I looked over at Maurice, who was still unlocking the cell. The lock was incredibly complicated, with slots and buttons, and I almost admired the security of the prison.
“Zeke.” Joy shook him gently. “Zekey?”
Nothing like enforced closeness to bring two people together.
Zeke opened an eye, and it focused on me for a few seconds. Then both his eyes widened, and he shot up like a coiled spring. “Kay!—”
“Shhh!” Joy and I silenced him simultaneously.
He looked around and noticed Maurice. His eyes said: What’s going on?
My eyes replied. Trust me one more time.
19
In a bad situation, it’s sometimes safer to depend on yourself. Using your own wits makes you self-sufficient, but self-reliance can only carry you so far. Sometimes you need a friend telling you it’s going to be all right. Even if, in your heart of hearts, you’re not sure the person is telling the truth.
Or you’re not even sure what the truth is.
Maurice was the first adult who knew what I was talking about. I wanted him to pat my hand and tell us that he had come from our place to get us out of this mess—that that was his purpose in life. But he remained professional as ever.
“Done!” Maurice swung the cell open. Joy got up once and fell. Zeke helped her up, but he, too, looked a bit woozy. I wondered if they had been sedated with alcohol. It seemed to be the only depressant that was readily available. At first glance, this place seemed like a party town—smoking and drinking and weed. It reminded me of that saying: Be careful what you wish for.
“What’s going on?” a voice growled from one of the other cages.
“None of your business!” Maurice snapped back. “Shut up or I’ll extend your stay in Hotel Happiness.” He turned to me, his voice almost inaudible. “We need to get Callahan before they catch wind of something.”
Maurice pushed the three of us forward. He opened a gray door that led into a poorly illuminated hallway with flickering yellow lights. The ceiling was so low that Zeke had to duck so as not to hit his head. There were periodic video cameras and I wondered how they operated with such little light.
The hallway kept shrinking. There were doors on either side but as the foyer’s ceiling became lower, the doors got shorter. I kept expecting them to open up and people from the cleanup crew to pop out in their gleaming white coats. I shivered as I thought of that man being tossed inside a van…the remnants of a severed life.
We were walking very fast, but it was hard to see more than a few feet in front of our eyes, like walking in an amber fog.
“Kaida?” Joy’s voice rustled.
“Quiet!” Maurice snapped. “Or I’ll handcuff you and throw you back in the cage.”
I turned around and looked at Joy, trying to be reassuring. Zeke was dragging her forward. Otherwise there was no way that she could have walked that quickly. When we reached the end of the corridor, Maurice opened another door, shoved us inside, and plunged us into darkness once he closed the door.
“No!” Joy yelped. “Not the cave, not the—”
“Shhh!” I sounded harsher than I felt, but now was not the time for freak-outs. “It’s not the cave.”
“Shut up!” Maurice barked. “This is a service hall, and the video cameras don’t work in the dark,” he told us. “Use the wall as your guide.”
Joy was hyperventilating. “It’s all because of me.”
I snapped, “It’s because of the cave, Joy, not you.”
“If it wasn’t for you or Zeke, I’d be dead.”
“Shhh.” Zeke silenced her. “Everyone’s fine, Joy.”
We walked quickly and clumsily, groping our way through the darkness. We couldn’t even see a millimeter in front of us. The wall was sticky, as if years of grease and grime had settled upon it, but it was all we had.
“This way leads to the back entry to where you were,” Maurice told me. “Shortcut to your old living quarters. Hopefully, one of the other guards didn’t transfer Callahan somewhere else while you were gone.”
We continued to fumble along for another five to ten minutes. Finally Maurice told us to stop. He said, “This is the back door to your closet. Wake up, Callahan, so we can get out of here.”
I had come full circle, back to the isolated room. There was minimal light in the cell coming from underneath the door in the opposite hallway. Someone must have removed the towel. I could barely make out Ozzy’s sprawled-out body. He looked like a corpse, and an involuntary spasm shook my body.
