The Perfect Soldier

by B D Grant

  “So I decided to do what I could to throw them off of you and Aunt Catherine’s trail. I brought up our old neighbor, Mr. Thomas; they hadn’t known about him. I got to sleep six straight hours that night. They were sure to tell me what a big deal that was. I held out as long as I could after that before revealing that I knew he had some Seraphim connections in Dry Creek.”

  Mr. Thomas had lived in the house between mine and Jake’s. I learned after finding out about myself that he was a Cachelerie, an invisible Seraphim, which helped our families stay hidden. He covered us in a sort of protective veil —that was his ability. Sensaa or not we couldn’t be found. He was the one who kept me from calling out when I saw Jake unconscious on his lawn that day. When Mom and I took off, Mr. Thomas had told us he was going to Dry Creek to warn Seraphim that he knew there.

  “You knew about Dry Creek?” I ask.

  “Only what I heard him tell my dad a week or so before. But I didn’t really care much about it at the time. They ate it up though. When they confirmed Thomas’s identity, how I don’t know; it marked the end of my sleep deprivation. It taught me to keep my captors happy if I wanted food and sleep. I stopped asking to see my parents and your dad.”

  He quiets down again. I’m curious, a painful need to know what happened burning in the pit of my stomach. But he’s told me so much I don’t push him to continue.

  “Sorry,” he says.

  “No, that’s fine. You don’t have to—” I say, trying not to feel disappointed. “I mean, I get it.”

  “No,” he says. “No, it’s…I started to like them.” He says it quickly, his words rushing out.

  “Jake, none of this is your fault,” I tell him, but the look he gives me is cold. The words feel stupid as soon as they leave my mouth.

  “Could you just, like, not do that?” he says. “It’s making this more difficult.”

  I remain silent, glancing at him again as he stares out the front windshield. His features harden when he speaks. “I volunteered to hunt Thomas down. They didn’t even have to ask. They had plenty of Sensaa for the job, but they liked the idea of me proving my loyalty. My mom had been right and wrong when she had begged for them to let me go. She was right that they weren’t looking for teenagers like me, but I wasn’t a normal kid. I am a Seraphim,” he says, looking at me as if this should be some big revelation, but it’s not. My mom had told me about her suspicions of Jake’s ability at the same time she was telling what Seraphim are and what they can do. “I’m a Sensaa, and my ability didn’t let me down.

  I was sent out with a search party of Rogues. Thomas wasn’t in Dry Creek when I found him. He was hiding out, and he wasn’t alone. If Thomas had seen me first he would have had time to warn the others. They would have had time to run.

  “But this guy, he didn’t know who I was. They must have helped kids like us because they mistook me for some lost Seraphim kid who needed help. So he took me inside, and then Rogues came in dressed as SWAT. We got three of them that way. Including Thomas.” Jake folds his arms protectively across his chest. His Adam’s apple rises and then drops as he swallows hard. “None of them survived longer than a week in the basement.”

  Jake’s confession leaves me speechless. Mr. Thomas had saved my life the day Dad and Jake’s family were taken. I had heard Aunt Beth screams, so I took off running toward her house. In Mr. Thomas’s driveway, I saw Rogues taking Jake’s parents away as Dad stood over Jake. Mr. Thomas had stopped me before I could yell across the street or chase after them. If it wasn’t for him, I’m sure that I would have been taken too. I always liked him. He wasn’t particularly friendly, complaining more than he did anything else, but he was like a relative just like the Angelos. He was more like a cousin than immediate family like Jake and his parents by how my parents would was always invite him to holiday gatherings, but would rarely show up. When he did make an appearance to the occasional Thanksgiving I could tell he enjoyed himself especially when his gripping would end and he would share stories with us about his childhood in South Carolina, where he lived until meeting his late wife. My parents trusted him and so did I.

  You never had a choice. They used you, I say in my head, wishing I could connect to him the way I’ve connected with Sidney and my mom.

