John Gone (17 page)

“We stay here,” Boone said. “Under the leaves
like the brocks.”

“And what’s a brock exactly?” John asked.

“I’ll show you,” Boone answered. “Hang on to
your butt.”

John raised an eyebrow.

“
Kyyyyyuuuuuuu!
” the man shouted in a
high-pitched holler. He dove into the leaves and thrashed about
wildly.

“
Kyyyyyuuuuuuu!
” he called again.
Seven angry badgers emerged from the leaves, growling and
grumbling, rolling and tumbling from the pile as Boone scooped them
out of the leaves. One turned and hissed at him, and he responded
by playfully pawing at the animal’s face.

Another badger ran straight at John and
crashed hard into his leg. John stumbled onto one knee and felt the
badger bite into the back of his leg. He yelped in pain.

“Did he get you?” Boone asked from the
leaves. Only his head was exposed above the pile. “Darn little
ankle-biters! Git! Git!” he yelled at the badgers. The cete hustled
away into the darkness of the forest at Boone’s insistence.

“All clear,” Boone called to John. “Come on
in. The bottom leaves are damp. With both of us down here, it’ll
warm up in no time.”

John felt the back of his leg. It was wet and
stung to his touch. He brought his hand back to his face and saw
blood on his palm, dripping down his wrist toward the watch. He
twisted his arm and the dark red blood pooled on the front
glass.

“You two go together perfectly, don’t you?”
John said to the watch and the blood.

“Me and the brocks?” Boone asked. “Nah!
They’re little bastards, you ask me. You just got to bite back
sometimes and they stop buggin’. Guess that’s why they call me King
of the Open Forest!”

“I thought it was ‘King of the Open Road,’”
John said.

“Well, that too. Some kings got more than one
kingdom.”

John wiped the blood from his watch and
approached the large pile of leaves beside the tree. He turned his
messenger bag to his front and slowly slid his body down next to
Boone. The leaves changed in texture as he lowered himself deeper
into their mass.

The first layer crunched at his weight and
the dried-out plants scratched at his skin like an angry cat.
Moving beneath them, however, John found the bottom soft, damp, and
oddly inviting.

“Not so bad?” Boone asked.

“You know a lot of weird things, Boone,” John
said, maneuvering in the leaves to get comfortable.

“I know a lot more, too,” he responded.

“I’ll bet.”

“I used to be rich, you know.”

“Let me guess,” John replied. “Something
ironic: Millionaire real-estate tycoon gets crushed by the housing
market and ends up homeless.”

“Good try, but the truth is more ironic
still,” Boone said. “When I was a little one, my family was poor. I
wanted nothing more then to make it big. Big! As big as they come.
‘One day,’ I always said. I thought I’d be an actor; get rich,
famous.”

John smiled and closed his eyes. Boone had an
odd way of pronouncing most words, but his voice was soothing and
John was tired.

“One day I got me a small part on the stage
as a hobo. Don’t know if it was a train hobo or a city hobo, now I
think of it. Don’t matter. Anyway, they got me in costume for
rehearsals. Once all dressed up, I went outside for a cigarette. A
man on the sidewalk asked me for the time. We had a little
conversation, and afterward he hands me two dollars! Two dollars!
For what? I have no idea. Then, I remember the bum costume and make
up. That’s when I heard it, my true calling.”

John smiled and sank deeper into the leaves,
stretching his legs and arms out under the pile.

“For the next several years I pretended to be
homeless,” Boone continued. “I was damn good at it. A terribly
strange thing to be good at, I admit. I got a lot of the same guys
passing by giving me something every day. You might not believe it,
but eventually I was making sometimes six hundred dollars a day up
in New York! It’s the truth! I was making about a hundred thousand
dollars a year, all cash, no tax. Had a nice car and a pretty wife
with a well-to-do father who thought I was a salesman.

“Soon though, other bums, real bums, got
suspicious and jealous. One of them found out about the secret. My
work was getting dangerous. He followed me home one night and ...
well ... I came out fine, but I knew that things couldn’t stay the
same. I left.”

