Chaos on CatNet

by Naomi Kritzer

  “We were on the run for years, and Mom never mentioned them. I sort of assumed they were dead, but no. Mom didn’t exactly get along with them, though. So, I have a grandma, but she might be a jerk. What’s your grandmother like?”

  Nell sighs. “Well, my grandparents let Mom and me move in with them after Dad left so that Mom could keep homeschooling me instead of having to go out and get a job. Even though they hate the Abiding Remnant.” She falls silent for a minute, staring out at the sunny highway. “When I got my period for the first time, Mom went off about the Curse of Eve and wanted me to fast for a day. Grandma said there’d be no fasting for fourteen-year-old girls as long as we were living in her house, and she took me out to buy me sanitary pads and told me this was the way God made my body and I had no reason to be ashamed.”

  “Wait, I don’t understand. Did your mom think if you were, I don’t know, less sinful, that you wouldn’t have a period?”

  “No. She just thinks that all women are extra sinful and having my period made me a woman instead of a girl. So she wanted me to fast and think about how extra sinful women are. Grandma thought that was nuts.”

  “What about your grandpa?”

  “He excused himself from the conversation as soon as the word tampon got said. He has this room he calls his den with a TV and a recliner, and that’s where he goes whenever Mom and Grandma get into it.”

  “What’s the connection between the Remnant and the Catacombs?” CheshireCat asks.

  “It’s not a Remnant website, exactly. But it’s a website to prepare for the Tribulation, so of course it’s very popular with Remnant members.”

  “What is the Tribulation?” I ask.

  Nell launches into an explanation of how Jesus is going to come back, but before that happens, the world is going to degenerate into an enormous mess. There are churches that believe that all the Christians will be taken to heaven before things turn terrible; other churches believe that the Christians will have to suffer with everyone else; her church believes that Christians have to fight to make earth worthy of Jesus’s return.

  “Do you think this is really going to happen?” I ask.

  There’s a long pause. A really long pause. CheshireCat, able to read the room for once, doesn’t start any new music.

  Finally, Nell says, “I mean, three years ago, my mother and I were going to a different church. The pastor there was insisting that the Tribulation had already started, and then one day, he just sort of reset to any day now it’s coming. Mom didn’t like that. She said if something was truly coming from God, it ought to be reliable. She moved us to the Abiding Remnant because of the Elder.”

  “Did she get a message?”

  “Yes. She got three messages, actually. The first was that she should stop worrying about what my father was doing and get on with her life. The second was that she should see an allergist because she was probably allergic to bees and should carry meds for bee stings. And the third was that she should get her car’s brakes fixed immediately because she was going to need good brakes soon.”

  “She thought those were messages from God? They all sound kind of mundane.”

  “They were right, is the thing. And specific.”

  “A hacker with access to her internet search history could have very definitely told her those first two,” CheshireCat says. “At least if she’d searched something like ‘lots of swelling bee sting’ or ‘bee sting metal taste.’”

  “She almost had a car accident the next week, though. The Elder was right about her brakes. A hacker couldn’t have caused that to happen.”

  I think about how CheshireCat hacked a self-driving car and decide I can’t tell Nell about it.

  “A hacker still could have known that she needed new brakes from an internet search,” CheshireCat said. “And if you’ve been told that you’re going to need brakes that work perfectly, it’s easy to think, Oh, that was it! if you slammed on your brakes for any reason. Humans tend to find patterns like that very readily. Human people like you and me are very good at that.”

  “Do you think the Elder is a hacker?”

  “Maybe,” I say. “I mean, he’s got a whole church full of people believing everything he says. And doing things he sends them to do.”

  “Multiple churches,” Nell says.

  “Have you or your mother ever met the Elder?” CheshireCat asks.

  “No,” Nell says. “I don’t know anyone who has.”

  If CheshireCat were a person, they would definitely have shot me a significant look at that point. Instead, they send me a text that’s just a single exclamation point.

