Chimera (34 page)

“It did not help. A guard was killed, in 1994. It
was a horrible time. The other guards swept through the camp looking for the
culprit. They were not . . . gentle in their interrogations. For a
while things quieted down as the boys were put under a draconian sort of
lockdown. They were forced to stay in their cabins at all times, not even being
allowed out for exercise. That couldn't last, though, not if we wished to keep
the boys healthy. I imagine some of us believed the rash of violence had been a
fad. A phase the boys would grow out of.

“This was not the case.

“The boys continued their lessons through it all.
The only time they saw each other, for a while, was in my classroom. Which meant
that their anger at each other found no other outlet. I had to break up fights
constantly. I had guards rush in and restrain my students in the middle of my
lectures. If I called on a boy and he didn't know the answer, the others would
jeer at him mercilessly. If he did know the answer, they would mock him for
being a show-off. Then one day a fight broke out that I couldn't stop. One of
the slower boys, but one notorious for his incredible strength, attacked another
boy right in front of me. The attacker—his name was Keenan—broke the other boy's
arms in the time it takes to say it. He was jumping on top of his victim,
smashing him with his feet. I tried to pull him away and he lashed out at me.
His nictitating membranes—his third eyelids, I can see you don't know the
term—were down, and when their eyes were like that I knew they weren't going to
stop. They were going to hit and bite and scratch until everything in front of
them was destroyed. Keenan came at me with nothing in his heart but pure, animal
rage. I had thwarted him, and he would tear me to pieces.”

Julia gasped. “What did you do?” she asked.

Ellie inhaled deeply. “I drew my sidearm and I put
him down like a mad dog. Three bullets in his skull, that was enough. Did I not
mention that I was carrying a pistol while I taught? We all were, by that point.
Every human being in Camp Putnam went armed at all times. It just wasn't safe
otherwise.”

CHICAGO,
ILLINOIS: APRIL 13, T+40:51

The fireplace by Chapel's right side crackled
and popped. Apomotov came in and poured more whiskey into their teacups. Outside
the wind from the lake battered at the house, but inside all was quiet. No one
spoke a word as they waited for Ellie to continue her story.

“The level of aggression we saw,” she said, looking
only into her teacup, “was far beyond anything we'd expected. Anything we'd
planned for. These were children! You've only seen them as adults. At that age
they looked like little seraphs, angels with black eyes. When they turned on
each other, or on us, they turned to demons in a moment. We tried so many
things. I recommended individual counseling—bringing in a small army of
psychologists, child development specialists, social workers. My request was
roundly denied. It was too great a security risk.

“The boys kept fighting, and every time they hurt a
guard, things just got so much worse. In 1995, they killed one of the
researchers, a Dr. Harkness.”

Julia gasped.

“I'm . . . sorry,” Julia said, when
Chapel looked at her. “Just—I knew her. Dr. Harkness. She was really sweet. She
used to bring me magazines,
Tiger Beat
and
. . . and
Seventeen
. She said being raised
by scientists, I needed to see what the real world was like. They killed her? Oh
my God. Oh my God . . . Mom just told me she moved away.”

She shook her head, and Chapel saw a tear roll down
her cheek.

“Please,” Julia said. “Just—go on. I'll be
okay.”

Ellie gave her a sympathetic frown, but she clearly
wanted to get back to her story. “After that the guards were told to shoot any
boy acting violent. They were human beings, those guards, and they rarely did as
they were told. At least, at first. In 1996, things changed.”

Ellie drew her feet up underneath her as if they
were cold. She took a moment to catch her breath and drink some more whiskey. “I
made a mistake. A bad one. It has occurred to me, more than once, that what
happened was my fault.

“I know I'm being overly hard on myself. But it
happened because of what I did. Or rather, what I didn't do.

