by Derek Milman
“Oh, Aidan.” He’s shaking his head at me.
Now, this I don’t like: being patronized by a terrorist who’s a little bit in love with his own (admittedly quite hypnotic) voice.
“That leaflet talks about love, Scotty. It doesn’t talk about killing. You’ve misinterpreted decades-old activism. You can fight for what you believe in without carnage.”
He’s still shaking his head at me.
“But it would bring you less glory than killing and blowing things up and making a big fucking show. Less infamy, right? And that’s what this is really about, isn’t it?”
Scotty gives me a charged, slightly dangerous look. “They’re moving quicker, more insidiously than ever. They’ve taken over all three branches of government. We need to fight on a bigger scale. Tactics must change. It’s time for the Swans to take flight. And you, hun, you need to spread your wings.”
“What is it you’re about to do?”
He peers at me like I’m not living up to some grand expectation. “When I said we were connected by loss—you and I—I meant it. We can both understand—and empathize—with the very personal, human costs of this war. And I will be the soldier who fights it in the name of those who no longer can.”
“Is that what any of those people would want you to do?”
He looks affronted. “You think I want to be a martyr?”
I didn’t use that word, but as soon as he says it I realize that’s exactly his plan. He wants to go down in a blaze of glory. Eventually, like all extremists, he wants a firestorm.
“I want to ask Shiloh if he’s really a Swan.” I look at Shiloh. “Do you think people should be murdered? They’re bigoted assholes, sure, but murdered. And innocent people too, if they get in the way? You, who told me in my hotel room, when we were alone, to listen to my friends and family and let them help me and call the police and that I need to grow up blah blah blah.”
Scotty is blinking rapidly, his jaw sliding back and forth as if on a broken hinge; he didn’t expect this. I got under his skin. Shiloh is his weak spot. Just like I thought.
15–love, bitches.
“I want to hear you say it.” I pout like a heartbroken schoolboy, overplaying my part maybe just a tad.
Scotty looks back and forth from Shiloh to me. Shiloh doesn’t respond.
“And yet here you are,” I continue, “snorting drugs with terrorists and killing bunny rabbits. Who are you, dude?”
“Hotel room?” says Scotty. He turns to Shiloh. He points the silver straw, coated with powder, at him. “I didn’t know you two were alone together in his hotel room.”
“We weren’t alone,” says Shiloh, finding his voice at last. “And it was only for a few minutes.”
“No, it was longer, and we were alone.” My voice rises. “Why are you lying about us and what happened?”
Scotty hops over to a wall. He opens the hidden door to a walk-in bar and steps inside. Round vanity lights automatically click on; they surround a mirrored wall that reflects bottles. Scotty frowns, considering his reflection. Then Shiloh and I both jump as Scotty drives his fist into the mirrored wall, smashing it into glittering dust.
Scotty punches what’s left of the pulverized mirrored wall again and again in this terrifyingly focused way. And then I have to look away because his hand is nothing but a bloody pulp. Yet he keeps on punching.
The sound of that. Jesus.
Shiloh lunges, grabs my arm. “I know what he’s going to do,” he whispers into my ear, “so just play dead.”
His swift movement startles the hell out of me. “What?”
“Play dead!”
“They know you’re an agent,” I whisper to him. “They know who you are.”
“I know,” he says. “But they think they turned me.”
“Did they?” Kind of a dumb question, I guess. Could someone answer if they’ve been brainwashed?
“No,” he replies.
He does seem, all of a sudden, focused, agile, and articulate; but also groggy and spent, like he’s fighting his way through a thick cloud.
“You wrote that note on my phone. Attack on visitor center was us.”
“What?” His face is ashen. Sweat coats his forehead and glosses his upper lip.
“Was that you? Who did you mean? The feds or the Swans? Whose side are you on?”
He shakes his head, his eyes rheumy, cloudy. “It’s the drugs…”
“Who was ‘us’ supposed to be?”
Shiloh just shakes his head.
I hear bottles clanging, a glass banging down. Scotty emerges from the walk-in bar holding a tumbler with brown liquid. In his other hand is a stainless-steel .44 magnum.
