by C. A. Gray
I thought about the man I’d carjacked to get to the Potentate’s palace and felt a stab of regret. “You’re forgetting the third option,” I said. “Give them a free choice.”
“Did we have a free choice?” sniffed Denise. “Albert and I were perfectly happy before you dragged us into all of this, against our will…”
“Except that we didn’t know where Katie was,” Albert reminded her gently. “We were worried sick about her.”
Kate watched her mother, presumably waiting for a similar affirmation from her. But the seconds ticked by in silence.
“We didn’t drag you, Mom,” Kate bristled at last. “That was the Potentate, remember? I wasn’t even coming to see you guys at all, I was going to find Charlie! If Nancy hadn’t told you I was coming, and if you hadn’t called the agents on us, then you wouldn’t be here right now. So if you want someone to blame, blame yourselves!”
“She’s in shock,” Albert scolded his daughter quietly. “Cut her a little slack.”
Kate scowled, folding her arms over her chest. Then she turned to me and said sharply, “What do you mean, give them a free choice?”
Before I answered, I winked at her. The hard lines in her jaw softened and she looked a little abashed. Then I said, “It’s surprising how often people are willing to help you if you just ask. We could go in there and take over the broadcasting station by force and make everyone leave, but if we were to do that, can Charlie do the filming and broadcast and make sure all the levels are right so people can actually hear what you’re saying, all by himself?” I’d never seen a broadcasting studio before, but I gathered from Kate’s and Charlie’s silence that I’d made a good point.
“So,” I added, “Especially since these are your friends, Kate—”
“Not good friends,” she interrupted, “I’ve just met most of them a few times.”
“Well, they know you. So I say, let’s just let the team choose. Those who want to help, should stay and help. Those who don’t, are free to leave. No violence necessary.”
“And then they’ll immediately go tell the agents exactly where we are and what we’re doing,” Charlie pointed out.
“The agents are going to know where we are anyway within two hours, if not before,” I said, “because your parents will have the signal disruptor with them. Remember?”
“But why would any of them stay to help, then?” asked Kate.
“Well,” Charlie mused, “what made you start to wake up?”
Kate thought for a minute. “Finding out Maggie got killed.”
Charlie nodded. “Exactly. And now all of them have their own Maggie. You.”
She looked a bit taken aback by this, but then she murmured, “Yeah, I guess… you mean because I’ve just been vilified on national broadcasting?”
“Right, and you said yourself that that’s going to cause some cognitive dissonance for a lot of people. They love you.”
I chimed in, “They still see you as someone they can trust. So if we show up with guns blazing, we’ll destroy that for the broadcast team, and anyone they tell. But if we tell them our story and give them a choice, a few of them are likely to help. And we only need a few, right?”
“I guess,” Kate murmured again, looking at Charlie for confirmation.
“But,” I added, “we’ll need you to be recognizable on camera, Kate. Get you cleaned up and looking like the news anchor people know, like, and trust.”
“What are you saying?” she smirked at me over her shoulder, her pasty makeup half smeared across her cheek. “Are you saying I look bad right now?”
I shrugged and held up my hands, smiling back. “Hey, I just… want you to look like yourself. Interpret how you will.”
Greensborough turned out to be a few hours’ drive from Jute. We stopped for gas once more, and although Kate and I stayed in the car to avoid the stares, the car itself was so flashy it still drew a lot of attention. I gave Charlie my ID card for gas, which fortunately no one had linked to me yet, so it didn’t seem to set off any kind of alarm. When we stopped for the last fill up of the night, I heard the sound of an engine overhead again, and rolled down the window so I could see the red lights of a plane in the sky.
“Why would Voltolini be building up the Air Force again?” Albert asked, leaning against the car door beside me.
“Maybe he thinks there’s some kind of outside threat,” Charlie mused as he pumped the gas. “New Estonia?” Then he snorted and said, “It’s funny. All my life I’ve thought of them as an enemy, but I never knew why.”
