We crossed Zukor Road at a canopied spot past the parks office. When we reached the wall, we headed counterclockwise, toward South Mountain Road.
“Melissa? Can you get me up there?” Kelsey pointed to a hill on our right. “I want to get eyes on our pursuit.”
Mom went flying up the hill with Kelsey riding piggyback as we circled the wall. My lungs were burning, my legs and back aching. I was carrying maybe thirty pounds of stuff in a backpack, which isn’t much until you take my body weight into account. I hoped we had all the things we needed for the truth app. We’d left so quickly, we could have forgotten something crucial.
Mom and Kelsey broke through the foliage.
“Soldiers ahead,” Kelsey said. “And closing behind. We’re pinned. Either we surrender or try to shoot our way out.”
Beltane cursed and punched a tree, which shook like a T. rex had hit it.
“If we surrender and give them everything, what will they do with us?” Molly asked.
The vets looked at each other. Finally, Mr. Chambliss answered. “Likely kill us.”
I guess that answer shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did. It felt as if a giant hand was squeezing my chest.
Boob sank to his hands and knees, gasping. “I can’t breathe.”
Rebe knelt beside him. “I think he’s having a heart attack.”
“Panic attack,” Mr. Chambliss said.
“Come on, we need a plan. What’s it gonna be?” Beltane said.
Beltane’s titanium fingers were still pressed to the tree she’d punched. She was so strong, I pictured her tearing the tree out of the ground, throwing it at the soldiers. That wouldn’t help us against rifles.
I looked at the wall rising up, pinning us down….“The tree. Push the tree onto the wall and we can climb over.”
Beltane broke into a grin. She moved behind the tree. “Out of the way.” As soon as I was out of the way, Beltane bent at the waist and pushed against the trunk, her feet digging for purchase. The top branches shuddered, sending a flurry of leaves raining down.
A sharp crack split the air, followed by a series of smaller ones. The tree plunged toward the wall of Clarkstown Heights, then slammed into it with a crash.
“On me, on me!” Beltane shouted.
Mom pulled Boob to his feet and set him behind Beltane, who hiked him onto her back.
“Hold on.” Mom motioned for Rebe to climb on Boob’s back.
Beltane scaled the tree like a monkey. As soon as she cleared the wall, she swung out onto a sturdy branch until she was hanging over the roof of a house. Then she let go.
Seconds later, she was back in the tree. As soon as she was past the wall, she dropped to the ground and picked up more passengers.
When everyone was over the wall, Beltane shoved the tree off it.
“Stay here.” Mom jumped off the roof like it was no big deal.
“You okay?” I asked Boob, who was sitting, clutching his stomach. He nodded.
“It’s not going to take them long to figure out where we went.” Rebe was studying the dark treetops beyond the wall.
“No, it won’t,” Mr. Chambliss said. “We need to disappear. Quickly.”
I went to the edge of the roof. We were on a neighborhood street, the houses as big as department stores. The street was brightly lit by spotless white luminescent sidewalks. How were we going to disappear in this place? We would stand out so badly with our taped-up sneakers and bionic bodyguards that we might as well have been a herd of purple buffalo.
Mom returned with an extension ladder under one arm. She leaned it, as quietly as possible, against the eaves of the roof. We scurried down to join her on a lawn like a golf course green.
“Excuse me.” Mr. Chambliss jogged over to a bald guy walking a white dog that resembled a cotton ball. I’m not sure what Mr. Chambliss said to the guy, but thirty seconds later, the guy was making a call for him.
The call lasted less than a minute, then Mr. Chambliss jogged back over. “The cavalry’s on the way.”
“Who’s the cavalry?” Beltane asked.
“My ex-wife.”
Until he’d cracked that joke about his ex-wife saying he wasn’t half the man her father had been, Mr. Chambliss had never mentioned he was divorced, but I guess that wasn’t something you shared with your students. It was nice to hear we had a friend inside these walls.
