by Scott McEwen
“Who said I was a police officer?” The big man leaned back, crossing his arms. Wyatt thought he could hear fabric stretching.
“So are you a … lawyer?” Wyatt asked weakly.
The man let out a slow breath. “Why does it matter to you what I am? You should only care about what I can do for you … and what I want you to do for me.”
Wyatt’s mind sharpened as he grew suspicious.
“Then what do you want?”
“Three months.” The man held up three thick fingers.
“For what?” Wyatt said, baffled. “Sorry, man. I don’t understand. What do you want?”
“Three months. I want three months of your time. Here’s a waiver.” The big man pulled a thin legal document from the bag and placed it on the table in front of Wyatt. It looked like a menu from a fancy restaurant—bone white paper with a fancy seal embossed at the top. The letters “CV” were painted in gold in the center and an inscription read: United States of America * Department of Defense.
The man angled a pen at Wyatt. “Sign that and we can get out of here.”
I, Wyatt Jennings Brewer, being of sound mind and body, have agreed to commit myself to three months’ internment at Camp Valor. I swear to keep the existence of the camp and all activities therein confidential. Any mention of the camp and its programs will result in imprisonment. I understand my sole compensation will be the experience itself and the liberty to return to society after a ninety-day period of service. I hereby waive any right to hold the U.S. government, Camp Valor, or its staff or any participants accountable for any injury, physical or mental trauma, death, or dismemberment during my internment.
Wyatt J. Brewer
“Who are you?” Wyatt asked when he’d finished reading the waiver.
“My name is Sergeant Hallsy.”
“And … what is Camp Valor?”
“It’s a summer work program for at-risk youths.”
Wyatt looked up. “Run by the Department of Defense?” He pointed to the inscription.
“They don’t run us, per se. Just fund us. The DOD has big budgets.” The man grinned, revealing his surprisingly white teeth. “You should be psyched about that.”
“What’s all the stuff in there about death and dismemberment?” Wyatt jabbed at the paper with his finger.
“It’s a waiver.” The big man shrugged. “Like when you rent a bicycle or ride a roller coaster at Disneyland.”
“Disneyland?” Wyatt scoffed. “This sounds like an experiment, a place where you’re tortured … or given an orange jumpsuit and forced to pick up trash.”
“Buddy, you’re already in an orange jumpsuit,” he said, motioning to Wyatt’s chest. “And wouldn’t you rather be outside picking up trash on the side of the road, where you can smell the breeze, and get a tan?” The man leaned back and waited. “But do you really think I’d waste my time grabbing a kid outta jail to come collect cigarette butts and pop cans?”
“So what kind of work would I do at Camp Valor?”
“Love the curiosity. But that’s not how it works. You wanna find out, you gotta do it.”
“But I can’t jump into something blindly,” Wyatt said. “At least here, I know where I stand. I have a trial coming up. I don’t know anything about the program. I don’t know anything about you. I mean, you told me your name, but it could be a lie. You showed me this piece of paper, but—”
“Stop. And listen. It doesn’t make a bit of difference if you know me or not. Or what my name is. Or what the paper says. Or what you’ll do at Camp Valor. You are facing life in prison—some of that is of your making, some of it not. None of it matters. The path you chose has led to this spot. It is a deep, dark pit that you cannot escape from. Now…” He leaned in toward Wyatt and looked up over his glasses. Wyatt could finally see his eyes. “I am your bridge. I am offering you a way to walk out of this hole and cross over into freedom.” He swung his hand over the table and walked two fingers across it, leaving a trail of prints in the metal finish. “Do you want to take the first step, or not.” He wiped the prints with the sleeve of his jacket.
“Three months,” Wyatt said, thinking three months anywhere would be better than in the CYDC. “And I’m free? I get to go home?”
“What it says in the waiver,” he said, pointing to the paper. “You’ll be back in school by the end of summer, eating mac ’n’ cheese and chicken fingers in the lunch line.”
Wyatt took the pen, drew a breath, and considered what to do. It’s just a piece of paper. I can always run … and what is this Hallsy guy going to do? Chase me? Good luck, Wyatt thought, and scribbled his name.
