Phoenix Island (11 page)

They crossed ditches on balance beams, vaulted over log hurdles, swung across the monkey bars, and hit the dirt to crawl under ten yards of low-strung barbed wire. Here and there, drill sergeants yelled at them to push it. They ran down a long curve that took them for a time through the forest, with its gloom and dampness and the sounds of birds, then broke from the woods and ran uphill to the cargo net ascent.

Carl leapt into the net and scrambled up. Throwing one leg over the top, he turned to razz Mitchell—and saw the spiderweb. Strung through much of the netting on Mitchell’s side, it was a foggy mass straight out of a Halloween nightmare. At its center, an entangled bird struggled and cheeped, eyes bright with terror.

Carl broke out in goose bumps. “Watch your head.”

“Whoa,” Mitchell said. “Thanks.” He climbed up beside it and whistled. “That’s a bird trapped in there. A little bird.”

“Yeah,” Carl said. “Creepy, huh?”

“I got it,” Mitchell said. “You’re all right, little buddy,” he told the bird, trying to free it. “This web’s crazy. Really strong.”

A spider the size of a plum crossed the web so fast Carl barely had time to yell a warning.

“Whoa,” Mitchell said, and ripped the bird free just in time. He leaned away, laughing and cursing, and tossed the bird into the air.

Then the spider jumped.

It landed on Mitchell’s neck, just under his chin. He screamed, whipped his head back, and batted at it . . . with both hands.

He fell ten feet and hit the ground with a horrible crunch.

“Mitchell!” Carl started down the netting.

Mitchell screamed in pain, then came off the ground with his left arm jutting at impossible angles and the huge spider clinging to his face. He ripped the spider away and threw it into the trees, cursing. “It bit me! That thing bit me!” Then he lifted his broken arm into view, saw the right angle in the middle of his forearm, the white bone there, the blood, and passed out.

Carl crouched beside him. On his forearm, Mitchell had a homemade Bart Simpson tattoo so poorly drawn that no one had even known what it was until the kid had grinned with his bad teeth and told them. Splintered bone had pushed completely through the skin there, splitting Bart in half.

Worse still were the bites, a pair of them, one on his neck, the other just below his eye. In mere seconds they had swelled to the size of tennis balls, bright red fang marks distinct as logos at the center of each lump.

Carl shouted for help.

Mitchell groaned and twitched. Spit foamed from his mouth.

A drill sergeant pushed Carl out of the way, looked at the bites, and lifted Mitchell’s shoulders. “We have to take him back. Get his feet.”

Carl grabbed them and lifted.

“You!” the drill sergeant called to kids coming up the hill. “Run back to Drill Sergeant Rivera and have him radio a jeep. Go.”

They carried Mitchell back up the trail. He continued to foam and twitch, and the bites continued to grow, swelling one eye shut and obscuring his prominent Adam’s apple.

Carl felt sick.

Back at the clearing, they loaded him into the jeep.

“Get him to the Chop Shop,” the drill sergeant said, and the jeep sped off, turning left.

Toward the medical center
, Carl thought. The Chop Shop. One more macho joke. Right now, with the image of Mitchell’s break and bites fresh in his head, nothing could seem less funny. What kind of twisted people would call a children’s hospital the Chop Shop?

CARL SPENT THE REST OF
his day going through the motions of training, avoiding Octavia, and trying to forget the image of the spider and the awful breaking sound Mitchell had made hitting the ground. The whole thing made him feel cold and nauseated.

On their way back to the barracks that night, Ross said Mitchell would be lucky to survive.

“Survive?” Carl and Campbell said simultaneously.

Ross raised his palms. “Don’t shoot the messenger. I’m just saying, a spider that size, a wound in the neck, another in the head, the swelling. I mean, the guy looked like he was fighting for his life. My diagnosis: anaphylactic shock.”

“Ana-what?” Carl asked.

“Anaphylactic shock. Like kids get from beestings when they’re allergic. Back in Massachusetts, my next-door-neighbor went into shock from a wasp sting. He looked just like that.”

“Did he live?”

“Well, yeah. They jabbed him with an EpiPen, and he was all right. But I didn’t see anybody doing that for Mitchell, and besides, we’re not talking a little wasp here, right? We’re talking about a spider the size of—”

“I’d rather not talk about it,” Carl said.

