“What was that?” asked the higher-voiced officer.
“Book drop,” called the woman employee.
Winston stepped closer to the book drop and tried to peer into the opening. The angle up the metal slide was impossibly steep, and, skinny as he was, not even Winston could hope to climb through a book drop door.
The elevator bell chimed again.
“Babits,” said the deeper-voiced officer. “Wait by the elevator there, will ya? Just for a minute. I’m not sure we’re alone down here.”
“OK,” answered a new voice, sounding just around the corner of the room’s entrance.
They were trapped and had only seconds left until being discovered. Could they hide? Could they burrow like worms into the canvas book bin and hide under the surface? No, not enough time.
Winston gripped his hair, wanting to scream in frustration as he scanned from side to side, to the ceiling — anywhere.
All they had were shadows, but it wouldn’t be enough.
Winston pointed at the book drop opening and mouthed the word “climb.” Shade looked from Winston’s face to the opening and back again, clearly finding the request impossible.
Winston stepped behind Shade and shoved him toward the book drop. “Try!” Winston hissed next to his friend’s ear.
Shade gingerly approached the canvas book bin and put one leg over its side. The thing was stained and stitched in a dozen visible places, and it seemed likely to split. Miraculously, though, the fabric held. Winston held the bin from rolling as Shade’s weight shifted. The springs under the bin’s platform creaked, but Winston was able to dampen most of the noise by supporting the platform’s edge with his foot.
Shade pressed his hands to the inside of the metal slide, brought up his other leg, then got one knee over the lip of the chute. Winston put both hands under Shade’s butt and pushed. Shade wriggled into the chute, groping for a handhold and a way to let the rubber of his tennis shoes help him climb the slick surface. The sides of the little tunnel were barely wider than Shade himself, and his backpack rubbed on the chute’s top, making the effort even more cramped.
Winston came up right behind him. He got one leg into the book bin, then the other, trying not to let the bin roll or creak. He glanced up, hoping that Shade would offer a helping hand, but no such luck. Shade was scrambling for his own ways to get farther and higher in the chute without making any noise.
“This back door is locked,” called one officer. “Is there any way through here?”
Quick footsteps.
“No,” said the woman. “It would trigger an alarm if it was opened. No one ever uses that.”
“Right.” Short pause. “Tony, you go check that side. I’ve got this.”
Multiple sets of footsteps.
Winston got one knee over the chute’s lip. He pushed against the sides of the metal slide as Shade had, trying to use the pressure to help pull himself up, but he didn’t have Shade’s upper body strength. Even worse, his palms were slick with sweat. As he tried to heave himself up, his left palm suddenly slipped free and squeaked loudly along the smooth sheet metal. Winston completely lost any hold he’d had and dropped.
Something clamped over his wrist.
As his legs dangled over the canvas bin, Winston found Shade’s top half hovering over him. His bottom half had somehow vanished into the shadows.
“I heard—” one officer said.
“Check it,” answered the other.
The walking turned into jogging. Thud-thud-thud-thud.
Stifling his grunts, face turning purple in the shadows, Shade heaved Winston up.
Winston got both feet over the chute’s bottom edge. Shade shifted and got a hand under Winston’s armpit and continued pulling. Winston braced both feet against the left wall of the chute and tried carefully walking upward as Shade yanked on him. Neither boy dared to breathe.
Suddenly, a rectangular light appeared high above them. Silhouetted shapes shifted across the tiny opening. Something slid toward Winston, and he barely had time to lift his butt off the slide before the first of four books slid under him and plopped into the canvas bin below. High above, someone sneezed, and the metal flap of the Eleventh Avenue drop box slammed shut.
Winston froze. Shade’s arms trembled with exertion, but he stopped trying to pull Winston up and only held him steady. At the slide's end, Winston saw an arm reach into the book bin and grab the top title.
“Theodore Rex,” said the officer. Winston could see the hand flip the book over to expose the back cover.
