Jake took a quick step back and ducked behind Brandon’s legs. He wanted something solid between him and that big man. He was used to Gracie and Brandon; to him, they were the size a regular person should be. This man seemed like a giant compared to them. Even his teeth looked too big.
“All the better to gobble you up.”
Jake didn’t know where that came from, but he knew what this giant meant: trouble.
“Shy, huh?” said the giant.
“He’s not shy, are you Jake?” said Brandon. “Just don’t know you yet.”
“Will you move the truck?” said Gracie. “We want to get through before it’s too dark.”
“Why the rush?” said the skinny man, Doc. “Driving in the dark isn’t safe.” he laughed. “Not much is safe these days, but being indoors at night is better than driving. You’re welcome to rest here until morning.”
“We know that,” said Gracie. “We weren’t planning on driving all night. We don’t need rest; we just need you to move the truck.”
Terry laughed. “Guess we know who wears the pants here!”
Jake could tell that Gracie was getting mad, and felt his heart start to beat faster.
“Nah, come on Gracie, it’s cool,” said Brandon. “It’ll be nice to sleep under a roof again. Just for one night?”
“No. If you don’t move it, I guess we’ll go back the other way,” said Gracie.
“Got places to be?” asked Doc.
“Sure, we’re going up to my Uncl—”
“We’re going to Bangor to look for my mom,” Gracie said.
Brandon frowned at her, but didn’t say anything. Gracie had told the man a lie. It made Jake more scared.
“Suit yourself, kiddo,” said Doc.
“Come on, Gracie,” said Brandon “My head’s pounding like a bitch, it’s cold and it’s dark, and I just want to sleep.”
“I don’t trust them,” said Gracie, glaring at the men. “I don’t know why they won’t just move the truck.”
“The truck has a flat,” said the giant, Terry. “Go look for yourself if you don’t believe me.”
“They’re army guys, Gracie. Jeez, my goddamn head!”
“Oh, God, okay, Brandon. Just for one night. But we’re sleeping in shifts.”
“As you wish,” said Doc, mildly.
Jake didn’t want to go inside that house. Sleeping in the car was okay, because there were windows all around. There was even a special window in the roof so he could see the sky when he needed to.
The house had low ceilings and little, dirty windows covered up with dusty curtains. It was stinky, too. There were dirty dishes and empty bottles everywhere. As they walked into the lounge, something scuttled across the room and slunk behind the sofa. Jake grabbed at Gracie’s hand, but she and Brandon were smiling.
“A dog!” said Brandon. “Is it yours?”
“It came with the house,” said Doc.
“Don’t get it all crazied up. It’s a damn pain in the ass,” muttered Terry.
Brandon tried to pet the dog, but it scooted further back behind the sofa. Its head drooped down and it licked its lips nervously as its eyes went back and forth between the army guys and Brandon.
Jake remembered about dogs. Kind of. It was part of the knowledge that was slipping away as the shiny patterns grew clearer, but there was a memory in there of a big dog with yellow fur, licking his face. No, licking Robbie’s face. This new dog had black and white fur and folded-up ears on top of its head instead of droopy ones. It didn’t look “crazied up,” just frightened.
Doc and Terry gave them soup to eat. It felt strange to eat something warm. The steam coming off the bowl was like breath on Jake’s face. Jake liked the cold soup better, something that was warm and breathing seemed too much like something that was alive for him to enjoy eating. He pushed the bowl away.
Brandon talked with Terry, who seemed the friendlier of the two men. Terry had a gun, which he let Brandon look at. Having more people around—strange, too-big people—made Jake’s head feel heavy. He wanted to go back outside.
Jake slipped from his chair and walked back into the lounge. He tried the handle of the door to outside, but it wouldn’t open.
“Dinner’s in here, squirt.” Doc stood in the kitchen door, looking at Jake as if noticing him properly for the first time.
“He your brother?” Doc called back to Brandon.
“Nope,” said Brandon “We just—”
“He’s my brother,” said Gracie. “We met Brandon on the road.”
