Crisis Zero (20 page)

I
WASN'T SURE HOW LONG I WAS GOING TO HAVE TO STAND THERE
and wait for someone to answer the door. And so I hit the doorbell at least a dozen times to ensure that
someone
would wake up and answer it. Turns out, even at that hour, you didn't have to wait that long to get yelled at after ringing someone's doorbell incessantly.

A light flickered on and then I saw part of a face peer out through a small window. The door swung open. A middle-aged man wearing only a bathrobe and boxer shorts scowled at me.

“I'm going to call the cops,” he said.

“I need to speak to Ms. Pullman,” I said, ignoring him.

“She's
sleeping
,” he said through gritted teeth. “What . . . how . . .”

He seemed too angry and too tired to be able to put together rational questions. It was hard to blame him. Were it not for all the adrenaline from what I'd been through and was about to go through, I'd have been passed out by this point.

“It's important.
Please.
” I tried to look as desperate as I felt.

“John, who is it?” a voice said from inside the house.

I looked past the guy and saw Ms. Pullman standing in the hallway, also wearing a robe. Her eyes were squinting and her hair was frazzled. As if she'd just been rudely awakened in the middle of the night.

“
Carson
?” she said, clearly shocked when she spotted me.

“Hi, Ms. Pullman,” I said. “I'm so sorry to bother you but it's important.”

“What's wrong?” she asked, sounding more concerned than annoyed.

“It's, uh, hard to explain.”

“Well, you had better hurry then,” John said, “because
I don't want to miss the end of it when the police arrive.”

He had a phone in his hand now.

“Wait, please, I just need to talk to Ms. Pullman for two minutes. Then you can call the cops.”

John glanced at his wife. She shrugged and nodded. He looked back at me and rolled his eyes.

“Well, I have to work tomorrow,” he declared, as if he deserved a medal for it. “So I'm going back to bed.” He headed back toward his room.

We stood there and listened as he stalked away down the hallway. Their bedroom door slammed shut a few seconds later.

“He doesn't like to be woken at three in the morning,” Ms. Pullman said. “Nor do I, for that matter.”

“I'll get right to the point then,” I said. “And this is going to sound insane. I get that. But you have to trust me. I mean, I know you probably shouldn't, I certainly haven't given you much reason to. But this time it's really, really—”

“I thought you said you were getting right to the point,” she interrupted, leaning against the wall with her arms folded.

“Sorry,” I mumbled. “Anyway, I need you to make sure the school is completely evacuated tomorrow morning.
No janitors, no teachers, nobody can be inside it or even near it at sunrise.”

She stared at me for several moments. She seemed unable to comprehend my words at first. I didn't blame her.

“What?” she said eventually.

I took a deep breath to start explaining, but she didn't even let me start.

“Maybe John was right to want to call the cops right away,” she said, moving toward the phone he had set on the edge of their dining room table.

“Fine, please, call the cops,” I said. “In fact, I will call them for you.” I pulled out Danielle's cell phone. “And I'll tell them whatever it takes to make sure the school is closed tomorrow.”

“Carson.” She furrowed her brow. “Be straight with me. What the heck is going on?”

“Right, okay,” I said, realizing I was going about this in such a frantic way that she was probably starting to worry about my mental health. “I know that you think I'm a good kid deep down, and I really am. I mean well. I never wanted to betray you. It's such a ridiculous story and I don't expect you to ever trust me . . . but I'm a secret agent. A real one. And . . .”

I trailed off when I saw her face change. Now she clearly did think I was nuts.

“Do your parents know you're here?” she asked, picking up the phone.

“No,” I admitted. “But that doesn't matter. I've never told anyone this before. In fact, I've been lying to just about everyone I know for the entire school year. But you have to believe me, or people might get hurt. Please, make sure the school is evacuated. I know there's no logical reason for you to do what I'm asking, no reason for you or anyone else to actually trust me anymore. But I'm asking you, because you're maybe the only person I've met this year who actually does.”

My desperation must have shown on my face because the hand holding the phone lowered back to the table. She looked at me and I tried to meet her stare. And that's when I realized I was crying. I had no idea when I'd started or why, but, sure enough, there were salty streams running down my face.

I wiped at them, embarrassed. The stress of this was clearly starting to get to me. That was fine, though; hopefully this would all be over soon, once and for all.

“If I did decide to trust you,” she began, “how do you expect me to do this? Principals only have so much
power, Carson. I'm not the dictator of the school. More like a prime minister, if that.”

I shrugged. “I don't know. I'm just a kid. That's why I'm here asking for your help.”