  I slow down as we get close to a near-empty gas station. I need a break from driving.

  Jake leans over to check the fuel gauge as I park the car next to pump number two. It’s half-full, but he says nothing. I take advantage of his proximity and pull him into a tight hug. He doesn’t wrap his arms around me like I’m hoping, but he does rest his head lightly on my shoulder.

  “They called it a ‘debriefing’ that I got after Thomas and the others were…” he clears his throat against my shoulder. “I was told that I did better than they’d expected.” He pulls away to face the front again, turning to look out his window. “They most likely expected me to try to escape. But I played the part to a tee. So after the debriefing, I was brought to The Academy. I knew full well about the underground facility. I had to agree to play a normal student being brought in from the outside world, not a captive. It wasn’t hard, besides it being a total friggin’ nightmare to be around people leading normal day-to-day lives when my life had just fallen apart.

  “I couldn’t talk about anything that happened to me before joining the school. If I was asked anything by another student or teacher, I could only talk about my life prior to my recruitment. Some of Rogues who worked in the basement and also worked above ground at the school would say I was ‘brought in’ like it was some favor to me. As if I had a choice, I also agreed to help them in the future if my ability reached its full potential.”

  “How would they know when you reached full potential?” I ask, forgetting that I’m not supposed to interrupt.

  He shoots me a look. “You think they’d tell me that?” Mutely, I shake my head. “They had a Dynamar kid in the basement with me when I first got there. He was in sort of training, jogging the corridors wearing the biggest weight vest I’ve ever seen. It was like he had blinders on, never looking anywhere but straight ahead. I only came across him a few times while I was being shuffled through the halls. He was a decent size the first time I saw him, but in the span of a few weeks the next I saw of him his arms, and chest had doubled in size. I’m guessing he had reached full potential.”

  Steroids would bulk someone up pretty quickly. Would drugs work for other Seraphim, those who don’t have strength as their primary ability? I’ve never thought about it.

  “It was hard to get over how surreal it was, being above ground. Some of the students were friendly enough like those guys your friends with, Kelly and Boston. I got in the groove of just being in high school again. Like, I caught myself stressing over essay assignments. And I had to stop myself from doing that. I didn’t know if my parents or your dad were alive or dead, and I’m sitting there like an idiot worried about some dumb classwork, like it actually matters whether I can solve quadratic equations.”

  “I know what you mean,” I say, thinking about my time at Uncle Will’s school. He looks over at me as if to say, “No, you don’t,” but instead he asks, “Do you want to pump or should I?” as he takes out a twenty dollar bill from his pocket.

  I watch the money move toward me, realizing I forgot to get one very important travel necessity. I don’t reach out to take it. “What happened after that?” I ask, trying not to think about my huge blunder.

  He shrugs, retracting the hand holding the twenty as he places the other on the door handle. “You already know what happened in the basement during the raid.” He opens the door, pausing. “The morning of the raid, before everything went to hell, Pauline—she was the school’s nurse—she warned me that something bad was about to happen. She had treated me. When they moved me upstairs to the welcome center as a transitioning between the basement to the school I saw her every day for those few days they reviewed what I could and couldn’t discuss with others on campus and ensured I knew
the basics of the courses I would be taking since it was near the end of the school year. They’d bring me to see Pauline while I was still living below ground too, and she would offer me chocolates while my guard wasn’t looking. She had asked me to sneak some of them to the prisoners who weren’t being fed. I thought it was a test at the time, so I never accepted them. The first time I refused her offer, I snuck a cracker from her snack bucket anyways. She had to have heard me chewing, but she didn’t say anything.”

  We’ve been parked in front of the pump for a while, and I start to worry that somebody might get annoyed. But it’s still early morning, and half the pumps are open, so I decide we’re probably fine.

