Astray (Gated Sequel)

by Amy Christine Parker

  Will gets up from the bed and moves toward me, but I take a step backward—almost on reflex. His hands were up like he was going to try to hug me. He lowers his head, and I panic. I’ve given too much of what I’m really feeling away and blown it, but then he just nods to himself and heads for the door. “You probably need time to clear your head and … let go of him.” He won’t say Cody’s name even now. “I can do that. I’ll do whatever it takes to get things back to where they were. I won’t give up on our future, Lyla. Being with you is my calling.”

  He goes out into the hall and I’m alone in the room. I lie back on the bed and put my arm over my eyes. I’m so tired all of a sudden. The lack of sleep and everything that’s happened over the last twenty-four hours are catching up with me. I’m too tired to move so that I can get under the quilt, so I just pull one side of it around me instead and stare at the wall. It isn’t long before I can feel myself slipping away.

  I wake up with a start. My dad’s hand is on my side, gently shaking me awake. My heart’s pounding and I have an indescribably bad headache. What I really need is a full, uninterrupted night’s sleep—maybe an entire day. I curl into myself again and hope that he’ll go away so I can go back to it, but he just keeps shaking me and saying my name. The light coming through the window is still really bright, which means that I can’t have slept very long at all.

  “Your lunchtime tea’s ready. We let you sleep for an hour, but we should probably talk a bit, don’t you think?” Dad says softly. “Come on, honey, wake up.”

  “No thanks,” I mumble. I never finished the last cup that they gave me. The truth is that I’m not sure drinking anything with any of them is a good idea considering what happened yesterday, but I can’t very well say that to him.

  “You’re going to need to keep hydrated. Fasting is hard on the body. If you don’t drink enough, you’ll start to get sick.”

  This makes me open my eyes. Fasting? Then I remember how Pioneer asked them all to fast and pray yesterday.

  “For how long?” I ask. Since Cody and the others are already poisoned, I’m not sure why they’re still doing it.

  “Until Pioneer tells us to stop or the Outsiders let him out of jail,” Dad says—very matter-of-fact. “Now come on, it’ll get cold.”

  I roll out of bed and stumble after him. I’m still so tired that the room feels like it’s rocking and I keep listing right and then left the whole way down the hall. I can smell cinnamon and cloves in the air.

  “There you are, sleepy girl.” Mom shuffles past me and ruffles my hair. The casual nature of her touch is strange. It’s like she’s choosing to erase all that’s happened in the past few months. She moves around to the little table beside the kitchenette and settles into one of the chairs, pats the one next to hers for me. She’s holding a cup of hot water with lemon.

  At my spot at the table is a large mug of spiced tea. This smell more than any other reminds me of my mom both before and after we left New York to go be with Pioneer. She’s been giving me this tea on cold days since before we lived in Mandrodage Meadows. Out of nowhere I get a flash of my sister, Karen, and me sitting at a table with our dolls, clinking our teacups together and giggling. What would our life have been like if she’d never disappeared? Would we be sitting at a table in our old brownstone in New York? Would Pioneer ever have entered our lives? Would my mom be more like Cody’s? These thoughts make my throat so tight that I’m not sure I’ll be able to take a sip, but both my parents are watching me, looking for signs that I’m back with them the way I used to be. I can’t give them any reason to doubt it, so I bring the mug up to my lips and drink.

  My parents grin at one another and my mom sips at her water.

  “Taste okay?” she asks.

  “Mm-hmm,” I say, and force a big smile.

  She laughs, delighted, and runs a hand up and down my arm. “We’re so glad you came home. I can’t tell you how much I’ve worried for you. Things are going to get a lot worse for the Outsiders now before they’ll get better.”

  “How do you know that?” I ask in a tone that I hope sounds merely curious, not accusatory.

  “Because Pioneer said so. You heard him yesterday. He knew what would happen. That’s why he told us to fast and pray. We just have to be strong for a little longer. But can you imagine the reward we have waiting for us afterward? A few years in the Silo while the Brethren wipe them out and we’ll have our new earth. Pioneer promised that your sister will come back to us then with the Brethren. What a life she must be leading up there with them. I can’t wait to be a part of it.”

