The Angel & the Brown-eyed Boy (26 page)

Jeremy kept stamping and swearing and the others said things to make him feel better. “She was deeply disturbed, Jeremy. You have to realize that,” Mel, the dark-haired jolly boy, said.

“SOMETHIN’ WAS WRONG WITH HER,” Sam shouted, stepping forward. His voice was much louder than he intended. “SHE
WAS DOIN’ TH’ BEST SHE COULD, SAME AS ANY O’ US. LEAVE HER BE.” His mouth kept running, but it wasn’t so loud at least. “Ye oughta feel sorry for her. She’s in a worse place than ye.”

They turned and looked at him, as though he’d shown up from nowhere.

Before anyone could respond, Arthur burst out of the computer lab and ran toward them. He was decked out in his black commando suit. No one would have thought him a mild driver now. He was a trained killer. “The surveillance equipment isn’t working. I’ve been monitoring the forest and it stopped working.”

“What?” Jeremy exclaimed.

“There’s some kind of electronic force out there. Overwhelms everything. The satellite feed just quit.” He addressed Sam, “Are federal commandos on their way? Can you tell?”

Sam was silent, listening to psychic currents he could perceive again, now that the hooch had worn off.

“Nah. Nowhere close. Ah got ma boys all about in th’ woods, they’ll let us know.” Sam had sent his men as far into the woods as they’d go. The haunt had them scared into sissies. “Ah’ll know if they come.”

“Let us know if you pick up anything,” Arthur said. “If they come after us, they’ll be so loaded on combat packs that nothing will stop them.”

Sam thought that the haunt, if it was real, probably would stop them. The people around the village were pretty near insane from fear of it.

He’d seen soldiers on those drugs that made them into killers. They were worth fearing. He looked up the stairs. The fairy girl had stayed in the main house.

“Commandos are not a problem,” Jeremy said. “We can go into the shelter and lock ourselves in. No one can get us there.”

“What about this shelter, Jeremy?” Mel asked. “I’ve heard about it for years. Let’s see it.”

“Yes,” Henry echoed, “I’d like to see it now that it’s done.”

Lena added, “Ellie said something to me about her people possibly coming for all of us tomorrow. I’d like to see what my options are before I go running off into space.”

“OK. I’ll give you a tour,” Jeremy said. He looked like he’d been draggin’ a dead bear for thirty miles and finally let go of it. “The first and only tour. Sam, get Rupert in here, too. I think he’s hiding in the bushes on the other side of the ballroom. We all need to see this place.”

“W
as there really a giant dog in the sky?” Val began grilling the kid the moment they got in the car.

“No!” he laughed. “They were passing around a bottle and playing the video game that Arthur—the driver—left after the limo went through. This week’s payoff.”

“Payoff?”

“Jeremy goes out to the estate every weekend in one of Mrs. Edgarton’s cars. It’s never searched, and there’s always a ‘gift.’ I’ve never seen corruption like here, and I’ve been stationed four places.”

“Tell me more.” Val knew she had those losers in the station pegged.

“Jeremy goes out to the estate all the time. They’ve been building something out there for years.”

“What?”

“The captain said it was an amusement park.”

“In the Hamptons?”

“That’s what I said. Every time Jeremy goes through, he brings a ‘care package’ for the captain.”

“What kind of care package?”

“Tech stuff mostly. Computer games, gadgets. Internet stuff. Stuff that can be sold for thousands of dollars, anywhere. The captain just bought a nice new house.” The kid nodded knowingly.

This was exactly what she was looking for. “Do you have any documentation of it?”

“No. They turn the cameras off when they see the car. My name is Josh, by the way.” He smiled at her.

“I’m Val Zanner.” she smiled back. “Tell me what happened today.”

Josh told her about stopping Mrs. Edgarton’s limo.

“The Dog Master was in the cab? Wait a minute. His show is live. I watch it as much as I can. He was shooting in New Jersey at the sheep trials today. He couldn’t have been here.” She thought hard. “Tell me what else happened.”

“We never saw Mrs. Edgarton, just heard her voice. Man, is she something.” Josh pulled his collar away from his neck like he was letting out steam. “That voice. We were expecting her; the orders for the day said she was coming through. We thought she was with the general. I couldn’t figure out why she’d drive her limo. She’d take a military chopper from the base or come in a convoy. But when the president spoke—”

“Wait a minute,” Val said. “I talked to him this afternoon. He was in the Oval Office; I dialed there on the dedicated line from the Anti-Terrorism Unit Director’s Office.”

“The president sounded just like he does on TV sometimes, with that cough.”

“He didn’t cough when I talked to him.”

They looked at each other.

“Let’s get out to the Piermont place and see what’s going on.”

Josh nodded. “The captain said Jeremy was going up there to party with a load of kids, but I don’t believe that.”

“Would you believe it if I told you that little Jeremy was a wanted terrorist, part of a cell operating from the Hermitage Academy? He blew up the school today, hiding evidence. That’s why my face looks like this. I was at ground zero.” She swerved, trying to fish her paperwork out her briefcase. “Get my case. I’ve got pictures of them in it.”

He found the photos she’d lifted from the academy yearbook.

“Shit! The old African guy was in the car. And so was this guy— Mel Adams. And her, too.” Val had gotten a picture of Lena from police files. She had a record of sorts—a neighbor had complained that she wouldn’t pick up her dog’s shit. “They were all in the car. And a guy who looked just like the Dog Master. Something’s going down at the Piermont place!”

