by B. C. Tweedt
“Who are you?” a gruff voice muttered from behind the camera, the TV’s volume filling the small, dark room.
The boy on the screen didn’t respond. His mouth hung open, his eyes lost to another place.
“Who are you?” the voice asked again, a little louder.
The boy jerked. “Huh?”
“You were rescued for a reason. We’re going to need a full testimony – to hear the truth – about Pluribus – about all of it. If you can’t answer a basic question, this will take a long time. Who…are…you? Tell the camera.”
“Uh…Nolan…”
“Your real name.”
The boy swallowed, peering into space and then back. “Greyson. Greyson Gray.”
“Who are your parents?”
Greyson’s eyes locked on the man off-screen. “Why?”
“Who are your parents?”
It took a few moments for the boy to surrender. “My mom, Gloria, was killed at the fair. My dad, Gregory, is in Nassau. I’m going to find him.”
The boy left no doubt.
“Now tell me about the attack.”
Taking a deep breath, the boy removed his hat, wiped his buzzed hair, and put his hat back on, thinking. “Which one?”
There was a pause as if the gruff man was reflecting.
“The one that just happened?” the boy asked. “With the trainwreck?”
“No. The attack on the fair.”
Greyson’s chin curled up and he shook his head. “Do I have to do this?”
“Yes.”
The television shone with the boy’s image as he fought with his memory in front of the camera. The man behind the camera and the camera itself seemed cruel, callous. They did not relent or console the boy. It was the boy’s battle to fight. But he looked determined to win.
He swallowed whatever was haunting him and eyed the camera with new resolve. “Where do I start?”
Chapter 2
Moments after Deadfall
Sydney squeezed Greyson’s hand, but he didn’t squeeze back. His eyes were closed, his chest rising and falling, the gauze wrapped around his shoulder beginning to show a lopsided red circle where he’d been shot.
Sydney didn’t look at it. She couldn’t. Instead she watched the dark landscape pass by the helicopter’s window. At first it was just the churning sea that fought with Hurricane Daryll, but then it was the coast far below. Houses, highways, power lines. Always something to look at. Always something failing to distract her from his pained breathing.
Even Jarryd, whom she had come to count on for a distraction, pleasant or not, was fast asleep next to Avery. His twin brother Nick sulked by the other window, deep in thought; and Avery, the Australian they had met on the cruise was awake, too, but Sydney didn’t feel like talking.
It was only the soldiers in the cockpit who talked in low voices. Talking about things more important than she could comprehend – orders, the military, satellites – but she didn’t care what they were saying. What she cared about was right next to her.
“He’ll be a’hright,” Avery whispered.
Sydney turned to Avery’s smile – it was a sympathetic smile – not the bright I’m-as-beautiful-as-a-model smile that she normally flashed at Greyson or probably any boy for that matter. But despite the sympathetic smile and the disaster she’d just survived, she still looked nauseatingly beautiful with her freckles and shining blonde locks.
Sydney tried to return the smile and then turned back to Greyson. His wounded hand rested at his side, also covered in a bloodied bandage. She’d seen what the bullet had done to it. Put a hole clean through his palm.
She shivered and peered again through the window. Minutes passed and the rain stopped. The nice soldier, the Hispanic one called Forge, told them where they were taking them. A secret place where Pluribus wouldn’t find them. A place where they could hide.
But they were too somber to protest; even if they could have, she had a feeling it wouldn’t matter. The soldiers were in charge, whoever they were. And she had to trust them. They’d saved them. They’d carried Greyson back from the destroyer’s control room as the missiles had fired into the sky. Wherever they were taking them had to be better than where they had been the last few months, constantly under FBI surveillance and hunted by terrorists who sought to silence any witness who could prove that Pluribus was behind the nuclear attack on Des Moines.
“Will there be a doctor? Or a hospital?” she asked Forge.
“Orphan will be taken care of,” was all he said, referring to Greyson.
Their nickname for Greyson made her think. Orphan. She used to only think about orphans in the way they were portrayed in the musical, Annie. Spunky little girls. Fictional. Waiting for their happy ending. Though she had played an orphan a few years ago when her elementary school had performed the musical, she hadn’t ever thought she’d be a real one.
But now maybe she was. The assassin dressed as a fisherman had given some sort of poison or tranquilizer to her parents – and the twins’ parents, too. Even Sammy had been knocked unconscious. And now where were they? With Pluribus, or dead?
And Greyson had been an orphan, too. At least they had all thought he was, until he had seen his father in the control room, working with the terrorists, alive and well. But then his dad had left Greyson there, escaping with the rest of the Plurbs. So his dad was gone again. And he was a traitor. Having a traitor for a father was probably worse than being an orphan.
Sydney took another hard look at Greyson, her heart breaking for him.
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Cael squinted through the windshield at the headlight beams that lit the bouncing road ahead of his rickety truck. His knuckles had begun to ache long ago, but he couldn’t relax his grip on the steering wheel yet – not until he reached safety, ran out of gas, or lost the spare tire. The spare was holding up under the harsh mountain terrain so far, but it wasn’t meant to.
