by Kirk Dougal
They slowly made their way down the aisle, farther into the shadows. At the back Tar reached for the swinging door when it quickly opened toward him, jamming his fingers. He nearly cried out but clenched his teeth and made a fist.
Toby stuck his head around the opening. “Hurry. Nobody is back here yet.”
Tar wiggled his fingers and followed his friend into the grocery storage area with Roger close on their heels. Toby’s flashlight, the battery all but dead, barely gave off enough light to navigate through the empty boxes and trash strewn everywhere.
“Right up here,” Toby whispered over his shoulder.
He led them to a concrete block wall. To their left were two large overhead doors, the metal rusted at the joints where the panels met. In front of Toby, however, was a normal-sized door.
“How’d you get it open?” asked Tar.
“It’s just got a bar that slides to lock it. No tech on it.”
Toby put his hand on the bar and turned off his flashlight. Tar heard the sound of metal grating against metal, a small wail of mechanical protest, then it stopped and the outline of a door appeared in the dark, letting in a hint of pale light.
Toby put his face to the crack and peered out for a few seconds. “I don’t see anyone,” he whispered. “You know they’re pinging for us. Do we go?”
“Yes,” Tar said, surprising himself that he was the first to speak. “We’ve seen them pinging through buildings. They’ll come in here sooner or later. We’d better go now while we can.”
“Tar’s right,” said Roger. “But if the Black Shirts spot us don’t wait on me. Get back to Sally and Nataly. You two have to get them someplace safe.” The silence hung heavy between them. Roger put his hand on Tar’s shoulder. “Promise me, boys. Help them. Don’t let the Black—”
“We promise, Doc,” Toby said. “Right?”
Tar looked from Toby to the doctor. “Only if you promise to do the same if I’m caught. Nataly may be the last of the fixers if that happens, the last chance for the zoms to be app again.”
“I promise,” said Roger.
“Okay. Let’s go.”
Toby pulled the door open and stepped into the dying light. Tar would have felt better if they could wait another hour, when the streets were full dark. Of course he would have felt a lot better if Black Shirts weren’t crawling all over the place, too.
The back of the store was much the same as the loading dock at the mall and thoughts of that place led Tar to memories of watching Shovel die. He shook his head a little to clear it and they went down some concrete stairs into an area lower than ground level, sloping up to where it met the street. In the distance—or at least it sounded like they were far away—the clip-clop of hooves echoed.
“There’s an alley across the street,” said Roger. “We can try to make it there.”
Tar was too short to see over the lip of the rise. He took the doctor’s word for it and nodded. “Lead the way,” he said to Toby.
His friend made his way to the triangular-shaped wall and walked carefully down its length. Tar followed a few feet behind with Roger a couple steps farther back. They stopped moving when Toby rose to peek over the retaining wall, then squatted down and waved them forward.
“There’s two men at the corner but their backs are to us. I think if we go one at a time and hurry across quietly, we can make it.”
Tar patted his friend on the shoulder. “You’ve always been my best book.”
Toby smiled, a mischievous little grin like he had just found a hidden present. “Who are you kidding? You don’t have any other books.” He looked back over the edge again and, when he looked at Tar this time, the smile was gone. “Me, too.”
With those words hanging in the air Toby moved into the open and dashed across to the alley on light feet, disappearing into the shadows.
Tar and Roger held their breath the whole time but there were no shouts, no beating of horses’ hooves. Nothing.
“Your turn,” Roger said.
Tar looked over the concrete wall. Toby had been right. There were only two Black Shirts in sight, still facing away. Without another thought, he ran.
In Tar’s mind, the street stretched before him like a living thing, growing to enormous size, the alley leaping away into the distance. But then he was plunging into the dark, slipping in the muck and almost falling.
Tar steadied himself and put his back against the far wall beside Toby. From there they could see Roger’s approach and keep their eyes on the Black Shirts. But when the man hurried by them deeper into the alley, Tar’s eyes never left the street corner. A massive old truck, covered in so much rust he could barely tell it had once been dark green with a white star on the door, stopped on the main street. The back gate clanged down and two men jumped onto the street and glared around.
But they were not the reason Tar felt his breath catch in his throat. One of them gestured back inside and a half-dozen boys hopped down, as well, the last shorter than the rest, with dirt smudges on his chin and long black hair hanging over his eyes. The boy shook his hair out of his face. Tar blinked at its familiarity. It was Jimmy.
Chapter 33
“That’s Jimmy!” Tar realized his voice was too loud but he was not about to leave his friend at the mercy of the Black Shirts.
Toby peered out toward the group. “What? Shoe’s little brother?”
“I can’t let him go 404.”
Tar felt a hand on his shoulder.
“Tar, I understand your loyalty to your friend,” Roger whispered, “but you’ve got to think about the big picture. If you get caught who will save those poor people that lost the ability to think since The Crash? Think about them.”
Tar hesitated a few seconds, then set his jaw. “No. If I’m caught you promised you would have Nataly try to save them. You promised.” He turned to look at Toby. “You know what they did for us. I’ve got to try.” His voice dropped, each word said with an edge. “Moenes take care of their own.”
