Child of Lies

by Eric Kent Edstrom

  She studied the lever Vaughan had used to make the Jeep go forward. Not knowing what she was doing, she shifted it backward. The engine roared, momentarily waking Vaughan. He mumbled something and removed his foot from the accelerator. The Jeep coasted to a stop.

  “Vaughan, wake up.”

  He slumped forward, face mashing on the center of the steering wheel, causing the horn to blare. She jerked him back. His breath came in the long, slow cycle of deep sleep.

  He’s exhausted.

  And probably half-starved, she realized. If Dr. Carlhagen’s addiction played a part, he was also in the grips of withdrawal.

  She shifted the lever into the bottom position, aligned with the P, which is where she thought it had been when they’d first gotten into the Jeep. She got out, studied the road. It continued into dense inland foliage. A glance at the sky told her it was midmorning.

  She climbed into the Jeep and tugged Vaughan toward her. He let out a moan but didn’t awaken. She leaned him onto the passenger seat, then hooked her arms around him and pulled.

  He was dead weight. She braced her feet on the side of the seat and tugged with all her strength. Slowly Vaughan slid across the shift lever and into the passenger side.

  It took another five minutes of tugging, pushing, and shoving, but she got him out of the driver’s seat.

  She bound him to the passenger seat with a strap she found. It had a buckle that snapped into a shorter strap on the other side of the seat. Clever design.

  Heaving a great breath to work up her nerve, Belle climbed into the driver’s seat and closed the door. There were two pedals. One to go and one to stop, she thought. Couldn’t be simpler.

  After a few failed attempts, she figured out the combination of pedals and lever shifts to get the Jeep creeping forward.

  “What are you doing?” Vaughan mumbled.

  “We can’t stay here.” She pressed the accelerator down, and the Jeep lurched. She let out a vile curse and stomped the brake. She nearly slid out of her seat. Vaughan jerked forward, but the strap she’d affixed to him kept him secure.

  She found the strap on her side and snapped it in place. “Now I know what that’s for.”

  She tried again, and soon they were under way, creeping forward. According to the gauge under the steering wheel, they were going twenty kilometers per hour.

  It was nothing compared to the speed Vaughan had driven, but she didn’t intend to run off the side of a cliff after coming this far. She kept the speed low, slowing to a stop at every sharp turn.

  After twenty minutes, the interior of the vehicle grew too warm. She fiddled with a few buttons until she found one to lower the windows. The breeze blowing against her face relaxed and cooled her as she drove. Though her confidence in the machine grew with every kilometer, she occasionally applied the brakes just to make sure they still worked.

  She didn’t know how long she’d been driving when the road turned south again and descended a hill among thicker trees. It came out along the coast on an area paved with concrete.

  “The docks,” she said, smiling to herself.

  The Scions had speculated that boat docks existed somewhere on the island, but none had ever seen them. In her studies, Belle had seen pictures of harbors and docks and piers. These were similar. A broad concrete quay ran parallel to the shore and longer concrete piers jutted into the bay.

  A huge machine with an appendage sticking out over the longest pier stood on its own platform. A metal cable dangled from its tip, and at the end of that hung a huge iron hook. She recognized it immediately as a hoist mechanism, probably used to unload the supply boats.

  Farther along was a small jetty. A white boat was tied up alongside it. It was small, but it was something. How it operated she hadn’t the faintest idea. Hopefully Vaughan would be able to summon a more substantial watercraft to take them off the island.

  Across the road from the docks stood a bank of open-sided sheds very much like the Jeep garage on campus. She slowed and studied the machines inside. One was a huge contraption with six wheels. Beneath it was slung an angled blade that appeared to drag upon the ground. Another machine had a big, flat implement on the front that was slightly scooped. She didn’t know what either of them were for.

  Between the sheds stood a sign with arrows pointing in opposite directions. The one pointing the direction they’d come was emblazoned with: St. Vitus Retreat Center. The other arrow read: Groundskeeper’s House.

