The Perfect Soldier
Page 10
I think back to the last time I sat at the window outside my father’s room, and I look around carefully before I lift the blinds. A dark screen covers the outside of the window that would make it difficult for anyone outside to see in even if the blinds weren’t there.
From this viewpoint, I can look over the side of the building and see the window I had initially peered out after the raid where I had watched a group of younger students from the school being brought in. The window is blown out now. It has a plastic shoot running out of it that ends at the large dumpster on the side of the building. A movement of something hitting the inside of the shoot at the top leads down to the half-full dumpster where broken sections of drywall drop out.
“I heard you were doing better,” a voice says behind me.
I carefully turn my head. “Kelly!” I say too loudly, hurting my collarbone.
I’m surprised by the relief I feel to see him towering over me. I turn all the way around to face him, careful not to hit my cast against the wall below the window as I do. “You look…,” I give him a quick head-to-toe scan. His arm is covered in bandages, hiding the worst of the burns. He got those from saving me, pushing me out of the way when Cassidy’s captors set off an explosion. His visible wounds are slowly being replaced by scar tissue. He has rolled up the sleeves on the robe that he is wearing over his hospital gown as if to show off his battle wounds “You look good.”
He flexes in response giving me a light-hearted grin. “Are you surprised?”
I really don’t want to make my collarbone start aching bad again, so I avert my eyes to keep from laughing. “I didn’t think third degree burns could heal like that.”
He lifts his arm toward me, filling the space between us to give me a better look. “You aren’t the only one freaked by my healing time.” He appraises his arm with a satisfied glance. “Speaking of the unexpected,” he says, dropping his arm, “we all thought you were a goner.”
“Looks like we’re both walking miracles, then.”
“Suppose so.” He looks down at the cast on my leg, which is sticking out from the leg caddy. “You’ll be good as gold in no time.”
I roll my leg behind me acting like it’s more comfortable. Really, it’s to keep my chubby toes that are dangling from the end of the cast out of sight. My toenails have been neglected, and they will continue to be until everything above my waist feels better.
“Have I missed a lot?”
Kelly’s face freezes. First Bryant, now Kelly. I’m going to stop talking before long if everybody keeps acting like this when I open my mouth. He turns to lean against the window next to me. He stares down the hallway thoughtfully. I have to roll my leg around just so I can stand like him, facing the hallway.
His voice is deeper when he speaks. “Some of the prisoners we got out didn’t make it.”
Not knowing what to say, I just watch as he continues to stare off. I didn’t know any of the people we saved other than my dad. A sad smile plays on his lips as he says, “Boston has finally stopped talking about his girlfriend.”
Boston’s girlfriend, Zoey, wasn’t with him and his small group of students when we met up during the raid. When we were in the van leaving the basement I heard him mention her. Boston had said she was the prettiest Dyna chick he knew and that he hoped she was in better shape than he was after the raid. He had managed to make it out with only one gunshot wound to the shoulder. If Zoey hadn’t made it to the hospital, it would mean that she’s either dead or with the Rogues who escaped. I don’t know which would be worse.
“You’ll be happy to know that Lena is doing great.”
“Fabulous,” I say, sarcastically.
At least he’s changed the subject. Lena had been one of the prisoners we freed. Kelly and the others with him, who had attended the aboveground school, had known her as a fellow student. They had all thought that she had left the school weeks before the raid, but it turns out she had been brought to the basement.
Lena had been put through the ringer while she was down there. Once she was freed, her nonstop rambling made the already-stressful situation worse for me. I got stuck in the same vehicle as her when we left the raid. All I could think about was my dad, who was on death’s doorstep, and her babbling just made things worse. In retrospect, I’m rather proud of myself for not strangling her right there in the van.
“Is she still mumbling nonsense?” I ask, not very concerned one way or the other.
“Nah, she’s fairly back to normal.”
I give him a speculative sideways glance. “Was she honestly normal to begin with?”
“Yes,” he says, nodding his head along with the word. “She was normal and smart.” When he sees me still looking at him in disbelief, he adds, “For real. She’s around somewhere, talking to some detectives about her Aunt Lia.”
Lia Heincliff had been the Rogue who Kelly had attacked in the church parking lot after the raid was over. It’s funny how highly he’s talking about Lena when I’ve seen firsthand how he feels about her aunt.
“I’ll take your word for it,” I tell him.
The last thing I want to do is find myself in a closed space with Lena again. Besides, in this state, I’m not sure I’d be able to walk away if the urge to choke her arises.
“Are you having headaches like the other Dynamar students from your school?” I ask before he can suggest a visit.
“Not like the ones they brought in today,” he says, obliging my change of topic. “You know Glensy is one of them?”
Glensy, like Kelly, had been a student at the Rogue school. He had been with Boston and Kelly when Delta team intercepted them. He had been a part of the effort to extract prisoners in the basement too.
“I didn’t. Why do you think it’s happening?”
“Don’t know. They won’t have time to run any tests to find out either, since we’re moving.”
“Moving?”
