The Fortress of Clouds

by J. A. J. Peters

  “This . . .” Alison began but her throat dried up. “This is what that police officer was talking about . . . you know, that gang the police are looking for.”

  “Yeah,” Ben quietly agreed.

  “Hey . . . Ben,” said Thomas in a glazed, monotone voice. “Two days ago, when we, I mean I, heard those voices in the basement? And I was going down to investigate and then those silver men arrived?” Thomas’s voice shimmered with a lilt of amazement that would not let him finish his thought. “And yesterday . . . by the airport . . . that tunnel, those voices . . . I told you!”

  “Yeah,” agreed Ben once more. He got up and walked a bit closer to the door. He could barely remember the previous two days--finding Thomas in the basement after that stupid game of Spy Hunter 3000 seemed like years ago. Too much had happened since then to be certain of when exactly it had taken place, or if it had even occurred at all.

  “Alison, what’s going on? I’m scared,” said Hannah. But Alison had no way to explain this place. For the first time in her life, she couldn’t make the world less scary for Hannah.

  Ben looked at his siblings, immobile in a mixture of fear and wonder. But then the expressions on their faces changed and before he could turn back to see what it was they had seen, Ben was struck across the face and thrown to the ground.

  “Get back against the wall, you feces,” yelled someone from above. The words were more spat than spoken, the voice tinged with an Hispanic accent. Ben looked up carefully but the light overhead made it difficult to see the person’s face. He got to his feet, only to realize that the person who had hit him was shorter than Ben and, indeed, was probably not much older than him. The figure wore a black and white camouflage uniform and his hair was a starburst of six-inch black spikes.

  “Who the hell are you?” roared the boy. He stared at the four of them with the authority of an adult. Ben couldn’t stop himself from smiling at the strange sight of someone so young trying to sound so old. “Ah, something funny?” The boy turned to Ben and swiftly kicked him in the ribs, which made Ben stop smiling quite quickly. “Let us try that one more time, you parasite. Who. The. Hell. Are. You?”

  When it looked like Ben was going to be booted again, Thomas said, “We’re the Graham children. Ben, Alison, Hannah. And I’m Thomas.”

  Ben got to his feet clutching his ribs.

  “And I’m supposed to know you, the . . . famous Graham children?” asked the spiky-headed boy.

  “No,” said Alison. “We’ve ended up here--wherever this is--by mistake. We’re terribly sorry. We’ve had a very strange few days. We just want to go.”

  “No one ends up here ‘by mistake’, chavala,” said the boy as he squinted and smiled at Alison. “There are no mistakes in my world. You are here for a reason. So what is it?”

  “Look, we’re sorry to be wasting your time here,” said Alison. “We were trying to get to the airport, and then we were in some sort of sewer tunnel, and we were grabbed by this filthy, uh, man--”

  “His name is Basho. He found you on his patrol. You are lucky he did not rip your goddamned arms off, which is what he usually does when he finds basura in our tunnels. He says you were running from the police. So what is your story?”

  “We don’t have a story,” said Alison.

  Hannah stood by Alison’s side, twirling her brown hair around her index finger. She was staring at the bizarre boy in front of her, a look on her face as if trying to determine whether he was some sort of movie actor.

  The boy’s eyes narrowed. “Then why were you running from the police then?”

  “I really don’t know,” Alison said with a huge sigh. “Until yesterday we were living with our mother and then she just disappeared and told us to meet her at the airport, but she wasn’t there--”

  “And,” said Hannah, “there was this strange man in a moving van following us--”

  The boy held up his hand to stop Hannah. “Hey, Jawl,” he called to a teenager guarding the room. “Have we got anybody working the airport?”

  The young man shook his head. He had long, blonde hair and wore a baseball cap so low over his forehead that it was impossible to see his eyes.

  Thomas continued with Hannah’s story. “So we told the police about everything--”

  At this the spiky headed boy shook his head and mumbled under his breath. “Bad move, baad move.”

  “--and then they took us to the police station but they didn’t believe us and they told us our mother abandoned us, and then they told us they were going to put us in some foster home. He called it a--”

  “A Children’s Facility? Or, my favorite, an Educational Pre-employment Center?” the boy asked with a look of disgusted amusement.

