Doc Harrison and the Masks of Galleon

by Peter Telep

  “But why did they bring me here?” Keane asks, and then he notices something over my shoulder. “Is that the engine? Oh, man, it’s buried! I’m never getting back!”

  “Hey, calm down, dude,” I tell him. “We’ll get you back.”

  And then, with a deep breath, I fill him in on everything that’s happened since we arrived. I conclude with my dive into the flooded subway and encounter with Julie.

  “So you think she’s trying to tell you something?” he asks.

  “Definitely.”

  “Well, I might have something for you.”

  My heart leaps. “You do?”

  “Yeah. I think Julie said something about the Hall of Vines.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The capitol building of Centennial. The whole continent. It’s sort of like the White House.”

  “Okay, I get it.”

  “It’s huge. Probably bigger than anything on Earth. And it’s all covered in vines.”

  “So it didn’t get blown up?” I ask.

  “Some parts did. My father said that after the withering the whole place went wild and turned into this crazy bazaar. He used to do some trading until it got way too dangerous to make the trip.”

  “We’ve been to the hall,” Steffanie says. “But it’s out near the coast. Actually, Pace’s caravan roams around there.”

  “Doc, do you mind if I speak to your friend?” Hedera asks.

  I already introduced her to Keane while I was telling him about our play date with the schmemmers. “Yeah, go ahead.”

  “I used to hang out with a few ivies when I was growing up,” Keane tells her.

  “I like you already,” she says. “Anyway, we came to help your friends, but I can’t ask my people to go all the way to the Hall of Vines unless you’re sure about this.”

  Keane sighs. “I can’t say I’m sure. I’m pretty sure.”

  “Why would Julie mention that place?” I ask.

  Steffanie’s eyes light up with an idea. “Maybe because of the hospital. It’s one of the best there is, even better than the Palladium’s.”

  “She’s right,” Hedera says. “We’ve heard about it.”

  “And after the bombs, you know who built that place from the ground up?” Steffanie asks.

  “Doctor Valaria,” Meeka answers.

  Steffanie nods. “She saved us. That place was her baby. And you know something, Doc? You’ve already been there.”

  “I have?”

  “That warehouse full of kids? The one Meeka showed you so you’d understand what your father’s company did to us?”

  In my mind’s eye, I gaze across that horrible place full of injured children, thousands of them wailing and weeping. “I remember.”

  “Well that’s where Val built her hospital. And I bet when she was with us up in the Highlands, she told Julie about it.”

  Another chill rushes across my shoulders. “Wait a second. You think Julie’s helping us? You think she knows where my parents are? You think she saved them?”

  Steffanie nods. “Someone’s obviously blocking her from you. Maybe her father. But she told Keane about the Hall of Vines and brought him here with the message. Uh, hello. She obviously wants us to go there.”

  Keane throws up his hands. “No, no, no. Are you kidding me? She couldn’t pick someone else? She couldn’t text or email or something? I’m dying! I need to get back. Zach promised to take me to Starbucks again. And I finally figured out how to DVR all my shows…”

  “Keane, find someone who cares,” Meeka tells him. “And Steff? You’re forgetting one thing: this could be a trap.”

  “How?” she asks.

  “What if Doc didn’t see Julie?”

  “But it was her,” I say. “I just know it.”

  “What if it’s not?” Meeka argues. “Her father can make his persona look like anyone he wants. We’ve seen him do that.”

  “No, I touched her,” I fire back. “It was her.”

  “If you say so. But, Doc, can you really trust her?”

  My breath grows shallow. “Wait, let me think about this. Maybe you’re right. Julie couldn’t save my parents. She couldn’t take Keane and bring him here.”

  “Why not?” Steffanie asks.

  “Because that would mean…”

  I break off, too scared to say anything else. I was in the water with Julie. She jumped. I saw the trrune, the vision of where she was going: to the safe house back on Earth, where she found Keane.

  But if Julie was able to transport my parents to safety and bring Keane here with a message, then she would have to be as powerful as her father.

  The only way to do that is to push your entire essence into your persona. And if that’s the case, then the flesh-and-blood girl I’ve known for my entire life is gone. Forever.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  “My mom’s thinking that we should move away,” Julie told me one August night while we were riding skateboards down her driveway. We had just celebrated her thirteenth birthday the week before.

  “You can’t move away,” I told her. “That would suck.”

  “I know.”

  “Why does she want to leave?”

  “She’s been crying a lot lately. She says we don’t belong here anymore. I’m not sure what’s going on, but she said we need a change.”

  “Maybe she’s just thinking about your father,” I said.

  “I’m not sure, but I definitely do not want to go. I don’t want to change schools. That’s the worst.”

  I was about to show her one of my coolest tricks when the skateboard shot out from beneath my sneakers and I hit the deck. Hard.

  She scraped me off the concrete. I banged my arm, the one I’d already broken.

  “Whoa. Are you okay?” she asked.

  I brushed off the sand stuck on my elbows. “Yeah.”

  “Are you bleeding?”

  I rolled my arm to examine it. “No, it just hurts.”

  “Were you trying to impress me or something, because you shouldn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  She sighed. “Just be careful.”

