“What are you doing?” Kizzy asked.
“Looking for fingerprints. 3, 4, 7 and 9,” Diego said. “I just have to figure out a combination of those numbers.”
He began furiously punching in different combinations with both thumbs. 3479, 3497, 3749, 3794. None of them worked.
“There’s like a million possibilities,” Kizzy said.
“Well, I’ve got to try all of them,” he answered.
Suddenly the code box flashed red and turned off.
“What’s wrong?” Kizzy asked.
“Too many wrong tries,” Diego said, turning to her with a pained expression. “I really don’t think there’s anyway to get you out of here.”
Outside Kizzy could hear the sirens coming closer. It was her impending doom.
Suddenly the office door opened. Kizzy turned around. A tall, skinny boy with round golden glasses entered. Kizzy hid her face in her chest.
“What are you doing here?” Diego asked the other boy.
“Working,” he said. “What are you doing?”
“But you never work Friday nights.”
“I needed the overtime since you never paid the rent,” the boy said, he seemed pissed. “Why are you here? And who’s this?”
Kizzy didn’t budge, making sure the hood covered her face. This was yet another person who would want her dead.
“A friend of mine,” Diego said with a smile. “He wanted to see how the crate system worked.”
“I see you’ve loaned him my red sweatshirt,” the boy said.
“Is that yours?” Diego asked, his eyes looked nervous.
“I’ve had enough of your bullshit Diego,” the boy said. “You don’t pay your rent, you’re never home, you steal my stuff and then you give it away. I’m sick of it. I’m sorry whoever you are, but I’m taking my hoodie back.”
He marched over and grabbed the sleeve of the red sweatshirt. Kizzy twisted away. He grabbed her around the waste. Diego ran to her assistance and tried to pull the skinny boy off of her.
“Get off me,” Kizzy growled.
“Just let me have it,” the boy yelled.
The sweatshirt began to come unzipped and then it slipped off Kizzy’s shoulders. She stood there in her own damp clothes feeling as if she was completely naked.
The boy looked in annoyance at the torn garment in his hands. “You ripped the hood! You...”
When his eyes met Kizzy’s the expression on his face turned to horror. “You’re a mutant. How did you get into the city?” He backed away. He began to reach out behind him towards an hourglass shaped alarm that was on the wall.
“Don’t touch that,” Diego said. “Just wait a second.”
The boy continued backing towards the wall. “The plague Diego,” he said. “She’s brought the plague here.”
“Just wait a second Milo,” Diego pleaded.
“We’re gonna die,” the boy said.
Diego whipped the gun from his pants and took aim. Milo froze. Kizzy hoped Diego wouldn’t have to pull the trigger.
“Just... We are in some trouble,” Diego said. “The authorities think I did something. They could be here any second. We just need some time to figure out what we’re going to do.”
“Are you going to shoot me?” Milo asked.
“Not if you don’t ring that alarm. We need you’re key card,” he looked over to Kizzy. “Go and get it off him.”
Kizzy approached Milo. He cringed as she got near him. She grabbed the key card from the lanyard around his neck and took the sweatshirt from his hands. Torn or not, it would still keep her warm. “Sorry about all this.”
She brought the card to Diego and he had her hold the gun. Kizzy’s hands shook as she held the heavy hunk of metal, carefully aiming at Milo’s chest.
“What’s your address?” Diego asked her.
Kizzy tried to scan her brain, it had been years since she had to remember it.
“67 East Farm Road. I think.”
“You think?”
“I never had to mail anything to myself,” she said looking back at him.
“I just hope it’s right then,” he said, shaking his head.
Suddenly the alarm went off. Kizzy turned back to see Milo running out the door. She glanced to Diego, who rolled his eyes and began typing into the computer furiously.
Kizzy helped him grab a crate and lay it on the conveyor belt.
“I’ll send myself out after you,” he said.
Blue lights began to flash on his face. Kizzy turned. The police were outside.
“Well, looks like I’ll just send you then.”
“No send yourself,” Kizzy said. “There’s no point in sending me.”
“No,” said Diego, “You’re going.”
She glanced down into the box. “It’s big enough for both of us.” She hopped up inside and pulled him by the shirt. He resisted, sighed, then jumped up into the box and pressed the send button on the computer. He ducked down.
Two police officers barreled through the door with their guns drawn. They opened fire. Kizzy covered her ears. Holes were blasted into the sides of the crate. The computer screen was hit and it fizzled out in an explosion of sparks. The lid slammed shut and the conveyor belt zipped them out of the room. Everything was dark. Kizzy’s ears rang and her body was shaking with fear. Diego was heavy and warm on top of her. He breathed nervously on her neck.
“Are you ok?” he asked from the darkness.
“I think so,” she said. She was so tense and her heart was beating so fast she couldn’t tell if she had been shot or not.
They became weightless as the box glided down some sort of slide and came to a sudden stop.
“We must be in the mail truck,” Diego said. “Hopefully the locked door to the garage holds them up for a while.”