“A group of the boys came to me. Just four of them,
a little cabal. They were the smartest of the lot, my best pupils. And they knew
what was happening. They understood that normal children—human children—weren't
like this. They said that if they could just get out of the camp, see the world
beyond and live like normal children, then they would settle down. That they
would overcome their impulses. The leader was a boy named Ian. The smartest of
them all, and one of the strongest. You could see in his eyes he was a natural
leader. Well, when his eyes weren't covered by those horrible membranes, you
could see it. He had organized this little committee. He came to me because he
knew I was the most sympathetic adult in that camp, and the one who was the
least tied to the military. He asked me for my help. They had a plan, but they
needed certain things to make it happen. They needed to know where the guards
would be at a certain hour. And then he told me he needed my sidearm.

“I told him it was impossible, and I refused to
help. He saw at once I wouldn't budge and that he'd made a mistake asking for my
gun. So instead, then, he pleaded—begged, on bended knee—that I not tell anyone
what he'd asked. He promised that he would forget all about the plan, that he
would devote himself to stopping the violence.

“So I kept my peace. Two nights later they rushed
the fence. They had no weapons and no idea what they were doing; they simply
thought they could climb over an electrified fence and run away. The guards
killed one of them and restrained Ian. Two more of them did get over the fence,
believe it or not. They fought the guards who came for them. One of them was
tranquilized and taken away and I never saw him again. One of them actually got
loose, and it was months before he was returned to us.”

“That was Malcolm,” Chapel said, remembering Funt's
story.

“Yes. Malcolm. They caught him again, eventually.
The camp he came back to was not the one he left,” Ellie said.

She shuddered but went on. “There had been a gate
in the fence, originally. A wide gate you could drive a jeep through. The guards
sealed that up. They added a new, outer fence. And in between them they laid
mines. Land mines. There would not be a second escape attempt.”

“Wait,” Chapel said. “They sealed the fence? There
was no gate after that?”

“I believe I spoke clearly, Captain. After 1996,
the fence was complete. After that date no human being ever set foot in Camp
Putnam. The guards had decided, you see, that it wasn't safe. Not even for armed
men. Anyone attempting to go in or out was to be shot on sight. And believe me,
this time the guards obeyed their orders to the letter.”

CHICAGO,
ILLINOIS: APRIL 13, T+41:06

Chapel's phone started to ring. It surprised
him enough he jumped in his seat. He took it out of his pocket and saw that it
was still set to vibrate, but apparently Angel could get past that. “Forgive
me,” he said. He yanked the battery out of the phone, and it went silent
again.

“Someone doesn't want you to hear this,” Ellie
said, looking frightened.

Chapel didn't blame her. “That's all the more
reason why I
need
to hear it,” he told her. “A lot
of people have spent a lot of time and effort keeping this secret so long. But
secrets have a way of festering. This one's old enough and dangerous enough that
people are dying for it. I have to stop that.”

“I suppose someone must,” Ellie said. “There's not
much more to tell, though, I'm afraid. My involvement with Camp Putnam didn't
last much longer.”

“You said you started there in 1990, and that you
worked there for eight years,” Chapel told her.

“Yes. Those last two years were . . .
terrifying. My safety was guaranteed, but the boys were trapped in there. They
were abandoned. Left to their own self-destructive impulses. When I took the
job, I had thought I was working at some kind of high-tech summer camp. By the
time I left, I felt like I was a schoolteacher at Auschwitz.”

“I'm sorry you had to go through this,” Chapel told
her.

“I stayed, Captain. I stayed even after they sealed
the fence. I'm not asking for your pity.” Ellie finished her drink. “Perhaps I
thought I could still help in some way. It can be hard to remember why we
did
things, later on. I've often suspected that human
brains are more susceptible to inertia than we like to think. I had been the
boys' teacher. I kept teaching. The soldiers built a platform, a kind of stage
that rose above the level of the fence. The scientists and I would go up there
whenever we wished to observe or address the boys. We were separated from the
boys by twenty yards of no-man's-land, so we had to use megaphones to talk to
them. The scientists kept asking them questions. The guards would throw food and
clothing down to them. I tried to teach them. I tried to stick to my lesson
plans. Each day fewer and fewer of them came to listen. I told myself they had
decided what I had to impart wasn't worth hearing. I think I knew the truth,
though. There were fewer of them all the time because there was nobody stopping
them from acting out. No way to dissuade them from killing each other. When I
began, there had been two hundred boys in that camp. When I left—when it became
clear that I wasn't helping them—there were perhaps thirty of them
remaining.”

