Monument 14: Savage Drift (Monument 14 Series) (10 page)

Caroline pulled back, in my arms, and looked at me. Her freckled face was full of concern.

“You have to take very good care of Mommy Junior,” she told me. “Because moms need a lot of help.”

*   *   *

Alex came alone, to bring us a plastic bag filled with the bits of dinner that everyone had managed to smuggle out for us.

He handed me a wad of money.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“It’s what I was saving, plus a hundred and five from Mrs. Dominguez. She says God bless you.”

Alex looked away, over the greens to the dark blue sky.

There was at least three hundred dollars in there.

“Hey, you don’t have to give me all the money you’ve earned,” I said. He’d worked hard fixing small electronics for people.

“Take it,” he snapped.

“I just feel bad—”

“Dean, I’d give every cent I’ll ever make in my whole life to keep you safe. This will buy you guys food and water and gas. Who knows what you’re going to need!”

“I’m sorry,” I said, for the hundredth time.

“You get there safe,” he told me. “Or I will never forgive you. I mean it, if you die out there, or you don’t show up, I’m going to go around for the rest of my life telling people that my brother was an a-hole.”

He was acting tough, covering up the pain, and I really started to hate myself.

Alex stormed away, up the lawn, toward the tent city that was our home.

*   *   *

It was hard to wait, after that.

I kept wondering if I was doing the right thing.

Was it stupid to leave? What would my parents think? I tried to channel my dad—he was so logic driven—what would he say about my choice? When I thought about my mom, my throat got tight. She’d want me to protect Astrid, wouldn’t she?

I stood against a pine tree. The wind played in the branches around us. The golf course was beautiful at night.

Captain McKinley would come for us soon.

Astrid came and leaned up against me. Jake was sleeping on Astrid’s pallet and Niko was sitting closer to the road, watching for the captain.

“I have an apology to make,” Astrid said quietly. I glanced sideways at her. She was wearing my old green cap and a white Irish sweater that didn’t cover her belly quite all the way.

Her breath made a little cloud when she spoke.

“The reason I wanted to find Jake before…”

She took my hand.

“Is that I was going to ask him to take me to Texas.”

I breathed this in. It felt like a punch to the gut. I closed my eyes and put a hand up to my face.

“I was scared and you weren’t taking me seriously and I was desperate,” she said, it all spilling out in a confession.

She sounded sad, worried, pained to be hurting me.

“But as soon as I saw him I gave up that plan,” she said, begging me almost. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s time,” Niko said. “Come on, guys.”

My heart felt like it was in the grasp of some iron-gloved fist.

“Please don’t be mad,” she pleaded. “I do love you. I really do. And I’m scared to go without you.”

I grabbed her, maybe more roughly than I meant to, and I kissed her on the mouth.

“I love you, too. And there’s no way I’d let you go without me,” I told her.

CHAPTER TWELVE

JOSIE

DAY 32

“Took you long enough, but you got the mess cleaned up,” Venger says.

As if he could see the spot anymore in the dark night. As if the spot hadn’t dried up two hours ago.

The last shift had returned from dinner. The nine o’clock bell had rung.

“Get on back to your room, now,” he orders me. “Lights out in a few.”

I can’t get up, not at first. My joints are too sore, too cold.

He drags me to my feet, and even then, I can’t get my knees to firm up and support my weight.

Venger releases me and I stagger, trying not to fall over.

A little spark of conscience must have caught in his black, cancerous heart because his eyes flicker to mine, and away.

“Maybe this seems uncalled for to you,” he says. “But everyone who saw you cleaning here knows I won’t take disobedience from anyone, man, woman, or child.”

There’s nothing you can say to a man so stupid he thinks that publicly punishing a fifteen-year-old girl will earn him respect in people’s eyes.

And I have bigger things to think about.

There is a curfew and everyone is supposed to be locked in their rooms after 9 p.m. And they usually are. But since the riots, some of the doors don’t work right.

There is a chance I am about to run into some animals in the Men’s hall.