“None of us did,” agreed Albert, running a hand through his thick, graying hair and still looking up at the sky where the plane had vanished. “None of us ever asked why…”
“We should be another hour out,” said Kate, leaning across the front seat to me. “Before we stop for the night, we still have to get a less visible car.”
“Agreed,” said Charlie. “The trick is finding something old enough, though… and it has to be in a place that isn’t well lit so nobody sees me trying to steal it…”
“Plus we’ll have to ditch this one somewhere far away from our eventual location,” I said. “We don’t want to leave any clues where we’re headed in advance of the broadcast.”
Charlie popped the trunk and got the gas canister we’d brought from Voltolini’s garage, which was now empty. Once he’d finished filling the car’s tank, he topped off the extra canister too.
“Incase we have to steal a car with no gas in it,” he explained.
I nodded. “Smart.”
“There’s a lake on the edge of Greensborough,” Kate said. “I don’t know how deep it is, but it’s probably deep enough to sink this.” She tapped the front seat of the Jaguar.
I raised my eyebrows and looked at Charlie, who had finished pumping gas and got back into the driver’s seat. He nodded.
“Sounds like a plan,” he affirmed. “So I’ll head for the lake, and hope we can find another car to take along the way.”
About an hour later, Charlie pulled off of the freeway for the Greensborough exit, and Kate navigated him to a small subdivision on the way to the lake.
“Most of the homes here have been abandoned for a decade or more,” she said. “Like everywhere else. But there are a few…” She pointed at the ramshackle huts with bare lightbulbs shining on their thresholds. There were some cars parked on the side streets in front of the homes, and I kept glancing at Charlie to see if any of them met his criteria.
“Nope,” he’d murmur as we passed one. “Too broken down… probably won’t run… too new, doubt I can jump that one… A-ha!”
I didn’t know cars at all, but he pulled over beside one of the ugliest vehicles I’d ever seen, with a gray body sorely in need of repainting, and a yellow door on the driver’s side. The fender dangled off of it precariously.
“This’ll do,” Charlie announced. “How close are we to the lake, Kate?”
“I think it’s about a quarter mile,” she said.
“Perfect.” Charlie parked, popped the trunk, and grabbed his toolbox. “Dad? Wanna help me?”
Denise had been asleep for the last hour, which was probably good for all of us. Albert gently coaxed her out of the Jaguar and into the backseat of the old clunker Charlie was working on, before he climbed into the front seat to help his son. Kate scooted over to the driver’s side of the Jaguar, which I gathered meant she intended to be the one to drive it into the lake. I climbed in to the passenger side and shut the door. But we couldn’t go anywhere until Charlie finished jumping the other car, since we had to stay no more than ten feet from the signal disruptor. That meant we had a few minutes, all to ourselves.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey,” she said back. She glanced at me and gave me a half smile. “Do I really look that bad?”
“Nah,” I lied.
She laughed. “You’re a terrible liar.”
“Not a skill I ever pr
acticed,” I grinned back. We both fell silent, and I reached out and squeezed her hand. “You doing okay?”
She didn’t answer for a second, and she looked at our hands, not at me. “About as well as can be expected. You?”
I nodded. “Trying to focus on what I still have, instead of on what I don’t.” I touched her jaw, and she looked up. Her eyes filled with tears.
“Thinking about Will?” I asked quietly.
She sniffed, and gave a half shrug. “Of course. But I’ve kind of been in that place where my mind just can’t even focus on any one thing for very long, you know? Will, and the trial… Mom and Dad almost getting killed, our escape, Stone and the execution, Molly, Beckenshire… All these different scenes are competing in my head. They’re all important, but there’s nothing I can do about any of them. So they revolve, and they each get about ten seconds before the next one takes over…” She gave me a sad smile. “But I forget who I’m talking to. You’re Mr. Focused. You can’t relate.”