John waited a few moments before realizing
Boone had ended his story. “Yeah?” he asked, half-asleep. “What
happened then?”

“I left,” Boone repeated quietly. “Left my
wife, my kid.” He paused and looked past the trees to the moon. “I
just ... you know what? Let’s not talk about Boone anymore. Tell me
about the little blue man, John. Or tell me about you. I want to
know.”

A cough sounded from somewhere in the forest.
Boone’s hand struck out from the leaves like a snake and landed
softly on John’s head, waking him instantly. Slowly, he pushed John
down farther into the pile until completely submerged.

John’s first reaction was to struggle, but he
stopped once he heard the coughing Boone had heard moments before.
Boone slid himself beneath the leaves as well, leaving no trace of
either him or John beneath the tall tree beside them.

John struggled to breathe beneath the top
layer of leaves. Each time he tried to inhale, small bits of dirt
and leaf sailed into his mouth, risking a revealing cough or gag.
Boone’s hand slid silent through the pile and latched itself
supportively to John’s shoulder. The warm contact calmed him, but
only slightly. That cough in the woods was getting closer.

Soon, the cough was accompanied by careful
footsteps. The Advocates were coming toward him. John thought he
could see a shape through the thick clump of leaves, maybe even
two, moving toward his pile. They were getting closer. He worried
that if he could see the men, they could surely see him too. He
closed his eyes. The footsteps were falling all around them now;
the two men were at the pile.

Someone began coughing madly above John.
Moments later, a black military-style boot crashed through the
leaves next to him and stepped blindly onto his watch. Its back and
sides bore into the skin of his wrist. The pain was crushing, and
John was stricken with an immediate wave of nausea trying to
contain the scream that would have normally followed the pain.

After what seemed an eternity, the boot
finally lifted from his arm and stepped down again, this time
missing his head by inches. Then, the boot was gone and the forest
fell silent.

John wanted nothing more than to clutch his
injured wrist, take it close to his chest, remove the watch and
tend to the wound beneath it. But no matter the fantasy, John knew
he could do nothing but lie helplessly, motionless and silent.

Something small, wriggling, and damp crawled
onto John’s cheek. The short steps of its tiny feet brushed against
his skin, creating an itch that grew more and more maddening the
longer he focused on it. Eventually, the creature made its way to
his eye and rested still on his closed lid.

John tried to listen for further footsteps,
but heard none.
Are they still there? Did they leave? Where are
they? They know where I’m hiding; they’re toying with me. Why
haven’t they caught me? What are they waiting for?

He strained his ears, hoping to hear some
clue to the Advocates’ whereabouts. Boone’s hand, still resting on
John’s shoulder, squeezed lightly as if he could hear the frantic
thoughts running through John’s mind. It was good to know that
someone else was there with him.

John continued to wait--they both did--hidden
beneath the leaves, motionless and silent, for the remainder of the
long black night.

Ronika piloted the scooter back into The
Napoli and walked with John to her first-floor apartment. He’d
spent most of their ride explaining what exactly she’d missed
during Mouse’s hours of darkness.

“You just laid there like that? All night?”
she’d asked.

“Until 3:14,” he’d answered her.

“That’s horrible.”

Kala hadn’t said a word since his argument
with John in the forest.

From the story he’d told her, she knew John
had to be glad to be out in the open once more, free to breathe,
talk, and move as he pleased. She was happy to at least share that
with him.

Ronika wore a worried look as she unlocked
her front door. While John had been beneath the leaves, she’d been
at home with one eye on a dark monitor, the other on a notepad by
the keyboard. She’d brought it with her to the desk to write down
ideas for removing the watch from his arm. It was still blank.

Dr. Kala had done a thorough job of
explaining John’s options, and had even made his own intentions
perfectly clear. There was no deception to see through or riddle to
solve; everything Kala had told them lined up perfectly. Why else
would he tell John that he intended to imprison him if it hadn’t
been the truth?