And he wasn’t meant to be driving. He was only fourteen, and the ones who were supposed to be driving were dead, back in Camden, killed by soldiers who had sworn to protect Americans. Sure, the militia had provoked them, but the soldiers had come down on them with a justice so powerful and merciless that it couldn’t be called justice. Cael had heard the drone’s missile strike the street where he had taught himself to ride his bike. The street on which he’d dragged his dad back from a bar fight. The street where his dad used to park his truck before he had rammed it into the military train, making a martyr of himself and an orphan of his son.
And then the runaway train had ripped his backyard to shreds, crushing the shed that he used to hide in until he couldn’t hear his dad’s yelling any more. The crash had taken everything he’d known and left him with a stupid red-capped boy and a bloody dog.
Cael swiped his long, greasy bangs away from his squinted eyes, cracked his knuckles, and re-gripped the wheel. He didn’t blame the boy. He blamed his own dead father. That was nothing new, though. His father had ruined his life from the beginning. But at least now he was gone. Gone. Forever. Cael was free.
He glanced at the corpse in the passenger seat. The dead man’s head lolled with the bumps of the road, thudding against the window. The man’s shirt was caked with dried blood. Some parts were fresher. He hadn’t been dead that long. He’d lived long enough to tell Cael where to go, screaming and spitting out orders for the first few terrifying miles outside of Camden, maneuvering the back roads to avoid all the helicopters.
But the man had been wounded badly. His anguish had grown as the miles wore on. Cael had watched him, listened to him moan for hours. The radio at full volume couldn’t even cover his torment.
And then he had smelled him. That must have been when he died – when his body gave out and every muscle relaxed.
Death was an awful thing.
Cael had rolled down the windows, letting the smell out. That was an hour ago.
“Ain�
�t that it?” he asked the corpse, squinting at the dirty road sign ahead with two words on it – Quarry Closed. Though the corpse didn’t respond, Cael was sure it was the one the man had muttered about. The directions had been complicated, forcing him down deeply rutted side roads in the dark, but they had gotten him here. Wherever here was…
He swung the truck to the left, following the arrow on the sign.
Then lights blasted down, so bright they blinded him. He slammed on the brakes, sure he’d ram the UFO, but slid to a stop on the muddy terrain.
He shielded his tired eyes with his arms, but the lights kept blaring, relentless and moving about, making it hard to shield his eyes from the beams.
“Get out of the vehicle!” a voice bellowed from behind the light. “Both of you!”
Cael tried to glimpse through the light, but it hurt his eyes. “Turn off the sun an’ I’ll consider it!”
“Now!”
Cael eyed the shotgun at his feet but threw off the thought. He didn’t know how many men were beyond the light and how well armed they were. Those were the exact reasons he couldn’t get out.
Then he had a crazy idea. He’d ram the lights with the truck. Turn them off himself.
Before he could hit the accelerator – BANG! – the front tire burst apart in shreds of flinging rubber.
Cael cursed to himself. “I’m coming! Keep your panties on!”
He opened the door, stepped on to the dirt road.
“And the passenger! Get out!”
“He’s scrapped,” Cael told a figure blocking out a human shape of light.
“What?”
“He’s compost. Living-challenged.”
“You kill him?”
“What’s it to you?”
“Answer!”
“Nah. I didn’t kill nobody.”
“Why’d you come here?”
“He told me to. ‘Fore he croaked.”
“What’s the password?”
Cael wracked his brain. “He didn’t say nothing ‘bout no password. What’s it start with?”
Suddenly the lights went out, bathing them in darkness. Cael covered his eyes as they adjusted to the change. Eventually he was able to see the two quad-rotored drones that had been blazing him with lights hovering above the men who surrounded him. There were half a dozen men. All had workers’ clothes on but with the loops of cloth on the shoulders called epaulettes. And they were all pointing AK47s at his chest. All except one.
The unarmed man approached him, wading through the headlights’ beams. He looked Cael up and down – his tattered, sleeveless shirt, his greasy mullet, and the permanent tired bags under his squinting eyes. Finally the man spoke. “Now.”
Cael turned just in time to see the butt of a rifle headed toward his face.
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Sam Reckhemmer followed so close behind the two Secret Service agents he couldn’t see anything but the backs of their suits. Every few steps he could make out the hallway ahead of them, but he didn’t really care. Most kids his age would be peering through every window, yearning to see the inner workings of a secret government bunker, but Sam was in another world. He was absorbed in his own imagination, desperately trying to concoct a story that would put the puzzle pieces of his life back together that had been scattered by a little black thumb drive.
The agents guided him around a corner. He glimpsed television monitors with news channels on. One showed streaks of smoke falling from the sky, like little meteors.
Too numb to be afraid, his interest was peaked. He’d known that the terrorists had launched missiles from the destroyer after they had taken it over, but no one had known where they were headed. The Secret Service had assumed the worst, taking him from his hotel in D.C. to the underground bunker reserved for men like his father – the governor of Iowa and a likely candidate for the Presidency.
