“Look,” he mustered the energy to say, “Lee can straighten all this out. Just get Lee to come out here and explain.”
Smits sat up. It seemed like the moon had risen just in the past few minutes, and now its beams fell directly on Smits’s face. Even in such dim light, Trey could tell that Smits looked baffled.
“But, Trey” Smits said, “I thought Lee was with you. The chauffeur came and got him that very first day.”
Chapter Nine
Trey felt like Mark really had punched him again. He reeled back against the hard ground, then began to moan.
“Nooooo…
“What’s wrong with him?” Mark asked.
“I don’t know,” Smits said. “Trey, stop it! You’re scaring me.’
Trey didn’t care. Why shouldn’t everyone be as frightened as he was?
Mark slapped him, and Trey was stunned into silence.
“Hey!” Mark said. “That really does work on hysterical people. Always wanted to try that.”
He sounded so cheerful, Trey wanted to hit him back. “Everything all right out there?” a man called from the little house.
“Sure, Dad,” Mark hollered back. “We’re just fooling around. We’ll go into the barn now so we won’t bother you.”
He hustled Smits and Trey toward a door. Trey wondered if he should object — was this Mark guy dangerous? — but he didn’t have the will for resistance.
“Mother and Dad are so freaked out right now, ‘cause of the news,” Mark was saying. “And Trey don’t like strangers nohow. So — why tell them you’re here?”
Trey kept silent as they stepped into the barn and Mark shut the door behind them. It was so dark Trey could have walked into a wall with no warning whatsoever. He stayed as close to the door as possible.
“I know Dad’s got an old lantern around here somewhere,” Mark was muttering. “Oh, here it is.”
He struck a match and a light flared, then settled into a dim glow. Now Trey could see pitchforks and hoes leaning against the wall. The lantern cast eerie shadows, making the pitchforks seem giant-size and terrifying. Trey had never been in a barn before, but this one seemed straight out of his worst nightmares.
“Okay,” Mark said, as comfortably as if they were sitting down for tea in a cozy parlor. “Why’d you get so upset about L — uh, Lee, going off with that guy in the big fancy car?”
Now that they were indoors — even in a terrifying indoors — Trey realized that Mark was barely taller than Trey, and probably not much older. He wasn’t some hulking muscle man, some horrifying monster — he was just another kid. He even had a little twang in his voice that reminded Trey of Lee.
Was Mark Lee’s real brother?
“You can call him Luke around Trey,” Smits said. “Trey knows that Luke was just pretending to be Lee. You’re a third kid too, aren’t you, Trey?”
Trey stiffened. How could Smits act so casual about everything? Lee was Trey’s best friend, and even to him Trey had never actually come out and said, “I’m an illegal third child with a fake I.D. You are too, aren’t you, Lee? I’ll tell you my real name if you tell me yours.” Trey hadn’t known that Lee’s real name was Luke. He and Lee just understood each other. They both understood that if you slipped and revealed a crumb of information about your real life — your real family, your real past, your real name — a true friend would just nod and go on.
“Whose question you gonna answer?” Mark asked. “Mine or the kid’s?”
Trey looked from Mark to Smits and said, “I think Lee is in danger.”
Smits screwed up his face like he was going to cry. Mark just leaned back against the wall, his posture clearly indicating, “Nothing you say’s going to bother me.”
“Why?” Mark challenged.
Quickly Trey explained what had happened when he’d arrived at the Talbots how the chauffeur had abandoned him and kidnapped the other kids.
“He must have swung by here and picked up Lee right after that,” Trey finished. “Why didn’t anyone stop him?”
Even Mark looked worried now. He didn’t answer.
“The chauffeur didn’t kidnap Lee,” Smits said in a small voice. “Lee wanted to go. The chauffeur drove by, and stopped and talked to Lee, and then Lee came inside and said he had to leave right away.”
