Monument 14: Savage Drift (Monument 14 Series) (19 page)

“Get in bed where you’ll at least be warm.”

So they do.

Aidan and Freddy get onto the top bunk. Heather lays on the bottom one. Lori has no intention of sleeping, I can see that, but she lays down with Heather, to help keep her warm.

“What kind of a dumb name is Mrs. Wooly?” Freddy asks again.

“You’re taking the whole blanket,” Aidan complains.

I tuck the blanket around the two of them.

*   *   *

Four sets of big, scared eyes blink at me from that bunk bed.

I sit on the floor.

“The day before the earthquake and the spill, I was on my way to school on the high school bus. I was sitting next to my friend Trish and we were just talking about … I remember we were talking about our bake sale to raise money for immigration reform. Hail started falling, but it wasn’t regular hail. It was monster hail, giant hail. There were hailstones as big as softballs! It was like being fired on by cannons. Our driver, Mr. Green, sped the bus up and lost control. We crashed.”

I can remember the smell of the ice in the air and the blood.

“Our bus crashed in the parking lot of a Greenway superstore.”

“We have a Greenway in Castle Rock,” Aidan says.

I nod.

“That’s where Mrs. Wooly comes in. See, Mrs. Wooly was the driver of another bus, right behind us. And it had kids from both the elementary school and the middle school on it. She had really little kids, as little as five years old, in that bus.

“Mrs. Wooly loves kids. You wouldn’t think it, because she can be very gruff, but she’d do anything to protect her kids.”

Heather takes her thumb out of her mouth to say, “Like Uncle Mario.”

Has she always sucked her thumb? I hadn’t noticed.

“Yes, she is kind of like Mario, only a lot younger. So the hail was crashing in through the windows of the bus and Mrs. Wooly was scared that her kids were going to get hurt. She did a crazy thing.”

Not a peep from the bunk bed, so I know I have them.

“She drove her bus through the front window of the Greenway!

“But remember, I was still in the crashed bus outside, and it was lying on its side so the hail was coming down through the windows, right on top of us. I got hit on the head and that’s where I got this scar.” I run a hand up to the dark gash, the flesh still depressed under my fingertips.

“Mrs. Wooly made the kids get out of her bus and wait where it was safe, in the store. By this time, the engine of our bus had caught fire. It was going to blow and we were all going to die.”

Gasps from the bunk bed. The slight shimmying of excited bodies.

“And then Mrs. Wooly backed her bus up, out into the parking lot. And she used an ax to chop open the lock on the emergency door. Then she helped us get out.”

I pause, not for dramatic effect, but because I remember Niko half dragging me down the aisle.

And then Astrid holding me on that bus. She held me in her arms like I was a baby.

I don’t think I ever thanked her for her kindness to me on the bus and now it is, of course, too late. Far too late.

“Then what happened?” Heather asks.

“Did the other bus explode?”

“It did,” I say, shaking my head to clear it. “Mrs. Wooly drove us into the store and the crashed bus exploded before we even got inside. She saved our lives, no question.”

“Wow!” Heather murmurs.

“We were snug and safe in there,” I go on. “We had all this food and even lights and heat. And all the clothes we could want. Imagine that!”

“Oh man,” Lori says. “I would kill for clean underwear.”

“And toys? Was there toys?” asks Aidan.

“Aisles and aisles of toys,” I tell him. “And candy!”

The questions stop and I can see all four of them, luxuriating in the idea of a safe place filled with games and sweets.

*   *   *

In the Greenway I had spun fantasies about Mrs. Wooly rescuing us in a tricked-out bus and the kids dreamed about returning to their lives and parents.

In the Virtues I told a real account of Mrs. Wooly’s actions and the children fantasized about living in the Greenway.

Imagine that.

*   *   *

Lifted up by my real-life fairy tale, the kids drift off to sleep.

I go and sit out on the bed against the door.

Maybe a half hour later, Lori comes to sit with me.

“Do you think Mario’s going to be okay?” she asks me.

I shrug.

“He’s tough,” I answer. “But he’s old.”

“What do you think is going to happen to us?” she asks me.