“Ozzy?” I kneeled down and touched his face. He opened his eyes. “Get up. We’re leaving.”
He rubbed his eyes. “Leaving?”
“You said think of a plan. I thought of a plan. Let’s get out of here.”
He bolted up and smiled. “Music to my ears.”
Maurice must have been serious about escaping with us because he had what looked like a stack of official papers. He handcuffed all of us and marched us to the entrance of the stationhouse. We watched anxiously as he convinced the cops or guards or whoever they were that he was transporting us to another division.
“You got too many prisoners,” one of the uniformed guards told him.
“Simon’s meeting me outside,” Maurice told them.
“He is?” The cop looked slightly bored. “He didn’t sign out.”
“Want me to have him come in?”
The cop thought about it and shrugged. “You sign him out. If there’s a problem, the shit will come down on you. Lemme see your tag.”
Maurice lifted up his pants leg and revealed a remote electronic ID ankle bracelet. “If you need me, just buzz.”
“Go.” The cop waved him along.
Fifteen minutes later, in breaking daylight, the four of us were crammed into the backseat of a police car. We sat behind a metal grate with our hands still cuffed behind our backs. Maurice got in the driver’s seat and started the engine, and within moments we were on our way to somewhere.
“What’s next?” I asked him.
“First I gotta get rid of this thing.”
I knew he was referring to the ankle tag. We drove for ten minutes; then he pulled over to the side.
“It’s taken me two years to finally figure out how to get this thing on and off without an alarm going off…unless they changed the electronics. Hold your breaths.”
We did. Time ticked slowly as he removed the bracelet.
“The moment of truth.”
No one moved except Maurice.
“Done!” He rolled down the window and tossed it down a sewer. He was all smiles. “Phew! That was step one. Step two is to get out of this district before the bosses discover that the documents were forged.”
“What day is it?” Zeke asked.
“Wednesday.”
“What date?”
Maurice told him the date. Zeke gasped.
“What?”
“It’s the day of our trip,” I said. “You’ve got to take us to Buchanan High, Maurice. It’s our only chance to get back.”
He scratched his chin. “When do you have to get there by?”
“We’re leaving at nine in the morning,” Zeke said. “What time is it now?”
“Around six.”
Joy groaned.
“Oh, my God!” I shrieked. “How far are we from the high school?”
He told me an area that didn’t sound familiar to any of us except Ozzy, who spoke up. “Do you know where the St. Mark’s district is?”
Maurice said, “That’s north of Calverson and east of Dunquest.”
“Exactly,” Ozzy replied. “Can you get us there?”
“If you give me good directions.”
And we were off. Again I asked how far we were from Buchanan. Maurice told us we were about two hours away. Suddenly each second began to tick too quickly.
“That went really smoothly,” Ozzy said.
“What?” Maurice asked.
“The escape.”
No one spoke.
“The only reason it worked so well is me!” Maurice said. “I’ve been working at that goddamn station for years, doing whatever those monsters told me to do. I’ve earned their respect with blood, sweat, and tears.”
We gave a collective “thank you.” But something was eating at me. The whole situation just didn’t seem right. I wanted to ask him why he was doing this, putting himself on the line, but I was too scared. I tapped my feet nervously against the police car’s floor.
“I’ll get you kids back to school in a couple of hours.” With a push of a button, Maurice lowered the grate that separated the front and back seats. “You’ll make your trip.”
Again I thought about how it was too easy. But I was too afraid to question. “When do we get the cuffs off?”
“Oh…” Maurice reached into his pocket, pulled out a ring of keys, and threw them into Ozzy’s lap. “Use the small keys. I don’t know which is which. I’d pull over to help you, but I don’t want to waste time. We need to get out of here.”