  “Yeah, that was it,” said Thomas.

  “You do not want to go to one of those Children’s Facilities.” The boy’s voice became calm and commiserating. “Making handbags, clothes, all sorts of cheap crap. Twelve hours a day. For what? Por nada. It is child labor. You are lucky to have escaped.” Then he stopped and looked at them out of the sides of his eyes. “So how do I know that you are not spies planted here by the police . . . or even Milagro himself?”

  “Look,” said Alison. “We don’t know anything about what is going on, or who this Milagro person is.”

  The boy stood there, dumbstruck and blinking. “You . . . you have never heard of Milagro? That is . . . impressive. I have never heard anyone say that. Híjole! You really are muy stupido. Well, you are lucky to have ended up here, I can tell you that much. Just orphans, eh?” He examined them with a skeptical squint.

  “Look, we don’t really want to stay here,” said Ben. “We’d like to just go--”

  “Well who are you then?” asked Thomas. They all looked at Thomas in wide-eyed shock, expecting him to get a boot to the face for such a question.

  The boy said nothing for a few tense seconds. And then he broke out into a huge grin. “I am General Lorenz,” he said. “And this is my army.” He proudly swept an arm through the air to indicate the scene in the cavern outside the door.

  “Lawrence?” asked Thomas.

  “No, Lorenz, you fool. With a zee.”

  “So are you that Miscreants gang then?” asked Thomas.

  “What . . . did you say?”

  “When we were at the police station,” said Thomas, “they at first thought we were members of some gang of kids living underground, the Miscreants. That’s obviously you, right?”

  “Ha. The police thought you,” said Lorenz as he pointed at Thomas, “that you bolillos were part of us? What a bunch of amateurs!” He laughed for a while, the spikes of hair shaking back and forth, but then he quickly changed his tone. “What else did they say? About us . . . the army.”

  “They said that they were close to finding your tunnels and that if we told them where the entrance was they’d give us anything we wanted.” Thomas smiled hesitantly, unsure if this would add to Lorenz’s delight.

  “Anything you want, eh? That is what we call bargaining in bad faith. Hmm, the Miscreants . . .” He mulled over the word. “That is Milagro’s name for our freedom army.”

  All this talk of gangs and armies appeared to be making Alison very uncomfortable. “This is all very impressive, General Lor--umm, sir, but we’d really like to be going now. We haven’t eaten in a very long time, so if you’ll just show us the nearest exit to your underground, uh, base, we’ll be leaving you.”

  “No, no, no! You must stay,” said Lorenz with a big smile. “You are my guests. We will get you some food, no problem. Whatever you want. And unlike the police, I am truthful. In that particular regard.”

  “Whatever we want?” asked Thomas.

  At this Hannah screamed, “Cookies!”

  “Cookies? Sure. No problem, nina.” Lorenz turned to the blond haired, baseball-hatted guard standing watch at the door. “Feed them,” he ordered. “Get them new clothes. And make them bathe. They stink.” As he was about to leave, Lorenz turned back to the four
Graham children. “Eat now, and in the morning I will explain everything.” He smiled for a moment and then disappeared into the cavern.

  The room was quiet for only seconds before a group of kids started bringing in plates and plates of all sorts of wondrous food. There was sizzling hamburgers and hot dogs, pizza dripping with molten cheese, haystacks of steaming pasta, massive rounds of steak, piles of fried chicken, five different kinds of cake, every soft drink on earth, and, of course, the cookies that Alison had been promising Hannah for over two days. Chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin.

  All of their mother’s carefully arranged dinners had been calculated right down to the calories per dollar. Here there was more food strewn on the floor in front of them than they could eat in an entire week. Ben didn’t know where to begin. He took a bite here and a bite there, wanting to sample everything without filling up on just one thing. At the door to the room, the guard watched them sternly, his arms crossed and his eyes shielded by his baseball hat.

  Thomas was immobile with shock. A string of drool hung from the side of his mouth. After a few seconds, he shook himself to life and dove in.

