Monument 14: Savage Drift (Monument 14 Series) (8 page)

“Astrid! Dean!” All the kids besides Chloe clamored. “Did you see the letter? Isn’t it cool?”

“Yeah,” I told them. “Very cool.”

“Alex says it’s going to help find your parents!” Caroline chirped. “I can’t wait to meet them!”

“Look at our fort!” Max said.

“We building a wall!” Ulysses said, pointing to a wonky construction of sticks leaning against the trunk of a large maple tree.

“Very cool,” I said.

“What’s wrong, Mommy Junior?” Henry asked Astrid.

Either because she was pregnant, or because they had their “big” mom back, they’d taken to calling Astrid Mommy Junior. Usually it got a smile out of her, but not today.

“Have you guys seen Jake?” Astrid asked the moms.

“Yes,” Mrs. McKinley said. “We saw him at breakfast. He said he was going to go with Niko over to the Air Force base.”

Astrid threw up her hands.

“Is everything okay?” Mrs. McKinley asked.

Astrid looked away from her. I knew the expression—if she started to talk about it, she was going to cry.

My heart melted for her. But only a little.

“I just need to talk to him,” Astrid said.

“And I’m helping Astrid find him.” I couldn’t help myself. “See, I take care of Astrid, and I help her get whatever she wants. That’s my job. I do what I’m told.”

Surprise at my sarcastic tone of voice flickered onto Mrs. McKinley’s face.

“Ignore him,” she said. “He’s being a jealous jerk.”

Astrid turned on her heel and headed up to the Clubhouse.

A shuttle for the Air Force base left once an hour.

I followed her.

“You don’t have to come with me,” she said.

“I know that,” I answered.

“So don’t come.”

“I need to talk to Niko anyway,” I said.

It was sort of the truth.

But mostly I went because … because I was a jealous jerk. I was worried about what Jake might do or say without me around.

*   *   *

From what Alex had learned, the main reason that the refugee camp had been established at the Quilchena golf course was that it was a large area of open space close to the Vancouver International Airport South, which was acting as a temporary Air Force base for the USA.

Part of the reason that Captain McKinley had gotten us all brought to Quilchena was that he knew he’d be able to see a lot of his family if we were here. This improvised base was the center of the US Armed Forces effort to support the hundreds of thousands of American refugees housed across the west coast of Canada.

Supplies came and went from this base, refugees arrived and departed on a daily basis, and there were Army offices where you could go to file petitions for transfers and the like.

All you had to do to take a shuttle over to the base was give them your social security number. They wanted to know who was where at all times.

Security was tight at the base, and guards patrolled the outskirts of the camp, so I guess they weren’t worried about us escaping.

I wondered what Astrid was going to do, as the shuttle approached. Would she use her own number or the made-up one that she’d used in the medical offices?

I felt too pissed off to ask.

She entered her real SS number on the sign-in sheet the driver held out.

She looked at me and shrugged.

“They know everything else about me,” she said.

She was giving me an opening.

But I was still too mad. What did she think Jake would say that was different from what I had said? He wouldn’t be any nicer or more understanding about it. What did she want from him—now or ever?

*   *   *

At the base, it didn’t take long to find Niko and Captain McKinley, but Jake was nowhere to be seen.

The captain looked really annoyed. Niko was basically trailing behind him as he did some kind of equipment check on a large transport helicopter.

“You don’t have to approve of my plan to help me,” Niko was arguing as we approached.

“I’m not risking my job to help a seventeen-year-old kid go on some wild goose chase,” McKinley snapped.

Niko was sixteen, but I wasn’t about to correct him.

“Hey, guys,” I said as we drew near.

“Is Jake with you?” Astrid asked.

“He’s visiting someone he knows at the motor pool,” Niko said. “It’s out behind this building.”

“Ugh,” Astrid said, rubbing her back. She looked miserable.

“Hey,” I said. “Why don’t you sit down and I’ll go get him?”

“No. I’ll go. I want to talk to him alone.”

Okay, fine.

I exhaled through my mouth, trying to keep my cool.

She headed back outside.

“What’s going on?” Niko asked. “You fighting again?”