“Please,” I say. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what? Don’t talk to you? Don’t try to be your friend? God, what is it with you?”

I shush her. She is going to wake up the kids.

“You think you have it so much worse than the rest of us,” she complains. “You’re all high on yourself.”

I laugh.

She is so totally wrong.

“You’re not even going to answer me?”

“You should go to sleep.”

“You know, if you had just let me do what I had to do with those boys, none of this would be happening.”

“You wanted to have sex with those boys?” I ask her.

She wouldn’t meet my eye.

She stands there at the window, arms crossed against the chill, the unearthly glow of the floodlights outlining her goose bumps in blue.

“No,” she says. “But I could do it. To protect us. It wouldn’t be the end of the world.”

“Mmmmm, you don’t know that. It might be the end of the world for you. Sometimes you can sacrifice too much—”

“It’s all right to do things you don’t want to, if the outcome is worthy.”

“No. It is possible to sacrifice too much,” I repeat. “It is.”

She still wouldn’t look at me.

“I’d do anything to protect those kids.”

“I killed to protect my kids,” I say.

And like a film being projected on the empty Sheetrock wall of our crummy double suite, I see Robbie, gun raised at Niko down at the end of a darkened aisle.

I see the crazed O soldier in the woods, headed for Max.

Oh, the joy I felt when I ripped that face mask off and inhaled, filling myself with rage and lust. And how strong I was when I bashed his head in.

And the father of the boy.

The father who had laid a trap and caught my friends.

My little loves, my devoted Niko, my old-new family, trapped down in the bottom of a pit and that daddy shining a flashlight on them, considering whether to let them live or die.

I sunk my teeth into his neck like a vampire and took out a hunk and he bled out, looking up at the no-star muddy sky.

I had enjoyed it.

Lori comes and stands beside me, wrapping her arm around my shoulders.

What sign of my distress had I given?

Maybe she could see the scenes playing in the reflections of my eyes.

*   *   *

They come around midnight.

First, the rattle of a hand on the lever.

Right, as if we might have left it open by accident.

Then the sound of fingers on the keypad.

Lori and I look at each other.

This is it. If they have the combination, we are dead.

Rattle, rattle, rattle. No.

They don’t have it.

“Hello?” comes a singsong voice. “Anybody home?”

And sniggers. The sniggers cut off by an elbow to the stomach, maybe.

Knock-knock.

“We’d like to see Josie,” the voice repeats. It has to be Carlo.

And then
BAM,
they try to kick the door in.

“Leave us alone,” Lori screams.

By this time the kids are up and watching from the doorway to the other room.

BAM, BAM!
They try the door again.

The bed shakes and the bureaus rattle.

“Hey, we just want to talk to you, Jojo,” Carlo says, the singsong lilt in his voice. “Not so nice what you did to Brett and Juani.”

“Go away!” I shout. “I’m not coming out.”

“You messed them up real bad!” comes a different voice.

“Leave those kids alone,” comes a shrill female voice. Maybe the skinny mom. “We all know you’re up here! We’ll tell on you!”

“‘We’ll tell on you,’” one of them mocks. “Who are you going to tell, Venger? He’s the one who let us up here!”

“Yeah! And anyone who helps Josie is in for it. You should all know that now!” roars another one.

We can hear them striking several of the other doors in the hall.

“You leave that girl alone!” comes another voice.

“Room Three-Oh-Four. Write that down, Ray,” Carlo says loudly enough for them all to hear.

Then
BAM, BAM, BAM,
they are hitting our door with something, maybe a chain, and the metal is bending, a little, near the lock.

I push against the bed with all my might.

The bed shakes with each chain lash on the door, but the lock holds.

Lori and the kids scramble to help.

The Union Men cannot get in the room.

They stop trying and my ears ring with the sudden silence.

There comes a polite knock on the door.

“Oh, Josie,” Carlo calls.

“What?” I say.

“This door is fully and truly locked. So we’ll catch up with you tomorrow.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

DEAN

DAY 34

We spent the night in the car.

Astrid cuddled with Rinée in the backseat and I reclined in the front seat.

Jake was crashed out in the passenger seat, snoring like a bear, his head lolling against the window. If I hadn’t been so tired, it would have kept me up.

