The Ark Plan (21 page)

As my head emerged onto the top floor, I blinked in wonder at this strange little man's house. The space was cavernous, spanning the entire length of the building. Unlike the other floors, where inches of dust, broken ceiling panels, and remnants of desks and machinery
lay in haphazard piles, this floor was swept clean, revealing shiny white tiles. The only light came from the wall closest to me, and I gaped in amazement when I saw that it was made of unbroken glass. I stepped closer to look out over the treetops. We were much higher than we'd been the night before, and the forest seemed to go on and on in every direction.

Metal screeched behind me, and I jumped. Turning, I saw Ivan, assisted by Todd, drop a thick metal plate down on the hole in the floor. The rope we'd used to climb was coiled neatly at their feet. Ivan walked around to all four corners, sliding metal bolts into place to lock the panel down.

“This,” Ivan grunted as he forced the last bolt home, “is what keeps the lizard beasties from making us their dinner.”

“Has one ever made it up this high?” Shawn asked.

“They've made it up,” Ivan said sourly, waving his missing appendage. I swallowed hard and looked over at Todd. He shrugged and grinned. Finished with the bolts, Ivan hobbled around his home, lighting lanterns. As pools of flickering light flooded the space, it became clear that Ivan did all of his living in one corner where a small bed, table, and stove stood. The rest of the empty space was cast into impenetrable shadows by
the fading light from outside. But even though Ivan's house was interesting, my eyes were drawn back to the spectacular view showcased through the floor-to-ceiling window. The sun, fat and red, dipped down and disappeared behind the trees, leaving waves of pink and orange in its wake. I just couldn't get over how beautiful things were up here, especially sunsets. And I'd missed hundreds upon hundreds of them. I felt like something had been stolen from me. Brushing the thought away, I turned back to the rest of the group. While I'd stared out the window, they'd made themselves at home at Ivan's worn wooden table. I glanced behind me, into the shadowy darkness of the rest of the skyscraper, and shivered. After living in tunnels, all this echoing openness made me nervous.

“You're probably hungry,” Ivan grumbled as he set a large pot on his stove and stoked the fire beneath it. Hungry was an understatement. My insides felt hollow and I realized I hadn't eaten since the night before.

“We have provisions,” Todd said, and he produced the large hunks of leftover raptor meat and handed it to him. Ivan sniffed it before chopping it into chunks and tossing it in the pot.

“There is something oddly familiar about that guy,” Shawn whispered to me. I raised an eyebrow at him.

“Really?” I asked. “I was just thinking that there was no way in the world my dad would ever know a guy like this.”

“I'm amazed you haven't been grilling him about your dad,” Shawn said. “Are you feeling okay?”

“I will.” I frowned. “There just hasn't really been a chance. And he's a little . . .” I trailed off as I watched Ivan scowling down at the stew he was stirring.

“Terrifying?” Shawn finished for me.

“I was going to say intimidating.” Ivan's eyes flicked to me with that same penetrating look, and I gulped. “But terrifying works.”

“So, Ivan, you are obviously still in the dinosaur trade,” Todd said. “Why haven't you been by the Oaks in years?”

Ivan glanced at Todd. “I'm semi-retired.”

“What do you mean by semi-retired?” I asked tentatively as I sat down at his battered table. My eyes were growing accustomed to the darkness of the room, and I noticed large shadowed shapes against the far walls.

“It means I only trade when it suits me. I don't drag these old bones of mine around the woods anymore from village to village. And I no longer have to deal with every idiot who thinks they know how to haggle.”

“Oh,” I said dumbly, looking to Todd for some guidance on how to communicate with this odd character.

“What have you and your mom been doing to get by without your father?” Ivan asked.

“We manage,” Todd said stiffly, then frowned. “Well. We did until these two came along.”

I stared down at the rough wooden surface of Ivan's table and wished I could disappear.

“What do you mean?” Ivan asked sharply.

Todd glanced at me, and I saw that anger still sparkled in his eyes. “I found Sky and Shawn about two minutes before they were about to get eaten. After I saved them, I brought them back to the Oaks. Next thing you know, the Noah's guys showed up and took the entire village away in these big black flying machines called . . .” He trailed off, looking at Shawn.

“Helicopters,” Shawn supplied.

“Right.” Todd nodded. “Helicopters.”

“We were followed,” I jumped in. Todd was making us sound really bad. “I'm not sure how the marines tracked Shawn and me, but they did.” When Ivan's head snapped to stare out his window, as though he were expecting one of the Noah's black helicopters to come bursting through the glass, I quickly added, “We got rid of everything we brought from the compound. There is no way we have a tracker on us now.” Ivan relaxed, but only a fraction.

