Subject 624

by Scott Ferrell

  “We need to figure out what’s going on,” she said. “That wasn’t my dad back there. He was never a violent man. And he changed. Physically.” She let out a short laugh, then sniffled. “He’s a nerd. A typical dork who geeks out on chemistry. He usually has the stereotypical nerd body.”

  “Maybe we should take this to the police.” I held up the flash drive.

  “You think that’ll help?” Nathen asked. “They didn’t care one bit when she tried to report her dad missing.”

  “This is different,” I said. “We have proof.”

  “Of what? Mr. Walker had a folder with a bunch of files with company logos on it. So what? For all we know, all that stuff could really be lunch budgets and stuff.”

  “With Lindström and Sterling logos all over the place?”

  “Conor’s right,” Carina said. “It can’t be a coincidence.”

  “If that is real stuff, why would he even have it?” Nathen demanded. “He’s a high school principal.”

  “His wife worked at Lindström,” Carina said.

  “The one who left him last year?” Nathen asked, glancing at her through the rearview mirror. “How do you know?”

  “Daddy mentioned her,” she replied. “He said she left him because she wanted to take a job in Germany or some place and he didn’t want to leave.”

  “So, she just handed over a bunch of company files to her soon to be ex-husband before she left?”

  “I don’t know, Nathen.” Carina sounded distant. Worn thin. “I’m just telling you he could have had access to Lindström’s files somehow. It’s not as out of the blue as you think.”

  “So, if we assume it’s all important documents and stuff, we should just take it to the police,” I insisted.

  “I say we find out what’s on them before we do anything,” Nathen said, making another turn toward his house. “If they turn out to be nothing, we’ll be busted for breaking into the school. Not to mention all the damage you did.”

  I fell quiet. It’s not like I had much to say in the matter with him driving. I went where he drove. I suppose I could have jumped out of the car. A little road rash wouldn’t kill me.

  The more I thought about it, though, the stupider it sounded. Nathen was right. What was the harm in finding out what we had on that flash drive before we went running to the police?

  We pulled onto Nathen’s street and I was happy to see it deserted. There were no other cars on the road and no people in their yards. In fact, more than a few houses had their windows boarded up like the apocalypse had come knocking on a diabetic’s door like a girl scout peddling cookies.

  I wondered about my family, surprisingly for the first time that day. Mom would definitely know by now that I was gone and she’d be worried sick. Guilt crept in, but there was nothing to do about it. I’d forgotten my cell phone when I left that morning. I’d just call from Nathen’s house to let her know I was safe. Maybe Dad would be home.

  Nathen pulled into his one car driveway and killed the struggling car. “My laptop is in my room.”

  He unlocked the front door and we stepped into the dark house. The place was narrow and long like those old row houses I’d seen on TV in the major cities back east. Claustrophobic stairs on the left led to the second floor. The living room was just off to the right, leading into the dining room and the kitchen at the back.

  Nathen started to take the stairs up to his room, but stopped and backed up, forcing Carina and me into the door I was trying to close.

  “It’s probably dead,” Nathen said. “I don’t remember the last time I plugged it in. Let’s use the desktop.”

  We cut through the living room to the dining room where a small desk sat with a sleek new computer on it.

  “Fancy,” I said.

  “It’s a computer,” Nathen said nonchalantly. “It’s great for gamin’, though.”

  He wiggled the mouse and the widescreen monitor came to life. No password needed. He held out a hand and I dropped the flash drive in it. He plugged it into the USB slot and after a moment, a folder appeared with all the files from Mr. Walker’s computer.

  “You’re cut,” Carina said.

  “Huh?” Nathen looked down at his arms. He had several shallow cuts to go along with a small nick on his neck. “Ain’t no thing.”

  He apparently hadn’t made it through the window unscathed.

  “They’ll get infected,” she said.

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “Nathen.”

  “Fine, fine. There’s a first aid kit in the closet by the kitchen.”

  She went to grab it while Nathen looked over the files. None of them seemed to stand out as more important than the others.

  “So…” Nathen said. He hovered the mouse over random files.

  “I guess start at the beginning,” Carina suggested, returning with the kit. She pulled out antibiotic ointment and bandages and started patching him up while he worked.

  I wiped my hands down the front of my jeans. I was a little nervous about what we’d find in those files. Part of me wanted them to be nothing but some weird filing system Mr. Walker used to keep school expenditures hidden. Maybe these files outlined how he was shaving money off the school budget for himself. It felt horrible hoping something like that on a dead man, but I wasn’t big on shouldering the responsibility those files might hold. It tore my resolve in two.