“My wife just said I should read that,” said the other cop, farther away.
The hand tossed the book back into the bin. Footsteps walked away from the chute opening.
“I’ve got nothing over here,” said the nearby officer. “You?”
“No.”
“What are you looking for?” asked the woman.
“We can’t really say. I’m sure it’s nothing. If we actually found it here, in a library, I’d eat my badge.”
The footsteps continued to grow fainter. Shade carefully reached down and got a hand under Winston’s other armpit. He let out a quiet sigh of relief as he was better able to support Winston’s weight in his awkward position.
“Having three of us down here is stupid. Lee, how about the stairs? I’ll check the sub-basement. Babits, keep an eye on the elevator.”
The two other officers mumbled agreement and the formerly purposeful footsteps turned into shuffling. Winston waited until it sounded like no one was nearby, then he whispered, “Up.”
Shade resumed lifting Winston’s torso and Winston walked his feet up the wall. Winston got about level with Shade and felt the upright side of the chute under his forward foot stop, giving him a blunted edge on which to rest some of his weight.
“Scoot over the edge like me,” breathed Shade near Winston’s ear.
Winston did so, first getting the backs of his knees over the slide's lip, then his thighs. When his hips were balanced on the ledge, he turned over and took his own weight.
“This is really uncomfortable,” whispered Shade. “I don’t know how long I can stay up here.”
“How far down is the drop?” asked Winston.
“Dunno.”
Winston figured it would only be six or seven feet. It made sense that there would be an empty space behind the slanting chute, just like the storage area under most stairs.
“Try to hold on for a bit. Can you find a foothold?”
“No! I’m trying to—”
Shade’s foot banged into the side of the chute. The thing rang out with a loud bonggg that must have been audible throughout the basement.
In the dimness, Winston saw Shade’s eyes grow wide with fright.
Suddenly, Winston reached out, grabbed one of the straps on Shade’s backpack, and yanked him forward. Without waiting to explain, Winston reached over Shade’s head, pulled across the top zipper of his pack, and reached inside the bag. A second later, he drew out the hardback copy of Algebra and Trigonometry: Structure and Method. Winston set the book flat on the slide. Using both hands, he let go of the book and pushed himself up and back. The book slid downward as his body fell free from the chute.
Winston’s feet hit hard dirt. Shade landed a few feet away, and Winston heard the textbook smack into the canvas book bin, causing several volumes to shift around.
Distant footsteps approached. Winston reached out for Shade and found him in the nearly total blackness under the chute.
“Not a sound,” he breathed.
The footsteps grew louder, and an officer called out, “Quite a racket from this thing.”
“Yeah,” said the male library worker, sounding much farther off. “Sometimes people just chuck stuff. Every so often, people shout down to us, calling for hobbits or whatever. We don’t reply.”
Winston heard the footsteps stop and a shuffling sound that had to be the officer moving around books in the bin. He heard a click, and then a flas
hlight beam appeared on the chute ceiling above them. It provided enough light for Winston to see that they were in a triangular, sloping space, just as he’d suspected. A thick layer of dust coated the cement floor. The walls near the chute slide were painted black, but otherwise the place was blank gray concrete that apparently hadn’t been touched in many years. Winston wondered if even the librarians knew about this spot.
The light moved about for a few seconds before clicking off. Officer Babits walked away to resume his post by the stacks room entrance.
The boys remained motionless for what felt like an eternity, but after what was probably three or four minutes, the other two officers returned.
“Nothing,” one said.
“Same,” said another.
“Alright,” sighed the deeper-voiced policeman. “Babits, stick around for a while, just to be sure. We’ll probably be out of here within the hour, soon as whoever called this shows up and figures out it was a wild goose chase.”
The officers called the elevator and were gone.
“We can’t stay here,” whispered Shade, pulling Winston close.
“I know.” Winston could see nothing around them. He had no idea how to get out of this hidey-hole, much less out of the library. “Believe me, I know.”
