Rise of the Elgen (28 page)

“What about the ranchers?” Taylor asked. “We can’t just leave them here. It’s the jungle. Something will, like, eat them.”

“If they work for Hatch, they deserve it,” Zeus said.

“No,” I said. “They might be victims of the Elgen too. But if we let them go, they could alert the Elgen.”

“I vote that we bring Raúl with us,” Ostin said. “He could help us. Then, when we’re done, he can come back on his own and free them.”

I thought over the idea. “You trust him that much?”

Ostin nodded. “I do.”

I looked at Taylor. “How about you?”

“Me too,” she said.

I was doubtful but said, “Let’s talk with him.”

“H
e understands a little bit of English,” Ostin said.

“Can you help us get in?” I asked.

Raúl nodded.

“If you help us, we’ll let you come back and free the others. Do you understand?”

He nodded again.

I looked at Taylor, and she nodded. “All right.” I pulsed and melted through Raúl’s ropes, which seemed to both intrigue and frighten him. Ostin gave him back his clothes and waited for him to dress. “Let’s go,” I said.

“Vámonos,”
Ostin said.

The four of us walked back over to the others. They were surprised to see the rancher with us. “Raúl knows the way, so he’s going to drive the first truck. Jack, you follow us.”

Jack looked at Raúl suspiciously. “You sure you can trust him?”

“Taylor read his mind. She trusts him.”

“Ostin,” Jack said. “Translate this.” He pointed at Raúl. “You betray us, I’ll make sure you go down with us. Understand?”

Ostin translated. Raúl frowned.

Zeus added to the threat. “Tell him that if he turns us in, I’ll electrocute him
first
. Make sure he understands that.”

Ostin nodded and translated that as well.

Raúl looked as indignant as he was afraid.
“Los odio también,”
he said.

“He says he hates the Elgen too,” Ostin said.

“We’ll see,” Jack said.

“Raúl will drive the first truck,” I said to Jack. “You, Zeus, Ian, Abi, and McKenna follow us. Stay close.”

The warning lights on the electric fence still hadn’t come on, so I checked it once more, then we all climbed through and walked to the trucks.

Raúl said something to Ostin, who seemed to be nodding his head in agreement.

“What did he say?” I asked.

“He says we should bring back the bull. Otherwise it will look suspicious.”

I looked over at the dead animal. “Good idea.”

Raúl got in the truck and finished hoisting the bull into the truck bed.

*   *   *

The ranch was nearly five miles in diameter and was composed of hilly terrain. We drove for several minutes before we could even see the compound. The sight of it filled us all with dread.

We drove on, crossing diagonally across the main road to avoid other cars and trucks.

As Raúl had explained, the compound was surrounded by two large fences with guard towers perched high on the corners, the silver barrels of their mounted machine guns glistening in the sun. The place reminded me of the pictures I’d seen in my history book
of World War II German prison camps, though this place was clearly much more high-tech.

The compound’s checkpoint was a hive of activity, with trucks, cars, and buses backed up for more than a hundred yards and dozens of guards, many with leashed dogs, checking the vehicles that awaited entry. The dogs were large and muscular, and I wondered what breed they were.

“Rottweilers,” Ostin said, as if reading my mind.

“What?”

“That’s what type of dogs those are. Very powerful. I wonder if they’re electric.”

The guards were wearing the same Elgen uniforms as the guards who had attacked our safe house.

As we got closer to the compound my tics increased and I began to gulp, something I didn’t notice until Taylor started gently rubbing my back. The compound was bigger than I expected and reminded me a little of the Boise State University campus, without the football stadium.

The Starxource plant, at the east end of the compound, was by far the largest of the buildings. I guessed it had to be nearly a hundred yards in diameter. Above it were three large exhaust pipes from which white smoke billowed into the air.

“Look at all that pollution,” Taylor said. “I thought this was supposed to be clean energy.”

“It is,” Ostin said. “Those are cooling towers. That’s steam emission. I’d bet my frontal lobe that’s where the rats are.”