“Don’t anyone forget: once we’re in a vehicle, they can listen in on our conversations,” Rebe said. “No names, no mention of the truth app or anything else that could trigger a live human listening in.”
A green van rolled to a stop in the street.
“How are ten people going to fit in there?” Boob asked as we hurried toward it.
“We’re going to squeeze like hell,” Mr. Chambliss said.
And that’s what we did. Five people, including me, jammed into the back with cans of paint, brushes, and other art supplies. Rebe was pretty much in my lap.
Mr. Chambliss’s ex-wife turned to study us as the autopilot pulled a U-turn. “This has got to be an interesting story. You all have to spill it the moment we get home.” She had pretty fingernails, splotches of red and green paint on her knuckles and fingertips, long silver hair.
As soon as we were in her house, she didn’t even wait for us to sit down. “Who’s going to tell it?”
“Well,” I began when no one else jumped in, “we invented a portable remote lie detector, and now the president is trying to kill us, so we got Mr. Chambliss to repair some disabled vets to be our bodyguards.”
Mr. Chambliss barked a laugh. “Sam, that was spectacularly succinct.”
“The president of the United States?” Mr. Chambliss’s ex asked.
“That’s right.” I was still trying to wrap my head around that.
“That fascist,” she hissed. “I’m Lilo, by the way.” She looked at Mr. Chambliss. “You still have the social skills of a mushroom.”
Mr. Chambliss winced. “That’s a bit harsh. I’d say I have the social skills of a stoat at the very least.”
“What the hell’s a stoat?” Beltane asked.
“A very large rodent.” Lilo leaned over, grabbed Mr. Chambliss’s shoulders, and kissed him on the mouth. “It’s good to see you, Ben. How can I help?”
“We need a place to hide out tonight, supplies, and help getting out of the county in the morning.”
“You got it.”
I pushed open the bathroom door. Molly was standing in front of the mirror wrapped in a towel.
I yanked the door closed. “Oh God. I’m sorry.”
“Nothing you haven’t seen before, right?” Molly said through the door.
“Why didn’t you lock it?” I asked, my face burning.
“I couldn’t figure out how. There’s no lock on the knob.”
“It’s voice activated. Just say ‘door lock’ and ‘door unlock.’ Don’t you watch TV?”
“Door lock.” The knob made a faint click. “Thank you,” Molly said brightly. “Now go away.”
I hurried down the hall, still embarrassed.
Lilo’s house was truly like something out of a TV show. Not only did the doors lock when you told them to, but you could move the walls, making rooms larger or smaller in seconds. The ceilings expanded upward, like someone was blowing a giant bubble, when you stepped into a room. There was a little cleaning robot constantly working, and the furniture adjusted via voice commands.
The vets were congregated in a sitting room, Mom lying on the floor, her knees pulled up to her chest, while Mr. Chambliss massaged Beltane’s neck and shoulder blades.
“Who’s got the Advil?” Mom asked.
“Oh. My. God. Ben!” Lilo was in the living room watching News America. We were on the news.
“No names,” I r
eminded her.
“Sorry,” she said as Mr. Chambliss rushed in after me. Everyone followed except Molly.
“…links to the pro-Russia anarchist group Seela,” Roshanna Lupe, the News America anchor, was saying. “The band of teens and army veterans have developed a weapon of psychological terror, shown in this footage captured by a butterfly camera inserted by the FBI after they were tipped off by one of the group’s own members, Theodore Harlow.”
We gasped as the footage rolled, showing me, Molly, Basquiat, Rebe, and Boob standing over Theo in Rebe’s garage. Theo’s hands were strapped to the arms of a steel chair that would have looked right at home in a horror movie.
“Don’t do this,” Theo said. “Please, guys. I had to tell them. What we’re doing is wrong.”
In the video, Basquiat raised a silver device the size of a coin, or a ring. Theo struggled frantically to get out of the chair, then every muscle in his body tensed. His jaw clenched, yet somehow he still managed to let out an earsplitting shriek. Then his head drooped like he’d been knocked unconscious.
