And what if Lorenz caught them running? He would . . . well, Ben guessed that Lorenz killed deserters and mutineers without hesitation. Or at least ordered Basho to do it, as he had done with Keelo. And if they did go back to the police, what fate would await them in the Children’s’ Facility? Ben didn’t see how they would ever find their mother again. If she did in fact want them back.
“Hannah, it’s very important that we all stick together tomorrow,” explained Alison from the next bunk. “And we can’t tell anyone at all what we’re doing. Even Ming, okay?”
But Hannah kept interrupting Alison in the middle of her instructions. Either her sister’s plans were incredibly simple, or Hannah wasn’t paying attention at all. “Alison, don’t you think it’s weird that the Milagronomics stuff is just like that story Mom used to tell, the one about the giant toad? That magician was selling a solution to his own problem, right? Just like that Milagro guy, right? Don’t you think that’s weird?”
“Yes, I suppose it is, Hannah, but listen, you’ve got to pay attention here--what I’m explaining is very important.”
“I know, I know, Alison. I’m listening,” said Hannah without much enthusiasm. She looked so much older now. As Ming had explained with a tearful eye as she remembered her own children, Hannah was just going through a growth spurt and it was only natural that she should shoot up almost a foot in a matter of weeks. Which was funny since in that time none of them had taken the vitamins their mother had told them were so important for their growth. When they first arrived in the Strand, Hannah was a sniveling and fragile little girl. But sometime in the last few days, the last few weeks maybe, she had changed. She no longer ran for Alison’s protection, or said things in a high-pitched, little girl, pixie voice. From time to time, though, she still whistled her imaginary bird calls.
Maybe it was like how Lorenz himself sounded so much older than he looked, how being forced to become some sort of warrior had made him grow up too fast. The Graham children no longer had homework to shirk, chores to forget, and a mother’s pesterings to ignore. Maybe, Ben thought, the whole idea of childhood was disappearing for them, just like Lorenz said it had done for every other kid in the country. Maybe the only way you could give your kids a childhood was to isolate them away from the chaos, high above the city in a tiny, stinky apartment.
Thomas was reading a technical manual for some machine and the glow of his flashlight illuminated his bunk like a spaceship. After tolerating Alison’s instructions, Hannah began whistling softly, and as she fell asleep the whistling became a slow, soft breathing. Ben lay in his bunk and thought about what Cabra had said, but it was too abstract to make much sense. What was their problem? Well, most obviously, it was to escape the Strand--and the police--and to somehow find their mother. Was the solution to that inside them? Ben didn’t see how it was anything but a matter of summoning the courage to run for their lives, as Alison had already decided they would do. Cabra’s advice wasn’t very clear. But, Ben considered, maybe that was the best sort of wisdom, when you were left to apply it to your own life without having someone tell you specifically what to do.
Ben closed his eyes and tried to sleep, but as usual, couldn’t. Whenever he closed his eyes he kept seeing the airport, and though he tried not to, random images of their mother. He missed her, but he hated her too. She had betrayed them, but he couldn’t keep the memory of the last time he had seen her out of his head. The fragile smile. The limp figure being shoved into the car. None of them had mentioned her for some time. In an army of child soldiers, it felt so juvenile to be pining for the care and comfort of an adult. Each day that passed was more and more proof that she had fled to a better life. Despite what Ming said about her loving them too much to just abandon them, it was becoming harder and harder to imagine ever seeing their mother again.
The men who had broken into their apartment that distant morning had wanted something their mother had taken, something very valuable, and maybe it was that twig (which Ben had hidden under his bunk some time ago) but whatever it was, whatever it was worth to someone, it was meaningless to him. To him the twig was only a symbol of being left behind, of being cast off into the dirty and bottomless depths of the city.
