Subject 624

by Scott Ferrell

  “Just as annoying as ever,” I replied.

  “I think he’s kinda cute.” She laughed.

  “Oh, girl, you liking them young?” Nathen asked. “Too bad you were born a few years too soon, Conor.”

  I kicked the back of his seat, probably a little harder than I should have. He jerked forward and the car swerved a bit before he pulled it back into the right lane.

  “Ouch! You trying to get us killed?”

  “I have every faith in your driving skills,” I said, making sure the sarcasm rang like a bell.

  Carina laughed even more. Oh man, I love that laugh. Corny, I know, but there it is.

  “Take the left up here,” she said.

  9:25 a.m.

  Twenty minutes and a few more turns later, Carina declared we were nearly there.

  Nathen looked out the windows, the car rolling back and forth on the road like it had a mind of its own. It stayed in the correct lane, though. Mostly. He let out a low whistle.

  I pulled my eyes from the profile view I had of Carina (creeper, I know) and looked as well. I mouthed the word “wow.” I leaned over to get a better look out the grimy car windows.

  Large houses on well-manicured lawns lined the street. They were nice houses. And by nice, I mean nice. Some were brick, some were stucco and stone, but all of them were…well, nice. Put bluntly; these were the houses for people who had money.

  “You live here?” Nathen asked.

  “Yeah, I guess.” Carina turned away from us to look out her window.

  Nathen whistled again. “What did you say your dad did, again?”

  “It’s up here on the right.” Carina pointed to a house without looking, ignoring the question.

  I scooted over to the right side of the backseat and stared out with my mouth hanging open a bit.

  Nathen pulled into a drive between two red brick pillars. The house at the end of the driveway was matching red brick with a porch that had two large white columns on either side of the stairs that led to a pair of double doors that were mostly glass.

  Nathen pulled to the end of the drive and turned the car key. The car sputtered and died. We climbed out and Nathen whistled again.

  “Would you stop that?” Carina said, leading the way up the porch.

  “How do they get the lines so straight?” he asked.

  The sizable lawn had diagonal lines cut into the grass. Nathen had a point. It looked like they had brought in a surveyor to mark off the lawn for the mowers.

  Carina stopped at the front door and turned. “Well, you got me here. Safe and sound. I’ll see you.”

  That was a dismissal if I ever heard one and I was surprised by it. Was she really that embarrassed that her family had money? I had known she wasn’t hurting. She never wore expensive clothes, but what she did wear was usually new and well maintained. With my near stalker status, I had noticed she rarely wore the same clothes more than a few times, but I never knew it was because she could probably afford a new outfit every day of the year.

  She pulled a key from her jeans pocket and pushed it into the doorknob. The door swung open an inch or two. She hesitated, staring at the door.

  “Did your dad forget to lock the door?”

  “Never.” She shook her head. “He’s the paranoid type. This isn’t right.”

  “Ah, he probably just forgot, I bet,” Nathen said.

  “He would never. Especially considering everything going on.” She brought two fingers up to touch her lower lip, staring at the door.

  “We can just make sure everything’s okay,” I said. I stepped forward, positioning myself in front of her, and pushed on the door.

  Carina inhaled sharply.

  It swung open to reveal a short entryway that lead into a great room. Broken pieces of furniture lay on the floor. Books were scattered and torn all over the place. There were holes punched in the walls. Shattered glass was everywhere.

  “You need to fire your maid,” Nathen said.

  Chapter 13

  9:53 a.m.

  “Dad?” Carina called out.

  I gave Nathen a look and punched his arm.

  “Ouch.” He rubbed his shoulder. “What was that for?”

  “Shut up,” I hissed.

  We moved through the entry into the great room. The living room might have been like a picture in one of those fancy living magazine if it wasn’t littered with the ruins of what must have been very nice and expensive furniture. They were slashed open, stuffing hanging out like the cushions had thrown up their insides.

  Shattered glass, what remained of a picture frame, crunched under my feet as I stepped forward. An antique musket lay on the floor by the fireplace; its barrel bent at a near right angle.

  I could feel Carina’s presence right behind me as we moved into the dining area on the opposite side of the living room. The table, chairs, and decorations were similarly destroyed. One glance into the kitchen around the corner showed it just as thrashed.

  “Dad?” Carina cried out before running out of the room.

  “Carina, wait!” I called out, but she rushed back to the stairs by the entrance and took them two at a time up to the second floor.

  I hurried past Nathen to follow her.

  “This isn’t good,” he said.

  I ignored him and rushed up the stairs.

  “I’ll check the basement,” Nathen called after me.

  I stopped at the top of the stairs and leaned over the railing. “No, stay there.” The last thing I needed was for whoever had done this damage to still be in the house, ransacking the basement and Nathen walk in on them.

