Jacked (18 page)

“I think this is it,” he said.

Toby glanced toward the building. “Not lookin’ too book. Let’s stop down a little ways and walk back.”

“I don’t know if I want to get out of the car.” Tar hoped his voice sounded stronger than it felt.

“It’ll be easier not to get noticed if we aren’t in it.” Toby pumped the brake, causing both of their heads to dip forward, then turned down the next street and stopped behind the rows of cars sitting permanently in the road. “Besides, if we’re gonna be too afraid to ping for this first guy, then we might as well head to the mountains like One Shoe said.”

“I guess so,” Tar said after a few seconds. “Chilly.”

They climbed out into the dwindling sunshine and looked down the row of deserted cars. The red Electrol blended in well enough, just another fragged brick.

“Better put that in your backpack,” Toby said, waving the blue and orange cloth that Oso had handed him. “This isn’t Moene territory so we better not show the colors.”

Tar nodded and stuffed the bandana into the pack’s side pocket. “You ready?”

For the first time Toby hesitated, each second feeling twice as long as the previous. Tar saw his friend’s pale skin and the glistening of sweat on his lip. He realized Toby was frightened, too, and oddly enough it made him feel calmer knowing they both felt the same.

“Yeah. Let’s kinda walk on by without stoppin’, see what we can see.”

“Okay,” agreed Tar.

Toby used the key to lock the car’s doors and they headed back around the corner. Toby kept to the side of the street opposite the huge building and Tar was chilly with that. He figured he could see everything he needed to from this side. They walked slowly by the lot and Tar noticed only one break in the fence, but it was locked shut with a heavy chain around the gate.

“I don’t see anyone,” Tar said.

“Not out front,” agreed Toby. “But look at the side. A couple kids playin’ out there and I’d swear I saw people inside moving past some of the windows.” He stopped. “Let’s go that way. I think I see some people near a gate down that other street.”

They moved back in the direction they had come. When they reached the corner, however, Toby crossed the street to the left. Tar was a step behind and caught up to him as they stepped onto the sidewalk.

They moved farther down the side street, passing in and out of the shade of the palms hanging over the sidewalk, and Tar noticed inside the compound that little kids barely old enough to run played with others closer to his and Toby’s age. Here and there he saw adults—a mother holding a baby or a man working with a tool. The face the building presented to the main street may have been quiet but the side street revealed a facility bursting with activity.

“Look at all the kids,” Tar said. “It’s got to be safe, don’t you think?”

Toby grunted and walked a few more strides. “If you want to go in I’ll follow you but…” he opened his jacket a little and Tar saw the handle of a big knife sticking out the top of his pants. “We gotta be careful. Keep your eyes open and don’t go zom once we’re inside.”

“Where’d you get that?”

“Oso.” Toby let his jacket fall back into place.

Tar nodded and looked back up. “If we’re going to find that first name on the list we’ve got to try.”

“Chilly,” Toby said, but Tar thought he heard a waver in his friend’s voice.

They walked up to the gate. About thirty feet inside the compound two men and a woman were pulling weeds out of long rows of plants. “Hey!” Tar called to them. “We’re looking for somebody, a boy.”

One of the men looked up and stared for a few seconds before reaching down. He picked up a long-handled hoe, swung it up and struck hard at the ground, throwing bits of dirt and dust up into the air.

“That’s plain enough.” Toby grabbed Tar’s arm. “Let’s go.”

But thoughts of his parents and Jahn flooded Tar’s mind. They had all made sacrifices to give him the chance to do what needed to be done and now they were all dead. He could not afford to give up so easily.

Tar shook off Toby’s hand and pushed on the gate. The familiar tingle coursed through his skin, and the gate swung open, banging against the fence. “I said, we’re looking for a boy. His name is Scott Larner.”

All three people looked up this time. The woman threw her hand up and tumbled backwards. She fell screaming behind a row of plants, leaving only her booted-feet and jean legs in sight. One of the men was almost as comical, standing frozen with clumps of weeds in both hands, chest heaving, his mouth hanging open.

But the third man, the one with the hoe, stared blankly for a three-count, then raised the hoe and started toward them. Tar heard Toby’s jacket open and the snick of a drawn knife. That brought the man up short, still a good twenty feet away.

