“And Granger,” Kent added.
“Yeah, Granger,” I said with no enthusiasm.
“Hard to believe that guy’s on our side,” Tori muttered.
“But he is,” Kent said. “He’s SYLO and SYLO is all about stopping the Retros.”
Tori stared at the ground. Her jaw muscles were working. It was Granger who ordered the attack on the camp of rebels that killed her father. Though it turned out that the attack was about rooting out Retro infiltrators, knowing that Granger was responsible for the death of her father was hard for her to deal with.
We rounded the corner of one of the long barracks and stopped to face the huge steel dome looming in the distance. The early morning sun was beginning to creep up over the mountains. It threw a warm light on its silver shell.
“What is that thing? Really?” Kent asked.
“I think it’s the key to everything,” I replied. “SYLO has tried to destroy it more than once. It’s important enough that they blasted the one in Boston to dust. Who knows how many others are under construction, but this one—this one here—this is the one that counts. This is where they’re launching their attacks from. This is where they’re putting up buildings to house an invasion force. If we solve the mystery of that thing, we’ll know exactly what this war is all about.”
“So how do we do that?” Kent asked.
“We stay alive,” I said quickly. “We do whatever they ask. And we wait.”
“For what?” Kent asked.
“I don’t know. A chance. A weakness. An opportunity. We won’t know it until we see it. Maybe finding these Sounders is the answer.”
“Sounders?” Tori said. “What are Sounders?”
“A Retro soldier helped us,” Kent said. “He told us to look out for Sounders because they were our only hope.”
“So then what are they?” Tori asked with growing enthusiasm. “Where are they?”
“I think they’re right here,” I said. “All around us.”
Kent and Tori exchanged looks.
“Seriously,” I went on. “Remember that Native American guy who helped us before the raid on Area 51?”
“Yeah.”
“Something he said really stuck with me. He couldn’t believe that anyone was capable of committing such wicked crimes against their own kind.”
“I thought you didn’t buy my alien invasion theory,” Kent said.
“I don’t, but I also have trouble believing so many people could be convinced to wreak this kind of destruction on humanity. There had to be some push back. I don’t care how badly the Retros believe things are going, wiping out billions of people isn’t something you just go along with. Most of the guards are treating the prisoners worse than cattle, but a couple have gone out of their way to show a little kindness. What if some of the Retros are having second thoughts?”
“You mean like a revolution inside the revolution?” Tori asked.
“Maybe. I might be reading too much into this, but if enough of these Retros don’t want the killing to continue, the Air Force may not be as invincible as it seems.”
The giant steel monstrosity was growing brighter as light from the morning sun spread across its surface. The beast was coming to life before our eyes.
“The gate to hell,” Kent said in a soft whisper.
“Everything that’s happened, everything we’ve done, it’s all led here,” I said. “This is what’s it’s all about. The key to stopping this nightmare has got to be inside that thing.”
“Yeah,” Kent said. “I’d like to get a look inside that bad boy.”
I looked to Kent, then to Tori. Glancing around the compound I didn’t see a single Retro soldier.
“Me too,” I said. “Let’s do it.”
“What do you mean?” Kent asked, suddenly sounding uncertain. “Do what?”
“Let’s go knock on the door,” I said and started walking toward the dome.
“Whoa, wait,” Kent said, hurrying after me. “Now?”
“Why not?”
“Because they’re not going to let us just walk inside, that’s why not,” Kent argued. “Not if it’s as important as we think.”
“Only one way to find out,” I replied.
I glanced to Tori, who gave me a wink and a smile.
“Let’s do it,” she said with confidence.
The three of us strode through the empty compound, headed for the monolithic dome. I had no idea of what we might find inside but was totally confident that whatever it was, it would give us a clue as to what we should do next.
We passed several quiet barracks, moving ever closer. The sheer size of the steel structure took my breath away.
When we were roughly fifty yards away, we rounded a building and came face-to-face with a team of Retro guards. Armed guards. They strolled casually across the dusty road, seemingly bored. That is, until three prisoners walked up to them.
When they spotted us, there was a moment of surprise and confusion as if they couldn’t believe three prisoners would dare approach them, let alone three kid prisoners.
“Stop right there,” one of the guards commanded, raising his black baton.
Instantly, five of them formed a line, standing shoulder to shoulder.
“We’re looking for the bathrooms,” I said, trying to sound innocent. And dumb.
“This is a restricted area,” the guard said sharply. “You know that.”
“We just arrived,” Tori said sweetly. “Why is it restricted?”
The guard answered by firing his weapon at our feet. The charge of energy tore into the ground, kicking up a cloud of sand that washed over us and hit us in the eyes.
“All right, all right,” Kent said, backing off. “We get it. We’re going.”
The three of us turned and hurried away.
I grit my teeth, expecting to get shot from behind. We took a quick turn to put a building between us and the guards but kept moving until we felt we were a safe distance away.
“That settles one thing,” Kent said, breathless. “They don’t want anybody near that thing.”
