A Stranger Thing (The Ever-Expanding Universe) (7 page)

Somewhere out across the ice there is another crack of thunder.
Crack-BOOM!

I look at Cole and smile wistfully. He smiles back. His teeth are so perfect. I hope Olivia gets his teeth and not mine. Some
other things, however . . . I mean, I love the lug, I really think I do.

I just hope being a moron isn’t hereditary.

•  •  •

It might seem weird to get so excited at the sight of a prison camp looming in the distance, but when you’ve been sledding along into nothingness for hours,
anything
is welcome. Even Alan lets out what I can only assume is a grunt of relief. I have a feeling the guy will be volunteering for kitchen duty pronto when he gets back. Dude does
not
like to travel.

The prison camp comes into better focus as the dogs trot closer. And not that I exactly knew what to expect when I heard we were being shipped off here, but this . . . wasn’t it.

The building is a log cabin. As in, Abraham Lincoln log cabin. It’s big, but not huge-big, maybe like medium-big. (At least, that’s how I imagine the famed poet Robert Frost would have described it in his ever-eloquent verse, “Two Roads Converged on a Medium-Big Cabin.”) And it doesn’t look very prison-y. There are no bars on the windows, no visible locks on the doors. A few huskies similar to the ones currently mushing our sled are hanging out by the front entrance, but they don’t look to be at all threatening. That’s the vibe I get from the way they’re busy sniffing each other’s crotches, anyway.

“I guess they figure there’s nowhere for us to try to escape to,” Ducky says, piping up for the first time since the depot.

My Bestie. The cheery one.

I shrug Ducky’s foul mood off and take in my surroundings slowly, cataloging every path, every window, every tiny crack
in the cabin’s wall. And I am absolutely positive my father is doing the same.

“Here we are,” Alan announces when our driver brings the dogs to a stop. “Your new home away from home.”

“Who do we call for turndown service?” I mutter, but no one pays me any mind.

We are greeted by a tall handsome fellow with a weather-beaten face, close-cropped hair, thin lips, and brooding eyes. You can tell just by looking at him that he’s not much of a talker. He walks over to the sleds, limping ever-so-slightly, favoring his left leg, and rather than greeting any of us, he bends down to one knee to pet our dogs. As soon as they get a whiff of him, the pups all stop their playfighting with one another and sit back on their haunches and begin wagging their tails frantically, ears relaxed in doggy glee as they wait, anxiously but obediently, for their turn for a scratching. Clearly they’re gaga for the guy.

“You Oates?” Alan hollers at him. The man nods, one sharp jerk of his head. “I got some cargo for you,” Alan continues, motioning our way. I notice the distinct change in his tone when addressing Oates. With us, he’s mostly formal, a little short. But with this guy Oates, there’s a disdainful edge that’s unmistakable.

The man Oates doesn’t reply, just heads to the back of one of the sleds, where he unstraps a few boxes of who-knows-what. Meanwhile, we “cargo” stand shivering in our thermal suits, not quite sure what to do with ourselves. I mean, no one really ever told me if it’s proper protocol to offer to help your new prison guard unload supplies or . . . what.

“If you wouldn’t mind hurrying,” Alan says, more to his watch than to the man. “I’d like to get back to the
Fountain
before that thunderstorm catches up with us.”

For the first time, Oates raises his eyes in Alan’s direction. I notice the leather hilt of a handgun at Oates’s hip. “That’s not thunder,” he says. His words come out slowly but precise, with a definite British accent.

He returns to his knots, and in short order he has removed the entire load from the sled. He looks straight at us and makes one quick motion with his arm, summoning us. We fall into line, and in turn he hands a box each to Dad, Cole, and Ducky, who, being the weakest of the bunch, grunts under the strain as he takes it. Oates lifts the fourth and last crate from the sled and turns as if to hand it to me, then stops cold when he sees the cargo I’ve already got cooing in my arms. It’s a long moment with him just staring, frozen in place. He doesn’t look shocked, or angry, or annoyed. Which bothers me some, ’cause I don’t like unreadable types, as a rule.

“So the child is staying?” he asks finally.

“At least until we hear back about that Vassar scholarship,” I say, crossing my fingers in what I hope translates as an indignant bit of sarcasm.

