“Get up,” he orders me.
“What?”
“Are you deaf?” he asks, tossing the barrels of his gun over his shoulder. “I said get up, son.”
I unwrap my sweaty hands from behind my head and push them at the floor below. They feel looser, but my legs are still bone tired and my ribs still ache like I’ve been a boxer’s punching bag. I grab at the counter to pull myself up, keeping my eyes on him as much as possible to see if he’s going to attack me.
“What are you going to do?” I ask him. “If you’re going to kill me or turn me in, please at least tell me what happened to the others. I need to know. One of them is my father. They caught him. I know that much. But the others are important too. Even the ones I don’t know.”
He ignores me as he walks around the corner. It’s not like he’s afraid of me attacking him. I can barely stand. And he’s not afraid I’ll run. I wouldn’t make it to the trap door in time. But most people wouldn’t take their eyes off a convicted traitor in a situation like this. The public thinks we’re dangerous, even if they’re not sure why the State says we are. He must know something I don’t.
The man comes back around the corner and sighs. “Are you going to come over here or what? You’re wearing my patience thin.”
I look to my left and right before confirming that there’s no other option but to follow him, though I’m not sure why he thought I would instinctively follow someone with a shotgun so naturally. But, come to think of it, he didn’t look armed when he reappeared. Did he set his gun down so readily? Was it even loaded?
I walk behind him, my knees wobbling a little, my head spinning with every movement. I turn the corner and see him sitting at a table. I was right, there is no longer a firearm in his hands instead I see food on a plate in front of him. And another plate across the table. He’s having breakfast. And he’s inviting me to join him. I rush to sit down.
“Eat,” he tells me between bites. “You’ve had a long night.”
I don’t question him this time. I don’t even care if the food is poisoned. At least I’ll die on a full stomach. No different than what I expected to happen yesterday. Two pieces of toasted cracker are set alongside a bowl of oatmeal and a jug filled to the brim with water. I’m sure I’ve eaten better food in prison, but this is not the time for standards, it’s time for survival.
He lets me eat everything off my plate before continuing the conversation. He never takes his eyes off me, but he doesn’t say a word while I restore my vigor. I won’t take my time or waste his. I’m too hungry to savor any flavor that might exist in this conservative meal. I’m too thirsty to let a single drop of water go undelivered to my mouth. If this is my last meal, so be it.
The instant I take the last bite of cracker I see a screen turn on in the corner. I didn’t think much of it as I was eating, but it is a little odd that there would be anything like it in a safe house. These kinds of instruments are generally considered too expensive and risky. The volume is down low, but the images are unmistakable. Video of the ruined city is captured from helicopters hovering above. They are the same ones that searched for me well into the night, no doubt. Words scroll beneath the images, and though it’s been a while since I’ve had the pleasure of reading, it isn’t something I would easily forget. The words are chilling, yet confirm everything I suspected regarding yesterday’s wonderful catastrophe.
Six criminals have been recaptured. Six remain at large. They’re still searching for us in the rubble. We’re all alive, at least as far as the newscasters know, or the State is willing to tell the people, but they’re chasing us through the streets. They won’t stop searching until they’ve found us.
“Guess I don’t need to introduce myself formally,” I tell him.
“I recognized your face the moment you walked in here,” he tells me, “but I had to make sure. I didn’t know if you were being watched, if you had been followed.”
I know I should have been more careful despite my desperation. He was right to consider me a threat, whether friend or foe.
“I had to make sure you are who they say you are, lest my eyes deceived me,” he continues. “Otherwise this safe house wouldn’t be as safe as it’s supposed to be. Strangers shouldn’t know the way in. Strangers shouldn’t know anything about a house that no one enters or leaves in the daylight. Secrecy is what keeps us safe.”
“Us?” I ask, my eyes focused on the screen, but my ears tuned in to what he has to say. “You’re one of the Faithful?”
“Of course,” he says, picking up my plate to take it over to the sink to clean it by hand. There’s no room for laziness or procrastination in a place or time like this. “You think you’re the only one who needs a place to hide from the State? We all have our reasons. All our stories start to sound the same after a while. It’s only getting worse with time. There was supposed to be another execution in two weeks. I guess they’ll double the nooses if they have to. Whatever it takes to keep the people living in fear, to keep them under control.”
“Two weeks?” I gasp. “What about the destruction to the city? The stadium was falling apart when I left. People can’t even drive their cars in a mess like that. How are they supposed to make it to a tattered stadium for more executions on such short notice?”
The man shakes his head. “We’re talking about the State here,” he says. “They’ll do anything to distract the people from their real problems. That’s why they have executions in the first place. They know we’re a threat to their control, the power they have over the people, to have them act and think in a way that gives them more power. They can’t get what they want if people have free reign over their thoughts and actions.”
I never thought about things that way. It seemed so much simpler than that. I believed everyone was against us simply because they didn’t want to change. I thought they were lazy in their beliefs. But they’re not lazy. They’re actively attempting to put us down because they know beliefs are powerful. But I still don’t see what harm we could ever do to them by sharing a message of hope.