Venger unlocks the front door for me and holds it open.

I guess I hesitate.

“Go on,” he says. “They’re all locked up for the night.”

“But some of the locks are broken,” I say.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” Venger grabs my arm and pushes me through into the vestibule.

In the front hall, where the co-eds had once checked their mail and gathered to watch live events on the bigtab, two skanky-looking guys are squatting against the wall, trading a cigarette back and forth.

Venger pushes me in and says, “You two leave this girl alone—she’s just crossing through.”

They look up at me. One of them smiles.

“Yes, sir,” says another one. I see he’s missing his two top teeth. I edge toward the hallway as Venger turns to leave.

If these are the only two guys out—I can outrun them …

They wait until Venger is gone.

The skinny creep opens his mouth. I expect him to say something ugly to me.

Instead he yells, “RABBIT! Rabbit on the hall!”

*   *   *

My heart starts hammering and the adrenaline pumping. My joints instantly lubricate. Muscles ready to spring. O blood coming to my rescue.

Thank you, biological warfare compounds—the sports-enhancement energy shot that I carry in my DNA now and forever.

I take off at a sprint down the hall.

The two behind me come lumbering along like snarling undead.

“Rabbit on the hall!” the one repeats.

Most of the doors are locked, and inside I hear the men shaking the levers, trying to bust free.

But there
are
some doors open and several men come lurching from their rooms in front of me.

One of them is sweating and bald, and he works his huge hands like I am already in them.

“Easy now, girly,” he coos.

“Leave her alone,” says a man, coming out of another room in front of me. “She’s just a child.”

“Shut it, Patko,” one of the men behind me snarls.

The man named Patko grabs the smaller of the two men in front of me and that is my moment to push forward.

Two from behind, one from in front, and another coming, now, down the hall—they swarm me.

The bald guy. Elbow to the gut. Stomp down on shin.

Wired, bug-eyed loser from front hall. Bash his nose in. Blood spurting out.

A bare-chested skinny maggot reaching for me and catching hold of the waistband of my pants.

He pulls me into his body, pressing his groin to my backside. Men swarming behind him and dragging me back.

I shift my hips and grab the maggot’s male parts and pull hard.

He screams and falls. I turn and a hand is holding me. Pry myself loose and scramble over bald-headed giant on the floor in front of me.

Released, I hurl myself forward, almost to the stairs, almost.

Then out comes Brett, the teenaged Union Man, ahead of me. God help me, ahead of me and I brace myself to hit him with my body.

He smiles and steps aside.

“Go, Josie, go,” he says as I fly past. I slam into the stairwell door.

It is locked, it is locked, it is locked, of course, it is locked.

Now I will die, hopefully quickly, but suddenly the door opens.

Mario and Lori are there and they pull me through and slam the door behind me. Somebody’s hand is in it, and a foot, and they slam it again, harder, and those parts are withdrawn and the door locks closed.

Lori pulls me to her, sobbing, and we sink to the ground.

*   *   *

Mario and Lori help me upstairs.

Adrenaline spent now, I am like a rag doll.

“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.” Lori is on repeat.

“That SOB,” Mario fumes. “He set you up—that monster!”

“I don’t know,” I say. Someone had hit me in the jaw, I am realizing. It is sore.

We get to our room. The kids are all waiting at the door.

They see me and burst into tears.

“I’m sorry, Josie, I’m so sorry,” Aidan cries and hugs me. Heather and Freddy join in.

“Stop. Stop!” I growl. “Don’t feel sorry for me. Don’t! Get OFF me!”

It is too much. Their embraces are too much. Fear grips me—I’ll suffocate—I will hurt the children.

I push them away.

“Don’t get attached to me. Understand? I don’t care about you and I don’t want you. Any of you!”

I don’t look at their stupid faces to see how they feel.

I am dead, don’t they see it? I am dead meat. I am bait. I am a rabbit, tossed to the wolves to keep them at bay.

I don’t want HELP. From a bunch of KIDS?

I pull away from all of them, even kind, loyal Mario and shut myself in the bathroom.