I hated when people said stuff like that. It was like she’d just erected an insurmountable barrier between us, like we were two different species. She said it like an envious compliment, but the receiving end of it felt lonelier than ever.
“I am human, you know,” I said.
“Are you?” she searched my eyes. “Sometimes I wonder.”
That hurt a little. I looked out the windshield. “Will asked me once if I had any weaknesses, too.”
I saw Kate wince at the sound of his name. “What did you tell him?”
“I told him… that I tend to lie to myself.”
“You lie to yourself?” she laughed. “About what?”
When I’d said that to Will, I’d actually been thinking of Kate at the time—wondering whether I really didn’t care about her that much, or whether I was convincing myself I didn’t for his sake, and for my own sense of honor. This didn’t seem like the moment to go into that, though.
What I said was, “I’m pretty good at seeing truth when I’m just an observer, and not a variable. But when my own feelings get involved, suddenly I don’t know which way is up.” I turned back to her and said pointedly, “I’m just like everyone else in that way.”
She still held my hand, turning it over and inspecting my palm so she didn’t have to look me in the eye. I felt like she knew exactly what I was talking about, but she didn’t want to go there right now either. Instead, she said, “You haven’t been talking much in the last few hours. What were you thinking about?” She looked up and joked, “Were you just hyper-aware of every car whizzing by us and every sound on the road?”
I smiled too, but it faded quickly. “I was thinking about Nick,” I admitted. “And Jacob. He was getting good at controlling his thoughts and tuning in, you know? And Roger. He gave up his whole life as an agent to come and help us.” I swallowed. “And Will. I know it seems strange, but I was really starting to like that guy.”
Kate bit her lip. “He’s likable,” she admitted, her voice trembling. “When he’s not being a condescending know-it-all.” She laughed, wiping tears away and smearing her makeup even worse than before.
“And when he’s not half mad with jealousy,” I added.
She didn’t answer right away, trying to compose herself. “They might still be alive.”
I nodded. “Sure. I know.”
Over her shoulder, Albert signaled us, and Charlie gave us a thumbs up.
“Looks like your brother has this down,” I said, as Kate put the Jaguar into gear to follow him. “So, do you have any idea how to run a car into a lake without drowning ourselves?”
“No freaking clue,” she grinned at me through her tears. “Guess we’ll figure it out though.”
“Let’s hope. I don’t feel like drowning tonight.” I started to fasten my seatbelt and thought better of it—in case I’d have to jump out quickly and all. “Lot of firsts today, huh?”
Chapter 34: Jackson
Kate put the car on cruise control at fifteen miles per hour so it would keep going without her, and headed for the bank of the lake. Both of us opened our doors wide and, with about fifty yards to go, jumped out and rolled onto the soft earth of the bank. I stood up and brushed myself off, watching the Jaguar splash into the lake, slowly fill with water, and sink.
“Is this lake deep enough to conceal it?” I asked her.
She shrugged. “No idea. But I figure anything is better than leaving the Jaguar parked in front of wherever we camp for the night, right?”
Charlie and Kate’s parents had followed us to the bank in their old clunker, so we walked back to them and got inside.
“There’s a house off by itself right there,” said Charlie, pointing at one at the very edge of the bank. The front part of the roof looked like it was about to fall off at any second, and the windows were cracked. It definitely looked uninhabited.
“Give it a try,” said Albert. I glanced over at Kate’s parents in the back seat beside me. Albert had his arm around Denise, who looked like she’d managed to fall asleep again. It was sweet, to see how much he cared for his wife.
Charlie pulled up behind the house, and killed the engine. The knob of the front door wouldn’t turn, but it didn’t catch in the lock either, so he pushed it open easily.
“Ugh!” he cried, fanning his nose. “What in the world—?”