Ben’s fists clenched involuntarily. He felt like he wanted to punch someone, to steal a gun from the munitions room and hold everyone at gunpoint until they let the four of them go free, to run as fast as he could at the barricaded steel door and rip it open. His heart felt like it was going to burst out of his chest. For the first time since they arrived in the cavern, he felt claustrophobic, like the whole place was going to come crumbling down at any second. Why couldn’t they be back in that stupid apartment? How could he have ever wanted to leave that place? It was all gone now. They’d never get back there. And it was all her fault. None of this would ever have happened if she hadn’t stolen something that wasn’t hers. A tear formed at the side of Ben’s eye but he quickly brushed it away. All along she had told them not to steal things. Screw her.
Ben reached under his bunk and brought it out. The twig still pulsed in a faint pink glow. The policeman had been right. It was just a stupid trinket. Her plan had failed, not because of something that had gone wrong, but because the plan wasn’t real to begin with. She had made the whole thing up. Their mother had abandoned them.
Ben crept out into the darkened cavern. The party was still crunching and crashing over by the kitchen area. The main lights in the empty belly of the cavern had been turned off, but various electronics and computer screens twitched randomly in red and blue. He picked his way over boxes and around the machinery. He wanted to kick something, but knew that most of the things lying around were either sharp or made out of metal, so he just stood there in the darkness with his eyes closed, feeling the anger pulse through his arms and the tears spill from his eyes.
But then something moved at Ben’s feet. A piece of metal fell over with a blunt clang. A shadow briefly appeared against a box, but then there was nothing. Seconds passed. Ben didn’t move.
He jumped as something rubbed against his leg, but then saw Mitty’s furry tail. As Ben’s heart stopped racing and he breathed a little easier, the cat began to weave in and out of his legs in its usual quest for attention.
“Guess you’re feeling a bit lonely too?” said Ben. Mitty continued his low humming in confirmation that he, too, possibly didn’t feel like he belonged among the crazy revelry on the other side of the cavern. The cat sat at his feet and looked up with an almost understanding purr. In the artificial dusk of the Strand, there was a strange, phosphorescent glow in Mitty’s eyes, as if he could see in the dark. If Thomas ever stopped being annoying, Ben would have to ask him if cats indeed had that ability. “Thought you went up on the streets with Cabra?”said Ben. Mitty swished his tail back and forth. “Guess it’s raining pretty bad up there though, right?”
Ben straightened up. After taking one last, quick look at the twig in his hand, he threw it with all his strength out into the dark void. After a second or two, he heard a distant and miniscule clink as it hit the ground somewhere amid the fragments of scrap metal, pieces of wire, empty boxes, and bits of plastic. It was no use now. Not that it ever had been. The twig was just a memento of a mother who had deserted them.
Mitty took off after a mouse and disappeared into the junk. After a minute, Ben turned and walked back to the bunk room, feeling slightly better at having done something just a little bit violent. It felt good to come to a clear decision about their mother and the twig, to just throw it away and put a part of his past behind him.
But that night, a fitful storm of memories flooded over Ben. Bits and pieces of things that he barely remembered visited him all night long, tormenting and guilting him with recollections of the moments when he had lost his temper, and when their mother had done things that hinted she would become the selfish tramp who would abandon them.
But there were also glimpses of long lost things that Ben now realized he missed. He remembe
red weekends back in the apartment. Since their mother didn’t have to work on Saturdays, in the morning they would all crowd into her bed for stories. Hannah and Alison would brush each other’s hair and they would sing and whistle together. Thomas and Ben would have these fake wrestling matches where the real animosity they had for each other didn’t matter since Thomas was Griffo the Magnificent from Siberia and Ben was Milano the Incorrigible from Italy. Their mother would just sit there with her hair a mess of black tangles and this look of delighted exasperation on her face.
Chapter Sixteen: The Gleaming White Monster
When Lorenz woke them all by crying, “Pónganse las pilas!” it couldn’t have been any later than about four in the morning, and Ben’s head still swam with the fragments of his dreams. It felt like he had been tossing around in a giant sack all night. Thomas roused himself like it was Christmas morning, and Hannah swayed back and forth as she tried to get up. As they made their way out into the cavern with the other kids, there was this nervous eye contact among the four of them, a look that seemed to say, well I guess we won’t be coming back here, will we? It wasn’t as if they had any possessions to leave behind, or memories to be tearful over. But Ben saw Alison and Hannah cast a sad glance across the cavern towards the House of Proof where Ming was still asleep. And Ben, too, realized that he’d miss Cabra, Basho, and Jawl in a weird sort of way.
