by Ryan Harding
“Shouldn’t Adam hear this, too?”
“So tell him.”
“I will, but…why don’t you want him around?”
Patrick sighed. “He may be smart but he’s only sixteen and he’s reeling from a loss you can’t fathom. You could hear it in the woods on the way to the creek. We were trying to step softly, keep the noise to a minimum. Adam was either distracted or incapable of the kind of stealth that will keep us alive.”
The forest shuffle had been a test? Of course. There had been enough daylight to avoid traps and it gave Patrick the opportunity to test.
“I trust myself and I trust you not to do anything reckless or stupid, but Adam didn’t have much to begin with and he’s lost it all.”
“Sounds like the perfect candidate for the hermetic life.”
“That’s not where the math led me. He’d be dead if you didn’t stop him from going back to the lake house.”
Patrick went to the doorway. He leaned out and looked both ways, then waved her over. As she approached he whispered, “Always know your escape route. Left takes you to the street. Took a quick look earlier and there aren’t any traps between here and there. To the right? Anybody’s guess.”
Gin didn’t like the exposure, but she joined him outside, minding the tripwire. Three trees had forced their way through the asphalt a long time ago, almost evenly spaced between the rear of the store and a neighboring building. Tall weeds grew everywhere, in any crack they could find. To her left it was a straight shot to the street—this must have been a dual-purpose delivery and parking lot, but any pavement markings were probably long gone.
Patrick said, “If something happens to me, get to Sandalwood on the other side of the lake. You don’t want to be around when the recovery team arrives.”
“If they arrive,” she said. “You’re guessing.”
“Suit yourself, but by the time you see them they’ll have seen you and it’ll be too late. Just say I’m right. What if his body begins regenerating when it dies? What if there was a way to speed that recovery so he woke up during their clean-up?”
“How?”
“We embed something in his skull like one of his bodkin arrows, then yank it and get the hell out when they come for him. He’s always incinerated just in case he runs out of do-overs. It’s possible he could wake up on them.”
“That sounds like a huge risk for a ‘possiblity,’” Gin said. “He’s always incinerated? You seem to know a lot.”
“Just…speculating.”
Is this what it would be like to live in here with Patrick, their lives forever dictated by his wild notions? Would he experiment with their lives without explanation, without consultation? If given half a chance he would probably try to capture Orange just to set him free on the agency.
Your little elevator fire. You were trying to point Orange in their direction somehow, weren’t you?
“I don’t want this, Patrick,” Gin whispered. She felt like crying and did a little. Lingering effect of the cat scaring the shit out of her, maybe. She was tired and the emotions were spinning out of control. She thought about Adam and his lost parents and felt guilty for being so upset she may never see her own again. At least they were alive.
Alive and suffering. Her disappearance would burden them for the rest of their lives.
“Why would they do this?” She made tight, useless fists. “The government or your faceless agency or whatever? Why would they put us here?”
Patrick smiled. “Nietzsche said, ‘He who cannot obey himself will be commanded. That is the nature of living creatures.’ Americans have ceded their power to the government, creating a byzantine, amoral Leviathan that creates more power for itself with decreasing accountability. And hidden somewhere deep within is the agency that deals with the Agent Orange crisis by providing him human sacrifices to keep him away from all the consumers and voters and fine upstanding citizens.”
“So breaking a bone and taking a trip or getting a stalker or homeschooling could mark us for death, but we’re just getting what we deserve because we let government get too big?”
“You’re so precious. Tens of millions of you seethe when you’re TSA playthings but you don’t question why airport security can’t be more like Ben Gurion. Mass surveillance, warrantless wiretaps, growing civil forfeiture abuses, you get what you deserve when you’re not paying attention. Not everything is as obviously sinister as The Reichstag Decree. If it’s any consolation we were most likely selected by a computer. Nothing personal; it never is with Holocausts, Holodomors, Great Leaps, Cultural Revolutions, and the like.”
