by A N Sandra
“Did Tilly tell you about the vaccination chips?” Sadie asked. They had all promised Doctor Justin they wouldn’t tell anybody, but Dan was so suspicious of the Hollisters that she wondered if Tilly had told Dan.
“What about them?” Dan asked quickly.
“You really can’t tell anybody… But we had ours taken back out.” And they turned out to be deadly...
“That was probably not a bad idea,” Dan told her. “But that isn’t why I’m really paranoid right now. I don’t want to tell you everything, but it’s like I’ve just woken up. The Hollisters never seemed that threatening to me until Tilly brought me her phone and Molly Hollister had had it bugged. I started to pay more attention to them. I got on the Dark Web and learned a ton of stuff. I don’t want to believe any of it, but if ten percent of the stuff about them on the Dark Web is true… I’ve seen things with my own eyes I keep trying to convince myself weren’t real.”
“What am I supposed to do if I get to Vermont and things aren’t right with your grandfather?” Sadie asked.
“Then I guess I’ll have to come deal with it,” Dan said. “I don’t want to leave the city right now with Tilly stuck here, but Gramps is super important to me and I’ll come if I have to.”
Sadie took the overnight bag she’d left Hollister Manor with and got in the rental car. Dan turned out to be right, she just drove slowly, and everything was fine. It felt therapeutic to ease out of city traffic, inching through tunnels. Sadie found herself able to quiet her mind and just focus on driving. I’ll worry about sorting out life later. Helping a friend by checking on their grandfather was the perfect thing to soothe her jangled nerves.
What the hell do you mean she didn’t go inside when she got home?” Molly Hollister fumed in a furious rage. “I don’t know what else to say, you were supposed to deal with her when she came home! I gave explicit instructions that she was only to be let off at her building and the driver was to leave her at the curb!”
Molly listened to the excuses her hired killer gave before throwing her phone into a nearby chair. Sadie was supposed to die. Everyone would assume that a creepy fan had done her in. It would fuel ratings and cement Doctor Justin to her as he would be impressed with Molly’s determination to find Sadie’s killer. She had, in fact, chosen a killer who was going to get caught, admit to the crime, and go to jail with the promise that Molly Hollister would get him out of jail later and pay him off big time. Molly intended for the “killer” (who probably wasn’t really capable of killing anyone) to sit in jail until the coming plague overcame him in his rotten, stinky cell. Loyalty was not a hang up Molly had ever had. The real killer was a useful man, and Molly would never have let him sit in prison when he could be doing her bidding. Except that he wasn’t very useful right now, since Sadie was alive somewhere.
“Are you ready for your tea?” Tessa the maid asked timidly.
“No, I’ve changed my mind. I’ll have coffee. ASAP.”
Tessa nodded and disappeared to get coffee. Molly idly wondered how much Tessa had heard but dismissed her worry. The maid had been with the family for a year, long enough to know never to cross a Hollister.
The phone began to buzz from its upholstered hiding place and Molly picked it up quickly. It was Doctor Justin, who wanted to know if she would meet him for dinner later.
“I’d love to,” Molly answered. “I’ll be ready at eight.”
The GPS in Sadie’s rental car worked perfectly. Right up until she reached Buckingham, Vermont. Buckingham was not a city. In fact the population sign said that fifty-one people lived there, and that it was a census designated place, which Sadie took to mean it was the middle of nowhere. There was a gas station, apparently run by the cast of Duck Dynasty, two restaurants, both of which were closed, and two bed and breakfasts.
“I would do anything for a Mafia Roll from Tanaka’s.” Sadie sighed as she parked the car to actually look at one of the folded maps Dan had insisted that she take. The gas station had stale cookies and Sadie bought one. It didn’t satisfy her sushi craving, but the cheap carbs gave temporary sustenance. She also purchased a pink camo t-shirt and hat, which she put on in the bathroom of the gas station, hoping to look less like herself.