  Nathen double-clicked the first pdf and the file opened. Lindström’s logo stared at us from the screen. Carina leaned over his shoulder to read, her nursing duty forgotten. In spite of my reservations, I did the same. The words blurred together and I found myself reading and rereading the same lines over and over again. It was like the text jumped around and teased me with their big words and odd syntax. I blinked and rubbed my eyes.

  I had a sudden desire to walk away from the chaos. I wanted nothing more to do with this whole mess, but I was conflicted. Half of me wanted to grab that flash drive and hightail it to the closest police station. The other half wanted to do any and everything possible to find our dads. Speaking of Dad…

  “I’m going to call home,” I said, suddenly anxious to make sure my family knew I was safe. Well, and more than happy to get myself away from that mess on Nathen’s computer screen.

  “You know where it’s at,” Nathen said without looking from the screen.

  Were they really reading that stuff? Even putting some distance between myself and the words on the screen did little to stop them from jumping around like they were at a rave or something. I stepped to the counter that separated the kitchen from the dining room and grabbed the cordless off the wall. I pushed the first button in my home phone number, but nothing happened. Normally the keypad would light up when anything was done on the phone. I held it to my ear. Nothing. I pushed a few random buttons but got no lights or dial tone.

  “It’s not working,” I said.

  Carina looked up from the computer screen, a worried look on her face. Nathen, however, didn’t stop reading. He reached into his pocket, pulled out his cell phone, and held it up for me to use.

  I took it, swiped the screen to unlock it, and brought up the contacts list. I found my home number and pressed the green phone button. I had it halfway to my ear when the phone beeped. I looked at the screen. A message displayed on it. The call could not connect. Please try again. I did with the same results. I checked the top bar.

  “There’s no signal,” I said.

  “What?” Nathen finally turned from the computer.

  “You’ve got no bars.”

  Carina pulled her cell out but shook her head after a quick check. “This can’t be good.”

  “Where are your parents, again?” I asked Nathen, fighting off the rush of jealousy at the thought of Nathen and Carina spending the previous night here. Alone.

  “Park City,” he said. “They gotta be worried sick. If those don’t work,” he nodded at the phone in my hand, “I should e-mail them.” He turned back to the computer. “W
eird. Internet is down.”

  “What?” My voice sounded strange. Trying to control the rush of rage had tightened my throat.

  “The interwebs have gone bye-bye,” he said, spinning around in the chair.

  That piece of information settled in my gut, wiggling my worry around like a worm in the rain. “I need to check on my family.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Carina said, her soft hand coming to rest on my arm.

  I felt my muscles knot tighter than a five-year-old’s shoelaces. “You don’t have to. You and Nathen look over those files or whatever.” I didn’t give her a chance to argue. I was moving to the front door.

  “Oh, okay,” she said.

  “Lock the door behind me.”

  I risked a glance back as I opened the door. Carina was looking at me, worry knotting her brows, but it didn’t last long. I heard her say, “Can you print those out? My eyes hurt looking at that screen” as I closed the door behind me.

  9:24 p.m.

  I ran the whole way home. Partially because I needed to find out if my family was okay and partially to burn off the anger that had built inside me. I felt guilty for feeling jealous. I mean, last night Carina had just discovered her dad missing. I doubted she spent the night making out with Nathen on his couch, but that was an image I couldn’t shake out of my head. It made me want to punch him in his smirking mouth. Sure, he had a thing for Clarissa, but she never gave him the time of day. Could Carina be his backup plan?

  I knew I was being stupid. Carina would never be anybody’s backup plan. If anybody tried that mess, she would laugh in his face and walk away with a middle finger raised over her shoulder. I knew that, but I just couldn’t shake that jealous side of me.

  I ran up our front walk and burst through the front door. “Mitchell? Harris? Mom?”

  Silence greeted me.

  “Dad?”

  The whole house was quiet—the kind of quiet that leaves room for the hum of various electric appliances.

  I realized I held the ruined knob that used to be attached to the front door in my hand and dropped the twisted chunk of metal. I had moved through the living room by the time it clattered on the hardwood floor.

  “Mom!” I called out.

  I glanced in the kitchen on my way to the stairs. Maybe they were hiding out upstairs. Why didn’t they answer me?

  I stopped, my foot hovering over the bottom step. I backed up to the kitchen and stood at the arched entrance, staring at the backdoor—or more accurately, the dark backyard beyond it. The door itself hung motionlessly open like a gaping mouth of surprise.

  I gripped the wall to my right. Mom wouldn’t leave the back door open. She wouldn’t. Especially with everything going on in town. She used to yell at me for leaving the door open when I was a kid. She never broke out the “born in a barn” question but came very close to it.