“Which is exactly why we have to get inside,” I said.
“I don’t see how,” Tori said. “Not if they’ve got guards ringing it.”
“Neither do I,” I said. “Not yet, anyway.”
I saw movement through the windows of one of the barracks. The prisoners were waking up. Two Retro soldiers appeared and strolled toward the building, probably to start the prisoners on the new workday.
“We just have to be ready when the opportunity comes up,” I added.
“We’ll be ready,” Kent said with confidence.
“You know we will,” Tori added.
I loved those guys. Even Kent. He had become my brother.
The Retro guards started blowing whistles to wake up the prisoners. The three of us hurried back to the barracks where I had been the night before for a grand total of five minutes. My hope was that we could all blend into Blue Unit.
We reached the barracks as some familiar faces started piling out. It was an easy trick to mix into the group and move along with them as if we had been inside sleeping all night. The fact that the Retros didn’t keep names or seem to care about who any of us really were gave me confidence that we wouldn’t be questioned. We were numbers, not people.
The group filed into the mess hall where we were fed a decent breakfast of scrambled eggs, greasy sausage, and orange juice. I made a point of downing as much juice and water as I could get my hands on. It was already getting hot outside, which meant the day was going to be a scorcher.
As we silently followed our leader out of the mess hall and toward our workplace, I thought of the failed escape attempt the night before and the decoy demonstration. Would there be some punishment doled out? There were hundreds of prisoner
s who staged that mini-riot. If Bova didn’t think twice about murdering a prisoner for trying to sneak a drink of water, I hated to think of what he might do to the group who tried to help others escape.
When our unit marched past the field where the demonstration had taken place, I had my answer. There was going to be punishment, but not the physical kind.
At first I thought there was a line of orange-clad prisoners standing shoulder to shoulder across the clearing, but as we got closer I realized that the coveralls were empty. They were strung up by a long line that was threaded through the sleeves, giving the illusion that people were standing side-by-side. It was a creepy sight that I didn’t understand at first.
But Tori did.
“It’s them,” she whispered so the guards couldn’t hear.
“Them who?” Kent asked.
“The ones who tried to escape on the bus. Their numbers are on those coveralls.”
We were being marched around the clearing to view the grisly display. These orange suits were symbolic of the fifty or so people who were incinerated on the bus. I didn’t know any of them but it still hit me hard. I could only imagine what the other prisoners who were part of the doomed plan felt like.
Many prisoners kept their eyes on the ground while others seemed to be steeling themselves to look at the macabre memorial. Several were crying.
Bova knew exactly what he was doing. He didn’t need to physically punish these people. Hell, they were already driven to the edge of insanity by the hard work under the desert sun. What he was doing was much worse. This was a psychological beat down. He was taking away any hope they had for escape and shoving it down their throats. No words were needed. No speeches or warnings. No games. The sight of those empty coveralls was torture enough.
We were forced to march around the large field three times. By that time the sun was up and the temperature was climbing. Our workday hadn’t even begun and we were already burned out.
Our unit finally broke away from the main group and we were led to our workplace for the day. The steel-haired woman Retro guard met us at a new structure that already had a cement slab poured. At first I was happy we wouldn’t be digging dirt anymore. That relief was short-lived when we learned what our job was going to be.
“There are thirty trucks loaded with lumber for the construc-tion of this building,” the woman announced. “They’re sitting over there, about a hundred yards away. Our first job today is to unload those trucks and stack the lumber right here where I’m standing. I want every truck unloaded by noon. Get that done and there will be extra water distributed. That’s it. Get to it.”
That was our morning: the brutal, physical labor of unloading endless heavy lengths of lumber, carrying them a hundred yards and stacking them near the work site. It made me wish I had some better skill to offer than gardening.
There was nothing to do or say. We all just got to work. Fortunately the supervisor didn’t question why Kent and Tori were there. She probably didn’t even realize she had inherited a few extra workers. We were indistinguishable to her.
It was brutal, backbreaking work. We weren’t given gloves, which meant we ended up being jabbed with splinters on most every trip. The healing waters of the shower that night would take care of the wounds, but that didn’t help with the pain we suffered while doing the work. After only a few trips, the front of my coveralls had massive bloodstains from where I’d wiped my bleeding hands.
Kent and Tori worked together while I teamed with the woman named Scottie who had given me the heads-up on the bathrooms the night before. Fortunately she was strong, so I didn’t have to carry more than my half of the weight.
After about an hour we were given a much-needed water break. I sat next to Kent and Tori as the three of us leaned against a stack of wood. We didn’t say a word to one another. What was there to say? We made eye contact, shared quick smiles, and tried to find a sliver of shade to wait for the water carriers to come by with our meager ration.
“Attention!” the woman supervisor announced.
There were a few groans because we had only been resting for a few seconds and most people hadn’t gotten water yet.
“Inspection!” she announced.
Inspection? What the heck were they inspecting for? The three of us exchanged puzzled looks.
