Camp Valor

by Scott McEwen

  With that, Dolly stood and left the lodge. It had been decided. Hud had to go.

  CHAPTER 25

  August 2017

  Camp Valor Cave Complex

  Hud lay on a hospital bed in the Cave Complex, hands cuffed together, his blue and green eyes watching the resident physician, Dr. Elaine Choy, ready a course of pills, injections, and the ECT machine beside his bed. The ECT machine, used for electroshock therapy, looked like it came right out of the 1970s, a clunky stereo tuner. Tune in, tweak your brain out.

  Choy was waiting on the final word to see if Hud would be expelled or not before she commenced with sedation, the first phase of the brain-wiping process. Hud couldn’t stand the suspense or the sight of the doctor sharpening her axes, so to speak.

  Something rang close to Hud’s head, and he jerked up in bed—a wall-mounted phone. The antiquated device matched the ECT.

  Dr. Choy answered. A string of mumbles and “okay”s followed. She hung up and eyed Hud, who was trying to play it cool.

  “So what’s it gonna be? What did they decide?” he asked.

  Dr. Choy approached Hud’s bunk and held out two blue pills. “I’m sorry, Hud. You’re going home.”

  He forced a laugh. “Figured.” The tears brimmed in Hud’s eyes. Anger, too, if you looked deep into them. “Fair enough.” He took the pills in his fingertips, tossed them in his mouth like M&Ms, and swallowed. “Okay, Doc, just do me one favor when I knock out and you get your machine all fired up. Get all the memories out. I don’t want nothing. Not the Old Man. Not Hallsy. Not Mum. Not any of Group-C.”

  “Once you fall asleep, any memories of Valor will seem like only a dream,” the doctor said and flipped on the ECT machine. It thrummed like an electric guitar being plugged into an amp.

  Hud’s heart rate jacked.

  Choy was used to this. “Don’t worry, Hud. This will be painless.”

  “Sure. Sure. Hey, Doc. Will you sit here with me?” Hud shifted in his bed to give her space. “Just for a little while?” Tears, which had pooled in his eye sockets, now rolled down his cheeks. “Just wait, until I’m asleep.”

  “If it helps you calm down,“Dr. Choy said and sat gingerly on the edge of the bed.

  “Hold my hand.” Hud’s breathing was deepening and slowing. “Please.”

  The doctor took his hand. More tears squeezed out. She watched as Hud’s eyelids grew heavy, fluttering as the sedative took hold, pulling Hud under. All tension in Hud’s grip slackened.

  “There,” she said. “That wasn’t too bad.” Dr. Choy moved to let go of Hud’s hand and Hud pounced, seizing her by the wrist and pulling her onto the bed with him. As the doctor screamed, Hud spat the two blue pills into her mouth and then clamped his hand over. He pinned her down and waited until the little blue pills worked on the doc.

  Ninety seconds later, Dr. Choy was out cold. Hud removed the keys from her belt and uncuffed himself. Rubbing his wrists, he took a moment to plan his next move. Hud was leaving Camp Valor, that was for certain. And he’d be taking his memories with him.

  * * *

  Wyatt had not been asleep an hour when the alarm sounded. Again.

  “All hands on deck,” Hallsy yelled over a megaphone. “Manhunt under way. We need all campers who can walk or crawl. You have five minutes.”

  “Gotta be kidding me,” Samy grumbled. “If this is another drill, I’m gonna lose it on someone. Don’t care if they’re staff or not, this camel needs some sleep.”

  Bright light shone into the cabin. All the boys inside groaned at the light, squinting. Dolly stood in the doorway.

  “Wyatt,” she said. “It’s Hud. He’s escaped from the Caldera.”

  PART FIVE

  CHAPTER 26

  August 2017

  Williamsburg, Pennsylvania

  Driving was treacherous. It was near midnight and fog banks rolled over I-80. Visibility varied between two car lengths and a hundred yards, depending on elevation. State trooper Bill Jefferies trailed a safe distance behind a late-model Chrysler Town & Country minivan struggling in the soupy conditions. Or was it something else?

  The trooper recorded the taillights veering off to the shoulder and jerking back, twice. The Seattle plates on the car told Jefferies the driver was passing through, and not in familiar territory. The swerving told Jefferies the driver might be tired, drunk, or unable to see. Possibly all three. Time to find out.

