Jamb: (19 page)

And I wonder
again, which side he is really on.

***

When the truck lurches to a halt, we’re all tossed forward.  We get to our feet and the chains are finally removed from the doors.  Swung wide open, beams of spotlights flood into the box, blinding me so that I throw my arm over my eyes.  Milo grabs my hand and pulls me with him to the edge of the truck.  We jump down, into thick grass, and he pulls me close.

And
the growl behind me is tangible.  I look over Milo’s shoulder as he quickly drags me away from Garrett and Teagan, who land behind us.  Grace whimpers in her mother’s arms.  Garrett looks like he wants to dismantle Milo.

The stagnant summer night
makes the grass sharp and scratchy on my legs.  We stand in the crowd from our truck, blinded by the spotlights rigged up on tripods.  The other truck lets a few people out of the back before it drives off. 

“Where are they going?” I whisper to Milo and he shrugs.

“No idea,” he says, but his answer sounds frightening.

I run my gaze through the crush of bodies and
pick out the traitors.  Dai, Ms. Fisk, Itchy.  There are several faces from the second Cura that I only remember because they were hanging over the ledge, shouting ugly things at Sean during the Totus.  And then I spot Larson.

He’s not just standing around with the rest of us.  He’s bound
with rope, his mouth gagged, blood trickling from the corner of his split lip.  His skin is a sickening, blotchy shade of bruises.  He’s standing straight, but I can tell that he’s calling on every muscle and bone to help him do it.

“We will separate
our
people,” Ms. Fisk says.  “From those who must go through the Jamb.”

Her voice is clear, even, precise.  And it chills me to the bone.  She walks through the crowd, flicking a finger to indicate each person’s placement: either in the group off to the right, or standing alone near the spotlight.
  Her tone is cheery as she flicks through them one at a time, “Welcome, welcome, welcome…yes, you are welcome…welcome, welcome…hmmm, oh yes, welcome…”

Larson is
not welcomed.  Ms. Fisk snaps her finger toward the spotlight and Larson is shoved in front of it.  His shadow stretches across the ground, his dark head falling on Garrett’s feet like an arrow.  Larson staggers to the side as if he sees it too, waffling to stay upright.  The Fury herd, off to the right, laugh at him.  Then they start to pitch rocks, trying to knock him over.

“Welcome, welcome, welcome,” Ms. Fisk continues flicking
, until she gets to Garrett.  “You?” she glares at him and then at Teagan.  “Which one is he?  Oh, never mind.  He will go through the Jamb.”

“No!” Teagan sh
outs as Ms. Fisk turns away.  Grace wails.  “He’s mine!  He’s Sean Reese, he is Simple!  The Jamb would kill him!”

“Wheat from the chaff,” Ms. Fisk says with a shrug.
  Milo’s nails dig into my skin and his other hand is banded around my waist.  I am sure he will try to take me down if I attack, but I don’t know how I can stay still.

“Wait,” Milo whispers with a kiss in my ear.  I want to rip off his lips, but I hold myself down.

“He is Simple!”  Teagan shouts again, her eyes wildly scanning the crowd until she finds Dai.  “Daddy!  It’ll kill him, you know it will!  He’s Simple!  Don’t you have any power at all?  Are you going to let
her
tell you what to do?”

Dai’s chest puffs out as he steps out of the crowd.  “This is my daughter’s wish.  I am faithful to the Mastermind.  As I have brought Contego from the inner circle in this amb
ush, I should be repaid for the honor.”

“You’ve brought
a
Contego, instead of the Addo.” Ms. Fisk flips her forehead in Larson’s direction and I calm.  She believes Garrett is Sean too.  “And the Contego is only Larson.  He was hardly worth the truck ride here. You didn’t even manage to bring the Addo’s Procella.”

“But,” Dai says with a spicy flash in his eyes, “I have brought her oldest son. 
The Simple Addo.  Surely, the Procella Reese will seek to recover him, especially if he is alive.”