*   *   *

I run water in the tub.

Sometimes there is hot. Usually there is at least warm.

Tonight there is hot and that means steam. Hallelujah.

I take up our shard of soap. I am going to use some. I am going to use my share of lather tonight.

I realize I am shaking and I sit down on the toilet before I fall down.

“Hey!” and a rap at the door.

“Leave me alone,” I say.

I feel bile in my throat. I make myself slow my breathing.

“Yeah, yeah. I know, you’re too tough to need help. And none of us is allowed to talk to you or try to help you or even like you,” Mario quips. “But you need to see something.”

I open the door a crack.

“What?”

He slides me a quartered sheet of newsprint.

THE MONUMENT 14
, reads the title. It is a letter to the editor.

*   *   *

They made it.

*   *   *

I am glad for the running water because I cry.

I feel joy for them and I miss them and I feel sorry, so deathly sorry for myself and I feel angry at myself for feeling so sorry for myself.

I am presumed dead. My name is set down from theirs. Separated. Of course it is.

I remember our times in the Greenway. All the funny things the kids would do. How Chloe was always pissing off the other kids and how small and precious the twins were. Max’s stories and Ulysses’s front-toothless grins. And I cry to be missing being locked in a superstore.

I hadn’t known how good I had it
before
we got locked in. And I hadn’t even known how good we had it when we
were
locked in.

Now my whole life before the clanking shut of the gates around the Virtues seems like a fairy tale.

I cry at Alex’s voice, laying out the story like a little salesman. Trying to get the editor of the paper to bite.

Alex would have known the letter was the best way to find their parents.

Since we have no TV, no radio, here at Mizzou, newspapers are like money. They are circulated, coveted, borrowed, and lent. It must be so in all the camps.

And have they found their parents by now? I cry for that, too.

Have they all met up with their parents and I am stuck at Mizzou?

Dead. Alex presumes I am dead.

I reach out of the tub and across the floor to my filthy jeans. I reach into the pocket and take out Niko’s note.

I read it one last time.

Then I tear it to confetti.

I put my hands into the water and open them up, letting the pieces float out into the water.

I am lost, Niko. I pull my head under the water. I am lost to you forever.

The bits of paper rise to the top. Confetti scum.

My knees bleed into the gray tap water and I cry like the stupid orphan I am.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

DEAN

DAY 32 & DAY 33

Captain McKinley was driving a large military passenger-transport truck. A canvas cover was pulled taut over metal supports that arched overhead—sort of like a covered wagon. Two benches ran on either side.

We piled in the back.

“Hey,” he said to us through the open back window of the truck cab. “Any problems getting out?”

“No,” Niko told him.

He drove toward the base.

At any moment I expected, I don’t know, guards to fire or a cop car to come screaming out of the dark.

But it was a still, moonlit night. The wind picking up the autumn leaves a bit. Quiet.

Before he turned the corner to head to the base, McKinley stopped and typed a message into his minitab.

He got an immediate answer.

“I have a friend at the gate,” he told us.

He turned toward the base then, and waved at the guy on duty.

The guard patted the hood of the truck as McKinley slowed.

“Didn’t see you, man,” he told McKinley. “Didn’t see you at all. Carry on.”

“Thanks, Ty.” And we were on the base.

McKinley drove the truck right out onto the landing strip, where his huge helicopter waited for us.

This wasn’t the same machine that had rescued us from the Greenway. That one had been slick and state of the art. This was more like Army standard issue. No frills.

McKinley parked the truck with a screech of the brake.

“Now listen,” he said. “I’m going to open the side door. I want you to keep low and hustle right in. I’ve got two friends here—one was at the gate. The other’s working the tower. But there are people here who will stop us, if they see you. There are guards and there is brass, so be quick about it.”

He got out of the truck cab and went over and opened the door to the chopper.

We all scooted down toward the back of the truck, getting ready to dash.

“Let’s go,” we heard his voice.

We filed out onto the moonlit tarmac and ducked down, scurrying to the chopper.