Another sharp nod. “I see.” And that, as far as I can tell, is the end of it. Oates grips the box easily in his hands and turns his attention to Alan, offering him the box to carry. Only Alan is already climbing back onto the sled with our other captors.

“You should come inside and rest for a spell,” Oates tells him.

But Alan is busy rousing the dogs. The guy could not
be more ready to get out of here. And to be honest, I’m not too put out by the idea myself. “If it’s all the same, I’d rather not,” he says, his voice clearly implying that by “if it’s all the same” he means “Is there an option to stick a live scorpion in my pants instead?” “There is quite a bit of”—he glances at Ducky—“
cleanup
to attend to on the
Fountain
.”

Ducky whispers in my ear so I’m the only one who can hear him muttering. “Advanced alien civilization, but they never heard of Dramamine?”

Oates puts down his box and saunters, gimp-style, to the front of Alan’s sled. The dogs sit perfectly still and watch him keenly—as if Oates had given them an unspoken command. “Your dogs will need to be swapped out with fresh ones for the trip back,” he tells Alan. “Please, come rest inside.” It is not a suggestion.

Alan clears his throat. “Your concern for the well-being of inferior creatures is duly noted,” he replies coolly with just that faint hint of contempt. The remark garners a few snickers from Alan’s fellow guards. “But nevertheless we shall be underway.” And he doesn’t wait for a response but instead turns back to the dogs.

Which is probably why he doesn’t see it coming.

The punch, that is.

Before any of us know what’s happened, Oates has dropped his crate and flown over the front of the sled, landing a real doozy of a haymaker to Alan’s face. Alan careens off his seat, crashing butt-first into the snow. But before he or any of the other Almiri can respond, Oates leaps on top of him, his left forearm pressing down firmly on Alan’s throat, and in
one fluid motion, looses the pistol from his belt with his right hand and trains it directly between Alan’s eyes. The pistol is old-fashioned, long and smooth, with an honest-to-God firing hammer. Like, for gunpowder and everything.

“Listen, brat,” Oates says, his voice still quiet and steely calm. “You may think you know a thing or two, but from where I stand, you’ve been around about as long as a sneeze. Dogs are living creatures, like you and me, and so they are deserving of your respect and care.” His lock on Alan must be solid, ’cause I’ve never seen an Almiri look so helpless before. Oates flicks the pistol in a slight upward motion for emphasis. “Wouldn’t you agree?”

Alan nods weakly, letting out a squeaking noise I can only imagine is an affirmation.

“Good,” Oates says.

And then he pulls the trigger.

“Pop.”

I flinch backward and close my eyes, but Oates’s verbal “pop” is the closest thing to a shot that we get. When I open my eyes, I see Oates standing up off Alan, his pistol by his side. Dangling by a long string from the barrel of the gun is a small, smooth wooden ball.

“A toy gun?” I ask, confused.

Oates holsters his “weapon” and turns back to the box he dropped in the snow. There is not a smidgen of recognition on his face that he has just made a dude nearly wet himself with a popgun. “A little levity helps to keep spirits light around here,” is all he says as he heads toward the cabin, nodding for us to follow. “I’ll send out a man to help you unharness those dogs.”

Alan rises up off the ground and brushes the snow and ice from his thermal. “Don’t think I won’t tell Byron about this,” he calls to Oates’s back.

“See that you do, boy,” Oates replies. He steps into the cabin without another word.

I turn to Ducky, who gives me a shrug.

“I guess, as wardens go, it could be worse,” he says.

•  •  •

The inside of the cabin is just as dreary as the outside would suggest, if not more so. It’s not much warmer, and the only light to illuminate the place seems to be coming from two old electric wall lamps. Several long wooden tables run the length of the room, scattered with framing squares, hammers, chisels, pencils, a sander, and other fairly low-tech carpentry gear. Along both walls are shelves crammed with toolboxes and other foreign-looking supplies, and a few crates litter the floor for good measure.

What I notice first and foremost, however, is the total lack of any other people.

“Is this it?” I ask, dumbfounded. Is this what the Almiri meant when they said they were taking us to a secure location? They were just going to maroon us in a log cabin with one (admittedly kinda badass) loner to guard us?

Oates sets down the box he’s carrying and gestures for us to do the same.

“There was a time when the contents of this cabin would have seemed like luxury accommodations,” he says, moving with that slight limp to the far end of the room.

