South Village (Ash McKenna) (26 page)

“We can,” he says. “I trust him.”

“Okay. We do that then.”

W
e walk in silence, twin beams of light slicing the dark, showing us the safe paths to take. We climb through the woods and it’s quiet all around us. Every few hundred feet I stop and put my hand on Tibo’s chest to get him to stay still.

The third time I do it, he asks, “Why?”

“Listen. In case someone is following us. Do you hear anything?”

“No.”

“Good.”

I need him to listen. I can still hear whispers out in the dark.

We get to the bus and check around it, make sure Katashi or Marx isn’t lying in wait. After we’re sure the area is clear I search for the tree. It takes a little while to find in the darkness, but finally I do. Run my finger through the gouge I made in the bark.

I dig a little.

Then a little more.

Come up with nothing but dirt.

Tibo asks, “What?”

“It’s gone.”

“Are you sure this is the right tree?”

I touch my finger to the mark again. “Positive.”

“That’s not good,” Tibo says.

I fall back into the dirt and sit, staring up at the canopy. “No, it’s not.”

Maybe Katashi poked around after I left. Maybe someone else was following me. Regardless, it’s gone. The cipher is still safely tucked in my e-mail and my phone, but I’ve got nothing to pair it with. The code is useless without the book. The last I checked my phone, none of the other bookstores had gotten back to me in the affirmative.

We are back to zero.

I
shine the flashlight on the boardwalk, regret not asking Tibo to come with me, because the whispers are freaking me, even though I know they’re not real. I stop a few times and try to listen but can’t make out what they’re saying. It’s a jumble. And if I stand for too long I get that feeling of climbing up the basement steps as I turn out the lights, and something is coming up behind me so I have to outrace it.

First, I stop in the library dome. After making sure it’s empty I grab the first book in arm’s reach.
I Am Legend
by Richard Matheson. There’s my fake cipher. Let Katashi have fun with that. Then it’s off to the kitchen, which is clean and spotless. Zorg does good work. I put on the kettle and prep an extra strong dose of valerian root. Something to get me through the night. I can’t say this for sure, but I feel like if I make it through tonight, I’m going to be in the clear. I have this feeling, like dawn breaking over the horizon.

I won’t be cheesy enough to call it hope. But it definitely feels optimistic.

Once the tea is done I dump it in a thermos, head back to the bus, which is empty. I give it a quick sweep with the flashlight, turn on the rope light and have a look around. I’m so tired, and within moments, I feel the drag, pulling me under the surface of the water, but this time, it’s far less terrifying.

If anything, it feels comforting.

T
he dream is different.

It’s not raining, which is the first big difference. The sun is out. A rare sight in Portland. I’m still digging the hole, still covered in mud. But Wilson isn’t here. I turn and Chell and my dad are standing over me, arms crossed. They’re soaking wet but the sun behind them is bright and shining strong.

We stand there like that, them looking at me.

Something about their demeanor has softened. It used to be, when they looked at me like this, it was an emotion somewhere on the scale from anger to frustration. Now, I can’t put my finger on it, exactly, but I would say it’s more like pity.

Which is better, actually.

They both open their mouths to speak and I wake up.

I
phase in and out of sleep. Sometimes I hear a crack outside the bus and it could be something or nothing. Real or imagined. Voices drift in through the windows. I’m getting used to the feeling now. It’s less terror-inducing.

I think maybe I’ve been asleep for eight or nine hours but it’s still dark, so I click on my phone and the blinding white light tells me it’s 2 a.m., which does not bode well. I see someone in the corner of the bus, but when I hold up the phone to illuminate the area, there’s no one there.

The phone goes off and plunges us back into darkness and I think I see someone sitting in the corner again. Scratch at my arms to get the bugs off but don’t feel any bugs. What I would give to be in a hotel. Around people. With a television I could leave on. Just the electric hum, making me feel like I’m not alone. Out here, it’s alone alone. I consider going to Tibo’s bunk, or checking in with the cam girls, to have someone to spend the night with.

Truthfully, I wish Aesop were here.

T
he sun is out. I lift my head off the cot, look around. Katashi is sitting at the wheel of the bus, facing me. He’s flipping through the copy of
I Am Legend
.

“I’m glad to see you came around,” he says.

I get up, walk past him and off the bus. The sky is washed gray and it’s raining softly. Still hot, but nice nonetheless. I piss against a tree and get back on the bus, open the thermos, take a sniff. Christ this stuff is nasty cold, but I take a little sip, something to even me out. I will be happy to leave this behind. No more treating problems with substances. After this, it’s clean living.

“Did you decode it?” Katashi asks. “Do you want to save me the trouble?”

“Nah, that’s the beginning and end of the favors I’ll be doing for you,” I tell him.

“You think because you handed this over, this makes you square?”

“Nope. But, and I would like to point this out again for posterity, I do not like you. I do not like your organization. I do not like how you handled things here. So go, do what you have to do. I gave you what you wanted. I don’t want to be involved anymore.”

He gets up and offers me his hand.

“You saved a lot of lives,” he tells me.

I look down at his hand until he retracts it and gives me a withering look.

“Have fun,” I tell him. “Tell Marx I said hi.”

“Oh we’re going to nail that motherfucker,” he says, smiling.

“He is a dick, but part of me doesn’t blame him.”

“What do you mean?”

“With his parents. The way they died. The fire.”

Katashi laughs. “You bought that shit?”

“What do you mean?”

“Marx’s name is Bryon Turner. He’s some trust fund kid from LA. His parents are alive. Who do you think pays for him to travel around the country and live like a hippie? Don’t get me wrong, he’s dangerous, but no, his whole backstory is a myth. Honestly, I think he uses it to get laid.”