Doc smiled at Jake a moment longer, then turned back to the food.
There was something about that smile that Jake didn’t like. It reminded him of the smiles on the faces of those fake plastic people at the mall: hungry, and not quite real.
Terry filled the bowls with more soup and putting them on the kitchen table.
“Last chance for seconds. If you want more, get your ass back in here, kid.”
Jake didn’t want to go back into that small kitchen and sit up close to those big men. The silver patterns flashed behind his eyes. A sad whining noise made his ears prick. The dog had crept out from behind the sofa a little and sniffed the air hopefully. The dog was very thin. Hungry. The dog was hungry, but it was too scared to get the soup. Jake held out his hand to the dog like Brandon had done, but it bolted away and slipped back behind the sofa. When he crawled back there and reached out a hand again, the dog growled and showed Jake its teeth. The dog was trying to make him think that it would bite him if he got closer. The hard little knot of the dog’s fear pulsed and throbbed inside its head. If Jake concentrated, he could see it in there, silvery strands a little like the shapes he saw in the sky. Jake reached out with his own mind. If he loosened this strand, untangled that one…this time, when Jake put his hand out to the dog it allowed him to pet its glossy black and white fur. Its tail started to wag. The hard fear knot in the mind of the dog was all smoothed out.
The dog snuffled at Jake’s pocket, and he remembered he had a cookie in there. It was stale from sitting in someone’s car all summer, but still better than eating with the men. Jake took a little bite himself, then offered the rest to the dog, who gulped it down without chewing, then looked at him for more.
“No more,” Jake told the dog.
The dog sniffed around for the crumbs. If he concentrated hard on the dog’s mind Jake found that he could smell those crumbs the way the dog could. The dog could smell so much! The men, the oil of the gun, the hot electrical smell of the stove, the overwhelming fug of the soup. This new thing that he could do was suddenly too much for him. Exhausted, Jake slumped back against the wall. The dog tilted its head to one side and wagged its tail, then lay down, with its warm flank pressed up against Jake’s leg.
“You should eat.”
It was Gracie, holding the bowl of soup. “You don’t like those guys, huh?”
The men were in the kitchen still, talking with Brandon. They laughed occasionally. Terry and Brandon anyway. Jake could hear Doc talking, but he hadn’t heard him laugh once.
Jake shook his head. Being close to the men had stolen his voice away again. He felt like he was looking at Gracie through a thick fog.
“Don’t worry, Jakester. We’ll be out of here tomorrow. Hey, did you make a friend?”
She meant the dog. The dog was Jake’s friend now.
“Hungry,” he managed to say.
“Well I told you, eat your soup.”
“Dog is hungry,”
“I don’t think dogs eat soup,” said Gracie, but the dog didn’t seem to share her opinion. When Jake set the bowl on the floor, Dog gulped the soup down in three hungry swallows and polished the bowl clean with her long, pink tongue.
“That was for you!” said Gracie.
“Not hungry,” Jake told her.
“I’ve got to go back in there. They’re drinking beer,” she wrinkled up her nose. “Brandon’s drinking beer. So much for his headache. Idiot. You stay in her
e if you want to, but don’t go wandering off anywhere, okay? And don’t look so worried. We’re not staying here. No matter what Brandon seems to think.”
It was okay here behind the sofa with Dog. There were dust bunnies back here. Someone’s shoe. A scatter of change. Jake hadn’t needed the Shinys since Gracie had found him his pencil and paper, but those were out in the car and the door to outside was locked. Jake arranged the pennies first one way, then another. There weren’t enough of them to make the patterns that were in his head, even when he added a paper clip and a candy wrapper. It helped though. He felt calmer, almost like he could sleep.
“Playing a game?”
Dog scooted as far back behind the sofa as she could go. She was showing her teeth and making the growling noise, and her mind was a snarl of jagged lines again. Doc was looking down at Jake, smiling that scary fake-person smile that didn’t reach his eyes.
“Don’t look so blue, kiddo. Looks like a fun game. Maybe you can teach me to play.”