“I guess I just imagined . . . I don’t know,” I continue.
Because, really, I’m not sure what I imagined.
Jailhouse Rock
? “Are you, like, the only guard here?”

Oates kneels down next to an inclined plane in the floor. On the side he pulls open a slide cover, revealing a small touchscreen console. He taps in a code, and suddenly the top of the incline slides open, revealing a staircase leading underground. A bright light emanates from below.

“There are no guards here, child,” he says, rising to his feet again. “In this place we are prisoners all.” And he shuffles down the stairs.

Ducky, Dad, and I all turn to Cole, as if he’ll know what’s going on, but Cole looks as lost as the rest of us, if not more so. You’d think if your civilization kept a big honking Phantom Zone–like prison on the underbelly of the planet, you might try to learn a thing or two about it, but not my Coley.

As Cole and Ducky start down the stairs behind Oates, Dad stops to make sure the straps on Olivia’s papoose are snug—and that’s when I see it. In a far corner, by the window, there is what appears to be an old, twentieth-century ham radio. It is rusty, and possibly missing a few parts, but still. It’s a means of communication. I elbow my father. “Dad,” I whisper.

He doesn’t even look up, just shakes his head. “Yes,” he says, as though he’s read my mind and found it lacking, “but who would we call?” My face falls. He’s right, of course.

“Then what’s the plan, Dad?” I say. And can I help it if my voice comes out a little whiny? “Please just tell me what you’re working on. I’m dying here.”

“Dearheart,” he says kindly, making eye contact at last. “There is no plan.”

I’m pretty sure I was less shocked when my Dad showed me his high school graduation photo with the goatee and accordion bowtie (the ’50s were brutally tragic, fashion-wise). “But you
always
have a plan,” I say.

He gazes at me, as though deciding how best to present his fatherly wisdom. “You can’t just shoot off into space in a trash compactor when you’ve got a baby to consider, Elvie,” he tells me, adjusting Olivia’s arm into a more comfortable position inside her papoose. “Things have changed now. For the moment I think it’s wisest to lay low, play along with our captors, and figure out who our friends are.”

“But . . .”

“The only plan you need to be concerned with is keeping this precious little girl alive,” Dad tells me.

Well. It’s hard to argue with that, now, isn’t it?

As Dad starts down the steps to join the others, I take one last look out the window at the snow, then kiss my daughter on the forehead.
Keeping this precious little girl alive.
I can do that. “Here goes nothing,” I whisper to her.

And I descend into my prison—a Nara without an escape plan.

Who would’ve dreamed it?

The first thing I notice, as I descend, is how much warmer it is than in the cabin above. Brighter, too, with modern light panels casting a pleasing glow across the space. We funnel into a long, white hallway with metallic walls and auto-slide doors. Blinking LED control panels are peppered along each side.

“A hidden bunker.” Dad whistles. “Would you look at that.”

“Come,” Oates says. “You must be hungry. There’s soup in the canteen. The others will want a look at you.” And he leads us down the hall, Dad and Ducky up front. I hang back a few paces with Cole at my side. I rub Olivia’s back nervously. Suddenly I wish she were awake, screaming even, just so I’d have something else to focus on.

“So there are others here,” Dad says to Oates as we make our way through a set of sliding doors.

“Yes,” Oates says. “Twenty-two besides myself.” He shakes his head, correcting his count. “Twenty-three, excuse me. We’ve had an unexpected visitor drop in of late,” he explains. “You folks make the count twenty-eight. Or”—he looks back at me—“twenty-seven and a half, at the least.”

“And you’re all prisoners?” I ask, massaging Olivia’s back in little circles. “There are no guards at all?”

“We are all guardians of our own souls, Miss . . . ?”

“Elvie,” I say.

“Well, Miss Elvie, if you’re asking why we stay here, each man would have his own story, I suppose. But the long and short of it is that we’ve all a reason to be put here, and that’s reason enough to stay.”

Sigh
 . . . Almiri and their dang honor.

“And you’re all Almiri?” I ask. “Everyone else but us humans, I mean?”

Oates doesn’t answer until we reach the far door, where there is a faint sound of music. He raises his hand to the control switch but pauses to look down at Olivia, that same stoic look on his face. “Well, it’s a complicated world, now, isn’t it?”