In the barracks, when everyone started polishing boots, Carl locked himself in the book man closet.

While preparing the whiteboard, he remembered the diary atop the ductwork and pulled it down. He needed a distraction.

Dear Diary,

Um . . . hi. I’ve never written a diary before, but this is the craziest thing that’s ever happened to me, so I figured I might as well start. Well, here goes.

My name is Eric Flemmington. I’m seventeen. Up until a little while ago, I lived in Tucson, Arizona. Then I got into some trouble and had to come here.

Carl skimmed along. This kid Eric had moved from orphanage to orphanage, group home to group home, with stays in juvie here and there. Then he’d been arrested for stealing cars, and they’d sent him to Phoenix Island, where he’d become book man.

The kid had a pretty good sense of humor.

Carl flipped ahead and knew instantly by the handwriting that something had happened. The opening pages were neat and tidy. A few pages in, the writing went sloppy and dark. The page itself was all wrinkled up, like it had been crumpled and then flattened back out again. In the margin, Carl saw what looked like rusty fingerprints. Was that dried blood?

Ralston died today. They put him in the sweatbox again and just left him there till he died. We could hear him screaming all night. Then this morning they formed us up and made us watch while they dragged him out. They were laughing, of course. Some of the kids were, too. I hate them. Someday, I’m going to let the whole world know about these murdering psychopaths.

Carl stared at the diary. They’d killed some kid on purpose?

For a second, he tried not to believe it—but certainty settled over him like a shadow. Hadn’t he known something was off here? Way, way off?

With a shiver, he remembered Parker’s whispered threat, the day he’d stabbed Carl with the pencil:
I’m going to fix your wagon once and for all.

Once and for all. . . .

His mouth suddenly went dry.

Skipping ahead to the last page, there was only one entry:

If you’re reading this, I guess I’m dead. If you’re stuck here like I was, you know what you have to do. Do it. We have to beat these monsters before it’s too late. That’s it, then. I got one chance, and I’m going to take it. I’m so afraid.

That was it.

Carl was shocked. What had happened? Was Eric really dead? What did he mean,
you know what you have to do
?

Was Parker planning to kill him? Was that what he had meant?

But Rivera would never let that happen. Right?

He turned back to the first page and read the thing straight through as fast as he could.

Then he read it again.

Then he just stared at the wall.

PERHAPS AN HOUR LATER,
someone knocked. Carl had been waiting for it, knowing Ross came on duty at midnight. He opened the door.

Ross looked tired. He made a crude joke about what Carl was doing alone in the closet, then Carl pulled him inside and closed the door. “We have to talk.”

Ross nodded at the door. “I’m on duty, in case you forgot. If Rivera comes up here, and I’m not walking the hall—”

“Ross, they
kill
kids here
.”

“Well, I don’t think he’d kill me, precisely, but—”

“I’m serious,” Carl said. “That’s why they only take orphans. Some kid steps out of line, they kill him.”

“Riiiight. I think somebody needs a glass of warm milk and a good night’s sleep.” Ross reached for the door.

Carl blocked him. “Listen, Ross. I found something. A journal. You can’t tell anybody about this.”

“Okay.”

“The kid who wrote it was book man a few years ago. He talks all about it. Torture, murder, everything. Something else, too, something about the doctor down at the Chop Shop. I don’t know what was going on there. He wasn’t sure. Something—the doctor doing stuff to kids, to their brains. It made me think about that kid we saw, the first day, driving in—the zombie kid—and it makes me worry about Mitchell.”

“Hold on,” Ross’s hand dropped from the doorknob. “You’re serious?
Murder?
”

Carl nodded. “His early entries, everything sounds like it’s been for us so far. Rough, but . . . you know, like it’s been. But then, thirty-some days in, they shifted to Blue Phase, and this guy they keep talking about, the Old Man? He shows up, and everything changes. People start dying. Lots of people. You ever see the pictures in the drill sergeants’ office, the ones with the faces blacked out?” Carl stopped himself. He didn’t like the panic he was feeling, and he didn’t want to overwhelm Ross.

Carl and his friend looked at each other for a few tense moments, then, to his surprise, the other boy smiled. “You found it in here, right?”

“Yeah. So?”