Raúl pointed to a small gate near the plant and said, “There.”

“There’s the entrance,” I said. “Be alert.”

“Todo el tiempo esta allá,”
Raúl said.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“He said the guard’s there,” Ostin said.

“Should we turn back?” I asked.

Ostin asked Raúl, then said, “He says no. That would be too suspicious looking.”

“I’ll take care of him,” Zeus said.

“No,” Taylor said. “Let me try first.”

Raúl pulled the truck slowly up to the gate. The man at the gate, a stocky Peruvian man nearly as wide as he was tall, looked at us sternly. He said to Raúl,
“Quiénes son estos gringos? Dónde están Cesar y Alvaro?”

Suddenly the man bent over, grimacing and holding his head.

Taylor said to Ostin, “Tell him that he’s been expecting us, and we’ve just brought the bull back that was causing the problems.”

Ostin translated.

The man blinked a few times, then waved us on.
“Sí. Adelante.”

I turned to Taylor. “That was cool.”

“Thanks,” she said.

Raúl pulled through the gate. I motioned to Jack to follow us.

“Whoa,” Ian said. “You won’t believe what I’m seeing.”

“The bowl?” Ostin said.

“Yeah, it’s full of rats. Millions of them. And they’re glowing like us. Only brighter and sort of an orange-red.”

Raúl drove the truck up to the first of three metal doors. Even though we couldn’t see anyone, the door slowly began to rise. Raúl said something to Ostin.

“This is where they take the meat to be processed,” Ostin said. “We have to pull in here. It’s their procedure, and it would look suspicious not to.”

I looked into the dark entrance. Five men in ranchers’ uniforms were waiting on the side of the concrete slip. Raúl slowly backed up into the space until a light came on. Jack pulled the second truck up to the side of the door.

“No,” Raúl said. He began saying something very quickly to Ostin.

“He can’t park there,” Ostin said. “He needs to pull up next to the other trucks.”

I hopped out of the truck, squeezing between the concrete wall and the vehicle until I was outside the building and close to Jack. “Raúl says to park there,” I said, pointing. “But back in, just in case we need to make a run for it. Then meet us inside the building.”

“Got it,” Jack said.

When I returned, everyone was out of the truck and Raúl was talking to some of the ranchers who were inspecting the bull.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“They’re trying to decide whether to use the bull to feed the guards or the rats. If it’s the guards they’ll send it to the butcher. If it’s the rats it goes to the grid.”

“What’s the grid?”

Ostin pointed up. Half of the room’s ceiling looked like the underside of a steel bowl. “The grid is where they make electricity from rats,” he said.

The men appeared to have made a decision because an electric forklift drove up to the back of the truck and lifted the bull, then carried it over to a metallic cage connected to a hydraulic lift. The bull was carefully lowered onto the platform.

After the forklift had backed away, a yellow light began flashing, accompanied by a shrill beeping sound. The lift began to rise. When the platform was halfway to the ceiling, a hole opened above it and the platform moved perfectly into place, sealing the gap.

“That’s cool,” Ostin said. “I wonder what’s up there.”

I turned to him. “Has anyone asked about us?”

He nodded. “The older guy with the mega-mustache is in charge. He asked Raúl where the other ranchers are, and Raúl told him they’re still out repairing the fence. He said they sent him back with the bull so a jaguar wouldn’t get it.”

“How’d he explain us?”

“He said one of the Elgen guards flagged him down near the checkpoint and made him bring us over to the ranch square. He said we’re ranchers from an American Starxource plant and we’ve been brought here to observe their operations.”

“Raúl’s pretty clever,” I said. “I almost believe his story.”

“Let’s hope mega-mustache does too.”

Jack and the others came inside, and we gathered together in the corner of the room, trying to keep out of sight, though not successfully. The ranch hands kept glancing over at us, though they were just interested in the girls.

“There are cameras everywhere,” Ostin said. “Not good. Not good.”

