Gone Black (20 page)

Rico got down and crawled on his belly through the thick, thorny bushes growing along the back wall of his mama's vegetable garden. The thorns kept scratching him, but he didn't care. When he got to the break in the wall where the bricks had fallen off, he could look into the courtyard, and he stayed down low and watched the big guards standing around with their long rifles slung over their shoulders. There were a lot of them, and they leaned against the wall at various places and talked together and smoked lots of cigarettes, just like they always did.

But he was trying to see that girl named Claire. She told him that everything was going to be all right, but he wasn't so sure about that. She didn't know what Jaxy and Max were like. How they liked to just kill people, anytime they wanted to, and nobody ever did anything about it. Sometimes they just up and killed one of their own men, too. Shot them down for no reason. And both of them were already angry at Claire for helping him get away.

So he was really scared that they'd just take her up on that high cliff and shoot her in the head, the way they had his parents. His whole body began to shiver, because he was very afraid for her, and he couldn't stop thinking about how Daddy and Mama had been thrown off the cliff, their bodies probably spinning around in the air, until they'd splashed down into the sea where it smashed so hard against the rocks very, very far below. He had been alone since that awful day, but now he felt like he had a friend, somebody who could get him away from Jaxy. That Claire lady had been real nice and held him real tight and rocked him, just like his mama used to do. He wanted to be with her again. He wanted her to hold him like that again and take him far, far away from all the bad people. And he never, ever wanted to come back to this place by the sea, not ever again. He hated it now. He hated everything about it.

For a long time, Rico lay in the dark and searched the courtyard for Jaxy. He did not want to run into her on his way inside the fortress. She would beat him with her sap and make him do tricks for the big men with the guns and they would all laugh at him. Then she would tie him to her bed when she went to sleep, and he would have to sit there on the cold, stone floor and wait for her to wake up, unable to move very far on the short leash or even go to the bathroom.

Right now, though, he was free, and he knew places that the bad ones didn't even know about, places where they would never find him, secret places where he could hide Claire, too. He used to love all his daddy's stories about the Romans and the pirates, but now he just hated it, every inch of it, every room, even his own hideout. But he could find out where they were keeping Claire. He could watch from the little slits inside the tunnels. Some of them led all the way down to the lowest grotto overlooking the waves and others led out outside the walls into the trees. There were spaces between the walls, too, with lots of hidden doors. He would be safe there, if he could just get into the first tunnel without getting caught. The one named Claire had freed him, and now he had to free her, too.

As the men turned and talked together about some soccer game being played in Rome, he moved stealthily along on the ground, still crawling low on his stomach, slithering out over the garden wall and elbow-crawling his way to the ancient covered cistern in the center of the courtyard. He could just barely lift the heavy lid high enough to slip inside. Then he eased down into the knee-deep water and waded as quietly as he could to where the narrow Roman trough ran under the courtyard and back into the main part of the house. Slowly, silently, he crawled along through the darkness and made it all the way to the Great Hall without even sloshing the water very much.

When he finally reached the main level, he squatted down and trembled all over. He held his breath when he heard Jaxy's voice floating out of the room right next to Rico's hiding place. She was talking to Max. She was talking about Rico. She was saying she was going to catch him and make him sorry he'd run away again.

Rico got really terrified then because she was so awfully mean and she was so close and because she hurt him so much when she shocked him with that dog collar. She would drag him around on the leash and laugh if it hurt so bad that he cried and then she would tell him to quit his blubbering and act like a man. He couldn't help it. He hated her. He wasn't supposed to ever hate anybody, his mama had told him so, but he hoped Jaxy fell off that high cliff and into the ocean and drowned and was taken far out to sea where a whale would eat her like one that had eaten Jonah.

But he didn't move a muscle the whole time that they stood talking together inside the very next room. He hardly even breathed, and held himself so still, not until she and Max moved over to the wide main staircase and climbed up to the second floor where all the bedrooms were located. Then he waited some more, just to make sure none of the big guards were coming, and then he got down on his hands and knees and scurried the rest of the way down the shaft until he reached the narrow space between the walls where he could stand up and walk. He wanted to find Claire so bad. He wanted to tell her about the man she was looking for, the man who had picked him up and held him, just like she had, when his fancy red car had skidded to a stop and almost hit him. Maybe if Rico could take her to him, maybe then she and the blue-eyed man would take him away with them, somewhere safe, where there weren't any bad ones that hurt him.