McKinley ducked away to the chopper, probably happy to have Niko off his tail for a moment.

“Yeah, I guess. Hey, did you see the letter?”

“No, what letter?”

I told Niko and Captain McKinley about it.

“Do you think it could help me get Josie out?” Niko said, getting excited.

“Maybe,” I said.

“I bet if I brought it to the press at Mizzou—showed them that the ‘presumed dead’ girl from The Monument Fourteen was actually inside—they could put pressure on them to let her out. Captain McKinley, don’t you think?”

“I think that the publicity might help you to get her transferred here. Which would be safe and legal,” McKinley said.

Niko threw up his hands.

Captain McKinley stopped what he was doing and came around to the front of the chopper.

“How’s Astrid?” he asked. “Kara said she’s not been feeling well?”

“She’s been having some cramps. I got her to go over to the clinic today.”

“She didn’t want to go?”

He was leaning on the nose of the chopper now.

“Ahh.…,” I stalled. I didn’t want to tell the captain about Astrid’s paranoid fantasies about the Army. It seemed like he would be insulted.

“She’s heard about some women being pressured to do testing.”

That was the least direct way I could put it.

“But she’s feeling all right?”

“She’s had some cramping. The nurse said she needs more vitamins and rest. I got to see the baby on the ultrasound.”

“Isn’t it amazing?” McKinley asked.

“Blew my mind!”

“I remember seeing the twins, all nested in together. Arms and legs all a jumble. Once they were sucking their thumbs! Both of them!”

There was a glow on his face as he remembered the sight.

Astrid came back with Jake then.

She looked furious.

“Dean!” Jake said, cheerfully, and I instantly saw he was drunk. “I hear we’re famous!”

“Is it even noon yet?” I asked.

“Never too early for a friendly game of cards,” he drawled. “And look, I won!”

He had a fistful of cash.

He tried to put his arm around Astrid.

“Don’t touch me,” she nearly shouted.

“Whoa, whoa, calm down,” Jake said.

“Astrid, I think we should go back,” I said.

“To where?” she asked, her frustration spilling over. “There is nowhere safe for me to go! That nurse is probably waiting at the tent!”

“Really,” I insisted. “We should go.”

I didn’t want her spouting the abduction stuff in front of Captain McKinley.

“Niko.” Astrid turned to him, begging. “Would you take me with you? Take me out of here to go get Josie? We can leave tonight! I’ll go with you!”

Niko didn’t know what to say.

But then Captain McKinley came around the corner of the chopper.

“Astrid, what’s wrong?” he asked.

“There’s a nurse who knows my name, she knows I was exposed, and she was pushing me to sign up to let the Army scientists do experiments on me and the baby—”

“Are you sure—”

“And NO ONE will help me! Everyone thinks I’m being paranoid.”

Captain McKinley rubbed his hands over his face. Then he dropped them.

“I’ll take you,” Captain McKinley said. “I’ll take you both tonight.”

“What?!” I cried.

“I’m supposed to fly this afternoon, but I’ll push it back a few hours,” Captain McKinley said, his voice calm, quiet, and dead serious. “Go back to Quilchena. Pack your stuff, say your good-byes.”

“Wait a minute, wait. What?” Jake said.

“They’ve been running women out. At night,” Captain McKinley told us. “I’ve seen them do it, a couple of times. I asked about it and they said that it was none of my business, and that the women have all consented to testing, et cetera, et cetera.”

Astrid swayed on her feet. I reached out and held her arm.

“But?” she asked.

“I’ve been asking myself. If they had given consent, why were they all drugged?”

*   *   *

We agreed that Captain McKinley would drive past the eleventh hole, where the kids’ play fort was, around 10 p.m.

What we couldn’t agree on was how many of us were going.

CHAPTER TEN

JOSIE

DAY 32

“You wanted to clean,” Venger says. “So clean.”

Well, of course, to clean—to
properly
clean a urine puddle off a courtyard floor—you’d want a bucket and a mop. A sponge would do it. Hot water. Some Mr. Clean, maybe, or at least some bleach.

Take it back even more and start by sweeping up the dirt, so it wouldn’t cake all up in the bucket.