The agents stopped short at a closed door guarded by two soldiers with automatic weapons, and Sam nearly ran into them.
“Your father’s in a meeting. We wait here.”
He knew better than to argue. Besides, he still didn’t know what to feel. He was scared, he knew that, but he was more afraid of his father than the missiles. The black thumb drive had contained documents taken from Pluribus, the organization responsible for the nuclear attack on Des Moines, the organization headed by Everett Oliver Emory, the Eye of Eyes – the man who had cut a message onto his back, saying “out of evil comes good” in Latin. Emory was now the most wanted man in the world, and he was most likely the one behind the cruise ship attack and the missiles.
And those same Pluribus documents referred to Governor Reckhemmer as an ally.
But it didn’t make sense. His father had been one of the most vocal opponents of Pluribus from the beginning. He hated them with a passion.
Plus, Sam knew his dad. He loved his country more than anything. He had even ordered a jet to fire on his own son to protect downtown Des Moines from the nuclear bomb. Thousands of Iowans had lost their lives, but thousands more owed their lives to him and his love of country. There wasn’t much greater love than to sacrifice your son for others.
The puzzle pieces didn’t fit together. Either everything he knew about his father was false, or the little black thumb drive had lied. And since he’d thrown it out a thirty-story building, he may never know.
The door hissed, releasing some sort of pressure lock as it opened, and his suited father snuck out. As the door closed, Sam caught a glimpse of President Foster’s stoic face with his brown glasses sitting at the end of a long table.
“Sam, good.” His father reached out, and Sam grabbed his hand out of habit. “Thank you,” the governor whispered to the agents. “To the airstrip. Iowa City.”
“Yes, sir.”
The agents circled around, back in the direction they had come.
“Iowa City?” Sam asked, feeling odd about holding his father’s hand when he was so angry with him. “Why are we going back? What about the missiles?”
His father shook his head as if waking from a daydream. “We’re going back because Iowa is going to need us. And the missiles won’t harm us. They’ve already found their targets.”
They rounded a hall and passed by more soldiers.
“What did they hit?”
“Satellites. Thirteen of them, all military.”
Letting it sink in, Sam felt his father squeeze his hand. Suddenly he felt sick. His brain’s gears couldn’t budge. There was sludge inside of them, mucked with confusion.
“It’ll be alright, bud,” the governor said, following the agents outside the complex. He looked down at Sam. “We’re going to get ‘em.”
Sam looked back, searching his father’s eyes to see if he could find lies in them. He so badly wanted to ask him about the documents, to outright end the awful feeling he had in the pit of his stomach.
“Why does Iowa need us?” Sam asked. “Can’t we help from here?”
His dad kept up the pace through the facility. “That’s what President Foster is doing with his cabinet. Congress is convening shortly. Before long the VSA will be law – if not by Congress, then by executive order.”
Sam had heard all about the Vigilant Shepherd Act. His dad had been discussing it in his campaign speeches for months. If the act would pass like his father said it would, then the government would be practically declaring war on Pluribus, on the organization that claimed to be a peaceful political movement even while many of its members committed terrorist attacks. If the bill passed, every citizen who aided them, registered on their website, or allowed one to sleep in their house could be arrested. Pluribus would be on the run everywhere. If his dad was an ally of the Plurbs, was this bill really what his dad wanted?
“But it’s too soon,” his dad reflected. “They’re reacting – and I understand that – with this bill, hundreds of Iowans will become criminals overnight. There will be a lot of fear, a lo
t of anger. It was supposed to happen over time. I don’t think the people are ready yet.”
The agents rushed them through another building, speaking through their radios.
Sam sighed, trying to wrap his head around what his dad was saying. Was he defending the Plurbs? Sure, hundreds of Iowans, and who knows how many Americans, would be declared criminals because they supported Pluribus, falling for their lies – but they deserved it. Anyone who supported an organization whose goal was to split the nation through secession was a traitor in Sam’s mind – even if they claimed they wanted to do so peacefully.
“Sam? You okay?”
Sam hadn’t realized his dad had been watching him. “Uh-yeah. Just confused,” he said honestly as they kept following the agents outside, onto a tarmac. The agents led them toward their private jet where grey soldiers stood guard. They had no American flag emblems; instead they had the flag of the security firm, StoneWater, with its dripping stone. They were armed to the teeth, but their facial hair was unkempt and their posture relaxed. They were a stark contrast to the suited Secret Service agents.
As they approached the jet, Sam had to speak. He couldn’t bear it any longer. “Dad, stop,” he said over the jet’s drone.
His dad stopped, positioned to keep going. “What? We need to hurry.”
Sam almost backtracked and made up some excuse, but the pit had risen to his chest, pushing the words out. “Would you ever work with the terrorists?”
“What?” His father nearly shook off the question and continued forward; but after a quick word with his security, he knelt at his son’s level. “Is that what’s bothering you? You heard some rumor out there?”