Jonah Havensby (7 page)

As the pain in his eye ebbed, he stood straight up. ‘Not to worry,’ that’s what the note had said. Not to worry is what his father always said. His father would never say ‘Don’t worry,’ or ‘no worries,’ he always said ‘Not to worry.’

He spun around toward the dumpster, blinking the rest of the pain away. Then he spun back toward the alley. He looked up the alley and down and saw no evidence anyone had been there. Was it his father? How could anyone have survived that explosion?

“Dad!?” He yelled up the alley. He yelled again in the opposite direction.

He thought about going inside again to look around, but he was almost certain he would have noticed someone inside on his way out, even if he was in a hurry. And if someone was there, wouldn’t they have stopped him?

He had this horrible little daydream that his father was now a horribly disfigured zombie and he probably thought that if Jonah saw what he looked like now, he might scare the boy, so sometime in the middle of the night he bought groceries and an electric blanket and crept in so quietly Jonah would never know he was there.

None of that made any sense at all, so Jonah shook it off almost the moment he came up with it.

Even if his father was a horribly disfigured zombie, Jonah was pretty sure he was better off with him than without him, and he knew his father would feel the same.

It had to be someone else, but to Jonah’s knowledge, no one had ever even seen him in the alley, much less going inside the warehouse.

In the light of day, and feeling at least a little more clear-headed, Jonah looked around once more. Nothing seemed out of place, and the only things that had mysteriously appeared were actually a great deal of help. And the office door was re-locked behind them. Didn’t that mean they wanted him to stay safe?

There were too many questions.

He didn’t necessarily want to go back inside just yet, so he decided he would leave for as long as he could today and if it appeared safe, he might try just one more night in the nest.  After all, he didn’t have anywhere else to go.

With some effort, Jonah managed to smash the entire backpack into the small door under the stairs. He took only the tablet and the gem with him. He decided he would debate the situation back and forth and stay away as long as he could.

That meant he was finally going to go to the mall.

He zipped up his coat and made his way around the corner to the street, making sure to look to see if he could spot someone watching him. He checked the rooftops of the surrounding buildings. He tried to see inside the farthest windows. He spun around and around to see if anyone was following. Once on the street in front, he continued scanning the area until he was sufficiently assured he was alone. He put the tablet under his arm, jammed his hands in his pockets and began to walk toward Main Street.

A while later, walking down the street full of people crossing this way and that, he began to feel a little more anonymous. No one seemed to be looking at him in any particular way, if they acknowledged him at all.

Window shopping took on an entirely new meaning. This time when he looked in the windows, he wasn’t looking inside. He was looking at the reflection of anyone nearby.

He finally came to the road he knew would take him down toward the mall and he walked across the street at the crosswalk. As he made his way, he looked down the street one final time and came to the conclusion that he wasn’t being tailed.

It was another five uneventful blocks up to the mall and when he finally reached the parking lot, he stopped just as his shoes hit the asphalt.

This was the place he and his father came to. The only place in town they ever actually went. That kind of made this place special. It didn’t really look special.

There were several entrances, but Jonah chose the one he knew best. Just on the inside of this entrance was a sports collectibles store. Jonah would beg his father to park on this side of the mall every time they came. They never went in, but Jonah loved to stop and admire the merchandise. There were all sorts of autographed items in the windows – posters, baseballs, bubblegum cards. His father would say all of that stuff was just far too expensive and the collectible value was never worth the prices they were asking. It never hurt to look though.

The mall was made up from three very distinct sections. The section Jonah walked into seemed to be the original mall. This end didn’t have any of the new or flashy name brand stores,  it held older stores that looked like they’d been around for ages. Next to the collectibles store was a sporting goods store, and then a sewing outlet and then a small barbershop.

Jonah hated that barbershop.

Every time they came to the mall, Jonah got a haircut there before shopping for things he’d out-grown, like shoes and jeans, and every single time the barber would buzz his hair almost impossibly short. His father called it a ‘military cut’. It seemed to be the guy’s specialty, since even the old guys who came out of that shop had the exact same cut.

He knew all of this would eventually get to him. Being at the mall made him miss his dad. He’d even volunteer to get his haircut if his dad were just here again. Then he had a passing vision of Zombie Dad buying sneakers at the discount shoe place three doors down and he decided to head for the Promenade.

The Promenade, which served as a food court, was completely open to the outside except for the various restaurant awnings. The whole walk was cobblestone that matched the slate stone exteriors of the restaurants here. There weren’t too many people out here today though. It did much more business when it was warm.

Oh, food! Jonah hadn’t remembered this place smelling so good. His stomach started rumbling. Maybe he should have eaten.

He turned left and went toward the newer area. This was a much larger construction and the exterior paint didn’t necessarily match the older section of the mall. When you walked in this section from either the Promenade or the parking lot, you got blasted with air. Depending on the season, it would be warm or cool, but Jonah never quite understood why that happened. As he approached the sliding doors, they opened and, sure enough, there was the gust of warm air.

As he walked in, he unzipped his coat. He wasn’t quite sure what to do with the tablet, so he slid it inside the back of his jeans. It wasn’t totally uncomfortable, and it did make him stand a little straighter. His father would be happy with the idea.

They only came to this side of the mall when his father needed to go to the electronics store for something for the lab. Jonah didn’t mind. He used to run through here looking at everything that time would allow. There were the expensive name-brand clothing stores, the high-end sneaker stores, there was even a store that sold musical instruments.  Jonah would run through them all, admiring all the things his father felt were too expensive but Jonah had seen on TV. It was kind of a tease, but they seemed far more real when they were within reach.