“You haven’t heard? I wasn’t supposed to say anything but I figured…Well, Mitchell—” He looks over at me. “You remember Mitchell Lanton, don’t you?” I nod. “Mitchell was in the meeting yesterday with your uncle and his top guys. They agreed that we need to move. They’ve locked down a hospital that’s better equipped to treat everyone’s injuries. You sure your uncle didn’t tell you about any of this?”
I shrug, figuring it’s best not to tell him the real reason Uncle Will has decided to move everyone. I’m lucky that Kelly’s a Dynamar, and I don’t have to worry about lying in front of him like I would a Veritatis.
“He was in my room when I regained consciousness,” I tell him truthfully, “But then the nurse and then the doctor came rushing in. With everything happening, it must have slipped his mind.”
He nods. “I can’t tell you much besides what little Mitch told me. I’m betting we’ll be moved out soon though. I heard Mitch talking about busses arriving tonight.”
“Busses?” I ask, hoping I misheard him. I hated riding the school bus back when I was still living a normal life with my parents. When Jake started getting picked up by his basketball buddies before school, I got one of my friends on the track team to give me rides whenever possible. I hated the bumpy, over-crowded bus ride to and from school.
Kelly doesn’t share my distaste. “My first kiss was on a bus.”
“That’s sad,” I say. All the boys that rode my bus were snotty nosed and covered in greasy, pimpled skin.
“Is not,” he says proudly. “She was hot,”
I laugh at him, but quietly, so as to lessen the hurt radiating in my collarbone and to not draw unwanted attention from the Seraphim walking the halls. “So were there any other blind kids on your bus, or was she the only one?”
“Oh, hardy-har-har. You know, I was going to offer to save you a seat in the back of the bus with us cool kids, but now I don’t think I am.”
I stop laughing to look him square in the eye. With absolute seriousness I ask him, “You think Lena would let me sit next to her?”
He gives me a smile, but no acknowledgement. “I better go check on Glensy. I gave him my bed until they get his migraine under control. He’s probably locked himself in the bathroom by now to get away from Boston’s jabber.” He pushes off the wall.
“Oh, okay.”
I sit up on my leg caddy, but then I realize that if I leave the window too, we will be going down the hall together. I opt to shuffle around to face the window again so that my indecision isn’t obvious. “Well, if you can find it in your heart to forgive me for the blind girlfriend joke, save me a seat,”
“I can probably do that,” he says as he departs, but after a few paces, he turns suddenly. Walking backwards down the hall he says, “Hey, uh, I’ll bring Boston by your room later if it’s cool. He’s been wanting to hear about what happened in the basement from someone besides me or Glensy. He thinks we’re exaggerating about the layout down there.”
“Sure. See ya.” I look back out the window.
Chapter 8
“Knock knock,” Boston calls from the hallway as he and I walk into Taylor’s hospital room shortly after the dinner plates have been picked up from the rooms.
“You decent?” I ask, before we’ve stepped deep enough into the room for her bed to become.
“Come in,” Taylor says. She’s sitting on the left side of her bed, closest to the door. Her legs are draped over the edge with her cast propped up on the leg contraption next to her bed that they have her using to move around with.
“Thanks for having us,” Boston says, sounding like we’re here for a formal event and not to hang out in a tiny hospital room.
Taylor plays along, setting the television remote that she’s holding down on the bed. “It’s my pleasure. Please,” she says, making a grand gesture with her hands toward the couch, “have a seat.”
“I’ll take the couch,” I say quickly, moving around Boston. “You can have the chair.”
Boston takes the chair on the right side of the bed without a fight as I drop down onto the couch stretching my legs out. I have to set my feet on the couch’s armrest to have the space I need to properly stretch. Boston and I had just finished talking about how uncomfortable the couches are compared to the fake, leather recliners they have in every room when Glensy chose to move from my bed to the couch in an effort to find a spot comfortable enough that it would allow him to sleep through the migraine he was having.
Taylor lifts her legs up onto her bed to face the both of us on the right side of the room.
Boston looks up at the television hanging up on the wall at the foot of Taylor’s bed. “You like this show?” he asks, sounding disgusted as a skinny brunette in her forties makes a comment about an even older blonde with dark roots’s boyfriend being thirty years her junior. The blonde erupts tossing what champagne is left in her champagne flute into the brunette’s face.
“No,” Taylor says quickly, grabbing the remote. “I was just flipping through the channels.”
Boston curls his lips in amusement, turning from the television to look at Taylor. “You know I’m an Veritatis, right?”
Taylor changes the channel twice, pausing when Boston informs her of his ability. Out the corner of her eye, she looks toward Boston stopping when she sees me on the couch grinning from Boston catching her in a lie. “Wasn’t there something you were wanting to talk to about?” she asks, looking back at the television where the weather channel is displaying the local forecast.
“As a matter of fact,” he says, perking up. “You could tell me what that school of your uncle’s is like, can’t you.”
