by A N Sandra
“There’s nothing to say,” Casey said. “But I’m sorry, brother.”
“I’m sorry,” Steve echoed.
“Don’t feel bad for me,” Joshua said, feeling the need to lighten the moment. He still had the guitar cradled in his lap and he played another Garth Brooks song, about having friends in low places. When he finished, he handed the guitar back to Steve.
“You’re really amazing on that,” Steve said. He looked at the guitar suspiciously, as if it had betrayed him with Joshua. “When I play it sounds like an old piece of junk.”
“You don’t get good if you don’t practice.” Joshua grinned.
Steve sighed and began playing different chords. The mood in the trailer shifted, Joshua picked up his book again, and it was easier to read with the guitar in the background. When it was time for bed the three of them said goodnight to each other. It’s a start, Joshua thought as he drifted to sleep.
“Here,” Casey moved his duffle bag to make room for Joshua in the back of the huge truck at the end of the seventh work day. Joshua smiled and sat next to Casey, Steve climbed in and sat next to them.
The truck bumped along over the dirt roads and all of them were covered in desert grit, but none of them cared. Somehow the dirt didn’t feel filthy. All of them minded being hungry, but they would eat soon enough. The next meal they ate would be eaten in the underground hangars and for the next seven days they would work in the compound. Joshua was looking forward to getting out of the desert heat, but a week below ground wouldn’t be easy. He reflected that he would probably be ready to go out to work again at the end of the week.
The hole in the ground opened for the truck and all of them unloaded, walking to the tunnel to get to the living area where they could set down their bags, shower, and eat.
“There’s an empty bunk in our room,” Steve told Joshua. “You should stay there. I’ll let Andrew know it’s okay. That bunk used to belong to Robbie, and he didn’t want to put you there, but it’s cool. You know us, you’re on our rotation, you should sleep with us.”
“Thanks,” Joshua said. Who was Robbie? He stuck with Casey and Steve and the rest of the men on their rotation. Everyone put their bags on their bunks and Joshua waited to see which was left, before setting his bag down. Everything felt better coming back.
“One rotation back, the other leaves tonight,” Curtis noted as he sat beside Joshua at dinner. “How was your time at the work camp?”
“We got a lot done,” Joshua said diplomatically. He took a huge bite of meatloaf smothered in BBQ sauce. It was filling, and he was hungry, but Danica would never have served it to her family.
“I know it’s rough right now, but I’ve got your back, I’m here if you need me,” Curtis said before taking his tray to what was clearly a table for leaders. Two men besides Curtis sat there with Court and an extremely tall woman who appeared to have a glass eye. All of them would have been right at home in an advertisement for protein powder.
Joshua doubted that he would bulk up like the others with just one hour of workout time a day for the next week. He’d always been athletic but lean. Girls loved his build. Girls loved his mop of hair. But everyone else in the compound, even the women, had short hair. Fitting in was more important than getting female attention. Ever since the day he’d realized he wanted to be the man of his own family Joshua hadn’t cared about scoring at all, which was incredible considering that he had spent years developing an aura that kept him flush with female attention. After dinner Joshua located electric clippers and gave himself the same haircut that every other man had.
“That’s more like it,” Steve approved when Joshua came to his bunk. “Now you don’t look like you belong in a boy band.”
“It’s cooler,” Joshua agreed. The one good thing he could say about the change. His features were more delicate without the hair to balance them and he felt like he was looking at a stranger when he looked in the mirror.
Court put Joshua to work in the motor pool, which was fine with him. Casey worked there too and there was more to do than take care of vehicles. There was a whole metal shop and projects of all kinds turned up. Joshua proved his welding abilities on the first day and the people around him were relaxing their guard. It was kind of like being in Ag Mechanics class in high school, except no one wore Wrangler jeans or ducked outside to chew Copenhagen. The motor pool had more than twenty World War II-era Jeeps that were kept in perfect condition, as well as motorcycles from the same time period.
