Pale moonlight rubbed the edge off the darkness. He could see vague shapes of things—the shadow of the workbench, the table, the cupboard at the back, always hanging open. Ben was sure that something was watching him from that cupboard, but there was no time for fear. He looked at the door. The padlock hung from the heavy chain, locking them all inside. Ben would go out through his trapdoor.
He took a step back. Another board creaked, and Mum made a sound. He waited, midstep, one foot in the air, balanced, too scared to lay the foot down. Three minutes on one foot. He felt like one of his own clay stop-motion figures, waiting for someone to take a still frame and move his leg. He wondered if this was the longest that anybody had ever balanced on one leg. Ben felt great compassion and admiration for seagulls. Eventually he dared lower his foot. Silently.
He bent down and lifted the metal chest that covered his hole. It felt heavier in the dark. His right hand squealed with pain from the sawing he had done. His shoulder ached. Ben squeezed his fingers beneath the small chest and lifted one end of it a few inches off the ground, then swung it aside. He put the chest down but the tip of one finger was jammed underneath—his left pinkie. It pinched him so hard he had to let out a quiet, breathy scream, then he grabbed the handle on the side of the chest and lifted, releasing the trapped finger. The trunk banged to the floor.
Mum sat up straight in bed. Ben lay low. His blood stopped flowing.
INTO THE WILD
Ben’s body was pressed flat to the cool roughness of the timber boards. He could see the black shape of his mother as she sat up in bed. How would he explain why he was lying next to a hole in the floor?
He waited for her to rock Dad and wake him. Dad would sit up and grab his rabbit gun. Mum would snap the flashlight on, point it at Ben, and see where he had cut the floorboards. They would know that he was trying to escape, that he was going to tell their secret.
Cool air blew up through thin cracks between the boards, tickling his eyes and nose. The floor smelled like old cheese and onions. He lay there, listening, waiting for the end to come.
Why did I do it?
Then, as quickly as she had sat up, Mum lay back down, rustled for a moment, and was still. Soon, she breathed steadily again. Ben matched his own breathing with hers.
A long time passed before he dared sit up. Stillness. But an odd noise from outside. A tinkling, rustling, and a dull thud. He listened. Nothing more. He had to get on with this. Could not stop for every sound or movement. He felt around on the floor, his fingertips touching the roughly hacked line of his escape hole.
He stuck his fingernail into the crack and lifted a board. It came up with a squeak and a twist of nails. The next two boards came away silently. He rested them against the wall next to the hole. Night air rushed in, filling his lungs. He breathed in the deep, dark wilderness.
Ben looked over at the bed. Maybe he could hold on a little longer, escape once they were back in civilization. But Ben couldn’t deal with not knowing where they were going next or for how long. This was the moment when he could take charge of his own thoughts and actions. Until now, his parents had been the ones in control. But now they were out of control.
Would she go to jail? Or just Dad?
He heard more sounds outside, odd sounds, but he had to ignore them. Had to go. He dropped his backpack into the hole, gently swung his feet down, and lowered his legs. His sneaker soles hit the hard-packed dirt. He pushed the rest of his body through the hole, scraping his sides worse than before. He knelt, and the night washed over him. Trees stood darkly shadowed against the faint glow of moon. Crickets and frogs croaked and buzzed nearby. The river said, “Shhhhh.” Mosquitoes attacked his arms, and he scratched their bites. He had to get moving.
Ben Silver was free.
He looked up at the hole. It would be so easy to go back. Easier than to go forward. He closed his eyes and wished that everything was going to be okay. He wished that he could rewind time. He wished that they had never come to the cabin. He wished that he was still at home, before the police had knocked on his door and set this in motion. He wished that he was making his movie, and only pretending about zombie thieves and forests and being on the run.