  * * *

  I recognize Rachel’s car outside the diner when we arrive. “Do we need to bring the robot inside?” Nell asks. “Are you worried someone will steal it?”

  “Anyone who tries to steal me will be in for a surprise,” CheshireCat says.

  “Better lock the car,” I say.

  Nell follows me inside, and Rachel waves from a booth. There are three menus and glasses of water on the table, and Rachel’s sketchbook is open, the glasses of water moved safely out of the way. I slide in next to Rachel, and Nell sits across from us, her eyes going from my face to Rachel’s and back. “Nell, this is Rachel. Rachel, Nell.”

  Nell looks at Rachel’s sketch pad and her zippered pencil case, which I got her for Christmas and has a whole lot of cats on it, and says, “It’s nice to meet you.”

  “I love your hair,” Rachel says. “How long have you been growing it?”

  “I think my mother stopped cutting it when I was eleven,” Nell says, and touches it a little self-consciously. “It was already pretty long, she just stopped cutting it at all, because … anyway, it’s kind of annoying when it’s not braided, but the braids keep it out of my way.”

  We all order pancakes with a side of bacon. Nell retells her story about summer camp. Rachel carefully tears out a page from the back of her sketchbook and sharpens one of her pencils and then passes both the page and the pencil to Nell. “Can you draw a map of the property, as much as you remember?”

  Now that is a good idea. I pull out my phone and load the satellite image, and Nell draws in the long driveway leading back off the main road, the big rambling house, and then the other landmarks she remembers from her previous trip—the fire ring, the area where they pitched their tents, the lake, the hill she hiked up with Glenys.

  “Do you know where the sheds are?” I ask.

  “There are five out behind the barn,” Nell says. “They use the barn as a garage.” She draws them, a big rectangle and then five smaller rectangles.

  I take a picture of the map and say, “Sending this to my hacker friend, Cat,” and shoot Rachel a look as Nell excitedly tells Rachel about the robot in the car.

  Rachel looks at Nell and then back at me and says, “Let me get this straight. Cat—this is the Cat I know?—Cat bought a robot, shipped it to your house, and is coming along to help us out. Sending a robot along to help us out.”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “And your mom didn’t freak out?”

  “She actually doesn’t know about the robot,” I say. “All she knows is that I’m visiting you in Wisconsin and Nell drove me here.”

  “Okay,” Rachel says to Nell. “Do you have a plan? Or any thoughts?”

  Nell points to a spot near the house. “When Glenys and I ran from the fake terrorists, once the sun came up, we could see the big house from the top of this hill. That’ll let me—let us—watch. It might be better to break her out at night, but we’ll be able to see if people are outside, or if they leave.”

  “The thing about night is that it’s dark,” I say. “That’s both an advantage because they can’t see us and a disadvantage because we can’t see where we’re going. The moon’s almost new, which makes it really hard to see.”

  “I have a flashlight,” Nell says.

  “Flashlights make you really easy to see,” I say.

  “You don’t happen to ha
ve night-vision equipment, do you?” Rachel asks.

  We wind up adjourning to Nell’s car to look through what supplies and equipment we’ve got between the three of us. Rachel has a hacksaw, wire cutters, a pry bar, and an ax. “I borrowed them out of my parents’ garage,” Rachel says. Nell has two pairs of bolt cutters, a screwdriver set, a set of binoculars, and a mini hacksaw, all brand new and still in the packaging.

  Rachel looks at me. “I brought a robot,” I say, and point at the back window, where CheshireCat has the robot peering out.

  There is a brief debate about whose car to bring and whether anyone will care about the other car sitting in the lot all afternoon. We settle on Nell driving, and Rachel moving her car to the back of the lot next to a car that looks like it’s been there for a week. We get all of Nell’s brand-new tools out of the trunk and into the car so we can cut everything out of the packaging. “Hello, Rachel,” CheshireCat says as Rachel climbs into the back seat.

  “Hi, Cat,” Rachel says. “Nice robot you’re driving there. Try not to drive it into anything, okay?”

