“Okay, the place is demolished,” said Sean. “Can we go now, Alison?”
Alison turned back to Sean, her face crumpled as if she was deciding whether to cry or punch him. “We used to live there. Those were our friends.”
“Oh, right, I’m sorry,” said Sean. “I forgot you were living with that . . . that street gang, but listen: it is absolutely imperative that we leave now. The Milagcorp guards can’t see that we have a--”
“We don’t care,” said Hannah without looking at him.
“Kids, if I could have done this in a more civilized manner, rest assured I would have, but you must know that we are being followed and at any second those guards are going to catch up to us.” But Sean’s logic was another language, an ancient dialect that sailed unintelligable over their heads.
The scene before them was too much to bear. The entire area had been demolished and excavated in a matter of hours. A fence had been erected around half a city block. It looked just like any other demolition or construction site, except that the workers down below were busy dismantling the Strand’s collection of reappropriated items. A procession of men was dragging out the boxes of wine, the paintings, the food, the electronics, and the furniture. Others were ripping apart all the wiring and plumbing. And in the far corner of the pit, Ming’s walls of books and newspapers were slumping over in the rain. The hole was flooded under nearly a foot of water and the freshly dug walls of the area were already slumping into the mud.
It looked so much smaller now. The strange magic of the place was leached away. Its motley community had vanished so quickly maybe it hadn’t existed at all. Maybe they had all been asleep for weeks and had all shared the same dream. It sounded weird to hear Alison call the Miscreants their friends, but it was true. Even though they had been held captive by Lorenz and his gang, the Graham children were now fighting the same enemy as their one-time captors. The Miscreants were the closest things to friends they had ever known. Ben couldn’t keep himself from crying.
Hannah and Alison didn’t move for a long time. Their hands gripped the wire barricade, and when they turned to Ben their faces bore a criss-cross pattern from pressing against the fence.
“Lorenz . . .” said Alison weakly.
“What?” asked Ben. But Alison didn’t hear him.
“What do you think happened to Ming?” asked Hannah, her face hidden behind a dripping mop of hair.
“I dunno, Han,” said Ben. If they weren’t killed in the initial demolition blasts, most of the Miscreants would probably be thrown in some Children’s Facility. But what would happen to Ming, who was too old for such a place?
“Okay, look,” said Sean in a stern voice. “We have to leave now. You’ve had enough time here and I’m tired of you endangering my life with your juvenile shenanigans.”
Ben turned around, a rage swelling up inside him. “You don’t get it do you? We don’t care about your stupid mission. Our mother has deserted us, our brother has been captured, and the closest thing we’ve ever had to friends have been slaughtered. And we’re going to just follow you on some car ride to the jungle? Can you please just leave us alone?” Ben looked at Alison and Hannah standing there beside him, different sized versions of the same figure: slumped shoulders and rivers of sodden brown hair flowing over forlorn eyes. “C’mon, girls. Let’s get out of here.” Without even looking at Sean, Ben grabbed the girls’ arms and they ran out of the alley, past the truck, and down the street.
The rain made it hard to look up as they ran. The few people on the street had their faces buried deep in hoods and under umbrellas. For some reason, Ben wanted to hold Alison and Hannah’s hands. He couldn’t remember if they had even done that during the run from their apartment, weeks ago, when it felt like they had been so much younger. Tears fell down Ben’s cheeks. The cars on the street sliced by uncaring.
But Sean caught up to them at the end of the block.
“Just wait--hold on,” said Sean. He weaseled his way ahead of them and stood in their way. “Look, you kids can’t leave.”
“Yes we can,” said Ben.
“Look, what if I told you that I could fix everything, but that the only way to fix it is to come with me?” said Sean.
“Sorry,” said Alison.
Sean grabbed Ben’s shoulder. “Look, Ben, I’m just trying to help you.”
Ben stopped. “What do you mean me?”
“Back there,” motioned Sean. He held his breath for a few seconds. “Your mom . . . when I asked which one of you . . . I, um, only heard one syllable, so . . .”