“What I really want to know,” he said, peering into
his simmering pot, “is why the daughter of Jack Mundy is sitting in my home.” I jumped at the sound of my dad's name, my eyes snapping up to meet his twinkling blue ones.

“So you
are
the Ivan my dad mentioned in his note,” I breathed, not daring to hope. “How did you know him? Have you seen him? Do you know why he left the compound?”

“What is your father doing sending you topside with nothing but this compound boy and the Birch brat?” Ivan asked as he began ladling food into bowls that he thrust into our hands unceremoniously

“I prefer Todd, if it's all the same to you,” Todd said.

Ivan raised an eyebrow at him.

“But Birch brat has a certain ring to it,” Todd said meekly.

“He asked me to do something for him,” I said. “Shawn came along to help me, and we met Todd.”

“Why didn't he do this ‘something' he asked you to do himself?” Ivan asked.

“Because he disappeared five years ago,” I said, my stomach sinking in disappointment. “So you don't know anything about my dad? He didn't come here?”

“Why would he come here?” Ivan asked.

I felt myself deflate. I'd been so excited about finding
Ivan, so sure he'd have answers.

Ivan sat down at the table across from me and leaned back, tugging at his beard. “Why don't you tell me how you came to be sitting at my kitchen table? Don't leave out any details, even if you think they are insignificant.”

I took a deep breath, and nodded. “I was seven the night my dad disappeared,” I began, telling him the same story I'd told Jett, Emily, and Todd only two nights before. But this time, I didn't conveniently leave out what my compass contained. Ivan listened in stony silence, never taking his eyes off me. Getting looked at like that made me nervous, so I told most of the story staring at the dinged wood of Ivan's table.

“So do you know anything about the note, or the plug, or the map?” I asked, finally looking up.

“No, I don't.” Ivan shook his head, making his long beard swish like the hairy pendulum of a clock. “I haven't seen your father in eleven years.”

I wrinkled my nose in confusion. Ivan wasn't making any sense. “Then how did you know I was his daughter?”

He looked up at me with level blue eyes. “Because you're a dead ringer for your mother.”

I about choked. “What?”

“Your mother,” Ivan repeated as though I hadn't
heard him. “I thought I was seeing a ghost walking through the woods this evening.”

“Wait. You knew my mom too?” The hope that had died moments before flared back to life.

“I'd say so,” Ivan said, taking a big bite of his stew. “Seeing as she was my daughter.”

“Y
ou're Ivan the dinosaur hunter's granddaughter?” Todd said in awe as he looked at me with newfound respect.

“I am?” I felt stunned and disconnected, as though maybe Ivan was telling this to someone else. This couldn't possibly be real. Could it? My hands shook, sending the soup sloshing over the sides of my bowl. I set it down and pushed it aside.

“You are,” Ivan confirmed. “My Clara had the same wild hair and birdlike build. Your eyes are your father's, though.” He frowned. “A pity. Your mother's were prettier.”

“How in the world,” Shawn asked, “would your
daughter, Sky's mom, have come to live in a compound?”

“What interest is it to you?” Ivan asked sharply.

“Sky's my friend,” Shawn said stiffly. “What concerns her concerns me.”

Ivan looked at me. “Do you trust the compound boy?”

“I'd trust Shawn with my life,” I said automatically, my brain still trying to process everything.

Ivan harrumphed into his beard, looking unconvinced. “My daughter wanted a more formal education. She was into books, read everything she could get her hands on. When she turned eighteen, I helped her enter the East Compound, posing as a voluntary transfer from the South Compound so she could attend the university.”

“But how—” Shawn began, but stopped when Ivan glared at him.

“I have my ways, and they do not concern you,” Ivan said. “She was supposed to come back once she'd had her fill of formal schooling. She wanted to teach some of the children in the surrounding tree villages math and science and that kind of rot.” Ivan sniffed and took another bite of stew. “But she didn't come back. She fell in love with that idiot father of yours.”

My jaw clench defensively. “My father was brilliant.”

“That's what Clara said. He might have been compound smart, but he had absolutely no common sense when it came to survival. I told your mother that, but she insisted on marrying him anyway. And then she died.” He sniffed. “I always thought I'd die first, my line of work and all.”

“But why didn't I know about you?” I asked. My dad would have mentioned if I had a grandfather. Wouldn't he? Maybe Ivan was mistaken.