“
Let’s get this straight right now.  He is Simple, which means he is incapable of being our Addo.  He is useless to us.  I doubt it matters to Madam Reese whether he is live or dead, since she hasn’t lifted one finger to recover her youngest son.  Why would she care any more for this one?” Ms. Fisk asks.  Milo’s nails dig into me again and he’s right to do it.  My legs are spring-loaded and I’m going to launch myself at Ms. Fisk and take her down, the second I get the chance.  But I don’t think he’s going to give it to me.

“Because we’ll tell her they are both alive
, and she will trade her real Addo for her sons,” Teagan says as her gaze drops down to Grace. “Any mother would.”

“She’s right,” Itchy shouts from the crowd.  Some voices murmur disagreement, others agree, and Ms. Fisk rolls her tongue delicately in her cheek.

“Possibly,” she says.  “Without any powers, it’s true that he isn’t a threat to us.  I will grant you this, Dai:  we’ll keep him alive, for now.  If the Mastermind’s plans fail, he may be of use later.”

Garrett steps forward.  “I am happy to help.”  Ms. Fisk turns on him with surprise.

“You would?  And why so eager, Mr. Reese?” she purrs, which coming from her blunt, hair-framed face, makes her look about as trustworthy as the Cheshire Cat.

“Because I love my new wife.  She belongs to me and I plan to do whatever it takes to keep her mine.”

Ms. Fisk smiles, but only with her teeth.  “Good to know.”

Teagan lets out a visible sigh of relief as she turns to Garrett, smiling up into his face.  He grins down at her.  Watching it happen at a distance, rather than being beneath his smile
myself, fills my stomach with cement.  Milo pivots me away, scooting us toward the crowd of The Fury that have already been welcomed.

Our shadows drop in the spotlight and Ms. Fisk spots us immediately.

“Nalena Maxwell,” she says.  Her tone is crisp.  “Another useless Contego.  Oh, and Milo Frangere.  Children of traitors, both of you.  I suppose it’s not surprising at all to see either of you here.”

“Not surprising that you weaseled your way in and took my place with the Mastermind, either,” Milo sneers.  I want to step away from him.  Well, run away. 
But his foot is on mine.  My brain tumbles.  He was the second hand to the Mastermind?  And now Ms. Fisk is?  Does that mean Milo is the Mastermind’s third?  I can’t even breathe.

“Good to see you back.  Happy to hear you helped take down a Contego or two in the ambush,”
Ms. Fisk purrs.  He did?

“The Moxes.  I couldn’t get the Addo, but I was able to take out the Moxes.”

My legs tighten, ready to bolt, but Milo presses down on my instep.  Ms. Fisk extends a finger to me.

“
But too bad you brought Nalena.  If you want her, she will definitely have to go through the Jamb.”

Garrett turns his back to me.  He is bowed over Teagan, holding tight to her and Grace, scooting them further
to the back of the crowd of accepted Selfish.

“You think I can’t control her?  You think I’ve got to strip off her Connection to make her do what I want?”  Milo fumes.  He looks like a man I’ve never met before.  My father, in the back of my head, says:
Cry.

I won’t
.  The Contego are supposed to fight their fear.  But my father says, 
Be afraid.  They’ll kill you if you’re not.  Think of your mama.  Think of how you’ll never see her again.

Looking at Ms. Fisk, the one who tried to write
my mother’s Memory and couldn’t.  The diamond my mother placed in my heart during her Memory ceremony, sparkles in my head.  That diamond reminds me of how my mother filled me up and made me strong and how she told me I would never be without her.  My mother never lied to me.  My father’s voice spikes to a terrified pitch.

Really, Nalena?  You think you’ll ever see her again?  Where is she, baby?  Where do you think she is?  She fed you lies. 
She’s never coming back, you hear me?  Cry for her!  Cry, dammit!

But his blabbering just hardens my resolve. 
I’m not going to show them that they can crack me so easily.  Even with Milo crushing down on my instep.