“How long before we go?”
“I put us in for priority shipping, it should be right away.”
“Do you think the mail man might hear us?” Kizzy whispered.
“There’s no mailman,” Diego said. “The trucks are automated.”
“Oh,” Kizzy said. She had always assumed that if she ran fast enough she could catch a glimpse of the mail carrier. “You’ll be the first man to enter the country then.”
“I guess so,” said Diego. “Since the plague anyway.”
The engine trembled to life and the truck began to move.
“When we get to my house, you can hide down in the basement,” Kizzy said.
“If the cops aren’t there waiting for us,” said Diego.
“But they’re not allowed out of the city,” Kizzy said.
“I think for us they’ll make an exception,” Diego said. “We’re wanted for murder. Murdering Banshee no less. There not going to stop until we’re dead. There gonna hunt us down and kill us. We’re screwed.”
Kizzy sighed. “It’s not my fault.”
“How is this not your fault?”
“I was defending myself,” she said sternly. “He made me take off my clothes and was kissing me. I pulled my knife on him to get him to stop and he fell onto it.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Why not?”
“He fell onto it?”
“There was a struggle.”
“But why would he do any of those things? It makes no sense.”
“I know,” said Kizzy quietly.
Diego was silent for a moment. “Actually, I was doing some research on Enoch pill fasting a while back. I remember reading about how some people, if they weren’t taking the pill often enough, would behave like that, wanting to be naked all the time, wanting others to do the same. There was a guy who got hypothermia from swimming naked in February.”
/> “Do you think that’s what happened to Banshee?” Kizzy asked.
“I don’t know,” Diego said.
“Well, it creeped me out,” Kizzy said with a shudder. “He had this strange glossy look in his eyes.”
Diego was quiet for a moment. “And what happened at the train station?”
“What do you mean?” Kizzy asked.
“With the gun.”
“Oh, I tried to kill myself.”
“Yeah, I noticed that. But why... why then?”
“I don’t know,” she answered. The feeling had just overwhelmed her. How much time did she have left anyway? She just wanted to speed up the whole process. Should she tell him she was immune? No. He didn’t need to know. He would most likely just shun her the way everyone else had. Plus in the close quarters of the box he would probably be terrified of catching whatever it was she was carrying. She felt the soggy map in her pocket. At what cost had she done all this? Too much had been lost. “It felt like the right thing to do at the time.”
“Well before you go and do something like that again, how about you get me off the hook first,” he said. “You’ve got to tell them I had nothing to do with Banshee’s death. You’re the only one who knows that. And if you die, I’m as good as dead.”
“But how can we do that?” Kizzy asked. “They’re going to shoot us on sight.”
“Well we need to buy some time. Maybe you can take a hostage, so there’s time to talk.”
“I could pretend to take you as my hostage,” Kizzy said.
“They want us both dead,” Diego said. “They’d just shoot both of us. Or let you shoot me, if they want to save themselves a bullet. Can’t be me. Do you live alone?”
“I live with my mother.”
“Ok, well, she’ll be the hostage then,” said Diego. “When we get to your place you hide me somewhere, you take your mother hostage and make sure you tell them I had nothing to do with the murder.”
“What if they shoot me anyway?” asked Kizzy.
“You’ve got to make sure you hold your mother too damn close for them to get clean a shot off. They’d never risk killing her.”
“Are you sure?” Kizzy asked.
There was a pause. “No, I’m not.”
They laid intertwined in the darkness as the truck weaved its way down the curvy country road. Their damp clothes sticky against their bodies.
Kizzy began to feel anxious. How could she convince several trained police officers that she was willing to kill her own mother? She was an awful actress. In school they forced her to try out for the role of the princess who kissed the frog, transforming it into a loaf of bread. But Kizzy kept forgetting her lines. The look of disappointment on her teacher’s face still stuck with her. They gave the part to Laura. She remembered all the lines perfectly. Kizzy was cast as a tree. She had no lines to remember.
What if her mother was killed during all this? Then the three people she had cared about most that morning – Laura, Banshee and her mother – would all have been killed. And it all would have been her own fault. She would avoid putting her mother in danger if she didn’t have to. But what if she really needed to? What if it came to that? And what if she died too? What if? What if? What if? She had to get her mind on something else. “Do you live alone?” she asked into the darkness.
“Ha. Nobody in the city lives alone,” Diego said. “I live with eight other guys.”
“Wow, eight?” said Kizzy. “I can’t imagine living with eight people.”
“Well, eight is pretty nice actually. At my old place there were fifteen guys. That was a nightmare.”
“At least you’d never get lonely.”
“I don’t get lonely though.”
“That’s just because you’ve never been lonely.”
“No, it’s because I don’t get lonely.”
“But you don’t know what lonely is,” Kizzy said.
“Yes I do,” said Diego, his voice angry. “Why do you think that?”
“Because you’re from the city,” said Kizzy. “You don’t know how to be alone.”
“Well I do,” said Diego. “I’m going to spend a lot of time alone once I get out of this nightmare, and I’m gonna love every minute of it.”