Was he really on the level? He seemed nervous. He kept checking over his shoulder. I glanced in the rearview mirror. With each moment that passed, his eyes became more wild. Ozzy worked the keys into his handcuffs. It took some time, but finally his hands were free. He shook them out, and it was the first time I’d seen any of us smile in a very long time.
One by one, Ozzy liberated our hands. It felt so good to see my fingers. Joy had been dozing on and off. Once the cuffs were off, she seemed to perk up, although she was still woozy.
In her daze, she asked, “Why are you doing this for us?”
Maurice said, “I’m doing for you what I wish someone would have done for me. I’m doing it because I’m not going back there anymore. You gave me courage to do something I should have done a long time ago. Now don’t talk anymore. Save your strength. You’ll need it.”
I looked out the window while the sky blossomed into pinks and golds. Maurice made a series of turns. He was still looking over his shoulder or in the mirrors every few minutes. I felt my eyes closing, although I didn’t want to succumb. I needed to think! I needed to stay awake. But the rhythm…
I was jolted awake by a sharp left turn.
“Damn it!” Maurice cried out as he accelerated into a sharp turn. “Hold on, kids, we’re going on a ride.”
The car shook as Maurice pressed the gas pedal and shot us forward. Suddenly everything was at time-warp speed. Joy and I screamed.
“What the hell is going on?” Zeke exclaimed.
“The Higher Rank!” Maurice cried out. “The goddamned Higher Rank is behind us!”
Sirens blared as the car whooshed at breakneck speed. Two cop cars were on our tail, the strobe lights blinking on top of the vehicles. Maurice shouted, “All of you, duck!”
We fell to the floor. My stomach dropped and suddenly I knew what must have happened. It had to do with the “nothing” sound that I had heard while Maurice and I had been talking. I looked up and peeked over the seat.
“Get down!”
I obeyed, but I managed to spy in the rearview mirror. Beads of sweat were raining down his forehead.
The sirens kept blaring.
“I think someone overheard our conversation,” I said.
“Can’t be! Room is soundproof. I did it myself.”
But his voice sounded shaky.
“What’s the Higher Rank?” Zeke shouted over the roar of the engine.
“The bastards sent to catch people like us,” Ozzy told us. “In other words, they’re sent out to catch the ‘biggest threats to society.’”
“We’re done,” Maurice barked. “Car won’t go any faster.” Suddenly he pulled off the road, down an embankment. The car jumped and leaped as we all screamed. I thought for sure that we were going to roll and roll and burst into fire just like the first accident. But this time we were luckier.
Maurice drove like a pro, bouncing the police car along the uneven ground, manipulating the wheels around trees and bushes until he drove into a copse of shrubbery. He slammed on the brakes, throwing everyone forward.
“They’re after me, guys. I’ll go back up to the road and try to distract them…tell them you hijacked me and point them in the wrong direction. Wait until the commotion dies down. Go straight and you’ll find a service road. That’ll lead you to the highway.”
I cried out, “But—”
“Make or break time.” Maurice had already unbuckled himself. “Good luck and wish me luck.”
He opened the door and jumped out of the car. The last we saw, he was running toward the highway, waving his arms like a traffic cop.
We sat without talking. We were utterly alone.
I turned to Joy. “How’s your arm?”
“Hurts, but it hurt before. I think the infection is getting worse.”
“Ozzy, can you drive?”
“Yeah, but I don’t know where I am or where the hell I should go.” Ozzy climbed over the seat and slid into the driver’s side. “How long should we wait?”
“The sirens have stopped,” I said. “I’m too scared to go out and look.”
“Patience,” Ozzy said. “Can’t rush this.”
“We can’t wait too long,” Zeke said. “We’ll miss our trip.”
“Better to miss the trip than to go back to jail,” I told him, although I really didn’t know what was worse: incarceration or being stuck in this universe.
The sirens kicked up again. We listened for a few moments and this time they seemed to be receding into the background. The Doppler effect. I remembered that from junior-high science.
We remained in our hiding place for another five minutes or so.
