One hour, twenty-six minutes, fifty seconds.
When we reach the first bedroom of the four—two on the left, two on the right—I tap Jax’s elbow with mine, nod to the box, then toward a pile of clothes between the two left-hand doors. He gives me a thumbs-up, and we crouch down together. Then, he slings the crossbow over one shoulder and, with both hands, lifts up a mountain of stuff that’s probably been sitting there for years. I slide the box into place, underneath, relieved to have it out of my hands, and Jax, with a smile, lets the clothing fall to cover it. You’d never know it was there.
Johnny raises four fingers, points to the four doors and to each of us and himself—four doors, four of us. We nod. Jax and I take the doors on the left; Johnny and Miguel, the right. Johnny silently counts to three and we all take a collective deep breath, then turn our doorknobs.
As soon as I open mine to peek through the crack, I close it again. In his bed, Diaz Superior lies naked in a puddle of his own puke. I could’ve gone the rest of my life without witnessing that, and will likely spend the rest of my life trying to erase it from my mind. The boys join me, and we scurry back to the room by our exit, ducking behind a mound of stuff in the corner.
“My room was empty,” Jax whispers. “Full of women’s wigs and stuff. Probably Emmanuel’s.”
“Mine was empty, too,” Miguel says. “Like, really empty.”
Johnny frowns and curses silently. “I had Mona in mine. What about you, Joy?”
“Diaz.”
“Not good,” says Jax. “We’re missing one.”
“Should we check the rest of the place?” I ask.
“Maybe we should just kill them,” Miguel says. “I mean, why not? We have weapons. Why wait for the box?”
“We don’t need to risk it—”
“Hello?” Mona Superior’s voice calls from the hallway, and startles my blood cold. “Emmanuel?”
The sound of a closing door and feet shuffling toward us makes me panic. Johnny stands with his weapon, but Jax pulls him back down. He holds a finger in the air and, taking the key ring from his pocket, gives it a jingle. “Yes?” he says in his best Emmanuel Superior impression. “I’ll be right back.”
Mona’s footsteps stop. “You going down there again?” She yawns. “Haven’t you had enough fun for one night?”
“Not yet,” Jax replies, face filling with rage.
“Well, all right. But remember, Arianna wants their minds intact for the transfer when she gets back. No head injuries.”
Jax hurries to the door, gives it a good slam.
“Whatever,” Mona Superior mumbles.
Seconds later, her bedroom door shuts again, and we all breathe a sigh of relief. We meet Jax by the back door. He quietly reopens it, and we slip away down the corridor, through the rusty double doors and into the Tree Factory, racing across the main room and around all of the machines we’ll never operate again. I take one last look at the chopper and the window.
I can’t say I’m sorry to see them go.
Then I remember: my daddy’s gloves. “Wait!” I whisper-yell. “I’ll be right back.” I leave them in the middle of the main factory room and dart to the chopper.
“Joy, what are you doing?” Jax whispers loudly behind me.
I snatch my daddy’s gloves from the grid and bolt back through the room. “Can’t leave these,” I say when I return.
When we get back underground, our relief is only slight. Arianna Superior could be anywhere. Down here, for all we know. My imagination tries to plays tricks on me, but I feed it with reason to keep it under control.
If she were down here, we’d know it.
“Anybody have a clue where she might be?” Johnny asks.
“No clue.” Jax holds up a hand, ears perking up in the dark.
Johnny glances over at Miguel and me, and we both shake our heads. How would we? There’ve always been periods of Arianna Superior’s absence. Sometimes weeks; once, for a few months. Rumors that she was on the Other Side circulated as much as rumors that she was in the Far West Bygonne, or visiting the eastern cannibal tribe, and so on. . . .
No, Arianna Superior has been an unsettling and unsolvable mystery since the beginning. Seems like ten lifetimes ago when she first came in with a group of fading vagabonds a couple of years before my mother got sick. I was fascinated by her white hair and wrinkled hands, and her eyes, a cloudy blue sky. Occasionally, she’d smile, though it appeared painful; one of those broken ones that pinches your heart and makes you wonder, even as a child, what made her so sad. And always, that inevitable break . . . it would happen someday; something would push her too far, and she’d snap in two on the inside. I didn’t have words back then, but I do now. Like nightfall after a toxic daytime storm, one day her eyes turned black and her broken smile faded forever.