“I’d like to blow a few of them out,” Zeus said. “Just for fun.”

“What do you see, Ian?” I asked. “What is this building?”

“It’s their power plant. This corner is where they feed the rats. There’s a butchery to the right, with a refrigeration room. In front of us there’s a series of tunnels and a lot of water pipes and conveyor belts. Directly under the bowl is a huge funnel.”

“For the rat droppings,” Ostin said. “If there’s really a million rats up there, they’re going to be moving several tons of droppings a day. That’s why there’s a manure processing plant outside.” He shook his head. “Man, I’d die for a look inside that bowl.”

“I’m sure Hatch would be happy to arrange both,” Taylor said.

“There are water pipes everywhere,” Ian said. “Like hundreds of them.”

“Cooling pipes,” Ostin said. “The bowl is like a nuclear reactor. With that much heat it would need a giant cooling system to keep it from melting down. Kind of like a car’s radiator.”

Ian turned a little to the west. Looking up, he said, “There’s an observatory up there, so they can see inside the bowl. On this level on the other side of the building it looks nearly identical to the laboratories back at the academy. Except in one of the rooms there are rows of cages filled with rats.”

“Probably where they breed and electrify them,” Ostin said.

Ian continued panning the room. “Over there are more offices.” He turned to his left. “Hmm. They aren’t offices. It’s a jail. Along this wall are five cells. The three closest are empty, the fourth one has an older man in it, and there’s someone in the fifth, but I can’t tell what they look like.”

“Is it my mother?”

Ian shook his head. “No. It’s a guy. And whoever it is, he’s glowing. He’s one of us.”

“Maybe it’s Bryan,” Zeus said. “He was always getting in trouble. But he’d just cut through the door. Does he have any of those wires on him?”

“He’s wired,” Ian said.

“That explains it,” Zeus said. “Gotta be Bryan.”

“Maybe he’ll join us,” Taylor said. “We could use him.”

Zeus shook his head. “No. He won’t join us. Those guys are loyal to Hatch.”

“Maybe he’ll change his mind like you did,” Taylor said.

Zeus looked at her. “Maybe. But I doubt it.”

“I want to know who it is,” I said. “If Hatch is losing control of his kids, I want to know why. What type of locks are on the doors?”

“Old-fashioned kind,” Ian said.

“So we need a key.”

“Or explosives,” Ostin said.

“Or Bryan,” Zeus said.

“What do you see outside the building?” I asked.

“More buildings. The building closest to us looks like a prison or jail. A lot of bars.”

“The Reeducation facility,” Ostin said. “It’s next to the assembly hall. Is there a bigger building next to it?”

Ian nodded. “Yeah. The guards are eating lunch in there. There’s got to be more than a thousand guards in there right now.”

“That’s the assembly hall, all right,” Ostin said. “North of it should be the dormitories.”

“Yep. Bunk rooms. A lot of them. There’re guards in there, too. How do you know this?”

“I studied the plans. What else do you see?”

“Past it, on the other side, there are maybe forty or fifty tents. There are guards in all of them.”

“Temporary shelter for the visiting guards,” Ostin said.

“This place is crawling with guards,” Ian said. “They’re everywhere.”

“Good,” I said. “Once we find some guard outfits, we can move freely around the complex.”

Raúl walked back to Ostin and started speaking. Ostin listened intently and asked a few questions before turning to us. “Raúl says
that his boss told him to give us a tour of their operations. He also says we need to be careful because there are three Elgen guards assigned to the ranch house. Two of them are new here, so they’ll be easy to fool, but it’s best if we don’t talk to the guards at all.”

“Will the other ranchers tell the guards about us?” I asked.

Ostin asked Raúl, then said, “He doesn’t think so. They don’t like the guards.”

“Where are the guards now?” I asked.

“He said they’re at lunch.”

“We can jump them for their uniforms when they get back,” Jack said.

“With all these cameras around, that’s risky,” Ostin said.