Oh, shit, what now?
Scotty grins at me. “I’m sorry, my dear, you’re up for elimination. The time has come for you to lip-synch for your life.”
“Scotty,” Shiloh rasps.
“Wait,” I say.
For the first time, Scotty raises his voice. “MILO!” he bellows.
Milo?
That’s when Bunny Boy enters the room again. This time he’s holding a different silver tray. There’s a lone gold object on the tray.
“So let’s find out if you’re a Swan,” Scotty tells me.
Bunny Boy picks up the object.
Bunnies and swans—what is it with Scotty and backyard wildlife?
“Open your mouth,” Bunny Boy tells me.
I step back. “Uh, what is that?”
“We liquefy our serum, hun,” says Scotty. “It’s what we call the Heaven-Ender.”
“N-n-n-no thanks.”
“Yes, Aidan. A single spray on your tongue. So I know for sure you’ve been dosed. It’s the first step. It’s how we begin our flight.”
I think of flocks of ducks honking across a winter sky. My house. My backyard. We had a stream. I would feed the ducks. Neil and I would.
I look closer. The gold thing is an atomizer.
“Open your mouth,” Bunny Boy says again, coming at me with that atomizer like I’m a flowering plant he’s about to water. I step back. “One spray on your tongue.”
“You have to shrink down to fit into Wonderland,” says Scotty, dancing around the room, his mangled hand dripping blood everywhere.
“Stick out your tongue,” Bunny Boy commands, still coming toward me at a steady pace.
“Only then can you fly,” says Scotty.
Is this where I’m supposed to play dead? That… doesn’t make sense.
“ENOUGH!” says Shiloh, pushing Bunny Boy away from me.
The room goes very still very fast, like evil fairies were pulling this whole terrifying performance together with cruel little strings—and they all just got snipped. Bunny Boy freezes in place. Scotty stops flailing.
“I guess you’re not a Swan,” says Scotty, petulantly, like a child playing with a dangerous toy that an adult just took away. He turns to Bunny Boy. “Get the fuck out of here, you’re boring.”
Dat’s wight, Wabbit! I almost say out loud.
I exhale.
Bunny boy quickly exits the room, taking his stupid tray and atomizer with him.
“I knew you weren’t a Swan,” Scotty tells me in a low voice. Although he legit seems disappointed by the realization.
I’m trying to catch my breath. “If you knew… why did you have me… why did you want me…”
“To come here?” He gives me a small smile. “Because if I brought you here, Aidan, I could settle all my doubts once and for all about this one.” He tilts his head toward Shiloh and hands him the gun.
I love how he keeps referring to Shiloh as this one. Adorbs.
“He’s who I really care about,” says Scotty. “Sorry, hun.”
It’s the way he says those final two words: full of malice, devoid of emotion, and I know, with a flooding dread, what he’s about to do.
“Now I’ll know for sure which side Shiloh is really on,” he says.
I can’t find the words to make this s
top. I just spew nonsense noises.
Scotty turns to Shiloh. “Shoot him,” he says, gesturing lazily at me.
“No, no,” I plead, holding up my hands. “Wait—”
There is no pause or hesitation.
Shiloh takes a few steps back, aims, and fires.
CHAPTER 17
Quest Gardens
He shoots me twice.
There is a bright flash and an incredibly loud bang. My ears are instantly ringing so bad I can’t even hear myself scream; what feels like a battering ram is thrust with incredible force into my chest, under my right shoulder. And then, when I’m down on my back, there’s a second bang, and another battering ram comes down on my stomach, right above my navel.
There’s incredible pain everywhere, and an insistent fear that the bullets penetrated the Kevlar and I’m going to die in seconds. But I still somehow manage to remember what Shiloh told me, and now it makes sense:
Play dead.
So I roll onto my stomach, capture my terrified breathing into the crook of my arm, and do not move.
