The Impossible Fortress

by Jason Rekulak

  And we still had thirteen miles to go.

  We passed through three different towns, each nicer than the last. We were entering a part of New Jersey I’d never seen before—residential neighborhoods where all the homes had circular driveways and two-car garages, where the hedges were pruned and the gardens were mulched and the flower beds were bursting with vibrant colors. Between the houses, we saw glimpses of crystal-blue swimming pools and private tennis courts. Traffic was light, so we biked down the center of the road, looking around in astonishment.

  “This place is rad,” I said. “Soon as I grow up, I’m moving here.”

  “Soon as you grow up?” Alf asked.

  “You know what I mean. When I get older.”

  Clark shook his head. “This street’s like Park Place and Boardwalk combined. How are you going to make all that money?”

  “Game design,” I said. “I’m going to save all my money and get a new computer, and then I’ll make games that sell like crazy.”

  Alf and Clark didn’t answer, but I knew what they were thinking: Minimum wage was $3.35 an hour and an IBM PS/2 averaged $4,000. I’d need to save for years and years before I ever wrote another line of code, and who had that kind of willpower?

  “I’ll tell you one thing I like about Baltic Avenue,” Alf said. “Less grass to mow.”

  “And less snow in the winter,” Clark said. “Can you imagine shoveling all these driveways?”

  “It’d take forever,” Alf said.

  We stood up on our bikes and pumped our legs, pedaling faster, leaving behind the neighborhood and talk of our futures.

  By eleven o’clock I was farther from home than I’d ever been in my life. We were passing fields full of tomatoes and corn and fir trees; we even passed a stable full of horses. Our teachers had always told us that New Jersey was nicknamed the Garden State, and that day I finally understood why. The relentless heat made everything seem more unreal. The temperature had soared into the nineties. I had a headache and I desperately needed a drink. We biked more than a mile on a dusty two-lane road without passing a single person or automobile.

  “You’re sure this is the right way?” Clark asked.

  I stopped to check the map. “We’re almost there,” I told them. “Another mile and change.”

  We stopped at a two-pump Gulf station to buy drinks and clean ourselves up. Clark paid fifty cents for a bottle of something called Evian, which turned out to be plain old water. Alf and I teased him mercilessly. What kind of dummy wasted fifty cents on water when there was a free spigot and hose right outside the building? Clark shrugged and drank it down. “This is fantastic,” he insisted. “It’s the best water I’ve ever tasted.”

  I removed Mary’s letter from my pocket and tucked it under my bike seat for safekeeping. Then I used the hose to clean my face and rinse the dirt and gravel from my clothing. Within minutes, I was sopping wet, but it felt tremendous, and I knew the sun would bake everything dry before we arrived at St. Agatha’s.

  The attendant was an old man in a plaid shirt and oil-stained pants. He dragged a rusty lawn chair into the shade of the garage and sat down. He watched us spraying ourselves with the hose, and I sensed he was getting ready to yell at us.

  “Are we close to St. Agatha’s?” I asked him.

  “Very close,” he said. “But you won’t make it.”

  Alf and Clark stopped horsing around.

  “What did you say?” Alf asked.

  “I said you won’t make it. I know what you’re trying, and it ain’t going to work.”

  Clark set down the hose and we all walked over to him. “How do you know?”

  “I’ve owned this station since 1969. That’s the year Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. And every year when summer rolls around, I sell sodas and Slim Jims to knuckleheads who think they can sneak into St. Agatha’s. So I am speaking from experience. Turn your bikes around. You will not get inside. No one gets inside.”

  “Because of the fence?” Alf asked. “The electric fence?”

  The old man smiled. “You won’t even reach the fence.”

  He refused to elaborate. Just shook his head and clucked his disapproval, like we were venturing blindly into a jungle full of quicksand and crocodiles. I retrieved Mary’s letter and returned it to my back pocket. Alf and Clark didn’t say anything, but I knew what they were thinking: we had come too far to turn back now.

  We hopped on our bikes and kept going.