“What's going to happen to my school, Carson?”

“I honestly don't know,” I said. “Maybe nothing. Hopefully nothing. But maybe
something
. We just can't take that risk.”

I couldn't believe she was actually considering helping me. Part of me, a significant portion, never actually believed I could pull this off. Deep down, I figured there was no way she'd ever trust me again. But, then again, deep down, maybe she really did think I was a good person. She had thought that at one point anyway. And that's what I'd been latching on to, since I saw it in her file.

“What on earth are you involved in?” she asked, even though I'd already tried to tell her the truth a few moments ago.

“You don't even want to know,” I said this time, figuring that answer was truly better for both of us.

T
HERE I WAS, SITTING ON THE TOILET INSIDE THE FOURTH STALL
from the door in Oak Park's public restroom, the last place I ever expected to find myself at 3:30 a.m. on a random Friday night, or early Saturday morning, technically. I wasn't actually using the bathroom; I'd just gotten tired of standing in the cold. Which is why I'd picked the lock and let myself in. That, and it was a pretty solid hiding place when the cops and your parents and who knows who else were out looking for you.

The idea of being a fugitive had always seemed cool
when I was a little kid, but I have to say that in reality it pretty much sucked. Especially in the winter. The feeling of having nowhere to go, nowhere safe to hide, was horrible. It almost squeezed any last positive thought I had left from my brain, like a giant melon juicer.

But we were near the end now. After we carried out our plan, I would simply turn myself in and face the consequences. And I wouldn't really even care what they were. Because if we succeeded, then Medlock would finally be gone, the Agency exposed, and all of this would finally be over. And if our plan didn't succeed, well, then we'd all be lucky to even see the next sunrise.

My mind was lingering on this morbid thought as I stared at the text message I'd sent to Dillon about a half hour before:

Jurassic Park is the best movie ever.

And at that moment, I heard the double honk just outside. That was my signal. The real question was: Where on earth had Dillon and Danielle gotten a car, and who the heck was driving it?

I stood up and crept toward the far wall, the only one with a window, but it was too high for me to see outside. I took a leap of faith and poked my head out the door.

Dillon and Danielle's mom's car was parked just
outside the bathroom in the parking lot. The headlights were off, so I could see my two best friends in the yellow glow of the streetlights nearby.

They'd actually stolen—or maybe borrowed is the better word—their mom's car. Things really were out of control now. I ran toward the car and dived into the backseat. Probably overkill, but you never can be too careful. There's no upside to lollygagging when you're a wanted man.

Danielle was driving. Dillon was in the passenger seat.

“Hey,” Dillon said, turning around to face me with a grin.

“Glad to see you remembered the code,” I said as Danielle carefully pulled out of the Oak Park parking lot, craning her neck to see over the large hood of their mom's old beater of a car.

“I'll never forget it,” Dillon said. “It was my idea, remember?”

I nodded. The message I'd sent him was our code. Or, well, his code. He was the one who didn't trust text messaging. So he'd developed a secret coding system for us to use to transmit messages without saying what we actually meant. It was pretty simple really. There were only a few key phrases to the code, but changing any one
of those words could mean a number of different things. Most of the code revolved around meeting secretly at various locations throughout Minnow, ND. That single text had meant for him to meet me at the Oak Park public restroom as soon as possible. Or so I'd hoped at the time. I didn't have the code system memorized as well as Dillon did.

We needed to use the code since it was quite possible the Agency was tracking my cell phone. I was an escaped detainee after all.

“You remember my theory on what really happens inside that park restroom, right?”

I somehow managed to smile back. “Of course. It's where all of the Oak Park squirrels meet secretly to plot their eventual invasion and takeover of Roosevelt Park.”

Danielle scoffed as she started up her mom's car.

“That's right,” Dillon said. “If you've never seen squirrels assemble to plot an invasion before, you're missing out.”

I shook my head, and couldn't help but grin. It dawned on me how amazing it felt to have finally cleared the air between me and my best friend. It felt like everything was back to normal between us for the first time since I was handed that package and gotten wrapped up in
international espionage in the first place.

“I think we should ditch our phones now,” Danielle said. “Just in case.”

“Definitely,” Dillon agreed. “They can triangulate our positions using them.”

We pulled over and dumped both our cell phones into a public trash can near the 4th Avenue bridge. Danielle bid farewell to her phone as if saying a last good-bye a sick grandparent. Dillon, on the other hand, was happy to finally get rid of his. He was probably the only kid in the whole universe who never wanted a cell phone to begin with—the only reason he had one is because his mom made him keep it for emergencies.

