The Angel & the Brown-eyed Boy (12 page)

“Be quiet!” The voice was rough.

Her eyes rolled back and she disappeared into unconsciousness.

V
al stalked into the dance studio, gun held before her with both hands. Her team flanked her, with Mercier somewhere behind them. The practice room was empty.

“Stand down,” Val barked and turned to the teacher. “Where is she?”

“I have no idea. She was there,” she said, pointing at the spot.

Val scanned the room. Empty. She saw the bank of windows to the left, the grand piano at the far end, the door to its right. A ballet studio in an old school. Unremarkable, except for one thing.

“This is a new room.” Except for the wooden floor and windows, the room was new cement. The edges and corners of the poured concrete were crisp, not showing any of the aging that a building this old would exhibit.

“Yes,” Madame Mercier replied. “A few years ago, maybe five or six, the trustees received a gift from a benefactor.”

“Who?”

“Mrs. Edgarton. She’s on the board.”

Val’s eyes narrowed. Everyone knew Mrs. Edgarton. She practically ran the country. She only slept with men richer and more famous than herself. That left the general, President Charles, and the tsar.

“Mrs. Edgarton funded a redo of the school?”

“Just the basement and foundation and some structural supports. The theatre was refurbished, as was this studio, and the offices and practice rooms behind that door. She redid the electrical system, as well.”

“Why?”

“The school was about to be condemned. The basement was crumbling; the building could collapse. The electrical system could have burned the place down. It had to be done.”

“The girl must have come to and run away through that door,” Val said. “Unless something came out and dragged her back there.”

“Richard is the only one back there. He wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

“We’ll see.” Val raised her weapon and nodded to her men. “Follow me.”

The team reached the doorway at the end of the room and opened it. The hallway was absolutely black. They shot their high-intensity flashlight beams down it and could see nothing.

“Let’s go in,” Val ordered.

“Richard’s room is up there,” Madame Mercier called from the rear of the column.

They found a door with the top glass panel blown out. “That’s his room,” Mercier shouted. Val motioned the agents to enter. They had flak jackets, flashlights, and enough weaponry to subdue anything.

“Holy shit!” That was Will. “Jesus, what a mess.”

Val moved quickly through the door and shone her light inside. Her nose wrinkled. Few people knew how badly the contents of human intestines smelled when ripped open. She stepped over a severed leg. Muscle and skin, guts and their contents, and pieces of the body were thrown all over. The floor was slippery with blood. Lockers were tossed around as though a giant had been playing with them. A barbell loaded with weights was imbedded in the wall.

“Here’s his head,” Will said from behind some downed lockers. “Oh, my God.”

That kid Richard had been shredded by something that hated him very much.

“Madame Mercier... stop, don’t come in.”

But she had already entered the room and was standing beside the head of her favorite student and lover. It looked like it had been gnawed and partially consumed.

“Oh.” She held one hand to her throat for an instant. “Richard. Who did this to you?” She bent over his ruined head.

Val moved back to the room’s door and spoke into her walkie-talkie, leaving the other woman to her grief. “We need reinforcements. Full backup. This is Code Red. Repeat: Code Red. We have an act of terrorism.”

When the blast came, the only thing that saved her was the fact that she was in the doorway.

“T
hat was well done, Mel,” a voice Eliana didn’t recognize said. “Find an alien and scare her to death.”

“I’m sorry, Jeremy. I wanted to keep her quiet until we could get her in here and explain.”

“Why didn’t you say, ‘Olga, I’m your teacher, Mr. Adams. We’re trying to save your life.’ That would reassure her, don’t you think?”

“Look, I’m sorry. I’ve had a lot on my mind. I mean, shit...”

“I’ve been having a bad day, too, Mel, trying to save my friends from the nuclear holocaust tomorrow morning. I just found out, too. I thought you could handle a skinny girl.”

The second voice was higher than the first one, which told Eliana that the person was younger. She was in a state where she could hear and think, but not move.

“How long until she comes out of it?”

“Beats me, Mel. I don’t know that much about aliens.”

“But you did predict this behavior.”

“Yeah. That comes from sampling off-world communication. She wasn’t out long with No Mercy. She should come around soon.”

The girl’s eyes popped open.

“Olga, don’t be afraid. It’s Mr. Adams. Remember me from class this morning?”

“Call him Mel, Olga. Don’t stand on preapocalyptic ceremony.”

“Olga, It’s Mel—”

She touched her chest and said, “Eliana.”

“That’s better.”

She sat up. They were in a dimly lit room. Blowing instruments and music stands were everywhere. She knew things like this from her world. It was a music-playing place.

“This is Jeremy.” Mel pointed to a boy with his back to her. He was moving very fast, doing something with the boxes at the end of the room. “He’s getting us out of here.”

Jeremy spoke to Mel, tossing words over his shoulder. He moved tensely and kept his back to them. “We gotta go. They’ll be in the hallway in a minute.”

“I’ll explain as we get out of here, Eliana.” Mel moved to the far wall and pushed something. A doorway opened. They entered another room. Big squares with moving pictures in them filled every wall. They were like the “TV” she had seen at Henry and Lena’s home, but there were many, many more of them.

Some screens showed the sky; others were filled with numbers and lines. Another showed every room in the school, changing from one to another quickly. Rooms in other buildings were shown, buildings she didn’t know. Jeremy slipped through the door and began doing what he had before, moving from one machine to another, doing something behind them. She stared, but her teacher took her shoulders and moved her through the room.