Ms. Fisk grabs my face and wrenches it up, so I’m looking at her eye-to-dry-eye.  The grin, framed by her square haircut, is sticky as soda spilled in the sun.  With flies stuck in it.

“Not this time, Milo.  But if she doesn’t die in the Jamb, I’m sure the Mastermind will let you have whatever is left of her.”

Ms.
Fisk’s fingernail scratches my cheek as she lets go of my face.  And now, I realize that crying would’ve proved that Milo could control me.  My father was trying to help.  He and Milo are both on my side and I just ruined my chances of avoiding whatever awful thing this Jamb is.  One tear slips out, running into the scratch Ms. Fisk left on my skin.  It stings as it makes it’s way down my face, finally slipping off my chin, too late.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Milo insists on being in charge of me and Larson.  At first, I think maybe he’ll try to shove us out of the spotlight and have us run, but the Fury is all around us.  They still chuck rocks at Larson and me too, until the spotlights are swung around to face in the opposite direction.

At first I’m blinded with ghost-spots of the lights, but Milo pushes me along.  He’s rough with me, even though he just does a lot of throwing me around.  I stumble a lot, with my head down, but he never lets me fall.  He’s even easier on Larson, as if he can’t really beat on Larson more, since he’s got his hands full with me.

When I lift my gaze, I see the side of a hill that is mostly sunk in the tall grass.  The mound could be a dead dinosaur, collapsed and curled for eternity beneath the grass.  Two men walk up its side, at least twenty feet apart, pulling something with them.  I blink and see the wide strip of sod they are pulling back, rolling it like a wedding carpet, from over the top of a narrow corridor.  This must be a Veritas hideaway.  It is so cleverly disguised, no one would ever suspect the corridor was here.  Which also boils my dread inside me, until it’s so full and thick that I can hardly swallow.

The corridor is cut right into the center of the sleeping creature,
the walls held back from crumbling by a deep brown brick.  The walkway is also covered with the brick but I can’t see where it leads, since the edge of the hill is high and the corridor slopes down into the belly of the hill.

The Fury stuff
themselves into the corridor, arguing about being first and elbowing each other out of the way, as if they are returning home to a gourmet dinner.  Maybe they are, but Milo is in no hurry. Garrett, Teagan and the baby enter the corridor first, far ahead of us.  As we step onto the first bricks leading down, I can already smell the ground all around me, moist and wormy, as if we’re being buried.

Ms. Fisk is
behind us, with a few grizzly men.  Their eyes don’t focus correctly and they fidget behind us.  I would bet they are insane, in the last stage of being usable to The Fury.  And that makes them even more dangerous.

I think they are whispering to me and when I swear I hear one of them say my name, I turn to see.  No
one is looking at me, except Ms. Fisk, and she definitely doesn’t look like she called my name.  Milo gives me a shove.  I move a few steps further into the corridor and the whispers begin again.  This time, I definitely hear my name.  And I definitely know the voice.  It’s my mother.

Nalena!  Go back!  Can you hear me?  Run!!

How can she be here?  My field explodes and my father’s voice is immediate. 
Can you hear Evangeline?

Yes,
I answer him. 
Where is she?  Can you see her?

No. 
Then, his tone drops as if he’s getting sick. 
Oh my God…

What?  What’s wrong?

If this is what I think it is…oh my God, honey.  They’re trapping the souls that haven’t been written.  I think they’re trapped in the bricks.  These bricks must be sealed with varnish they make from Manga leaves.  That varnish blocks the souls from getting out, not from getting in.

I listen carefully and I hear so many voices.  My mother is the most desperate, beating on something and shrieking my name,
to get my attention, but I can’t look up.  I don’t know if it is a mistake to let her know I hear her.  I also hear the disorganized chorus behind her chanting,
Help us
and
Don’t let them bring you in.

Half
way down the sloped path, I ask my father,
If I walk in here, does that mean you won’t be able to get back out with me?

I don’t know
.

I can try to run
, 
I tell him, but I already know it’s impossible even before he answers.