From Smits’s forlorn expression, Trey guessed that for him, at least, Lee’s leaving had been a little more complicated than that Regardless of what LD. card he might carry now, Smits was a real Grant, raised in unbelievable luxury But Smits had been devastated by the deaths of first his brother, then his parents. Smits had clung to Lee as his substitute brother. Smits had probably cried when Lee left.
“It happened while I was at school,” Mark said. “Luke said he’d still be here when I got home. So why’d he go off again so quick?”
There was pain in Mark’s voice. He turned his face toward the shadows like he didn’t want Trey or Smits to see the pain in his expression.
Maybe even this tough-guy Mark cried when Lee left, Trey thought. Nobody ever cried over me.
“Reckon that driver guy tricked Luke?” Mark said fiercely, like he was determined to turn all his pain into anger. “Thicked him into thinking he had to go, no matter what?”
“Yes,” Trey whispered.
His whisper seemed to echo in the silent barn. The lantern flickered, making the shadows dance even more eerily along the walls.
“Luke went back to the Grants’ house,” Mark said, his voice as hard as rock, and about as likely to betray any emotion.
“He did?” Smits said. “I didn’t know that.”
Trey saw a full play of sorrow and fear in the younger boy’s face.
“I heard Mother and Dad talking,” Mark admitted. “They didn’t know I was listening. Why…” He paused, steadying his voice. “Why do you reckon Luke would want to go back there?”
“I don’t know,” Trey said. “He wouldn’t. We’d just come from there.”
And we’d seen people die there. We didn’t know if we could trust anyone there, Trey thought, but didn’t say.
“The chauffeur was badl” Smits said, his voice edging into hysteria. “What if he hurts Lee? What if he took him away to kill him?”
“Calm down,” Trey said, trying to quell his own panic as much as Smits’s. “We don’t know anything about the chauffeur’s intentions. If the chauffeur was going to hurt Lee or the others, he could have done it before he brought all of us here.”
“You were in the car then,” Smits said, pouting. “You were helping protect us.”
Trey was so stunned by Smits’s interpretation that he couldn’t speak.
Protecting you? He wanted to say. I was more terrified than anyone. During the whole trip from the Grants’ house to the Talbots Trey had buried his nose in the Grants’ financial records. All those numbers had seemed like Trey’s only lifeline to sanity. Had Smits actually been fooled into thinking that Trey wasn’t drowning in fear? That Trey might actually have been capable of taking care of someone else?
Had the chauffeur been fooled?
Mark narrowed his eyes and peered at Trey. Mark didn’t look like he thought Trey would be much of a bodyguard.
“Seems like, if this driver was a good guy, if he had good reasons for taking my brother away, he wouldn’t have left you behind,” Mark said slowly.
Yes, Trey thought. Exactly. He liked Mark a little better for saying that
“And the chauffeur went away before all the men in uniforms showed up,” Trey said. “So he wasn’t scared about his own safety. He left me behind on purpose.” It hurt just to speak those words, but Trey forced them out It was like he actually had some hope that Mark could help.
“So this dangerous man took Luke away and left you behind, and we don’t know why,” Mark said. He kicked the toe of his boot at the packed-dirt floor of the barn. “And did you hear that the Population Police are in control of everything now? Mother and Dad are inside listening to the radio right n
ow, shaking in their shoes, scared to death. It’s like the whole world’s ending, but it hasn’t quite ended yet way out here. And what they’re most scared of is that something bad’s going to happen to Luke, and Trey won’t even know.” He kicked the dirt once more, then looked up. “Let’s go get him.”
“Huh?” Trey said. He’d gotten lost in Mark’s reasoning after that first kick in the dirt
“You heard me,” Mark said. “I said let’s go get him. We’ll go to the Grants’ house and bring Luke back and everything will be okay.”
Trey’s jaw dropped in disbelief. He’d always thought Lee was insanely brave. Now he knew Lee’s brother was even crazier.
“We don’t have to go anywhere,” Trey finally managed to say. “We can call. We can call the Grants’ house, or call Mr. Hendricks back at the school — Mr. Hendricks can get Lee from the Grants’ house, if we just call…”
He really meant that Mark could call. Mark or his parents. Trey was feeling better now, at the thought that somebody else could take care of everything and he wouldn’t have to. This was a good plan. But Mark was shaking his head.