  “I will only drive it into anything if it’s necessary,” CheshireCat says.

  It’s another two hours to get to the compound. There’s a closed-down gas station near where the driveway intersects the road, and we park the car behind the gas station. The car is warm inside after hours of driving with the heater on, and we’d shed our scarves and hats and unzipped our coats; now we put everything back on for the trip through the woods.

  “What are we doing with Cat?” Nell asks, looking at the robot. “Are we bringing you?”

  “I have legs,” CheshireCat says. “I can walk with you.”

  “I bet you can’t if we’re going through the woods,” Nell says. “There’s snow. I mean, try it.” She opens the door and lifts the robot out of the car to walk around. We quickly determine that the robot can walk on packed snow and plowed ground but that it sinks into deep, loose snow and is quickly immobilized and that even a small amount of underbrush is an even worse problem than deep snow. Rachel suggests carrying the robot but changes her mind when she realizes how heavy it would be in her backpack. We wind up leaving it under the car, where CheshireCat can potentially bring it in by way of the driveway.

  My boots are also not super well-suited for tromping around in snowy woods as opposed to walking on city streets. They’re insulated but not as warm as I’d like. I’ve got wool socks, at least. We load up our backpacks with tools. It’s early afternoon and the sky is clouding over, but at least it isn’t snowing. Yet.

  The woods are quiet as Nell leads us up a slope around the back. The snow is deep in places, and the only tracks are animal tracks. It’s a long, tiring hike, even though it’s not that far as the crow flies, and I alternate between thinking about how cold the wind is and trying not to show the others how much I am freaking out. We are breaking in to a compound owned by a religious cult that used guns as props to scare a bunch of their own teenagers, which means they definitely have guns and they’re also terrible people. I keep thinking I hear someone else’s footsteps crunching through the woods, but every time, it’s just some sort of weird echo of our own steps, or the wind making trees rattle against each other.

  Finally, we come out to a clearing at the top with a picnic table and a clear path down to the house. “How well can they see us?” Rachel asks. None of us are sure. I brush snow off the picnic table benches, we sit down, and Rachel digs out the binoculars.

  Nell takes a look. “I don’t know if anyone’s even here,” she says.

  “There’s got to be,” Rachel says. “I saw a light on in the house.”

  I take the binoculars for my own look. There is a light on in the house, but just one. I don’t see any cars, but Nell mentioned they used the barn to park cars, and of course you want to park inside in January if you can.

  I see movement. “Someone’s definitely down there,” I say. Rachel holds out her hand, and I give her the binoculars.

  We watch and wait. No one seems to see us—I don’t see any pointing, hear any yelling—but my face and feet get very cold. There’s a man we see going in and out who Nell confirms is Brother Daniel. There’s another man Rachel glimpses who’s gone out of sight when Nell gets the binoculars back, and an adult woman.

  It starts to snow lightly.

  “Do you know how many adults are probably there?” Rachel asks Nell.

  “Brother Daniel. Probably Brother Malachi. I don’t know how many others.”

  “How many cars would fit in the barn, then?” Rachel asks. “Because there aren’t any cars outside.”

  Nell chews her lip. “There was an event in the barn during camp,” she says. “Probably … not more than four.”

  In midafternoon, Brother Daniel opens up the barn and brings out a snowmobile and takes off on it. A little while later, a man and a woman come out, back a minivan out of the barn, close it up, and then turn around carefully and drive away down the driveway.

  We look at each other for a minute. “This seems like our best chance,” I say.

  “Just because we only saw three adults doesn’t mean there only are three adults,” Rachel says.

  “It’s still probably our best chance,” Nell says.

  We walk down the path to the house. It’s a lot faster to wade through snow than fight underbrush, at least. I tuck my hands under my armpits, trying to warm them up through my gloves. Rachel ducks her head down against a gust of wind.

  Five sheds, all padlocked. “Can we knock?” I say. “Will she answer? Do we need to break into all five?”

