Pod (16 page)

Dad, still unnerved about my “encounter” yesterday, is checking up on me every fifteen minutes or so. The binoculars are in my lap. It’s a Dad decoy. I have no hope of seeing Amanda, or anything else beyond the window. All I’m really doing is trying to figure out what’s going on. I’ve had no more episodes since this morning. I suppose that’s a good thing. I’ve come close to telling Dad about it, but at the last second a voice in my head says that it’s probably not a good idea. So I hold off for now. But if I were to tell him, I would have only one thing to say.

Of all the stupid stuff I’ve done or said since the PODs arrived, reaching out into that fog ranks number one—by a mile.

Out of the Frying Pan

Here’s my plan.

Of course there are problems with the plan. Like, what if I can’t find any place to hide? Or I hide and they find me? Or I miss with the pepper spray? Or I run out of food before I find Cassie? Or I can’t find Cassie, or my escape route is blocked? All sorts of things can go wrong. I’ve learned that when you make a plan, it’s a good idea to have a backup plan handy in case the first one doesn’t work. I have one of those, too. Take Richie up on his trade. If he wants the gun that much, he can have it. All I care about right now is getting Cassie back.

I hike back to the cave and stash half the water and the rest of the beef jerky. Then, back at Level 1, I load my backpack with the tools I might need: two screwdrivers, the makeup mirror (for seeing around corners), the busted Swiss army knife, white tape from the first-aid kit, three PowerBars, some wire from a coat hanger, and a half bottle of water. I smear my face, even my eye patch, with streaks of engine oil. I tie a black scarf around my head and jam the glow sticks into my waistband. The metal case gets stuffed up under the backseat cushion of the crappiest car in the whole garage—Mom’s ’78 Nova. No one will find it there. I review the plan in my head, then take a final look around my world.

Outside there’s still the swirling yellowish blue fog. If I stare long enough, sometimes I see small flashes of light inside, like bug zappers on a hot summer night. It’s so thick it’s like the rest of the world isn’t there. A part of me wonders why it doesn’t come into the parking garage. The other part of me wonders why it would want to. Wrecked cars, broken glass, stuffed animals with missing parts, clothing that’s too big or too small, old newspapers, and all the other assorted pieces of lives that scared people in a hurry left behind. Oh, and one long, dark stain. A heaviness leaks into my bones. It could be the fog—or maybe it’s something else.

But I don’t have time for this kind of thinking. I shake my brain until it clears. Take a deep breath. Shoulders back. Okay.

I head for the stairs.

Three knocks on the door. No one answers. I knock again. Same thing. I test the doorknob. Locked. I pull on the door. It seems to move a little, so I pull again, harder. It swings open, almost knocking me over. Maybe the latch was full of dust or something was wedged in the doorway. Maybe it’s a trap. And maybe, just maybe, a piece of luck floated my way for once. I don’t see anyone inside. Whatever the reason, I put the pepper spray in my pocket and walk in.

Light from outside spills into a room that isn’t much bigger than the toolshed back home. There’s two gray electrical boxes on the wall with useless yellow-and-black
stickers reading
Danger—High Voltage
, a calendar still stuck on January showing a guy doing some upside-down stunt on a snowboard, a folded-up stepladder in the corner. There’s an air-conditioning vent above the ladder—it’s covered with dusty cobwebs. Moving to the right, there’s a metal desk, a metal chair with a dark sweater hanging over the back, a small calculator, a desk lamp, a Starbucks coffee cup, a mop, and two buckets. And two more feet to the right, another door. There’s an awful rotting sour smell I can’t quite figure out. I know it’s not a bloater, though. That smell I’ll never forget.

The moment of truth.

I tiptoe to the other door and wrap my fingers around the handle. It turns. I pull a little; the door opens a crack. And squeaks. I close the door. Another squeak, loud enough for someone to hear. I run to the outside door, which is still open, and wait. My heart is pogo-sticking against my chest. I’m ready to run like a rabbit if that inside door opens. I set my brain clock to five minutes. Nothing. I close the outside door, test it to make sure it still opens. It sticks a little but works. Okay. Escape route secure. Now the room is totally black. I reach for one of the glow sticks, then stop. Not yet; need to save those. I close my one good eye and picture the room. I put my hands out in front of me and zombie-walk until I touch the opposite wall, move slowly to my right, touch the desk, the lamp, the coffee cup. It falls to the floor with a soft thump and a splash. Now I know where the smell is coming from. I wait a couple of heartbeats, then feel my way along the wall to
the door handle. Turn, pull, squeak, wait. Pull, squeak, wait. One more pull. I fit my head through the opening. More black, more silence. I step through the space and into …

A hall, I think. Or at least it
feels
like a hall. I measure the width of the space with steps. I count twenty from one side to the other, and who knows how long it is. I’m about to close the door when I freeze. It’s locked from the hall side. There’s no un-lock button on the other side of the handle. If I close this door, which is one of those un-smashable metal fire doors, then there goes my escape route. Good-bye to Part 3 of the plan.
Stupid, stupid, stupid!
I take off my pack, fumble around for the tape, tear off a piece, and stick it over the latch. Note to self:
Don’t be stupid
.