The map made the route to Dan’s grandfather’s house look so easy. Over the river and through the woods. Several wrong turns and many, many curse words later, Sadie pulled up in front of an adorable log cabin that could have been a tiny home advertisement. There was a Ford truck in the driveway and an elderly man wearing camo came to the door with a very large gun cradled carefully in his arms.
“I’m friends with Dan and Tilly!” Sadie called out to him from the car window.
“Let me see you… slow like…”
Sadie stepped from the car, unfolding herself carefully, putting her hands on top of the car door once she didn’t need them anymore to get out.
“Just step around the car…”
“Haven’t you seen me on TV with Tilly?” Suddenly Sadie wanted to be recognized for herself again.
“Easy now—”
Sadie stepped around the car door and the old man rested his gun against the side of his cabin. Both of them sighed in relief.
“I can tell you’re not with the Urban Relocation people,” Tilly’s grandfather said. “You aren’t dressed for fighting.”
Sadie was wearing skinny jeans and long leather boots with her gas station fashion.
“I thought you would know who I am,” Sadie said. “I thought you would have seen Tilly and I on television together. Your grandson Dan is getting a little worried about you.”
“I haven’t had internet or television for months. The Urban Relocation people cut them off. They tell your family you aren’t paying the bill, so your family will think you need to be relocated. It’s one of their tricks.”
“That’s rotten!” Sadie was outraged.
“That’s the least of what they’re doing. Come on in, I’m just fixing a very late lunch.” The man paused. “I’m Travis, by the way.”
“Sadie.” The two of them shook hands in front of the tiny cabin before going inside.
Lunch turned out to be cold cereal since Travis’s girlfriend who used to cook for him had been taken by the Urban Relocation people months ago. Tilly’s grandfather had been existing mostly on cold cereal for a long time. He had a huge stockpile of it in his pantry. Both of them crunched and slurped contentedly for several minutes.
“I had a neighbor with a milk cow until recently,” Travis said. “But they finally got him too. They took his cow. Some of his chickens got loose and I rounded them up and feed them. I have a hard time finding the eggs, but I keep them fed, and I eat the eggs I do find.”
“How can they just take people away and we don’t hear about it?” Sadie wondered.
“They do whatever they want,” Travis said. “I’m the last person in this area over fifty who doesn’t have powerful friends somewhere.”
“How did you last this long?”
“The other people trusted process. I never trust process,” Travis said simply. “They’re coming for me though. They’ve got a lot to do with tearing down people’s cabins and other work, but when it’s done, they’re coming for me.”
“Why don’t you get an RV and stay on the road?” Sadie asked.
“That’s what some of my neighbors did,” Travis told her. “But once they were on the road they were easy for state police to pick up.”
“Oh.”
“I’ve got a plan,” Travis said, placing his cereal bowl in the sink. “I never intended to die in this cabin for someone to find. My time here was ending soon anyway. The first time I got a bad review from my doctor, I planned to move to Montpellier and get a condo. I’ve had a really long run here. I was blessed with good health, I was blessed not to run out of money and even have enough to help my grandkids. But I’m not giving the Hollisters the power to make choices for my life.”
“What are you going to do?” Sadie was rivet
ed by his determination.
“I am going to out them when they come for me,” Travis said with a soft voice. “They will not remove me in secret.”
“Don’t you need Dan’s help for that?” Sadie wondered aloud. What good was a plan to out someone without a web connection and—
“I’m not getting my family mixed up in my prideful battle,” Travis said. “I’m going to make sure that many people know that I am healthy, happy, independent, and being taken from my home by force.”
“Without the internet, how are you going to do that?” Sadie wondered.
“I have arranged for a religious experience,” Travis said, mysteriously.
“I thought the beauty of spiritual experiences is that they are spontaneous,” Sadie said. Growing up she had Pentecostal neighbors who were always talking about Azusa Street and the Holy Spirit. Everyone knew they were nuts, but Sadie had been a little intrigued. The people of Azusa Street had been very surprised when the Holy Spirit showed up, and Sadie was convinced that spiritual experiences could not be manufactured.