  I look at Dad, but he won’t look at either of us. I can see the same doubt about Pioneer in his face that was there that last day in the Silo when I asked him to leave with me; it’s slipping in and out of his expression.

  There’s a knock at the door and then it opens before anyone gets up to answer it. This is the way it used to be back in Mandrodage Meadows. People weren’t allowed to keep their houses locked and it was expected that any of the other Community members could enter your house without permission. There was no such thing as privacy. It seems funny that I thought that was normal before. It seems that they’ve brought that practice here too. Which will be good for when I want to snoop around, but bad if I want to feel safe anywhere.

  Mr. Brown enters our trailer, his face flushed from the cold. He plucks a napkin from our table and blows his nose loudly and then leans against the wall and peers at our tea. “Looks good, may I have a cup?”

  “We wanted to welcome Lyla home,” Mom says as she gets up to pour him a mug.

  “Wonderful.” Mr. Brown looks at me and winks. “So good to see you here with your parents. They’ve missed you. The last few months have been quite hard on them. On all of us. You’re our family too.”

  “I know, I’m sorry,” I say.

  “You’ve been gone for a while, Lyla. You’ve probably developed lots of bad habits, maybe gotten too used to seeing things from the wrong perspective.”

  Translation: he thinks I’m infected with Outsider beliefs. I knew that he would. Now I have to convince him that I’ve really and truly seen the light. He will be harder to convince than everyone else. My stomach quivers.

  “Coming back means letting go of all of the new, wrong ideas that you’ve taken into your life. You have to let it all go willingly and completely if you want to be back for good.”

  I put my hands on my knees beneath the table and grip them tightly. After everything that’s happened, I knew that I would have to convince them of my commitment. But I’m not sure what I can do. What will they ask me to do?

  He looks over at my parents. “I’m going to have a little talk with her to get her sorted out and back on the right path. Pioneer told me what would need to be done if she returned. He left me detailed instructions on how to … correct her. I’d like to do it in the barn.”

  At the sound of Pioneer’s name, I tense. Pioneer left him instructions? For what? I can’t imagine. I look past Mr. Brown at the door and briefly consider jumping up from my seat and bolting for it. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.

  “Absolutely, we’ll just let her finish her tea and head over there with her,” Dad says. He pats my arm and I feel less afraid for a moment. He seems utterly calm. Maybe I’m just being paranoid.

  “I think it would be better if I took her with me now and you both waited here. I’ll have her back to you soon.” Mr. Brown motions for me to stand up. “She seems ready to do what it takes to be with us again. Aren’t you, Lyla?” Mr. Brown is talking in a voice that’s warmer than a thick pair of mittens, all deep and soft and pleasant. Pioneer used to do that too—right before we got punished.

  I get up from the table. I already know that my parents won’t argue with him to keep me with them. They never did before and I’m certain that they won’t start now.

  I go outside with Mr. Brown and slowly follow him to the barn. On the way, I pass several of the Rangers. They’re standing over at
the far end of the barn in a kind of huddle, a laptop computer propped up on a log between them. I can hear someone talking on the computer. It sounds like a news report.

  “Sources say that as many as two restaurants frequently visited by those at the courthouse were compromised. Some kind of salmonella poisoning is suspected, but the police have not released any statements confirming whether the poisoning was deliberate.” One of the men looks up at us as he listens and frowns. It’s clear from the way he watches Mr. Brown go by that he suspects the Community and that he isn’t happy about it.

  I have a sudden urge to call out to them, to confirm what they seem to already suspect, but I stay silent. It’s too big a risk until I know how they feel for sure. I make myself keep walking with Mr. Brown—all the way to the barn and whatever he has waiting for me there.

  I am the devil here to do the devil’s business.

  —Charles “Tex” Watson, member of the Manson Family

  TWENTY-THREE

  The barn is completely empty. Mr. Brown leads us to the back of it, all the way to one of the rooms I found earlier this morning, the one where the rusty shears are. For one brief moment I’m tempted to grab them off the wall and point them at Mr. Brown, but I don’t. I am choosing to be here … sort of.