“Eliana, we have to leave right now. Jeremy’s destroying his lab so no one can trace what he’s got. We have to get out...” He steered her to a circular metal thing on the wall, big enough to step through. It had a round wheel in the center.

“Jeremy, unlock it will you?” Mel called over his shoulder. The wheel buzzed and they heard clicking noises. Mel spoke quickly to her while the door unlocked.

“Jeremy’s the Hermitage Academy’s big secret. He’s a computer genius. The techies think he’s a god. He works out of this secret lab, which he and his mom built behind his music studio. Everyone in the school thinks he a weirdo, down here practicing for hours. He’s really saving the planet.

“He’s one of the prime movers in the revolution, and the FBI’s most wanted criminal.” Mel’s voice faltered. “Jeremy got me a new identity. I’d be dead without him.”

“Mel, get out of here. The door’s unlocked.” Jeremy kept moving rapidly from one computer to another.

Mel turned the circle in the door. It unscrewed from the wall.

“Mel, go! Arthur is waiting for us,” Jeremy said, continuing to reverse plugs and switches.

He never turned to look them, but Eliana could see that he was small for his people. He was bigger than her, but smaller than most of the boys in the school. His hair was dark and curled in ringlets. The skin of the back of his neck and hands was dark, but lighter than Henry’s. She couldn’t see his face.

“Get out, Mel!” Jeremy shouted.

Jeremy pulled little square things out of the computers. He shoved them into a carrying bag like the other students had. “Go. I’ll blow the lab when you’re in the tunnel.” He looked around the room and she saw his profile. He had wide lips and smooth skin. “I said, go!”

Mel turned the handle in the middle of the circle a few more times, and then yanked on it. The round door opened out, revealing utter blackness.

“Here,” Mel said, reaching into the darkness behind the door and handing her a helmet. “Put this on. You turn it on like this.” The light on the front of his miner’s helmet lit up. “Let’s go.”

She slipped through the round opening after him.

“Let’s go. Jer will catch up.” She ran down a passageway with her teacher. It was cement; she knew what it was from her time in this world. This world seemed to be made of cement. They hadn’t
gotten too far when a light appeared behind them. She heard squealing noises as the door was closed.

“Run, you idiots.” They heard Jeremy running hard behind them.

She was thrown off her feet by the blast. Dust filled the air. She could hear chunks of cement falling behind her.

“You OK, Jer?” Mel said.

After a pause, she heard, “Yeah. I’m OK. Keep going. Get moving.”

They ran. The tunnel emptied into a larger tunnel. Their lights revealed cement vaults, muck and mud. Discolored cement. Filthy water in a shallow trough extended as far as they could see.

“This is how we’ll escape,” Jeremy said.

“Great, Jer,” Mel said. “What about that?” A very heavy metal grate covered the opening between them and where they wanted to go.

Jeremy pulled something from his backpack. He flipped down welder’s goggles on his helmet and lit the end of a metal canister. He worked like he welded every day. He didn’t say anything, quickly removing a section from the grate large enough for them to get through. When they’d entered the older channel, he looked up and down the tunnels.

“These are the sewers of New York,” Jeremy said. “Where the giant mutant alligators live and vampire societies flourish.”

“Do they?” Mel looked apprehensive.

“We better hope not. We’re going that way.” He pointed left. “Go. I’m going to blow the tunnel.” He looked down at the canister he’d used to cut the grating and flipped some switches before tossing it up the tunnel they’d just left.

“Go,” he shouted. “It will blow in thirty seconds!’

Eliana stared at the liquid in the sewer.

“I don’t like it, either, but we have to move!” Jeremy shouted.

“It’s not that,” Mel said. “Maybe water’s poisonous to her or something.”

Jeremy grabbed her feet, Mel her torso. She kept her big coat on, clutching it to her body. It made her an awkward bundle. She wouldn’t take it off.

“If we have to carry her all the way, we won’t make it.”

The second blast threw them from their feet again. They dropped Eliana in the confusion. Her calf was splashed with sewer water and a corner of the coat got wet. She rolled up in a ball clutching her lower leg. They could feel her pain, even though she didn’t make a sound.

“Look at that—water eats right through her skin.”

“Fuck.” Jeremy rummaged in his backpack. “What can fix that?”

“Oy,” she said.

“Oy,” Mel replied. “Like oy vey?”

“Oy. Oy-l.”

Jeremy found a container of machine oil in his backpack. “Is this OK?”

She sniffed it, tasted it, and then poured it over her wound. It began healing instantly. Mel reached over and wrung out the corner of her coat.

“That’s as good as we can do right now,” he said.

Eliana went up on her pointes, clutching the can of oil. “I go there.” There was the four-inch ledge rimming the sewage channel.

“Let’s do it.” Jeremy swung his backpack up and they charged after her, barely keeping pace. The coat ballooned behind her.

“OK. Stop.” Jeremy came to a halt and pulled a small screen from his bag. He turned it on and held it in front of him. Colors and lines filled it. He pointed at a spot on the screen. “Arthur should be right there with the car. It’s more than ten blocks from the school. That should be outside any perimeter they set up.” A branch of the sewer diverged to the right. They took it for a few hundred yards.

Jeremy looked up through the opening. “This must be it,” he whispered. “The grate’s missing.” He whistled. A similar whistle responded.

“Here. Climb up on my shoulders,” he said to Eliana. She clambered up his back and disappeared into the daylight. She heard them talking from below.