“Spiritual experiences are spontaneous, but religion is manmade,” Travis said with a wicked grin. “I have a very good friend who specializes in mass hypnotism. He is helping me plan a religious experience that will worry the Hollister employees who come for me. They will spread the word faster than the internet that they have scrubbed so clean.”
“Good for you!” Sadie was cheered. “Tilly and I tried to keep from getting caught up in their games with the reality show—”
“Tell me everything,” Travis said. He held up a French press. “I want fresh coffee for this story.”
“I would be delighted to tell you everything,” Sadie said. Fresh coffee sounded amazing. She couldn’t wait to tell Travis everything that had happened in the last few weeks in his cozy living room with a mug of steaming coffee in her hands.
Molly Hollister needs to talk to both of you,” the front desk clerk told Maddy on the phone as she and Tilly were lounging in her room. “Now.”
As always, if there was the slightest possibility they would be caught on camera, they both checked their makeup before they went to the elevator. Both had their unbreached cell phones in their pockets, never leaving them where they could be compromised.
When the elevator opened, Becky, Molly’s assistant met them.
“Molly is in the Sunset Room, waiting to talk. I’ll take you.”
The Sunset Room was a small banquet room where Molly had various meetings with the contestants when she needed interviews for show fillers, or promotional opportunities. Both Tilly and Maddy knew where it was, but they both followed her past the front desk and down a half flight of stairs to the room, which had all the curtains drawn. Molly herself sat at the head of the large conference table with a glass of ice water in front of her. No pitcher or other glasses were in evidence, so offering Maddy or Tilly beverages had not been part of the plan.
“Where is Sadie?” Molly cut to the chase.
Tilly and Maddy traded worried looks. Neither of them had anything to say.
“Are you both going to play possum?”
“Possums are very helpful marsupials,” Maddy said, unexpectedly. Her brother (a veterinarian) had once nursed a possum to health after a roadside accident had almost killed it. “They eat harmful insects and rodents.”
Molly shook her head almost like a horse shakes off an annoying fly. She pretended she hadn’t really heard what Maddy said.
“We don’t know,” Tilly said, softly.
“You both know a lot of things,” Molly said with spite. “You both have fancy phones you text on and you never let the screens of your phones get in front of a camera.”
“Are you asking about my phone?” Tilly inquired. “I don’t know why you would care what we text anyone.”
“Whatever you text is nothing to me,” Molly spat. “No one can find Sadie.”
“Why do you need to know where she is?” Maddy wondered. “She probably needed some personal space. She probably checked into some fancy spa to relax after her public humiliation.”
“I would know,” Molly scoffed.
“You know every spa, everywhere?” Tilly scoffed back.
Molly didn’t dignify that with an answer.
“Where. Is. Sadie.”
“I. Don’t. Know.” Maddy answered. She was done. If Molly pressed her further she would walk out and take whatever hateful lie Molly dished out. She pictured herself storming up to her room, packing her overnight bag, and going to the street to hail a cab. The thought became intoxicating. She flirted with it the way she’d flirted with Eddie VanHorn in eighth grade. He’d been a basketball marvel and she would have given him her thirteen-year-old body if she’d had enough unsupervised time.
Molly, like every playground bully, knew she had reached the end of Maddy’s patience and turned to Tilly, only to find Tilly looked like she might do something dangerous herself.
“I’ve done a lot of things for this cast! I’ve made all of you famous! You were nothing without me and if I decide to turn you into nothing in the future, nothing you will be!” Molly blustered. “I just want to know where Sadie is for an exit interview—”
“Well, you know where every spa is, so I’m sure you can find her.” Tilly measured her words with precision. “Would you like us to stay and keep you company while you do?”