Gin wiped her eyes with the back of a hand.
“Glad you’re paying attention, otherwise you’d be in the same boat…oh, wait, you are.”
He patted her arm. “Come on, smartass.”
Once inside and safely past the trap Gin felt more at ease. A dark, abandoned building could be acceptable sanctuary from a killer. Necessity would lead to many compromises in the coming days. A sense of security? Gone. Favorite foods? Gone. Warm showers? Gone. Welcome to your new, hungry, desperate, stinky life.
This would have been a store room/receiving area. The stingy moonlight didn’t provide much beyond the area immediately around the doorway and Patrick had already warned her not to explore, which suited her just fine.
“There are three of us. One of you can be a go-between, but the other must man this trap at all times,” Patrick said. “If I need something I’ll whistle…only one of you comes. He could attack any time. Guard up. Listen. Don’t fall asleep.”
They weren’t any more than eighty feet apart and all it would take was a shout, but maybe the point was to keep them from attempting to communicate at all. However, the last edict struck her as very unlikely.
“Fall asleep?”
“Fatigue will surprise you. Stay awake and keep vigilant. A few seconds separate you from life and death. You want Adam here? I can keep him with me if you like.”
“Why the hell would I want to be alone?”
“We’re not that far away. Thought he might be irritating you.” He turned abruptly. “Be seeing you.”
She couldn’t see Patrick’s face and couldn’t formulate the question she wanted to ask, wasn’t sure how she could ask it, wasn’t sure if she should ask it. And then he was off, back to the other side of the building where she could see the shadow of Adam as he sat on the floor working with the string.
Patrick knew a lot about the place, maybe more than he’d let on. Had he known how Agent Orange would react to Gin all along? If he knew Orange would save her for last could he have used proximity to her as a talisman?
What about the clothes? Had he known as far back as the lake house the clothing might be trackable? Was the street performance just that? Oh, I figured out we’ve got to change everything because they could track us…but not yet for you two. Conveniently, Patrick was ready to hit the road, untraceable once the so-called recovery team came knocking. They were playing the waiting game now so why not take the opportunity to be ready?
Adam’s feet crackled on the floor, the slight echo shifting from one room to the next. Patrick’s footsteps had been half as loud, despite having twenty or thirty pounds on him.
“Friend or foe?” she whispered. “Answer or get the sticky end of a ball mace.”
“It’s me,” Adam said, his tone flat like Patrick gave him a good admonishing before sending him off. “Now you sit still and leave her alone, okay? She’s had a rough day and doesn’t need to hear more out of you.” It would take a few minutes for her to undo the Patrick Effect.
“Did he say anything about changing our clothes?” she whispered.
“No. I wondered about that, but didn’t ask.”
“Go back and get the jeans.”
“All of them?”
“Yes. Tell him we need something to sit on. The floor is filthy. And walk quietly.”
“Uh, sure.”
Adam walked slowly, which didn’t nec
essarily equal quietly, but he was trying. She listened to the crickets outside—some were in the room with her.
The shoe string was at her feet, but she didn’t feel like an attack was imminent. Maybe she’d grown complacent after so long without seeing Orange, but it felt like the time for a siege had passed. He’d have to check the buildings one by one, but he had to guess they came to town in the first place.
While she waited she pulled her left arm inside her shirt, reached to her back, and unhooked her bra. If she had to take it off she might as well get it over with.
Privacy. Another relic of the civilized society they’d left behind. She imagined bathing with Patrick or Adam keeping watch, probably peeping because she was the only female in their foreseeable future. The idea of Adam seeing her didn’t bother her much (he’d probably worship her), but she had an unnerving feeling about Patrick. Maybe because he was older, had probably seen a lot of naked women, could compare her to them. He certainly hadn’t been shy himself.
A screech outside.
She hurriedly pulled her bra through her sleeve and dropped to her knees beside the shoe laces.
