“Actually . . . yeah,” said Ben. Thomas’s eyes had the sharp spark of fascination that appeared whenever he figured something out. Did he remember seeing the twig in the bedroom that morning? “I think she did say something about taking something.” Ben tried to sound as if he was just remembering this now.
“Well, of course,” said Thomas in a proud and boastful voice. Ben waited for him to mention the twig, but he didn’t. Either Thomas was torturing Ben, or he had been so drunk on the excitement of his subterranean quest that the brief memory of the twig didn’t stick permanently in his brain.
“What, Mom stealing something?” Alison was aghast. “Impossible.”
“I know it doesn’t make sense, Al. I’m just telling you what I know.” Ben tried not to think of the other possibilities, of the things Mrs. Brodsky had spat at them. Their mother couldn’t be like that--no deceitful criminal could have that tearful look of reassurance in her eyes. Bad people couldn’t be emotionally demolished and try to make you feel as if everything was going to be okay. Could they?
They sat in the dust on the sidewalk for a long time while Ben waited for them to digest the situation. Sweat dripped down his forehead. They would need to find out how to get to the airport. They had to be at least halfway there by now. The street was deserted, a collection of brick buildings that may or may not have been inhabited, that were either half-built or half-demolished. There were piles of rotten plywood, faded boxes, shopping carts.
After a long silence, it was Hannah who spoke the obvious.
“Well, what other choice do we have?” she said. “I guess we have to keep going, right?”
“Pretty much,” agreed Ben. They had spent their entire lives scared of the city, but now it was the stuff behind them that was the most fearful.
“Okay, let’s go,” said Alison as she breathed in deeply. “We’ll figure it all out when we meet up with Mom at the airport.”
As they got up, one of their stomachs growled loud enough that everyone heard. They would have to find food and water somewhere. Then Ben noticed Thomas’s backpack: he hadn’t taken it off since fleeing the apartment. Alison had obviously been unsuccessful in ordering him to abandon his plans for the day. Ben, having been too busy squandering his opportunity to lead an escape, had missed this small victory of Thomas’s. Surely Thomas didn’t have . . . he couldn’t be that dumb, could he?
“Hey, Thomas,” said Ben. “You bring any food or water in that backpack?”
“Yes . . . yes, I did,” said Thomas. “Why, do you want some?”
“You idiot,” said Ben under his breath.
The empty streets soon fed into a more populated part of the city. The buildings became taller and there were huge stretches of cool shade where the office towers blotted out the sun. But it was louder and their heads hurt trying to see everything that was happening. A giant flashing billboard advertised webglasses, and then cars, and then hamburgers. A man in a ripped brown suit shouted after another man who was running away. Cars honked for no apparent reason. On the other side of the street, someone emptied a box of garbage out the window of a building. Pieces of paper floated like leaves but a few heavy items landed amid a group of men who then swore up at the sky.
The crowds became denser. Like waves, the people flowed blindly, each person submerged under their webglasses. They walked without looking where they were going, bumping along like herds of cattle. It was like everyone had agreed to avert their eyes and not look at each other. They talked, but not to each other. There was just this low, steady hum of voices. Ben now saw the logic in their mother’s advice to stay among the crowds.
There were new smells everywhere too. At an entrance to an alley, an old woman was cooking strange black meats on a hissing fire. Either she was selling the food, or if the entrance to the alley was actually her kitchen. Behind her were boxes that could easily be where she slept.
Just then, two cars collided up at the next intersection. The drivers got out and started yelling at each other, shaking their fists and screaming insults. They started throwing punches. One of them pulled out a glimmering knife and they danced around each other for a minute. Then the knife was kicked to the ground and one of them was caught in a headlock. His head was thrown into the side of the car like a bowling ball. Motionless on the ground, the man was given a victory kick to the ribs. The victor held his head high and nodded at the resolution of their fight.
“This is madness,” Ben heard himself say.
“Isn’t it incredible?” said Thomas. "See, Ben, all those things Mom told us about the city were just made up. She was obviously trying to scare us."