  Lieutenant Jefferies accelerated, pulling up directly behind the T&C. He flipped on his lights and chirped his siren. The van abruptly swerved, the driver perking at the wheel. Not an uncommon reaction. Jefferies engaged the cruiser’s speakers—he loved the speakers. “Pull over,” he said, a lilt of pleasure in his tone.

  But instead of complying, the minivan sped up, edging into the middle of the two lanes. Jefferies thumbed his radio, “502 headed eastbound on I-80, vehicle not responding to commands to pull over. Can you run the plates for me? Wait—” Jefferies watched as the minivan drifted wide on a turn, driving nearly off the shoulder. Then in a wildly dangerous move, the driver slammed on the brakes and cut the wheel to the left, crossing back in front of the cruiser at a hard angle and skidding toward a turn-around in the median of the highway.

  Jefferies nearly clipped the minivan’s rear bumper and shot past. The T&C turned a full 180 degrees as it slid off the expressway into the median, now headed in the opposite direction.

  “Holy mackerel, vehicle is now heading westbound on 80.” Jefferies punched his brakes, attempting his own three-point turn, but overshot the median. The next turn-around was two miles ahead. The minivan would be long gone. Screw it, he thought. And banged a U-turn and drove east on the westbound left-hand shoulder back toward the median, praying no cars would be headed in his direction.

  He had lost sight of the minivan until he came up to the median and saw the two red taillights stacked vertically in the grass, a swath of mud cutting across the median. The van had flipped and was on its side, engine smoking. The driver’s head poked out of the passenger-side window, blood streaming down his face. He hoisted himself up onto the doorframe, perched like a cat ready to spring off.

  Jefferies lit him up with his spotlights and opened his own door. He stepped from his cruiser, gun drawn, hunkering down in shooting stance behind the door.

  “Hands up and face his way.”

  The driver seemed to contemplate a run. Jefferies was prepared to fire when he saw hands slowly interlace behind a close-cropped head.

  “Turn around!”

  The body twisted on the doorframe. The driver was just a boy, maybe not even sixteen. Black hair, one eye blue, one eye green. And he looked feral.

  CHAPTER 27

  Summer 2017

  Glowworm Gaming Headquarters

  After nearly nine months, negotiations with the ISIS affiliate for the captured operator had nearly ground to a halt. The Glowworm wanted Pablo to negotiate that, too. Which he would. But the price was going up because someone else was bidding high. Maybe the U.S. And maybe the Glowworm would pay fifty million dollars if they could prove the captive was Chris Gibbs … but that was still uncertain. They needed proof that the HVT was the real article. Pablo’s biggest fear was that they’d shell out fifty million dollars for the wrong guy, for some poor schlub yanked off the streets of Jerusalem. When did human trafficking and bounty hunting get so complicated? And expensive? Pablo shivered to think what Raquel would cut off and eat if he messed up.

  But good news came one morning when Pablo saw Fouad running down the rows of cubicles, waving a printout. “Hola, hola, Pablo. Think we got something.” Fouad slapped the papers down on Pablo’s desk and slid into the chair next to him.

  Pablo studied what looked like a copy of a police report. “Arrest report? What is this?”

  Fouad spoke quickly, “Early Tuesday morning a Pennsylvania state trooper attempted to pull over what he thought was a drunk driver. The car gave chase, the trooper radioed in the number of the Seattle plates, and the
y came back as belonging to a different vehicle. Mid-chase, the car crashed. The driver was injured but still tried to flee the scene of the accident.”

  Pablo shrugged, “Maybe he’d stolen the car and was trying to make a run for it.”

  “Sure, yeah,” said Fouad. “But when the trooper finally made the arrest, he discovered the driver was a boy, teenage, and had no ID. Cop guessed between fifteen and seventeen years old. And the car was a mess. It looked like the boy had been on a road trip, living off of what he could hunt, fish, or steal. The car was filled with camping gear and a variety of license plates, which he was apparently swapping out. Tracing the VIN, they learned it had been stolen from a SEA-TAC long-term parking lot a week before the accident.”

  “SEA-TAC?” Pablo asked.