Soon after, Micah Greenleigh—the mayor for which our town was renamed—on his death bed handed her the keys to the Tree Factory. Then, everything changed. People grew ill, died younger. My daddy worked his fingers to the bloody bone for years without a day of rest.
Only now am I seeing the smoke and mirrors here. . . . For how long has Arianna Superior been stashing aces? What secrets does she know, of Bygonne and the Other Side, the keys to our freedom—or our demise?
“Transfer,” I say. “I wonder what she meant by that. . . .”
The warehouse comes into view, and the whispering of children in the dark is music to my ears.
“I don’t know,” Jax says. “I’d feel a lot better if she were up there, sound asleep in her bed right now.”
One at a time, we step through the broken doors of the warehouse, ducking through the silent wreckage and stirred-up dust.
“How much time do we have left?” Miguel asks.
“Maybe an hour and ten or fifteen minutes,” Jax says. “Hard to say.”
“We’ll know when it happens,” says Johnny, “if your friend’s message is right.”
At the storage room door, the older boy with the spear stands at attention, in the exact same spot we left him. I smile, and he salutes me. I salute back. “Any excitement while we were gone?”
“None. But I have a feeling there might be some soon, now that you four are back.” He hands over the spear and yawns.
Aby rushes past him and throws herself at Miguel. They hold each other tight, and only then do I relax a little more. Corpse woman might be missing, but at least we’re together and safe. Soon, we’ll have two fewer Superiors to worry about.
“I’m thinking we should move,” Jax says. “No way to know for sure how powerful that blast will be—”
“But the box is so small. . . .” I peek in at Baby Lou and most of the others asleep on the blankets, curled up together comfortably.
“Doesn’t mean the blast will be,” he says.
After another few seconds of thought, I make my decision. “No, we should stay and let them rest.” I tuck my daddy’s gloves down safely into my bag. “We have no idea what we’re doing next. We should use this time to plan. Plus, we need to make sure it goes off. If it doesn’t, we’ll have to go back and take care of them ourselves. If the explosion was dangerous to us, way over here, I think Smudge would’ve warned us.”
Jax tugs a handful of hair, shaking his head. “Are you sure about this? We don’t even know her—”
“She gave us food, water, and supplies. And weapons. And toys, for crying out loud! Why would she do that, if we couldn’t trust her?”
Still, he shakes his head slowly with a sigh. “All right, you got me there. . . .”
“Let’s make ourselves comfortable and wait for the boom, then. We’ll sit here in the doorway and keep an eye on things.”
“Wait for the boom,” Johnny repeats. “Intense.” He slides down the doorframe, resting cross-legged with his head against the wood.
The rest of us join him to create a circle in the doorway.
“Well?” Aby asks. “How’d it go? Did you get inside their bunker?”
<
br /> “Yeah,” says Miguel, “but Arianna wasn’t there. And we almost got caught by Mona, until Jax faked the most excellent Emmanuel impersonation I’ve ever heard in my life.”
“Wow. . . .” She clasps Miguel’s hand between her own two. “Nice going, Jax.”
“Thanks.”
Jax lies down with his head in my lap, gazing up at me. I brush some hair from his face, trace the outline of his lips. “Soon, we’ll be in paradise,” I say.
“You really think it’s a portal to the Other Side?”
“Yes. I mean, I . . . I think I do.”
Jax sighs, heavily this time, and again tugs at his hair. “I can’t even comprehend how that would be possible.”
“I wish you people would explain this ‘portal to the Other Side’ thing,” Johnny says.
Miguel’s eyes widen, then cloud over with confusion. “The smell. . . .” He stares off into nothingness, like his thoughts scampered away into the dark.
“Yes?” I say. “The smell what?”