Molly didn’t answer. With a dramatic gesture she took a large drink from the water glass in front of her, as if to demonstrate that she had water, and Tilly and Maddy didn’t. The silliness of the situation and the dramatic tension they had been under for weeks caused Maddy to have a fit of giggles. Maddy couldn’t remember an assault on her composure on that level since Eddie VanHorn had caused a similar fit of giggles when he walked by her junior high locker.
“Come on,” Tilly said under her breath. Once they were in the hallway they ducked outside to the pool area to be able to talk quietly without getting caught on camera.
“We’re going to pay for that,” Maddy said grimly. “She needs us now, but when the show is over—”
“Six more weeks.” Tilly frowned.
“—we’re going to pay.”
“Not if she can’t find us.”
“I’ve been doing a lot of classes online with all this spare time, but I can’t get a good MBA without going to school.” Maddy bit her lip.
“What part of, four people died from the chips they took out of our arms, leads you to believe you would use an MBA if you got one?” Tilly huffed. She had given up all ideas of fashion design the second she understood about the chip. Maddy’s insistence on reverting to previous plans frustrated Tilly.
“I can’t not take the next step in my life because someone wants to kill me,” Maddy protested.
“Yes,” Tilly argued. “Yes, you can be safe instead of getting killed.”
“Do you think everyone is getting chips that will kill them, or just us?” Maddy wondered. “It makes a big difference.”
“I don’t know that it does. There’s a lot going on here we don’t understand-”
“Do you have a guess where Sadie is?” Maddy interrupted.
“She wouldn’t have gone back to her parents,” Tilly said. “She hates that suburbia stuff, and no one would let her have any peace there anyway. Molly probably tried her agent, and her agent wouldn’t have lied to Molly, so her agent doesn’t know either. That means she’s not out doing auditions or making deals. Doctor Justin is busy wooing Molly to figure out what’s going on, so she’s not with him. That would be too risky anyway. The rest of her coworkers that she likes are here… That leaves Dan. I’m hoping she’s with Dan.”
“Do you think the Village is far enough away from Molly to be safe?”
“Maybe Dan will get her out of the Village.”
“I know Dan got us the cell phones that are bug proof… but do you think he understands the danger we’re in? We didn’t tell him about the people who died in Doctor Justin’s lab fro
m the chips.”
“Dan knows everything isn’t okay,” Tilly said, remembering the protest Dan had attended where the Hollister’s security had cut the throats of the protesters and nothing had yet surfaced on any media. Please, please, Sadie, be with Dan.
Sadie and Travis crept about the Hollister Youth worker camp in the dark. At no time in her life had Sadie ever spent time in an outdoor camp. She had attended various performing arts camps as a young person but had always stayed in a dormitory with a comfortable bed. The youth workers slept in huge canvas tents, and the leaders had small camper trailers. Portable bathrooms were off the very edge of the clearing. It was rustic beyond anything Sadie could have imagined.
With a car battery and a strange sort of projector that Sadie had never seen before Travis managed to put a faint outline of a horse into the night sky.
“Watch this,” Travis chuckled softly maneuvering the projector just a little.
The horse began to gallop across the sky, weaving in and out of visibility.
Sadie could see that once anyone came out of their tent to use the bathroom they would be instantly mesmerized by the horse. Twenty minutes went by before someone came outside, but when Travis was sure the young woman who had been headed for the bathroom was fixing her gaze on the horse, he turned off the projector.
“Just a tease,” he grinned. Both of them crept away. When they were a little farther from the camp Travis continued telling Sadie his plan. “I took a whole lot of mane from a white horse, and I put it in the bushes around the camp. Also, when I can I put some in the areas where they are working. A couple of times I’ve dropped LSD into their drinking water supply.”
“O-M-G!” Sadie was shocked at his plan of attack. A little sad, she reflected, “This would make a great movie.”
“It would be art imitating life,” Travis said. “As the best art does, of course. But I don’t think it’s going to happen.”
“Probably not,” Sadie admitted. “But it would have been awesome.”
“Yup,” Travis acquiesced. Pausing for effect, he clarified. “I am old. I am not stupid. I am not weak.”