  There’s a chair inside, the metal folding kind, and nothing else—the workbench and all the things on it are gone. I stay close to the door, but Mr. Brown nudges me farther into the room. His wife is in the far corner. She waves at me. She’s wearing the apron she always wore when she had kitchen duty in the clubhouse, the one with little cherries all over it. It’s oddly cheery in comparison to the rest of the room.

  “Take a seat, Lyla, no need to hover in the doorway,” she says.

  I don’t want to sit and have them standing over me. “I’d rather stand if that’s okay?” I keep the question in my voice so that hopefully they won’t see this as defiance. It doesn’t work.

  “You see, this is the very thing that we have to address before you can truly come home,” Mr. Brown says. “You used to know how to listen to your elders without question.”

  I steel myself as best I can, lower my head like I’m apologetic, and quickly sit down. I’ve been punished before. I can handle it … I think.

  Mr. Brown crouches next to my chair and Mrs. Brown moves behind me, gathers my hair in her hands. It’s all I can do not to leap out of the chair, I’m that sure that she’s going to cut my hair and make me bald. I grip the edge of the chair to force myself to stay put. But instead she begins to braid it the way that my mom used to. All of the girls in the Community wore their hair in one when we were little. Maybe she’s trying to make me feel like that again—little and helpless.

  “They told you we were wrong. They told you Pioneer was a bad man. A criminal. Crazy.” Mr. Brown smiles a sad sort of smile. “But did they ever tell you about their own pasts? Did they ever tell you all the things that they’ve done wrong? Or how they found out what kind of man Pioneer was before he was with us?”

  “They showed me articles about his first arrest on the Internet,” I say cautiously. I’m not sure what he wants me to say or where he’s going with this. Behind me, Mrs. Brown keeps working on my hair, pulling it tightly as she goes. Too tightly. I squirm a little.

  “The Internet.” Mr. Brown pronounces it like “enter-net.” “People can post stuff on there and claim it’s the truth when they know it’s a lie. They don’t even get in trouble for it. That’s why Pioneer forbid us from having it in the first place.”

  There’s a knock on the door and then Jonathan comes in. He’s holding a laptop. He looks at me, his blue eyes bright, his head cocked to one side. “Brian said that you needed this?” He looks excited to be helping with whatever’s going on. I eye him suspiciously. He’s definitely in on the poisonings, I can feel it, but unlike Mr. Brown and the others, I am not sure of his motives.

  “Oh, good, thanks, son.” Mr. Brown rises and takes the laptop from him. “I’ll get it back to you in a few minutes.”

  “How’s your hand?” I ask him to keep him in the room and stall for time. I stare pointedly at the wall and the blackened wood.

  He holds it up. The bandage is white and fresh and the skin around his fingers isn’t as raw-looking as before. “Better.” He is utterly calm standing there. He doesn’t even look at the wall. It should make me doubt myself, but it doesn’t; it only makes me more certain that I’m on the right track. He was doing something in this room, there was a fire, and that’s how he burned his hands.

  “I’m glad to hear it. I was worried about you yesterday.” I make my voice sweet and smile when I really want to shake him and Mr. Brown both until they admit what they’ve done and what they’re planning next.

  His mouth curves up at the corners. “I’m fine. The ones you should worry about are the sheriff and his son. They’re the ones who are sick. You’re very lucky that you were spared.” He looks almost disappointed and a chill runs up my spine.

  “When did you become one of us?” I ask, because I can’t figure it out—why he’s so committed to a man and cause he barely knows.

  “I haven’t made any final decisions about the Brethren, not yet,” Jonathan says, and I can’t help but gasp. So then why is he involved? “Pioneer’s been talking to me about them for as long as I can remember, ever since we met at a gun show some years back. I may not be a true believer, but we do agree on one thing. This country is going to hell in a handbasket and nothing short of a serious tragedy is going to shock it into change.” He rubs his hands as if the wounds are a reminder of this somehow.