Ben’s brain took hold of what this meant. A golf-ball sized lump formed in his throat and he felt like he was going to stop breathing. Alison, Hannah, and Thomas were all more than one syllable. “Maybe she said none,” said Ben.
“I heard Ben,” said Sean.
“Look, I don’t want to--”
“It’s you, Ben.”
Hannah and Alison looked at Ben with distant, disgusted stares. “So is that why you don’t care about going back to rescue Thomas?” asked Alison. “Because the code or the plant or whatever is in Ben?”
“Oh, I care,” explained Sean. “But I have to cut our losses. I’m only following orders, Alison.”
Ben felt like he was going to be sick. Thomas had been sacrificed, since Ben was the prize. “I don’t want your . . . help,” said Ben. “I just want to go home.”
Sean looked Ben in the eye. “Ben, your home doesn’t exist anymore. I’m sorry, but you can’t avoid this.”
“But I don’t want any of this.”
“You really don’t have much of a choice here.”
Ben looked around at his feet and found half a brick lying beside a crumbling wall. He picked it up and felt its weight in his hand.
“What are you doing, Ben?” asked Sean. “Put that down. Look, I’m sorry, okay? What do you want me to do?”
“How about leaving us alone,” said Hannah.
Ben hurled the brick at Sean and struck him in the arm.
“Ow, fff . . .” cursed Sean. “Why on earth did you do that?”
They left him there on the street corner, swearing and clutching his arm. And this time he didn’t follow them.
The neighborhood was a ghostly stretch of run-down houses and barricaded stores. There was nothing to buy and no one to buy it. Up ahead, the street disappeared into an abyss of rain and cloud, the cars seeming to just appear and disappear out of gray nothingness. The rain was overwhelming the storm drains and water was starting to crest the curbs. If Ben closed his eyes, it felt like he was underwater, and the imagined oceanic weight pressing down on him made his breathing slow down just a little bit. What were they going to do now? He tried not to think about it.
Unfortunately, Hannah needed to know. “Ben, where are we going? What are we going to do now?”
“I don’t know,” said Ben. “I don’t care.” He stopped beside a gap-toothed wooden fence that pathetically guarded a vacant, junk-filled lot. Strips of wood, once sun-splintered, were sagging in the rain. Overhead, the leaves of palm trees hung like lifeless fingers.
Ben sat down on the curb and stared at the fleets of cigarette butts sailing down the street on the tide of rain water. His heart burned. He wanted out, out of some arrangement that had been made before he had even been born. He didn’t want to be Ben anymore. How could he not even be given a choice over his own life? How could he be forced to carry around something that wasn’t him? He wanted to rip himself out of his body, to cut away the stupid genetic code to the plant. A pile of old snake skin left on the sidewalk. He clawed at his arm and watched as the blood was washed away by the rain.
Alison and Hannah sat down on either side of Ben.
“I’m sorry, Ben,” said Alison.
“Maybe we should go back to the last place we saw Mom,” said Hannah.
“You think she’s still there?” asked Alison.
“Maybe she--”
“You’re not going anywhere,” said a
slow, rough voice from behind them.
Chapter Twenty-six: There was Only Supposed to be One
They spun around to see two silver Milagcorp guards--one short, one tall--smiling down at them. Ben couldn’t be sure, but they looked like the original two who had broken into their apartment so many weeks ago.
“Well, well, well,” said the tall one. “So nice to see you little brats again.”
“You know,” the short one said to Ben, “my balls still hurt from the kick you gave me.”
Ben reached for the fence beside him and wiggled a board loose from its rusty nails. There was a new fire inside him, and these two would be the first to taste it.
“What, you think you’re gonna hurt me with that board, kid?”
Ben swung at the short man and missed, but then he quickly turned on the tall man and struck him across the face. The man swore, but it was pained cry, and blood started spurting out of the side of his head. Ben looked at the end of the board: there was a crooked red nail sticking out of it.
The short man put his finger into his ear and barked into his wrist. “Yeah, this is Phil. We found them. Tenth and Cedarcrest. Send backup. Immediately.” He took his finger out of his ear and took a slow step towards Ben. “Okay, kid. Why don’t we put that board down, okay? Dontcha think we’ve gone a little too far? You idiots got us in enough trouble last time.”
