Atlantic Island (31 page)

Finally, one of the men turned and grunted. Theo watched him carefully. This was the man who had slept through Theo's arrival. He was the largest of the men and he was black. The other two were white, or maybe Hispanic. Theo couldn't really tell. The man slowly rose from his deep slumber. His eyes grew wide when he saw Theo sitting across the room from him. "Whuzzat…who…who are you?"

"I'm Theo Essex… I was thrown in here with you last night."

The man laughed. "Essex, huh? You and everybody else in this place."

"I don't follow," Theo said.

The man studied him as if he was examining a curious slide under a microscope.
 

"Wait a minute," he said, "you're really him, aren't you? Theo Essex. Damn."

"You've heard of me?"

The man laughed. It was a warm sound, welcoming in the chilly room. "Of course. You're the guy the Supreme Leader wants dead. Every guy in this place has claimed to be you or to be friends with you, just to piss off the guards. Man, never thought I'd be the one to be talking to the real deal. Name's Tony."

Theo was struck by recognition. "Tony? Is your wife's name Jane?"
 

The man's jaw dropped. "You know Janie? You've seen her? Is she okay?"

"She's fine. My friends and I would all be dead by now if it hadn't been for Jane. She kept us all safe in the house where she was sent when you were arrested. It never occurred to me that you might be her husband."

Tony laughed. "Why? Because I'm black and she's white? All kinds of crazy things happening on this island."

Theo smiled. "No, not that at all. I just never expected to meet you. To me you're a pretty mythical name too."

"That's great," said Tony. Suddenly, he frowned as a thought dawned on him. "Wait… if you're here, we're all in big trouble, aren't we?"

"Well, that's what I was hoping to talk to you about. And those other guys. I just didn't want to wake them."

"Hell with that, man. Hey, Wes, Jason, get your lazy butts up! We've got a visitor."

The men Tony called Wes and Jason cursed him off, but got up just the same. They had seen Theo's arrival last night, and curiosity was motivating them to find out just what was so exciting.
 

"Boys," said Tony, "This here, believe it or not, is Theo Essex. The one and only."

"Really?" asked the man to Theo's left. "I expected more."
 

Theo felt a pang of concern. How was he going to inspire these men to listen to him? Then the man smiled. "I'm just joking. I'm Wes. That over there is Jason. I take it you already know Tony."

"Yes," said Theo. He stood up, hoping that raising himself above the others would subconsciously convey a sense of authority. "I know why you are all here, and it's really no different than why I'm here. We all made the mistake of upsetting Tiberius. What I don't have is the luxury of time. Tiberius wants to publicly execute me, to keep others from following in your footsteps."

"Jeez, you sure?" asked Jason.

"Pretty sure, yes. But here's the thing: I have it on good authority that there's a force coming to free all of us and to move against Tiberius. There's a war starting tonight, but it will take all of us to make a difference, and they won't be able to get us out if we don't do our part from the inside."

The men looked skeptical. "Pretty much every man who said he didn't like Tiberius's hair color is locked up in here," said Wes. "What kind of an army could there possibly be?"

Theo had to smile. "You all have wives or girlfriends?" Wes and Jason nodded. "That's my army. All the women you were forced to leave behind. Oh, and they are being led by my girlfriend."

There was an incredibly awkward silence. Then the men burst into laughter. Tony looked like he was going to have a heart attack, he was laughing so hard.
 

"Our…wives!" he managed, "Our wives and your girlfriend…gonna lead a war!" Theo remained calm. Gradually, the men saw how serious his face was and the truth hit them. "Oh, hell," said Tony. "You're serious."

"I wish I wasn't," said Theo. "I know how much that scares you. I'm scared every second that I stop and think of what Kylee is going to be getting herself into. But they are coming, whether we want to protect them or not. The best we can do for them is help them from our end."

"But we have no weapons!" said Jason. "How are we supposed to fight?"

"As best we can," said Theo. "The rebels are bringing plenty of firepower, enough for every prisoner. But they won't be able to get to us without our help. There's too much of the Security Force consolidated in the prison."

"So what do you want us to do?" asked Wes.
 

"We are going to create a distraction. A riot. Disarm and defeat as many soldiers as we can, but mainly keep them so focused on us that they can't organize a defense against the rebels."

"And you think that four of us can make that kind of a distraction?" asked Tony. "How do you know they won't just kill us and go to dinner?"

"I don't think they'd be so quick to kill me or anyone involved with me, if they can help it," Theo said. "That wouldn't give Tiberius the show he's craving. But more important than that, I wasn't planning on it being just the four of us. We need to get everybody here involved. Do you have any ideas?"

Jason stood up. Theo could tell the man's mind was working and his enthusiasm was growing. "The only time we see everybody is at lunch downstairs. There's going to be a ton of guards in the place. We'll have to rely on whisper-down-the-lane and hope that when you give a signal everybody will jump up."

"That could work," Theo said. "It's a little more of a risk than I'd like to take, but we really are working with very limiting constraints. This has to happen tonight. So we will spread word around at lunch."

"What do you want to tell people to do?" asked Wes.
 

"How do you get the guards to come to your room?" Theo asked.
 

"Sit right there and I'll learn you a couple things, new guy."

Jason walked over to the entrance to the room. A little button that resembled a doorbell was next to the heavy metal door.
 
He pushed the button and stepped back, waiting. A minute later, the locks turned in the door, and it opened to reveal a masked Security Force agent, gun in hand.
 