  3100 REM *** DRAW NEW FORTRESS ***

  3110 FOR I=1345 TO 1362

  3120 POKE I,35:POKE I+BG,9

  3130 NEXT I

  3140 FOR I=1625+15*40 TO 1642

  3150 POKE I,35:POKE I+BG,9

  3160 NEXT I

  3170 FOR I=1519 TO 1542

  3180 POKE I,35:POKE I+BG,9

  3190 NEXT I:RETURN

  A FEW MINUTES AFTER the gas station, the road curved through a small patch of trees. When we emerged on the other side, the mountain was upon us.

  No one associates New Jersey with mountains, but there are forty miles of them in the northern part of the state, formed by volcanoes 150 million years ago (apparently I did retain one or two facts after a year of studying Rocks and Streams). Our destination wasn’t particularly large. If you were driving past the mountain in a car, you wouldn’t give it a second look. But from the sweaty vinyl seat of a dirt bike on the hottest day of the year, it might as well have been Kilimanjaro.

  We soon arrived at the base of the mountain and a large sign:

  NOW ENTERING MOUNT SAINT AGATHA’S

  PREPARATORY SCHOOL FOR GIRLS

  PRIVATE PROPERTY

  AUTHORIZED VISITORS AND GUESTS ONLY

  “Hear ye children, the instructions of a father, and attend to know understanding.”—Proverbs 4:1

  “This is it,” Clark said. “Are you sure about this?”

  “Sure I’m sure,” Alf said. “I’ve come this far, haven’t I?”

  Clark flipped his empty water bottle at Alf’s face, conking him on the forehead. “I’m talking to Billy, numb-nuts.”

  Alf leapt off his bike, and it clattered to the pavement. He reached his arm around Clark’s neck, pulling him into a choke hold. “I’m sure, I’m sure,” I said, inserting myself between them and calling for a cease fire. “Knock it off and let’s go.”

  I’d barely separated them when Alf pointed behind us, to the grove of trees we’d just traveled through. A white Volkswagen Beetle was weaving along the road, coming right toward us.

  “Hide,” I said.

  We dragged our bikes off the road and into the surrounding woods, then dove behind shrubs to conceal ourselves. The Beetle motored past, and we saw five sisters in black habits through the windows, crammed inside like clowns in a circus car. We crawled out from our hiding places to watch the VW ascend the mountain. Even with switchbacks cut into the sides, the incline was steep, and the car climbed slowly, gears grinding and engine groaning.

  “I can’t pedal that,” Alf said. “I’m already whipped.”

  “That’s fine,” I said. “We’ll leave the bikes.”

  We charged the road at a full-on sprint, but the pitch was brutal and after a minute we were all walking again. The sun beat down on our necks. The black asphalt was broiling, and I was soaked with sweat. But we were close. I touched my back pocket, checking for Mary’s letter. Soon she would have it, and that was all the motivation I needed to keep going. In another thirty or forty minutes, she would finally know the truth, and I’d be able to live with myself again.

  We had just climbed the second switchback, not even halfway up the mountain, when I peered down to the road below. Another vehicle was emerging from the grove of trees. This one was a brown UPS truck, and it was going well over the speed limit, building momentum before the first ascent.

  “Shit,” Alf said.

  We started running, but I already knew we weren’t fast enough. The truck was coming way too fast; it was bound to overtake us before we reached t
he top. At once I understood why the old man at the gas station had predicted our failure. We were running up the road in plain sight, three boys on private property where boys were expressly forbidden.

  “We’re not going to make it,” I gasped. We’d just rounded the fourth switchback, and the truck had rounded the third. We had to hide, but there was no place to hide. There were no trees or shrubs—just rocky slopes covered with roses and wildflowers, everything in full bloom. We were moments from being spotted. We had to get off the road, had to camouflage ourselves.

  “Get down,” I told the guys, and then I dove face-first into a bed of pink roses.