Ross spread his hands. “It’s obviously a joke. The guy made it up, hoping somebody would find it. He’s probably sitting somewhere right now, back in the world, laughing about it with his buddies.”

“No. It wasn’t in a place where people would find it.”

“
You
found it.”

“It’s real, okay? If you read it, you’ll see.”

Ross rolled his eyes and held out his hand. “Let’s see it.”

Carl handed Ross the journal.

Ross grinned at the beginning. “This guy seems way cooler than our book man.”

“This is just the normal stuff,” Carl said. He flipped the top page.

“Hey,” Ross said, “he was talking about how fat his dog was.”

“Look,” Carl said, pointing partway down the second page. “Here’s where the Old Man shows up.”

“This kid sounds pretty impressed.”

“Yeah. Apparently, the Old Man is way different than the other drill sergeants. Like the ultimate poet-warrior or something. Way smarter, and way more dangerous. Turn the page. Look.”

“Yadda, yadda, yadda . . . somebody mouthed off to a drill sergeant, pushed him.” Ross read on for a second and frowned. “No way. This has to be joke.”

Carl didn’t say anything, just let him keep reading.

“Public execution?” Ross said.

“Right in the quad. Everybody was made to watch. And look who did the killing.”

“Parker?”

Carl nodded. “At first. Then some kid tried to sneak ammo off the firing range. They shot him on the spot. Another kid got caught trying to sneak into the girls’ barracks. He died in the sweatbox after being left there for
eight days
. Another one, this kid who started crying in formation, they threw him to the sharks.”

“That’s ludicrous.”

“When people started dying, it changed everybody.” Carl grabbed up the pages and started reading from them. “ ‘Some of the kids went with the program, got mean. Others ran.’ ”

“And?”

Carl looked up at Ross, who had gone white. “ ‘They hunted them.’ ”

“That’s sick.”

“It gets worse. It wasn’t just the soldiers hunting runaways—the kids helped.”

“No way,” Ross said, shaking his head.

“That’s what they’re doing here. They’re turning us into killers.”

Ross looked at him. “Why?”

Carl said, “According to Eric—that’s the guy who wrote all this—the Old Man turns Phoenix Island grads into mercenaries.”

Ross gave him a look.

“You don’t believe me?”

“Oh, I believe
you
,” Ross said. He shook the papers. “I just don’t believe this guy. Look, if I had Parker on my back and Davis giving me trouble, maybe I’d buy into this stuff, too, but believe me: this is some kind of joke. There’s no way. They’d get in so much trouble.”

“How?”

“Well, they can’t just kill kids.”

“Why not?” Carl leaned forward. “If somebody kills me, who’s going to know?”

“I’d know.”

“And what would you do about it?”

“Tell somebody.”

Carl crossed his arms. “Who? One of the drill sergeants?”

Ross made a face. “Somebody on the outside, obviously.”

“How?”

Ross opened his mouth but said nothing.

Carl said, “If somebody kills me tomorrow, who’s going to come asking? No one. How about you?”

Ross threw the papers on the desk. “This is stupid.”

“Who would check on you?”

“Somebody would. I have an aunt in Vermont.”

“Okay, let’s just say she did wonder about you. Who would she ask? Nobody knows where we are.”

“Somebody does. The judge does.”

“You sure about that?”

“Well, someone does,” Ross said, scowling. “The system does.”

“Maybe. And what would the system do? Your aunt calls, are they going to come all the way out here, check up on us? No way. At best, they’d call or email, and the drill sergeants could say, ‘Ross, oh, he’s doing fine. Sorry, no, he can’t talk. Strict policy. Wouldn’t want to ruin all the hard work he’s done. We’re so proud of him.’ ”

Ross looked uncomfortable.

Carl said, “Or they could even admit you were dead. ‘Oh, we’re so sorry, ma’am. We didn’t have your contact information. Such a tragedy. He drowned while swimming.’ ”

“But if enough people checked . . .”

“How many people would? Not many. And they’d all be trying different judges in different towns, different states. Who’s going to connect the dots? And this is just me, thinking off the top of my head, but if the Old Man can set up an
entire island
with guns and a military and stuff, I’m pretty sure he has a whole plan set up. He could forge letters, let people talk to graduates who work for him—a huge smoke screen that hides us forever.” Carl shook his head, truly frightened. “We’re stuck, man. We’re all alone.”