Finally Zeke said, “How about getting us back on the main road?”
Ozzy put the car in reverse and swung it around. “I can do that provided…”
“What?”
“Provided that the Higher Rank is gone. What if they’re still out there looking for us?”
No one answered.
“We won’t get anywhere sitting in this ditch.” I climbed into the front passenger seat. “We have to believe Maurice…that he did what he said he was going to do.”
“What if he didn’t?” Joy asked.
“We’ve got to do something,” I said. “Inaction is the same thing as giving up.”
“Agreed.” Ozzy started the engine and we crawled onto the service road. Once we hit the thoroughfare, Ozzy pressed the pedal and accelerated into the flow of traffic until we were doing around eighty.
“You okay back there, Joy?” I asked.
“I’m coping.”
I glanced at my wrist to check the time, but I wasn’t wearing a watch. Outside the windshield, the sun was rising in a blue sky smudged with white smears. Ozzy drove quickly and efficiently for the next half hour until we were interrupted by another siren.
“Crap,” Ozzy swore under his breath, and accelerated. “They caught back up with us…the Higher Rank.” The speedometer needle was grazing 100 MPH. “Kaida, how many cop cars are there?”
I turned around. No cop cars, just a white van closing in on our bumper.
I looked in the rearview mirror. Saw people in white with flat faces.
It wasn’t the Higher Rank.
It was the cleanup crew.
20
“Why are they chasing us?” I asked Ozzy. I was breathless! “We haven’t crashed. What do they want with us?”
“I don’t know!” Ozzy shouted as he weaved in and out of lanes. “Are they still on our tail?”
“Right behind us!” Joy yelled.
“This is not good!” Ozzy let out a deep breath. “Hold on, everyone. If you’ve never prayed before, maybe now’s a good time to start.”
He yanked the wheel to the right and swerved across the four-lane highway, exiting onto a service road. I turned around and couldn’t see the van, but I could hear the sirens wailing.
Zeke was acting as the lookout, his body turned around so he could see out of the back windshield. “I think they got off the highway.”
Ozzy let up on the pedal, then floored it. The car flew forward as Ozzy twisted between cars, passing slowpoke drivers on the right and on the left. All of us shrieked when we nearly collided with an oncoming bus.
“I’d rather be in prison than dead!” Zeke screamed.
“If the cleanup crew catches us, we’re as good as dead!” Ozzy yelled back. “Where are they?”
“I can’t see them,” Zeke said, “but I sure as hell hear them.”
Indeed, the air resonated with an ominous wee-oo, wee-oo, wee-oo! I remembered the Sirens from the Odyssey. They were supposed to kill you by seduction, not by naked terror.
“Move it, move it, move it!” I told Ozzy.
“We’re going as fast as we can,” he snapped back. “I’m already overheating.”
Wee-oo, wee-oo, wee-oo!
“Are they gaining on us?” Ozzy cried out.
“I can’t tell,” Zeke said.
“What do you see?”
“Commotion.”
Wee-oo, wee-oo, wee-oo!
“What kind of commotion?”
“Just a lot of cars.”
“Do you see them?”
“No…”
“Wait a second, wait a second,” Joy shouted. “Ozzy, cut a left!”
Ozzy shouted, “Are you crazy? We’re over an embankment! There isn’t even a road—”
“Cut a freaking left!” Joy screamed as the sirens drew nearer.
“Just do it!” I cried.
Ozzy spun the wheel and for the second time, the car began to bump and screech as it catapulted down the hillside, landing on hard-packed ground. He galloped through a field of pale green and yellow grasses that had probably been scenic before the car had torn through it. We kept going and going and going and going even after the sirens had begun to fade into the background.
One mile…two miles…three miles…until we all saw smoke come out of the hood of the car.
“Anyone see us go down?” I asked.
“Doesn’t look like it,” Zeke said. “Or maybe that’s wishful thinking.”
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