“Because last I checked, children are no good at keeping secrets from a government with eyes and ears everywhere,” Ivan said. “I always assumed your father
would
tell you about me when you were old enough.” He scrutinized me a moment, and I squirmed. “You do look like my Clara, though. Although she had the sense not to let her skin fry in the sun. Us redheaded folk must take extra precautions.” Ivan's close-cropped hair and beard where white, but on closer inspection, I saw a few stray hairs that had retained their red color. “Didn't they teach you anything useful in that compound school of yours?” he asked disapprovingly.

I frowned. “Not really.”

“It wasn't completely useless,” Shawn protested.

“Shawn, it was, and you know it,” I snapped. “Stop pretending it wasn't.”

“Hmmm,” Ivan said. “You have Clara's temper too.”

“Sorry,” I muttered to Shawn, not feeling very sorry at all. Turning back to Ivan, I thrust my dad's note and map at him. “If you haven't seen my dad in years, why did he ask me to find you?” Ivan picked up the pieces of paper and read them before laying them down on his table. “These were hidden in Jack's compass?” he asked as he pulled another compass out of the front of his shirt.

“You have a direction whatchadinger too?” Todd asked.

“Whatchadinger?” Ivan snorted. “It's called a compass.” He shook his head and mumbled something that sounded like “village kids these days,” but I couldn't be sure.

“Can I see it?” I asked, not taking my eyes off the gleaming brass circle in his hand. When Ivan handed it to me, I held it up next to my father's. They were almost identical. “Why do you have this?”

“Every member of the secret society of the Colombe had one,” Ivan said.

“What's the Colombe?” Shawn asked.

“Idiotic name, isn't it,” Ivan said. “It was your father's idea, Sky. It's the word
dove
in Italian or French or some such nonsense.”

“My dad loved languages,” I murmured, remembering a long-ago life where languages were woven into
the fabric of every day. “But why dove?” Ivan ignored me as he reread the note from my dad. He set it down sharply on the table. “Your father was an idiot,” he said after a moment. Before I could protest, Ivan went on, muttering more to himself than us as he scowled down at the bowl. “Sending you aboveground with no training and the barest of clues to go off. Jack Mundy, what were you thinking?”

I sat up, my spine straightening. “He was thinking that I could handle it.” When Ivan didn't say anything, I scowled. “I'm still alive, aren't I?”

“You are,” Shawn agreed.

“Of course she is,” Ivan snapped. “She's my granddaughter, isn't she?” He frowned down at my untouched supper. “Eat the rest of that. I don't let food go to waste.” I grimaced. My hunger from moments before had disappeared, but I picked up my spoon anyway and forced myself to take a bite.

“The Colombe.” Ivan sighed. “I guess I better start at the beginning. I met your father fifteen years ago. I relocated east when Clara insisted on going to that compound university.” I could tell by his expression that he hadn't agreed with her decision. Ivan took a big bite of stew and continued. “While she was at that university, she met a few other students who didn't buy into all the dinosaur dung the Noah was flinging about.”

“What dinosaur dung?” I prompted.

“The dung about humans only being safe in underground bomb shelters,” Ivan said. “Last I checked, there hasn't been any bomb. The dinosaurs haven't made our planet uninhabitable; people panicked after the pandemic when they realized they were outnumbered and
chose
not to inhabit it.”

“Not all the humans,” I pointed out with a glance at Todd.

“Correct,” Ivan said. “There are thirty-five villages spread across North America that I know of, at least. I'd venture to say there are more than that, but the majority of humanity is still cowering under concrete. My daughter met others who believed that humans and dinosaurs can share this massive planet of ours. Of course,” he said, turning to me, his eyes softening, “your mother knew that it was possible. I'd raised her to hunt and trap with the best of them.” Ivan cleared his throat, and I saw a flash of pain in his eyes. I hated to admit it, but that look made me jealous. I would have given anything to have a memory of my mother.

Ivan cleared his throat and went on. “Once she felt like she could trust them, she told them about me, about life in the sunshine, about the villages in the trees. Your father named their little group the Colombe.”

“I still don't get the dove reference,” I frowned.

“Why does the Noah call himself the Noah?” Ivan prompted. “Why do they call the compound-living system his Ark Plan?”

“It's based off an ancient biblical story,” Shawn said. “About a guy named Noah who brought a bunch of animals into a big boat called an ark to save them from a flood. So a hundred and fifty years ago, when William Brown saved the human race by bringing them underground, he called himself the Noah.”

“Good to know they taught you something in that school,” Ivan said begrudgingly. “But what about the rest of the story?”

“What do you mean?” Shawn asked. “That's it.”