Every day when he was done with work he went to the gym. Working out for more than an hour a day was easy for Joshua, especially since he could focus so carefully with the box. There were several mats for sparring on in the corner of the gym, and it was fun to watch different people practicing their martial arts skills. Steve was really good and taught a class of sorts that Joshua joined. His natural athletic ability hadn’t been put to good use since he graduated, but he felt inspired to work at his hand-to-hand combat skills as soon as he saw people sparring.
Without the sense of focus that the box brought to his mind Joshua might not have been patient enough to work on kata and basic technique. With the box Joshua became observant of details to the point that in four days of practice Steve watched him moving through kata and sparring with intense interest.
Every day, either before or after dinner, Curtis wove together news from the mainstream media and the Dark Web, painting a picture that could only be seen by people who wanted to see it. People who had seen things like the Hollister Mental Health Intake Center could believe the picture of the coming destruction. Joshua realized that everyone there had experienced some sort of epiphany that made their belief possible. It made Joshua a little nervous, because Curtis seemed to be looking at him more often than he looked at other people. It could be my imagination. Or not.
Joshua poured cold water down his throat, exhausted after working several hours in the motor pool and a two-hour workout. He slumped against a large punching bag, too tired to consider going to take a shower.
“That was a good workout.” Steve was also worn out and was nursing his water bottle as if it was a magic elixir. “Tomorrow we go back in the field.”
To call the desert, “the field,” even figuratively was slightly humorous to Joshua but he was too tired to laugh.
“You really picked up on this fast,” Steve told Joshua. “Everything you do goes well… I guess it’s a good thing you’re here.”
“Nobody wanted me here.” Joshua shook his head just a little. This is the moment to ask. “Why the hell not?”
“After Robbie, we all decided we weren’t going to add any more people. Nothing personal. It wasn’t about you.” Steve slumped, too tired to be defensive.
“What did Robbie do?” Joshua pressed his luck.
“Robbie was a great guy.” Steve shrugged. He looked around, but no one was listening at all. In a distant corner a woman with a build an Amazon would have been jealous of was deadlifting with a spotter, but they were listening to music, focused on their workout. “Everybody loved him. Which was weird because he was too smart to be popular anywhere but here, where we need smart people. Curtis has ideas. When he found this place, Curtis had the idea to make it a base, not to tear it up like the Hollister Youth Foundation told us to. Four underground airplane hangars with an artesian well in the middle of the desert? Robbie had the brains to figure out the logistics to make it happen. I know we need Curtis, but he’s always got a new play, a new idea. Robbie could make the old ones work.”
Joshua didn’t have anything to say while Steve paused.
“We were building things, getting ready for what’s coming. Everyone here knows what’s coming. But Robbie started to get scared. We’re all scared.”
Steve was the size of an all-pro linebacker. It was hard to imagine him frightened, but if he said he was, he was. Joshua wasn’t necessarily scared, but he thought he would be without the box near him constantly. Joshua tried to look receptive to Robbie.
In his mind he could hear his eighth grade English teacher Mrs. Murdoch, telling the class to listen to others to win their trust. Joshua was known as a good listener thanks to Mrs. Murdoch’s advice, and being a good listener had always gotten the trust of the pretty girls he turned his ear to.
“Robbie didn’t want to live if he hadn’t done everything he could to save everybody in the whole world. The trouble was that he knew too much about us, he was going to get caught and we were going to be caught too. It was a risk we couldn’t take.”
“So, Robbie’s dead,” Joshua finished when Steve hesitated.
“Yeah,” Steve answered. “We all took a vote and decided not to take in anymore people. We can’t take the risk. We have more than four hundred altogether. Not just here but people who will hide here after the new year when everything gets ready to go down.”
Four hundred had never sounded so big and so small at the same time.
“But I’m here,” Joshua said. “And Curtis told me that my family could come too, if everything worked out.”