I hear animal sounds: Scotty rasping, lurching, moaning, cursing in high-pitched whelps, kicking over a chair, then swiping a bunch of papers off the desk. I hear Shiloh grabbing him, flesh on flesh, whispering to him, calming him down, like someone reassuring a runaway stallion. “I need to know now,” says Shiloh quietly. “You have to start letting me in more.”
Scotty mumbles something else, and Shiloh says, “Okay, okay…”
Shiloh finally gets Scotty to leave the room, saying, “No, it’s over, it’s over, it’s over…” and Shiloh closes the door behind them.
Okay, then I pretty much fuck things up.
I sit up, peel off my hoodie and shirt, undo the side strap, and rip off the vest, because I’m freaking the hell out. I want to know if the bullets penetrated the Kevlar. They didn’t. Despite being high as a kite, Shiloh knew where to aim, and what distance to shoot me from. I have two horrible-looking bruises forming on my body, but the bullets didn’t go in. That’s when I hear footsteps right outside the closed door.
I leave my hoodie, shirt, and the Kevlar on the floor like a snake that’s shed its skin, and hurtle myself into the walk-in bar. Broken mirrored glass crunches under my feet. I peek through a small crack in the door. The Hardy Boys rush into the room, huffing and puffing like big bad wolves. They stare down at my discarded clothes.
HARDY BOY JOE: Oh, shit.
HARDY BOY FRANK: Where did he go?
HARDY BOY JOE: I don’t know.
HARDY BOY FRANK: He was wearing a vest. We didn’t frisk him.
HARDY BOY JOE: Oh, shit.
HARDY BOY FRANK: We gotta tell Scotty.
HARDY BOY JOE: Oh, shit.
HARDY BOY FRANK: He escaped.
HARDY BOY JOE: Find Scotty.
HARDY BOY FRANK: Shiloh knew.
HARDY BOY JOE: They’re both moles. They’re feds. That’s a vest.
HARDY BOY FRANK: We gotta find Scotty.
They leave the room and I begin to understand two things right away. One: holy crap, those two are really stupid. Two: there’s a very good chance I might not make it out of this thing alive.
That’s when I start to realize some stuff.
I could have run away. I could have gone into hiding. But I penetrated a terror cell in the hopes I could help Shiloh, who I believed to be a good person, and prevent something truly awful from happening.
Okay, yes, I didn’t have too much of a choice, with everyone pulling at me and coming after me, but I think I made the right decision for once. And I did have a decision to make. This was brave. I’m officially one of the good guys.
I didn’t have a great start to my smudged-up adolescence. I didn’t do the right thing with Tom. I didn’t behave well for a good portion of my life, and that includes with my brother. It’s hard even to think about that stuff.
After what seems like close to an hour, I step out of the walk-in bar and throw my shirt back on. I take a bottle of whiskey and pour it on the floor. I wrap a bar towel around it and smash it in two so the neck is a jagged weapon.
I search the room. Papers are scattered all over the floor; one of them catches my eye because it seems out of place. It’s the schematics of the wooden Mind Melter roller coaster, the iconic ride at Quest Gardens.
Everyone knows Quest Gardens. It’s a famous amusement park in Lollaby, New York. It’s been in a lot of movies, mainly during montages halfway through rom-coms. I’ve even been there a few times, when I was much younger, on summer getaways with my family. It’s probably pretty close to here.
Why am I looking at a diagram of the Mind Melter roller coaster? Next to it are printouts of computer code I can’t understand, and next to those the schematics of the Quest Pool. There are also schematics for the Derby Racer Carousel, one of only two like it in the nation.
An article reprinted from a local paper states that due to consistent warm weather—or, as the park euphemistically puts it, “climate re-alignment”—Quest Gardens will have its Grand Opening three weeks early this year, at a time when lots of kids are on their spring breaks. Although I bet there are some economic factors involved as well—I heard Quest Gardens almost went bankrupt during the last recession. The opening is tomorrow. Or, as I gaze out the window, I guess it’s today.
The sky is lightening. It’s already dawn. I see a discarded rabbit mask lying on the grass outside, and I think about the electrified pool.
Look where we invaded. The very place that symbolizes the Family and All Its Precious Little Values. American suburbia!