  In less than five minutes, Hannah was encircled by a mess of bones, wrappers and scraps, and when she came up for air she had a glazed, distant stare. She licked her fingers dreamily and turned to Alison. “Oh my gosh, Alison,” she said. “Try this chicken. It’s so yummy.”

  “That’s okay, Hannah,” said Alison. Alison poked at a bowl of salad with her fork. She hadn’t taken more than a few bites from a cheese sandwich.

  “What’s wrong?” said Ben.

  “Just not hungry, I guess,” said Alison.

  “Suit yourself,” said Thomas as he bit into his fourth hot dog.

  Next, they were ushered into a bathing area, where jets of hot steam peeled the dirt and sweat from their skin. Ben almost fell asleep with his head against the wall, the hot water kneading at his sore muscles. Boxes of brand new clothes were tossed at them by the guard. It was like Christmas morning, except these clothes all said “Made in Italy” on the labels. Ben took a pair of jeans the color of a tropical ocean and a simple black t-shirt. Hannah found a long green dress that shone like silk and instantly transformed her into a movie star. Thomas went through all the boxes before he found a pair of black dress pants and a blue linen collared shirt. Ben tried not to laugh. Out of all the possible outfits, Thomas chose clothes that made him look like one of the office workers with the webglasses they had seen downtown. But Alison didn’t even look in the boxes. She didn’t even compliment Hannah as she waltzed around the room. Alison put her old clothes back on and strode out of the room without saying anything.

  They were given beds at the end of a long, dark room. Bunks were separated by fake palm trees, and on the walls were framed paintings that made the room feel vaguely like a hotel lobby. All of the other beds were empty though, and outside in the cavern loud music was playing. Everyone was apparently in the midst of some sort of party. Just like at home, Thomas and Hannah took bottom bunks. Ben dragged himself up the ladder to the bed above Thomas, where a deep, fluffy comforter swallowed him like a wave breaking over his head. He was almost asleep when he noticed Alison staring at him from the neighboring bunk. Her eyes narrowed in on him. It was the cold stare she gave him when Ben had done something wrong.

  “What is it, Al?” said Ben. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “You know this isn’t right, Ben. We need to leave.”

  “We can still leave, Al. We’re just, you know, enjoying Lorenz’s hospitality.”

  “Ben, if we accept all this stuff, then we’re going to owe him something in return.”

  “Wouldn’t it be worse if we didn’t accept it? Come on, what are we supposed to do, not eat?”

  Alison shook her head in silence and lay back down on her bed.

  Chapter Eleven: You Owe Me Your Lives

  When Ben awoke, the cavern’s inhabitants were already at work. Noises of drills, saws, hammering, and the spitting of a welding torch drifted into the bunk room. And permeating beneath the din was the cumulus shaking of the same bass-heavy music that had been playing the previous night. There was no way of knowing what time it was. None of them had been wearing a watch when they were flushed from the apartment two days ago, not even Thomas with his backpack of snacks and screwdrivers. Ben was so used to being awoken by the sun coming through the window of their apartment that it felt strange to wake up without natural light. Alison awoke with Ben but Thomas and Hannah were still snoring away.

  And Alison had the same look on her face. It was as if she had been staring at Ben the entire night. “Ben, this place is crazy. We need to get out of here. We’re obviously in the middle of something really dangerous here.”

  “What, you want to go back to the police?” Ben didn’t know what to think. Too much had happened to be certain how he felt about it. He tried to recap the last two days’ journey in his head. His brain pounded and the industrial music--and the almost musical industry--off in the cavern wasn’t helping.

  “Well at least that foster home that they were going to put us in would be better than this.”

  “Those educational factories or whatever? You heard what that guy Lorenz said. We’d be forced to work for nothing.”

  “Oh, and you believe that, Ben? He’s obviously just trying to scare us so we don’t leave, so we don’t tell the police where this place is.”

  “But Mom told us the same thing, that the entire city is full of gangs and slave dealers. Besides, I didn’t exactly see any children out there in the city, did you? Maybe . . . maybe that’s what it’s really like out there, Al.”