  I turned to find the second floor just as rummaged and in tatters as the first. I picked my way through the pieces, glancing into each bedroom as I went. Two had been sparsely furnished before being torn apart. The third, the largest by far, had received extra attention. It looked like somebody had tossed a couple of grenades in and then went through everything with a fine-toothed knife.

  “Carina?”

  “He’s not here.” Her voice came from a room off to the right.

  I picked my way around the bedroom, stepping over the debris and into the master bathroom. She sat on the toilet seat, picking at a spot on her knee with shaking fingers.

  “That’s a good thing, right? I mean, he is probably at work.”

  “He’s not answering.” She glanced at her cell phone lying on the sink beside her.

  “What about his work number?”

  She glanced at me with eyes threatening to overflow. The sight made my heart break nearly in two. She nodded and grabbed the phone. She brought up the number pad, pressed the number nine, and held it up to her ear. A receptionist answered. “Marc Hass, please,” Carina said. Another moment. “Oh, okay. Thank you.” She pressed “end” and set the phone back on the sink counter. “He didn’t go in today.”

  “Oh,” I said lamely. “That doesn’t mean—”

  “He’s been acting really weird lately, Conor,” she interrupted.

  “Oh,” I said again. “How?”

  She shrugged. “Just acting crazy. Coming and going at weird times. Muttering to himself. Snapping at every little thing I do.”

  “Everybody’s been on edge lately,” I said.

  “Yeah, I guess,” she muttered. “Should we call the police?”

  I wanted to tell her no. I wanted to reassure her that everything was fine. I wanted to say there was no need for the police and I was sure he’d show up out of the blue and we’d all laugh at how silly we were, but I just couldn’t. I’d seen what was going on out there firsthand and there was no telling what happened to him if was out at night. I stepped over the towel rack on the floor and picked up her phone to hand it to her.

  “That’s probably a good idea. And you can keep trying to call him.”

  A tear slid down her cheek as she looked at the phone in my hand. She nodded and took it from me.

  “Let’s grab Nathen and get out of here. You can call from the road
.”

  “Where will I go?” she asked as we walked back to the stairs.

  “Do you have any family nearby?” It was really starting to dawn on me exactly how little I knew about her.

  “My grandparents live in Brigham City,” she said.

  “We can talk Nathen into driving you there.” We came to the bottom of the stairs to find Nathen gone. “Nathen!”

  “Don’t yell,” he said from right behind me, coming up the stairs leading down into the basement. “There’s nothing down there but more of the same. Saw your room, Carina. It wasn’t pretty.”

  She nodded but said nothing.

  “Didn’t I tell you to stay here?” I asked him.

  “Yeah, because you’re the boss?”

  “Do you need anything?” I asked Carina. “Clothes or something? I can go down to get it,” I offered.

  “No, I have stuff at my grandparents’. Let’s just get out of here.”

  We headed back to Nathen’s car.

  “Where to now?” he asked once we had piled in.

  “Brigham City,” I said as Carina dialed 911.

  “Uh, we’re going to Brigham City?”

  “Yeah, we are. Carina’s grandparents live there and I think it’s best she get out of town anyways.”

  He cranked the car twice before it turned over and reached around the steering wheel to tap on the dash above the gas gage. It stubbornly stayed just above the red empty line.

  “If I’m driving up there, I’m going to need gas.” He turned to look at me in the backseat. “And I’m broke.”

  “I have money,” Carina said, pressing end on her touchscreen.

  “What did they say?” Nathen asked.

  She laid the phone in her lap and itched at a spot on her forearm. “‘An adult can’t be considered missing until after twenty-four hours,'” she quoted in a nasally voice. “They can’t even get somebody out here. With everything going on, home invasions are a low priority if nobody is hurt.”

  “What? That’s stupid!” Nathen exclaimed. “Your dad could be hurt or dead or something.”

  “Nathen!” I wanted to reach over the seat and smack him upside the head. Of all the stupid things to say.

  “Let’s just get out of here,” Carina said. She twisted her arm behind her to itch between her shoulder blades. “Stop wherever for gas. I’ll pay.”

  10:23 a.m.

  We passed three gas stations before Nathen found one without a long line of cars stretching out of the parking lot into the streets. The store was a dingy box with pumps that still had numbers that spun around to indicate the cost and gallons. The prices had been marked all the way up to $9.99 a gallon. No wonder nobody lined up to get gas there.

  Carina rebuffed Nathen’s refusal to allow her to pay those kinds of prices. I silently agreed with Nathen, but she wouldn’t have it. The place was the quickest to get in, out, and on the road up to Brigham City.