  “Okay.”

  “And hey, that would’ve been a really cool jump if you didn’t fall.”

  “Really?”

  She smiled. “Hell, yeah.”

  I smiled back. “So tell your mom you can’t move away.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. Because you’ll be lonely.”

  She closed her eyes. “You’re right. I will be…”

  That was the first time I imagined my life without Julie.

  There’d be no one to talk to after school. No one to make sure I didn’t dress like a loser. Apparently some of the things Grace let me wear were hideous.

  So I went home and cried. Dad told me not to worry. Alina was just “going through some issues” and that it’d all be over soon. They wouldn’t be moving. And they didn’t.

  Because they couldn’t.

  They were Florans on an alien planet, and it was safer for everyone to keep close. I never found out what Alina was going through, but maybe when the drugs finally wear off I can ask her immortal.

  I guess it was hard being a single parent and raising the daughter of a murderer. She always put on a happy face, even though it was killing her inside.

  The girls are talking to me, and so are Keane and Hedera. Ignoring them, I head over to the makeshift shower coming down through the cracked ceiling. I close my eyes and let the water flow over me…

  Maybe we’re wrong about everything.

  That wasn’t Solomon disguised as Julie.

  It was her. And she helped us. And she’s still okay.

  She’s still… normal.

  But why did I keep clinging to that thought? Why can’t I just accept the fact that she joined her father, she doesn’t want to be rescued, and she won’t care if I just let her go?

  I mean to be honest, I don’t love her anymore, do I?

  Maybe
I was never really in love, just obsessed with the idea of getting her to love me.

  Still… when I think about walking away, it just hurts so much. I can’t turn my back on someone I’ve spent my entire life with, someone who drove me crazy but who still cared about me, even though she sometimes had a funny way of showing it.

  I wish I were better at controlling my emotions. I wish I had the strength to say goodbye—because now we have more important things to do like find my father and get some answers once and for all.

  My hands clench into fists.

  “Doc, is that you?”

  I jolt over the familiar voice and glance up.

  It’s Tommy flanked by two ivies holding him at gun point.

  My breath is gone.

  “Son, you’re looking at me like I’m a ghost.”

  “Are you?” I ask.

  “No, I am not.” He sounds odd, almost sad.

  “Do you know what happened?”

  “I do, son. God help me, I do.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Hedera’s wreath still functions well enough so she can understand Tommy and order her people to release him.

  However, he can’t understand her. Not yet, anyway. It might take a few hours for her wreath to adapt to English, especially when the speaker is from Promised Land, South Carolina, where y’all need to visit some time, y’hear?

  Meanwhile, the rest of the ivies can’t understand Tommy and never will, unless they learn English. The youngest ones point at him, giggle, and mimic some of his words. Their pronunciation is really, really bad.

  For now, Hedera will act as Tommy’s translator.

  At his suggestion, she leaves two ivies with the buckets for security.

  I keep demanding answers about what happened to my parents. Tommy says he’ll tell me, but first he wants us to follow him across the street. As we’re about to leave, he takes a moment to frown at Keane standing there in his Batman underwear. “Whoa, son. I thought you were sitting this one out.”

  “Me, too,” Keane says, wrapping his arms over his chest.

  “What happened?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  Tommy glances at Keane’s boxers. “I’m sure it is. Now please… cover up them skivvies. And let’s go.”

  After slipping between piles of destroyed buildings, we weave farther beneath cracked awnings of stone. Mangled and twisted girders shield us from the rain.

  The path narrows, and then, just ahead, flashlights glow from inside a shelter about the size of single car garage. It’s been constructed in an alley between hills of debris, with a web of shivering support lines shooting out toward puzzle pieces of rock and bent window frames.

  Inside, long planks of scorched wood tied together with some kind of electrical cable serve as walls, and if this were Earth, I’d guess the wood came from pews inside a church. Maybe they once had similar benches inside the Monkshood temple, and it came from there.

  A patchwork of fabric bigger than a parachute sweeps over our heads, rising and sagging with the wind. More water streams down from a few leaks along the back, where Blink sits among the gear packs and rifle cases. He’s still wearing his cheap sunglasses.

  For just a second, I see him holding the rifle after he’s just killed Landry and Boonwalla. That’s an image I need to forget but never will.

  “Challenge!” he shouts as we file inside.

  “U.S. Marine Corps!” Tommy replies.

  With a nod, Blink tries to relax, but his head jerks left and right. Still, he does look a little more calm from when we left him, and he must be since Tommy’s removed his restraints.

  I mutter over my shoulder to Hedera, “The Marine Corps is like our military on Earth.”

  “I can see that,” she says. “And Tommy looks way stronger than any nomad I’ve ever met. I’m glad he’s on our side.”

  “Me, too. And the more you get to know him, the more you’ll like him.”

  “I already like the way he talks.”

  We shift into the shelter and plop on the floor. The grren arrive behind us and sprawl out along the edges.

  Tommy raises his head at Grandpa, and I introduce him to the grren.

  “So this old geezer and his pack are it?” he asks.

  “We didn’t see any others.”