  Mr. Brown’s jaw clenches and he looks close to saying something, but he thinks better of it and directs his focus to the laptop instead. “Son, if you don’t mind, we’ll need just a bit of privacy here.”

  Jonathan looks reluctant to leave, but after a moment he does.

  “Here, I want you to watch this, Lyla,” Mr. Brown says as he places the laptop across my legs.

  “Is he one of us now?” I ask.

  Mr. Brown looks up. “Almost. Pioneer feels that he has potential, but in order for him to have a place with us he’s going to have to earn it. He has to believe all the way, not just hate the Outsiders.”

  “What about the other Rangers? Do they have potential?”

  Mr. Brown snorts. “No, they do not.”

  “Then why are they here with us?” I ask. I want to make positively sure that what I suspected outside is true, that they have nothing to do with what happened last night. Then maybe I can ask them to help me figure out what’s going on.

  “Because we needed them to get back on our feet after the government seized our land. And Pioneer needed a lawyer, which they were more than willing to provide if we let them use Pioneer’s case to further their own causes. Listen, think of them as spiders—beneficial if you’re trying to keep other insects away, but repulsive nonetheless. When all is said and done, they’re no better than those outside of our Community. Just because they choose to help us doesn’t really change that. They don’t believe in Pioneer or the Brethren. We tried to talk to them, but they won’t see the truth. They’re using us to make some kind of anti-government statement. So we’ve decided to use them to help Pioneer get out of jail and to keep this Community together. And isn’t that the ultimate irony? That we can manage to use evil to keep good going?” He leans back on his heels. “Now lookee here at what I just found on your Internet.”

  I look down at the laptop. On the screen is a website called True News. Taking up most of the page is an article. I glance at the title. “Local Election for Sheriff of Pickens County Thought to Be Rigged.” I begin to read it in earnest then. It basically says that at least two of the voting stations set up county-wide had volunteers at them who were somehow related to Sheriff Crowley and that these volunteers were being accused of throwing away votes for the sheriff’s opponent. Machines at both spots malfunctioned and the ballots had to be counted by hand. I can feel Mr. Brown watchin
g me read it. The article is accompanied by pictures of people standing in line to vote, and toward the end there’s one of the sheriff holding a hand up to his face like he’s trying to hide from the camera. He looks angry—and guilty.

  “You see, Lyla, if you dig long enough and deep enough, nine times out of ten you’ll find out something that you don’t know or like about a person.” Mr. Brown moves closer and pushes the arrow key to scroll down further. “And if you aren’t real, real careful, you’ll never even realize that it probably isn’t true.” At the bottom of the page, the article’s author is named. And it’s Mr. Brown.

  “I made it up this morning—got the pictures from some local election and the one of the sheriff with his hand near his face is from the other day at the courthouse. See, unless you did a whole lot more digging, you wouldn’t know that, would you? And the sheriff might never even realize that it’s out there for a while, which means that anyone who ends up on this page could have an impression of him that’s altogether untrue. Now, if I can do that right here, right now, to him, don’t you think that he could do the same to Pioneer? You told your parents that Cody showed you something online that made Pioneer look like a criminal, right? How do you know for sure that he didn’t just make it up? How do you know that he and his dad didn’t purposely lead you to believe that just so you’d help them when the time came and they stormed our property? Takes less than an hour to set stuff like this up, and look how much damage it can do.”

  I stare at the screen and the sheriff’s picture. The article looks believable, even though Mr. Brown’s just made it up. I try to remember back to when Cody showed me stuff about Pioneer and the natural disasters back at the hospital. But I can’t remember much about the actual web pages he showed me—probably because I had a concussion at the time. Suddenly I feel a flicker of doubt. Could that be why he showed it to me right then? Because I wasn’t going to be able to think clearly about it or ask questions? No. Wait. Mr. Brown can’t be right. I know Cody. He wouldn’t lie to me. And this doesn’t explain away what I know about Pioneer, what I saw him do to Marie. It doesn’t explain away the questions the press asked Pioneer about his past.