15
Grievous Engagements
Bledsoe wrinkled his nose at the stench. No sooner had he stepped out of the second-floor elevator than he wanted to get back in and delegate this to someone else. The retirement home reeked of human waste, not just excrement but also of fear, desperation, and regret. It pressed into Bledsoe’s mouth and nose, wanting to dig into his brain. No amount of disinfectant could cover it up. It was the smell of people with no more purpose, who lay in bed rotting like old fruit waiting to be thrown out. They had nothing left to add to the world. All they could do was leech away its resources.
He glanced at the signs on the wall and turned left. An orderly behind the nurse’s station desk smiled at him. He walked past her, uninterested in pleasantries.
Room 219. Donald Allen.
Despite his distaste, Bledsoe chuckled to himself and stood in the open doorway, only glancing at the paper flowers and grass taped to the side wall. Near the ceiling on the far wall, a TV showed two announcers, one male and one female. A blue banner across the top of the screen bore the words “BREAKING NEWS” while a red banner across the bottom carried the headline “FBI: Portland Teen Sought in Terrorist Connection.”
Bledsoe nodded with satisfaction and glanced at his watch. 12:02. Right on cue to catch the lunchtime buzz. Half of Portland would be primed to hunt down the Chase brat if he slipped past them. This way, everyone would be glued to the news, waiting to do Bledsoe’s work if he needed them to. Meanwhile, the president’s ever-tightening security efforts would get a public relations boost. Why, of course we need more surveillance and drones. Look at all the terrorists running around!
A photo of Winston standing in front of a bank teller appeared between the two news anchors.
“We don’t have a name yet,” said the female announcer. “However, the suspect did arrive yesterday afternoon at a Southeast Portland bank, withdrew several items from a safe deposit box, and exchanged thousands of dollars of old U.S. bills for smaller denominations. The old bills were subsequently confirmed by the FBI as counterfeit and the deposit box may have been rented by an individual with ties to the Hezbollah terrorist organization.”
“The FBI notes that the suspect may be armed and is believed to be carrying potentially radioactive explosives,” added the male announcer. He turned to his colleague and shook his head. “Our own youth. This is really serious, Mary.”
“I have a son this age, Ron,” she said. “I’ll be honest. This sort of thing is just terrifying.”
From inside the room, a man let out a strangled yell. A remote control flew through the air and crashed against the wall a good two or three feet below the television, sending bits of plastic, buttons, and batteries flying in every direction.
“I know,” said Bledsoe as he walked into the room. “A terrifying terrorist. Who writes this stuff?”
Bledsoe passed the bathroom corner and sat down on the bed right next to his target’s left arm. The nurse’s report had prepared Bledsoe to expect someone old, but seeing the man up close almost took his breath away. His one-time friend appeared exactly how this place smelled: ghostly pale, sagging, spotted, and decaying. If not for the eyes, Bledsoe would have sworn he had the wrong man.
Those eyes took in Bledsoe, seeing his dark hair, the outline of his cheeks, the color and shape of Bledsoe’s own eyes, and grew wide.
“What happened to you, Claude?” Bledsoe asked. “I think your plastic surgeon got a little carried away.”
The oldster opened his mouth, but Bledsoe reached over and clamped his left hand over it. With his right, he brought up the small syringe of amber-colored sedative he’d been keeping in his jacket pocket. Bledsoe pulled off the protective cap with his teeth and jammed the needle into Claude’s neck. He depressed the plunger. Claude’s cry of shock and pain was much quieter than his outrage over the television.
“Where’s the Alpha Machine, Claude?” Bledsoe asked.
After a few seconds, he let up on the pressure over the old man’s mouth. Showing impressive restraint, Claude didn’t try to call out. He only furrowed his brow and clenched his jaw in stubborn resistance.
Bledsoe made a tsk-tsk sound as he removed the needle and tossed it in the nearby trashcan. That big male nurse on the payroll here would clean things up.
