Invasive Procedures (40 page)

“What good will it have done you? Do you think Keener is going to suddenly leave you alone? No, now he’s proven he can kick your butt. He’s even more confident than he was before. And while your friends might be impressed that you got in a few good punches, that doesn’t change the fact that you got your butt kicked.”

“But what if I did beat him? It’s possible.”

“OK, let’s assume you beat him. Bloody lip, the works. All your friends put you on their shoulders, and you’re a hero for a day. But what happens tomorrow? You think Keener is going to play fair? No, he’s a creep. He’s got to save face. So he’s going to get his buddies, or worse, some older kids, and they’re going to ambush you. And then you’ll really get your butt kicked.”

“So what do I do?”

“Ignore him. Never be alone. If you see him coming for you, go hang with an adult.”

“So I run?”

“Running from a fight you can’t win doesn’t mean you’re a coward. It means you’re smart. What do you think we’re doing now? You think I should have stayed in the barn and fought all those Healer guys, stuck it out, showed them that I wasn’t a coward?”

“That’s different.”

“Why? They’re bigger than me, stronger than me, like Keener is to you.

“But you did fight some of them.”

“Only because I had no choice. Only because the other option was much worse. Every other time I ran. I got out of there. You think that makes me a coward?”

“No. But even if I’m not a coward the other kids will still call me one.”

“Maybe. Do you care?”

Wyatt shrugged.

“Well, that’s the question you have to ask yourself. What’s more important to you, getting called a coward by some snot-nosed wienies who are no braver than you, or getting your butt kicked repeatedly until you graduate from high school?”

“My dad would probably say getting called a coward.”

“Well, your dad is entitled to his opinion. As for me, I have better
things to do than get pummeled every day. They can call me whatever they like.”

The forest suddenly opened to a wide field beyond which were acres of fruit trees lined in neat rows. The road curved sharply to the south. Frank and Wyatt stopped and waited for the others.

“Well, what do you think?” said Byron. “Should we stick with the road?”

“This orchard belongs to someone,” said Frank. “I say we check it out.

No one objected. They walked down the nearest furrow and soon reached a dirt road that divided the orchard and led to a small farmhouse. All the lights were off, but a beat-up white pickup sat parked out front.

“It’s quiet,” said Monica.

“Do you think anyone’s home?” said Byron.

“Let’s hope not,” said Frank. “Stay here.”

Monica crouched by the road behind some trees with the others while Frank snuck up to the house. When he was only a few feet from the truck, a dog chained to a post in the yard sprang to life from the shadows and began barking loudly.

“Shut up, dog,” Dolores whispered.

“It’s going to wake them,” said Byron.

Sure enough, the front porch light came on. Frank hid behind the truck just before the front door opened.

A middle-aged man in an undershirt and boxers shuffled outside. He yawned, scratched his backside, saw nothing of interest in the yard, then told the dog to shut up. When it didn’t, he picked up one of the shoes by the doormat and pitched it. It hit the dog unawares, and the dog retreated and fell silent.

“Well, that’s not very nice,” said Dolores.

“Shh,” said Byron.

The man mumbled a few obscenities and disappeared inside.

Frank went around to the passenger door—opposite the dog—peeked inside, then opened the door and crawled in. The dog went berserk, barking, pulling at his chain, pawing to get free.

“What’s he doing?” said Byron. “They’re awake. He can’t jump it that fast.”

The truck engine roared to life.

“Okay, maybe he can.”

The truck peeled out of the yard in reverse just as the man in boxers came running out of the house yelling. Frank spun the wheel, and the truck spun with him. There was a grinding of gears, and the truck shot forward and bounced up onto the dirt road. The man in boxers ran after it, while the dog pulled vainly at his chain. Monica and the others scrambled to the roadside, and Frank skidded to a stop, reached across the cab, and threw wide the passenger door. “Get in.”

They didn’t need to be told twice. Monica and Wyatt climbed in first, followed by Dolores and then Byron. Frank floored it before Byron had the door closed.

“How the hell did you do that?” said Byron, yelling over the engine.

“Thank Dolores,” said Frank. “The key was in the ignition.”