“You won’t be able to handle it,” Kizzy said.
“You really are an idiot aren’t you?”
“What?”
“You don’t know a thing about me. And you’re acting like a know-it-all, but you’re really a dumbass.”
“I don’t have to cooperate with your little plan you know,” Kizzy said.
“Are you threatening me?” Diego asked.
“No, I’m just stating facts.”
She could feel his body grow hot. There was a loud bang against the wood. Kizzy realized Diego had punched the wall. “You have to,” he shouted. “I’ve helped you so much.”
From far away Kizzy heard the police sirens.
“You hear that?” asked Diego.
“Yes,” said Kizzy.
“Are they coming closer?” he asked.
She listened for a moment. The volume of the sirens increased the slightest bit. “Yes.”
“Look I’m sorry,” he pleaded. He grabbed onto Kizzy’s shoulders in the dark. “You’ve got to promise to help me.”
She sighed. The anxiety peaked in her heart. “Ok.”
“You promise?” Diego asked.
“Yes, I promise,” she said. She felt guilty for even suggesting that she wouldn’t help him. He had only been kind to her. He didn’t deserve to die.
Soon the wailing sirens were just outside the box and the truck came to a halt.
Diego grabbed Kizzy’s hand and squeezed it. Was he nervous? Was he reminding her of their agreement? Was he trying to tell her everything was going to be alright? The door of the truck slid open. The low hum of the conveyor belt vibrated through the box as they were moved outside onto the ground. Beams of orange porch light shined through the bullet holes. The truck drove off and they sat and waited a long time in silence for someone to come and open the lid. Soon the blue flashing lights turned the inside of the box into a disco. But no one was coming to open the top.
“What are they waiting for?” Kizzy asked.
“I don’t know,” Diego said. He pulled the gun from his pants and pointed it upwards. “No time for the hostage plan. Just say I had nothing to do with it immediately.”
Kizzy heard a door open and footsteps approaching them. The box beeped and the lid sprung open. The light blinded Kizzy’s eyes. “He’s innocent!” she yelled. After blinking she could slowly make out the outline of a woman with a porch light halo.
It was Laura’s mother. She gasped and stumbled backwards. Kizzy could see on her face she had been crying. “A man,” she murmured.
“Mrs. Palmer?” Kizzy said. “What are you doing here?”
“At my own house?” she asked.
Kizzy looked past her and noticed the 67 on the siding. She looked back at Diego. “I gave you the wrong number.”
“I noticed,” he said. “And it’s a good thing you did.”
Next door, Kizzy’s house was surrounded by four flashing police cars. Ten armed officers emerged, ran to the front door and kicked it in.
“They must have just seen the truck driving off.”
“Sorry mother,” Kizzy said under her breath.
“You have to put yourself to sleep,” Mrs. Palmer said grabbing Kizzy by the shoulder. “We’re having Laura’s funeral right now. You have to come inside and take the poison pill or I’ll call the police over here.”
“Not so fast,” Diego said, raising the gun to her head. “She needs to live a little bit longer.”
Mrs. Palmer blinked rapidly, “I�
��m only trying to do what’s right.”
“I don’t care,” said Diego. “We need a place to hide.”
“The attic,” Mrs. Palmer said. “You can hide up there.”
Kizzy and Diego ran inside to the stairs. Kizzy froze mid-step when she saw Laura inside an opened crate in the living room. People were all around her crying. They turned to look at Kizzy. On a poster board next to the crate were photographs from Laura’s childhood. One jumped out at Kizzy. It was a picture of the two of them from the school play. Kizzy was dressed as the tree and Laura was dressed as the princess.
Diego yanked her by the shirt and ran up the stairs. When they reached the second floor he pulled the string that brought the ladder down from the attic.
They scurried up into the cold, dusty loft. Diego ran to a small window at the end of the dark room. Kizzy followed. She watched as every room in her house became illuminated and was thoroughly searched by police officers.
“They must have ID’d you somehow and got your address. That’s why they’re over there and not here right now.”
“My mother must be so freaked out,” Kizzy said.
“Man, I feel bad for her,” said Diego.
“No,” Kizzy said. “She’s been a bitch lately. She’s had this coming.”
Soon every room and even the barn had been searched. The police met up in a group outside.
“Ok,” said Diego. “Now just get back in your cars and go back to the city.”
The police stayed out on the lawn lit by the yellow porch light.
“What are they doing?” said Diego. “They’re just standing there. God I hope they don’t notice the crate sitting over here.”
Suddenly they spotted Laura’s mother running towards the policemen waving her hands in the air.
“We should have taken her hostage when we had the chance,” Diego said smacking his forehead.
“Well, what’s our plan then?” Kizzy asked.
“Maybe we can make a run for the woods over there?” Diego said.
Kizzy looked at the darkness of the forest. The image of the face from the ghost town flashed before her eyes.
“You can go,” Kizzy said.
The Enoch Pill Page 12