"What?" asked the agent. "You know it's not time for breakfast. This better be good."

"I just wanted to see if you'd been washing yourself properly," Jason said. He made a show of sniffing the air. "Nope, you still stink."
 

The guard stepped forward and in one smooth motion jabbed the butt of his gun into Jason's stomach. Jason fell to his knees gasping for air.
 

"That's what you get, funny man. Leave me alone unless it's something important. You got me?"

He slammed the door and Theo heard the locks turn back into place. He ran over to Jason who was still holding his stomach. Jason looked up at him and smiled. "And that's the way it's done."

Theo was shocked and impressed by the man's enthusiasm and lack of fear. He supposed that a little time spent locked up with all of one's rights stripped away could harden a person. "Okay," he said, "are all the prisoners in shared rooms like this?"

"Absolutely," said Wes. "The leadership wasn't about to treat us to our own private spaces. It's three or four to a room all around, from what I've heard."
 

"That works. Here's what we have to do: Spread the word at lunch that one minute after dinner is served to the rooms, each room hits the button to bring a guard. Now of course, they don't have enough guards for each room, but that's fine. The important thing is every single guard on the floors for "political prisoners" will go to a room. It's the job of the prisoners in that room to grab the guard and disable him. I know that's a big risk, but it's the way we have to do this. Those prisoners have to let the others out."

"I think this might be crazy enough to work," said Tony. "What do we do then?"

"Then we head to the stairs and fight any remaining Security Force guards on our way to the entrance. By then they will know that Kylee and the rebels are nearby, even if they haven't quite arrived yet. We have to hold off guards until the rebels arrive. At that point, the responsibility to get us out of there falls to our army, and your next orders should come from Kylee."

Theo walked into the prison cafeteria. It had once been some kind of restaurant in the building's former existence as a hotel. What fascinated Theo about everything he had seen so far in the prison was how quickly the Security Force had been able to get the building secure. With limited resources and a very small talent pool, Tiberius had been able to create a very tightly controlled facility. The halls were all lined with concrete, and special, massive doors separated segments of the building. Guards patrolled every nook and cranny of the place. The restaurant had been stripped bare. In place of the booths and tables that had once filled the room, a series of metal picnic tables has been erected.

Men sat quietly at the various tables or waited in line for food. Theo saw to his surprise that the prison rations were not very different from those provided to everybody on the island, or at least the people outside the city. Baked rolls and simple vegetables were on offer. Theo thought again about the suspicions he and his friends shared about Tiberius's advanced knowledge of the hurricane. If the leadership hadn't known it was coming, how did they know to make sure to harvest crops from the farms before they were destroyed in the flooding?

Too late to worry about that now, he thought. Theo waited in line with the other men from his room. The four of them knew what they had to do: get every man in the room on board with the plan for the evening. The plan itself was full of potential risk and room for slipups. Theo had to convince people that the risks were worth taking, and he had to hope that Tony, Wes and Jason could do the same.
 

He kept an eye on the other men throughout the meal, as he talked to the five at his table. He could feel the guards who surrounded the room watching him, though it was impossible to tell under what Bill called the "death masks," black glass and carbon fiber helmets shaped like a cross between the head of a robot and a skeleton. Theo tried to concentrate on the conversation. He had not been sure he would be given an opportunity to speak, but that proved not to be a problem. Somehow, word had spread about the arrival of the mysterious Theo Essex, the teenager who had resisted Tiberius. The men at his table looked at him in a way he imagined celebrities would recognize immediately.
 

The men saw him as the one who would save them, and Theo used that to his advantage, carefully firing the men up for the night's uprising. When he had finished giving what he thought was a fairly inspirational speech, he sat back and waited to see how the men would respond.
 

"You're telling me that my wife is going to war with Tiberius tonight?" one asked.
 

"Yes, that's probably right," Theo said.
 

"Well if she can be brave enough for this, so can I. I'm in, Theo."

The other men shared similar assent. Now came the important part. "I need you guys to go sit elsewhere. Pretend you don't want to have to sit with the new kid. Spread around the room and tell everyone what I told you. This is our one chance to share the plan."

The men listened, jumping up from the table. One yelled out, "Fine, new kid, see how you like sitting by yourself!"
 
Theo saw the guards move their hands to their guns, watching the men carefully, but the men simply went to new tables, sitting all around the room. Theo made eye contact with Tony and they nodded at each other. The word was moving around the room. Tonight, the wrongfully jailed citizens of Atlantic Island would fight back.
 

Theo finished his lunch in silence. In the back of his mind it occurred to him that this might be the last meal he would be able to eat for a while, possibly forever.
 
If so, he was going to enjoy every bite as best he could. He hoped Kylee and his friends were enjoying their meals and not worrying too much about the rebellion. Worry would do nobody any good. This had to happen. Whether it succeeded or not was not for him to decide. He would simply do the very best he could.

Kylee knew things were going too well. The rebels had progressed past ten streets without so much as a stray animal running by, not that many animals were left alive on the island. She felt her confidence in herself and the mission growing with each cleared block.
 
And yet, a voice in the back of her mind said,
this is all too easy. It can't possibly continue this way.

And so it was that when the sniper fired the first shot of the war and dropped one of her soldiers to the ground, that voice spoke behind the panic.
Told you so.

The sniper's gun made no sound, at least not one that could be heard over the marching feet and squeaking SUV wheels. Kylee only knew something had happened when the women around the victim of the shot screamed.