Frank stuck to the rural roads, always driving in a southeasterly direction—the bobbing compass on the dashboard proved useful in that regard. The LCD display on the radio said it was one in the morning, which explained the light traffic.

The cab was unmercifully cramped. What was intended to seat three, now accommodated four and a half. It helped that Wyatt sat on Monica’s lap, but it didn’t make Monica any more comfortable. And when Wyatt fell asleep, it became even more awkward as she tried to cradle him without invading anyone else’s space.

The heater worked, at least, much to Dolores’s delight. And moments after Frank turned it on the lowest setting, Dolores slumped onto Byron’s shoulder, fast asleep. Wedged against the window Byron had little else to do but join her, and shortly fell asleep as well.

“You think you can stay awake?” said Monica.

Frank rubbed his eyes. “If I was driving alone I’d have the radio blasting and the windows down.”

“You want me to drive?”

“No, I’m good.” He tried to press himself more into the driver’s side
door to give her another inch of room. “You can’t be comfortable holding him that way. Why don’t you lay him across everyone’s lap?”

“I don’t want to disturb them,” she said.

“An atom bomb wouldn’t disturb them. Go ahead.”

She bent forward and lifted Wyatt’s legs gingerly onto Byron and Dolores’s lap. Then she sighed and wiggled her leg. “My leg fell asleep.”

“It’s all the rage,” he said. “Sleep, I mean.”

“Right.”

He had meant it as a joke, but knew it was a stupid thing to say as soon as the words came out. Classy.

“I hope he didn’t talk your ear off back there,” she said.

“Wyatt? No, not at all. After everything he’s been through, it’s good for him to talk.”

“I think he’s kind of taken by you.”

“Well, I hear he’s a tough judge of character, so I’ll take that as a compliment.”

She smiled. “You have any kids?”

Once again, the question had snuck up on him. “A daughter,” he said finally.

“How old is she?”

“She would have been eight this year. She died about a year and a half ago.”

There was a brief silence. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“No, it’s okay.”

“I can’t imagine how difficult that must have been.”

“It wasn’t sudden. She’d been sick for a long time.”

“I’m so sorry,” she repeated.

“Don’t be. She made me very happy.” He smiled to himself. “You would have liked her. She was a crazy kid. Loved the Bee Gees.”

“The Bee Gees?”

He laughed. “I know, what six-year-old loves the Bee Gees? My father was to blame. He brought an old record player and a bunch of albums for her hospital room. She really got a kick out of it. Most of the nurses had never even heard of
Saturday Night Fever
. She even did this little dance in her bed with her hips and her hand. Cracked me up.”

Wyatt squirmed a bit to reposition himself, then lay still.

“What was her name?” Monica asked.

“Rachel. Rachel Evelyn.”

“Pretty.”

“Names from my wife’s family”

“And what’s your wife’s name?”

“
Ex
-wife, actually. We divorced shortly after Rachel died.”

“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Rachel was kind of the glue holding us together. When she was gone—I don’t know, if we had had other children, maybe it would have been different. But she was so sick, even early on, that more children was the farthest thing from our minds. Not because we were disappointed with her. Not at all. She just needed all of our attention. You know what I mean?

She nodded.

“That’s probably more information than you wanted to hear,” he said.

“No, I don’t mind. In fact, it’s almost therapeutic to hear someone else talk about their divorce. It seems like that’s all I’ve been doing for the past year, getting a divorce.”

He glanced at her.

“It was all finalized a few months ago. Kind of a surreal experience. Just sign your name on some legal document and
whoosh
, everything you thought you had structured in your life is suddenly gone.” She became quiet, and after a moment, she reached up and wiped her eyes. “You’ll have to excuse me. I’m sort of an emotional wreck. And not about my divorce, either. About everything.”

Frank kept his eyes on the road. He wouldn’t disturb her. Let her have her cry.

“You never met Jonathan,” she said, sounding calm again. “Not alive, I mean. He was good kid—misguided, maybe, but a good kid. With a little help, a kid with a future, maybe. And now, nothing.”

“You can’t blame yourself for—”

“Why not? It was my doing, wasn’t it? I killed somebody else’s kid to save my own, didn’t I? And Hal and Nick. You saw the barn fall. They couldn’t have survived that.”

