Storm (11 page)

I had no answer for that. It was great news, but another piece in a puzzle that didn’t quite fit.
“What do you want to do, Tucker?” she asked.
“Uh, you mean right now?”
“No, I mean about staying here. You’ve had a chance to think, and I’m better now. Do you want to stay?”
She looked up into my eyes, and for the first time I sensed that Tori Sleeper had doubts. She was always supremely confident in every move she made, whether it was tying a fisherman’s knot or running the gauntlet between two burning warships. Now she was conflicted and looking to me for guidance. It was alien territory for both of us.
I opened my mouth to speak, though I wasn’t sure of what I was going to say when—
“Stop!” she yelled.
“Uh, what?”
Tori eyes had gone from questioning to frightened. “Kill the music!” she shouted for all to hear.
It made everybody jump.
Tori pulled away from me and ran to the table where Jon had the iPods set up.
“Shut it off!” she yelled at him.
Flustered, Jon stopped the music. The marketplace went deathly silent. Nobody moved. All eyes were on the crazy girl who had just pulled the plug on their party.
“What is it, Tori?” Chris Campbell asked as he made his way through the crowd.
Tori threw up her hand to stop him.
“Listen,” she said.
I’d heard that command before.
Every last person trained their ears to try to hear what Tori did. They all feared the same thing. Their focus went to the sky.
“I hear it,” I said softly.
It was faint but unmistakable.
A rumble went through the crowd as everyone picked up on the sound. It was the last thing they ever wanted to hear again.
“There!” Jon shouted, pointing skyward.
High in the night sky, coming from the west, was the first in a long line of shadows.
The Air Force was back.

The entire crowd scrambled for the building where we had been safely sleeping below ground. What had been a barracks would now have to serve as a bunker. It wasn’t a full-on panicked rush. There were no screams but plenty of pushing and shoving.

I went for the cables that were powering the Christmas lights, but Olivia grabbed my arm.
“Where are you going?” she screamed. “Get inside!”
“I’m coming,” I said. “Get out of here!”
She hesitated, as if not wanting to leave me, but Kent yanked her away. The two ran for safety. Jon abandoned his DJ table and was right behind them.
The musical sound of the incoming planes grew louder.
I found the main plug for the lights and yanked it loose, breaking the connection to the generators and plunging the courtyard into darkness. When I turned to head for the building, Tori was there, facing me.
“Does this change your answer?” she asked.
“Can we talk about it later?”
We took off, running for safety.
The courtyard was nearly empty. It had taken only seconds. Tori and I would be the last ones to get inside. We ran to the back of the crowd that was jammed up near the door and had to wait while everyone squeezed through the opening.
I looked skyward, and my knees went weak.
“There they are,” I said, barely above a whisper.
It was a cloudless night with no moon. With Boston dark, the sky was alive with stars. Their sparkling light is what allowed us to see the silhouettes of the dark planes.
“My god,” Tori said.
There were hundreds of them. This was not a search for stragglers; it was a full-on assault.
Tori and I stood paralyzed, staring up at wave after wave of planes that appeared from the west. They flew in perfect formation, wing-to-wing and row after row.
“They look smaller,” Tori observed.
“Not smaller, higher,” I replied. “They’re way up there.”
The doorway was clear. Everyone was safely inside.
Tori and I stood frozen, staring up at the spectacle as the planes kept coming.
“This isn’t about us,” I finally declared. “They’re not here to attack, they’re going somewhere else.”
“They’re headed out over the Atlantic,” she said. “They could be going to Greenland, or England or any one of a thousand other countries.”
We continued to gaze up at the massive fleet, no longer afraid for ourselves but thunderstruck by what this show of force might mean.
“Who is commanding them?” Tori wondered aloud, as much to herself as to me. “What is their mission?”
“Hopefully it’s to wipe out SYLO,” I offered.
She tore her gaze away from the planes and looked at me.
“How can you be so sure that would be a good thing?” she asked.
I wasn’t sure of that at all, but I wanted SYLO destroyed and didn’t much care who did it. I answered her with a noncommittal shrug and kept my eyes on the sky.
The trailing edge of planes finally passed over us as the entire force continued east, headed for some unknown destination and unthinkable mission.
“We have to tell the others it’s safe,” I said.
Tori snickered. “Seriously? It isn’t even close to safe. But at least they can all get back to their fun.”
We entered the building and announced that we weren’t under attack. The news traveled quickly, and the tension was soon gone, though nobody felt much like going back out to dance. The party was over.
Tori and I went to our bunks to find Kent, Jon, and Olivia already there. Nobody was in the mood to discuss what had happened, which was fine by me. All I wanted was to fall asleep and get the image of those planes out of my mind. Instead, I saw something that only added to my anxiety.
“Where’s Jim?” I asked.
The mattress on his bunk was rolled up, and his suitcase was gone.
“Was he at the dance?” I asked.
