And elaborate despite its phoniness. A desperate illusion until Michael could think of something better.
“Let’s get out of here,” Red said. “They’ll catch us.”
Ferrance growled as he uttered a quick curse. “You got lucky,” he told Michael, who had already scrambled to his feet.
Michael was confident the men would turn and run. So confident he simply stood there and waited instead of getting the hell out of there like he should have done.
Before turning to escape the warehouse, Ferrance must have figured it would make him feel better to punish Michael for his lucky break. Ferrance swung an arm outward, whipping the hand gripping the butt of the shiv—Michael couldn’t actually see this, but he felt it a moment later—and slammed it against the side of Michael’s head.
The clucking of chickens slowly faded, along with the shouts of the guards, like someone turning down the volume on a radio—until there was silence.
“What in the wrath of…” Ferrance began.
Drunk with dizziness, Michael kicked him. Somehow, the kick took Ferrance squarely in the groin. The man stumbled, groaning and probably clutching himself, but Michael didn’t stay behind to make sure. He ran toward the sliver of moonlight coming through the warehouse door, which had been left open a crack.
Red chased him. Michael could hear the clapping of the man’s bare feet, understood at once that he and Ferrance had not worn shoes tonight, which told him they were good at this—at things like avoiding sound, detection, and picking the right spots. They had done this before.
The wind brushed Michael’s ears as he sprinted toward huts he could no longer distinguish. It was too dark to know which was his, but not dark enough for him to easily lose Red.
“Over here,” a voice called out in a loud whisper.
Michael turned toward it. He recognized the voice.
A man appeared in the near distance, his skinny frame and his straight, confident shoulders outlined in the thin moonlight.
Dean Hampton.
Michael ran toward him. Dean lifted something. A shiv. That had to be it. Though Michael couldn’t make out what was in his hand, he sensed Dean’s intent.
“Get down,” Dean said.
Michael sprang to his right, falling and sliding across the dirt. He saw a quick flicker of motion where Dean stood. He had thrown whatever was in his hand. Red grunted, then his body fell heavily to the ground.
Michael could tell by the way Red clutched himself the shiv had taken him squarely in the chest. Sputtering, he struggled to remove it. Dean jogged over to him, yanked out the shiv, then used it to slit the man’s throat.
Another voice spoke, low and flat.
“You just…signed your death warrant,” Ferrance said. Bent over, he panted with his hands on his knees. “You…you’re a dead man, Hampton.”
“You go near this boy again,” Dean Hampton said, “and I’ll do the same to you.”
“They’re gonna execute you,” Ferrance said with a chuckle.
Michael could only watch the confrontation. A cold dread seeped into his stomach. Dean had just killed a man. He would be punished for it, for saving Michael tonight from God only knew what Red had intended to do once he had caught up to him.
“Dean,” Michael said. “Give me the shiv.”
Ferrance chuckled again.
“Go back to bed,” Dean told Michael, as sternly as a father speaking to a stubborn son. “Stay out of it.”
“I’ll say I did it,” Michael said. “Give it to me. You shouldn’t have to go down for this.”
“I won’t tell you again,” Dean said.
Ferrance slapped his hands together, as if brushing off dirt. He sounded content with the way things had turned out.
“You’re a killer,” he told Dean, “and the boy’s a ment. You’re finished. Both of you.”
Dean took a step toward Ferrance, brandishing the shiv. Ferrance immediately broke into a sprint in the opposite direction. He didn’t seem to care how cowardly it made him appear. He ran like a little boy with a tremendous secret, eager to spill it to an adult and get another child in trouble.
“We’re screwed,” Michael said.
Dean walked over to him. “Did they take you to the warehouse?”
“Yes.”
“He said you were a ment. Did you use telepathy to get out of it?”
“Yes,” Michael said.
“You’re a Type II then,” Dean said, motioning for Michael to follow him to the huts. “Whatever happens next, don’t share that info with anyone. Not even if they try to torture it out of you.”