“Maybe it’s better in the back rooms,” I said, pinching my nose too as I made my way in. Something was definitely decomposing in here… maybe several somethings. Maybe several big somethings. But it was no worse than the homes we’d found in Beckenshire.
The back bedroom looked almost untouched. There was a single wide mattress on the floor with a threadbare coverlet on it, and a thick layer of dust covered the floor. I wandered over to the large piece of furniture that must have been a wardrobe and opened it. Inside there was a musty smell, but compared to the rest of the house, it wasn’t too bad.
The wardrobe had belonged to a young woman, evidently. That gave me an idea, and I rifled through the clothing, pulling out a blue dress that looked about Kate’s size. There were a few loose threads here and there, some tiny holes that might have been made from insects, and the zipper in back looked like it might have one or two uses left in it. But other than that, it looked all right. It reminded me of the dress she’d worn the first time I’d seen her, on camera.
Charlie knocked on the door of the bedroom where I was, coughing.
“Think we’d all end up with pneumonia or something here,” he said. “Let’s keep looking.”
I tucked the dress into the bag I’d brought with me, next to the rope, and followed him out.
We left the housing subdivision altogether and entered the industrial area of Greensborough. Kate pointed out a large warehouse with graffiti on its walls, and no windowpanes at all.
“Really?” said Charlie, skeptical.
She shrugged. “Well, it’s on the edge of downtown, so it might still be on the main water line. And at this point we need to sleep somewhere.” Judging from the position of the moon, I guessed it was probably about nine o’clock. Even I felt exhausted, so I assumed the others were about to fall over.
Charlie parked and we got out cautiously, creeping up to inspect the warehouse in single file. But despite the bright moonlight, there was no one in sight. The main metal door was locked, but Charlie pulled some sort of long thin instrument out of the toolbox he and Kate had stolen, and picked the lock.
Once inside, Albert revealed a bunch of cans and a can opener he’d pilfered from the last house, and we had a meager meal of beans and corn, but it was much better than nothing. When we’d finished, we all laid out a series of blankets on the filthy concrete floor for our beds, right next to the small half bathroom. A single lightbulb hung down in the middle of the bathroom ceiling, and Kate went in and pulled the cord—lo and behold, it lit up.
“Found some soap,” she told no one in particular, and I saw that she h
eld a bar in her hand which she also must have gotten from the house. As she closed the door, I heard her try the sink. There were a few gurgles and spurts, but it eventually did sound like she got at least a trickle.
Denise and Albert lay down immediately, and Denise went right back to sleep. Albert lay beside her, but I could see the reflection of the moonlight filtering through the window in his eyes. He was in his own world. Charlie stood at the window with his back to us, arms clasped behind him, also staring out into the darkness. Like the rest of us, I’m sure he was wondering if it was his last night on earth.
I crept up to the bathroom and knocked on the door.
Kate opened it, her face fresh now and looking like herself again.
“There she is,” I whispered, and smiled, holding up the blue dress. “Thought you might want to wear this tomorrow, instead of the jumpsuit. Not that that doesn’t also look great on you.”
She gave me a weak laugh and took the dress, looking at the tag. She nodded and whispered, “It’s the right size.” Then I saw her face crumple.
Instinctively I stepped into the little bathroom and closed the door behind us, just as Kate covered her face with her hands and began to cry.
“Hey,” I said, pulling her into my arms.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered against my chest. “I just had a horrible thought.”
“What’s that?”
“That… you just handed me my shroud.”
I took a deep breath. What could I say to that?
She continued to weep silently as I stroked her hair, resting my chin on the top of her head.
Well… what if she’s right?
Despite the blanks the agents used as bullets, at least the Potentate had to know the difference, and by now he knew that we knew, too. Any number of things could happen tomorrow. He could send agents with real bullets. He could bomb the studio.
I had a fleeting thought of Will. He might still be alive. But if he was, what were the chances we’d ever see him again anyway?
If I do see him again… I’ll apologize later, I decided.