Hallsy grinned, slipped the document back in his bag, and stood up without saying a word. He fished an ID card out of his pocket, swiped it through the reader on the door. Once again, it whined open. He looked back over at Wyatt, face crinkled. “You waiting for someone?”
“The guards,” Wyatt said.
“Why,” Hallsy asked flatly.
“Don’t I need to be processed out? See a judge? Get some kind of permission? At least get my things?”
Hallsy arched an eyebrow. “A judge? They can’t help you now.” With that, Hallsy stepped out and passed from sight.
The door remained open. After a few moments, Wyatt got up and looked around, afraid he was being lured into a trap. He peered through the window to the door Hallsy had just exited. The guard who’d walked him down the hall was gone. No one was there. No one was watching.
Wyatt looked again beyond the doorway. It lay open and dark and shadowy. It called to him.
CHAPTER 7
April 1984
Miami, Florida
The last time Wil Degas saw Chris Gibbs was at the Biltmore Hotel in the Miami suburb of Coral Gables. In the hours and days since fleeing La Crema, Claudia Degas and her lawyers had been petitioning the U.S. State Department for political asylum and scrambling to protect the Degas family assets, a fruitless endeavor. Meanwhile, Wil and Chris had been holed up in Wil’s room at the Biltmore, curtains drawn, living off the mini-bar, room service, and endless rounds of Kong, Duck Hunt, Tetris, and Hogan’s Alley.
Wil shut out the maids. Trays, dirty dishware, napkins, and wrappers piled up around the room. As did the daily newspapers that the boys scanned for news of Wil’s father. The Colonel had been presumed dead, his body believed to be bobbing somewhere in the Caribbean, but so far no corpse had been recovered.
Three broad theories emerged regarding the Colonel’s disappearance. One theory, proffered mostly by U.S. and Bahamian authorities, had the Colonel accidentally drowning while drunk. An alternative theory, often offered up by news sources from Central and South America, described assassination by a foreign power like the U.S. or a betrayer like Pablo Gutierrez, the Colonel’s head of security and number two. This made some sense, since after icing his rivals aboard La Crema Pablo quickly replaced the Colonel as Central America’s resident paramilitary thug.
The third theory, which was widely touted in tabloid media, suggested that Claudia Degas drugged her husband and pitched him overboard. Some tabloids even went so far as to speculate that Wil helped Claudia do the shoving. Wil’s personal theory was that one of his father’s men, likely Pablo, had murdered his father in an attempt to seize power.
For three days the boys spoke little. Mostly they played video games, read the papers, and waited—waited for news and for the dreaded moment when Chris’s parents would arrive from New Hampshire to take him home. For fifteen-year-old Wil, losing Chris was by far the darkest cloud looming on the horizon, vastly darker than learning the details of his father’s death, darker than losing his family fortune, darker than never returning to his country. Starting in boarding school, Wil had come to rely on Chris as his only source of light and happiness. To Wil they had become more than best friends, they were fellow survivors. Blood brothers. And now, in a curtained and smelly hotel room, Chris once again provided Wil with his only source of light. A source that was dimming fast
.
When the day finally came, both Wil and Chris stared at the boxy room phone, an orange call light blinking as it rang and rang.
“Might be room service,” Chris said hopefully, glancing at the piles of plates, forks, knives, and trays in the corner. “We do have half the hotel’s silverware in here.”
“I wish,” Wil said somberly. “I did the calculation. From your parents’ house to the Biltmore is fifteen hundred fifty-five miles—that’s approximately twenty-four hours of road time. Assuming they were able to drive six hours the first day, twelve the second, and six this morning after breakfast with a stop for lunch, that would put them here at 3:00 p.m. It’s 3:30. I’m betting they had a long lunch. Or your dad kept hitting snooze this morning.”
“Then I won’t answer it,” Chris said, letting the call click over to answering service. The phone was silent for a few seconds. Then it rang again.
Wil sighed. “Might as well pick up. They’ll just come to get you if you don’t. And I don’t want to see anyone, if that’s okay with you.”
“You sure?”
Wil nodded. Chris picked up the receiver, said hello. Wil could hear Chris’s parents on the other end—his mother excited, teary and relieved. Chris’s parents asked if they should come up to the room to get Chris. He said no, he’d be down in a minute, and hung up.