“Then the fire killed them, not you.” He said it as convincingly as possible, even though he didn’t fully believe it himself.

“Don’t be nice to me. Please. I don’t think I can handle that.” She was
quiet for a long time after that, staring out the windshield as if in a trance, the only sound coming from the hum of the engine and the low purr of the heater fan. “I never thanked you,” she said. “For getting Wyatt. Before you left. You risked your life. After everything I did to you. I’m grateful for that.”

“I didn’t do it for you,” he said. “I did it for Wyatt.”

“I know,” she said. “That’s what makes it all the more wonderful.”

He said nothing, only nodded his head slightly. Then she leaned against Dolores’s shoulder and in moments fell asleep.

The tapping on the driver’s side window woke Frank. It was morning. He sat up and saw the old man in coveralls standing outside the truck, smiling. They were parked in a field. Frank vaguely remembered pulling off the road after nearly falling asleep at the wheel.

“You folks all right?” the man said.

“Where are we?” said Dolores, coming to.

Frank turned the ignition and started the truck, startling the old man. He backed up as Frank waved politely and put the truck in reverse.

“What’s happening?” said Byron.

“Where are we?” Dolores said again.

Monica and Wyatt woke as Frank bounced back onto the road again. How long had he been asleep? Two hours? Three? It couldn’t have been long. Dawn was just breaking. Frank shook his head. Stupid. Shouldn’t have pulled over.

Soon they were among the early commuters creeping into LA from the San Fernando Valley.

By eight o’clock they were taking the Wilshire exit and circling back toward the Federal Building. As they turned right onto Veteran Avenue to head for the Federal Building’s parking lot, a line of congested traffic brought them to a stop. A roadblock had been set up ahead, manned by half a dozen BHA agents in biocontainment suits. The agents stopped each car that approached and looked inside it before waving it on.

“They’re looking for something,” said Monica.

Three cars up, an agent squatted down next to the driver’s window and looked inside. In his hand was a piece of paper featuring the photo of a person’s face.

“Not
something,”
said Frank. “They’re looking for someone.”

The agent determined the car he was inspecting clean and told the driver to continue on.

“I got a bad feeling about this,” said Monica.

“Yeah,” said Frank, “me too.”

The agent moved to the next car, leaving only one car between him and the truck. He motioned for the driver to roll down the window, and then Frank saw the face on the photo.

“Hey, that’s you,” said Monica.

“Then they’re looking for us,” said Dolores. “We’re saved.”

“Hold on,” said Frank. He backed up a foot, cranked the wheel, and gunned it. The truck did a U-turn, narrowly missing a car headed north, and turned east onto Wilshire.

“What are you doing?” said Dolores.

“Are they following us?” said Frank.

“No,” said Monica, “I don’t think so. Another car turned around also.”

“Hold up,” said Dolores. “Somebody want to tell me what’s going on? I thought we were going
to
the BHA. Now we’re running away from it?”

“They were looking for me,” said Frank. “They knew I was trying to come back to the BHA and were trying to stop me.”

“But why would they want to do that?”

And the answer came to him the instant the question was posed. “Irving,” said Frank. “Of course. Has to be.”

“Who?”

“Director Irving, head of the BHA. Galen said that Director Irving had been helping him. Maybe the Healers are still in contact with Irving. If so, they could have informed him of our escape and asked him to use the BHA to stop us from reaching the countervirus.”

“Wait a second,” said Dolores. “
You
said the BHA was the one place on earth where we would be safe. And now you’re driving away from it? No, let me out of this truck.” She reached for the passenger door handle, but it was locked.

“Stop,” said Frank. “Just relax. Let me think.”

“Think?” she said. “Think? All we been doing is walking and thinking.”

Frank accelerated, weaving among the traffic heading east on Wilshire Boulevard.

“But I don’t get it,” said Byron. “How did this director mobilize the entire BHA against you?”

“I don’t know,” said Frank. “He could’ve told them anything, made up all kinds of incriminating intel against me. He’s the director. Who would disbelieve him?”

“Maybe we’re being paranoid,” said Monica. “Maybe we’re getting upset over nothing. Maybe they were looking for you because they want to help you.”