Raging Sea (8 page)

I poke up enough to see its owner. He’s short, maybe no taller than five foot four, with a port-wine stain smeared across his left eye. He’s got a shaved head. What is it about the shaved head with cops?

“No, sir,” Duck says a little too enthusiastically. I suddenly know everything I need to know about that kid. He’s the one who never knows when to shut up, especially around authority figures and people who can make his life hard. He just can’t help himself.

“What about you, girl? Have you seen any strangers around today?”

Sloan turns toward the fort and locks eyes with me. I bite down hard on my lip, sure we’ve been betrayed, but then she turns back to Ferguson and shakes her head.

“You speak English?” the cop demands.

“Of course I speak English,” she snaps. I guess Duck and Sloan were made in the same factory.

“We haven’t seen anyone, but we could keep our eyes open. What do they look like?” Lucas says, stepping between the cop and his friends.

“There are three of them. They’re about your age; pretty girls. Two of them are wearing metal gloves.”

“Metal gloves? Like Shredder?” Duck laughs.

“What?”

“The bad guy from
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,
” he explains. “His name is Shredder. He wears gloves with razors on them so he can shred. What did they do? Are they dangerous?”

“Heck, yeah, they’re dangerous. Do you think I’m out here looking for them because they’re selling illegal Girl Scout cookies? One of them is one of those fish things.”

“Fish things?” Lucas asks.

“Forget it,” the cop barks, then turns to Duck. “Are you sure you haven’t seen them? You wouldn’t be lying to me, would you?”

“No, sir,” Duck says.

“Are you a citizen, boy?”

“I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy, pal,” Duck says.

The punch comes from nowhere. Suddenly, Duck is on the ground and Ferguson has his foot on Duck’s head.

“You a Coaster, smart-ass?” he shouts. “Do you have your paperwork? Did you sneak over the border? I bet you’re all illegal. What about you, girl? Where are you from?”

“Sir, let him up,” Lucas begs.

“Shut up! You kids are out here loitering day and night, and I never hassle you. I could send Social Services over here, but I don’t. I’m a nice guy up to a point, but if ya’ll push my buttons, I get angry. Girl, you better get a hold of those dogs, or I’m gonna put them down.”

Sloan quickly grabs the dogs by the collar. She tries to calm them, but their frenzy of barking continues.

“Sir, please let him up,” Lucas cries, panicked but trying to play by the officer’s twisted rules. Unfortunately his pleas are ignored.

I watch in horror from the safety of the fort. Those kids are suffering because of us, and I can’t let it continue. I shift so I can get my gloved hand out in front of me, but Bex pulls me back.

“C’mon, Lyric. Using that thing shouldn’t be the first option,” she hisses.

“Then what do you want to do?” I cry, bewildered.

She peers through one of the tiny windows.

“There are a million things you can do with it. Pick one that doesn’t put him in the hospital,” she begs.

I tuck my hand under my hoodie to block the light from radiating out and revealing our hiding spot. Then I strain to hear the water’s call. There are pipes running beneath Ferguson’s feet, eager to explode and knock him down. There’s a sprinkler system I could use to drown him. There’s even a garden hose lying in the grass nearby that I could turn into a whip. All of them are deliciously vengeful, but for Bex’s sake I’ll try to be creative.

“Use some restraint,” I whisper to the voices.

A second later, a fire hydrant in the street blows up and its metal cap sails through the air, landing at Ferguson’s feet. A jet of water shoots into the sky and comes down on his car with such force, the back windshield collapses. Water floods through the broken glass and quickly fills the car.

“What on earth?” Ferguson hollers, and all of a sudden tormenting children is not at the top of his list. Duck scampers to his feet, embarrassed, angry, and hurt, but he knows better than to fight back. Instead, he steps as far away as he can from the cop.

Ferguson calls to his dispatcher. She accuses him of throwing a temper tantrum, then promises to send a fire truck.

“Get out of the park,” Ferguson spits. “If I see you Coasters again, I’m calling Immigration.”

He stomps back toward his squad car and suffers through the ceaseless spray to get behind the wheel. It’s so powerful, it knocks him down before he finally gets the door open and crawls inside. While he’s busy, Bex, Arcade, and I climb down from the fort. The kids eye us with both wonder and fear.