Chapel's heart skipped a beat. Thirty, in 1998.
According to Hollingshead, only seven had still been alive when the fence was
blown open and they escaped. Seven—out of two hundred.

“The last of them I ever saw was Ian,” Ellie said.
“He kept coming. My star pupil, he was always there when I went on that stage.
He would shout questions up to me, and I would answer them the best I could.
When he asked when I was coming back inside, when the gate would be
reinstalled—” She stopped for a moment. “When he asked when he would be free, I
had no answer for him. I could only pretend I hadn't heard him. Captain, you
told me earlier about Malcolm. Malcolm survived all this time. He got to be free
again. That makes me strangely happy. I'm not surprised Brody made it as well.
He was the most thoughtful of them. The one who tried to think things through,
to understand why things were the way they were. Quinn almost certainly made it.
He was the strongest of them by far. But I am certain—absolutely certain—that if
even one of them is still alive out there, it's Ian. You say you haven't met him
yet. When you do, I think you'll understand.”

She fell silent then. She wasn't looking at Chapel
or Julia, just at her own memories. When Apomotov came in to announce someone
was persistently trying to call them on the telephone, Ellie glanced up.

“Well, who is it?” she asked.

“A young lady who won't give her name. I told her
we couldn't accept any calls now. Under the circumstances.”

“Quite right,” Ellie said. “Captain Chapel. I've
told you all I know. I find it has distressed me more than I expected, saying it
all out loud after all this time. I think I'd like to go to bed now. Was there
anything else you required?”

“Just one more thing, ma'am. I hate to impose.”

Ellie lifted one hand in resignation. “I can hardly
refuse now.”

Chapel leaned forward on the divan. “I need
directions on how to get to Camp Putnam,” he told her.

CHICAGO,
ILLINOIS: APRIL 13, T+41:27

Apomotov fetched them their coats and Chapel
thanked him profusely. Julia just stared at the door like she couldn't wait to
leave. Before going back out into the cold, though, Chapel decided he needed to
do one thing.

He put the battery back in his phone. It started
ringing instantly. He put the hands-free unit in his ear and said, “Hello,
Angel. What's new?”

Any trace of the sultry vixen he remembered was
gone from the operator's voice. “Captain Chapel. I have new orders from Director
Hollingshead. Will you listen to them and acknowledge receipt?”

“Sure,” Chapel said, with a sigh.

“The director orders you—and I am told to phrase
this as a direct order—to proceed immediately to Denver, Colorado, where you
will take charge of the security detail around Judge Franklin Hayes. Do you
acknowledge?”

“You can tell the admiral I received him loud and
clear,” Chapel told her.

“Chapel,” Angel said, her voice warming up by maybe
a tenth of a degree, “you're headed down a dark path.”

“I know it, Angel.”

She clucked her tongue. “You're not supposed to
know any of this. I'm not supposed to know anything about Camp Putnam. That's a
top secret DoD installation, and just the fact of its existence is need-to-know
information.”

“I know.”

“I can't help you if you disobey these orders,
Chapel. I can't help you with the consequences of your actions. You'll be on
your own. I want to go on record as saying—no—begging you to reconsider your
next move. You have your orders.”

“Understood,” he said. He put the phone and the
hands-free unit in his pocket. He left the battery in the phone for the moment,
just in case. Just in case of what, he couldn't say. He glanced at Julia, but
she was still staring at the door.

Ellie had come up to the foyer to see them off.
“Stay warm,” she said.