“Why?”
“Harris Kole rewards these men for finding people like you. They’ll drug you, stuff you into the back of a truck, and deliver you straight to him. But first, they’ll break your arms and your legs so you can’t escape. Kole won’t care, as long as your mind still works.”
“Spiteful wrath,” Michael said. “How do you know this?”
Dean sighed. Michael sensed enormous pain filtering through the man. “When they captured me, I was with another soldier. Danny Sanders. We all knew he was different—real reserved and had a creepy habit of staring at your eyes without blinking—but we didn’t know he was a telepath until he bragged about it one night. Another prisoner, kid named Sam, ratted him out.”
“He meant something to you,” Michael said. “Danny.”
Dean was silent for a moment. “No, I barely knew him. But the other boy—the snitch—was Sam Hampton.” He paused again, letting it sink in. “Sam was my younger brother. He was about your age when it happened.”
They were nearing the hut now. Michael wished he could stay out here for hours conversing with Dean.
“Was,” Michael said. “Did they kill him?”
Dean shook his head. When he stopped walking, Michael caught sight of the man’s features in the moonlight. He was frowning so heavily he almost looked enraged.
“Turns out he had been snitching on us from the start. He was the one who told them about the time I stole eggs from the coop. One of my weaker moments.”
Dean lifted the stump of his left hand.
“After they cut it off, I asked Colonel Keagan to take it as a sign Sam was loyal to them. Keagan put in a good word, so now Sam’s back in the People’s Republic. A soldier. Keagan gives me updates now and then. Sam’s doing well out there, I guess.”
“Serving Harris Kole,” Michael said, anger blooming in his chest.
“Better than having him here, where he could do more damage,” Dean said, resuming his walk. Michael followed him, unable to process what Dean had just implied. How could he still care about a snitch who had caused the loss of his hand—even if he was his brother?
They stopped at the entrance to Michael’s hut. The entrance to Dean’s was around the corner. For a flash of a moment, Michael imagined following Dean into his hut—not as a grown teenager, but as a little boy—and curling up in the man’s arms, an infant son with his strong father, forever protected from this horrible place.
The moment passed before a different feeling took over—the urge to talk in secret with Dean about Michael’s reason for being here.
The urge to recruit him.
“What are they going to do to you?” Michael asked.
Dean shrugged. “Hotbox. Keagan will understand what was about to happen in that warehouse. He’ll go easy on me. The old warden would have executed me without a second thought, but not Keagan.”
“You must hate him,” Michael said. “But you don’t sound like it, even though he took your hand.”
“That was the old warden,” Dean said, shaking his head. “Warden Colonel Smith. Man was a monster. But I don’t even hate him. Hatred doesn’t serve a purpose in a place like this, except to slowly eat away at you until you’re dead or a shell of a man. There are men like Keagan, then there are others like Smith, Halsidier, Ferrance, and Harris Kole.”
“Halsidier,” Michael said absently, lost in thought. H
e had seen the man around, had heard about his terrifying lack of empathy, his brutal punishments, and his love of breaking men’s spirits before blowing their brains out on a stage for all to witness.
“You be on guard around him,” Dean said. “Luckiest thing that ever happened to me is the fact he’s away from camp the next week or two. If he were here, there’s no telling what he would do to me after tonight.”
“I will,” Michael said.
“You keep your head down, do your work, never lose hope. Understand?”
“Hope?” Michael said, almost blurting it out. “Hope for what? Are you planning something?”
Dean peered at him, clearly suspicious. Michael knew at once the man would never fully trust another prisoner in this camp. Not after what had happened with his brother.
“Do me a favor,” Dean said, dropping his voice slightly, conspiratorially. “Use your ability. Get the hell out of here. You’re better off out in the wasteland than in here, especially after tonight.”
“Never,” Michael said. “I won’t abandon you or our men.”