“Did you do that?” Lucas asks.

I nod.

“I won’t hurt you,” I promise.

“You’re that girl from Coney Island,” Sloan says.

“We need a squat for the night. If it’s not cool, that’s fine, but say it now, please, so we can keep looking before it’s too late,” Bex says.

She reaches over and gives my hand a squeeze. I return the show of affection.

Lucas speaks to Duck and Sloan. Tattoo Boy wipes the blood out of his eye and listens, his face full of suspicion, but then he eventually nods.

“You can come,” Lucas says. “But whatever food you’ve got, you have to share, and Malik gets first pick.”

“Who is Malik?”

“The guy who decides whether you sleep outside or not,” Sloan explains.

She grabs Lucas by the arm, whispering something to him while staring at me the entire time.

“C’mon, we’ll take you.” Duck picks up his board and walks into the dark. Lucas and Sloan do the same.

T
HEY WALK US ALONG A LONELY ROAD TO A BRIDGE.
Once there, we crawl down the embankment and find a huge metal drainage pipe big enough for a grown man to walk into upright. It leaks murky brown water into a muddy creek basin. Without hesitation, Duck plunges us into the dark. Sloan and Duck follow, then Arcade.

Lucas happens to have a small flashlight in his pocket, and he takes the lead for Bex and me. Soon we’re so far in that I can’t see the light of the entrance any longer. Along the way, Duck tells us his life story. He and his father left Newport, Rhode Island, when it was ravaged by the Rusalka—who he calls the “frogs.” They packed all their belongings in the car, only to get stopped in their tracks at the Texas border. They were separated by the mobs, though, he admits, his dad might have ditched him.

“I wasn’t his favorite child. Unfortunately I was his only one.”

He laughs at his own expense, but it’s not loud enough to cover up the pain.

Sloan says she’s from a little town in Delaware that was overrun by the monsters. She and her mother and father abandoned everything they had and took off in the family’s SUV. When they got to the Texas border, they were stopped and searched. The soldiers threatened to arrest the whole family, but her father bribed one with the car. He would only let Sloan pass through, all alone. That was a week ago. They were supposed to meet here but she hasn’t seen them since.

Lucas, on the other hand, doesn’t offer much.

“Are you from the Coast?” I ask.

“Yeah.”

That’s his answer for everything. He’s like a male version of Bex. Getting him to share is like pulling teeth.

Finally we reach a ladder. Duck climbs up while Lucas shines his flashlight at him. When he gets to the top, he pounds his hand on a metal grate that blocks his way, first three times, then once, then four more times.

“Secret codes.” Duck chuckles down to us.

There is movement from above, and then the grate opens and the tunnel fills with light. Leaning down into the hole is the face of a dark-skinned boy with a shaved head and the beginnings of a sad, thin mustache.

“What happened to your face?” he asks. He seems genuinely concerned for Duck, as if they were family.

“Ferguson.”

He frowns, then peers down at us.

“Who are they?”

“They need a place for the night,” Lucas replies. “Let us in.”

“We don’t have room for three more,” Malik argues.

“You know we do, Malik,” Lucas argues. “Let us in. I’m standing in sewage.”

“We will only be here until morning, and then we’ll be gone,” I promise.

“They got anything to contribute?”

I take off my pack and hand it up. Malik snatches it and unzips it, peering inside. He rifles through it like it’s his own, pulling out the last of the protein bars and the cans of soup, then takes out the package of bologna and smells it.

“One night,” he says sternly, then moves enough to let Duck finish his climb. We all follow until we find ourselves in what appears to be an ancient boiler room, not unlike the one we used to have in the basement of my apartment back in Brooklyn. Once we’re all out of the tunnel, Lucas closes the grate and then fastens a padlock to keep it shut. He hangs the key on a nail pounded into the nearest wall.

“You’re gone by eight,” Malik commands like it’s the law of the land. He snatches the bread for himself, then hurries up a flight of stairs and vanishes from view.

“Don’t mind him,” Lucas explains. “He’s sort of the mayor of this place, and he’s very protective.”

“Paranoid is what he is,” Duck says.

“He needs to be,” Sloan chastises.

“What is this place, exactly?” Bex asks.