  My fingers dug painfully into the drywall and my brain buzzed. I thought I should call out again. I thought I should run upstairs to check for them. My parents’ bedroom. That would be the logical place to hide. It was the room furthest from the front door and had a small balcony at the back that would provide a quick escape if needed. I should have checked. I didn’t.

  A chunk of drywall ripped away from the wall and I staggered, deprived of my stabilizer. I didn’t check the rest of the house. I knew they were gone.

  My only hope was that they had left on their own account. A tiny hope, really. Nonexistent. They wouldn’t leave without me. Mom would sit in that house waiting for me while World War III broke out around her if she had to.

  I struggled to grab on to a coherent thought. My head swam with anger. I threw the chunk of drywall. It smashed into the wall on the far side of the kitchen, taking out a glass on its way. It bounced off the wall and back across the counter where it knocked something to the floor.

  I crossed the kitchen and knelt to pick it up. Dad’s work badge. His name, Jacob Ferguson, was printed below the company’s logo and name. Salt Lake Pharmaceuticals. I stared at it as my mind cleared a bit. A vision, or memory, settled in the forefront. Nathen’s computer screen and the document I was having trouble reading. The words were all still mostly jumbled, but three words were clear in my memory. Salt Lake Pharmaceuticals.

  Just as a sliver of clarity slashed across my mind, everything went dark.

  Chapter 22

  9:46 p.m.

  I burst through Nathen’s door, causing him and Carina to scream. They stood in the middle of the living room, looking at a piece of paper by the light of a cellphone. All items wound up on the floor as they nearly jumped out of their shoes.

  “The powers out!” I yelled.

  Funny how the obvious was what came out first.

  “We noticed,” Carina said as she stooped to gather up the stuff they had dropped.

  “I told you to lock that!” I slammed the door and twisted the deadbolt.

  “Chill, Bro,” Nathen said.

  “Don’t ‘chill, Bro’ me!”

  He opened his mouth to say something but closed it, a look of confusion on his face. I’d never talked to him like that. Not that harshly. Not even the other morning. Apparently snapping at him was the way to shut him up when I really needed him to.

  “Conor,” Carina said calmly, “what’s going on?”

  “They’re gone,” I said, pacing over to the computer. It sat there dead. I don’t know why I expected it to work in the blackout.

  “Who’s gone?” Nathen asked.

  “The power’s out,” I said again.

  “We’ve been through this,” Carina said cautiously.

  “You said you were going to print it out.” I checked the printer’s finishing tray. It was empty. “You didn’t print it out?”

  “Conor—” Carina said.

  “You said you were going to!”

  “Conor—”

  “How are we supposed to figure out where they are if you didn’t print it out?”

  “Conor!” Nathen’s tone was that of a normal conversation, but the word boomed around the room, rattling pictures and knickknacks.

  I stopped with my mouth open in the act of yelling at them for not printing out the documents.

  “We did print them.” Carina held up the sheets of papers they had dropped when I stormed in. “What’s going on, Conor? Who’s gone?”

  I stalked around the couch, ignoring the completely invented image of them making out on it, and took the papers from her. I looked at them, but couldn’t make any sense of the jumble of words. “What language is this?”

  “English.” Nathen drew the word out like it should have been obvious.

  I flipped through the pages. All I could make out was Lindström Research and Development and Sterling Securities logos. I guess I expected to see Salt Lake Pharmaceuticals logo as well, but it was nowhere to be found.

  “This is it?” I asked. “There were more files than this.”

  “We—” Nathen started.

  “We didn’t get them all printed before the power went out,” Carina answered.

  “What? There was plenty of time before the power went out. What were you doing?” I demanded.

  “Well—” Nathen started.

  “We couldn’t find paper,” Carina said, then added, “for the printer.”

  “We need to find where it mentions Salt Lake Pharmaceuticals.” I thrust the small stack at Carina.

  “Isn’t that where your dad works?” she asked, shuffling through the stake. “What’s going on, Conor?”

  “They’re gone!” I yelled. “We have to find them.”

  Through the haze of blind panic, I saw realization dawn on her face.

  “Oh,” she breathed. Her eyes widened. “Oh! Conor…”

  “I know I saw dad’s company mentioned in there somewhere.” I started pacing the living room like a caged lion. I wanted to punch something.

  “Somebody care to tell me what’s going on here?” Nathen asked.

  “His dad is miss
ing, too, remember?” Carina answered.

  “Yeah, but—” He cut himself off. “Oh.”

  “We have to find them,” I moaned. My tone went from Grade A pissed to pleading.

  “We’ll find them,” Carina said, but I didn’t hear much conviction in her voice. She brought her cell phone to life and used the backlight to shine on the papers. “I saw the mention of your dad’s company in here, too.”

  Nathen took the phone from her while she flipped through the pages.