Not with
all those goons behind you.  Besides, The Fury is behind this and if anyone can help you with them, it’s me.  We’ll figure this out.  We’re in this together, honey.

It might be
the first time in my life that I’m relieved that my father is near.

The whispers and shouts from within the brick don’t get any louder, but they don’t go away. 
The smell, the brick, the trapped souls—everything about this makes me feel like we’re being funneled into a crypt. And that we’ll never get back out.

But I plod forward anyway, with Milo and Ms. Fisk and the crazed Selfish walking behind me.  I keep hoping that at any minute the Ianua will do their own ambush.  With every step, I keep expecting Garrett to come running back from the front,
or for Milo to start fighting, or for something bigger than life to happen that would change our decent on this stone path to something different than a death march.

I hope it.

I wish it.

I pray for it so hard that I start to feel a little crazy myself.  Nothing changes.  Nothing happens.  Nothing, but getting closer to the stone archway at the bottom of the bricks.

I can’t help being afraid.  I wish my mother would stop calling my name.  I glance at the brick from the corner of my eye and mumble,
Mankind,
hoping it will quiet her.

Ms. Fisk says, “What did you say?”

Milo gives me a hard shove and I stumble into Larson.  He grunts with the impact, but manages to keep us both from falling over.  As he rights himself, I wonder if he’s not so weak as he seems.  I wonder if he will be the one that busts us out of here.  Maybe he has a plan.

I hope it.

I wish it.

“Go in,” Milo barks
to Larson and me as we close in on the archway.  Maybe this is the Jamb they were talking about.  It’s a tall, cement block opening and it looks exactly like the entrance to a crypt.  I swallow down my fear.  And I don’t close my eyes as I walk over the threshold.

We’re in a huge
, circular room that looks like walls have been knocked down to make it even huger.  It’s like an entrance hall or, from the way we’re all crowded together, a holding pen.

“The Jamb!” A man giggles
at my left.  He paws in the air, toward me, as if he is teasing me with something I don’t know.  And he is.  I snap my knees into place so I don’t shrink away from him.  I fix my gaze on him like a rock, holding it until he shrinks away himself.  But in my head, I’m repeating the mantra Mr. Reese had me choose to blot out my fears: 
mom, mom, mom.

The pawing man shrieks, “We want the Jamb for her!”

“I want to see it now,” a woman beside him says.  The pawing man giggles to her and the woman repeats, as if he didn’t hear her, “I want to see it now.”

He grabs her face and rams his tongue into her mouth.  I look away fast.

Across the room, a man with a shaved head jumps on top of a rickety chair.  “Who’s betting?  Bring me the money!  5 to 1 odds against the male!”

“
Oh, anybody can see he’s gonna die!” a woman hoots.  “Too bad we don’t have an Addo anymore.  I kinda liked hearing who was getting ripped out of them.”

“Lookit the girl, with her chin in t
he air!” Another woman points to me.  “So fancy!  I can’t wait to see her drop!”

“I hope she makes it,” the man fro
m the truck pitches in.  He is rubbing his leg again, a slow caress that totally freaks me out.  My impulse is to step away, but my instinct is to stand strong and glare at the man, even as he strokes his thigh.

Milo is off to the side, but I won’t turn my head to look at him. 
He may be on my side, but if he’s just going to stand there and let them do whatever horrible thing they have planned, then I can’t stand to look at him.  He is worse than a coward.  I will never speak to him again.  If I’m here to speak at all.

Mom, mom, mom, mom,
I repeat it like one long word in my head. 

I won’t let them get to me. 

I won’t. 

I
keep insisting it to myself, and almost buy it even, until I glimpse the back of Garrett’s head.  He is walking away, out of the entry hall, with Teagan.  I watch him disappear through an opened archway with her, his arm over her shoulders.  He never turns back to look at me even once. 

I am alone.

Mom, mom, mom, mom, mom,
I chant.  The mantra widens. 
My mom loves me, she loves me, my mom is with me, always.

But it is
my father’s voice that comes through,
I love you too, Nalena.  I’m here for you, honey.  I’m here.