What did I have?

I have a dirty towel.

On our first day, Mario had given me a four-word mantra to get by: “Look down. Look dumb.”

He said that would get me through life in the Virtues.

Look down, look dumb.

I scrub the stone pavers with the towel.

Most of the pee had run into the cracks anyway.

There was no way to get it out. It was just going to have to dry up. You’d never see the urine in the morning.

But Venger wants to see me scrubbing so I scrub.

The skin doesn’t come off my knuckles right away. It starts coming off about a half hour in.

I have to be more careful; somehow the wiring is messed up in my brain. Things don’t hurt the way they should anymore.

How do you know you’ve grated the skin off your finger bones? They hurt and then you look and see blood on your towel.

I feel my knees, though. They ache. The cold from the stone is setting into my bones, that’s how it feels.

*   *   *

I hear our group come back from mess.

I hear Heather cry, “She’s still there.” And hear her shushed.

*   *   *

Venger takes out a pack of cigarettes.

“Hard to get cigarettes in here. Know how I got these?” He is chatting to me like I am a barkeep in his regular haunt.

“Every week, we ship off about fifteen, twenty prisoners. All type O. All people who’ve been exposed for longer than a couple hours. Bunch of brass. They ask me for the worst of the lot.”

He lights a smoke. I can smell it.

My knees are numb now. They feel like they are made of cold metal. But my back is screaming.

“They take them away. I don’t know where. And do experiments on them.”

It is getting cool, now, but that isn’t why I feel my flesh shivering.

“I just wanted you to know that, so the next time you think about disrespecting me, or showing off for Scietto and the snot pack, or just doing anything even the littlest bit out of line.”

He is standing over me and I can smell his god-awful breath intertwined with the cigarette smoke.

“Here’s what I want you to keep in mind: I can send you somewhere even worse than this.”

I can’t help it. I laugh.

I say the word, “Really?”

The thought is so absurd.

And I hear a sound from him and it sounds like a laugh.

I dart a look over my shoulder and he is laughing, too.

Somehow I think this means I can get up. The ordeal seems over.

I lean back on my heels. Wipe off my brow.

“What’re you doing?” he asks me, still chuckling.

“I thought … I thought we were done.”

“No,” he says. “Not yet. I’m gonna keep you out here till the last group goes in. Safer for you if we wait until after lockdown.”

“I think … please,” I say. “Can I go now?”

He leans down to me, nodding, liking what he is seeing, I guess. That I am broken.

He opens up his maw and says, “Not. Just. Yet.”

*   *   *

I hear the next group go over to Plaza 900.

I hear them come back.

My knees are bleeding now.

Crickets somewhere start singing. It isn’t too cold for them, I guess.

Soon they will die.

My left hand keeps cramping up.

*   *   *

The last group goes over for dinner.

Forty-five minute shifts.

Then another thirty minutes to get everyone locked down.

My hips feel raw in their sockets.

*   *   *

Tears fall from my eyes and that is fine, I use the water for my cleaning. Spot, spot, drip, drip, drip. The dark little tear-marks vanishing under the arc of my towel.

I didn’t know I could cry, anymore. I nearly thought they were rain.

I should have stayed out of it.

“I can take care of myself, for Pete’s sake,” Mario had grouched the day after I kept Venger from cracking his head open at the fence. I was supposed to let the guards bust his head like a melon, if it came to that.

I was supposed to keep my head down until I was set free.

“I’m an old man,” he had said. “I’m not afraid to die—but you, you’re my project. You’re my last good deed on this earth and you’re making it out of here alive.”

Ha-ha. I saw the trick.

I should take care of myself for his sake.

The stain is long gone and the towel, now, shredded into long, sinewy strings that I hold cupped between my palms.

I ask God if this might be a good time to get it over with.

I know all I’d have to do is rise to my feet and take a weary swing at Venger and he’d put me down.

He wears a gun. He wears it so we can all see the leather holster.

It isn’t the kind of riot-control gun the other guards wear. Those ones are big, semiautomatic guns, loaded with tranquilizer darts.

Venger’s gun is a pistol loaded with bullets.