“The Population Police shut down all the phone lines in the country yesterday — security reasons, Trey said. And now they’ve shut off the electricity…. What if Trey come and take away our gasoline next? We can’t just sit around waiting. We’ve got to go rescue Luke.”
He sounded almost happy at the thought that it would take more than a phone call to find his brother.
“We don’t know for sure where he is,” Trey protested. He was suddenly desperate to avoid being roped into Mark’s dangerous plan. “For all we know, the chauffeur might have lied about going back to the Grants’ house. Trying to find Lee would be like… like looking for a needle in a haystack.” He thought Mark might appreciate the agricultural analogy. But it didn’t go far enough. He remembered what Mrs. Talbot had said about roadblocks and house-to-house searches. “No — now that the Population Police are in charge, it’d be like looking for a needle in a burning haystack.”
“Oh, I’ve done that,” Mark said airily. “It’s a game we used to play, after we got rid of all our livestock and didn’t need our hay no more. You throw a match into the haystack, give the fire a three-second head start, and begin looking. You can find the needle every time if you work quick”.
Trey couldn’t do anything but stare at the other boy Mark wasn’t just crazily brave — he was stark, raving mad. Trey thought Longingly of his cozy cupboard hiding place back in the Talbots’ kitchen. He could be back there in a matter of minutes. He certainly wasn’t spending any more time hanging around this lunatic.
But Smits stepped forward.
“You’ll help Mark, won’t you, Trey?” he said. “If the two of you work together, I know you can get to Lee. You’ll rescue him, won’t you?”
It’s impossible, Trey thought It’s ridiculous to risk two more lives when we’ve got no chance of success. This is insanity. It’s a suicide mission! He thought about how deluded Smits was, thinking Trey had ever been able to protect anybody, thinking Trey might be able to take care of somebody else, instead of needing somebody to take care of him.
That one time I saved Lee’s life, it was a fluke, you know? he wanted to scream at Smits. I can’t do anything. I’m a coward!
But what he said to Smits was: “Yes.”
Chapter Ten
“Okay. Ready to go?” Mark asked. “Now?” Trey squeaked. He wanted more ceremony somehow — a commissioning service, perhaps, or an anointing of the heroes, like he’d read about in books. Some acknowledgment that brave men (okay — boys) were about to head into danger.
Or maybe he just wanted a delay. A chance to change his mind.
“What — you want to wait until the Population Police make it a crime to go anywhere? Of course now!” Mark said.
Trey could feel Smits’s eyes on him.
“P-papers,” Trey managed to stammer. “We’ve got to take the papers from the Talbots’ house first”.
He didn’t know why that seemed so important suddenly, except that he’d brought papers to the Talbots’ and it didn’t seem right to leave them behind.
“The Talbots? Trey’re the ones in the big house over there?” Mark asked, pointing.
Trey felt so disoriented that he barely could have identified up from down, but he nodded.
Mark shrugged. “Always wanted to see inside one of those monster houses,” he said.
And Trey was glad, because he wasn’t sure he could muster enough courage to go back into the Talbots’ house alone, then Leave again, if he was also supposed to be gathering courage to go rescue Lee.
Mark extinguished the lantern, and Trey stepped from the dark of the barn into the dark of the night. Mark led the way, holding branches back so Trey had a clear path. They were halfway to the Talbots’ house before Trey realized Smits hadn’t followed.
“Shouldn’t we wait for Smits — I mean, Peter?” Trey asked.
“I sent him to bed,” Mark said. “He’s just a little kid.”
He’s a Baron, Trey thought He’s used to other people doing his dirty work for him.
What if Trey adopted that attitude? What if he just sent Mark out alone to rescue Lee?
It was a tempting thought.
Trey reached the door of the Talbots’ house, and Mark hesitated for the first time.
“They don’t have any of those fancy alarms on this, do they?” he asked.
