly bigger, the way a creek becomes a stream, then a river. We saw many more cars, the fancy kinds from the factory. No one seemed to notice or care that five kids were driving around by themselves. Maybe that was normal here.
When I crested a bridge and we first saw the capital, I almost slammed on the brakes so we could just… absorb it. But the car behind us honked, so I sped up and tried not to completely lose my mind.
“It’s…” said Nate in wonder, and Mills said, “Yeah.”
“It’s so unbelievably huge,” Bunny said, which didn’t begin to cover it.
There were so, so, so many people. Just the people walking along the streets were more than ever came to a cell festival. The buildings went up and up, almost to the clouds.
“There are people in those buildings,” I said in awe. “There’s enough people here to fill those buildings.” I couldn’t imagine it, and pictured one or two people per floor.
Most of the buildings had lit signs on them, some of them the company’s name, some with enormous ads two or three stories high, saying drink this beverage, or eat these noodles.
There was so much traffic here that we were moving slowly, and I could see a checkpoint up ahead. “We should ditch the car,” I said reluctantly. “I’m sure they know it’s stolen by now and are looking for it.”
“That sign says park here,” Bunny said, pointing, and there was an empty space between two other cars. I parked and we loaded up with all the hand weapons we could. I hated leaving the rifles, but we just couldn’t hide them well enough under our coats. I locked the car—something I had never done in my life—and thought about home. It had been peaceful there, quiet. I’d known just about everyone, at least by sight. These two realities existed in the same world. It was unbelievable.
Jolie took my hand and, trying not to look too obvious, spelled P-O-L-I-C-E, and then made a circle motion with her finger.
I nodded. It was true—there were police everywhere. I’d never seen so many cops. If you have a ton of people, you have a ton of cops, I guess. At home people pretty much followed the rules. Was it the same here?
One of the billboards flashed, BUY TRUMAN BRAND SHOES—THE BRAND YOU CAN TRUST. Then that picture winked out and we had the more typical sign: THE UNITED IS BUILT ON TRUST. YOUR LOYALTY IS TO THE UNITED FIRST. It gave us a few seconds to absorb this, then changed to, UNITED, THEN COMPANY, THEN FAMILY. THE UNITED ONLY WORKS WHEN EVERYONE COMPLIES. That was more like it. We had the same signs at home.
I started looking at small building signs—if we found a doctor, could we risk having her check out Nate? He hadn’t complained lately, and he looked okay, but—
“Arms, please!” The cop was wearing riot gear, with visor, bulletproof vest, the works.
“What arms?” I blustered, my brain immediately whirring with possible escape routes.
“Your arms, smartass,” said the cop, holding out his own arm, wrist up.
Real arms. Okay.
One by one, we did the same, holding out our left wrists.
The cops pushed our sleeves back, then scanned us with a UV light. Nothing showed up, and the cops frowned and looked at each other.
“Where’s your chip?” one asked, just as another punched a button on his comm and alarms sounded, along with a canned voice: INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER ALERT!
Instantly we had our weapons out and were in attack stance. This was exactly what we’d been trained for.
75
THE SITUATION WAS EXACTLY WHAT we’d been trained for, but these big city cops were on a whole new level. The United soldiers we’d taken out before were nothing in comparison. These guys were a highly trained, professional team, armed with weapons so new I barely recognized them. Five teens, even armed to the teeth, didn’t faze them. One of them even smiled. My heart started pumping, and without being aware of it my brain quickly calculated order of attack and key areas of vulnerability. I heard a high-pitched whine and recognized the sound of a taser charging.
“Let’s get crazy,” I said under my breath, and the team knew I meant like at the Crazy House and whirled into action—literally. I spun away as if to run, then sprang up to snap-kick the closest guy in his helmet. He staggered back and pulled out his gun, but his aim was off and the bullet whizzed by my ear. Another kick from me knocked the gun out of his hand, and his expression went from stunned to furious. I kept it up, mostly with kicking since his flak jacket would break my knuckles if I punched him. He whipped out a billy club and smacked my thigh with it, almost dropping me to the ground. I wouldn’t have thought that a stick could hurt so much.
Finally I got in a lucky kick that snapped his head back, and as he came forward I managed a flat-palm smash against his nose. He fell.
There was a one-second opening and I jumped in. My squad had been doing their best—Mills and Bunny had even been shooting at them—not a good idea in such close quarters. But the cops’ bulletproof vests made the shots painful annoyances rather than death blows. We were all fighting dirty—street fighting the way we’d been taught—but this high-tech armor was defeating us. All of us were wounded. I was limping, Mills was holding his right arm close to his body, and Nate could barely see because of the blood running into his eyes.