"What?” asked Ben. “You trying to sound all tough or something?”
Thomas stood resilient. "Don't be such a little boy, Ben. Geez, scared of everything."
“What are you talking about, Thomas?" said Hannah. “This place is a nightmare--we need to get out of here!”
“Ben, this isn’t the direction we should be heading in, is it?” said Alison.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, are we still traveling towards the airport?”
“Yeah . . . I think so,” Ben lied. He tried to remember what the city looked like from their apartment. The tall buildings had stood in a main clump, but maybe that clump wasn’t exactly between their apartment and the airport. The city he had spent so much of his life staring at now seemed unrecognizable.
Thomas was staring up at the sky. As usual, his mouth was moving in silent calculation. “Well, the planes I’ve seen in the sky aren’t all heading in the same direction. So we should probably walk towards the setting sun, since that’s always west . . . and since the airport is pretty much as west as you can go.”
“Eh, is it the airport yer after, then?” asked a voice from behind them.
The four kids turned around to see a long-haired man smiling down at them. He was wearing a blue Hawaiian floral print shirt, and he carried an old, smooth stick as a cane. On top of his head was a white cowboy hat that was almost an extension of his scraggly white beard. His eyes sparkled from behind thin, wire-framed glasses.
“Well, I can show ye how to get to the airport,” the man said in a low, Scottish-sounding accent. And then an orange cat started weaving in and out of his legs, purring in a low drone.
“No, that’s quite okay, thank you,” said Alison. Hannah’s face brightened at the sight of the cat and she crouched down to pet it, but Alison pulled her back.
“Well, ye could walk towars the sun,” said the man, “but then ye’d have to take into account what Tennyson says aboot how margins fade when we move an’ all that.”
“Do you mean that poem--what was it called--Ulysses?” asked Thomas, apparently eager to be talking to an intellectual equal.
“Thomas, shhh!” hissed Alison. She was clutching Hannah’s hand tightly, but Hannah had successfully lured the orange cat over. It was now leaning into her leg and emitting a quiet rumble of contentment.
“The very one, young man,” the man continued with a resigned sigh. “I myself ‘ave been wandering most of me life. Not like these sheep, though.” He motioned with a sweep of his cane across the street where the throngs of suits and dresses galloped forth, their mouths moving in hushed mumblings. “They march around the same small patch of ground their entire lives.” He shook his head in silence. “Look at ‘em all!” he exclaimed. “‘Tis a fine hoard today, is it not? Hooked up to that great network of blindness, the internet. Fed whatever information they want. And happy as pigs in the trough. Got everything they need an inch in front of their eyes, and they can’t see noofin beyond that. Heads in the clouds. Brains full of stuffing. Lost in the impenetrable fortress.”
As if on cue, a man and a woman in webglasses smacked into each other right in front of them.
“Tha’s the only way they ever talk to each other,” said the man. The suit and the dress nodded at each other by way of an apology, picked up their dropped belongings, and strode on. “Well,
they split oop. Tha’s too bad. I thought they’d be good for each other,” he laughed. “Beh, I guess they were too caught up in their oon little worlds.”
“Come on, everyone,” Alison instructed in a firm voice, as if she were all of a sudden in charge. “We have to be going.”
“Ehh, you lot seem a little out of place,” said the man. “I think I might be able to help ye.”
“That’s okay,” said Alison. “Thank you anyways, sir.”
“Well, m’dear! Calling me sir, how flattering! Well, ye children take care now. There’s some decidedly weird fooks aboot these days.” With his cane, blue Hawaiian shirt, white hat, and orange cat, it was a little unclear who exactly the man was referring to as weird.
After they walked twenty feet or so, the man called after them. “And remember: everywhere ye go, they’ll be watching ye. Look!” He pointed with his scraggly stick at the tops of the adjoining buildings. Tiny boxes with circular pieces of glass were slowly sweeping from side to side.
“Oh, no,” said Alison.