*   *   *

Rinée woke us up, crying.

“Shhh,” Astrid told her. “It’s okay.” But there was no soothing the kid.

“We’re out of juice boxes,” I said. I rummaged around for something the girl would eat. Actually for anything that would get her to stop crying. My nerves felt like they’d been sharpened on a honing blade and the crying, screaming now, was going to put me over the edge.

“What about a protein shake?” Jake suggested.

But we tried that and she wouldn’t take it.

“Come on, sweetie, let’s take a walk,” Astrid said.

She opened the door and Rinée wailed louder, pushing against Astrid. Astrid set her onto the ground and the toddler stormed away from the car.

“Do you want me to go?” I asked Astrid. She nodded.

The circles under her eyes were starting to worry me. It looked like she hadn’t gotten, maybe, the best night of sleep in the world, curled up in the backseat of a Mazda with a twenty-two-month-old.

I followed Rinée as she wandered around. It was chilly, almost downright cold.

“Let’s go get a blanket, Rinée,” I said. “Come on, Rinée. Gotta keep warm.”

I went to pick her up and she laughed and ran from me. Good, it could be a game. Anything to keep her from crying.

A cup of coffee sounded good to me, even though I didn’t like the way it tasted. I needed something to open up my brain.

Finally she allowed me to scoop her up and I blew a raspberry onto her neck, causing her to giggle. I realized she was wet—really wet.

Coming back to the car, I saw the trunk open.

Jake’s face peeked over the top and he saw me and then dropped back down.

As I walked up he shut the trunk.

“Found these,” he said, holding up a bag of frosted animal crackers. “I thought I’d see if there was anything she might like…”

And he was sort of palming a protein shake behind his back.

He must’ve seen my eyes dart to the shake.

“Breakfast. It sort of tastes like last night’s dinner,” he joked.

I smiled. Nodded. What Jake did was not my concern. He could sneak whisky all day long. I didn’t have to rat him out. I didn’t even have to hold it against him.

“Where’s Astrid?” I asked.

“Went to pee.”

*   *   *

Astrid came back and changed the baby (I was going to have to learn how to do it. And soon. Blecch.) and we got on the road.

I drove, Astrid tried to keep Rinée occupied, Jake sipped whisky out of a protein shake bottle.

It’s a weird thing, to have someone doing something that he’s covering up in your presence. There was this huge lie going on right in the car and neither Astrid nor I said a thing.

I’m sure she could smell the booze. I could.

Jake told us about his days in Texas, back before he moved to Monument. He told us about the championship football games and about the BBQ dinners the backers threw for the team.

Breakfast was cold sandwiches from a gas station. Forty-two dollars. We were getting low on money.

I had the thought that maybe Rinée’s dad might give us a reward or something for bringing her back. Then again, he might think we were kidnappers. Would he believe us, about how we’d found her in the trunk?

Jake chatted on and on. Astrid laughed at his cocky monologue.

I didn’t feel much like banter.

I was thinking of Vinita. What we’d seen and what we might encounter.

*   *   *

I found Rinée’s house by driving to the gas station in Vinita and going from there.

The charred remains of the service station were still smoking, twenty-four hours later. If I had stopped, we could have seen Rocco Caputo’s bloody, skeleton prostrate on the asphalt, but I didn’t care to stop.

What I didn’t see was any trace of the drift. Nothing in the air, nothing skittering along the ground.

I kept remembering an eyewitness report I had read about a drift in a falling-apart copy of the
National Enquirer
back at Quilchena.

The man’s description of the drift fit perfectly with what we had experienced. Of course it was hard to take seriously, back then, because the story it ran next to was about how aliens had triggered the Megatsunami with a rock-melting submarine.

The drift article had discussed a theory that the drifts were a fusion of the magnetic blackout cloud and the blood-type compound. That the thermobaric bombs the Air Force had used to destroy the compounds and the blackout cloud had locked them together.

The “grains” I’d seen were square in shape. Alex had described the blackout cloud as being tiny airborne magnets. There was some force keeping the particles together. Otherwise, they would disperse. It all seemed to make sense.