Another screech followed by a low-pitched mewling as two cats squared off.
Her body quaked from the near miss. Anything out of the ordinary was a near miss—it could have been Orange coming for them.
Can I live my life this way every minute of the day?
Sixteen
Gin sat across from Adam in the dark where she worked on tying shoe strings together because it gives me something to do. Crates at their backs, they were eight feet from the doorway, legs outstretched, the soles of their shoes flat against each other. He wore jeans now, his shorts and underwear atop the crate behind him. They had changed right here in front of each other and Adam had never wished so hard for a flash of lightning in all his life. It wasn’t to be; he had to be content knowing she wore nothing from the waist down as she tried on jeans until she found some that fit. Those few moments could have had a much higher rating, but he’d have to settle for a PG moment with “adult situations.” At any rate, they were ready to disappear deep into the Kill Zone once this whole killing Agent Orange thing was concluded.
Yeah. This Patrick killing Agent Orange thing.
Meanwhile they waited and it was like watching the most boring movie ever. G-rated with utterly no plot. Watching the Door. But it could just as easily turn hard-R with a horrifying plot, Guess Who’s Coming to Skin Them?
Adam stared into the dimness outside in a trance-like state after having told Gin a story from two years ago.
Honey, I’ve been to Kids in Mind, it’s a hard R. That word is used nineteen times. Maybe when he’s fifteen he can—”
He can watch Saving Private Ryan. It’s something he needs to see. He already learned that word from your brother, by the way
Nine of ten on the Violence and Gore scale. Nine out of ten! Unacceptable.
It’s the context. He’s not watching a horror film.
Nine of ten, Ed! To me, that is a horror film.
Dad won. He usually did in those arguments. The movie was awesome, the best he’d ever seen. Kevin had already seen it several times (of course). Oh yeah, dog, all the best movies are R. The harder the better.
“We’re living a hard R life,” Gin whispered.
It was so easy to tell her things. Some questions he knew he shouldn’t ask her; relationship stuff. Otherwise he felt he could talk to her about anything.
“I wish I’d done more. Back home, I mean. Kevin was always into something.”
Usually something not very Christian. Kevin isn’t saved.
Lately Adam felt like he wasn’t, either. Talk about apostasy.
“I figured I’d go away to college and it’d be…different.” His fantasies made Old School seem as realistic as the Normandy invasion in Saving Private Ryan, probably more in line with Kevin’s summary of Cocksucking Co-Ed Cum Slutz (“They cram for the big exam, no bullshit”—a movie that mysteriously never materialized when Adam spent the night). “Feels like I didn’t do much and now…”
He trailed off with a shrug she couldn’t see in the dark. It was hard to express all this without it sounding like a criticism of his parents, and thoughts of what his life hadn’t been vividly reminded him of what it was and never would be again. Patrick and Gin needed him focused now, or there wouldn’t be a later to indulge his grief.
“You have to decide to survive, Adam,” Gin said. “I have. If I have to live in here, I’ll live in here, but he isn’t going to kill me and neither will they.”
He thought he heard a smile as she said, “Besides, you’re polite and well mannered. If I might be locked in this prison camp the rest of my life, you’re the only sixteen-year-old guy I’d want to be with.”
Adam laughed softly. He looked in her direction, surprised he didn’t see the after image of the doorway burnt into his retinas like the image left on the television screen in the den back home.
Her right foot pressed against his. He pushed back gently.
“I’m not giving up,” he said. “Doesn’t feel like we have much of a say either way, though.”
“Our lives were automatic out there, not about survival. Not like in here. This place will obey us and give us what we need to survive. If we can’t kill Orange, we can avoid him.”
“So now you don’t think Patrick’s full of crap?”
“We’re screwed if we get out. I think he’s right about that much.” Her voice had been a whisper all along but she dropped it even lower to add, “And I don’t trust him yet. We have to know how to survive on our own. We can’t be dependent on him.”