Wil leveled up in Kong, his fingers clacking the remote. Chris gathered his things and stepped into the bluish light beside the TV, but Wil would not look up from his game.
“I’ll see you back at school in a couple weeks,” Chris said.
Wil’s eyes grew glassy tears, his pupils following Kong. “I hope. I don’t know. I don’t know what’s next.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Chris said. “Wherever you go, we’ll be in touch. I promise. I’ll come see you.”
“Where? You don’t know where I’ll be. I don’t know. My mom doesn’t even know.”
“Wherever it is, I’ll come see you. I’ll always be your friend, Wil, I promise.”
Wil finally looked up from the TV screen. “Okay. Wish me luck, Chris. I’m going to need it.”
Chris kneeled beside his friend and extended a hand.
Wil shook it weakly. “Wait,” he said. “Before you go I want to do something.” He fished a steak knife from the pile of silverware in his room. “We’re going to be brothers”—he dangled the dirty blade— “gaming brothers.” Wil etched his initials into the top of his Nintendo and added the date: 4-14-84. “Let’s never forget this.”
“Never.” Chris took the knife and etched his own initials—CMG.
Wil returned to his game play.
Chris picked up his bag. “Wil, promise me you’ll get outside. Don’t stay locked up in here. You need fresh air. You need the sun. It’ll make you feel better.”
Wil rolled his eyes.
Chris’s voice grew serious. “No, dude, that’s not good enough. I need a promise. I made a promise to you, now I want one back. Or I’ll drag you out of this room right now, I’ll take you down the elevator on my shoulder and throw you in the pool.”
Wil laughed. “Okay, okay. I promise,” he said. “Might not be today. Might not be tomorrow. But I’ll get out. I swear I will.”
Wil hit pause and the two embraced for a short, backslapping, mini–dude hug and then Chris walked out into the hallway.
Wil watched Chris walk down the hall until a maid peeked out of a room and saw Wil’s door open. She came hurrying over. “Excuse me, sir, can I—”
Wil shut the door, chain-locked it. He flopped back down in front of the TV with his remote.
Wil sat in the darkness for a few minutes, then got up and moved to the window. He pulled back the drapes and recoiled from the blinding South Florida light. Squinting, he looked toward the roundabout. An aggrieved valet waited by a rusty station wagon with New Hampshire plates. Wil could tell the valet was pretty sure he wasn’t getting a tip.
Chris’s dad came first, tossing Chris’s bag in the back seat and walking around the front of the wagon. Mr. Gibbs’s outfit matched the car in its lameness: shorts hiked over his belly button, a too-tight imitation Polo shirt and comb-over. He moved like a fighter—fists balled, steps wide, chin tucked, and eyes up. To Wil and the valet’s surprise, Mr. Gibbs passed the valet a couple bills. Not a total cheapskate, Wil thought.
Chris’s mom looked like June Cleaver, a pretty-enough lady with a rigorously groomed hairdo and a polka-dot dress. Wil smirked, thinking about how scared and out of place this proper lady must have felt being in Miami. Chris opened the door for his mother. A nice move, Wil thought. Genteel. They all piled in at once. He was hoping Chris might look up, to wave at Wil before he left, or better yet, to invite Wil to join them. Instead, with a puff of bluish exhaust, they drove off. Wil let the curtains fall into place and returned to his gaming setup.
* * *
A few days later, Wil was telling himself, you have to get outside. Go visit the pool. Get out in the sun. You promised Chris. You promised you would do that.
He continued to lecture himself until a knock came at the door. He was sure it was his mother. He would tell her he was going to the pool and she didn’t need to pester him. She’d complain about the scent filtering out the door and beg him to let the maids clean.
But when he opened the door, his mother just stood there, tears in her eyes. “I have sad news,” she said.
Wil assumed it was about his father, but what she had to tell him was far more crushing than anything he had expected. There had been an accident. The Gibbs’s crappy station wagon made it all the way to Virginia and got caught in a storm. Mr. Gibbs decided to push through and lost control while crossing a bridge in a flash flood. Skid marks were left on the blacktop. The wagon went into the river.