But now they had drawn the attention of others. Women nearer to the building shouted and the children ran for the safety of the walls. Other men appeared, carrying whatever was at hand when the alarm was raised: a hammer, a shovel, even one with what appeared to be a table or chair leg. They all came forward but stopped short of the boys. Tar and Toby found themselves suddenly at the center of a semi-circle, their backs to the open gate.

“We’ve gotta go,” Toby hissed. “We tried but they don’t want to blog. Come on!”

“No!” Tar raised his voice again. “My name is Taro Hutchins. We are looking for Scott Larner. We only want to talk to him.”

What he said had no effect on the men but a woman’s voice broke the tense quiet. “Wait!” The woman in the garden had scrambled to her feet in an earthen fog of dust and bits of weed. “Look! The fence is still on.”

She pointed past Tar’s head at a little green light on the fence above the gate. By the time he looked back at the arc of men most of them took a step back, wearing looks that ranged from terror to wide-eyed awe.

“Tom, go get Mother,” the woman said. “I don’t give a damn what she’s doing. Drag her here if you have to.”

A man at the back of the group hustled into the building as the woman walked out of the garden and stood between the men and the boys. She smiled at them, then peered at Toby’s knife and gave a little shake of her head.

“Toby,” Tar said quietly, “put it away. I think it’s going to be chilly.”

Several seconds dragged out until Tar was sure his friend had not heard him or was going to ignore what he said. He opened his mouth to repeat himself but Toby finally said, “Okay, but I’m not taking my hand off it. Nobody’s getting between us and that gate.”

He heard his friend’s clothes rustle as he tucked the knife away.

The woman’s smile grew larger. “I’m Mary Bellagio,” she said. “But everyone calls me Marybelle. Does your friend have a name, Mr. Hutchins?”

“You can call me Tar. This is Toby.” Now that he really had a chance to look at the woman he realized she was not as old as she first had appeared. Long hours in the sun and wind had tanned her face and left little lines around her eyes that deepened when her smile grew but she was probably no more than ten years older than him. Staring at her was also starting to give him that funny feeling he used to get in his stomach every time Mrs. Stephens smiled at him in the apartment building. He suddenly realized the silence had stretched into awkward minutes. “Do you know Scott Larner?”

The smile wavered and Marybelle’s eyes half-shut before she caught herself.

“I sent for our leader, Mother Lisle. She’ll talk to you.”

“Will she tell us where he is?” asked Toby.

Marybelle started to answer when more people appeared at the nearby corner of the building. A half-dozen men walked toward them in a ragged line, some carrying long-barreled rifles, but it was the woman in front that caught Tar’s attention. She wore a long-sleeved, ground-length dress that was dark against her pale, wrinkled skin. Her gray hair was wrapped tight in a bun at the back of her head. Although she was probably taller than he was, she was hunched over, her back and shoulders forming most of a “c,” and she walked with a cane that reached almost to her chest. Despite her frail appearance, everyone there parted respectfully. When she drew close she tilted her head to the side and looked up at Marybelle with fire in her eyes and strength in her voice.

“Damn you, Marybelle. I don’t care if you are my granddaughter. If you think you’re old enough to order me around, I’ll crack this cane across the back of your legs like I did when you were little. Now, what’s so all-powerful important to interrupt my sewing?”

Marybelle grimaced at the tongue lashing but the smile never completely went away. Tar was beginning to think it never fully did.

“Mother, these two young men are looking for Scooter. This one,” she pointed to Tar and the old woman tilted her head until she could see his face, “opened the gate…by himself.”

Tar stepped forward, noticing out of the corner of his eye that some of the men brought their weapons up when he moved. He held his hands out to his side as he approached Mother and Marybelle and stopped about two steps away.

“We’re looking for Scott Larner, ma’am. Can you tell us where to find him?”

Mother turned her whole body as if a board was fixed to her back and her head, not allowing her neck to go from side to side. She stared at the gate a few seconds, and then looked at Tar. Her dark eyes looked him over and he felt each minute of his life peeled back under her gaze.