Johnny grunts an irritated chuckle, and tosses a rock. “Am I here? I think I’m asking a question, but maybe I’m too idiotic to realize I’m not actually saying anything . . . ?”
Jax puts up a hand to silence Johnny’s rant. “Hold on, let him finish.”
“The smell,” Miguel begins again. “In the empty room I checked . . . it just occurred to me. The room was weird—no furniture or anything. Not like the rest of the bunker crammed with junk. Empty . . . and a little smoky. . . .”
“Okay, what’s so strange about that?” Johnny asks.
“The smoke . . . smelled like citrus.”
Jax and I make startled eye contact.
“Are you sure?” I ask.
“So what?” says Johnny. “Who cares if it smelled like citrus?”
“Okay, Johnny, listen. I’ll give you the quick version. . . .” And Jax sits up, cross-legged, hands in his lap. “Twenty-two floors below us is a smoky room that smells like citrus. When you go inside, a bright light flashes, and suddenly you’re in a wooden hut overlooking the ocean. Real trees, blue sky, animals . . . paradise.”
“Get outta here.”
“It’s true,” I say. “And the more I think about it, the more I believe it has to be the Other Side. Nothing else makes sense.”
“And that makes sense?” Jax says.
“None of it makes any damned sense to me.” Johnny tosses another pebble through the open door.
“Why would it smell like that in Arianna Superior’s room?” Miguel asks.
“Probably a coincidence,” I say.
“You sure it was the same smell?” Jax asks.
“Pretty sure.”
“Ugh!” Jax yanks on another handful of hair. “None of this makes any sense!”
“I don’t know . . .” Miguel says. “Maybe it was a coincidence.”
“Maybe.” I search my mind for the words to describe what I’m thinking. “Or . . . maybe we can’t understand it. You know, because, well . . . imagine if an alien came to Earth from some distant galaxy—would it be able to comprehend our world?”
“That depends,” Miguel says. “If they were smarter than us, then—”
“Okay, bad example. I mean, if we’ve never experienced something, or never been told or taught about it and don’t even have a clue that it exists, and suddenly we’re thrown into it, how likely is it to make any sense?”
Jax scratches his head, furrows his brow. “So . . . okay, you think we should go back down to twenty-three? What happens if we can’t get there? Smudge said never to come back—what if we can’t even get down there? Or what if we do, and can’t get into the room? Or we go there, but come right back? Then what?”
“Then, we search the bunkers until we find the trolley tunnels,” I say. “She wouldn’t help us escape and kill the Superiors if that was her intention, though. She’s obviously leading us to safety, otherwise she wouldn’t have manipulated the oxygen levels and turned the lights on, and everything else.”
“How’d she do that?” Johnny asks. “She some kind of electrical wizard or something?”
“I don’t know. But when we find her, maybe she’ll tell us.”
For a while, we sit in silent contemplation, listening to the rhythmic breathing of the sleeping children—and a few snorers—until a roar-and-rumble above startles us. Shock waves roll through the walls and the floor and the ceiling, shaking the whole room and showering dirt and debris onto us. My heart beats a thousand miles an hour, sparked by the adrenaline surging its metallic fire through my veins. We jump up as the children are jolted awake by the earthquake.
“Woo!” Johnny yells.
Then, we’re all cheering, jumping around, celebrating. That boom was the snap of two more chains binding us to a life-long miserable existence.
FIFTEEN
Baby Lou begins to cry from the noise and excitement. I scoop her up into my arms. “Shh, Baby, it’s okay. One step closer to freedom.” I rock her and Millie while the celebration continues.
“Goodbye, Tree Factory!” Jax hollers into the air, along with the rest of the cries of celebration.
But Chloe isn’t celebrating. Instead, she cradles her new doll in the corner, a sadness in her face. I sit down next to her, pulling her into my lap next to Baby Lou. “What’s wrong, sweetheart? Did the noise scare you?”
She shakes her head.
“Well, then why are you sad? We don’t ever have to build trees for the Superiors again. Doesn’t that make you happy?”
Still, she peers up at me with the eyes of a wounded angel. “Yes,” she says hesitantly. “But who’s gonna build trees now?”