She punched it, shooting through the countryside. Theirs was the only car on the road, which deteriorated rapidly the farther they went. The next checkpoint was deserted. She didn’t like the way the overhead canopy was swaying, so she pulled around the outside of the kiosks and didn’t go under it.

“Gee,” Josh said, “did you see that?”

“What?” The checkpoint was behind them by that time.

“One of the stations was smashed up. Looked like a car ran into it. A red car.”

“Why red?”

“A lot of red paint was scraped off.”

They drove in silence. The roads got worse.

When she saw the final checkpoint, she stopped in the middle of the road. “What could do this?” The overhang that went from one side of the road to the other was ripped off. The guard stations were pulled out of the ground and torn up. Pieces of sheet metal littered the road.

“Josh, are you sure you didn’t see anything back at the station? No giant flying dog?”

“I didn’t see anything. But I was downstairs after getting the crap beat out of me for stopping Mrs. E’s car. I couldn’t see anything.”

“Now you tell me. That’s great, Josh.”

She punched it again, heading into the forest.

“Do you think we should go back?” he asked.

“No. I’m on a mission. Did you see the video about the missiles being armed?”

“Yeah. I saw it.”

“What did you think?”

“I didn’t know what to think. What do you think?”

Val blinked. The combat pack was telling her to go for it no matter what the cost. A niggling doubt whispered inside her. She’d passed huge concrete installations all afternoon. Were they missiles? Were they armed? Should she go back? No! She was doing her duty.

“I think we ought to get to Veronica Edgarton’s mansion as fast as we can. The answers will be there. Besides, we don’t know what direction whatever wrecked the checkpoint was traveling. It could be at the estate, or it could be going back to New York City.”

Josh looked at her. “OK. I’m sure you’re right.”

“That’s right, Josh. I am right. Let’s go for it.” She rammed the pedal to the floor.

Val was glad she worked out as much as she did; she needed her strength to stay in her seat. The car was bucking like a rodeo horse; the road kept going downhill. Something hurt her hand. She looked and saw that her ring had turned so that its stones were biting into her clenched fingers. She spun it so that the stones didn’t rub. It sparkled, even in the dim light. Her breath caught. She felt like crying.

Fuck that. She pushed the throttle down harder and peered ahead. It was getting darker, both from the sun going down and the fucking trees. She’d never seen so many trees. They had to be subversive. Josh kept looking at her as though she knew what she was doing.

“Hey,” he said, “why don’t we pull over for the night? We can’t see much in this light. We can start again first thing in the morning.” He was scared.

“Let’s just go one more mile. If we haven’t found the mansion by
then, we’ll stop.” She felt creepy. They were in hills. First all the trees, then the hills. There was a drop-off to a river on their left, which, if she remembered right, was the Pawtawamauck River. On the other side was a steep forest. Trees. The outdoors freaked her out. She’d lived in a city all her life and saw no need for trees.

“Josh, what was that?”

“What?”

“I saw something running in the forest.”

“I didn’t see anything.”

“It’s over there—look!”

J
eremy slipped through the round door. The minute he stepped over the threshold, the other side lit up without him doing a thing. He had hardened up like he’d never been a boy crying about his mother while saying every bad thing about her he could.

Sam’s eyes widened as he walked through with the others behind him. A hall ran off to his right. He could see a computer lab through glass windows. He hadn’t seen a computer, but he knew what the screens meant. The lab was dug under the mansion. It seemed huge to him.

“This is my upstairs lab,” Jeremy said. “It’s smaller than the one down below. That’s where people will be living and where they’ll need the computers. I’ve transferred all the data and good computers down there. These are old. They’ll probably be destroyed by the blast.”

To the lab’s left was a steel wall with another round door in the center. Sam stared at it, filled with dread. He’d seen them build this shelter; he knew how deep the pit was. He didn’t want to go all the
way down. People crowded behind him. All his life, he’d wanted to go to the lady’s parties. Now here he was, with them in fancy clothes all around him, and he wanted to be home with a pillow over his head. But he had to go down—he was the headman. Did the fact that Jeremy was taking him and Rupert down mean he was inviting them to live in it?

“The living quarters are at the bottom.” Jeremy pushed a button on the wall, and the new door screwed out from the wall and swung open. They stepped through it. This area was also brightly lit. Another set of steps down, with a circular door at the bottom, lay in front of them. They went down and through it, and then did it again. Through six doors, all told, and down six sets of stairs.

The shelter had seven levels. They ended up on the lowest one. The doors remained open, all the way up. That’s all that kept Sam down there. He’d have bolted back to the top, if escape hadn’t been clear. The echoes and unnatural light unnerved him.

“I didn’t put an elevator in it because everything’s on solar,” Jeremy said, then corrected himself. “I say I designed the shelter, but it was a collaboration. I did the on-site design, and scientists all over the world commented on it and created specific systems. We built them here. There’s no elevator because we didn’t want to use as much solar power as an elevator takes, and I didn’t know how much the blasts would throw the shaft out of alignment.

“We built the shelter with everything important on the bottom. This level will be radiation-free no matter what. As the radiation clears, we’ll be able to go to the higher levels. I don’t know how long that will take. The shelter is designed for two thousand years’ occupancy. That’s the worst-case scenario.”

Sam looked around, feeling hope desert him. Rupert shuddered and pulled close to his da like a kiddie.