Gracie
hen I woke up the next morning, Brandon and the army guys were already drinking again. Soup and beer—it seemed to be pretty much all Doc and Terry had to get by. So much for the great military supply chain.
Oh, and coffee.
Good for hangovers, I guessed.
Brandon sipped delicately on his beer, looking so green I could tell he was struggling to keep his breakfast down. Trying to impress that big troll, Terry, no doubt.
I glared at him while he choked down a second beer, trying to pretend he hadn’t noticed me. The third beer I plucked right out of his hands before he could open it.
Terry laughed. “Chill out, sugar.”
“My name isn’t sugar. He’s been sick.” I turned to Brandon. “We’re leaving this morning. You can’t get drunk.”
“No one ever got drunk on three lousy beers,” said Terry, who was on his fifth. He turned back to Brandon. “So anyway, shit is blowing up all over the place. There are honest to God lasers, some real Star Wars bullshit. Our dudes are frying the crap out of anything that moves up there, but we can’t even touch them.” Terry gestured with his beer bottle as he talked, slopping suds down his arm. Gross.
“The bitch lands. One of those little bitches with the guns on ‘em. The hatch opens and we’re ready to go. I’m thinking this is it, we’re finally going to see what the bastards look like.”
“Then what?” asked Brandon.
“Motherfuckers leave.” Terry hooted laughter. “Just up and leave. Of all the lame-ass bullshit.”
“A diversion,” said Doc. “And you wouldn’t have won, even if they had been fighting you for real.”
“That fighting was real, bro,” said Terry. “You were back at the Hanger in your goddamn office, so how in the hell would you know? They had lasers. Our guys got toasted. I saw them, just burned up until there was nothing left.”
“How many men were ‘toasted?’ “ said Doc with a smile. “Twenty? Fifty? Don’t you think they could have wiped you all out without breaking a sweat if they’d wished to? A diversion. Poke the nest, then steal the honey while the good little soldier-bees tilt at windmills.”
“You don’t know shit,” Terry muttered into his beer. “He thinks he’s real smart,” he said, turning back to Brandon “But he was the one got us kicked off the mission.”
“Terrance, that will be quite enough,” said Doc.
“Are you an army guy, too?” I asked. I was pretty sure I had Terry’s number, but Doc was harder to pin down, and to my mind, that made him more dangerous.
“An intelligence officer,” said Doc. “Not a heroic marine like Terrance here, but yes, ‘an army guy.’ “
Terry snorted. “Haven’t seen you do much intelligence recently. He told the brass he was going to bag ‘em a ship, but what happened? My unit gets scragged, hostage is toast, and I end up demoted and stuck in this shit hole on another big-ass wild goose chase with him. I got a medal in Afghanistan, and he—”
“Shut up, Terry,” said Doc. His tone was mild, but Terry shut up.
Doc ate the rest of his soup in delicate spoonfuls while Terry watched him in sullen silence. Soup finished, Doc disappeared into the back room behind the kitchen. The door to that room was locked. I had tried all the doors in the house, had a good poke around while they’d all been sleeping. Not that I expected to find anything too creepy. These guys might be assholes, but it wasn’t like “Bluebeard,” where I was going to find a big room full of dead women.
It’s good to find out all you can, though.
Know your enemy.
Jake slept behind the sofa with the dog curled around him, a furry black and white comma. “Dog,” he’d started to call it, like it was a name. The name on the dog’s collar said “Bridie” but Jake called it Dog all the same. The two of them wore identical nervous expressions when either of the Army Guys were around.
“We’ll be out of here today,” I told Jake again when I’d woken him up in a vain attempt to get him to eat breakfast. He’d nodded, but he’d looked doubtful. I was beginning to feel pretty doubtful myself. Would Brandon want to leave? He hadn’t suggested staying here for good yet, but I just knew he was going to. In his mind, it probably made sense. Who knew what we’d find at the cabin, who knew how we’d take care of ourselves all winter long?
But Brandon didn’t know about Jake.