I don’t know what to reply to that.
  He still is what he is.  I don’t love him, but I don’t hate him anymore either.  At least it’s comforting to know that someone, even if it has to be him, is with me.

“Kill the man first!” a woman shouts. 

“I want to see if the girl makes it!”

“No, the man!  The man first!”

The shouting spins around the room and comes at me from all directions.  I stare at a spot on the wall, streaming my mantra through my mind.

“We will wait for the Mastermind!” Ms. Fisk shouts.

“He doesn’t care about seeing the Jamb.  All he cares is that they’re in there!” A man snaps.  Ms. Fisk shakes her head, but the crowd becomes more insistent.

“Mastermind’s gone!” a man shrieks through the noise.  “He’s not even here!”

Someone throws a chair and shouts, “Who wants the Jamb?” and the chant rises up, “Jamb!  Jamb!  Jamb!”

The word passes like a disease
, clinging to the lips of The Fury, until the whole room is saying it.  A fight breaks out near the door where we entered and people scramble both toward it and away from it.  A couple across the room press each other against the wall, pawing and kissing as if they’re lives depend on it, right in front of everyone. 

“
Mastermind’s gone…sounds like we do the Jamb!” a man yells.  Ms. Fisk’s frown cuts deeply into her thick face.

“Fine,”
she says, rolling her eyes behind her rectangular glasses.  “Just do it and let’s get on with things.”

After what can be broken in the room is broken, whoever’s left standing places their bets.  The couple against the wall are half-naked and some of
The Fury stand around them and stare.  Some do worse things.  Some don’t even notice because they’re chanting for Larson to be thrown into the Jamb.

I look for a pit, but there are no holes in the floor.  It’
s even more confusing when they take a pole from the wall and use a lasso on the end to open a door knob on a dark, wood door at the back of the circular room.

“Yo!” the man that worked the pole hollers into the room.  “Time’s up!  Get out!”

We wait a few seconds before two couples stumble out.  They squint in the light, but they’re grinning wildly.  Except for one of the women who just looks exhausted. 

“Who wants in next?”  the man with the pole asks.  The couple against the wall suddenly
peel away from each other.  The girl grabs the boy’s hand and drags him through the door. 

“Anybody else?” the man asks.  The creepy guy, who was rubbing his leg in the truck, dives in after the couple.  Once he’s in, the man turns back to the crowd.  “If that’s everybody, then
everyone’s gotta back up, so I can bring down the curtain.”

“
Back up yourself!” the answer is shouted from the opposite side of the room and followed by laughter.  Even Larson snorts a laugh, which earns him a hard poke with the pole. 

“
Unless you want to go in the Jamb yourself, you better step back!” the man barks.  “And put the two of ‘em in!”

Milo’s hand is on my shoulder.  He gives me a reassuring squeeze, but then it’s his hands
that push both Larson and me forward, close to the door of the room where the couple and the creepy man have disappeared.  As I move closer, I hear the sounds from the room, moaning and slurping, and I try to turn away, but Milo gives me such a hard shove, I fall on my knees.

Milo turns and dodges out of the way as the man with the pole releases from the ceiling what looks like an enormous, clear plastic shower curtain.  The thing swings down, separating the crowd from
me and Larson.  The faces are distorted as I look through the curtain, but then the crowd presses closer, moving the curtains toward us.

The
opposite end of the pole, an end with a small hook screwed into the tip of the handle, is inserted through a sealed flap in the curtain.  I duck as it slides past me.

“Move!” I shout to Larson
, but even though he teeters out of the way, the end of the pole bashes into him.  I hear the laughter on the other side as he hits the floor, but the people near Larson move in more tightly and push him back onto his feet.  The hook has left a gash on his back that melts into a small crimson stain on his shirt.

The pole slides
again, past Larson this time, to the door, but it stops abruptly at the threshold.  The man outside announces, like a circus ring leader, “Ladies and Gentlemen!  Today, for your pleasure, the
gentleman
will go first!”