Dodging blows while aiming a kick perfectly at one cop’s nuts, I heard a zapping sound, then a body hitting the ground. Someone grabbed the back of my neck, so I slumped to dead weight, then stomped his instep and followed it with a kneecap-shattering kick. There was another buzzing sound and the cop I was facing grabbed his arm, stiffened, then fell like a bushel of wheat seed. Right next to him another cop went down. The team stood back, as mystified as I was. The last two cops we’d been fighting were lying on the ground twitching, their eyes open. They’d been tased, clearly, but by whom?
Then I saw them. They weren’t dressed all in black or anything, but there was a look in their eyes—the same look I saw whenever I got a glimpse in a mirror.
They were armed and wore blue kerchiefs rolled up and tied at the back of their heads. Scanning quickly, I counted five people, male and female, some looking as young as us. Glancing from them to the cops helpless on the ground, I got it right away: these were rebels. Big-city rebels. Potential allies? Ansel’s message, “They will take you to the Loner,” popped back into my head. Had that been a clue, or a warning?
I stepped forward, ready to make contact with the one who seemed in charge. She pointed her rifle at me, and a guy held up his Taser.
“Hold it,” she barked, and I froze.
Within seconds, a black van with tinted windows screeched to a halt right next to us and its doors slid open. Before I could yell for the team to scatter, we’d been grabbed and thrown into the van. Inside, in the darkness, waiting hands immediately cuffed and hooded us.
Awesome, I thought grimly as I was tossed into a corner like a sack of turnips. Just like old times.
76
’COURSE, I WASN’T A SACK of turnips. I was a soldier-kid with anger-management issues and an extremely strong dislike of being cuffed and hooded. I sensed someone in front of me, someone who smelled different from my team, and automatically I pulled back a booted foot and slammed it forward as hard as I could. I heard someone hitting the other side of the van, and they swore. Then someone punched my leg and said, “Kick me again and I’ll tie you up like a pig!”
Suddenly I slumped with an exhaustion so complete that it surprised me. I was just so… tired. Tired of fighting, being on guard, working a mission I wasn’t even sure of. A bit more than a year ago my biggest concern had been my calculus final. I was too tired to think of the weird path I’d taken to end up here. My concerns now were to keep myself and my team alive and, oh, yeah, try to overthrow the government.
I lay quietly, breathing in dust on the floor of the van, and when Mills whispered a question at me, I pretended not to hear him.
After about half an hour I quit measuring time. We were in darkness, on unfamiliar roads and streets, in a huge city we hadn’t known truly existed till two days ago. So all I could tell was that the drive took forever. Another skill the Crazy House taught me came in handy right now: the ability to fall asleep instantly, almost anywhere and under any conditions.
Who knew how long later, I got shaken awake. The business end of a rifle prodded me hard in my ribs and someone yelled, “Get up!”
Recognizing the slightest grunts and groans of my squad, I knew we were all still together, still alive. Cuffed and hooded, we were pushed along by a couple different people who said nothing, explained nothing, threatened nothing. Bunny was first in our line—I heard her hiss as she stumbled. The air I breathed smelled damp, a bit musty. My foot hit something, and I realized we were being herded up steps.
I concentrated on trying to hear anything around us as I climbed: voices, water flowing, people working, vehicles that might tell me where we might be. I tried to jump-start some brain cells, enough to memorize the route we were taking, the twists and turns. I was concentrating so hard that it took me several moments to realize I now heard only three sets of footsteps: mine and two others. Two unknown others. Where was the rest of my team? When did we get separated?
A door swung open and I smelled wood smoke. Someone yanked off my hood and I blinked in the sudden brightness. I was in a small, fancy room, its walls covered with shelves holding more books than I’d ever seen. There was a fireplace with a fire blazing beneath its carved marble mantel. I smelled pipe smoke, old books, some things I didn’t recognize. I blinked and shook my head—where the hell was I?
Behind me a voice said, “Thanks, Bets.” I whirled to see my two captors step backward through the carved wooden double doors, shutting them. I turned toward the voice and saw one person, only one, standing ten feet away. I could take him without even trying.
I’d been trained to be hyper aware of my surroundings. Keeping the person in one corner of my eye, I did a fast three-sixty, memorizing doors, windows, any means of escape. And… did not see much. The person—quite tall—he must be six foot six—was also very slender with shaggy blond hair and clear blue eyes. He gave me a half smile that I didn’t return.
“There are two double doors,” he said, pointing to the ones my guards had just left through. “The only windows you can reach are these little round ones, which won’t do you any good.” He met my eyes again, an odd, almost sad expression on his fine-boned face. “Actually, Becca, the only way out of here right now is up.” He pointed toward the turreted ceiling and I saw, maybe fifty feet up, several large, open windows, letting in light and air. He’d seen me look, knew I was searching for an escape. So he was a former soldier—or maybe a former prisoner?