“What is it?” asked Hannah.
“There are cameras everywhere, Hannah,” said Thomas. “If the police are after us, they’ll be able to find us pretty quickly.”
“Okay, we’ve got to keep moving,” ordered Ben.
They walked away as fast as they could. The man waved after them as if they were close friends embarking on a long sea voyage. His cat sat patiently at his feet, its tail swishing back and forth.
“Alison, how do you know we couldn’t trust him?” said Hannah.
“Hannah, that man was pure evil. You could tell, despite the way he talked. Remember Mom telling us about people who roamed the streets abducting kids and forcing them to join gangs and work in secret factories? You should know better.”
“What, you think that man was some sort of monster?” asked Thomas.
“He had a cute cat,” added Hannah.
Alison shook her head. “Thomas, Hannah, do you think bad people try to look bad? Do they get up every morning and find the scariest outfit in their closet? Do you think they practice speaking in their most blood-curdling voices? Bad people obviously try to hide their evil by appearing kind and nice. Mom told us about this. But you haven’t learned anything, have you?”
Thomas rolled his eyes. “Oh, whatever, Alison. Mom’s stories were just to scare us from leaving the apartment building. Look around, do you see any gangs trying to kidnap us?”
Before Alison could say anything, a distant clapping noise echoed down the street. They couldn’t see where it was coming from. It stopped for a second, and then stuttered to life again in a sinister applause. A woman screamed. It was gunfire.
“Come on,” said Ben. “Let’s get out of here.”
Chapter Seven: A Raw Heart
Just as the sky became that deep red that signals the final gasps of day, they stumbled on a park with clumps of shrubs and palm trees scattered about its coarse brown lawns. The four of them collapsed simultaneously, more exhausted and hungry than they had ever been. Night birds swooped down in black arcs, and everything looked eerily ghost-like in the fading light of the almost-gone sun. The sourceless background hum of the city began to fade.
There were other people in the park, shadowy figures that seemed to materialize from the twilight. They pushed and dragged shopping carts full of junk, some with dogs amid their collections of belongings. The bedraggled arrivants looked as if they all knew each other, and they struck up mumbling conversations as they found places to lie down. In a slow, ritualized manner, they began sorting their day’s scavengings.
No one seemed to notice the four children hiding in a small thicket at the back of the park. As darkness descended, they ate the rest of the snacks in Thomas’s backpack--two granola bars and four cookies--and took turns running to a water fountain. They sat facing each other in a small circle, surrounded by four-foot tall bushes, the small, shiny leaves knit so tight that they almost felt safe. Alison had her arm around Hannah, who from within a fitful sleep looked like she might still burst into tears at any moment. Hannah’s lip was quivering, as if she was carrying on a conversation in her sleep. She looked somehow older, in the way that all people look different in their sleep, perhaps.
Ben watched Thomas. Despite his aversion to physical activity, Thomas was unfazed by their escape. He looked like he was trying to make mathematical sense of it all, as if by finding the right equation he might come to a proper reckoning of what was going on. He scratched with a stick at the dirt in front of him. Ben tried to read it upside down. It was a vague map of their route that day. There was the apartment, a meandering snake-like route through the city, the park, and the airport spire somewhere in the unknown west.
“So, she’s just disappeared then?” asked Alison. She seemed to ask this just to see Ben nod, just to offer another way into talking about the situation that made so little sense.
“Yeah, well, she was taken,” said Ben. “Or at least she went with them.”
“By the same men who broke in this morning, in the silver suits?”
“Well, they looked like the same ones, I guess. I dunno if it was the exact--”
“She’s abandoned us,” said Thomas.
“What are you talking about, Thomas?” said Ben. “She didn’t abandon us, you idiot.”
“Ben, keep your voice down,” said Alison. “You’ll wake Hannah.”
“But she obviously knew these men, right?” asked Thomas.
“Thomas, what on earth are you getting at?” asked Alison.