  “Anyway, when Pauline showed up at breakfast that morning She looked freaked out. In front of everyone at the lunch table, she told me to report to her office, making it sound all official like they do when they’re wanting you to report to the welcome center. I thought I was in trouble. When I left the cafeteria, she was waiting for me outside. I got really nervous when she didn’t say anything at first, just walked with me toward the welcome center. It wasn’t until we were in the woods between campus and the welcome center that she told me some of the prisoners had been shipped out before sunrise. She didn’t tell me why she chose to share this information with me, or why she had initially trusted me enough to ask me to sneak food down to the other kids underground, but if she wouldn’t have been watching out to me I would have been far less likely to make it out of there like I did.

  “Pauline didn’t know what exactly was going on, but she said if I wanted to escape, there were things in the barn on the other side of the school grounds which could help. When she told me all of that I was certain it was another test.”

  Someone honks on the street, and we both jump. Without a word, Jake climbs out of the car shutting the door behind him. He hurries inside of the gas station before I can follow after him.

  I know I don’t have any right to be annoyed, but who leaves in the middle of a story?

  I get out and open up the gas tank when he comes back out of the gas station with a receipt in his hand in the place of the twenty, my mind going through everything he’s told me, trying to absorb the words into my memory. I doubt I’ll get to hear any of this more than once.

  He takes his time picking up the pump and inserting it into the car’s gas tank. My cheeks turn warm as they flush from my growing aggravation. I contemplate hitting him.

  “So the barn…” I say, waiting for him to continue.

  He looks down at the twenty still in his hand as if he’s thinking about walking inside to pay instead of answering me. “I didn’t make it to the barn,” he says emotionlessly.

  He clicks the little lever, letting the pump rest on the side of the car and freeing his hands. He leans against the car a few feet away, watching the meter climb. “I had never been out to the barn. And, like I said, it was on the other side of campus. So in case it was a trap, I did some surveillance. Then, because I still wasn’t sure, I talked some older students from the school into going with me, but the alarms went off before we got to it.”

  “It was too big of a risk by then. I took off from the others and went back toward the welcome center instead. I mean, it was really starting to get bad then—the alarm bells went off, and people were running everywhere, and I heard what I thought might be gunfire, so I just wanted to free whoever was left in the basement and then split.”

  The automatic trigger on the pump shuts off as the numbers round to an even twenty on the screen.

  “What happened to the nurse?”

  Jake taps the end of the nozzle in the tank as he pulls it out. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  I think of Aunt Beth and Uncle Chuck. I know better than to ask about them. I watch Jake return the nozzle to its holder, wondering if he knows. He could be trying to spare me. I flinch when he snaps the fuel door shut.

  When I look up from the gas tank, he’s watching me closely. He holds out his hand for the keys. “My turn to drive.”

  Chapter 13

  “We have to go somewhere,” I say for what feels like the hundredth time. “Come on! We’re driving in that direction anyways.”

  Jake gives me a sideways glance from the driver’s seat. “What do you think you’ll find at your house that can help us find her?”

  After leaving the gas station, I wasn’t able to connect with Mom during my short snooze. We spent what little money Jake had left when we stopped at the Waffle House for an early breakfast after I had woken up. Once Jake made the comment at the restaurant of being out of cash, I knew my mission was going to be over real quick if we didn’t get our hands on any funds. I hadn’t had the courage to tell him that I only packed clothes and snacks in my get-away bag. I straighten my tee shirt beneath the seatbelt, as if I’m a business woman preparing for an important meeting. I sit tall in my seat, hoping to hide my discomfort. “Dad would forget to go by the bank occasionally, so Mom kept a small amount of cash hidden in our study.” Jake doesn’t look impressed by my explanation. “We’re going to need funds,” I say.

  “You don’t have any cash?” He asks pointedly.

  “Of course I don’t,” I say, as if he’s suggested something unreasonable. “Where do you think I’d get cash from, begging for change on the sidewalk? Oh, wait, we couldn’t even go outside.” I know that I’m being overly-defensive. I’ve got to tone it down; he always knows when I’m compensating for being stupid. Besides, Jake has been nothing but supportive considering his certainty that I’m going to get us both killed.