  Now, up until that moment I guess I’d never seen a rose in real life. I’d watched countless music videos in which half-dressed girls lay down on beds of roses, caressing crimson petals against their milky white skin. But none of these videos prepared me for the fact that real rose stems are covered with hard, brittle spikes. Before I’d even hit the ground, hundreds of thorns were piercing my clothes, puncturing my skin and drawing blood. By the time I realized my mistake, it was too late. I tried to push myself off, but the hooks had me snared. I shrieked. I howled. Everywhere I moved, there were more thorns, biting deeper into my ankles and gouging the soft tender flesh of my forearms. I might have been stuck there forever if Alf and Clark hadn’t grabbed my belt and pulled hard, peeling me off the vines like a strip of Velcro.

  The three of us lay gasping and out of breath on the side of the road as the UPS truck rumbled past. The driver hadn’t even noticed us.

  I touched my fingers to my forehead and they came away red. “Am I bleeding?”

  “It’s just a scratch,” Alf said. He pointed to my temple and traced the outline of a large trapezoid. “Right here . . . and here and here and here.”

  There were more gashes in my shirt and little spots of blood were blooming through my khakis. But I could see we were nearing the top of the mountain, and this gave me a surge of confidence.

  “Are you all right?” Clark asked.

  “We’re almost there. Let’s go before another car comes.”

  We ran up the last two switchbacks without any problems, and finally the pitch of the mountain leveled off, but the road kept going, winding through a dark grove of trees. We followed it from a distance, trampling over ferns and rotting branches, ready to drop at the sound of another car.

  I soon realized the school map wasn’t drawn to scale. We seemed to be lost in the middle of a primeval forest, not minutes away from a chapel or classroom building.

  Alf looked around, skeptical. “Are you sure this is right?”

  “It has to be,” Clark said. “This is the only road in.”

  “Up there,” I said, pointing. “See?”

  Through the trees we glimpsed a large wrought-iron gate that looked like it had risen up out of the earth, all twisting vines and pointed leaves and the words MOUNT SAINT AGATHA’S PREPARATORY SCHOOL FOR GIRLS arched across the top. On either side of the gate was a tall wrought-iron fence. It was seven feet high and stretched off into the forest, forming a boundary around the entire campus.

  “If that’s an electric fence,” Clark asked, “where are all the wires?”

  “They bury the wires,” Alf said. “That’s how they fool you.”

  I pointed to a cluster of sparrows on top of the fence, happily chirping. “Maybe you should warn those birds.”

  Clark pointed out that the fence—electric or otherwise—was the least of our concerns. Next to the gate was a small shed that looked like a tollbooth. Inside sat a man reading a newspaper. We crouched behind a fallen tree and studied the man through Alf’s binoculars. This was no snoozing old-timer we could easily distract. The guy looked like a Navy SEAL; he sat on a stool that was too small for his huge, hulking frame, sipping coffee from a thermos and reading the Sports pages.

  I handed the binoculars to Clark. “Now what?”

  He peered through the lenses. “I’m not sure.”

  “It’s easy,” Alf said. “We wait for another car to drive up. While the guard’s distracted, we make a break for it.”

  “That’s not going to work,” I said. I’d seen too many World War II movies where a lone guard radios for help and suddenly the whole prison camp is teeming with Nazi soldiers.

  Clark agreed. “Let’s follow the fence,” he suggested. “Maybe it stops after a while. Or maybe there’s another way inside.”

  Anything seemed better than confronting the guard, so we set off into the woods, trampling through mud and weeds and fallen branches. I carried the map but there were no landmarks to guide us—no buildings or roads on either side of the fence, just tangled forest and an occasional boulder. The fence twisted and turned, weaving its way around the largest trees. Every twenty feet or so, Alf would give the bars a gentle tap, still determined to find an “electrified section.” Clark pushed even harder, hoping to find a spot where the fence was weak and we might pull it down. But the fence never budged. It seemed like it was built to repel an army.

  Suddenly Clark stopped walking.

  “Did you hear that?” he asked.

  I stopped and listened. I didn’t hear anything.

  “It was a girl,” he said. “I heard a girl calling for someone.”

