“Hey!” I shouted. “I’m awake. Why am I chained up?”
A light appeared high in the air. I couldn’t tell how big it was or how far away because I had no other frame of reference. The light slowly grew more intense as it warmed up, and I realized that it was a spotlight that had its beam directed somewhere behind me. I rolled over to see what was being lit up and nearly screamed.
I was lying below a giant face.
The thing must have been twenty feet high. It was the face of a woman, based on the puckered, painted lips. The skin was unnaturally white and smooth, which made me realize it wasn’t living. The eyes and nose were covered by an ornate silver mask. Attached to the top of the mask and jutting above it were several tall blue and gold triangles that came to points another twenty feet above the face. Each point was topped with a large, golden jingle bell the size of a basketball. Similar blue and gold points circled below the face like a collar. The silver mask itself was intricately decorated with looping detail that looked like waves. There was a half-moon on the forehead and something that looked like an ancient boat. Its eyes were closed, thank God.
Once I caught my breath, I realized it was a carnival mask . . . a very big carnival mask on a very big statue of a face of a very big woman. It appeared to be nestled in a bed of ornate greenery.
“What’s your name?” an amplified woman’s voice boomed from the general direction of the mask.
If the lips had moved or the eyes opened, I probably would have passed out again. Thankfully it wasn’t the big head talking. Somebody was pulling a Wizard of Oz stunt on me.
“Tucker Pierce. Where are my friends?”
“Why are you here?” she asked, ignoring my question.
“We heard the radio broadcast,” I replied, and as soon as I said that, a thought hit me. “Wait, the broadcast voice sounded like you. Who are you?”
“Where did you come from?” she asked.
I had been through an interrogation like this once before, when I was captured and sent to the SYLO compound on Pemberwick Island. I half expected Captain Granger to come strolling out from behind the big head/mask/statue/Oz/whatever thing.
“We came from Pemberwick Island. We’re looking for . . .”
I didn’t finish the sentence. I had to be careful. There was no way to know who this woman was or who the bikers were who had drugged and captured us like wild animals.
“Why don’t you cut the show and just talk to me?” I asked.
“We need to know exactly who you are and why you came here,” she said. “Your friends are safe and are also being questioned. If we are satisfied with your answers, we will join you.”
“And what if you aren’t satisfied?”
“You will die.”
Oh.
I had never been a great test-taker. I hoped I was up to the challenge. The only thing I could do was speak truthfully. If I thought lying would have helped, I would have lied, but without having any idea who my interrogator was, I figured it was best to just tell the truth.
I told her the whole story, beginning with Marty Wiggins’s death and ending with the bikers showing up to the Valley of Fire. It took a while. It was a long story.
The mask listened without asking questions. At least I think it was listening. It was hard to tell. It was a mask. My hope was that the others were telling the same story. If somebody (Kent) tried to get clever and head off in another direction, it could doom us all because then none of us would look credible.
I finished the story by saying, “And then I ended up here, chained to the floor, talking to a giant mask. It’s been a hell of a couple of weeks.”
There was a long silence. I think I was more nervous at that point than at any time before. It was like being a defendant waiting for the jury to come back with a verdict. Only this wouldn’t just be a verdict, it would be a sentence: life or death.
The spotlight went out, and I was back in black.
“Whoa!” I called. “I told you the truth. What more do you want from me?”
Another light appeared, only this one was much smaller, and it was moving. It came from behind the big mask, and I realized it was somebody with a headlamp.
One word came to mind: executioner.
I pulled against the chain that held me to the floor in the dumb hope that it would break loose, as opposed to the other dozen times I had tried.
“Look,” I said nervously, “there’s been way too much killing already.”
The person didn’t respond. The light moved closer until their shadow loomed over me.
I had a strange reaction. A second before I had been terrified. That terror changed to anger.
“You know what? Go ahead. Kill me. I’m done. You’d be doing me a favor. Use whatever magic weapon you’ve got and just do it!”
I’m not sure if I meant it. The killing part, that is. But I was definitely tired of being scared and didn’t want to deal anymore.
The person stood there for a moment, then reached into a pocket and pulled out a set of keys. The person knelt down and unlocked the shackle around my ankle.
I immediately pulled away and curled into a ball on the far end of the mat.
“How old are you?” the person asked. It was the same woman whose voice had been amplified during the interrogation.
“Fourteen,” I replied.
“Jeez,” she said and rubbed at her eyes. “You’re a baby.”
Was she crying?
“I’ve heard a lot of stories over the last couple of weeks,” she said. “But yours takes the cake. You gotta be some kind of special kid to come through all that.”
“So you believe me?” I asked.
“It’s the exact same story the others told,” she said. “So either you’ve all done a good job of cooking this up or it’s the truth.”
She had a slight drawl, which made me believe she had come from these parts.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“My name’s Charlotte,” she replied. “I’m a Clark County sheriff. At least I used to be.”
“So you’re not with SYLO? Or the Retros?”
“To be honest with you, Tucker, I never heard the term ‘Retros’ before you all showed up, and all I know about SYLO is that it’s the military outfit from the Navy that quarantined Pemberwick Island. We’re not part of either.”