They were each given crisp black and white army fatigues just like Lorenz’s. They scarfed down a quick breakfast of smoked salmon (expropriated from the finest seafood restaurant in town, according to Delfa) and scrambled eggs on bagels. As they made their way to the tunnel runners, Lorenz gave them all heavy backpacks full of the bombs they would use to blow up the Children’s Facility. And out of the corner of his eye, Ben saw Jawl and Basho each swing a machine gun over their backs, and Lorenz place pistols into holsters under each of his arms. It was hard to tell just how many kids were assembling for the raid. There were maybe twelve of them in all: Lorenz, Basho, Jawl, Delfa, the four Graham children, and a few others Ben couldn’t make out.
They clambered into the two tunnel runners, Lorenz barking at them to move quicker. Since each machine only had seats for four, two people had to stand up and hang onto the roll bars. The door was opened by a guard and the two machines surged to life with screams that ripped into the black silence in front of them.
The tunnel runner sent up huge wakes of mud behind them, their headlights barely able to pierce the darkness in front of them. It felt like they were a bullet exploding down the barrel of a gun. Lorenz was with Basho in the lead car, since Basho was apparently the only one who knew exactly which turns would take them to the Children’s Facility. The four Graham were in the second tunnel runner with Delfa and Jawl, who was driving the vehicle with far too much enthusiasm. Ben sat in the front passenger seat and between him and Jawl lay Jawl’s big machine gun. It smelled like greasy steel, and was bouncing around a little too much for Ben’s comfort.
Random turns were made every minute or so, the machines barely avoiding smashing into the walls. Ben felt like he was going to pass out. He didn’t know whether to watch the lights of the first car tearing into the blackness in front of them, or the instantly receding emptiness behind them. There were no seatbelts, and everything was simply too terrifying to watch. In the back seat Hannah was clinging close to Alison, while Thomas was trying to peer around the driver’s seat to get a look at the darkness rushing at them. He was grinning from ear to ear.
After about thirty minutes of fearing for their lives and Jawl yelling, “Faster! Faster!” as he tailed the other machine, they skidded to a stop. Everyone got out and walked around slowly, trying to lose the dizziness.
“Wooo-hooo!” screamed Jawl as he regained his balance. He took his machine gun out of the tunnel runner and began firing into the darkness. The end of his gun flowered into a shower of sparks, and Jawl was screaming like a maniac.
“Do not waste your ammo, you fool,” yelled Lorenz. “No manches!”
“Huh?” Jawl swung around but only took his finger off the trigger once the bullets started ricocheting off the walls.
“Well, what now, Basho?” asked Lorenz once silence returned. He took a cigar out of a jacket pocket on his jacket and lit it with a tiny, mirrored lighter. The glowing end of the cigar danced in the darkness like a small, orange cherry.
“We go on foot from here,” said Basho. “Follow me.” He hoisted his backpack and immediately dissolved into the darkness.
The backpack was heavy and its contents had sharp corners that dug into Ben’s back. He tried not to think about what would set the bombs off--would they explode if one of them tripped? Would some unseen radio frequency make them go off without warning? He kept his head down and concentrated on the waves of his own breathing and the sucking sound his boots made in the mud.
What would Alison be looking for in an escape plan? And how would she know when to run? They would have to become separated from the rest of the group somehow. Would they have the courage to do it? Was that what Cabra had been talking about, some hidden strength that they didn’t know they had?
The tunnels were narrow now--too small for the tunnel runners--and they took so many turns that at one point it felt as if they had gone full circle. Narrow pipes led to huge passageways big enough to fly a plane through, and then they would once again be in claustrophobic culverts too small to stand up in. At one point they were right underneath a street and could see people’s feet through the storm drain grates, but then the tunnel took a turn and they once again lost their bearings in the black void. Behind Ben, near the back of the group, someone was breathing hard, and Delfa soon called up that she needed to go to the bathroom.