“Are the supplies in the trunk?” I asked once we were driving again.

“Oh yeah,” Dillon said. “We had way, way more leftovers than we suspected. It's filled to capacity. And this is a 1996 Lincoln Town Car, which easily has the largest trunk of any midsize sedan in history.”

“How could you possibly know that?” Danielle asked.

“Because,” Dillon explained patiently, “I once had a working theory that certain cars were being marketed specifically to hit men. Greater trunk capacity equals more bodies. More bodies means more hits, which
means more money. Right? It's simple math.”

We all laughed. It died out quicker than usual, however as we neared the edge of town. Which meant we were getting closer and closer to the grand finale.

Hopefully just the finale of our plan, and not of our lives.

I
T WAS STILL DARK OUTSIDE, EVEN AT 5:00 A.M. IT WOULD HAVE
been pitch-black where we were, outside of town, a mile or so away from Augustine Church. That is, if not for all the fires.

They burned all around us, massive rolling flames that looked like small torches in the distance. Up close, the flames would have been hot enough to melt off our skin. These fires that dotted the vast plains around us looked even more eerie in the winter at night than in the summer. They were natural gas fires. Oil companies
had moved into western North Dakota years ago to start fracking. Which is what they call the way they basically blow up the ground with explosives to get to the oil underneath the bedrock. Anyway, when they do that, a bunch of natural gas escapes. And so they light it on fire to controllably burn it off instead of just letting it pour into the atmosphere.

It's quite a thing to see at night. Miles and miles of darkness dotted by hundreds of massive flames, all underneath a sky blanketed with billions of stars. It should have been pretty, but instead it sort of gave me the creeps.

Fortunately, they weren't close enough to the county road we were on to even provide enough light to see where we were going. Which is precisely how we wanted it. The headlights were off and Danielle squinted over the steering wheel in an effort to stay on the snow-covered gravel road.

It helped that she was only going ten miles per hour. Any faster and we'd have been in a ditch a long time ago. Driving on these county back roads was dangerous enough by itself in the winter, let alone in the dark without headlights. These roads were used so rarely that by
January they were typically undrivable due to snow accumulation.

Keeping the headlights off was a necessary precaution. After all, the Agency was already expecting the exchange to get ambushed. So surely they'd have agents out here on advanced recon for signs of Medlock or his men.

Luckily, I knew these back roads well. My brother used to have a summer job scouting farm fields for crop diseases and he'd brought me along a few times. He'd have reams of old county road maps with him, and I learned them pretty well since he usually let me be the navigator. These were roads not found on any other map and so I was pretty sure we'd be able to sneak in undetected on foot after we silently parked the car in the dark a mile or so away from the church.

“Is this good, you think?” Danielle asked as she pulled the car over onto a flat section of the ditch.

“Yeah, I think so,” I said, checking out our location on their mom's GPS. “It'll be a cold walk to the church, but we've got good boots and coats.”

“Okay, let's get to work,” Dillon said.

We all got out of the car and circled around to the
trunk. Danielle popped it open and I stared at the contents with wide eyes and the sudden feeling that what we were about to do was very, very stupid.

“Maybe this isn't such a good idea,” I said.

“It was
your
idea,” Danielle reminded me. “You said it's all surface burn, remember?”

I nodded nervously. “I just don't want anybody to get hurt.”

“Neither do we,” Dillon said, plopping two large plastic sleds from the backseat onto the ground. “Which is why we
need
to do this. Come on, no backing out now.”

He was right. And so I started helping him and Danielle unload our cargo onto the two sleds. It didn't take as long as you'd think, considering just how much of it there was. Still, we were all breathing hard and sweating under our winter coats and hats by the time we finished.

“This will definitely do the trick.” I panted, while looking down at the two three-person sleds packed to capacity with the payload.

“I hope so,” Dillon said, picking up the rope to one of the sleds. He pulled it, testing the weight. It slid smoothly across the ground, but was still a struggle for him.

“Should we lighten the load some?” Danielle suggested.

“No, if we're going to do this, we need to go all out,” I said. “No point in taking any chances.”

“Yeah, it will be mostly flat ground,” Dillon said. “Well, except for the last part anyway.”

We all just stood there for a few moments and looked at the two sleds. None of us wanted to say it again, but I think we were all starting to get the idea in our heads that we were making a mistake. That was perhaps the dumbest plan, or prank, any of us had ever come up with.

But, like Dillon said, there was no turning back now.

Right?