Dean’s eyes widened. He was at a loss for words.
“You could actually do it,” Dean said. “I can tell by your voice. You could get out of here, couldn’t you?”
“Not without you, I can’t.”
Frowning, Dean made a hissing noise through his teeth. “You’re either insane or you’re one stupid, stubborn son of a bitch. Which is it?”
“Probably both.”
The man cracked a smile. Sighing, Michael glanced over at his hut.
“I won’t sleep a wink tonight,” Michael said. “Look, whatever happens, we have to stick together. I might know a way out of this. For all of us. But you have to trust me and try to stay alive a bit longer.”
The words almost felt alien coming out of Michael’s mouth, as if someone else—Louis Blake, maybe—were speaking through him.
“Get some rest, Marshall,” Dean said, apparently unconvinced Michael was in his right frame of mind. “And don’t worry about me. You’ve got your own set of problems now. Just remember what I said—keep your mouth shut.”
“I will,” Michael said.
They parted ways. When Michael was back by the window under which he had been sleeping for the past week, he scanned the men around him to make sure they were all asleep. Then he dug a tiny metal box out of a space in the wall between two shoddily constructed boards.
The box was a metal tin once used to store loose tobacco. Now, it held something precious to Michael, something he’d only been able to smuggle in by using telepathy on every guard he’d encountered so they wouldn’t find it sewn into the inside of his shirt.
Michael opened the box, then took out the silvery pendant Arielle had given him that day in the garage on Silo Street. He studied its four stubby leaves for several minutes, lost in the memory of her—the warmth of her body, the smell of her hair, and the way she seemed to clutch at him when they embraced—then he kissed the pendant, pretending it was her lips.
He laid it gently back into the box, hid it, and curled up beneath the window, where he slept not at all, his mind racing with ideas.
By breakfast the next day, three major events had already taken place.
Dean Hampton was arrested for the murder of Red—whose name was actually Errol Flynn—after he came forth and admitted to the crime; Ferrance Walker was arrested and placed into an interrogation room; and word spread among the prisoners there had been a rape attempt, though no one yet knew who the victim had been.
As dreadful as that morning was, Michael had reason for hope. The news of the attempted rape had united the prisoners in a way he hadn’t expected.
“That’s one thing we don’t tolerate,” Michael heard one whisper at breakfast, inciting nods of agreement among those sitting within earshot. “That son of a bitch Flynn deserved it, and Ferrance is gonna pay, too.”
They were all in agreement about one thing, it seemed—they could be beaten, starved, and over-worked by the guards, but no one was going to be humiliated by one of their own. Michael felt confident Ferrance Walker’s days in this camp were numbered.
Dean ended up in the hotbox, as he’d predicted. Those closest to him discovered which one. Within hours, they had come up with a schedule of who would smuggle food and water to him and when. The shack he was being held in had a loose board through which one could easily pass small items to the prisoner trapped inside.
Dean somehow had ended up in that particular hotbox. Colonel Keagan—and Michael had found this out from hearing the gossip—had instructed his guards to place Dean there. Michael wasn’t sure if the others had figured it out, but after what Dean had told him about men like Keagan being different from men like Halsidier, he suspected Dean had been given a lighter sentence. His suspicions were confirmed by the contented look on Keagan’s face. Normally, the man wore a serious scowl or a frown of dissatisfaction, but on the day of Hampton’s arrest, he looked almost pleased with the way things had turned out. Maybe he was glad someone had finally stood up to Ferrance Walker and Errol Flynn.
But that wouldn’t change Michael’s sentence once word got out about his use of telepathy to summon the chickens. It was only a matter of time before Ferrance spilled what he knew.
Which raised a question—what was taking so long?
The evening after the murder, Ferrance rejoined the prisoners. He stayed away from Michael—didn’t even glance in his direction. Michael used telepathy to try to gauge the man’s mental state, but there was little he could sense regarding the man’s plan or what he had revealed to Keagan about that night, if anything. Telepathy didn’t work that way, though Michael desperately wished it could.