Toby nodded. “Let’s do it.”
Roger looked back and forth at the boys and sighed. “Okay. How do we get your friend out of there?”
#
Toby pointed out a door hanging from its hinges deeper in the alley so they went to it and found open access to the building. They ducked inside and made their way to the broken windows in the front. That way they could watch the group while staying hidden.
The last of the sun’s light flared orange as the prisoners were herded into the middle of the street. Tar noticed one of the Black Shirts threading a metal cable through bands on the ankles, then loop the end around a lamp pole. The guard then attached a box to the cable and a small red light began blinking on it. He signaled to the other men and all but one left the area.
“Frag me!” whispered Toby. “It’s tech.”
Tar blinked in surprise. “Maybe some of them use small tech. We know Ludler only rides horses but this group had a truck, right?”
“I don’t like it,” said Roger. “It’s too easy. They’re looking for fixers but they use a piece of technology to hold their prisoners? Something is wrong.”
“I know,” Tar said. “It doesn’t feel right but I’ve got to try.” He paused for a few seconds. “I’ll have to be the one who goes out there.”
“We’re not just going to sit here and watch,” said Roger.
“No. I need you to help get that last guard away. Can you go over a couple of streets and make a lot of noise?”
“A diversion might work,” Roger answered slowly. “But I’m not sure how much time we can buy you.”
“If that’s just a lock, I’ll only need a few seconds. At least it’s dark. None of the street lights are working.”
“I don’t think there is any electricity in Sunnyvale,” said Roger. “It is so deserted, there was no one left to use it.”
“Where do we meet when it’s over?” asked Toby. “Back here?”
“
No, it’s too close,” Tar answered. “We need to meet some place closer to the Mind.”
“The Tower,” said Roger.
“What?”
“When you get the prisoners free go straight north to Palo Alto to Stanford University. On campus is the Hoover Tower. Almost 300 feet tall. You can’t miss it. We can meet there.”
“Is it close to the Mind?”
“The Mind was in a building on campus. That’s where we all worked.”
All three were quiet for a couple of minutes.
“Chilly,” Tar finally said. “Let’s free Jimmy.”
#
The moon floated in and out of the clouds and Tar stood motionless beside the empty window frame, just staring out into the street and waiting. He could see the outlines of shadows but the only real light was from the blinking red dot on the tech.
Suddenly a crash in the distance made him jump. It sounded like the echo of metal banging on metal. A few shouts broke out, then several more, until a roar rose up. An orange glow flickered above the far building roofs. Tar was not sure what Toby and the doctor had done but it worked. The lone Black Shirt meandered hesitantly down the sidewalk to the corner, his gaze trained toward the commotion.
This was it. Tar stepped over the frame and crouched down. Staying low, he moved quickly toward the dark spot he knew was his Moene friend.
“Jimmy,” he whispered. “Wake up. All of you, get up but stay quiet. I’m getting you out of here.”
“What? Who is that?”
“It’s me. Tar.” He had already moved away and grabbed the tech.
“No, Tar!” said Jimmy. “It’s a trap!”
As the light moved in his mind and the lock tumbled open it was joined by a flare in the street. The truck’s lights lit up the area around him, casting his shadow long and thin on the street behind.
“They’ve been moving us every night, trying to draw you out,” Jimmy said, his voice cracking with emotion. “It’s just a fragging trap.”
The truck door slammed. A figure walked toward them, backlit by the truck’s headlights. The figure stopped a couple of steps away, blocking just enough light for Tar to see the man’s face.
Ludler.
Tar fell on his butt and tried to scoot away but he was stopped short, running into the legs of the younger Black Shirt guard he had seen giving orders earlier.
“Yes, a trap,” said Ludler. “And it worked quite well, I should say. We do not even have to test you, seeing that you just disabled the lock.”
Tar looked down at the device still in his hand, its light now dark. He let it clatter to the street.
“Lieutenant Martinez,” continued Ludler, “secure the prisoners. Oh, and Lieutenant. Let’s use some good, old-fashioned rope, hmm? We wouldn’t want our little prize to fix his way out of our grasp again, now would we?”
Chapter 34
Tar tumbled across the floor of the truck. Morning light shone through the open flap of the truck’s canvas and lit up the inside enough for him to see the other prisoners lining the benches down both sides. His hands and feet were still tied so he lay between them until Pup and another boy reached down to help him onto a seat.
“Why’d you come after me?” Jimmy whispered. There were no Black Shirts inside the truck but they did not know how close they were standing outside.
“Moenes take care of their own.”
Jimmy snorted. “Yeah, well my brother is gonna frag me for sure. Getting’ caught by the Shirts twice. Damn!”
“How’d they catch you?”
Jimmy looked at his feet. “I was showin’ a couple of guys the app you fixed for me. Playin’ some music, ya know. One of them must’ve ratted me out. I don’t even want to think about the aggro One Shoe is gonna throw on them if he finds out.”
“Shhh!”
The hiss came from one of the boys nearest the opening. A few seconds later Black Shirts appeared, dragging a man between them. Together they heaved him up and over the tailgate. The man hit the truck floor with a lung-emptying crash on the floor. Tar’s stomach flopped.