This was it. Clouds must have smothered the moon, because suddenly the night looked darker. The only things he knew out there were the river and his raft. He had already decided that he would use the raft. But what lay beyond, farther downstream? This was stupid. “Better the devil you know.” That’s what people said. If there were two choices and they were both bad, you should go with the one you knew. Your own family. Flesh and blood, said the voice in his mind, the voice he could not control.
There was a jingling sound and a kshhhh.
Ben looked to his right, squeezed his bottom lip. He quietly, carefully crawled to the edge of the cabin and looked up toward the clearing. It was dark and still. He watched. Listened. Sticks and leaves crackling underfoot. Something up there. Someone. Ben did not breathe. For a full minute he waited, only his eyes moving, like an owl’s.
Kshhhh. A radio. That was the sound. Like his orange and green walkie-talkies at home. Like the one on Dan Toohey’s belt.
Then the shape. Behind a tree about a hundred feet from the cabin, at the bottom of the final steep hill on the dirt road. The figure motioned to someone farther up the hill. Then there were two shadows at the base of the forever-tall pine.
Had they seen him? He did not think so.
Were there more of them? He squinted, looking up the dirt road.
What to do. Would he run? Olive. He thought of Olive.
On the corner, up the road, he saw white. The front of a white car.
This decision could change his life. Would he run alone like the zombie thief in his movie? Would he surrender? Or would he listen to the voice at the back of his mind and wake them, warn them?
Flesh and blood.
FLESH AND BLOOD
Ben pulled slowly back from his position and crawled beneath the hole in the floor. His knuckles pressed into the dirt. His eyeballs throbbed in time with his pulse. He felt tears in his eyes, body supercharged with adrenaline. Fight or flight. That’s what they called it. Would he fight or fly?
He needed to tell his parents. They should escape too. Through his hole. He would still run but he could not leave them to be caught. No matter what they had done. He needed to help them.
Were the men behind the tree police? Or people after the money? Were they wearing uniforms? He could not see. Hats? He could not remember. Radios? Certainly.
Ben looked up. He reached into the hole. He stood and squeezed the top half of his body into the cabin.
“Psst,” he whispered quietly, glancing up at the window, expecting dark shapes to appear.
His parents lay still.
“Psssssst,” he said a little louder.
No response.
One more time, he thought.
“Pssssssssssssst.”
His mother stirred. She sat up.
“Mum,” he whispered.
She looked around. “What?”
Too loud, Ben thought.
“Down here.”
She turned to him, to the dim, moonlit outline of the top half of his body.
“There are people outside. Police, maybe. You have to come.”
The next few seconds happened in a heartbeat. Mum alerted Dad and Olive and they were silently up and out of bed, and Olive’s half-asleep body was being passed down through the escape hole to Ben.
“What are we doing?” she grizzled. Ben’s instinct was to put his hand over her mouth but he knew it would upset her and she might start screaming. So he simply leaned very close to her ear as Dad dropped the gray sports bag with the black straps through the hole and Mum lowered herself down.
“We must be very, very quiet,” Ben told Olive. “It’s hideand-seek. Can you be quiet?”
Olive nodded her head sleepily and sucked her thumb, then she took a sharp breath.
“Whe
re’s Bonzo?” she whispered.
Ben panicked. “He’s hiding,” he whispered, close to her ear. “We have to find him, but we must be so, so quiet. Rabbits have very good hearing.”
She nodded a small nod in the darkness. Mum huddled close to Ben now. Dad’s legs were through, and he grunted quietly as he pushed his hips and bottom down. The tiny metal studs on his jeans scraped on wood.
Ben heard more noises from up the hill and he passed Olive to Mum and crawled to the edge of the cabin, looking up to the tree where the two figures had stood.
They were no longer there. The white car hood could still be seen up the dirt road and through the trees. But where were the men? At the cabin door? At the window, watching his father escape?
Dad twisted and squirmed to pull his shoulders and arms through the hole.
Finally, all four of them were under the cabin. Their family. Dad handed Bonzo to Olive, and she hugged Dad’s arm to thank him.