Rico tiptoed up the narrow stone steps behind the wall that rose beside the staircase, up to the second floor, where he used to have his own bedroom, where his mama used to come wearing her white and pink nightgown that was all covered with little rosebuds and read books to him before she kissed him good night and turned off the light. He wished she could still do that. He wished she wasn't floating under the water, dead, with fish all around her. He wished she could kiss him good night again. Tears burned behind his eyes, but he didn't cry. He had stopped crying for her a long time ago. And he also knew what would happen if Jaxy heard him. So he moved along inside the walls, as silent as a wraith floating above the ground.

Once Black got outside his white prison, he staggered blearily down the hallway and almost fell to his knees. He was still groggy and disoriented and very weak from lack of food and water. He had been slowly coming down off the effects of the drug but had enough strength to slug Jaxy a couple of times. He had hit her hard enough to slow her down; he was sure about that much. But now he was seeing the vibrant colors again, all around him, pulsating in bright patterns and vivid stripes on the walls on both sides of him, in and out and up and down, shivering and disconcerting.

Black shut his eyes and struggled back up on his feet, using the wall as support, and then he opened them and searched for a way out. He had to get to Claire, he kept thinking, but he was so confused he couldn't quite focus on how to do it. But then he remembered the bedroom and the bomb, and he somehow knew he had to find her and get her out before they killed her. But he still couldn't think straight enough to figure it out, couldn't really see through the dancing colors. Everything was wavy and blurry as if he were trapped in an underwater cavern filled with rainbows, and his reality was so distorted that he could barely stumble along, not sure what to do or where to go.

Whoever was manning the cameras would have spotted his escape. He did know that much. He had to find somewhere to hide. So he began to feel his way along the wall, and the stone was cool under his palms, but he was not sure where he was or where he was going, just that he had to get away and hide. The drug was still in his system and still strong enough to make him see things shift and whirl about and everything so distorted that he didn't know what was real and what wasn't. But he had to pull himself together. He had to find Claire before they killed her.

Black made it to the end of the hallway before he heard running feet, loud on the tiled floor. Several men. Coming straight at him. He ducked into the first room he came to. It looked like another bedroom, but one that had been converted into some kind of closet, with shelves of towels and toilet paper and cleaning supplies lining the walls. It was purple, with green frost climbing up the walls, shiny and crystallized, and thick yellow snakes slithered around on the floor around his feet.

They're not real, it's your imagination,
he kept telling himself over and over. Mind reeling now with total disorientation, he tried to avoid the writhing reptiles and felt along the shelves, searching for a weapon, anything, but he found nothing he could use. Then he heard the men right outside in the hallway, opening and shutting doors, searching for him. When his hand touched a broom propped in the corner, he sought to tear off the head and then he gripped the handle in both fists. He squatted down against the wall, ready to fight, but another strong wave of melting colors and echoing sounds took hold of his mind and made the room grow small and then expand, and then small again, a vivid flash of every color and hue glowing dim and bright, dim and bright, making him feel sick to his stomach.

Sweating profusely, he started breathing deeply, trying to force some kind of clarity into his tortured brain, trying hard to pull himself out of the drug-induced nightmare and back to a semblance of reality. The effects had been coming in waves for what seemed like hours, violent onslaughts that wracked his perceptions and made him feel as if he were going crazy. The men were closer now. He could hear them just outside the room, and his fingers tightened around the broom handle.

Then he heard something else, a voice behind him, and he jerked around, weapon ready to strike, and found himself staring at a child. It was the boy who had been standing in the road the night Black was captured, the little kid he had nearly run down. Or was it? He tried to think if the boy was real or another figment of his imagination. He tried to shove away the jumping blues and yellows encasing him so he could see the boy better. The kid was another hallucination. He had to be. Black had been seeing people and wild animals in his drug daze, people trying to kill him, people trying to fight with him, people who disappeared when he swung at them. The kid was not real. He couldn't be.

“C'mon, mister, come quick,” the little boy cried out in English.

“What?” Black frowned and tried to blink the vision away. The boy still stood there, motioning hard for Black to follow him.

“Claire sent me. You've got to come.”

Black scrambled over on his hands and knees to where the kid stood. “Where is she? Can you get me there?”

The boy nodded, and Black grabbed his small arms and the boy felt solid. He was real. The kid started pulling Black's arm, trying to lead him back farther into the closet. Black let the kid pull him through the warped nightmare inside his head. But then the door to the hall was thrust open behind them, and three men were there in front of Black, grabbing him as he fought desperately to get away. One of them raised his rifle and brought the butt down hard on Black's back. He went down, and as they grabbed him again, Black looked for the kid but the child was gone. They hadn't gotten him. Or maybe the boy had been a hallucination after all.