Jonah’s one luxury item on those special occasions when his father had to go electronics shopping was a single CD of his own choosing. Jonah always chose very carefully, knowing that it was a rare occasion. He would usually settle on a compilation CD of recent radio hits. It made him feel like he was kind of putting one over on his dad, since he usually got a good selection of a lot of songs he liked, as opposed to songs from just one artist that you may never hear on the radio.

He had just reached the center of this portion of the mall. Here, the mall opened up to the second floor and you could look all the way up to the large glass dome at the top. There was a round stone tri-level fountain here. The water would collect in the pool at the bottom and then get funneled up through the center spouting from the top in big gurgling arcs which fell into a second tier and then over-flowed back into the pool. There were miniature versions of this fountain at the three other entrances to this part of the mall. Jonah remembered people throwing coins in to those as he passed by.  He’d never seen anyone throw money in this one. This seemed to be a central waiting area where people could sit and rest while whoever they were with could take off for either floor of the mall using the escalators.

It was here that Jonah decided to sit on one of the many wooden benches and fire up the tablet.

He took his coat off, looking around to see if anyone was looking at him curiously, and then took the tablet out from behind him.

He turned it on and, after a moment, the screen lit up as usual. The internet connection signal glowed red, but then flashed to green, meaning he was online.

He decided to check the Settings menu under the Internet tab. He had always assumed that the internet required a password to get online, so it was a mystery as to how the tablet was doing this.

The mystery went even deeper when he saw what was happening. There was the usual list of wireless networks. This list had the sneaker store, the denim store across the way, the ladies apparel next to that – any number of stores in the general vicinity. But the tablet seemed to be scanning, then signing in, then signing out, then bouncing to the next. It seemed like it was actually collecting passwords and then bouncing from one network to the next. He didn’t think that should be possible.

Just to check, he closed the Settings tab and went back to the Home Screen. He clicked on the Sports App It checked for an internet connection, and, sure enough, opened to today’s headlines.

So the internet was working.

He scanned the headlines, but found himself amazingly uninterested. He was mainly just reading them in utter disbelief that he could actually see them.

He shut the Sports App and opened the News App. He had a moment of terror that he shouldn’t try to look, but something pushed him. He typed in ‘Explosion’ in the Search box. Various international headlines came up as well as some national ones, but it seemed that nothing came up regarding anything locally. He typed in ‘Explosion Derry Road’. Most of the headlines remained the same, and the Derry Roads that came up were not anywhere near his house.

It had been only seven days since the explosion that killed his father and the ‘dangerous men’ that had come there. There should be something somewhere. The house was remote, but it was close enough to town that probably most people heard it. And the fire department from here would have been sent out there.

He tried again and got the same result. He typed in his name and got some ‘Jonahs’ and some ‘Havensbys’ but nothing about himself. He hadn’t really expected anything.

There was that momentary blush of fear again, and then he slowly typed in ‘Doctor Nickolas Havensby’. He didn’t realize he was holding his breath until he released it with a long huff when he pressed the Search button.

He searched down the list to find nothing very relevant. Again, different combinations of all three words came up. But about ten headlines down, he saw something that caught him.

SCIENTIST WANTED IN CONNECTION TO FEDERAL GRANT FRAUD

Under that were the first two sentences of the story and ‘Dr. Nikolas P. Havensby, Ph.D, D.Eng, Sc.D.,’ was highlighted in blue.

He knew his father was a scientist and the name matched perfectly, so he clicked on the story.

It was published five years ago. It read that his father had worked in Special Projects at the International Aeronautics Laboratory or I.A.L., and was involved in some very top-level research and development programs up until the time he had falsified documents gaining himself some three million dollars. When confronted, he fled taking the three million dollars with him in untraceable accounts the world over.

The story seemed implausible. This was not at all the man he grew up with. That man certainly didn’t have three million dollars lying around in banks all over the world. Even if he was trying to hide some money, he could have sprung for a pair of hockey skates at least once. The father he knew was frugal to the point of belt-tightening. And they had never moved, not even once, in Jonah’s whole life. If this happened five years ago, they could have found his father in the same place they’d always been.

Jonah tapped back to the search page and continued on through the headlines. It seemed the story was very newsworthy for two months, each story re-telling the account with very little new information. Then it seemed to have dried up.

But didn’t some part of this ring true? They did live very far from any neighbors. And they never came into town if it wasn’t completely necessary. Even their groceries were delivered and left on the front porch. That could be the sign of a man who doesn’t want to be found.

Were the ‘dangerous men’ from the government? Did the government want his father so much they were willing to blow up the house to get him? More questions. He was getting sick of questions. One thing was certain, whether or not those men were satisfied with killing his father or if they were coming for him too, Jonah had to keep a very low profile.

He looked around and then stood up. He put his coat back on and flipped up the hood. He returned the tablet to the back of his pants and went for a walk around the mall.

Hours later, he’d done about as much window shopping as he could take. He didn’t dare go inside any one of the stores. People might ask what he was doing.

His stomach was really growling now. He’d have to go back to the nest and eat that peanut butter, if it was, in fact, still there. On the way out, he passed one of the miniature fountains that people threw coins into.

He made a subtle circle to make sure no one was anywhere near or looking out a store window. Fortunately, this time of day seemed to be very slow for the mall.

He hiked his sleeve up and plunged his hand into the fountain as fast as he could. He came up with a handful of change, but didn’t even look at it before he shoved his hand into his pocket.

“There,” he thought. “Like father, like son.”

He made sure no one saw him and then walked out the door.

He immediately felt bad about it. He wondered if he should go throw the change back in the fountain, but felt sure that if anyone saw him take it, they’d catch him if he went back. No, he should just keep going. Back to the nest. To see if anyone was there to catch him as well.