  “Seattle–Tacoma airport.”

  Pablo was squinting, confused.

  Fouad held up a finger. “Hang on to that detail. Just wait. In the car, they also found a military issue M4 assault rifle, which the police traced to a munitions depot in Florida.”

  “Wait,” Pablo said, still squinting, “he was in the military?”

  “Hold on to that detail as well. Here is how it works. The military buys weapons, they trace and track each weapon with a serial number. The gun the boy had in his possession had last been in Florida. Now this kid, this car-stealing survivalist, would not speak, would not even give his name. So we don’t know how he got the gun. But when he was printed, a juvenile record came up. Several priors, all pretty minor stuff: shoplifting, joyriding, truancy, and an assault charge for a fight with a teacher. All when he was younger. There’s nothing on the kid for the past three years … which is where it gets really interesting.” Fouad grinned, yellow teeth forming a crescent in a scraggly beard. “He had been remanded to spend his summers at a juvenile detention facility where he’s supposed to work cleaning up trash, paying off his debt to society.”

  “Okay,” Pablo said, “I see a lot of interesting pieces, but how do they fit together?”

  “They don’t. That’s the point. The juvenile detention facility where the kid was supposed to be this summer was in upstate New York, a place called Fishkill. He was picked up in Pennsylvania. He’d stolen a car in Seattle. He had a military-issue rifle from Florida. The kid couldn’t have possibly escaped from New York the same day he stole a car in Seattle and picked up a gun from a munitions depot in Florida. Plus, he not only knew how to live off the land but apparently could steal cars, too, live off the grid.

  “Pablo,” Fouad said. “What’s missing, the thing that puts the puzzle together, is the program.”

  Pablo considered this for a long moment. “Yes. I see what you are saying.” Pablo shrugged. “Or, he’s just another juvenile delinquent runaway.…”

  As soon as Pablo said the words, the hairs on his arms and neck rose. Puzzle pieces weren’t just coming together now, they were crashing together. On all fronts. Pablo stood up, wobbling a little on the prosthesis, and steadied himself with a cane.

  “Follow me to the Glowworm’s office. He needs to hear this.”

  Pablo limped out into the endless rows of dark cubicles, Fouad trailing behind him.

  “The police,” Pablo said to Fouad. “They found his record. Who is he? And where is he?”

  “He’s being transferred from Pennsylvania to New York City.” Fouad hurried to catch up with Pablo, an eager puppy. “In terms of who he is, I saved that little nugget for you too. Hudson Decker is his name.”

  “Why does that name sound familiar?” Pablo asked.

  “The Decker Library, the Decker Museum, the Decker Institute of Arts. Those New York cultural and historical institutions ring a bell?”

  Pablo nodded as if he knew, but the truth was, if there wasn’t a Decker casino, he probably wasn’t aware of the family. “Pablo, Armand Decker is the kid’s great-great-grandfather. He basically built what we know as modern New York. Just think about the kind of connections that kid must have to the military, to the judicial system.…”

  Pablo was thinking all right as he came to a stop outside of the Glowworm’s office, two heavily armed guards clad in black on either side of the thick black doors, the smell of meat wafting out. “Go see about the plane.”

  * * *

  Travel for the Glowworm was never easy. Given his abhorrence of sunlight, and security requirements, getting the Glowworm to move around the world required the support of a small army of logistics experts, support personnel, specialized vehicles, and safe houses. It also required a specialized plane for the Glowworm himself.

  The first thing the Glowworm did after buying his personal 747 was to completely black out all windows. He gutted the interior and divided it into two sections. The first was his personal space, which was in the darkest part of the plane—the rear. This was outfitted with high-speed Internet, cloud service, a Vitamix blender, his pump system so he could eat, and all of the spy equipment you’d find on a P-3 spy plane.

  The front section of the plane was where the Glowworm’s goons, hackers, and captive workers—like Pablo and Fouad—would travel. It was actually pretty luxurious. There was a gaming room, a workout room, a shower, tea and coffee bar, and lay-down beds, like the kind you’d find on a first-class Asian airline.

  En route from Panama to New York City, Pablo watched the classic film Gone with the Wind after a snack of PowerBars and injections of steroids. A song lyric from the 1960s came to his mind from the hippie band the Grateful Dead. “What a long, strange trip it’s been.”