“I can tell you where Scooter is.” She pointed at a row of trees at the far end of the property.

Tar followed her gesture. He could just make out some low monuments under the shade.

“He’s dead.”

Chapter 23

Tar settled into his chair and sipped cold water from a glass. He could not help from staring around the room; from floor to ceiling, polished wood reflected light from the windows, echoing back whispers of voices. It was not just this room, either. Having followed Mother through the building the lustrous wood extended everywhere.

“You look impressed, young man,” said Mother.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Tar replied. “I didn’t think there was this many trees in the world.”

Mother laughed. “I was born in the state of Washington. When I was a little girl there were trees and forests as far as anyone could see. But this,” she waved her hand at the walls, “is mostly stained redwood and painted to look like other kinds.”

“It sure is big,” Tar said.

“Forty bedrooms, two ballrooms, nearly fifty fireplaces, more than 160 rooms in total. This used to be a kind of museum. People came from miles around to walk through and look at it. Do you boys know what a museum is?”

They both nodded.

“How do you know all this?” asked Toby.

Mother leaned back in her chair as much as the curve in her body allowed and smiled. “I used to work here before The Crash. They paid me to dress up like Mother Winchester for the visitors, and the name stuck. This was her mansion, more than a century ago. After The Crash I stayed here, and eventually more people came because it was safer than being out there.” The smile had gone and her gray eyes turned cold. “Now…you know why I’m here. What’s this nonsense about you knowing Scooter?”

The boys looked at each other. Tar had grown accustomed to Toby leading the way but now his friend remained silent.

“I never said we knew Scott, uh…Scooter,” Tar said. “I said we were looking for him but…how did he die?” He could not help but notice several of the others in the room flinched. Tar thought he saw the glisten of tears in Marybelle’s eyes but she gave a small smile when she noticed him looking at her.

“Five years ago the sickness came,” Mother said. “Probably some kind of flu. Took out a lot of people in the area. The Black Shirts went door to door after a while, seeing who was dead and who was alive. They piled all the dead a couple of streets over and burned the bodies. Eventually the sickness faded.” She stared down at her hands for a few seconds, then looked up again. Her eyes looked even harder, the gray turning to steel. “Not before it took my James and a couple others, including young Scooter.”

“I’m sorry,” Tar said. “I remember hearing about the sickness but it didn’t hit us that bad.”

“That’s because you stayed at home,” Toby interrupted. “They closed the school for weeks and made us all stay inside and away from each other. An apartment building a few streets away from us is still empty. Everyone there got sick and died.”

Mother nodded. “It was especially hard on the old people and the young and the old.” Mother was about to say more, then stopped. Her silence dragged on until Marybelle put her hand on the old lady’s shoulder, which seemed to bring her back from whatever memory she was reliving. “You’ve sidestepped me, boy,” she said. “If you didn’t know Scooter what did you want with him?”

“My uncle had a list of names and his was on it.”

Mother’s eyes twinkled and a smile played at the corners of her mouth before she pushed it down. “Tom, search their bags.”

Tar’s stomach lurched as his backpack was suddenly snatched off his lap. Toby tried to fight back. He pushed the guy named Tom away and went for the knife at his belt. Two more men stepped up, one grabbing Toby’s arm, the other laying in a solid kidney punch.

“Toby! Just let them have it! Stop hitting him,” Tar said, worried the violence would escalate if his friend kept fighting. Toby finally gave up but glared at Tom, who had taken the bag and the knife.

Tom dumped the bag pack out on the table. He turned the flashlight over in his hands a few times but nothing else seemed to get his attention.

Tar frowned at Mother, who merely squinted at Tom as the man went through their things. She and her people clearly had the advantage here and Tar knew any more resistance would only increase the chances of things not ending well for him and Toby.

Tom moved on to Tar’s backpack, examining his flashlight, then rifling through his clothes. The man froze when he got to the shirt wrapped around Jahn’s app. He carefully folded back the sleeves and pulled the machine out into the open. A gasp went up throughout the room.

“Does it work?” asked Mother.

Tar tried to swallow. It had felt right to go looking for the other names on the list, but now it seemed everything had gone wrong. He felt very small in a very big, very dangerous place.