“No one survived,” his mother whispered.
Wil’s reaction was worse than even his mother expected. He began frothing at the mouth. He dropped, he seized, flopped to the ground, and went limp, writhing like a worm.…
PART TWO
CHAPTER 8
June 2017
North American Wilderness, Location Unknown
Wyatt awoke on cold hard steel, confused. Why was he back in his cell? But the air smelled different—fresh, and cooler than he was used to, and he felt it moving, blowing against his skin. The steel floor canted.
Wyatt opened his eyes but saw nothing—just black. Something covered his face, smothering him. He tore it away. A sleeping bag. Light blinded him. He saw only a gray-green blur and a white cube. The floor swayed back.
He braced himself. Tense. Blinking until his eyes focused on—What was he seeing? The cube was a pallet of grocery items—canned food, toilet paper, Wheaties boxes stacked six feet high. All wrapped in plastic and lashed down on the pallet under a slate-gray sky. A sliver of yellowing morning light etched its way past a ridge line of tall pine trees poking out of a low-hanging mist that spilled like gas from evaporating dry ice onto a silver sheet of water. He saw waves.
He was on a boat, a dim memory now coming to Wyatt of Hallsy heaving him out of a car and laying him on a sleeping bag. An engine hummed and a sharp laugh punched through the morning calm. Wyatt arched up onto his elbows, craning around to see a pilothouse. He pushed himself up off the deck, his body brittle and sore but at the same time deeply refreshed. He had not slept so long and soundly in months. Maybe ever.
He limped slowly across the flat deck to the pilothouse. Inside, Hallsy leaned against the single bench seat, drinking coffee, grinning.
Next to Hallsy stood a tall, heavyset Native American man wearing a red flannel shirt. A Toronto Blue Jays baseball hat rested on his horse’s mane of jet-black hair.
“Where are we?” Wyatt asked.
“He wakes,” said Hallsy, ignoring the question. He motioned to the Indian beside him. “Wyatt, meet Mackenzie.”
“A pleasure,” said Mackenzie, squinting over the edge of his mug. “You gotta get that looked at.”
“Huh?”
Wyatt muttered, still groggy.
“You have blood trickling out of your mouth.” Mackenzie lowered his mug toward Wyatt’s chest. Wyatt looked down to see bloody drool pooling on a fold in the jumpsuit below his neck. Wyatt probed his tooth with his tongue. It wobbled in his gums and felt even looser than before.
Hallsy patted Wyatt on the back. “There’ll be a medic around later. Maybe he can save it. If not, yank it out.”
“Nah, that tooth is done, eh.” Mackenzie groped around the pile of maps and notes behind the steering wheel. “Take this.” He came up with a dirty piece of fishing line. “You can pull it yourself. String. Doorknob. Pop.”
“I like that option,” Hallsy said.
Wyatt felt woozy. He steadied himself. “I’ll wait for the medic.”
“Suit yourself.”
Mackenzie drove on for a while and then turned his face upward, squinting. “Haze is about to clear.” His long black hair began to riffle and a strong breeze gusted. The mist hanging over the boat seemed to peel back, revealing a tall island.
Mackenzie motioned with his coffee cup. “That’s us.”
The island was heavily forested; looming pines and spidery cedars jutted out from the shore and curled upward. A line of smoke rose from behind the high and distant ridge. Or was it mist? It was hard to tell.
They rounded a rocky peninsula and entered a crescent bay with a sandy beach and a wide, concrete dock. A short distance uphill past the beach sat a white-and-red lodge and a series of white cabins. An American flag snapped in the breeze, fairly glowing in the sunlight now tearing through the overcast skies.
T-shirts and towels hung on clotheslines, canoes sat upside down on the beach. Footprints pockmarked the sand, and a simple sign hammered into the post at the end of the dock read, CAMP VALOR. But, strangely, Wyatt saw no people.
He could smell cooking. Breakfast—bacon and maple syrup. Must be chow time. The last food to cross Wyatt’s lips had been slopped onto a tray and slid into his cell through a slot along the bottom of the door. Wyatt’s body seemed to cave in at the smell of a proper breakfast, and his stomach didn’t just growl, it screamed.