  “I just thought you’d have a credit card or… or something,” he mumbles.

  I lean my head back against the headrest, shutting my eyes. “Yeah, well I don’t. Sorry to let you down.”

  Pulling into our old subdivision is weird. We don’t talk about it, but Jake has got to be feeling the same ache at seeing that nothing has changed in our neighborhood. We pull into the driveway across from my house. I’m careful crossing the street, but it’s hard to take my eyes off my house. I’m half expecting to see my parents emerge from the front door. Our yard is being maintained, no doubt by the retired couple who live next door. Mr. Landry would always offer to mow our yard whenever our lawnmower was on the fritz. Still, Mom would be livid to see the state of the front shrubs threatening to block the windows and consume our flower beds.

  Jake follows me as I make my way around the side of the house. I’ve locked myself out enough times to know that the small window above the kitchen sink can be shimmied open as long as someone lifts me up. Jake gives me a boost, kneeling down on one knee to let me step on the other as he holds my legs to steady me until I’ve gotten it open. He hoists my feet up once I’ve opened it enough for me to fit through. I crawl over the empty sink with all of the grace of a newborn calf.

  “Could you make any more noise?” Jake complains as soon as I unlock the back door for him.

  “What does it matter? If any of the neighbors saw me crawling in the window, they aren’t going to do anything. They all know I live here. No one’s going to call the cops.”

  He goes to a window nearest the back door and barely lifts a blind to peep out. “We need to keep moving. Get the cash, and let’s go,” he says, pointing behind himself in the vague direction of the hallway.

  It’s clear that people have been in our house since Mom and I took off after Dad and the Angelos were taken. Dad and Jake had told me that they took family photos from our house, but it’s different to see the rummaging first hand. The wall and tables that my mom had displaying all of our smiling faces are now bare. Drawers have been rifled through, the contents left on the floors. Dad’s study is ransacked.

  I check every spot I can think of that Mom used as a hiding spot for cash or valuables. When the study turns up empty, I move on to my room not even worrying with my parent’s room seeing it even more torn apart than the study as I pass. Dad’s gun case in the corner of their bedroom has been emptied with its door still wi
de open.

  “I’ll be right back,” Jake calls down the hall.

  “Where are you going?” I ask.

  “I’m going to my house. If you don’t find any cash, I’ve got some power tools from my garage to pawn.”

  “Good idea,” I say, genuinely impressed as I step into my room heading straight for the closest. At least one of us is planning for the worst case scenario.

  When I was little, Mom and Dad used the top shelf of my closest to stash our emergency bags for an easy grab if they had to collect me out of my room. Once I was old enough to know what to do in the event of an emergency, they moved the bags to the coat closet in the middle of the hallway. I never used the top shelf in my closet even after the bags were taken down, though, so maybe they left stuff on it.

  Walking to my old room, I can’t help thinking about all of the signs I had growing up that my family wasn’t normal. In elementary school, my friend Tabatha’s parents would teasingly call my family “Doomsday Preppers” after I told them about our emergency bags and exit strategies. My parent’s had laughed when I told them about it later, and then made me promise not to tell anyone else on the premise that they didn’t want to take the chance of making other people uncomfortable by how prepared we were.

  My parents may not have come straight out and told me that we were in hiding, but I should have figured it out long before Dad and the Angelos were kidnapped.

  I use the shelving that runs down the middle of my closet to climb up, pulling myself up high enough to see to the back of the top shelf. Two shoe boxes sit all the way against the wall, so inconspicuous that I never would have noticed them if I hadn’t been looking. Both are coated with a thick layer of dust.

  I grab the box to the left, pulling it forward with the tips of my fingers and nearly falling as I do so. It topples down, and I pick it up from the floor. Dust falls as I leaf through trinkets and snapshots from my parents’ younger days. I push it to the side and slide the heavier box forward, careful not to let this one fall. Jackpot.