“So then who are you?” I asked. “And would you mind losing the headlight?”
“Oh, sorry,” she said as she pulled the lamp off. She placed it on a chair I had no idea was next to me, shining the light back on herself.
Charlotte had short blond hair. Though she was small, she looked wiry and tough, like you’d expect a county sheriff to be. She looked about as old as my mom, but unlike my mom, I wouldn’t challenge her to an arm-wrestling contest. She had on her uniform, which was dark pants and a khaki shirt with sleeve patches that said: “Clark County Sheriff.” The shirt was wrinkled and worn. She’d been wearing it for a while.
“I’m just like you,” she replied. “A survivor of the massacre.”
“So the broadcast was real? You’re calling out to other survivors?”
“Real as rain, darlin’,” she said. “I don’t know about you, but I’m not one to take something like this sitting down. No, I take that back. I do know about you. You came a long way to be here. You may be young, but you’re a fighter.”
“What was with the bikers? And knocking us out in the middle of the desert?”
“Security,” she replied. “Anybody can hear that broadcast. We meet folks out in the middle of nowhere and bring ’em back here to size ’em up. To figure out if they’re with us or against us.”
“So there are others?” I asked.
Charlotte chuckled.
“You ain’t the only one left in the world with some fight in ’em. They’ve been coming from all over the country. From Canada and Mexico too. I’ve been doing plenty of these interrogations. Guess it comes from being a sheriff. I like the whole big-mas
k thing. Freaks people out. It’s good to keep your subject off-balance.”
Charlotte liked her job.
“Has anybody failed the test?” I asked.
Her expression turned dark.
“You may think we’re a loose bunch of delusional desperados, but make no mistake, young man, we are deadly serious. There have been a couple of bad seeds that the Air Force sent out on a . . . what would you call it? An exploratory mission. They didn’t pass the smell test.”
“And what happened to them?”
“They were sent back out into the desert,” she said with a shrug. “They won’t be comin’ back.”
“Oh man,” I said, stunned.
“I didn’t give it a second thought,” she said. “After what they done, they got off easy.”
My head was spinning, and it wasn’t because of the tranquilizer. As much as I had hoped that the broadcast was real and we would be meeting up with other survivors, deep down I didn’t believe it would happen.
I looked around at the darkened room and said, “So if I passed the test, are you going to tell me where we are?”
Charlotte gave me a mischievous smile.
“Better to show you. The sun’s just coming up, thank God. The nights are just too eerie for me. I’ve lived here my whole life, and there was never a time that the city wasn’t lit up at night as bright and sparkly as a Christmas tree. Not anymore. Now every light we’ve got runs on batteries.”
She stood up and offered me her hand. I took it, and when I stood up, my head went weak and I nearly toppled. Charlotte grabbed me and kept me from going over. She had to be a foot shorter than me, but she was strong.
“Easy there, pardner,” she said. “You still got some lingering effects. Tell you what. It’s tough negotiating through the dark on foot. We’ll take a boat.”
“A boat?”
“C’mon,” she said with a chuckle, and with one arm around my waist to steady me, she led me away from the freakin’ giant mask.
I began to get a sense of the room. It was big with a huge skylight overhead. Once the sun came up, the room would be completely lit. By then we would be gone. By boat. How could a boat be in the desert? Were we still in the desert?
“How long was I out?” I asked as we made our way through the hazy space.
“About twelve hours. Long enough to get you here and settled.”
Yeah, settled. Manacled was more like it.
“Where are my friends?”
“I suspect they’re headed to the same place we are.”
It was still too dark for me to make out any real detail, but it seemed as though we were walking along a narrow city street with shops on either side of a cobblestone sidewalk. But that didn’t make sense because we were definitely indoors.
It was about to make even less sense.
“Here we are,” Charlotte announced. “Hop in front. I’ll paddle us out of here.”
“Out of where?” I asked with growing confusion.
“Out of Venice, of course,” she said, chuckling.
It sounded like a joke, but we had stopped at a boat that looked very much like a gondola floating in a canal.
“Are we seriously in Venice?” I asked.
“Yup, but not for long.”
Charlotte was obviously having fun with me, and I stopped asking questions. When the sun came up, I’d see all I needed to see. I got in the front of the boat, or the gondola, or whatever it was, and sat on a seat that had an ornate cushion. Charlotte picked up a long oar that was yoked toward the stern and pushed us off. In seconds she was churning us along the narrow canal. We passed under elaborately decorated footbridges and slid by open courtyards that had statues in their centers. We also passed dozens of dark shops. We really were in Venice. Was it possible that the survivors flew us across the ocean in the twelve hours that I was out? I suppose anything was possible.
“Is this ever going to make sense to me?” I asked.
“Any second now,” she replied with a chuckle.
Up ahead I saw light, which meant the canal would bring us outside. Seconds later we slipped through an archway and into a wide pool. The sun hadn’t yet risen, but the sky was bright enough that I could make out detail through the gray haze.