  Nell pulls a glove off, puts her thumb and forefinger in her mouth, and blows a piercing whistle. Then she puts her glove back on and listens. We can hear birds around us in the woods, and very far away, the whine of a snowmobile. I’m worried it’s someone coming back.

  Then a faint answering whistle, from the middle shed.

  There’s a padlock on the door. Rachel pulls out the bolt cutters. At basically all the schools I’ve gone to, there’s some custodian with a set of bolt cutters to take the lock off your locker if they think you’re hiding something in there, and those bolt cutters usually have handles that are as long as my arm. These are more like the length of my forearm, which is why they fit in the backpack. Rachel gets the blades around the shank of the lock, but struggles for a long minute with the bolt cutters.

  “Let me do it,” Nell says, and Rachel surrenders the bolt cutters to her. Another long minute, as I listen to the distant snowmobile, trying to decide if it’s getting closer, if we need to run and hide and try this again later.

  Then there’s a crunching sound and the lock gives way. Nell yanks open the door, and there’s a girl with two long braids and a face streaked with dirt and tears, wrapped in a blanket. I know from the look on Nell’s face that this is Glenys.

  There’s a pause, and then Glenys and Nell fling their arms around each other. “Why are you here?” Glenys asks. “How did you find me? Are you in trouble?”

  “I’m here to rescue you,” Nell says, choking back a sob. “I’ve been so worried about you. No one would tell me anything. Are you okay?”

  Glenys ducks her head in a nod. “I don’t know how long I’ve been here. I should have kept track. It was a couple of days after your mother disappeared that my mother brought me. She handed me over to Brother Daniel like I was a dog who’d bitten someone and was being surrendered at the pound.”

  “We should go,” I say. “We have a car, Glenys, it’s not too far.”

  “But there’s snow and I don’t have any shoes,” Glenys says, her voice suddenly shaky.

  I’m cursing myself for not even thinking about this possibility, but Nell rips open her own backpack and out comes a pair of ratty fleece boots. “Put these on,” she says, and then sheds her own coat for Glenys as well.

  I’m pretty sure I’m hearing the snowmobile getting closer. “We should hurry,” Rachel says.

  Glenys puts her feet in the boots and
follows us without another word. “I think we should just run back along the driveway,” I say. “It’ll be faster. If we hear a car or snowmobile coming, we can run into the woods.”

  “They’ll see our tracks,” Nell objects.

  “They can see our tracks up the hill, too. Better to just get out of here as fast as we can.”

  We head up the driveway. I turn back for one last look at the house and see a face at the upstairs window. It’s a man, watching us silently. It’s not Brother Daniel. It’s not any of the people I saw through the binoculars.

  It’s Rajiv. Rajiv is here.

  23

  • Nell •

  Glenys grips my hand as we walk up the driveway as fast as I think I can make her go. She’s shaky and unsteady, and I don’t think she can run. Any more explanations can wait. I look at Steph and Rachel, who seem completely calm, like somehow everything we’ve done today is just a regular Saturday for them, even though I’m pretty sure it isn’t, and I swallow hard and try to look like I know what I’m doing.

  My stomach is churning and my face feels flushed, and it isn’t until Glenys stumbles and I hear her make a tiny sound in the back of her throat that I realize I’m furiously angry and have been since I opened the door of the shed. The Elder told me she was locked in a shed, but actually seeing her standing alone in the cold and dark—I probably ought to be afraid right now, but I’m so angry it doesn’t really leave any room for fear.

  “I’m so cold,” Glenys whispers.

  “Put on my hat,” I say, pulling it off and giving it to her. “The car has heat. It’s just a little farther.”

  “Where are we going?” she asks a minute later.

  “Somewhere safe,” I say. I have no idea where we’re going once we get to the car. Away from here, though.

  “I’m thirsty,” she says, and we stop for a second, and I hand her one of the water bottles. She drains it dry.

  The snow is coming a lot faster. It’s probably good we didn’t try to retrace our earlier path.