  Certainly, it had been strange, but long … long was relative, and Pablo hoped—prayed—that in Hudson Decker he would find the answers he needed to keep lengthening his own trip. The truth shall set you free, as they say. Can the truth return you to limitless vodka and long days berating the patrons from the seat of your casino bar? Can it save you fifty million dollars? Or at least save your critical appendages?

  Pablo gazed over at the beautiful Lebanese blond killer-child sitting across the aisle. Raquel in repose. A demon reclining in a Sharper Image massage chair on a 747, reading the latest issue of Teen Vogue.

  Pablo wondered what was going through her mind as she wetted her fingertips and flipped through pages of pumps, gossip, and cashmere sweater ideas. Did she think about killing the people in the photos? Or, like most people, did she think about wearing their clothes? Or wearing human skins as clothes? More likely the latter.

  Pablo was a killer. His whole life, he had dealt with, befriended, worshipped, and hunted killers. But creatures like Raquel and the Glowworm, he just couldn’t understand. God save us, he thought, crossing himself.

  He heard the Vitamix blender buzzing in the rear of the plane. God save us.

  CHAPTER 28

  August 2017

  Decker Apartment, Manhattan

  Hudson Decker lay on the enormous couch playing Grand Theft Auto V, his cell phone repeatedly buzzing against leather. News, social media, texts, pokes from old friends who’d heard he was back, back in action. Word had traveled fast.

  “Dude, weren’t you like already in juvie this summer?”

  “What happened?”

  “Your parents get you out?”

  And of course: “Want to come over?” Hud didn’t want to see anyone. Not yet. And not immediately with his New York friends. They were good enough people. But they were talkers, the kinds of kids who liked to hang out, to keep things on the surface. Hud liked deep connections built on experience. He liked friendships that didn’t need words, or time spent “chillin’.” Maybe this was why Hud had so few real friends and preferred those at Valor.

  The ankle bracelet on his leg meant he couldn’t leave his family’s apartment in the city, which occupied two floors of a prewar building overlooking Central Park. The Decker family lawyers had swarmed the Pennsylvania courts to get Hud released and placed under house arrest. But where were his parents now? Mom shopping, Dad in his wheelchair rolled up to a giant credenza in a skyscraper somewhere, probably drooling.
Doing anything not to be with Hud.

  The place wasn’t bad. Better than most ultra-luxurious apartments in the city. Hud had some friends with swankier digs, but not many. Certainly the double penthouse beat the hell out of jail. But did it beat the hell out of a dirty, dusty tent? Or a shady spot near the water on the far side of the Caldera?

  The apartment, the city, Hud’s life, couldn’t hold a candle to the crappiest bunk at Valor. He wanted it back. He wanted to be back more than he could take. He’d screwed up big-time—with Wyatt, with Valor, with Dolly. With his own life. What’s worse, Hud knew he was putting the camp and his friends at risk by remembering. By taking the memories with him. And because of this, Hud knew that above all else it was just a matter of time before Valor came for him, for their memories. But when would they come? And how would he know they were coming?

  Hud had been playing Grand Theft Auto in multiplayer mode, going head to head with someone in Ireland. Then around 2 p.m., the game lost connection. Internet was out, cable was out as well. Hud rebooted the modem and tried the game again. No dice. Hud knew one of his neighbor’s Wi-Fi passwords and tried that. His neighbor wasn’t getting a connection either.

  Moderately annoyed, Hud grabbed his cell phone and thought about who to call—Mom, Dad. Or Carlos, the building manager. Bingo.

  Hud queued up Carlos’s number and called, but he couldn’t dial out. There was no signal. Maybe Carlos was down in the lobby or in the basement.

  Hud tried the in-apartment elevator. Called it several times. Didn’t come. It was possible that because he was on house arrest, the building managers had programmed it that way, but Hud’s instincts told him he needed to move. To walk. To change locations. Ankle bracelet be damned. They could throw him back in jail if they wanted. He hoped they did. Or tried. He’d be safer in jail or on the run than he would be with Valor after him.

  Hud started out into the cold stone stairway and started down. He had eighteen floors to go and stopped halfway down the first flight of stairs. He listened.