The Angel & the Brown-eyed Boy (24 page)

The captain hedged before answering. He cleared his throat a few times, and then coughed. “Uh... it was kind of unusual. We all saw different things. Uh, Jim, you saw it best. Tell her.”

Jim stalled, too. “All I can tell you is: it’s real.”

“What’s real?”

“Uh... we had some traffic a few hours back. A party went through, and up the road into the trees. Then there was a noise.” Jim stopped.

“What kind of noise?” Val was getting irritated.

“It was like a... growl.”

“It was a growl,” another man volunteered. “A really loud growl, like a huge animal.”

“You came in here because you heard a huge growl?” Val kept her disbelief from showing.

“I know it sounds weird. It was weird. And loud.”

“A loud growl. Anything else?”

“Yeah. The canopy over the checkpoints started to shake like something was trying to pull it out of the ground. Parts of it are loose, too. I noticed when I was running for the station.” Jim looked around for support.

“Was it an earthquake?” Which were unknown where they were.

“No. Pete saw it. He was off a ways, taking a walk in the field.”

“Well, what was it?”

“It was in the sky. Pretty hard to see with the sun shining through its hair.”

“It had hair?”

“Long flowing hair, like clouds.”

“I see. What was it?”

“It was a dog. Looked like my auntie’s little dog, with long hair. But it was big.”

“And in the sky?” Fortunately, she was a trained interrogator and knew how to keep her feelings hidden. Val would have guffawed if they hadn’t looked so trigger-happy. All but one kid in the back, with a bruised face.

“OK. I believe you. You saw a giant dog in the sky and came inside after it attacked the guard posts.”

“It’s not just that, Lieutenant,” the captain said. “We just found something out.” He nodded at the screen. “Need-To-Know-Only broadcast. Cops and military. The broadcast said those things that rose up in the fields are nuclear missiles... and they’re fully armed.”

“That’s ridiculous. If there were nuclear warheads all over, the government would tell us about them. What you’re saying is un-American, Captain.”

He looked at her, shaking his head. “They’re right there, Lieutenant. There’s one in the field outside. Go look. That’s what Pete was checking when he went on his walk.”

“I spoke with President Charles today. He didn’t say thing about warheads. He would have told me.”

“Think so?” The captain looked skeptical. So did the rest of the men.

‘Let’s not get distracted. I’m out here on Anti-Terrorism Unit business. Have you had anyone heading to the Piermont mansion recently?”

The captain shook his head. “Not that I remember.”

“Yes, there was. Earlier today, just before the attack,” the bruised kid spoke up. “A big limo came through. The Dog Master was in it. And—”

The other men snarled when he spoke. She got the whole thing. That kid was loyal. He had tried to report the limo, and they had “disciplined” him for it. Hence, his face. She wondered how much that bitch bribed them to look the other way.

“Private, I’d like to speak to you outside,” she said. He jumped up immediately and followed her. She whispered, “Pick up your jacket; it’s cold.”

“Don’t go out there, Lieutenant. It’s dangerous,” the captain called.

They climbed in the SUV and drove away.

J
eremy went to his room and put on one of his tuxedos. He made sure he was correctly dressed, down to his cummerbund and patent leather shoes. He returned to his mother’s room to collect Ellie and found her studying the framed photo of his parents.

“Beautiful, Jeremy.”

“You’re beautiful,” he said. She’d used his mother’s photo as a model of how makeup should go on. She looked like a fashion model, teen version. In one of his mother’s drawers, she’d found a tiara—diamonds and sapphires in platinum. Priceless and beautiful.

“Wait just a second.” He ran back to his room, all the way across the mansion’s second floor. He carried the photo of his parents and stuck it on top of his chest of drawers, then dropped to the lowest drawer in the chest. He searched way in the back for something he’d hidden there.

Years ago, he’d gone into his mother’s room when she wasn’t there. He’d looked through her jewels, not knowing why he was doing it. In the back of her bottom drawer—where you’d hide something you hated but didn’t want to give up, or something you loved but that belonged to a part of you that was dead—he’d found
a velvet case.

In it were a few pieces of inexpensive jewelry. His father had bought these things for her in the beginning, with his own money. The baubles were paltry and small compared to what his mother bought herself, or inherited. A thin piece of white gold, probably ten karat, was studded with low-quality sapphires set in a flower design. Chains had been attached to each end of the gold piece, making a necklace. It had earrings to match, little flower dangles for pierced ears. The ensemble also included a slender bracelet with sapphires. And a tiny matching ring. A pinkie ring? He had taken the jewelry case from his mother’s room, not really knowing why. She’d never noticed it was gone. He’d hidden it in the recesses of his lowest drawer and never touched it again.

Now, when he opened the velvet box, it was like opening the past. Poof! His parents’ love for each other burst out like it was a living thing that had been kept in chains. Every one of those baubles shouted that his father had loved his mother. Jeremy pulled out the bracelet and necklace and shoved the case back. He dashed back to Ellie.

“For you,” he said, fastening the sapphire necklace around her neck. “And there’s a bracelet.” He put that on, noticing he’d been right when trying to remember whether to bring the earrings. She didn’t have pierced ears. He would never pierce those beautiful lobes.

“We’d better go.”

She stood up. He knew that they’d walked through a door. What he had given her was important. Her mouth was a bit open and eyes wide, but she didn’t say anything for a moment.

“We married, Jeremy?” she asked.