Slowly, Theo opened his eyes and raised his head. “Who are you?” He looked around. “What is this place?”
This was so typical of News America. They murdered Theo because he believed in truth so staunchly they couldn’t buy him off, and now they were twisting him into a martyr for their side.
In the video, none of us answered Theo. We watched him, sneering, as Theo looked from one of us to the next, his eyes pleading.
“Who am I? Where do I live?”
Whoever wrote News America’s dialogue needed to find a new career.
The image switched back to Roshanna Lupe, who was the spitting image of a young Vitnik: the same pointy nose and too-small mouth, the same bobbed black hair. That was not a coincidence—she’d had extensive plastic surgery to resemble Vitnik. “The device, which they call the Blackout App, can permanently wipe someone’s entire memory from a distance of up to twenty feet. If you see these people, call the authorities.” Lupe folded her hands, leaned toward the camera. “Or better yet? Round up some friends and neighbors and take them out yourself.”
Lilo turned off the feed.
Molly looked absolutely distraught. “My mother is going to be losing it right now. And I can’t call and set her straight.”
Basquiat wrapped his arm around Molly and whispered something to her.
I didn’t know why I was surprised. This was what Vitnik did. She lied. What I didn’t get was why so many people believed her lies. It wasn’t like people didn’t know video footage could be computer generated. Last year, when Dwayne Singeon created a TV show on his computer, in his bedroom, starring students and teachers from our high school, everyone watched it, but no one thought it was real. When Singeon showed our admittedly hot English teacher Ms. Evans having flings with students on the show, people didn’t think she really had. Yet people believed the footage on News America. One day our sixty-nine-year-old president is running in a half marathon, and the next day a child just happens to fall while taking a nonexistent tour of the White House so the president can stop the bleeding and apply bandages? It was all fake.
That must be why Vitnik wanted the truth app so badly. If average people had them, they’d learn how much Vitnik lied.
“Visitors are approaching your house, Lilo,” the house’s electronic voice announced. “One U.S. Army lieutenant and one private first class.”
“Everyone in the basement,” Lilo said.
We scrambled for the door to the basement.
“You have no obligation to allow U.S. military personnel into your private residence,” Mr. Chambliss called over his shoulder. “They have no jurisdiction in a privately funded community.”
“I know,” Lilo said.
We huddled in the basement with the lights off. I could hear the murmur of voices—Lilo’s and a male voice—but couldn’t make out what they were saying.
Moments later, the door opened.
“Clear,” Lilo called. “They’re going house to house, looking for you.”
It wouldn’t take long for them to figure out we went over the wall. What they wouldn’t know was whether we’d gone into hiding or kept running.
“We have to get moving,” I said.
“You think?” Beltane said, her voice dripping sarcasm.
Lilo was rushing around, grabbing packs and shoving them at my stunned friends. “There’s an emergency escape route that comes out near the river—”
“You’re kidding me,” Mr. Chambliss said.
Lilo glanced at him. “In case the poor rise up, I guess. I’m so ashamed that I live in this place. But it’s so damned nice.”
It was definitely nice. I still wouldn’t want to live there.
“Do you have clothes Beltane and I can use to cover our bionics?” Mom tapped her leg.
Lilo pointed at her. “Good point.” She disappeared into her bedroom. I could hear her telling her closet what she wanted from it; a moment later, she was back, handing Mom and Beltane shiny tracksuits.
Beltane muttered something about wearing “old-lady clothes” as she pulled them on.
Inside the garage, we piled into the van. Lilo covered the five of us in the back with a paint-spotted drop cloth. Ten people packed into a van was as big a giveaway as vets with working parts.
Ten minutes later, the van rolled to a stop, and Mr. Chambliss slid the drop cloth off us.