  Alf looked skeptical, and I guess I was skeptical, too. We were so hot and tired and thirsty, it seemed possible that Clark might be hallucinating.

  “Keep walking,” I said.

  We kept walking. The fence led us all the way around the campus, but we never saw a single student or even a building. The school and its entire population were hidden well beyond the perimeter. After twenty minutes of hiking I realized we were approaching the gate again, this time from the opposite direction. Some fifty yards ahead of us, I could just make out the guard booth through the trees.

  “Careful,” Alf said, grabbing my arm.

  I was so busy looking for the security guard, I’d nearly walked into a small stream. Alf and Clark hopped across, but I stopped to take a closer look. The running water had eroded a narrow gorge beneath the fence, maybe twelve inches deep.

  “Forget it,” Alf said. “We won’t fit.”

  “We might,” I said.

  Clark teased the water with the toe of his shoe, poking around at the mud. “It’s not deep enough, Billy. Maybe if we had a shovel. But not like this.”

  He didn’t seem to understand we were out of options, that we’d reached the end of the line. I kicked off my sneakers and hurled them over the fence. They landed on the other side, far beyond my reach. “You can turn back if you want,” I said, “but I’m going in.”

  Alf and Clark watched, skeptical, as I climbed down into the creek and lay flat on my back in the cool muddy water. At the base of the fence was a rusty horizontal bar with jagged edges. By turning my face to the side, I was able to pass my head underneath—but my chest wouldn’t fit. I sucked in my gut and pulled on the fence, wedging myself further and further until I was completely and totally stuck.

  Alf watched me flail for a minute before offering to pull me back out. “Should I grab your feet?”

  “Hang on,” I said. By pushing up on the fence, I found I could press myself deeper into the mud, carving a deeper trench through the ooze. Something small and slimy fluttered against the back of my neck—a fish? A tadpole? I ignored it and kept pushing, using my legs to propel me along. The rusty base of the fence raked the front of my shirt, slashing the cotton and popping buttons. But soon my waist was through and the rest was easy. I crawled out of the creek, caked with mud and slime, and stood up. Through the bars of the fence, Alf and Clark observed me in a sort of horror.

  “You look like Swamp Thing,” Clark said.

  “It’ll wash off.” I dipped my hand into the shallow water of the creek, demonstrating how easy it would be to clean up. All I really managed was to smear the mud around my skin. “Come on, now. Let’s go.”

  They both hesitated, and I knew what they were thinking: This sort of thing
never happened to James Bond. Somehow he always managed to breach the perimeter without getting a speck of dirt on his white tuxedo.

  But then a sound cut through the forest—a girl’s voice, laughing. “That’s it!” Clark said. “That’s her!”

  “I hear it now,” Alf said.

  He kicked off his sneakers and knelt down in the mud. All of my squirming and thrashing had made things easier for him; once he was halfway under, I grabbed his arms and pulled, dragging his pristine Hard Rock Cafe shirt through the mud. Clark had a somewhat harder time because he had to do most of the pushing with one hand, but Alf and I splashed around him in the mud, heaving and pulling until he was all the way through.

  It wasn’t until Clark stood up that we realized Alf had forgotten his socks and sneakers—they were back on the other side of the fence, out of reach. Alf fished a branch through the wrought-iron bars, trying to snare them, but all he managed to do was push the sneakers farther out of reach.

  “We have to go back,” he said.

  “Are you kidding?” Clark asked.

  “There’s no time,” I said. “We’ll get them on the way out.”

  Alf took a step forward, wincing as his bare heel came down on a pinecone. “I’m not going to make it,” he said, but then there was more girlish laughter echoing through the woods, a siren’s song calling us forward. Clark and I followed the sound, and Alf had no choice but to limp after us, hopping and complaining the whole way.

  Through the trees, we began to discern a large athletic field. Some thirty girls were running, shouting, and swinging nets on long sticks. It was a sport I’d never seen before; they all seemed to be chasing a small rubber ball.

  “Is that polo?” Alf asked.

  “You play polo on horses,” I said.

  Alf shook his head. “No, that’s jousting.”