Ben motioned for his father to join him near the edge of the cabin. He placed his hand on his father’s shoulder, whispering very carefully and quietly in his ear.
“I saw two men here.” He pointed. “Car up there. They had radios.”
Ben could not believe he was helping his parents escape when he should have been turning them in. Culpam Poena Premit Comes—the police motto. Ben figured it must be something about honesty, truth, abiding by the law.
Dad scanned the bush. There was a sound from above, at the front door. Dad turned to crawl back beneath the cabin and, as he did, he hit his head on one of the timber beams supporting the floor. This sound set off a chain of events.
An explosive crash came from inside the cabin. A light went on, a moving light. A bright flashlight. Shouting, several voices at once, the kind of raid that Ben had seen on TV.
Dad whispered “Come!” and motioned sharply. He and Mum scurried out from under the far side of the cabin, opposite where Ben had seen the figures behind the tree. Ben watched his parents run off toward a large pine tree farther down the slope. Olive lingered at the edge of the cabin, not knowing whether to run or wait for Ben.
The shouting and loud footsteps continued on the cabin floor above. Within seconds they would see the hole, look down, and find them. Ben’s parents had escaped safely and now he would run. Down the hill toward his river, to his raft, and away into the night. But would he take Olive, or leave her? He looked around toward the hole in the floor one final time and he saw something. The gray sports bag. It was lying on the ground directly beneath the hole, the moving, swirling light of the police torches illuminating it occasionally. Dad had left the bag. Ben crabbed backward and picked it up.
“Let’s go, Ben!” Olive whispered.
Police above, little sister to his left. Holding a bag filled with what he thought was a million dollars. Would he turn them in, run, or follow his parents who had done the very bad thing? In that brief moment, crouched, panicked, one side of his face lit by flickering beams, the other in darkness, Ben no longer knew if he was a detective or a thief. His dream was to be an officer of the law, but his reality was very, very different.
I’m me, said a voice in his head.
Not now, Ben thought.
I’m me, said the voice again, but they are me too. My own blood.
He felt paralyzed. He could just make out the shape of his parents about ninety feet away, behind the tree, motioning for Olive and Ben to follow. But would he? All of these thoughts and actions happened in a matter of seconds but it felt like minutes to Ben. An annoying sister and criminal parents who lied to him, locked him up, showed no remorse.
Run, said another voice.
But they were his family, the only family he had.
I’m me, but they are me too.
“Stop!” said a loud voice as a head appeared through the hole and a sun-bright flashlight beam landed on him. Ben grabbed Olive by the hand, the bag of money in his other hand, and they scrambled out from under the cabin. He put his backpack on, and they started toward Mum and Dad. At that moment a police officer ran down the left side of the cabin, cutting them off from their parents. Without thinking, Ben changed direction, and ran steeply downward. Olive was right behind him. He could barely make out the tree trunks. It was like running blindfolded. He simply had to trust. He felt the trees rather than seeing them.
“Ben. Olive!” Mum’s voice, desperate-sounding.
Bang! Doors slamming, and shouting from the cabin. Three, four voices. The other police officers would be running to the door and down the hill after Ben and Olive. The officer who had cut them off from their parents was thudding heavily through the pine forest behind them and off to the left. Ben didn’t know if he could see them.
Sam Gribley would have left earlier. He’d be eating turtle soup or making acorn pancakes downstream somewhere. He wouldn’t be in this mess. I wish I was in a book, Ben thought. Things are easier for characters in books. Things turn out okay. But this did not feel like it was going to turn out okay.
Bad plan, said another voice.
Shut up, he thought.
He tripped on a rock, hit the ground, falling forward. His head hit something hard and there was a bright white flash that stopped everything.
THE FUGITIVE
“Police!”
That word ejected him from the moist night ground, dizzy and hurting. He grabbed the bag and ran again, saying, “Come on! Come on!” and Olive followed, holding his hand. Adrenaline bolted helter-skelter through their bodies, and his forehead ached. The police officer’s flashlight beam was still off to the left, but closer now, stumbling down through the trees.