“I didn’t see him,” Jon said. “But I was busy.”
“He could have been,” Kent said. “It wasn’t like I was looking for him.”
I lay down on my cot but couldn’t relax. Where could Jim have gone? He might have moved to another cot, but that didn’t seem likely because most were occupied. I couldn’t let it go, so I got up and walked the length of the building, scanning each of the cots with the light from my headlamp.
Jim was definitely gone.
When I got back to my own cot, Tori was awake and waiting for me.
“Maybe he decided to leave,” she offered.
“No chance. He was here for the long haul. He told me so every chance he got. I can’t believe he’d just take off. He didn’t even say good-bye.”
“Then he must still be around somewhere,” she said. “We’ll find him in the morning.”
I put my head down on the pillow, but there was no chance I was going to fall asleep quickly. Jim was a fixture at the Hall. He helped to organize it. He had no family left and nowhere else to go. Why would he change his mind and leave?
I eventually drifted off to sleep, and when I woke up the next morning I knew exactly what I had to do, which was the same thing I had done most every day. I was going to see who was leaving on the morning bus.
I tried to get out of my cot without disturbing anyone, but when I stood up, Tori was waiting there, fully dressed. “I’m going with you,” she whispered.
“You don’t even know where I’m going.”
“You want to see if Jim gets on the bus.”
Enough said.
Soon we were walking together in the gray dusk of the chilly Boston morning. I didn’t miss the fact that she was clutching her gym bag.
“People leave every day,” she said. “Why is this bugging you?”
“Because he didn’t want to leave. If he’s getting out, something happened to change his mind, and I want to know what it was.”
“Glad to hear it,” she said.
“Why’s that?”
“It means there’s hope for you yet.”
We didn’t say another word until we reached the end of the long building and the spot where I’d watched the bus load up and pull out every morning.
There were no deliveries being made that day. There was only the big bus, empty, with the motor running, waiting for its passengers.
I led Tori to the same spot I’d gone every day, behind a large green dumpster that was tucked up next to the opposite building. From there we had a clear view of the bus and the building it was idling near.
“Why are we hiding?” Tori asked. “If this is all legit, we should go over there and bid the people a fond farewell.”
“Yeah,” I replied. “But if it’s all legit, why do they take off at the crack of dawn? They could just as easily pull out at noon.”
“You’re even more paranoid than I am,” Tori said.
“I’m not,” I argued. “I’m just logical, and there’s something illogical about this.”
The door to the building opened, and the same procedure began that I had been seeing every morning. The pretty cowboy named Ashley came out with a clipboard and stood by the bus. She was soon followed by a line of people that shuffled past, offered whatever information she asked for, then continued onto the bus.
Though it was still fairly dark, I could see everyone. The loading process went normally. One by one the people filed by the girl, she checked something on the clipboard, and they boarded. Nothing was out of the ordinary, until the last guy came out of the building.
It was Jim.
I grabbed Tori’s arm. I’m not sure why.
“I don’t believe it,” I whispered.
“Guess he didn’t love it here so much after all,” Tori said.
“Or something changed his mind.”
I was about to step out of our hiding place and walk over to confront him, when Jim suddenly bolted from the line and ran off.
We watched in stunned wonder to see two of Chris’s cowboys appear from inside the building as if they had been observing the whole time. They were much younger and stronger than Jim and chased him down easily. The two grabbed him by the arms, and there was a brief struggle, but Jim was no match.
I made a move to help him, but Tori held me back. I pulled away from her but stopped when I saw Jim suddenly go limp.
The fight was over. It was like they had given him a tranquilizer, for he instantly stopped resisting and allowed them to lead him back toward the bus. He walked docilely, looking exactly like all of the other people I had seen boarding the buses.
“They were all drugged,” I whispered, trying to contain my emotion. “None of them left by choice.”
I looked at Tori. Her eyes were wide and frightened.
I started toward the bus again, but she grabbed my arm with the strength that came from hauling lobster traps, forcing me to stay put.
“No,” she said with a stern whisper. “Unless you want to end up on that bus too.”
I glanced at Tori’s gym bag. The bag with the gun.
She saw me and put her foot on it.
“Don’t even think about it,” she ordered.
I felt incredibly helpless.
The cowboys loaded Jim onto the bus, sat him in a seat, and stepped off. After a quick wave to the driver, the door closed and the bus headed out for . . . who knew where?
Ashley joined the two guy cowboys, and they all casually strolled back toward the mess hall as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. They were probably looking forward to a hearty breakfast after a job well done. Before they disappeared inside the building, I heard them laugh.
“What the hell is going on?” I said.
“Obviously they’re shipping people out who don’t want to be shipped out,” Tori said. “Maybe it’s like a transfer to somewhere else so the Hall doesn’t get overcrowded.”
“Do you really think it’s as innocent as that?” I asked skeptically.
“No.”
“Me neither. They’re drugging people, getting rid of them, and lying about it.”