“No? You don’t remember? Or you just don’t feel like sharing?” asked Bledsoe in his Southern sing-song. He waited a moment for any response, but Claude’s silence wasn’t surprising. “Nothing? That’s too bad. The good news is that we have a bunch of new scanning and analysis techniques. I don’t fancy all that old-fashioned torture stuff. Where’s the learning and science in that? I’ve got newer and better toys to play with. Still, who knows? We might get lucky and just pick up the boy down at the Central Library—” He checked his watch. “—right about now.”
Claude’s nose flared with a sharp intake of breath, and his eyes grew cold. Good. There was still a fighter buried somewhere in all that droopy, withered flesh.
“When did you arrive?” Claude asked in a low, sandpaper growl.
Bledsoe cocked his head, wondering if he should keep from volunteering any information, but he decided there was no harm in it.
“You mean when did you and Amanda abandon me? November 7, 1989. Two days before the Berlin Wall fell.”
Claude took a moment to process this. “You didn’t exactly give me time to consider which future to pick…while you were trying to kill me.”
“My friend.” Bledsoe opened his hands in a display of innocence. “I never wanted to kill you. Not back in the ‘40s, anyway. Besides, I think everything happened as it did for a reason. Maybe you picked the best time possible. It gave me more time to smell the roses.”
“Somehow, I doubt that.”
Bledsoe laughed. He stood, walked to the far corner, and turned off the TV. Then he bent over and grabbed the end of the paper garden in his hand. Slowly, savoring the sound of tearing, he began ripping it away from the wall.
“Funny how the boy ended up befriending you. I always wondered if our little band would get back together somehow.”
“If you hurt Amanda—” Claude began.
“I would never hurt Amanda!” Just like that, his temper snapped like an overwound spring. One muscle at a time, he forced the smile back to his lips. “You will be amazed how much I won’t hurt her.”
The old man’s eyelids started to droop, and he blinked them several times, trying to rouse himself.
“You never cared much about not hurting people,” he said. “Not toward the end, anyway.”
The male nurse walked into the room, large and imposing, carrying two duffel bags. He nodded at Bledsoe and disconnected their patient from his IV drip
.
“I don’t think you really understand me,” Bledsoe said. “I’ve always wanted what’s best for people.”
“Your people.”
“Our people,” Bledsoe corrected him. “Our people. Americans. We left right as the Cold War was starting back home, when we still grieved every night for those we’d lost. Then I land here—” He gestured out the room’s small window at the world beyond it. “The Soviet Union fell. We lost our only decent rival in the world.”
“That’s a bad thing?” The old man’s words were sharp, but his head started to wobble a bit, as if he were dizzy.
“You wouldn’t think so,” said Bledsoe. “But it turned out to be the worst disaster in this country’s history.”
“Because we won.”
“Because we stopped being scared and working together. We got fat and lazy. Can you imagine today’s America enduring the rationing and sacrifices we did during the war? People would be flooding the streets and rioting. ‘Oh, God, you can’t take gasoline!’ ‘How will I ever put the next Disneyland trip on my credit card?’ ‘You can’t ration coffee — I need my five-dollar latte!’”
The old man gave him a drowsy smirk. “So…what? You’re going to become a motivational speaker?”
Bledsoe sat back down beside the man and leaned in close, speaking quietly, almost like a conspirator sharing a secret. “The Russians exploded their first A-bomb in 1949. We destroyed Hiroshima with sixteen kilotons, but by 1953, when Stalin died, the Soviets were airdropping four hundred kilotons a pop. Just imagine how things might have gone differently if we’d hit them in, say, 1950 or ‘51. Just completely knocked out their military before it was armed and then walked in with QV-enhanced troops immune to the radiation.”
For a moment, the drowsiness evaporated from his former friend’s eyes, and Claude stared agape. “You can’t be serious.”
“Of course not!” Bledsoe gave the old man’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze and felt a pang of both sadness and revulsion at its boniness.
Winston Chase and the Alpha Machine Page 16