“That’s what makes people upset when they see you. Curtis just did what he wanted to do, even though we’d taken a vote. Curtis is in charge. He’s the one with the charisma who put this together. We all understand that. We’re a group of people Curtis brought together, and we stick together. Whether or not we’ll make it through what’s coming… we don’t know. We wouldn’t have any hope of living through it without Curtis, but we don’t want him to do whatever he wants, you know?”
“I do,” Joshua answered. Being led was different from being bossed. Bud had understood it well. The quarry and his family had been led by Bud, not ordered about. “Four hundred people is a lot to expect to keep quiet.”
“It is, but we have every reason to keep what we know about this place to ourselves. We trust each other.”
“You can trust me,” Joshua told Steve firmly.
“I know that,” Steve said. He looked surprised by this observation. “Everybody else will too.”
Chapter 8
October 7th, Outer Banks, NC
The luxury beach house buzzed with activity as Daniel set everyone to their tasks. Satellite dishes were assembled, boosters were set up, and everyone waited to see if the Hollister Foundation IT police would descend on them to carry them off or do worse to them.
Days blurred into nights, and everyone consumed coffee, energy drinks, and nutritional supplements to keep up with the work they were doing. Everyone in the house felt slightly suspended from the outside world, even the world just outside the house, as they moved into the Dark Web.
“This is like the week before opening night,” Sadie said to Tilly at one point as she took a few moments to eat a yogurt in the sunroom. “It’s all the stress of a tech rehearsal that never turns into a production.”
“We’re not going to get any applause.” Tilly sighed. She had been sorting through a huge box of cords looking for the one Daniel wanted. “There’s no glory or money to this project.”
“But thank God we’re doing it,” Sadie said with a small shiver. She’d never been more frightened in her life. Every day she learned more about the Hollister Mental Health Services, the Global Bank, Global Forces, and the Hollister Youth Foundation, and every day she couldn’t believe how far the evil of the Hollisters had spread. Seven years ago she’d never heard of them, and in such a short period of time they were everywhere, in charge of everything. Their counterparts in Asia and Europe were just as controlling. There was no place to move where there was a chance to be an autonomous citizen.
“I’m torn between wishing we didn’t know, and wishing I’d figured this out sooner,” Tilly shook her head. “I would have spent the last few years very differently.”
“Not me,” Sadie answered. “I’m glad I had a good run at a career before Molly turned me into a trashy reality star—”
“You were never trashy—”
“And I kissed Doctor Justin, my biggest celebrity crush ever—”
“Even though I think he was a weasel for how he went after Molly for information, he was pretty dreamy—”
“Who’s a weasel?” Maddy entered the sunroom with a mug of coffee in her hands. Her hair was put up in a messy bun with a Sharpie stuck in it and she had no makeup on.
“Doctor Justin,” Tilly answered.
“Well, Sugar and Bonnie are coming up the walk with him and some other people right now,” Maddy said casually. “You can tell him yourself.”
“What?” Tilly straightened in her chair.
“Seriously?” Sadie actually jumped up. The panicked look on her face said that she cared very much about how she looked for Doctor Justin.
“Yup.”
Any room Sugar was in was automatically brighter for her presence.
“Girlfriends!” Sugar called as she came through the entryway and everyone scrambled to meet her. Except Sadie. Sadie had scrambled to her room to freshen up. “I brought something for you!”
“We saw!” Tilly exclaimed, hugging the blonde bombshell before turning to hug Bonnie and shake Doctor Justin’s hand.
“Look what the cat dragged in.” Maddy grinned, stepping forward to hug Sugar herself. Turning to Doctor Justin she became more guarded. “How are you?”
“Worried,” Doctor Justin answered. He shook her hand and looked into her eyes, but Maddy didn’t feel like exposing spontaneous emotion to him and looked back toward Sugar. There were introductions all around to Bernard and Stacy, two assistants who had come with Doctor Justin.