  “Man, I don’t like that. I don’t like it all.” Tommy hunkers down, shows Grandpa his hand, and then reaches up to stroke the grren’s ear. “What happened, old timer? Can you tell me?”

  Grandpa just looks at him.

  “I guess he’s shy, but that’s better than being hungry.”

  “He got up on his hind legs and imitated a mask,” I say.

  “No kidding? That is strange.”

  “It’s like the masks took all the grren, except for them. And we don’t know why they were spared.”

  “Something wrong with their wreaths?”

  “Nope.”

  “Damn, son, we need to figure this out.”

  I harden my tone. “Tommy, where are my parents?”

  “Easy, son, we’ll get there.”

  Hedera projects her persona and asks Tommy if she could have a word with him.

  As they shift aside to chat, I glance around, sighing over the fact that it’s warmer here and we’re finally out of the rain.

  The ivies begin drying themselves off and digging into their packs for snacks and jugs of water. One girl wrestles with a comb, dragging it through her wet and knotted hair.

  Across the shelter, Steffanie sits near Blink, cupping a hand around his ear. I’m not sure what she’s telling him, but I’m praying he doesn’t have another breakdown. One thing’s certain: he sure as hell will never carry a weapon again.

  Meeka slides up behind me and squeezes my shoulder. “This is good,” she whispers. “It’s time for answers.”

  “Roger that.”

  Tommy finishes speaking with Hedera and then crosses to the middle of the group. “Now before y’all go off on me with your questions, just here me out because we can’t stay long.”

  “Why not?” Keane asks, pulling on a pair of pants loaned to him by one of the ivies.

  “Because we got despers coming in here. Blink and I hid in the subway. Doc, I told your mom to close her eyes and be still. I heard them talking about all the food they stole. Our food. And then they took off, but they’ll be back.”

  Tommy glances away for a moment, takes a huge breath, and then a weird expression comes over his face.

  Like he’s worried about something. Scared.

  I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him like this…

  And up to this point, he’s been all high-and-tight Marine, business first, no emotions.

  But now when he opens his mouth, his voice won’t come, and he can barely face me. “Son, I did everything I could.”

  “What?” I ask.

  “As the water got higher, I tried to rig up some breathing tubes, I tried everything… everything in my power to save them.” His lip quivers. His eyes fill with tears. “But I just couldn’t. I’m sorry, Doc.”

  “Tommy, what’re you talking about?” I ask. “I swam down there. My parents are gone. Julie might’ve saved them.”

  “No way. I saw it. Right near the end, the water came up real fast. Way too fast.”

  “Tommy, you didn’t see anything?” Meeka asks. “A bright light? Maybe Julie’s persona?”

  He squints into a memory. “You know, you’re right. There were some lights. I was hollering and screaming. I think I hit my head on one of them railings. But come to think of it, I don’t remember how I got up top.”

  “She saved him, too,” Steffanie says. “But she left him here, so we’d find him.”

  “Who saved me?” Tommy demands.

  “Julie,” I answer. “And she brought Keane here with a message. So you’re right. We need to go.”

  “You’re telling me that little girl saved us all?”

  “That’s what we think,” I say.

>   “Yeah, but now she’s leading us somewhere,” Meeka says, making no attempt to hide her distrust of Julie.

  “Well, maybe she is,” I argue. “She’s leading us back to my parents.”

  Tommy’s stunned. “So how did Julie do all this?”

  No one answers.

  I blurt out, “Look, let’s just go find my parents.”

  “Well, if they got rescued, I’m all in for that,” Tommy says.

  “One other thing,” Meeka says. “Tommy, did you see any grren? I mean grren in their personas?”

  “No. We’ve been here, waiting for y’all to come back. I got a little sniper’s nest up top. Been watching the temple, but I fell asleep. Some Marine, huh? I didn’t know you were here till I heard the shouts. I saw the girls and ran over.”

  “The gravity’s making us tired,” I say, letting him off the hook.

  “And we still can’t jump,” Meeka adds, firing a hard look at Tommy. “Did Doc’s father say anything about that?”

  “He didn’t. And I already talked to Blink about this. The drugs should’ve worn off. They didn’t. So whatever he gave you didn’t work—or he didn’t want it to work.”

  “Did you go through his pack?” I ask. “Was there anything there? Maybe he brought the neutralizer with him? Maybe he thought it wasn’t safe at first?”

  “He’s got a first aid kit, but some stuff’s not labeled, so we ain’t touching it right now.”

  “Tommy, are you serious?” Meeka asks. “Are you really going along with this plan, even though it’s all lies? Is that what a Marine would do?”

  Tommy winces and thinks hard a moment. “Look, if you come off the drugs, you might wind up like everyone else. I don’t like it any more than you do, but I’ve known Thaddeus for a long time, and he’s trusted me with everything, with his own boy here, so for now, we’re following the game plan he laid out. But if I think for one second we’re in real danger because of that, then all bets are off. I promise you that. I promise all of you.”

  The others seem to appreciate that.

  But Meeka’s expression grows darker. “Well I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

  Tommy looks at me and quickly changes the subject. “So you know where your parents are?”