“Lorenz, hold on. I have to go to the . . . you know.” Delfa made a hopping motion to emphasize the urgency of her situation.
“What is it?” Lorenz called back. The cloud of cigar smoke swirling around him was illuminated by the others’ flashlights.
“I gotta piss, man,” said Delfa.
“Fine, hurry,” muttered Lorenz, wiping the sweat from his forehead. Delfa jogged back down the tunnel to where it curved away into dark privacy.
“So how much longer are we going to be walking?” asked Thomas.
“You’ll see,” said Basho in dismissal.
Lorenz watched as Delfa disappeared into the blackness. He bit his cigar in concentration and his eyes narrowed. After only a few seconds, he took off after her down the tunnel. He emerged a minute later, dragging Delfa by her jacket collar. She was tossed on the ground like a sack of laundry. “What are you drinking, damn it?” bellowed Lorenz.
Delfa clutched a filthy plastic container in her hand. It looked like some sort of drink bottle, but it was as dirty as the old containers of brake fluid lying around Basho’s workshop. “Coffee, Lorenz--just coffee,” pleaded Delfa. “It makes me a better soldier! Please don’t, Lorenz! I get so nervous doing this stuff. I need to drink it to calm down.”
“Rule Three: no drugs, Delfa.” Lorenz swung his boot into Delfa’s ribs and Delfa gasped for breath. “Borracha.”
“But hansa doesn’t have any side effects,” she wheezed. “How can it be a drug if it has no side effects? Please, I’ll never do it again!”
Lorenz cast a huge, cruel grimace down at the cowering girl. “Its side effect is that you are addicted to it. You seem to feel the need to seek some sort of escape from the reality of this day. As you will soon see, there is no escape. Not in this world, and especially not where you are going.”
“No! I’m sorry,” she whimpered. “What about all that whisky you drink? That’s the same friggin’ thing!”
“Okay, Basho,” said Lorenz under his breath. “Take her away.” Basho grabbed Delfa and tossed her backpack over to Lorenz. With his machine gun bouncing on his back and Delfa under his arm, Basho marched back down the tunnel.
Delfa’s cry warbled insect-like out of the darkness. “I thought you loved me.”
“All right, let’s go,” said Lorenz. “No time for sitting around worrying about basura like her.”
“So what’s going to happen to her now?” asked Ben as he tried to keep pace with Lorenz. Ben’s brain could not comprehend how the girl who was supposedly Lorenz’s girlfriend had turned out to be a drug addict. How could Lorenz just turn his back on her?
“She is done,” said Lorenz without emotion.
“And what does that mean exactly?” asked Alison.
“Basically, we cannot let her loose in case she tells the police the location of the Strand. And Basho is the only person who knows all the tunnels. So he just takes these, you know,” he motioned behind his head with his cigar, “he takes these sorts of people down a whole bunch of wrong turns and leaves them there. It would be a miracle if she ever found her way back.” Lorenz turned to Ben and smiled. “She will go insane before she dies of starvation.” He smiled a sharp-toothed grin at this and then blew a huge cloud of cigar smoke at Ben’s face. Ben gulped. Did Lorenz know about their plan to escape? Maybe he had secret microphones in the bunk room . . . maybe he was just waiting for the four of them to try something.
They soon came upon a rusty ladder and one by one they ascended what felt like hundreds of feet. At the top, Basho helped everyone pull themselves up into a passageway that radiated in a strange glow. Ben knew immediately that the bluish-white tinge was the light of the sun, the sky, and the clouds, all those natural things that could never be replicated in a man-made light bulb. Real light almost smelled different.
Ben squinted as he approached the end of the tunnel. It was a drainage viaduct that emptied over a hillside slope high above the city. At their feet, a tiny rivulet of water dropped to the ground below, where it had teased a clump of green grass to grow out of the yellow scrub. The outside air flooded Ben’s lungs. It felt like he had been underground for years. And even though the air smelled as polluted as ever, the stinging in his lungs and eyes was as refreshing as a mountain meadow.
The Fortress of Clouds Page 15