  But Alison couldn’t resign herself to Ben’s pessimism. She crossed her arms in frustration. “Well we can’t stay here. This is some sort of war zone. We should at least try to find those silver men to give them that . . . that twig thing.” She pointed with a dangling index finger at Ben’s pocket as if it contained some sort of hideous snake.

  “Yeah, but how are we going to get out of here?”

  Thomas, having been roused by their increasingly heated discussion, spoke up from below Ben. “I think I might be able to retrace our route in here. I was able to make a map in my head as we were dragged in here . . . the turns we took in the tunnel . . . I think there was some sort of pattern to them. And we probably left a trail in the dirt as we were dragged, right?” His face furrowed in concentration.

  “Thomas, no more crazy escapes,” said Alison. “We should have just stayed in the police station. Let’s just tell this . . . this Lorenz that we don’t want any part of his cavern, or base, or whatever this place is--that we have to find Mom, okay? Come on, let’s go.”

  At this, Hannah sat up on the edge of her bed and yawned like a lion. She scratched the sleep from her eyes, belched loudly, and swept the cookie crumbs from her clothes.

  In addition to all the machines in various stages of dismantling and assembly, the shelves full of food, and the cables and wires strung all over the place, they could now see other parts to the cavern. There was a wall covered in maps, a kitchen area, and stacks of boxes. And off to the side behind the rows of shelving units was a guard standing in front of a giant steel door. Slung across his shoulder was a glistening, black machine gun.

  “Wow,” said Thomas. “That’s an M16.”

  “Exactly, Thomas,” said Alison. “No more crazy escapes.”

  “Well, good morning,” said a voice from behind them. “Que onda?” Lorenz wore the same black and white camouflage outfit, and there was now an unlit cigar hammered into the corner of his mouth. He looked no older than Ben, and yet he moved and spoke like someone twice his age. It seemed so silly, or scary, Ben couldn’t decide which.

  “Um, hi,” said Ben. Alison’s surprised eyes met Ben’s, as if to ask how long Lorenz had been behind them. Had he heard their conversation?

  “I sincerely hope you all slept well?” asked Lorenz with a smile. He looked at Hannah munching away on
yet more cookies. “Still eating, eh?”

  “Yes, yes, it was very nice,” said Ben. “And the food was amazing, so, uh, thank you.” He was unsure how to tell him they were leaving.

  “Look, General Lorenz,” began Alison, “we--”

  “So, you are probably all wondering what this place is,” said Lorenz, “and what exactly we do here.”

  “Yes, it looks fascinating,” said Thomas.

  Ben and Alison both hissed at him. “Thomas, be quiet!”

  “No, no, that is okay, Alison,” said Lorenz. “Thomas is obviously quite curious about it all. Let me show you around the facility here. Please,” he said with an elaborate bow, “come with me.” Before Alison or Ben could say anything, Lorenz began walking down into the main part of the cavern. Thomas leaped up in close pursuit and Ben, trying to get a word in, followed too. But Hannah loitered behind, examining every interesting thing she saw.

  “Hannah, don’t touch anything!” scolded Alison.

  “I’m not hurting anything, Alison. Jeez.” Hannah rolled her eyes at her older sister. “I thought I saw a cat or something.” She stuffed another cookie into her mouth.

  “There aren’t any cats in here, Hannah. Now come on. And where did you get all those cookies from?” Hannah’s mouth was too full to say anything. Her eyes lingered on a shadowy corner of the cavern.

  “. . . so basically all the goods come in here every day from our various channels and then we sort everything each night,” explained Lorenz. “The better stuff and the stuff we don’t need for our immediate needs is sold for profit, through secret arrangements, of course, and anything we do need is stocked according to its use in the shelving systems. The Old Woman--I will introduce you in a second--keeps all the records of what comes and goes so that--”

  “Listen, uh, General Lorenz?” said Ben. “We really need to be--”

  “Ben, was it? Cállate! Do not interrupt me, Ben. I am explaining the fundamentals of the operation here.”

  “So who are you fighting exactly?” asked Thomas.