Bad plan, bad plan, bad plan. Those were the words running through Ben’s head as he pulled the raft down over mossy boulders and into the darkness toward the river. The rocks were difficult enough in the day and impossible in the black of night.
Just as he felt the front of the raft hit the water, Ben slipped on a rock, banging his tailbone hard. A yelp escaped him, and pain screamed up his spine, but he stood right away. No time to stop, no time for pain. Ben pushed the raft into the river. He looked back up the hill and saw two flashlight beams probing the trees like lightsabers.
His feet sloshed into the shallows and he realized that he had no idea if the rebuilt raft would float with a human on it. He prayed that, this time, it was seaworthy. Ben made a silent vow that if he made it out of this alive he would take swimming lessons. He wondered if prisons had swimming pools.
“Get on!” he whispered, and Olive climbed onto the raft, clutching Bonzo by the ear as she crawled to the front. The raft wobbled side to side.
“Spread your weight. Spread out and hold this.” Ben passed her the bag of money. He still wore his backpack. He held the raft steady, pain shooting up from his tailbone, and guided it into the middle of the dark, flowing river. Knee-deep, waist-deep, chest-deep. The water was black ink but for a few patches of moonlight poking through the tips of the tall hoop pines.
The cold numbed the pain in his tailbone. Voices slashed through the darkness. Threats. Where were Mum and Dad? Caught?
The flashlight beams were flying down the incline toward the river now, spraying light through the trees. Ben swam, kicking hard with his legs and holding the front corner of the raft. Olive lay still and flat, the water lapping over her shoulders and legs. He knew that she couldn’t swim well either. She hugged Bonzo and the bag of money.
The current took them. Ben wanted to laugh and cry at the same time—laugh with nervousness and fear, cry with the knowledge that he was escaping from his parents, from the police.
The flashlight beams painted moving tree shadows all over the rock wall on the far side of the river. Hulking, sinister shadow puppets. Ben paddled along next to the raft now, trying not to make a sound. The river moved quickly, and Ben concentrated on steering away from the line of rocks jutting into the middle of the river.
He began to feel that maybe they would get away with this, when a shot went off and his b
ody crackled with adrenaline. Ben looked back and saw that one of the flashlight beams was riverside. Were they firing at him and Olive?
He dug in and paddled hard. The dark shapes of rocks and ferns stretched into the center of the river up ahead. He tried frantically to guide the raft toward the opening where the river flowed quickly. He looked back and the flashlight beam was moving down the river’s bank toward them. They would either be caught in the ray of the flashlight or stuck on the clump of rocks. Ben paddled, not caring so much about noise now, knowing that his life, both their lives, might depend on getting away.
He felt his body and the raft being sucked toward the waterfall.
“We’re going down,” he whispered, warning Olive. “Down the drop.”
“Okay,” Olive said quietly.
The water swept them toward the opening between the boulders and the edge of the river. At the bottom of the small waterfall the water roiled and frothed and the foam glowed white in the moonlight.
“Spread yourself across the raft,” he said firmly, and she did.
Ben edged around to the back of the raft, his body still in the water. He knew that they would drop six feet over the fall. He knew that the strength of the raft he had built and sheer luck would decide whether or not they made it. This was an impossible option, but so was going back, giving themselves up, giving their parents up.
They were powered through the gap in the rocks with a gale-force rush, down and over. Ben was airborne, trying to push the back of the raft down as he followed it. He waited for the slap of raft on water, for the raft to explode into a million splinters. He prayed for Olive and he prayed for himself and for the madness of what they were doing. His feet hit the surging broth below. The front of the raft tipped sharply forward and Ben tried to stop it from nose-diving into the river. There was the slap, and he sank beneath the water, losing his grip on the back of the raft.
On the Run Page 10