  “Retreat Center?” she mumbled. She supposed that the signs were intentionally misleading. If a wayward boat docked, Dr. Carlhagen wouldn’t want anyone seeing the words “Scion School.”

  Mother Tyeesha’s had to be the Groundskeeper’s House. Belle gripped the wheel and continued on her way.

  12

  It’s not reasonable. It’s obvious

  Jacey had always wondered why Dr. Carlhagen had made their uniforms black. She now fervently believed it was to slow the Scions down if they ever happened to escape the campus.

  The long trudge up the hill and down to the southern coast took most of the morning. The low wind-gnarled trees along the way offered little shade, and by the time Jacey and Summer had descended to the southern slopes, the wind had died.

  Now they boiled beneath their uniforms as the black fabric drank up the sun’s heat.

  Jacey drew her sleeve across her brow to wipe away the runnels of sweat streaming into her eyes. “I wish I had a rubber band for my hair.” She supposed it served her right for defying school dress code and wearing it down.

  Summer walked to the edge of the road, snagged a long length of vine, and returned to Jacey. She used her fingernails to split and draw the vine into thinner sections of fiber. “Here,” she said, holding one out, “use this.”

  Jacey stared at Summer, surprised by the girl’s initiative. “I should’ve thought of that.” She drew her hair back, but fumbled with the strand, then botched the job by tying it too loosely.

  “Let me do it,” Summer said, pressing Jacey’s shoulders.

  Jacey knelt. Summer’s hands gently but efficiently pulled her hair back and cinched it into a ponytail with another strand of vine. A gust of breeze swept down the hillside as if the island itself had been waiting for Jacey to take this sensible step.

  At least one problem was solved.

  During their flight from the school Jacey had been playing out all the possible bad things that could happen. First of which was that they would get lost—which they had.

  Her second worry was that they would exhaust themselves just as Senator Bentilius’s guards started to search the island.

  And then there was the problem of food and water. She licked her dry lips and tried not to think about how wonderful a cool drink would be.

  She didn’t know much about the geography of St. Vitus. She had spent the first eight years of her life at Children’s Villa but left there the day she turned nine. She didn’t remember much about the landscape around Children’s Villa, except that it stood at the top of a rise surrounded by trees. Since arriving at the Scion School, she had always assumed Children’s Villa was on the opposite end of the island. The trees there had been taller and lusher than any at the Scion School. One thing she did remember quite clearly—it rained a lot at Children’s Villa.

  On the day that she had traveled to the Scion School, Mother Tyeesha had gotten her and the others out of bed before the sun rose. They had gotten into a vehicle that everyone called “the old Jeep.”

  She’d been so nervous during that long, winding drive, staring at the darkness. Seeing the road rush at them in the headlights had revealed almost nothing about the nature of the island, and she certainly hadn’t remembered all of the turns and twists.

  After what had seemed like hours of driving, they had gotten out of the vehicle and waited in front of the chain-link fence. It had opened, and she’d been greeted by Dr. Carlhagen and Sensei. And that was all she had seen of the island.

  Jacey and Summer c
ontinued onward. Summer’s initial panic had subsided. She gazed around curiously, commenting on how the plant life had changed. The road along the southern shore had climbed into dense forest, which brought new smells. Damp earth, moss, floral scents half-remembered that evoked feelings of safety, fun, and innocence.

  Jacey hadn’t taken any biology or botany classes, but Summer apparently had. She pointed out acacia trees and a stand of fragrant bay rum.

  After several hours of walking, they passed a mango tree. The fruits were not quite ripe, but they took them anyway, biting into the soft skin and relishing the moisture, if not the taste. They sat in the shade while they ate their mangoes. When Jacey finished hers, she threw the pit into the woods. “We have to find water.”

  “We may not have to wait long,” Summer replied, eyes lifting to the sky. A band of black clouds was blowing in from the southeast, a veil of gray rain hanging below it.

  Jacey welcomed the rain, was ready to let it soak her to the skin. Anything to quench her thirst.