“No, Eliana. We’re just good friends.”

She nodded. “My people say if we married, Jeremy come home with Eliana.”

“We’re not married, Ellie,” he said quickly. “Though if I was going to get married, it would be to you.”

“Jeremy come with Eliana tomorrow? Before fry?”

That set him back. “I don’t know, Ellie. I’ve worked on the shelter as long as I can remember. I don’t know about leaving it, even for you.”

“If Jeremy love me, come my world? Is nice. We get married and you come.”

“Hey, let’s think about that. I mean, we just met each other.” Part of him wanted to say yes so much. What difference did it make? The aliens’ coming wasn’t a certainty and she was the most beautiful girl—or something—he’d ever seen. Plus, it was the end of the world. “Can the others come, too?”

“If my people say OK.”

“Look, let’s just see what happens tonight. You can keep my mom’s jewels,” he said, terrified at the thought of a bond to anyone. Will you love me? he thought. Will you love me forever and make me right? Can you make me right when everyone I’ve loved has made me feel so wrong? Will you love me if you see my darkness?

“Thank you, Jeremy.” She touched the necklace and smiled.

He put her velvet cape over her shoulders, draping the hood so the tiara showed. She took his arm and they walked down the stairs.

Everyone applauded when Jeremy and Eliana walked down the stairs. “Wow! Look at them!” Mel clapped and James whistled. “Movie stars!”

Henry beamed and Lena looked at them as though they were her children. Only Arthur looked lonely, standing off to the side. He wore austere black clothes; he was still on duty.

“You guys look like you had some fun!” Jeremy said to the people below.

The attics contained clothing and costumes from hundreds of years of parties. Lena looked like an African queen, with plumes and feathers and a gold-and-silver lamé gown. Henry wore a robe fit for an ancient emperor. James and Mel were dressed in tails—James in ivory that must have belonged to Chaz Edgarton, Mel in black from the same provenance.

“Oh, wow! Who did all this?” Jeremy looked around the dining room in wonder. The table was overflowing, as though it were Thanksgiving and Christmas. Blazing candelabras were spaced down its length. A carved turkey sat in the middle, with that gorgeous eightrib roast on one side and a ham on the other. Side dishes in silver bowls and on platters filled in.

“We did this. Why not?” Henry said. “It was hard enough to get it here; why not eat it? Let’s celebrate. Here, Jeremy, you’re at the head of the table.”

They sat down. Champagne was poured. Plates were filled.

“Well, I can’t say I’m thankful that what’s gonna happen is happening,” Henry said. “But I am grateful to be here with you all. My favorite people on earth. And I am thankful to your mother, Jeremy, for keeping this place safe. And for makin’ sure our daughters got to a good shelter.” He turned to Jeremy. “She got our girls a place in a bomb shelter she’s runnin’. They’ll be safe as anyone.”

“My mother did that?”

“Your mother does all sorts of things, Jeremy. And she’s working to help people.”

Jeremy glared. “She’s helping people?”

“More than you know, son. You don’t know all about her. She’s been fightin’ to stop it, with the general. Even he don’t want this to happen.”

“My mother?”

“Yes, Jeremy.”

“I
’ve got to do something.” Jeremy jumped up from the table. He dashed through the mansion’s entrance hall and down the stairs to the lower floor.

At the bottom of the stairs was a lobby as big as the entrance hall above. It had been built in the days when hundreds of people might attend a party. The ballroom doors were to his right, and his kingdom fanned off to the left. He’d built it over the years, first the computer lab, then the shelter.

He turned left and held his palm over a sensor on the wall. The door opened. Most would have thought it a strange door: a circle of solid steel, six feet across and a foot thick, screwed into steel casing in the wall. The door sealed the lower level against radiation, assuming the blast didn’t destroy it.

The computer lab in the Hermitage Academy was what he could get away with in close quarters. His real labs were here. The underground facility ran along a corridor on the right side of the bunker. Here, banks
of computers and screens filled room after room, behind tight security.

Jeremy entered the computer lab. This was his last chance. He sat down and collected himself for a moment. He loved his mother, no matter how much he hated her sometimes. When she had told him she was going with the general, he had screamed at her. They’d been in his room at the Hermitage. He’d chased her down the hall, up the stairs, and out of the school, saying the worst things he could think of. She hadn’t fought back, and she hadn’t contradicted him.

When she’d walked out the school’s big front door that night, Jeremy had known he had lost her. He hadn’t seen her for a year, and the few times she’d come home the two years before that, the general or his men were with her. They had e-mailed back and forth, but he’d known every word was censored. They’d figured out ways to communicate on the sly, but he never knew everything about her or all that she did.

Strapped to the inside of his ankle was his last-ditch, the-shipis-going-down-and-the-sharks-are-circling means of contacting his mother. He had made one for himself and one for her. They wore them always. He hadn’t heard from his mother in weeks and had assumed it was because she couldn’t safely contact him. The bit of technology on his ankle was for final good-byes.

As he sat down, the image of his mother came to him. He could see himself sitting on her lap in her bedroom. He was about four years old. People thought you couldn’t remember back that far, but he could.

She’d been sitting on one of the fine French lounge chairs in her room, wearing a burgundy velvet robe. He knew exactly what the robe looked like, to its color and cut. He remembered the scene so well, he could describe the wallpaper. His back leaned against the seductive, soft pillows that lived on her chest. If he sat on her lap, they were there.