A jeep screamed up and stopped twenty yards from us.
“Uh-oh,” Kent muttered under his breath.
Out of the passenger side stepped Major Bova. As far as I could tell, nothing good ever happened when that guy showed up. He gave a half-hearted salute to our supervisor, who saluted back crisply.
“Forgive the intrusion,” Bova said to her. “We’d like to take a quick look at your workers.”
“Is there a problem, sir?” she asked nervously.
“No, no. You are all doing a fine job. We are looking for three individuals that arrived yesterday.”
“Prisoners come and go all the time, sir,” the woman said subserviently. “It’s hard to keep track.”
“Understood,” Bova said. “If they’re here, we’ll find them.”
He punctuated his sentence with a grin that showed no humor. Something was up and it couldn’t be good.
“This is it,” Kent whispered nervously. “He’s coming for us now. He’s gonna force the two of us to fight. I’m not going to fight you, Tucker.”
“I don’t think you’ll have to,” I whispered back. “He said he’s looking for three people, not two.”
Another soldier stepped out of the jeep. An officer. He had short blond hair and wore freshly cleaned fatigues. He stood up straight and set his gaze upon our ragged group of prisoners.
“Oh my God,” Tori whispered.
In that instant I knew exactly who these soldiers were looking for, and why. They were hunting down the three saboteurs who were responsible for destroying the entire Retro fleet of planes at Area 51.
They were looking for us.
Seeing this soldier answered a question that had been bothering me for days. When the final explosive charge erupted, destroying the massive attack craft that had wiped out Las Vegas, I had seen a mysterious dark shape blasting away from the doomed craft. It wasn’t until that moment, when the officer stepped out of that jeep, that I understood what it was.
It was an escape pod.
I thought Mr. Feit was killed in the explosion.
He wasn’t.
He was very much alive. . . . And he was here at Camp Retro looking for us.
NINE
“If he sees us we’re dead,” Tori whispered.
We were asked to line up, shoulder to shoulder, to be inspected. We stood at the end of a line of thirty people, watching Bova and Feit move closer. They strolled slowly, almost casually, past the tired, sweaty workers who wouldn’t dare look their tormentors in the eye.
Bova was more focused on Feit than on the prisoners. He had no idea of what we looked like. Feit, on the other hand, knew us all too well. Bova kept watching him for a reaction, waiting for him to identify his prey.
Us.
Feit was in no hurry. He must have known we’d either be in the camp, or dead. There was no way we could have survived the helicopter crash and made our way out of the desert alone. He looked at each person in turn, sometimes using his black baton weapon to lift their chins so he could look them square in the eye. It was like he didn’t want to actually touch any of us dirty primates with his fingers for fear we might contaminate him.
When I first met Feit on Pemberwick Island he seemed like a typical older surfer dude with long hair, a hoodie, and an earring. He was all sorts of casual . . . while dispensing a killer performance-enhancing drug to see how far he could push the human body before it crashed. His true identity wasn’t revealed until we met him again in Fenway Park, where the Retros were building another steel dome. It turned out Mr. F
eit was actually Colonel Feit of the United States Air Force and a major player in the Retros’ campaign to change the course of civilization. Later on, when we confronted him aboard the flying death machine that had obliterated Las Vegas and was headed to wipe out the remaining survivors of Los Angeles, he was amazingly cool, as if he never doubted that he was in total control.
That had changed. It was subtle, but Feit’s entire attitude was different. His laid-back surfer manner was gone. He stood military straight and moved with precision. His eyes had gone cold. It even seemed as though the sadistic Bova was wary of him. Feit’s nose looked no worse for wear, considering I had broken it when I smashed his face into the hatch of the plane we were aboard. I shouldn’t have been surprised. All it took was a dose of the magical medicine.
Feit moved from prisoner to prisoner, appraising them like pieces of meat at the grocery store.
“He’s pissed,” Kent said under his breath. “What do we do, Rook?”
I had no idea. We couldn’t just cut and run. That would be futile. We couldn’t attack him, or bargain, or turn invisible. I stood there between Tori and Kent in total brain lock.
Feit and Bova moved closer. There were halfway down the line. In seconds they’d be standing in front of us.
“It’s you, isn’t it!” a woman prisoner shouted.
Everyone looked to see that one of the prisoners had stepped out of line to call out the guy Feit was about to inspect.
The screamer was Scottie, the woman from the barracks.
“Don’t go pointing at me,” the guy she was accusing yelled back at her. “This is your fault!”
The guy gave her a shove. Scottie took a step back and then leapt at him angrily, wrapping her arms around him and pushing him back.
The entire line of prisoners swung around to see what was going on.
Feit and Bova did too.
We had our chance.
I grabbed Kent and Tori by the hand and pulled them away from the group. They didn’t need convincing. We sprinted toward the pile of lumber we had been stacking all morning and skirted around to the back side. It was the only place that was close enough for us to hide quickly. It was a weak escape at best, but better than standing there until Feit walked right up to us.
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