  The squall blew in fast, sending a strong breeze across the road. “We’re never going to catch enough rain water in our mouths,” Summer said. “We need some way to funnel it.” She drifted to the side of the road and pressed her fingers on the various wide leaves hemming in the road. She stopped, peering into the thicket. “There we go.”

  She pushed aside stalks of weeds and the thumb-width trunks of scrub trees and disappeared.

  “Summer!” Jacey called.

  Eyeing the foliage for insects, Jacey pressed after the girl. “Hold on. I don’t want us separated.”

  Once past the initial barrier, the undergrowth thinned. The tall trees, vine-covered and mossy, stretched high overhead, their branches intertwining and blocking the sun.

  Summer stood next to a stand of rambling bushes bearing leaves as wide as her head. They were concave and facing up. Some still held water from past rains. Summer got to her knees and burrowed her way deeper into the thicket. “Maybe these’ll protect us from the worst of the rain, too.”

  Jacey scanned the ground, but didn’t spot any creepy-crawlies. The first rain hit the canopy above, followed soon after by a furious downpour. The sound of it battering the leaves grew moment by moment, each drop making a sharp crack. A minute later, the first drips penetrated the canopy and runnels spread across the forest floor like wandering serpents.

  They sheltered under the bush, arms wrapped around their knees. Water coursed down a slight rise behind them, and soon they sat in a puddle, bottoms wet and cold.

  “Do you ever wish you’d never figured it out?” Summer asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “About the Scions and the transfer machine. And what happens to us.” Summer put her chin on her knees. “Maybe it would be better not to know, to just go in dumb and have it happen without realizing it.”

  “No,” Jacey said. “I don’t ever wish that.”

  “I do. Sort of.”

  “We’d be dry inside of Girls’ Hall right now, if that’s what you mean.”

  Summer hunched forward and rubbed her nose. Jacey couldn’t see enough of her face to tell if she was trying to sleep or hide tears.

  The rain fell harder, and the trees swayed above them.

  Just as Summer had predicted, the leaves of their shelter filled with water. Their stalks bent under the weight so that streams poured to the ground right in front of Jacey and Summer.

  Once they had drunk their fill, Jacey wished aloud for a container to collect more water. Summer immediately set about stripping one of the leaves down and weaving it into a bowl.

  “That will never hold water,” Jacey said.

  “Not like this it won’t,” Summer said. “But I have an idea.”

  The squall passed while Summer was weaving her bowl. It wasn’t large, perhaps as wide as Jacey’s hands cupped together. Summer plucked another leaf, but kept it whole and tucked it down inside the bowl.

  “It won’t hold much,” Summer said, “but it’s something.”

  In another burst of ingenuity, Summer wound a length of vine around the rim of the bowl and drew it tight so that it formed a sort of handle allowing them to carry the water without spilling any.

  Jacey smiled at the girl and patted her back. Summer shrank away from Jacey’s touch and brushed past. “Let’s get going.”

  “You did a good job.”

  No answer.

  Summer retreated through the thick foliage by the road and disappeared.

  The shift in Summer’s mood infected Jacey. She didn’t know what she’d said or done to provoke the behavior.

  Jacey joined Summer on the road and they continued west. Three minutes later they rounded a bend and discovered boat docks, across from which stood metal-roofed sheds.

  Summer uttered a string of curses Jacey was surprised the girl even knew. As a Nine leader, Jacey should have scolded her for that. Considering the circumstances, Jacey laughed it off. They’d suffered twenty minutes getting their butts soaked when shelter lay so close by.

  Summer said, “At least we found a roof for the night.”

  “I don’t think so. We won’t be able to stay here long. When they start searching for us, they’ll look here first.”

  Summer trudged forward. “You mean when they start searching for me.”

  They headed to the nearest shed and peeked in. “What do you suppose this machine is for?” Jacey asked, hoping to ease the growing tension.