“That’s only half of it,” Tori said. “Where are they taking them?”
I couldn’t begin to guess.
“They come out of that same door every day,” I said. “I want to see what’s in there.”
“What if it’s one of Campbell’s cowboys?” Tori asked.
“We’ll play dumb, like we’re lost.”
“I don’t want to be here anymore, Tucker,” she said, sounding genuinely frightened.
“Me neither, but I want to know what’s going on.”
She nodded in agreement.
We came out of our hiding place and walked quickly across the open space between buildings until we arrived at the door. I grabbed the handle, expecting it to be locked. It wasn’t. We exchanged nervous looks, and I pulled it open.
Inside was a small, nearly empty room with one desk to either side of the door. There were empty bins on both desks that looked similar to the bins I had seen at the reception desk back at Quincy Market, except that they were empty.
“For paperwork,” I whispered. “They pass through here on their way to the bus. They must get processed out the same way those girls process people in.”
“It’s all so . . . efficient,” Tori pointed out.
“Yeah, until somebody bolts.”
Staying close together, we moved to a door on the far side of the room. I opened it and cautiously peered inside.
What I saw in that next room was far worse than running into somebody who might have caught us snooping around.
“Oh man,” was all I managed to say.
Tori pushed the door open the rest of the way. When she looked inside, she had to grab my arm to steady herself.
“This just . . . it can’t be,” she said numbly.
There were stacks of suitcases piled along one wall that reached nearly to the high ceiling. Hundreds of them. All types, shapes, and colors. Another wall was full of bins that held used clothing. Shirts were separated from pants. Women’s clothes from men’s clothes. Another set of bins held shoes, underwear, and socks.
I drifted into the room and touched a suitcase that was on the floor in front of the large pile.
“It’s Jim’s,” I said, my voice cracking. I lifted it and added, “empty. I’ve been watching people get on those buses for days. Nobody left with their belongings, and nobody came back. This is all their stuff.”
“It’s like pictures I’ve seen of the Holocaust,” Tori said. “What are they doing to those people?”
I felt nauseated. We’d seen enough. Too much.
“We can’t be seen here,” I said and headed for the door.
Tori was right behind me. We made it out of that horrible room and back through to the outside door without incident. Once outside, we kept walking and didn’t say a word until we were back near the mess hall.
“We’ve got to tell everyone,” Tori cried.
“And say what? Hey, everybody! Looks like jolly old Chris and his merry posse of cowboys are sending people off to their deaths.” “Yes!”
“No! We don’t know who’s innocent and who’s working with the cowboys or where those people are being taken. If we tell the wrong people, we could end up on the next bus out.”
“So what do we do?”
My mind raced through every possible scenario, from breaking into the place where the records were kept to breaking Chris’s legs. Nothing seemed like a smart move.
Finally, the right idea hit.
“We have to find out what’s going on,” I said. “And who’s in on it.”
“How? It’s not like we can ask Chris.”
“No, but we can follow the next bus to see where it’s taking those people.”
“You mean, like, tomorrow?”
“Yes. We’ll track the bus to see where it goes. Once we know for sure, we can come back and blow the whistle . . . just before we get the hell out of here for good.”
“What about Kent and Olivia and Jon?” she asked.
“I don’t think we should tell them anything until we know for sure what we’re dealing with. It’ll be a lot easier convincing them to go once we have evidence.”
“Agreed,” Tori said. “It won’t be easy keeping quiet about this for a whole day.”
“I’m more concerned about how we’re going to find a car.”
Tori reached into her bag, and for a second I thought she was going to pull out her gun. Instead, she pulled out a set of car keys and shook them at me.
“When Jon first got the Explorer, I found a spare set in the glove compartment. I thought it would be smart to hold on to them in case of an emergency.”
“I think this qualifies.”
“Yeah, this qualifies.”
Tori and I spent the rest of the day trying to act normal. I worked in the garden directly in front of Quincy Market and she did . . . whatever she did. The whole day I spent living inside my head, trying to understand why Chris would be getting rid of the very people he was working so hard to protect . . . or at least pretending to protect. Was he working with SYLO? Or the Air Force? I couldn’t imagine who else might want people sent off to their deaths—if that’s indeed what was happening. It made sense that he was working for one side or the other. But which? And why?
It was all the more confounding when I worried that we might be jumping to gruesome conclusions. Was there an innocent explanation for what we’d seen? If there was, I couldn’t come up with it. Wherever these people ended up, it looked certain that they were being tricked and betrayed.
Betrayed. I knew a thing or two about that, thanks to my parents.
The people in the Hall were being told that this was a safe refuge. They were fed well and protected . . . until they weren’t. It struck me as incredibly cold to lure people in with the promise of sanctuary only to send them off to another fate, whatever it was. It was beyond evil. What I couldn’t understand was if the intent of the people running the Hall was mass murder, why were they going through the trouble of pretending it was something else?