Ben could feel his sisters frozen behind him. “Duck through the fence,” he ordered Alison and Hannah.
“Ben, are you insane?” said Alison.
“They can’t hurt us,” said Ben. “You heard what Sean said. Isn’t that right, Phil?” The short man was advancing towards them. “We’re special.” Ben flashed a devilish, wide-eyed grin, and then swung the board wildly. The man leaped back, which allowed the three of them to squeeze through a hole in the fence.
“Grab something, anything,” commanded Ben. The lot was a mess of beer cans, mud, and weeds. Ben kicked through the junk and found a three foot section of rebar. Alison and Hannah each picked up some fist-sized rocks. Then the fence burst apart behind them.
“Alright, look,” yelled the short man. “You can just give up right now without getting hurt, but the more you drag this out, the less likely you’re gonna stay in one piece. Either way you’re coming with me. Your choice.”
“Oh, we’re dragging this out,” said Ben. “Girls, let ‘em fly.” Alison and Hannah threw their rocks and struck the man in the back. He fell to one knee, but staggered up again. Then he started running towards Ben. But Ben was ready.
“Kid, you’re gonna get hurt,” the man said.
“Bring it on, fat ass,” said Ben.
The man lunged at Ben with his right fist. Ben ducked, but then the man sucker punched him with his left. Ben heard his nose crunch and a horrible nausea clouded his brain. He staggered around but couldn’t stand up straight. Warm blood ran into his mouth. His limbs wouldn’t follow his brain’s directions. Out of the side of his vision he could see Alison and Hannah scrambling to find more rocks, and the short man seeming to consider whether he should wait for Ben to get up, or go after Hannah and Alison. He advanced towards the girls.
“You know, I have no problem hitting little girls,” said the man.
Ben winced and forced himself to get up. Wiping the blood from his face, he grabbed the piece of rebar and lurched up behind the man. He lifted the heavy rod above his head and let the weight of it fall against the man’s back. The man gasped for breath and fell sideways into the mud.
“Sorry for dragging this out,” said Ben through his heavy breathing. The man was folded over and struggling to form words. “You look hurt. That’s a drag.”
Ben grabbed his sisters and they left the man there, wheezing and clutching at his back.
Back on the street, the tall man wasn’t anywhere to be seen. Blotches of blood led down the sidewalk to their left, so they instinctively ran in the opposite direction. By pinching his nose, Ben managed to stop the bleeding, but something was out of place. It felt like there was a rock jammed up one nostril.
They stared at the ground as their sprint slowed to a walk. They passed countless blocks of empty houses and cracked sidewalks. No one questioned where they were going. Somewhere. Anywhere. Away from here.
“Wow,” Hannah finally managed to say.
“I know,” said Ben. For their entire lives, their mother had told them that violence was the worst way to solve a confrontation. She probably hadn’t anticipated this.
“I feel kind of sick,” said Alison. “Do you think that guy is . . .”
“I don’t know, Al,” said Ben. “We didn’t have a choice.” They kept wandering down the street, exploring the disgusting pride that comes from beating someone up.
But after maybe ten blocks, a sharp, urgent voice called out from behind them. At first, Ben thought it was a dog barking.
“Hey,” called the tall Milagcorp guard. The three kids turned around slowly, knowing the voice immediately. The man had put a piece of duct tape over the gash on his face, but blood was still dripping from his chin. He had a strange gray gun pointed at them. “Just stop right there,” he said.
“You can’t kill us,” stammered Ben, but he instinctively raised his arms in surrender.
“Oh, I wouldn’t do that,” the man said with a smile. There was a loud bang but no flash of gunfire. A massive net enveloped the three of them and pulled them to the ground. The man calmly walked over and glared down at them like a hunter admiring a prized jungle cat. “Well,” he said, “looks like we got all four of you parasites now.” He chuckled and put a finger to his ear. “Mike here. I got the other--”
There was a deafening whine and a white blur to their right. Sean’s truck went into a fishtail and slammed into the curb right beside them. He leapt out and ran straight for the Milagcorp guard.