  The vehicle was ten meters long and had six wheels, each as tall as Summer. The thick treads looked perfect for gripping the dirt road they’d traveled. A monstrous metal blade hung from its belly, dirty and chipped.

  Summer squatted and studied the blade. “This is meant to be dragged on the road. To scrape it, make it level.”

  Jacey eyed the machine. “Sounds reasonable.”

  “It’s not reasonable. It’s obvious.” Summer stood and stepped onto the road.

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  “That monster in the other building must be meant to push stuff,” Summer said, pointing at a machine with a flat blade mounted on its front. It crouched upon steel tracks. “That would be fun to drive.”

  Summer’s attention went to the docks and a huge machine standing on its own concrete pier. “They use that thing to hoist things out of the supply boat.”

  She started toward the water’s edge, but Jacey blocked her way. “Summer, why are you being a brat all of a sudden?”

  Summer folded her arms across her chest. “I’m not.”

  “You’re acting like you’re mad at me. Did I say something?”

  “No. I’m just tired.” She side stepped around Jacey and continued to the pier.

  Jacey made a neck-strangling motion behind Summer’s back, then took a deep breath and forced a smile onto her lips. Adding energy to Summer’s mood wasn’t going to help them at this point. To be fair, the girl had a lot to deal with. This morning Summer had woken up an innocent Scion, believing Dr. Carlhagen’s lie that she was important to the future of humanity. Now she was homeless and would soon be the object of an island-wide search.

  Jacey joined Summer on the pier. She hadn’t expected to find a ship, and even if she had, she didn’t know the first thing about driving one. They would just as likely drown or be captured by someone loyal to Senator Bentilius or Dr. Carlhagen.

  They retreated and walked along the quay. Jacey made a face as the smell of rotting fish wafted from the shoreline. The thought of fish stopped her. She eyed the water, considering how they might catch some of the long, silvery fish sheltering in the shade of the pier.

  Summer suddenly dashed away, running onto a smaller jetty. She let out a high-pitched squeak and clapped her hands together.

  Jacey followed. “What is it?”

  “This is it. This is our way off the island.”

  Summer had discovered a wooden skiff tethered to the jetty. It stretched four meters from bow to motor. It was empty, except for three fla
t, wooden bench seats that appeared to be part of the structure. Two weather-splintered oars were tucked along one side. It sat low in the water, partially flooded with rainwater.

  Summer crouched and rapped her knuckles on the hull. “It’s wood.”

  “And old,” Jacey said. More bare spots showed than white flakes of paint. If it was sea-worthy, which she doubted, Jacey thought they might manage to drive something of its size. But not for leaving the island. “It doesn’t look like it’s meant for long voyages.”

  Summer threw an irritated sneer at Jacey. “It’s obviously for fishing and moving along the coast. Probably faster to get around the island than to cross it. But it could get us to Turtle Island.”

  Turtle Island was a small hump of land a few kilometers off Isaac’s Beach. Jacey doubted there was any shelter there at all.

  Summer moved to the rear of the skiff, stopping to thump the black metal housing of an outboard motor. “I bet I could get this started. Socrates covered the details of internal combustion engines. This one is simple.”

  Jacey glanced at the sky, trying to gauge the time of day. She guessed they’d been off campus for four or five hours. And that meant they had about seven before Senator Bentilius arrived by helicopter.

  Not wanting to douse Summer’s enthusiasm, Jacey nodded noncommittally at the boat. “I think we should rest for a little while, see if we can find some more food, maybe some more mangoes. And then I think we should scout down the road a bit farther.”

  “Why?” Summer’s face grew sullen, and her arms wrapped around her middle.

  “Because the more we know about what’s down there, the better prepared we’ll be to—”

  A strange heartbeat sounded from the west. She didn’t recognize it at first, but a shift in the wind brought the sound to her more clearly. She spun. There was nothing in view, but she knew what made the sound.

  A helicopter. The senator had come early.

  “Quick,” she said to Summer. “Into the shed. We’ve got to get out of sight!”

  Summer didn’t move, but she’d turned her gaze to the sky.