“It sounds to me like she knew these guys, like she went willingly, like she didn’t put up much of a fight.”
“Thomas, they grabbed her,” said Ben.
“I’m just saying. Sounds like a pretty good way to leave us. You know, pretend like she’s being taken.”
“You fool, Thomas. I didn’t see you put up much of a fight back there in the apartment. Man, sometimes you should just think before you open your mouth.”
“Ben, stop shouting,” said Alison. “Thomas, that’s a horrible thing to say, and you know it.”
“Well, what’s your plan now, Ben?” Thomas asked in a snide voice. “Where are we? What are we going to do for food now that the snacks that I brought are gone? We’re lucky that I remembered to bring something. I don’t know why mom puts you in charge.”
Ben could feel his limbs tensing in anger. “You didn’t remember to bring snacks, Thomas. You were heading down into the sewers and--”
“Well, you could at least thank me.”
At this, Ben lunged at Thomas and the two of them called each other the worst names they knew. They rolled around trying to throw punches until Alison screamed to make them stop. Hannah woke with a start and rubbed her eyes.
“Thomas, stop it!” yelled Alison. “Ben, let go of him!”
“What, what is it?” asked Ben. He had Thomas in a headlock but stopped just as he was about to slam his face into the dirt.
There was a silence of a few seconds. It was almost completely dark now, but Ben could see that Alison’s eyes were huge with worry, just like they had been when Thomas went missing. She looked at something on the ground. She poked at it with a hesitant finger.
“Ben, what’s this?” asked Alison. She held up the twig like it was a hairy spider. “It just fell out of your pocket. What is it, Ben?” It glowed in a pink light that illuminated Alison’s worried face.
“Hey, that’s that thing you had this morning,” said Thomas as he brushed the dirt and cigarette butts from his hair, somehow forgetting the fight of seconds before.
“What’s going on, Ben?” Alison’s voice cracked. “There’s something else, isn’t there?”
Ben gulped. He closed his eyes and tried not to look at the thing he wanted to pretend didn’t exist. It was easier to accept Thomas’s explanation that their mother had deserted them than to think about what the twig might mean. Ben looked down at Hannah, who was now back asleep. What was he supposed to say? �
�Mom . . . Mom gave it to me. After she said we had to meet her at the airport tomorrow, at the spire. She put this in my hand when the silver man wasn’t looking. She didn’t say what it was. She just said, ‘Take this, just in case.’” Ben cleared his throat.
“Ben, did it ever occur to you that maybe this is what those men were looking for?” said Alison. “Don’t you think that this is it?” She carefully turned the twig over in her hand.
“Well, I guess . . . maybe. But if it was what they were looking for then Mom would have just given it to them, right? I mean, she obviously didn’t want them to have it.” It now seemed clear to Ben as he said this.
“Who cares what it is,” said Alison. “If this is what they’re after, then we can give it to them and get Mom back, right?”
“Yeah . . . I suppose,” said Ben. But Alison’s elegant logic somehow didn’t sit right.
“Listen, what could be more important than getting her back, Ben?”
Ben couldn’t offer anything, and yet he couldn’t find a way to express his unease. Maybe it was because of the way their mother had spoken to Ben--that look of resigned hope--that he felt that there was more going on than just the twig. “Maybe you’re right, Al,” he said. “But we need at least to give it a chance. I mean, Mom told us to meet her at the airport tomorrow. And she obviously knows more about this . . . this situation than we do, right? And it’s not like we know where to find these men if we just wanted to give this thing to them, right?
“Well, they seemed pretty easy to find this morning,” said Thomas.
“Shut up, Thomas, or I’ll punch you again,” said Ben through his teeth. “Whatever this thing is, it sounds so valuable that Mom wants it out of the hands of those men, right? And if Mom doesn’t show up at the airport, then we’ll find a way to give it to those men and get her back, okay? How about that?”
“I guess that sounds okay,” conceded Alison.
The glow of the twig illuminated Thomas, who was shaking his head.
The Fortress of Clouds Page 6