No
, Ronika thought.
He isn’t lying.
He just knows that the only logical outcome of this is for John to
follow his advice and go down into the lab.

She didn’t feel outsmarted, just
predetermined, as if hopelessly tangled between the fine, humming
wires in John’s watch, helpless to affect them, helpless to free
herself or her friend from their web.

She looked at John as he slumped onto her
living room couch. His expression was blank, mirroring the monotone
in which he’d told her the details of last night’s events.

“Do you want something to eat?” Ronika
asked.

“Water, maybe,” he answered.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah.”

Ronika turned and walked into her
kitchen.

“I’ve been thinking a lot since last night,”
he called to her from the living room. “I really can’t fight this
thing, you know?”

“I know,” Ronika answered, scratching one of
her fox ears with one hand while pouring him a glass of water with
the other.

“Only one of two things can come from this,”
John said. “The first is that I don’t make it. One of the jumps is
going to kill me if the Advocates don’t do it first.”

Ronika walked back to the living room,
holding his glass of water and listening intently.

“The other option is imprisonment,” John
continued. “Alone, underground, and in the dark.”

“There are fluorescent lights, actually,”
Kala interrupted as his hologram reappeared on the watch’s face.
“With panels optimized for processing vitamin D.”

John ignored the comment. “If these are my
only options, then I only have two or three days left. I just want
to spend as much of that time as possible with the people important
to me.”

Ronika couldn’t help but smile despite the
obvious pain of John’s epiphany. She walked toward him and offered
him the glass.

“So, I’m leaving,” John finished.

“What?” Ronika blurted, nearly dropping the
water.

“I have to see Molly, then maybe explain this
whole thing to my mom,” he answered.

“Oh.”

“Here,” John said, pulling Mouse from his
bag. “I brought the arm, too.” He handed her the damaged robot and
fished into the pocket of his messenger bag. He found the missing
arm and placed it on the table.

“Will it live, doctor?” John joked. Ronika
struggled a weak chuckle in reply.

“Alright, I have to go,” he said, standing.
“I’ll be back before the next jump.”

“I’ll just work on this, then,” she said
softly, putting the glass of water she’d brought him down on the
table and lifting the small robotic arm into her hand. She turned
and walked toward her workstation as John left through her front
door without saying goodbye.

Outside, John mounted his scooter and drove
straight for Molly’s house.

“Mr. Popielarski,” Kala began. His hologram
was faint and shapeless in the wind, but his voice held clear. “I
think that you--”

John interrupted him. “What did I just say
about spending time with people I care about? I don’t want to talk
to you.”

“I know you inaccurately think me a monster
trying to eat you up,” Kala said, “but tell me what you would do in
my situation. Do you think it’s my fault I ended up down here? No.
It was bad luck. It was the end result of reprehensibly evil
decisions made by men with power over me. It’s unfair, but out of
my hands. Your situation is unfair and out of your hands, too. If
you take my place down here, then that is simply an extension of
the situation that has already happened to you. It’s not me who‘s
doing it.”

“You’re just trying to use me to escape,”
John said. “You don’t want to help me. If I came down there, you
could just give me the tool and let me leave.”

“I could,” Kala admitted, “but why would I?
Would you do that for me? Do you honestly think you’re the hero of
some grand adventure and that each of the side characters in your
story should all leap at the opportunity to sacrifice themselves
for you so that you can carry on with whatever life some spoiled
sixteen-year-old has made for himself in Florida? I have a life
too, John. I have people I care about, and goals, and aspirations.
Why do I have to throw all of those away for you? Because you’re a
kid? Well, grow up.”

John considered Kala’s point. He found
himself uncomfortably empathetic.

“Look. You don’t need to try and convince me
to come down there, okay?” John said, his tone friendlier than
before. “I understand what you’re saying, and I understand how much
sense it makes for me to listen. I just don’t want to be reminded
of it constantly.”

“You’re right,” Kala admitted. “I’m sorry.
I’m not very good ... ” He paused as a loud car passed them going
in the opposite direction down the road. “--with people,” he
finished.