“After spending extensive time with Natalie and Jase, Christina Harris’s former assistants, I am convinced that there is a virus on the chips.” Doctor Justin frowned. “I knew it when my own interns died investigating them, but I understand the situation much better now. Natalie provided me with a formula to make a vaccine that is even better than the vaccine Global Forces is using for their own troops. We are going to set up a lab here and begin producing vaccines ourselves.”
“Wow.” Tilly looked dazed. “Our rebel outpost is expanding. I can offer you a snack, or I can take you to see the Tech Lair upstairs,” Tilly said.
Maddy wasn’t sure about Doctor Justin seeing Daniel’s work, but he was already there, Sugar and Bonnie must have told him about their Dark Web Com Center anyway. Before they went upstairs Maddy wanted to know one thing.
“Molly isn’t dead, is she?” Maddy looked Doctor Justin square in the eyes. Lord, the man is charming. The energy that he sent out at close range was intoxicating.
“No, she’s not,” Doctor Justin confirmed. “The plane wreck is some kind of publicity stunt. She wasn’t clear with me when she intends to come back.”
“That’s what I thought,” Maddy said. She didn’t want to say that she was sure the whole reason Molly had gone through the complicated farce of her death was that she wanted Maddy to resume her life. If Maddy became confident, registered for winter term and moved in with her mother, Molly’s security people would be waiting to take back the ivory box. “She didn’t say anything at all about why she’s pretending to be dead?”
“Nothing,” Doctor Justin assured Maddy. “If I knew, I would tell you.”
“Good,” Maddy said gently, hoping that he understood that she would hold him to his words the way a third grader holds someone to their pinky swear.
“Come see what we’ve done with the place!” Tilly pulled on Sugar’s arm enthusiastically and the group allowed themselves to be led upstairs.
The wide hardwood stairs had a large window at every landing encompassing the view as the ocean glinted in the distance and on the third floor was a huge room that had once been the sleeping loft for the abundant Simpson grandchildren. A room with windows on every side to let in sunlight or starlight as needed. The beds were stacked neatly in a corner, and plastic folding tables were set out, covered with monitors, small cell towers, and mysterious equipment.
“Hello,” Daniel said without looking around. His wild hair was sticking up in many
directions and he was wearing sweats and a large T-shirt. “The Hollisters just put down a bunch of slaughterhouse strikers in Nebraska. The poor bastards had been working seventy, eighty-hour weeks and they had a walkout. Hollister security shot right into the crowd.”
“Daniel, we have visitors!” Tilly announced. Daniel turned around, surprised to see so many people there.
“How do we know Molly didn’t have you followed here?” Daniel said directly to Doctor Justin, without bothering to greet anyone else.
“We took a lot of precautions,” Doctor Justin assured him. “It seems you know who I am… and you are?”
“Suspicious,” Daniel answered fixing his hazel eyes on Doctor Justin. “Why are you even here?”
“I brought him!” Bonnie said. “He treated my father two years ago. When Maddy told us about him removing the vaccination chips from the girls I got worried and contacted him to find out if it was true.”
“And it was!” Maddy said with an edge to her voice.
“Yes, it was,” Doctor Justin said. “And part of why I came is because I have a vaccine for the virus that is in those chips. I also was hoping to see about setting up a lab here to make more vaccine, if that’s all right.”
“A rebel base.” Bonnie grinned ear to ear. “A real rebel base.”
“If we don’t do everything we can now…” Tilly shrugged.
“I don’t like making this riskier than it already is,” Maddy fretted. She felt uneasy about Doctor Justin but not enough to do anything about it. “Later might be too late.”
“Hello,” Sadie stood in the doorway, she hadn’t put on much makeup, but she never needed it to be stunning. Her red hair fell about her shoulders and with the sounds of the ocean in the distance she might as well have been a siren.