Huh. That certainly changes things. And now I dislike him even more.

“And, look, one last thing,” he says. “I’m sorry for jumping you in the woods. That was bad form. But I had to get the book and didn’t want to blow my cover.”

“Wait… that was you?”

Oh shit.

That doesn’t make sense. I thought it was Marx or Gideon.

Katashi gets a funny look on his face and for a second I think he’s piecing together that there’s something wrong, but after a moment he says, “Like I said, I’m sorry. I thought you had the book on you. I didn’t realize it was the wrong book.”

He thinks I’m really angry. That’s good. I mean, I am. But this means I was wrong about the book. He had
The Monkey Wrench Gang
. And they got the cipher at the black site.

“You are an asshole,” I tell him.

“Well, here’s a little payback. I would get far away from this place if I were you.”

“What do you mean?”

“It means you’re about to have some company.”

He smiles his snake smile at me and leaves the bus, disappearing into the woods.

I don’t like the way that sounds. I step out into the morning air. The rain seems to be picking up, but besides the sound of it tapping the leaves, the forest is quiet. The air is stagnant. Like all the animals up and left, anticipating something was about to go down.

I step into the bus, put all my belongings into a backpack, and cinch it tight to my back. Leave behind a few items of clothing that I feel like I can live without because I don’t want to be weighed down. Go outside and count off the paces to my coffee can stuffed with cash. It takes a minute of digging to get down to it, and that, at least, is untouched. I take the money and stuff it in my bag. Wonder if I’ll be coming back.

I run back to the main part of camp, get to the clearing as the rain is picking up and people are diving for cover. Tibo steps out of the kitchen and says, “I was looking for you. I called Ford…”

“It was the wrong book.”

“What?”

“Katashi. He jumped me. They had the book and the cipher, but they still couldn’t translate it, which means I had the wrong book.”

“So… how do we find the right book?”

I nod toward the library, figuring that’s as good a place as any to start. We step inside, the rain now nearly torrential outside. It’s empty, so I pull off my backpack, stash it in a dark corner where it can’t be easily seen—better that than it getting soaked—and walk the spiral stack reaching up to the ceiling.

“Let’s work this out,” I tell him. “First thing first. Why use a book cipher in the first place?”

“Easy to move around,” Tibo says. “You can send it over e-mail or by the mail, and even if the wrong person sees it, it doesn’t matter. You can’t translate it unless you have the right book.”

“Correct. Now, the Soldiers of Gaia are a terrorist group, right? Cells that aren’t connected to each other. Clearly, because Pete was the only one here connected to them. Marx wasn’t able to contact them, or else why need the cipher? So, think about that for a second. You’ve got a lot of people spread out like that…”

It hits me. Something I should have realized sooner. And maybe I would have, if I wasn’t either drunk or withdrawing.

“What’s the point of picking a book that’s so damn hard to find?” I ask.

“So you think it’s something easier to track down,” Tibo says.

“Maybe.”

“How did you even settle on
The Monkey Wrench Gang
in the first place?”

“Cannabelle. She said she saw Pete carrying it around. I figured that was the book he had before he died. I found it in the library. I thought…”

“That’s not precise at all. That’s required reading for environmental activists.”

I think back. The scene of Pete’s death. There’s something there. Something scratching at me. Something I saw that stood out as weird.

And then I remember.

W
hoever searched my bus seems to have searched Pete’s tree house, too. Everything is put back in its place but still feels slightly off. Sitting out, like before, is
The Kiss of the Rose
. Seems I’m not the only person stupid enough to overlook it.

“That’s it?” Tibo asks as I pick it up.

The cover says it’s a
New York Times
best-seller. I flip through to the copyright page, and find it came out last year. “This is new. And popular. Way easier to find.”

“So whoever took the stuff you hid has bad information.”

“Right. And it couldn’t have been Katashi, or else he wouldn’t have shown up this morning. So figure it’s someone on Marx’s team. Either way—I think we might be the only ones who actually have everything we need.”

I pick up the book and pull out my phone. Still enough juice to see the cipher.

“Do you have a pen?” I ask.

“No.”

“Let’s go see the girls. They’re close. Might help to have the computer, too.”

We make our way out of the tree house, climbing down the branches, careful not to slip on the wet bark. I hop onto the boardwalk and jog for the camgirl house, which isn’t too far away, Tibo right behind me. We get there and I knock. There’s some shuffling inside and Sunny peeks her head out. I can’t see anything past her collarbone, but she doesn’t seem to be wearing any clothes.

“We need light and a computer and various other things,” I tell her, stumbling over my words.

“Ash, we’re broadcasting right now…”

Tibo pokes his head around. “Sunny, it’s important. I’ll hold you harmless on the camp’s cut for the next two months if you stop the show and let us in.”

Sunny thinks about it for a second and says, “Three months.”

“Deal.”

She disappears. There’s murmuring inside. After a few moments Sunny opens the door in a flower-print robe. Moony is standing behind her, barefoot in a too-long t-shirt, face flushed, looking a little annoyed. I think there’s a third person in the room with them, lying on the pillows at the center of the room, but then realize it’s a blow-up sex doll with “NIK” written across the stomach.

We step inside and the bright light makes us both squint. Tibo looks around at the shelves, and the glittering rainbows of sex aids, and says, “That’s an awful lot of dildos.”

Moony smiles and shrugs.

Sunny sees the book in my hand and says, “Why do you have that piece of trash?”

“Hey, that wasn’t a bad book,” Moony says.

“Here we go again. She writes like a grade-schooler.”

“Yeah, and she’s also a multi-millionaire,” Moony says. “Clearly she understands something about the world that you don’t, smarty pants.”