It was Dr. Pierinski.
His face was bruised while blood covered one cheek. His clothes were ripped and dirty. Worse than the way he looked he did not move, only lay on the floor and moaned.
“Do you know this guy?” Jimmy whispered?
“Yes. He and Toby were making a lot of noise to get the Black Shirts attention while I freed you guys.”
Roger moved his head a little. “Tar, is that you?”
“Can you guys help him up?”
It took three of them to lift the doctor onto the seat and prop him next to Tar.
“I was hoping you got away,” Roger muttered through puffy, bloody lips.
“It was a trap. They were waiting as soon as I got the lock off.”
The doctor coughed then winced. “It just didn’t feel right. They shouldn’t have been using technology.”
Tar felt bad. He should have trusted Roger’s intuition. Now they were both going 404. “Did Toby get away?” he asked, clinging at least to a little hope.
Roger opened his less swollen eye and looked from Tar to Jimmy, who was leaning in close and listening.
“He’s chilly,” Tar assured the doctor.
Roger nodded, then coughed a few times, doing his best to hold them in. “We set off the diversion with a pile of steel and a fire and it worked. It actually worked too well. They came from everywhere. We ran into a building but they saw…they followed us in and grabbed me right away. But, yes, in all the confusion, I think Toby got away. I don’t know…how he did it…”
“And the Shirts went aggro on you, looks like,” Jimmy said.
“Aggro…if you mean they beat the hell out of me then, yes…yes, they did. It wasn’t too bad until their captain showed up. He had the picture of all of us on the team.” He opened his eye to look at Tar. “The one on your handheld.”
Tar nodded. “Their leader is named Ludler. Uncle Jahn said he was the worst.” He paused for a second. “He’s the one who killed Shovel.”
“I believe it. So, now he knows I worked on the Mind. He kept asking me over and over about the other fixers…where they were…who they were. When I didn’t tell him he started hitting me. I think he…”
“The monster lost control,” Tar cut in.
The boy at the back hissed for quiet again and they all leaned back against the canvas. Lieutenant Martinez peered in and counted everyone. He lingered on Tar, staring before giving a small smile, then he left.
“This is all my fault,” Tar said. “I’ve let everybody down.”
Roger sat up a little, a groan escaping his lips. “This is not your fault. You were trying to help those poor people who were lost when the Mind went down.”
“All my trying has done is make it so Toby can never go home and it got you fragged. Yeah, I’ve done a lot of good.”
“You busted me out of jail,” Jimmy offered.
Roger turned his eye on Tar. “For a lot of years I stayed hidden for reasons you now know.” He did not mention Nataly but Tar knew what he meant. “I could have done something—anything—to make things better. I could have tried to go back to the Mind myself. I could have helped…you know, get to some of those people and fix them. Instead, I told myself I was protecting her by hiding.
“But…I was really just protecting myself…because I was scared. You’ve shown me something, Tar, that it’s okay to be scared, but you have to keep going forward anyway. Listen, a few months ago I heard about some people who were fighting back against the Black Shirts, causing a lot of problems. I could have tried to go to them…see if I could help. I didn’t because I convinced myself that I wouldn’t do any good, that it wouldn’t make a difference. But now…now I have hope again. And you’ve given me that hope, Tar.”
“Somebody’s fighting them?” Tar noticed Jimmy had suddenly looked away. “Jimmy. Do you know anything about this?”
The boy twisted his head to the side but still didn’t look Tar’s way.
“Jimmy, what is it?”
He finally turned toward them.
“You’ve already met one of the leaders.”
Tar blinked in surprise.
“Your brother? Is One Shoe leading some the fight against the Black Shirts?”
Jimmy snorted. “No.” He leaned in and whispered. “Didn’t you think it was funny how One Shoe and Oso were the only two older guys in the Moenes?”
“What do you mean?”
“All the older guys have gone to fight the Shirts.”
A face popped into Tar’s mind. A pale face with freckles and a scar down his left cheek. All sitting underneath a shaggy mop of bright red hair. “Turbo,” he said.
Jimmy gave a nod. “He got some of the other gangs to kick in some guys and they’re doin’ it together. First thing they probably ever agreed on. But that’s why One Shoe is keepin’ everybody out of the other territories. All the gangs are in a, uh…what do you call it?”
“A truce,” said Tar. “Is there some way to get a message to him? There’s someone else that needs protection.” Tar noticed Roger straighten again.
Jimmy must have seen the movement, too. He glanced at the doctor before he answered. “Not from in here. You tell me who you’re talking ‘bout and if I get out, we’ll make sure they get taken care of.” He smiled. “Moenes take care of their own.”
“Shhh!”
This time it was not Lieutenant Martinez who appeared at the back of the truck. Ludler stared in through the opening and Tar felt his breath catch in his throat. He understood what Roger meant about the man losing control. One look in those eyes scared him more than almost any time he could remember.
Ludler lips were a straight, bloodless line as he stepped up on the bumper and swung a leg inside. He hunched over and walked down the row of prisoners until he stood in front of Tar, glaring down, red spots on his cheeks. “Abomination,” he said through clenched teeth.