I look up and ask, “How are we a serious threat to their power? We never taught the overthrow of the government like they say we do. That’s not our purpose at all. You know that. They have to know that.”
He shakes his head again. “You have a lot to learn, don’t you?”
“Maybe,” I tell him. I always thought I’d have more time to learn from my father. But that’s not an option right now. “At least I have more time to figure things out. What about the others? Have they released any more information? I need to know what I’m up against. I know I can’t stay here forever.”
“You’re right,” he says. “You can’t stay here forever. There’s only enough food in here for the two of us for today. Then we have to move on to another safe house. I’ve been here long enough as it is. I think some of the locals have started to notice my presence. I’ll take a look at my map and we’ll leave tonight. Things are getting dicey in this region. It might be time to move further away from the city.”
“Further away? No, I can’t do that.”
“Oh,” he says, furrowing his brow. “And why is that? Do you have a better plan up your sleeve?”
“My plan was to die yesterday,” I tell him as I watch the screen display my fellow escapees one by one with all our information and crimes listed for the populace to consume. “I didn’t expect to get this far, but I’m not leaving the region without my father. I must find a way to free him, to free them all. Ariel shall not have its brand of justice imposed on my people any longer.”
CHAPTER SIX
An Itch He Couldn't Scratch
JACK COULDN’T BELIEVE it. He dropped the pages to the floor, rubbed his eyes, and jumped to his feet, his knees wobbling on the way up. He paced the floor for a minute, scratched at the top of his head, and shuffled the sheets of parchment next to the map. He looked them over quickly, shaking his head in disbelief, but indeed they had changed from the day before. And this
time the story was longer. This time it was much harder to recover from what was clearly no hallucination.
“How could this be?” he asked himself.
“How can what be?” his father asked as he poked his head up the attic like a gopher ready for harvest. “Doesn’t look like you’ve done a whole lot here this afternoon. Don’t tell me a little bit of hard work is wearing you out so easily.”
“Did you put this up here?” Jack asked his father as he wiped the sweat dripping off his forehead, the words escaping his lips before he could think to retrieve them. “Is this your letter? I found it in the treasure chest.”
“My letter?” his father shook his head. “I told you, none of this stuff is mine, at least not that I’m aware of. And I don’t remember writing many letters, even as a kid, before we had all those fancy gadgets you kids like so much. Why? What’s in it?”
Jack looked at the pages again, then back to his father. “Oh, just an old story, I thought you might know something about it,” he said, hurriedly putting it back in the chest, not sure what he wanted to admit to his father. If he told him what he thought had happened to him, how the story became so real to him, he might be spending the rest of his vacation in therapy, which sounded like even less fun than cleaning up the old attic. “Thought maybe you did it for school or fun or whatever.”
“Doesn’t sound like anything I can remember,” he shook his head. “Just put it with the rest of the junk. How do you think things are coming along? Looks like you took care of the easy stuff, at least?”
Jack looked behind him and frowned, his mind was suddenly brought back to the reality of his own world and all that he had yet to accomplish. His concern for enjoying Christmas vacation as originally planned had begun to fade away, not only because of the punishment that was taking away his time, but also because of this strange journey he had been taking in the form of Niko Monroe. It didn’t make sense to him, and he dared not try to explain it to his family, but it seemed too important to lie to himself as if it hadn’t happened twice now.”
“Looks like I get to spend some time as a paperboy,” Jack grimaced. “Among other things. Say, why am I doing this all of a sudden anyway? Were you reserving this chore for the day my grades got bad enough? I don’t remember you ever worrying about the attic before.”
“Sounds like you’re on to me,” his father said gruffly as he sorted through the stacks of furnishings his son had separated to the side. “But no, not really, this was more of an idea your mother and I came up with recently. I know it might seem a bit harsh to you right now, but we aren’t making you do this as a meaningless punishment. We need you to learn the importance of hard work. I know that concentrating at school can be hard for you, but you have to learn how to discipline yourself, how to get a job done even when you would rather be doing something else. In the end, I think you’ll see that doing hard work has its rewards.”
Jack looked again at the stacks of newspapers thrown across piles of boxes and bags of mysterious artifacts that he would get the pleasure of cleaning up in the coming days. His heart, however, was drifting back to the treasure chest behind him and its contents.
“All this stuff up here in the attic has got me thinking,” Jack said as his father looked over his notes. “Do you know much about our family’s history? I know you said that grandpa never really went anywhere, but what about his father or grandfather? Any cool stories that you know about?”
“Hmmm,” Jack’s father contemplated. He put his hand on his chin, sat down on a spare chair, and thought about it for long enough that Jack wasn’t sure if he should ask a follow-up question or if he was supposed to stand there and wait for an answer. “Your grandpa…he wasn’t a very talkative man when I was a kid. He still isn’t, of course, you know that yourself, though he did loosen up a bit since my brothers and I went off to college. He used to tell me stories about our ancestors, but I always had the suspicion they were highly exaggerated, might’ve even been lifted from some books or movies we hadn’t been allowed to watch. But I think I might have come across one of those stories by now if they had been plagiarized. Maybe an element of truth belonged to them after all. Curious. Very curious.”