“No.” Ivan shook his head. “The story didn't end with that Noah man stuck on the boat forever with all those animals. After forty days and nights, Noah sent out a dove to look for land. That dove came back with an olive branch, so Noah knew it was safe to come off the ark. So he parked that huge behemoth of a boat and let everybody out. Taking them into the boat didn't save them; it was letting them back off that did that.”

“I get it,” I said. “The dove symbolizes that it's time to go topside again.”

“Very good.” Ivan nodded approvingly. “I was beginning to worry that you didn't have much in the way of brains. That is exactly right. The group consisted
of your mother and father, and a few other scientists and biologists that attended the university with them. I even snuck into East Compound to meet with them a few times to discuss their ideas. Your mother was so happy,” he said. “She believed that she was changing the world.”

“Wasn't she?” I asked.

Ivan shook his head sadly. “She never got the chance. Shortly after she had you, the Noah caught wind of the group. We aren't sure how, but I have my suspicions that one of the group members got nervous and turned on them.”

“I bet that didn't go well,” Todd said.

“It did not,” Ivan agreed. “The Noah was unsure who exactly was involved. This created a problem, as he couldn't very well execute every student in the university. So he came up with another solution. He scattered the entire university population to the four compounds, cutting off any opportunity they had to communicate. Your father was sent to North Compound. A few, including your mother, tried to escape into the wild before the transfer.” Ivan's face clouded over. “Some got away, but your mother was killed.”

“Killed?” I repeated, stunned.

“But the Noah values human life too much to kill anyone,” Shawn spluttered.

“Were you not at my village yesterday?” Todd asked.

“I just don't understand,” Shawn said, putting his head in his hands. “How can everything we learned be a lie?”

“It wasn't all a lie,” Ivan said gently. “The man we are talking about believes wholeheartedly in what he preached to you. He believes that what he does, he does to save the human race. History has shown us over and over again that there is nothing more dangerous than a man who believes so completely in his own convictions that he can't see the truth, even when it's right in front of him.”

“Lies,” I repeated, feeling numb. “My dad always said my mom died giving birth to me. That was a lie too?”

“It was.” Ivan nodded. “I can't think of anything more dangerous than telling his young daughter a secret that could get them both killed.” I shut my eyes, trying to make myself understand what Ivan was telling me. My mom had been murdered? I waited to feel pain, sorrow, or horror, but instead I felt betrayed. I thought back to those fuzzy years when my dad and I lived in our little apartment. How much of our life had been a lie? There was nothing solid I could hold on to, nothing true to keep me balanced in all of this. Willing myself not to cry, I opened my eyes to find Ivan watching
me. I swallowed. He wasn't just Ivan, though, was he? If what he said was true, he was my grandfather. I couldn't think about that right now, though. It was too much on top of everything else.

“Why didn't she take me with her?” I asked him, feeling the sting of abandonment. What kind of mother left her baby behind?

“I can only assume it was because she thought you'd be safer underground,” Ivan said.

“You still haven't explained the whatcha, um, compass things,” Todd corrected himself, his face flushing red.

Ivan waved his hand dismissively. “I provided those. I'd found a box of the things during one of my trapping trips, buried in the rubble. Clara wanted the group to have some kind of unifying symbol, and I liked to make Clara happy.”

“You loved her,” I said, knowing it was true. He had the same warm gleam in his eyes my dad used to have. I'd forgotten what that look was like until just now.

“She was my sun, moon, and stars,” Ivan said. “And if I'd known her daughter, my granddaughter, was living as an orphan in one of those horrid compounds, you better believe I would have come for you.”

I didn't say anything for a minute as I studied him. It was obvious in his tanned and wrinkled face that he
felt guilty for leaving me in the compound. I looked away and out the window as tears threatened again. I swallowed hard and blinked them away. No one except Shawn had cared about what happened to me ever since my dad left. I glanced back at those level blue eyes and nodded. “Thank you,” I said. I knew it wasn't much, but it was all I had at the moment.

“So mission accomplished, right?” Shawn asked, clapping his hands together, his voice forcefully cheerful. “You brought the plug to Ivan. You succeeded!”

I looked at Ivan. “Do you know what's on the plug? What my dad found out?”

“I haven't the foggiest,” Ivan said.

“Do you have a port screen?” Shawn asked. “One that will fit the plug?”

“I did have one of those infernal contraptions,” Ivan said. “Your dad gave it to me, but it was ruined when my pack fell into a pond about two years ago.”

“So this isn't over,” I breathed. “We still need to get to Lake Michigan.”

Shawn groaned and flopped his head down on the wooden table dramatically.