Duck grins from ear to ear. “You’re going to love this.”

He hurries us up the stairs until we’re standing in a room with soaring ceilings and a hardwood floor. Before us is a monstrous curtain that must be forty feet tall. There’s ancient electrical work on the walls and huge black panels filled with tiny bulbs. Ropes, pulleys, and catwalks hang from a ceiling that soars to dizzying heights. Duck pulls back one end of the heavy curtain and urges us to step through. Once there, I find myself on a stage in a huge sloping room with hundreds of velvet chairs.

“It’s a theater,” I gasp.

I don’t know how old this building is, but it was built with a lot of care and craftsmanship. The balconies are carved with cherubs, and the walls are decorated in a glitzy art deco design. There is a pipe organ to the left that looks as if it sinks into the floor, and the ceiling—oh . . . it’s breathtaking. It shoots high above us, and it’s painted to look like an endless blue sky dotted by chubby clouds made of milk. Unfortunately it’s marred by water damage, and there’s a hole up there somewhere that’s allowing birds to nest. A few pigeons circle the room, spiraling around and around as if they are wheeling in a real sky.

“Welcome to the Royale,” Lucas says when he joins us.

“It’s incredible,” Bex says.

“Malik found it a while back. He’s been on his own for a couple years, so he cleaned it up. When Duck and I wandered into town a couple weeks back, he took us in.”

“He’s really not such a bad guy, just cranky,” Sloan says.

The boys give her a “look who’s talking” look.

She punches each one in the arm.

Lucas waves toward the seats. I was so overcome by the architecture, I didn’t notice that there are people sitting out there, maybe thirty of them, both men and women, some teens and small children.

“Who are they?” I ask, peering out at their faces.

“Coasters,” he says.

“Malik has been taking them in,” Duck says. I can hear the respect he has for the boy in every word.

We descend a small flight of stairs and walk up the sloped floor. All the way, faces stare out at me. There are people in this theater who are brown and white and red and yellow. There probably isn’t a better example of what America professes to be than in this room. Now they are refugees, unwanted in their own country.

“They all paid some guys to hide them in a truck and drive them across the borders. They were told they would be taken somewhere nice and put in a motel, but instead they got robbed and dumped in the middle of the desert in the pitch-dark. Every week there’s more. Malik and I go out and check from time to time, then bring them back here,” Lucas explains.

“How do you get them back here?” Bex asks.

“I’ve got a truck,” he says.

“You’ve got electricity, too,” Bex cheers, pointing to some lights glowing in the balconies and the back of the theater.

“We’ve got hot water,” Lucas says. “You could take a bath in one of the sinks.”

“If that is some kind of crack about how I look, I don’t even care,” I say with a laugh.

“Nothing wrong with the way you look,” he says.

I blush.

“Look who gets to be the hot one,” Bex whispers to me.

“Where should we sleep?” I ask.

“Find a spot. Anywhere, really,” Lucas says, then points to one of the balconies that overlooks the stage. “Except for there. That’s Malik’s. He keeps his prayer rug up there, so be cool and find somewhere else. The place is huge. There’s a couple rules. You can’t hang around outside, and when you go, you need to use the tunnels. This place is off the town’s radar at the moment. It has been closed for years, but when they shut it down they left the power and water on, which tells me someone still owns it and has plans for it someday. I have to assume it’s a big company that doesn’t care that it keeps getting bills, but there’s no point drawing attention if we don’t have to.”

“Got it. We’ll be gone in the morning,” I promise.

“I said the same thing when I walked through that tunnel at the back of the theater,” he confesses. “Ignore what Malik said about leaving tomorrow. If you need to stay, you can. We’re all here for as long as there’s no place else to go.”

At some point a bottle of vodka gets passed around. It’s the cheapest brand you can buy and bottled in a big plastic jug, which is never a good sign. I pass on it, but Sloan and Lucas each have a pull. They pass it on to Bex and Duck. I gave her a worried look and she gave me the thumbs-up expression. She upends the bottle, taking a long, slow drink, then wipes her mouth on her shirtsleeve.

“Easy there, cowgirl,” I say, trying to take it from her.

She takes another swig.

“Don’t spoil the fun, Walker,” she teases.

Duck takes a drink himself, then drags Bex out of her seat.