“Well . . . no one. At least not anywhere around here.”
At this, she leans into my chest and cries.
“Sweetie, what’s the matter?”
“Now we won’t have any air to breathe, and we’re all gonna die, and . . . and I want my mommy!” Then, she cries and cries . . . more than she ever has before. Like she’s only now learned how to grieve for the parents she barely knew and will never remember. She was a surprise baby, born too late. Her mother was already approaching thirty.
I hold her tight and let her cry, feeling somewhat foolish. How did I not consider this problem before a five-year-old did? What will become of Bygonne now, with no one left to build trees? Rumors once circulated of another Tree Factory somewhere, but no one knows if it actually exists. What’ll become of this place now? Have we unintentionally sealed the fate of certain death for Bygonne?
“I’ve got you, sweetheart.” I rock her and Baby Lou. “We’ll have air to breathe; we’re going to find paradise, like Billy, remember?”
She nods, rubbing a balled fist into a tired, teary eye.
“You have to trust me now, okay?” I kiss her forehead, squeeze her and Baby Lou tight. “Momma Joy will take good care of you, and all of your brothers and sisters. I promise, I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”
She has every right to be scared. All of us do. We’re sailing blindly through the dark, unsure if the light at the end of the tunnel is merely a mirage. And if we are stuck in Bygonne, we’ve destroyed our possibility of survival. If we don’t get out of here, we have less than a year to live.
We find a few large backpacks in the supply crate, along with a first-aid kit and some peel-back cans of strange, edible goods. Paper labels with funny names like “Brussels Sprouts,” “Artichoke Hearts,” and “Garbanzo Beans” call us to a strange and delicious new world of tastes. There are even a few rolls of toilet tissue. Smudge thought of everything.
We load up the bags and get seven older boys to carry them. The food and water we have will get us through the next twenty-four hours, at least. I peel a banana for Baby Lou and Chloe to share. They devour it in under a minute. They’ve never eaten anything but nutrient-fortified slop; everything you need to survive, minus the appeal. They’ve never been happier than they are right at this moment, yellowish-white mush and bliss spread acr
oss their faces.
Jax slides an arm around my waist. “What now?”
Smoke smell drifts down through the ceiling.
“I need to make an announcement,” I say. “Aby, will you take Baby Lou?”
“Sure.”
She puts Baby Lou on her hip, and I stand in the doorway. “Everyone listen up. Olders, find a younger buddy. You’ll be responsible for them from now until further notice. We’ll be walking through a lot of corridors and down a few flights of stairs. Help them if they need it. If they get tired, let one of us know, and we’ll stop the caravan to rest. I don’t want to stop too much, though, until we get to our next destination. It isn’t far.”
Jax moves beside me. “There’s a box full of light sticks right over here.” He points to a crate beside the door. “Everyone take two. We don’t know if there’ll be light or not in the corridors.”
Murmurs rise up as everyone shuffles around. Chloe tugs on my arm. “Will you be my buddy, Momma Joy?”
“Of course.” I crack a light stick and hand it to her. “Shake this up real good, and help light the way with me.”
Her eyes widen with excitement as she shakes the stick with two tiny hands.
“Baby Lou needs changing before we go,” Aby says.
“Okay, and if anyone else needs to use the washroom . . . well, there isn’t one. But any boys, follow Jax outside to the corridor across from us. Any girls, go with Aby to the storage room across from the warehouse, where we found the supplies. We’ll meet back here when everyone’s relieved, then we’ll head out.”
I hand a toilet tissue roll to Jax, and a small group of boys follows him out the door. A larger group of girls gathers around Aby. She hands a whining Baby Lou back to me in exchange for a roll of tissue, then she leads the girls away to the secret storage room.
“Johnny,” I say, “I need water and cloth. Be my assistant.”
“Um. . . .”
“Come on, it’s fine. You don’t have to watch, just dig through that crate and find me a thick shirt.”
“Gotcha.” He takes a bottle of water from his bag, then digs through the crate of old clothes.
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