Jesus, I know what they’re going to do next—something aimed directly at the notion of apple-pie Americana.
We’ll finish off the rats, then take their children.
Schwartz was right: they’re targeting children.
Quest Gardens isn’t some big, national chain; it’s a small, local amusement park. No one’s eyes are on it. No one’s eyes were on the funeral in Kansas, either, or that random visitor center in the Adirondacks. The Swans are clever that way. They’re never going to attack a big city or some important monument.
They’re going to directly smear the very idea of “The Family” and “Family Fun”—paragons of the religious right—while operating behind the well-tended trees and shrubs of the Merrick Gables.
Leave it to a gay terror organization to have a matching theme.
Turns out all I really needed was a blueprint, a well-placed sympathizer, and a really good electrician.
Holy shit. Scotty has someone on the inside at the amusement park.
Suddenly remembering my FBI-sanctioned dental work, I say out loud, “Hello, FBI? I think the Swans are going to hack the rides at Quest Gardens Amusement Park. They’re going to electrify the public pool.”
I have no idea if the feds can hear me, since I can’t hear them.
I have no idea if this implant is operational, or ever was.
I need to get out of this house. But I hear voices and running footsteps outside the library, so I wait, aiming the broken bottle at the door, ready to thrust. And then I wait some more. And then I wait even longer, my whole body aching and throbbing where I was shot.
I cautiously move to the closed door. Suddenly the door is thrust open. I pounce with the broken glass in my hand. But it’s Shiloh standing there, breathing hard, Scotty’s gun at his side. “Whoa, whoa!” he says, jumping back.
“Shit, sorry. Sorry!” I back off, throwing down the piece of glass.
“Jesus, Aidan. It’s okay,” he says, one of his hands raised defensively. “We need to get you out of here.” I notice he’s fully dressed now, with a perfectly tailored light-blue shirt, navy-blue jacket, and slender beige slacks.
I stare at him. “What did you… hit a Barneys outlet?”
“I just got dressed.”
“Your eyes are clear.”
“Scotty likes to keep everyone docile, in a state of perpetual intoxication.”
He’s p
robably sleeping with every dude here.
“I was already sobering up,” says Shiloh, “but Scotty keeps an IV drip in the house. I used it to flush out my system.”
“Why did you take the drugs?” I anxiously rub the sides of my face. I cannot get a handle on this boy.
“You have to do some seriously messed-up shit when you’re undercover. You have to play their game to an extent to give yourself credibility.”
Yeah, to an extent. “So they didn’t turn you?”
“No one turned me.”
“The feds lost track of you.”
“Things with me and Scotty took a… bad turn.”
“Where is he?”
“He escaped. With his henchmen.”
“Why didn’t you stop them?”
Things are moving too fast for me to fully appreciate that the word henchmen can now be dropped in casual conversation with nobody batting an eyelash.
“They were too fast. There were… obstacles.”
“He’s going to attack Quest Gardens,” I say.
“Yeah. I know. Mass electrocution. I found out the plan, he finally just told me, which was why I was undercover for so long. I needed to build up that trust. It took time.”
“I think he also sabotaged the rides.”
Shiloh’s eyes widen (in this totally cute way). “Oh.”
“I saw diagrams on the floor.”
“I didn’t know about that part. We have to get you out of here.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you. I want some answers. When we met on the train, what was your objective? Try to kill me as soon as you got me alone?”
“No, Aidan, then you’d be dead. I was supposed to get you to Lake George. The Swans have a base there, where they train new recruits.”
“Recruits? Scotty had already tried to kill me by then.”
“What, Vinny drowning you?”
“Who? Is that the bellhop—?”
“Yes. That wasn’t on Scotty’s orders.”
“But the next one was, right? Why that random visitor center, with all the kids?”
“After he told me to send you to Mohawk, Scotty changed his mind and decided to take you out—send a message to the feds that he knew you were a decoy. Also, hitting a random spot populated by tourists and families was sort of a dress rehearsal for Quest Gardens. Scotty was super impressed you survived.”