“Well,” Jack said uneasily. “I guess it’s about time for…”
“Right!” his father asserted. “You must be starving. Better get downstairs for some dinner while there’s still some left. Your mother made a bunch of those deli meat sandwiches for everyone to dig into. Nothing special, but it should get you through the night.”
“Dinner?” Jack gasped. He looked at his watch and couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “Dinner? I missed lunch. How could I have missed lunch? There’s no way I’ve been up here…”
“Looks like it,” his father shrugged. “Your mother and I were in town for most of the afternoon, didn’t think you’d need reminding to grab something to eat from time to time. Guess I was wrong. Maybe tomorrow you should set an alarm so you won’t forget.”
Jack had had enough lessons for one day. He swooped past his father, scooted down the stairs, and shimmied his way around to the kitchen. The table was empty. Was this some kind of sick joke?
“Yours is in the fridge, dear,” his mother hollered from her craft room down the hall. “Everyone else is finished, so eat whatever you want.”
Jack stopped listening after the word fridge. He didn’t hear another word or sound coming from anywhere for the next thirty minutes. He sat at the table, shoved every last bit of meat down his throat, and thought about what was happening to him.
It made no sense. He knew it wasn’t a dream. He knew what dreams were like. It wasn’t his imagination. His mind never worked like that. Jack wasn’t sure what would be considered a vision, but it felt more real than anything he could have ever imagined. He was a part of it. He was experiencing it. The letter…the story…he was living the life of Niko Monroe.
One thing Jack was absolutely sure of was that his body had been worn out. Spending an entire day in the attic, whether he had been awake for all of it or not, had taken his energy from him. He let the food settle in his stomach, then trudged up to his bedroom, where he found his brother, who had long been asleep, the excitement of Christmastime overwhelming the youngest sibling.
Jack slid into his bed, clicked the light off from the lamp on his nightstand, and closed his eyes. He was asleep before he could roll over to his side.
Unlike the night before, this time Jack did dream, and though in many ways it was much like others he’d had in the past, in these dreams he was not entirely himself. His mind was calling back to visions of all he had lived and witnessed as the young man who went by the name Niko Monroe.
Jack mulled over all that had happened to him. He thought about the guards, the impending execution, and the earthquake that helped him escape. He thought it all over and over again as he tossed and turned in his bed. Oh, what it had been like to live on the run, to hide from merciless authorities, and what would cause someone with a death sentence to believe they had been the one who had been wronged. He had never had to consider such things before. Good guys and bad guys were more clear cut in the movies.
When morning arrived, Jack felt more exhausted than when he had fallen asleep and was dreading the day that was ahead of him. He was comfortable with what he had accomplished the previous two days, as he cleared out a good portion of space in the attic, but the final section was the one with the most to organize. It wouldn’t be as easy as when he had to sort a couple dozen empty suitcases or flip through a bunch of old maps. He was going to be picking up one piece of junk at a time, looking for anything new and interesting, before almost certainly putting the bulk of it into plastic bags.
Jack did not want to get out of bed. He hardly had a choice when his little brother began jumping on his bed. “Get up, Jack, get up! It’s happening!”
Sadie and Samantha ran past his door giggling. Jack had no idea what his brother was yapping about, but he knew it had to be something good, or
at least it better be. Jack and Calvin scampered down the steps and hustled through the living room to the kitchen where their mother was busy setting out a bag of flour, a bag of sugar, various little bottles and baskets, and toppings with all the colors of the rainbow.
Jack caught his breath and his heart sank. He knew what all this was for. Every year it was a family tradition for the kids to help their mother decorate the Christmas cookies. The Monroes made sure to produce the same two kinds every year. The first was stuffed with chocolate chips and made according to an old family recipe. The other type was a colorful array of red and green and blue and yellow and white sugar cookies, each color a different flavor of frosting spread carefully on top, then completed with sprinkles spread generously all around the oversized treat. But Jack’s Christmas vacation had been taken from him. He wasn’t going to be able to take part in this yearly festivity.
His mother looked at him with one eye opened much larger than the other and her jaw clenched like she had just bitten into something surprisingly sour. She looked at Jack’s brother and sisters as they washed up and began to tie aprons around their backs.
Jack didn’t want to hear the words. He sighed and began to walk back toward the living room, his eyes set on his feet, his mind already working on what was to come his way for the rest of the week.
“Where are you going?” his mother asked him sternly. “Did you really think you were going to get out of helping your brother and sisters with the annual duty of making the Christmas cookies?”
Jack stopped in his tracks.
“They don’t make themselves, you know,” she said, pointing at the table as Calvin started rolling scoops of dough into misshapen balls and setting them onto a tray for baking. “You’re still a part of this family. Get on with it now.”
Jack trembled with excitement. He knew it was only a matter of time before all the cookies were baked, and he would eventually be sent back up to continue his mission, but for that brief period he set aside his worries about the filth up in the attic, the newspapers, the garbage bags, and even the visions of Niko Monroe that had mangled his Christmas vacation into a jumbled mess.
The Treasure Map Page 7