“Sure,” she says, glancing in my direction. I shrug at her, not knowing what to say. I had told Taylor that Boston wanted her to tell him about what happened in the basement during the raid.
“Good,” Boston chirps. “Glensy wouldn’t tell me anything about it.”
I sit up propping an elbow under me. “What he means to say is, Glensy could barely stand up straight when he got here thanks to the migraine he got on the ride here from The Southern Academy. The only thing he could do was groan when Boston tried talking to him.”
“He was being dramatic,” Boston moans. “He’s always complained about any little headache like it was the end of the world. So,” he says, leaning on the recliners armrest toward Taylor. “What’s it like over there?”
I end up laying back on the couch to stare up at the ceiling as Taylor begins describing the layout of her uncle’s school. The Southern Academy is made up of buildings one through four. “It’s a big square,” she says, telling us how the four multistoried buildings connect to the next at either end, with the exception of buildings three and four where there’s a covered walkway leading to the gym and cafeteria. A large courtyard is in the middle of the buildings where it’s divided in half by another covered walkway that connects building one to building three.
Behind the gymnasium is the track and field. Behind that is student housing. Taylor explains that to help stop guys and girls from “mingling after class” as she puts it, they have female housing on the east edge and male housing on the west. They’ face each other, but are several hundred yards apart with security constantly walking the area.
As much as I was looking forward to hearing Taylor tell Boston about how I saved her in the basement, hearing her talk about the school is pretty nice. I don’t know if it is having a cute girl like Taylor to talk to or if Boston’s tired of talking about the raid, because he says nothing about out old school. I listen intently imaging what our futures will hold at The Southern Academy.
“Hey, Kelly,” Mitch says, walking into Boston and mine’s room. Mitch takes a look at Glensy, who’s passed out on the couch. “The bus is here,” he says casually. He looks back out into the hall in the direction where he normally stands watch when he takes his turn working as unmarked security for our hallway. “You and Boston want to come with me downstairs?” he asks, looking back in our room. “We’re about to begin loading.”
We’ve been stuck on the same floor of the hospital since the grenades. Everyone’s been itching to go outside for weeks; Boston and I are no exception.
None of us bother waking Glensy. He’s waiting on another dose of nausea medication before we leave. The doctors have said they aren’t sure why some of the students extracted from the Rogue school during the raid are suffering from migraines, but they are treating their symptoms as best they can.
I grab the shirt and sweat pants out from the cabinet that Mitch brought me for when I got to leave. Boston’s already got his shorts on under his hospital gown, so I toss him his shirt before carefully pulling my gown off without touching any of the bandages covering my arms and shoulders. I’ve already cut slits in the short sleeves of my shirt under my armpits to allow more room for the bandages covering my burns.
Mitch pauses each of the three times we pass one of the large, and clearly Dynamar, men standing watch over the Seraphim section of the hospital. “It’s time,” he tells each of them before continuing on his way as the first heads to the nurse’s station and the second toward the north end of hallway. It isn’t until we are almost outside that I realize the third, and shortest of the Dynamar Mitch spoke to is still following us at a distance.
Instead of the bus Taylor and I talked about, a big, spacious tour bus is parked under the covering. Two of McBride’s guys are sweeping the underside of the bus with large mirrors attached to long poles so that they don’t have to get down on hands and knees to inspect the undercarriage. The Dyna who’s been following us joins the guy with the pole mirror who is checking under the engine.
“Sweet,” Boston says, walking up the stairs
leading inside the bus. “Does it have a bathroom in the back?”
Mitch follows shortly behind him, hopping up the stairs. “I’m sure it does.”
Boston picks a seat that’s three-quarters of the way back while Mitch and I give the interior a once-over before walking down the aisle.
Mitch repeatedly squats down, peering beneath the seats as we walk down the aisle. “What are you doing?” I ask him.
“Checking,” he says, standing up to take a couple steps before doing it again.
“For what?” I ask.
He kneels down and looks under the next row of seats. “Anything,” he says from beneath it.
I look over at Boston, who’s bent upside-down, peering under his seat. “All clear,” he calls up. Inspection complete, Boston props himself against the window and closes his eyes.
“You aren’t going to help us check under everything else?”
He barely opens one eye to look at me. “You got this.”
“Thanks, pal,” I grumble.
I help Mitchell check every nook and cranny for anything unusual.
Boston hears me walking back to his row, and he readjusts the arm below his head. “Nothing ticking?” He asks.
If I had anything in my pockets to throw at him, I would. Instead, I plop down beside him in the seat next to the aisle. “It’s all clear.”
I’ll have to grab seats for Taylor and Glensy before everyone else starts pilling in. What’s waiting for us outside isn’t a school bus, like Taylor and I had imaged.
I grab one of the blankets folded up nice and neat in first row behind the driver’s seat and drape it over the seat behind me, saving it for Taylor. It should give her room to stick her leg out in the aisle. Hopefully, we’re far back enough that she won’t trip anyone or get her leg busted even more.
We wait until Seraphim start emerging from the hospital, chatting anxiously outside the entrance.