“I just walked out this door fifteen minutes ago,” Trey said. “No alarms went off then. The electricity’s out, anyway. What are you, scared?”
Trey enjoyed taunting Mark, but his bravado was false. For all Trey knew, there could be silent alarms rigged up on the door, ones that secretly alerted the police even without electricity. Would that kind of an alarm be battery-operated, or would the Talbots have needed a backup generator? If they had a backup generator, wouldn’t the lights have stayed on in their house even when the rest of the neighborhood lost power? What if it was all a trick?
While Trey was still considering every possibility, Mark shrugged and stepped into the Talbots’ house. Nothing happened. Feeling sheepish, Trey followed.
“Draw the shades, and I’ll light the lantern again,” Mark said.
Trey pulled blinds down over the window he’d used for spying, and jerked curtains along a rod to cover the sliding door they’d just walked in through. Then Mark struck a match and lit the lantern. His jaw dropped and his eyes widened.
“Those Barons must have lived like pigs,” he said, surveying the mess before him.
“Their house was searched, remember?” Trey said. “Fifty guys in uniforms trashed it. I bet this house was a showplace before.”
He didn’t know why he felt compelled to defend the Talbots. He just didn’t like the note of glee in Mark’s voice.
“Well, get your papers, then,” Mark said.
Trey had hidden them in the kitchen cupboard. He retrieved them and, straightening up, saw the avalanche of papers covering the counters.
“I should take those, too,” he said. The thought had just occurred to him. He hadn’t read any of them, and they were probably worthless, since the uniformed men hadn’t carted them off and Mrs. Talbot apparently hadn’t wanted them either. But it seemed wrong, suddenly, to leave them behind. Trey’s father had taught him that nothing was more valuable than the printed word, and Trey couldn’t shake that belief now.
Mark didn’t seem to be listening.
“So much food,” he muttered, looking at the boxes and bags strewn about the kitchen. “It was true, then: they even had more food than we did — and we were the ones growing it.”
“All that food’s not doing the Talbots any good now,” Trey said.
Mark squinted, and the dim light from the lantern turned each squint line into a deep shadow.
“S’pose it would be stealing to take some of it?” Mark asked. “Just in case, I mean — if we’re going to be gone a while….”
>
Trey didn’t like thinking about how long they might be gone. He didn’t even like thinking about the fact that they were going anywhere.
“Mrs. Talbot said other people were welcome to anything in this house,” he said, trying to shrug casually. “She left it all behind and didn’t care.”
“Anything?” Mark asked, his eyes big.
In the end, Trey took only some food and the papers, and bags to carry it all in. But after they’d stepped out into the darkness again, Mark kept casting longing glances back at the house.
“Bet it’ll all be gone before I get home," he muttered regretfully.
Trey was more convinced than ever that Mark was a lunatic.
Trey loaded everything into a mud-covered pickup truck back in the scary barn. Mark stuffed the papers into a slit in the seat—”Just in case we get stopped,” he muttered. The food from the Talbots’ house went into battered bushel baskets in the back. Mark covered the top of each basket with a layer of moldy-looking potatoes.
He was admiring his work when someone pounded on the door of the barn. In a flash, Trey dived under the truck.
"Mark!" a voice called from outside. “Mother says you’ve got to come in to bed now.”
“Just a minute," Mark called back.
From his hiding place under the truck. Trey could see the door open. Another boy stepped into the barn.
“What you doing out here anyway?” the boy asked.
“Loading the truck for Dad to take to town. So’s he can take the potatoes to market,” Mark said. Trey was amazed at how calm Mark sounded, how even he kept his voice, how easily he lied.
The other boy snorted.
“Dad ain’t going to town,” he said. “The way things are going, Dad ain’t never leaving home again. And neither are we.”
“You’ve been sneaking out to see Becky,” Mark said. “You’re risking your life to go visit your stupid, ugly girlfriend.”
The other boy didn’t deny it. He didn’t even defend his girlfriend. Trey couldn’t see anything of him but his bare feet. The feet shifted awkwardly.
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