“Wrong move,” said Sean. He jumped feet first at the man and drove him into the sidewalk. The two of them struggled to their feet simultaneously.
“Hey, look. It’s one of those hippies from the jungle,” said the tall man. Sean held his injured right arm close to his side, and tried throwing a punch with his left. “Oh, have you got a hurt arm? Don’t worry, I’ll go easy on ya.” The tall man cocked his head, smiled broadly, and then headbutted Sean. Sean swayed uneasily and fell to the concrete. When he got to his feet, blood was running freely out of his nostrils.
“Hey, buddy, I’ve already had one bloody nose today, okay?” said Sean. “The first one was from a little girl, so go easy on me.”
“Oh, it’s gonna get worse, hippie,” said the Milagcorp guard. “Don’t you have any of them fancy jungle weapons, guy? Maybe some of them poison frog darts?”
Sean stared at the Milagcorp guard for a second and then, in a lightning fast movement, roundhouse kicked him in the head. The man keeled over like he had been turned to stone.
“Nope,” said Sean. The Milagcorp guard lay unconscious on the pavement. “Just that.” He turned back to the three kids still tangled up in the net. “God, I hated those jiu-jitsu lessons as a kid,” he said in a whiny voice. “Everybody else was playing in bands, drinking beer, getting girls. But I had to learn martial arts. Oh well, can’t take that back.” He unraveled them and helped them to their feet. They all stood there in the rain and had an awkward sort of a laugh. “Well, have we had enough fun today?” he asked. “You kids are pretty good at getting into trouble. Now, would I be able to persuade the three of you to come with me?”
Just as Ben opened his mouth, his eyes squinted. A bright light illuminated the sides of Alison and Hannah’s faces. They turned around into the bleaching headlights of a bunch of silver cars swerving to a stop on all sides of Sean’s truck. Doors slammed in unison and a small army of Milagcorp guards instantly assembled behind the cars.
“Get on the ground now!” commanded a monstrous, iron voice. Ben and the girls started to get down on their knees, but Sean just stood there with his hands up.
“Children,
listen,” whispered Sean. “They’re going to shoot at you but they’re not going to hit you. On the count of three, I need all of you to run as quickly as possible, okay?”
“What?” said Ben. “Run where?”
“Just run in the opposite direction as fast as you can. Ready? Here we go. One. Two. Three.”
The guns snapped behind them. Bullets smacked the concrete around their feet and knocked against the fence beside them. Then shouting and the rumble of footsteps as the guards started to run after them.
At the end of the block, they darted into a narrow alley filled with boxes and garbage. Behind them twenty boots stampeded and ten voices yelled. Bullets went buzzing by overhead, bouncing off the walls of the buildings. Hannah and Alison were screaming, but Ben was breathing too hard to say anything.
“Down there!” said Sean, pointing to a dark stairwell. They followed him down the slippery steps and into an underground parking garage that was flooded under a foot of water.
“Where are we going?” asked Alison as they splashed through the water. Shouts echoed out of the stairwell behind them.
“We need to get back to the truck,” said Sean between huffs. “But we’ll have to find somewhere to hide first.”
They ran out of the mouth of the parking garage and back into the street. There weren’t any silver guards on the street, but the ones behind them were only a hundred feet back. They bolted down the sidewalk, pushing aside anyone who got in their way, the startled shouts not even entering Ben’s brain.
At the end of the street stood a huge, shaggy hedge guarding a tiny house. They grappled their way up and over the hedge, the blue juniper needles scratching at their skin and getting into their clothes. The lawn on the other side was a tangle of brown weeds. And there was a man sitting on the back porch of the house. He looked up at them slowly, like a hibernating bear being stirred from sleep. There was a shotgun lying beside his chair. They all froze.
“This is a private residence!” shouted the man “Get off my property!
Just as he said this, they heard the shouts of the silver guards behind them. Four heads crested the hedge. The man on the porch looked away from Sean and the three kids and took notice of the Milagcorp guards. He reached for his gun.
The Fortress of Clouds Page 25