A few days later, Michael found out what Ferrance was up to. The man was smarter than he looked.
10
They met in the field behind the old doctor’s house, Blake immediately relaxing at the sight of so much natural beauty. Midas Ford had been hunched over his garden. He rose, holding a tiny shovel in his gloved hand, and smiled.
“Heard anything about our boy?” he asked.
Blake stopped at the manmade stream. He remembered the town coming together to dig it, a process that took many months. Back then, they had all worked together as one harmonious unit, even John Meacham, and not because someone had ordered it, but because they had been a community. Then Blake stepped down, and Meacham became mayor in his place. Gulch went downhill after that.
It had been Blake’s fault. He couldn’t deny it any longer. Everything was his fault.
“That’s what I came here to talk to you about,” Blake said.
Midas wiped sweat off his forehead with the back of one gloved hand. Then he tossed aside the shovel, yanked off his gloves, and dropped those as well. He proceeded to pull a small metal flask out of the front pocket of his overalls. After he unscrewed it, he stared unhappily down at the ground, then took a long pull. Blake sensed the man was steeling himself for what he was about to hear next.
He offered Blake a pull. Blake waved it away.
“You heard something about him, then.” Midas said, screwing the cap back on. “News of his whereabouts?”
Blake breathed in the smell of water, then turned to approach Midas. The old doctor raised the flask as if it were a shield.
“Louis, tell me. What happened?”
Blake described the video call he’d had with Hirscham Kole. When he got to the last bit of the story—the part about Michael—he hesitated.
“Harris raped that poor girl again and again,” Midas said, shaking his head. “We should have stopped him. I didn’t even know.”
“Very few did,” Blake said. “But I didn’t come here to relive the past. There’s something you should know.”
“Tell me. What is it?”
“It’s Michael. He’s Harris Kole’s biological son.”
Midas Ford’s eyes widened. “DNA tests…”
“Confirmed,” Blake said. “And the worst part is…�
��
At this, Blake looked down at the grass in shame, almost as if he couldn’t believe what guilty secret he was about to admit.
“…the worst part is, Charlotte is Harris’s daughter.”
“But they slept together,” Midas said, shaking his head in amazement. “She could be pregnant.”
“I know.”
Midas spoke vehemently. “It’s exactly the sort of thing we would do in the experiments. Incest. We would inseminate the concubines with sperm from their own brothers, their own fathers, in hopes the telepathy would evolve, would change somehow…”
“I know,” Blake said. “Will you relax already?”
“What have we done, Louis?”
“Listen to me, Midas,” Blake said. “I need your help with something.”
Midas was speechless. He turned away from Blake, as if to hide tears of shame. Instead, Blake saw he was scowling furiously.
“Whatever it is,” Midas said, “it better involve making right what we allowed to happen.”
“Maybe. All I know is that we shouldn’t have allowed Michael to leave,” Blake said. “And I’m going to make that right. I’m going to go get him, and I’m going to bring him back.”
“But…” Midas sounded stunned. “But you wouldn’t survive a trip out there.”
“That’s why I need the best doctor this town has to offer.”
Midas didn’t seem amused. “I’m the only doctor.”
“I know.”
“This isn’t a time for jokes.”
“Well, if this isn’t the time, then when is?”
Despite the words coming out of his mouth, Blake wasn’t amused, either. He was staring sadly at Midas, hoping he’d agree.
“For Michael,” Midas said.
He pulled the flask out of his front pocket again. Then he did something that made Blake want to smile, though he remained solemn and respectful. Midas unscrewed the cap, poured out the whiskey or whatever was in there—a symbolic gesture he performed for himself and no one else—and tossed the flask into the stream, where the current swept it away.
“I’ll get my things,” he said, picking up the shovel and the gloves before heading toward his house.
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