It was like leaving a dream, only to enter a more impossible dream. Venice is one of those cities that you see in movies and in pictures and on TV, so it looks familiar even if you’ve never been there. There was a tall brick tower near an ornate footbridge that spanned the pool. Gondola docks with red-and-white barber poles ringed the pool.
It really was Venice.
But it wasn’t. I also saw huge, modern buildings that loomed over us. I saw what looked like a small volcano nestled amid palm trees, behind which were two pirate ships flying the Jolly Roger. In the distance, I could have sworn I saw the Eiffel Tower.
I was convinced that the tranquilizer was giving me hallucinations.
“Uh . . . what is this?” was all I managed to say.
“Never been here?” Charlotte asked. “Guess you’re a little young.”
“I don’t think you can be too young to be insane,” I said.
Charlotte laughed. “You’re not insane, though this place has driven plenty of folks off their rocker.”
“Where are we?” I asked, with more than a little desperation.
“It’s Las Vegas, Tucker. Haven’t you ever seen pictures? Or been to the movies?”
Las Vegas. I’d seen it on the map, not far from the Valley of Fire. Things were suddenly clicking into place. Charlotte was right. Las Vegas was the city that never sleeps, or something like that. But it sure looked sleepy to me. Every movie I’d seen of the place showed it with billions of glittering lights. But there was no power for that. Las Vegas was dead.
There were huge billboards advertising shows at places called the Mirage and the MGM Grand. Some had pictures of people who must have been superstars, but I didn’t recognize any of them. Men wore tuxedos and women wore shimmering gowns. They were bright and happy and ready to please.
They were probably dead.
It might have been some great destination for people to have fun and see shows and gamble and do whatever else you did in a fantasyland out in the desert, but now it was just another dark, empty city. The word Charlotte used to describe it totally fit: eerie.
Charlotte guided the gondola up to a dock that had ornate columns like you might see in Italy. The real Italy. This was a theme-park copy. She tied up the craft and gave me a hand to get out because my head was still spinning . . . and it had nothing to do with the tranquilizer.
“Let’s walk,” she said. “Newbies always get a little welcome speech. We’ll find your friends in a minute.”
We climbed up to street level from the lagoon, where I got a full view of this section of Las Vegas.
“It’s called the Strip,” Charlotte explained. “It’s where most of the big hotels and casinos are all jammed together in a four-mile stretch. Las Vegas is a big city, but this is where most of the action is.” She paused and added, “Or was.”
We walked out onto the street and took a left, heading toward the Eiffel Tower. As dead as the city was, it wasn’t abandoned. Far from it. People wandered out from the buildings to greet the new day. Some stretched. Some jogged. Others just walked quickly, as if working to stay in shape. There were all sorts of people representing most every nationality or ethnic group. All were in civilian clothes. This was not an army. Most of them were older than me, no big surprise, but I didn’t see any young kids at all. I guess that made sense. Anybody looking to join up with a band of rebels wouldn’t bring their toddler along for the ride.
“Why here?” I asked.
“It’s the perfect place to hide out,” Charlotte replied. “There’s a labyrinth of tunnels that run up and down the Strip and connect all the properties. What better place to stay underground and safe from them damned black planes? You know that drill.”
I did.
&n
bsp; “It’s like a rat warren down there. If those planes ever come looking for us, we can disappear into the depths like cockroaches.”
“Have they ever come looking?” I asked.
“Nope, but you’ll hear more about that at the briefing. We haven’t had a single incident since we started gathering here.”
“Is anybody in charge?” I asked.
“There’re a couple of guys. Good guys. We call ’em the Chiefs. A few have military backgrounds, so they’ve kept it all organized. Check this out.”
She pointed down a side street, where I saw a group of people jogging in perfect formation, four abreast, with a guy in green camo pants leading the way.
“It’s like they’re training,” I said.
“They are,” was her reply.
“How many survivors are here?” I asked.
“Last count was six hundred and fifty-two, including you.”
“Exactly?” I asked.
She shrugged and said, “Like I said, we keep it organized. Everybody counts here. We’re not playing this loose. There’s too much at stake.”
“So what’s the plan?” I asked. “It’s not like six hundred civilians can take on the Retros.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself, pardner,” she scolded. “You just got here.”
We passed more massive buildings that I guess were hotels. I saw one that looked like the Roman Colosseum surrounded by statues right out of ancient Italy. The Eiffel Tower was real, or at least as real as an almost-full-sized replica built in America could be. A gigantic Statue of Liberty stood guard in front of a replica of the New York City skyline . . . that had a roller coaster snaking through it. There was a medieval castle and an Egyptian pyramid guarded by a sphinx. Everything along the Strip was monster-sized: a Coke bottle, a guitar, a golden lion that loomed over the boulevard. I didn’t understand what huge replicas of actual places and things had to do with gambling, but I’d never been to Las Vegas, so what did I know?
Charlotte led me into a fancy hotel that didn’t look like it was trying to copy any specific country or city. We entered a lobby that had a ceiling covered with thousands of paper flowers of every size, color, and shape you could imagine. It was actually kind of pretty, and less cheesy than anything I’d seen so far.
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