Doc and Terry didn’t know about Jake either, so it was probably safe for now. I wasn’t even sure I really knew about Jake. Or wanted to admit that I knew something. I’d been trying to avoid thinking about what happened at the mall—the way Jake had told those Drones to back off. Because he was Jake. One of us. Just a little kid, not a…whatever Drones turned people into. If Jake had been one of those people, one of the Taken, he would have gone to a ship, walked into the light like the Novaks and all those other people.
There were others who hadn’t been picked up by the ships, though. Stephie. Brandon’s dad. People who got held up, held back, and when people in charge, people like Doc and Terry got hold of those Taken…
Jake was playing a game with Dog, tossing someone’s old shoe, which Dog brought back to him, tail wagging, and bug-eyed with excitement. Jake even smiled a little at Dog’s antics. I didn’t think I’d ever seen him smile before. If the Taken were sick, infected somehow, then it could be right that the police and the army guys had taken them away.
Then I remembered Brandon’s dad.
Mona screaming and screaming after the drugs wore off.
The locked doors and the piles of dying people.
I needed a minute to settle my nerves, then I was gonna grab Brandon and get all three of us out of here. It had been dumb to stop here in the first place. In the back bedroom, I climbed into my sleeping roll, and tried to cry. Just one good cry was all I needed to clear my head. The lumped-up horrible feelings were there, but the tears which would relieve them wouldn’t come. I heard a hoot of drunken laughter from downstairs. At least Brandon was enjoying himself. I knew I should have told him about what happened at the mall with Jake, but if he’d known there was something wrong with Jake, would he have left him behind? Would he have left us both behind and gone on to the cabin alone?
Ugh, it was all such a mess.
I felt like punching something. Smashing the room up. That stupid pink lamp would have been fun to break for a start. It was nice to have real light again, but that was one butt-ugly lamp. When we got to the cabin, we’d have a generator and light of our own…
For a second, I couldn’t believe I’d been so dumb.
The power was on. I could charge the tablet!
As soon as the battery had enough charge to power up, I looked for a network. I was amazed that there was one at all, but of course it was locked and useless to me. I decided to try searching again—maybe there might be a weaker one that was unsecured?
“What in the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Doc stood in the doorway of the room.
“Just r
echarging,” I told him “I wanted to get online.”
“You did, did you? And why is that?”
I stared up at him. His face was red with rage. “To see what’s going on, why else? But the network’s locked, do you know…?”
“It’s a military network for essential communications only. Highly classified information. We’re in a state of martial law. You’re committing a crime even trying to break into it,” he snarled.
“Jeez! I wasn’t trying to break into anything! Why are you being so crazy?”
“Give the computer to me,” said Doc.
“No! It’s mine. I don’t have to give you anything.”
Doc took three short strides across the room. He snatched the computer from me, ripping the plug out of the socket.
“You can’t!” I screamed as he raised the tablet above his head. He threw it hard on the floor where it smashed. There were footsteps on the stairs, and Brandon and Terry appeared.
“What in the hell?” panted Brandon. “Why did you do that?”
Doc ignored him.
“Terry, put the boy somewhere secure.”
“What did I do?” asked Brandon, but I knew it wasn’t Brandon that Terry wanted.
Had they known what Jake was from the beginning? Had it really been that obvious?
Terry was pounding down the stairs.
“Brandon, stop him!”
A commotion of barking and swearing thundered in my ears, and then a thud and a yelp.
“Gracie, Doc, what’s happening? I don’t get it.” Brandon stared at the smashed tablet, at Doc, and I knew he was going to be no help. I darted for the door, but Doc grabbed my arm and jerked me back, twisting my wrist painfully.
“Let her go, man,” said Brandon. “You don’t have to drag her around like that, what the hell?”
“Brandon, please,” I sobbed, “they’re going to take Jake.”
Brandon
e just need to talk this through calmly, so I know what’s going on,” I pleaded. My head was pounding, and angry blood-flowers bloomed in my field of vision. If they’d all just quit shouting!
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