We were parked along the side of the road in a heavily wooded area. Lilo led us down a path, over a little bridge, and to a clearing with a windowless blue steel building in the center. She used her ID to open the door. Inside was an elevator that took us to a dimly lit tunnel. It was nothing fancy—concrete walls and floor. There was an electric cart that must have been for maintenance people, but it only seated two, so we walked.
“I didn’t know you’d been married, Mr. Chambliss,” Basquiat said as we headed down the tunnel.
“Since you’ve lured me into a situation that’ll probably result in my painful, premature death, I think you can call me Ben.”
“So what went wrong between you and Lilo, Mr. Chambliss?” Rebe asked. Yeah, he was always going to be Mr. Chambliss to me as well.
“Nothing. We signed a five-year marriage contract and divorced when the contract expired.”
“Seriously?” Rebe said.
“No, Rebe. You can’t get married with an expiration date. Maybe that’s the problem.”
“Has anyone noticed that whenever Mr. Chambliss doesn’t want to answer a question, he turns it into a joke?” I asked.
“I hadn’t noticed,” Mr. Chambliss said.
“Let’s stay focused,” Mom said. “When we get out there, everyone is going to be watching for us. There’ll be a universal facial recognition alert in place, so don’t go anywhere there might be surveillance cameras.”
“That pretty much leaves us in the wilderness,” Boob said.
“And that’s where we’re headed,” Mom said.
“I hate camping,” Rebe muttered under her breath.
“Well, you better get used to it.” Beltane was walking right behind us.
Rebe glanced back at her. “I wasn’t talking to you. Do you mind?”
Beltane gave her a withering look before moving around us and picking up her pace. If not for the leathery skin and the scowl, she’d be pretty, I realized. You had to squint to see it, though.
The tunnel came out in an abandoned quarry sitting on the edge of the Hudson River. We were surrounded by rusting chutes and squat buildings. Behind us, the hills were cut open, the tan rock center, shaped like a giant staircase, exposed.
We waited in the shade of a huge pile of gravel while Beltane jogged off to check on the situation.
“She’s not growing on me,” Rebe said.
“I
f she hadn’t pushed that tree over, we’d be dead by now.”
“That doesn’t make her any less annoying.”
Boob nudged me. “Silhouette Lark is talking about us!” He was watching Lark’s channel on a tiny screen.
“What’s she saying?”
“She has her doubts about the video. It’s going viral. Everyone’s talking about it.”
Beltane appeared on the gravel road, her face glistening with sweat. She took a few seconds to catch her breath, then said, “Roadblock.”
Mom pointed at the mountain behind us. “We’ll have to go over High Tor mountain.” I’d been afraid of that. I’d hiked the trail up High Tor a dozen times. It was steep. I wasn’t enthralled by the idea of doing it with a pack on my back.
“Or we could steal a boat.” Rebe jerked her chin toward a gray dock, where a couple of recreational fishing boats were moored.
“Do you know how to hot-wire a boat?” Mr. Chambliss asked.
Rebe shrugged. “How hard could it be?”
“I don’t know, I’ve never tried.”
Ten minutes later, the boat rumbled to life. Mr. Chambliss unmoored it from the dock and cruised down the shore to the quarry, where we were waiting. Quietly, we waded into the river, up to our armpits. Rebe and Mr. Chambliss helped us over the railing.
The boat had a canopied area at the bow, while the stern was open. Most of us sat in the stern with our backs to the railing, so anyone watching from shore wouldn’t see ten of us packed onto a boat meant to hold maybe five.
Boob was on my left, our shoulders pressed together. “Is there a bathroom on this thing?”
I leaned forward and looked into the open cabin. Mr. Chambliss was steering, with Kelsey at the bow scanning the banks, and Mom and Beltane sitting with rifles in their laps. “I doubt it.”
Boob squeezed his eyes shut. “So what are we supposed to do if we have to go?”
“Hold it, I guess.”
Boob didn’t look happy. “I’m not built for this. My guts turn to water when I’m scared.”
The Future Will Be BS Free Page 11