“He tells us to do things without telling us why.”
“Screwing with our heads. Getting us in the habit of doing what he tells us because it might make sense later. He could have told us why we were gathering strings.”
“Yeah. Still don’t get the dash from the lodge to the woods.”
“He throws so many crazy things at us, but just enough of them have an explanation that we don’t question the rest.”
“I thought I was bait. Or maybe no one would follow me.”
“I wouldn’t have let that happen.”
But Adam wouldn’t put it past Patrick to engineer a situation where it would happen. He was sly. If he didn’t want Adam around, Adam wouldn’t be around. Hey, can you hand me that log over th—oh shit, sorry, didn’t see those spikes. Well, I told him to be careful...
“You know which one of you I’d choose,” Gin said.
“Sometimes I feel like,” Adam whispered and his heart accelerated because he knew he was going out on a limb even as he scooted himself along the precariously thin branch, “like I have a chance with you.”
Gin scoffed, the sound a dagger in his heart worse than any deathblow Agent Orange could land. He cringed at his recklessness. He’d held back so many similarly rash statements only to unleash one in an unguarded moment, but he had to know. He wanted to recall the words, but all he could do was await the verbal smack down to come.
“We may live here now. A lot can happen.”
“Like…what?”
“Let’s wait and see.”
Something punched Adam in the side of the neck and knocked him sideways. His right hand hit the floor and slid through the dust, gravel, and grit. Warmth spread from each side where it felt like pinchers had clamped him. He sucked in air and his lungs inflated without problem, but the pinched nerves in his neck were almost debilitating in their pain. He grabbed at his throbbing neck and found a thin shaft.
“Adam?” Gin whispered.
“I’m hit! Get behind the crate!”
How had Orange seen Adam? Outside Adam could only see the dark shape of a tree in the distance, nothing else, no movement.
Adam slid along the floor, keeping his head perfectly still. He traced the length of the shaft and found the fletching were only a few inches from his neck. On the right side, the arrow had torn a gash. The tip of
the arrow was past his shoulder.
“Patrick!”
Instead of hiding, Gin had crossed over to him.
“Where are you hurt?”
“Go to the string,” Adam said, surprised how his voice could sound so normal. So…calm. He attempted to swallow, but it hurt too much.
“Where are—”
Her hands moved along his arms to his shoulders and bumped each side of the arrow almost in unison.
“No!” It came out like an anguished whine. “Adam!”
“I think I’m okay.”
Was that possible in this situation? No, he was probably completely messed up and in shock or something, but he wasn’t swallowing gallons of blood, he could breathe, and he could feel and move his limbs. Somehow the arrow missed everything vital. It was a miracle, probably, but what good would it do him? There were no hospitals, no antibiotics.
Gin’s hands felt along his neck, seemed to identify the exit wound on the right side was worse than the entry on the left. “Hold this against it.”
Adam held the fabric against his wound. It felt wispy and thin, like a small handkerchief. Her panties. So it took a mortal wound to get a hold of those. Anything was possible after all.
“Hide. Grab the string,” he said.
“Patrick!”
“Maybe he’s already dead. Let me check.”
“What?”
Adam pushed Gin aside gently. “Stay behind the crates. Watch for him.”
Something he’d taken for granted: how many neck muscles the act of standing required. Pain exploded through him. He expected another arrow to hit him in the back as he cleared the top of the crate. When he stumbled to his left and frontward, though, nothing hit him.
“Stay here. I’ll be back.”
“Be careful.”
His pain was really something, but it hurt worse to hear her cry.
Sideways through the door and then slowly, slowly toward Patrick’s last known position. Right hand holding panties to staunch the flow of blood, one careful, deliberate step at a time. No outline of Patrick ahead, but a clear doorway. The trap had not triggered so either the trap jammed or Orange never came. It didn’t matter. He had no weapon, but what he hoped to have was enough time to warn Gin that Orange was on this end so she could run for her life.