  Carina climbed out of the car to go inside to prepay, as indicated by a handwritten note taped to the pump.

  “Watch your arms and legs while you’re in there!” Nathen called out to her. “They might want those, too.”

  Twelve gallons and over $100 later, Nathen peeled out of there as fast as his old Camry could go. Which wasn’t very fast, but pushing the pedal all the way down to the floor made him feel better. It didn’t put us in any immediate danger, so I didn’t complain.

  Making our way through the winding streets toward I15 proved to be slow going. Cars crowded the streets, honking and pushing their way in and out of traffic. Apparently, we weren’t the only ones who had the idea of getting out of town.

  “Oh, no,” Carina whispered, lowering the phone from trying to call her dad again.

  “You gotta be kiddin’ me!” Nathen exclaimed.

  I leaned forward to look out the windshield. Cars stretched out in front of us for blocks, leading to a traffic jam heading up the onramp to the interstate.

  “We’re not going anywhere in that,” Nathen said.

  “We don’t have a choice,” I said. “We need to get Carina up to her grandparents.”

  “Maybe I should just go back home,” Carina suggested.

  “No way!” Nathen and I said at the same time.

  “What if my dad comes home?” she asked.

  “Then he’ll call and find you safe.”

  “Where am I going, then?”

  “You can stay with me,” I said. “I mean, with my family.”

  “And sleep where?” Nathen asked.

  “I can sleep on the couch,” I said.

  “You think she wants to be sleepin’ on your teenage boy smellin’ bed?”

  “Nathen—” I began.

  “He’s right,” Carina cut in. “Nathen has a spare bedroom. Besides, I’ve seen more than enough of your brother in those shorts to last a lifetime,” she said with a small smile back at me. She rubbed a spot on her arm with a thumb.

  I clenched my jaw and tried to come up with a good excuse to convince her to stay at my place. I wanted to protect her. I wanted to be the one who was there for her while her dad was missing. I wanted to…

  “It’s settled then!” Nathen said. He pulled on to a side street. The lane heading away from the interstate was clear and easy going. “To my house!”

  I wanted to say, “Hey Carina, I can punch a hole through a person’s chest if I wanted to, so you should come to my house and I’ll protect you.” Instead, I sighed and relented. Not because their arguments were all that convincing, but because I knew I was going out that night. I couldn’t very well protect her while out beating the crap out of punks.

  11:20 a.m.

  They dropped me off at my house on the way to Nathen’s. I stood on the sidewalk and watched them drive away. Every bone in my body screamed for me to go after them. If I had to, I’d protect both of them.

  What was I supposed to do? Stay home to protect my family? Go to Nathen’s to protect my friends? Or do I go out and do my best to help fix whatever was going on out there?

  I had no idea where this gift of mine came from and I had no idea what responsibility I held with it. Protect those who mattered to me or do what I could to help the city. It weighed on me like a freight train tied to my ankles as I shuffled inside. The answer should have been obvious. I should stay and protect my friends and family, but I wanted nothing more than to go out and bust some skulls.

  Mom and the little bothers were huddled on the couch, staring at the TV. I stood behind the couch to see what they were watching. Images from around the city flashed around on the screen.

  “What are you doing home this early,” Mom asked with a glance of concern over her shoulder.

  “School’s been canceled.”

  “Is it really that bad?”

  I shrugged. “I guess. A lot of people are trying to leave the city.”

  If possible, the look on her face grew even more worried. “Maybe we should, too.”

  “Nobody’s going anywhere,” I replied. “The interstate is a mess.”

  “We should really consider it when your father gets home. I’m sure it’s not that bad.” She turned back to the TV.

  A reporter sat behind a large wood-veneered desk. He looked even faker than the reporter lady who was attacked that morning. Was his hair a chunk of sculpted plastic?

  “…going live out to City Hall,” he was saying, “where Vincent Sterling of Sterling Securities is coming out to speak to gathered reporters.”

  The picture cut to a man in his 60s walking out of the castle-looking building that was City Hall. He stepped to a podium with a microphone poking out the top. It was an almost majestic image with the large arches reaching up behind him.

  “He kinda looks like Grandpa,” Harris said as the camera zoomed in closer on Mr. Sterling.

  “All old people look alike,” Mitchell retorted.

  “True that,” Harris concurred.

  “Shh,” Mom shushed.

  I couldn’t have disagreed
more with the twins. Besides a slightly bulbous nose and a prominent chin, the man looked nothing like Grandpa. Mr. Sterling’s slightly overlarge blue eyes looked like they could pierce concrete. They were knowing and sharp. Grandpa’s hair was always perpetually in disarray while the man on the TV had his slicked back from his forehead. Not a single strain out of place.