Now for Part 2—find the treasure.

As I move down the hall I remember something. One night Mom and I were sitting on the couch watching TV when I saw a mouse run under Zack’s chair. We chased the mouse, but it got away. The next day I saw another mouse (or maybe the same mouse) in the kitchen, and we couldn’t catch that one either. So all of a sudden we had this big problem. Mom wanted to set mousetraps, but Zack said no, use poison. After a couple of weeks, no more mice. And two weeks later our neighbor’s cat died. The vet told them it was because she ate poisoned mice. Zack told Mom that if a cat is so stupid it eats poisoned mice, it deserves
to die. And that, Mom told me while we were driving through a thunderstorm in Colorado, is when she started making her escape plan. That and the time he showed her a gun and said it had a bullet with her name on it if she ever tried to run away. Anyway, the point of this is that I learned mice stay close to the walls when they move through a room. So that’s how I move down this hallway in the dark—close to the wall and quiet as a mouse.

There are five more doors along the way, all locked. I touch a fire extinguisher on the wall next to door three and almost knock over a garbage can between doors four and five. Smooth, Megs. I reach the end of the hall and it takes a left turn. There’s a thin sliver of light in the distance. Another door? As I get closer I hear voices. People talking. Conversations! Something that should seem as normal as getting out of bed, but gives me a chill instead. I touch the door, reach around for the handle.

It’s locked. There’s an air vent above the door. Filtered light and pieces of conversations are leaking in from the other side. The vent is too high for me to look through, but I have an idea—the ladder from the utility room. I walk back and get the ladder, being careful not to kick the garbage can or bang it against the walls.

Back at the door now, I open the ladder and climb all the way to the top. It’s a little shaky, so I use the door for balance. Looking through the vent, I can see three steps leading up to a big room with a high ceiling and lots of windows. Probably the hotel lobby. A shiny wooden counter is at the far side of the room with paintings behind it
and a big sign on the wall saying
Hotel Excelsior
. Black rugs dot the white floor and there’s a row of tall windows on one side of the counter. With the fog outside the windows it looks like this is a hotel in the clouds. On the other side of the counter is a door with smoky dark glass. There’s painted writing on the glass that reads
Misty’s Restaurant
.

I count twenty people, but there’s probably more. Some are sitting in lounge chairs reading magazines, some walking around, some in corners talking, but most are standing in a long line that leads to I don’t know where. There are three kids, a boy and two girls, standing in the line next to a woman. Her eyes have the glassy look of a dead fish. The boy is around my age; the girls are younger, red-haired twins. The boy has a cell phone and he’s pretending to talk with the aliens. He’s telling them to beam up his stupid ugly sisters. This bugs the twins, who keep trying to take the phone. The woman wakes from her trance long enough to grab the boy’s arm and whisper something in his ear. Whatever it is, he doesn’t pay attention because the next thing I know the woman reaches down, snatches the phone out of his hand, and snaps it in half. She gives one half to each of the twins. The boy stares at her, his mouth swinging open like a broken trapdoor.

My eyes move on to more important things. There are three men in the room. Hacker is standing to the right of the restaurant door, cleaning a gun with his shirtsleeve. After every cough he spits into the pot of the plant beside him. The guy on the other side of the door is slouched in
a chair. I’m pretty sure a gun is poking out the top of his sweatpants. It looks like he’s sleeping, but every once in a while his head turns a little, just enough to see it’s Black Beard. And he’s definitely not sleeping. The third guard is standing at the top of the stairs, no more than six feet from where I’m balancing on a shaky ladder. I can’t see his face because he’s wearing a hood and turned the wrong way. But I see his boots.

Snakeskin.

A woman walks up to Richie. Her sad eyes are ringed with shadows and she slides one foot as she walks. She’s holding a baby wrapped loosely in a blue blanket. The baby’s face is bright red and he’s taking short, raspy breaths. The woman asks Richie if she can see the man in charge right away, it’s an emergency. He ignores her. There’s a woman in the background, sitting on a couch. She was reading a magazine. Now she’s focused on this conversation.

The mother says, “Please. My baby, he needs something for his fever.”

Richie says, “You think I care about that?” He points to the end of the line. “No cuts, lady. Go wait your turn like everyone else.”

The people in the line don’t pay any attention. They keep inching forward. But the woman in the background is heading this way. She’s short and thin and probably doesn’t weigh much more than me. But the way she moves, light and smooth like a dancer, reminds me of one of my favorite people—Aunt Janet. Aunt Janet was a gymnast in high school and can still do a backflip anytime she wants.

The mother stands there, frozen. Her shoulders start shaking. She puts her head down, turns away.

Aunt Janet says to her, “Stop. Wait right there.” Then she says to Richie, “What’s your problem? Can’t you see this is a medical emergency?”

Richie, turning to face her, says, “I can see just fine.”

She says, “I’m tired of the way you treat people.”

Richie says, “That a fact?”

She says, “Just because you have—”

Richie’s hand slides into his pocket, pulls out the knife, flips it open, points the tip at Aunt Janet’s head. The whole thing happened in less than three seconds.

He says, “Just because I have this?”

Aunt Janet stops talking. She stares up at the blade six inches from her throat.