Hideout

by Jack Heath

  It’s hard to crawl on one arm. My hand has to jump quickly from one spot to another while my abdominal muscles strain to hold up my torso. How fast can a human being crawl? One mile per hour? Less? It’ll take me hours even to circle the house.

  Soon I can’t hear the dogs anymore. I must have crawled out of earshot. Or maybe they ran away. It’s impossible to know.

  Grass under my hand, not gravel. I’ve gone off-road. I back up, find the driveway again. But then I hesitate, not sure which way leads to the house. Right or left? The longer I wait, the harder it is to work out which way I came.

  Before I can decide, engine noise fills the air. Tyres crunch on gravel towards me. I can see headlights behind my closed eyelids. Has Thistle come back for me?

  A car door opens. I can hear dinging from the dash—a door open alert.

  Shakily, I stand up. My hopes are crushed when the driver speaks.

  ‘What the hell?’ Donnie says.

  ‘Donnie.’ My voice breaks. ‘Thank God.’

  ‘How the fuck did you get out?’

  ‘Hailey had a key to her cuffs.’ I spit a glob of peppery saliva onto the ground. ‘Don’t know how she got it. She started letting all the other prisoners go. I waited until she freed me, and then I started screaming for you guys. You didn’t hear me?’

  I’m still blind. I have no way of knowing if Donnie is buying any of this.

  More footsteps. The other Guards are here.

  ‘When they ran, I chased them,’ I continue. ‘But Hailey had a key to Fred’s truck, too. I tried to stop them getting away, but the FBI agent pepper-sprayed me. I guess the can must still have been in the pick-up. But how did Hailey get a hold of those keys?’

  I stop myself from directly suggesting that one of the other Guards helped the prisoners escape. It’ll be more convincing if Donnie joins those dots on his own. And at this point, turning the bad guys against each other is my only hope.

  Silence.

  ‘Donnie?’ I try to blink the stinging mucus out of my eyes. The headlights are two bright patches. Everything else is dark. ‘Are you still there?’

  ‘Why didn’t you escape with them?’ Fred’s voice this time. Donnie isn’t alone. Fred sounds like he’s thinking aloud.

  I try to spread my arms wide, but with one missing, it probably just looks like I’m pointing to one side.

  ‘I’m one of you,’ I say. ‘I’ve always been one of you.’

  I hear the snick-clack of a slide being pulled back, a chamber checked for a bullet.

  ‘If he was a cop, he would have left with the others,’ Zara points out quietly.

  ‘No, he would have stayed to arrest us,’ Fred says.

  ‘Look at him,’ Donnie says. ‘He’s in no shape to arrest anybody.’

  ‘To follow us, then, so he can turn us in later.’

  ‘He doesn’t look like he has a “later”,’ Cedric says.

  I can sort of see the group, now. Four blurry shapes. Unclear who is who. Where’s Kyle?

  ‘What if he’s not a cop?’ Donnie sounds quietly horrified by the possibility that he cut off the arm of an innocent man.

  My teeth are chattering. ‘Can we discuss this in the van? I’m freezing to death out here.’

  ‘Either way, we gotta get moving,’ Cedric says.

  ‘Who votes we take him with us?’ Zara asks.

  Three blurry shapes raise their hands. One doesn’t.

  That fourth shape is Samson’s killer. It has to be. But I can’t see who it is.

  ‘All right,’ Donnie says reluctantly. ‘Get in the car, Lux.’

  ‘Thanks, man.’ I stagger towards the van, blinking away more tears and pepper spray. My surroundings are slowly coming into shape—including the house. I almost laugh. After what felt like hours of crawling, I’m still more or less where I started. My skin sizzles.

  Fred—I think it’s Fred—lifts up his phone.

  ‘You gonna push the button?’ Cedric asks.

  ‘Yup. Should have done it five days ago.’

  I look back at the house, remembering all the packages of ammonal crammed into the walls. Enough to turn the whole building inside out. Destroy all the evidence that a house was ever here.

  I can see Penny at the attic window, watching us. My vision is still too blurred to make out her expression.

  Fred pushes the button.

  I cover one ear with my remaining hand.

  Nothing happens.

  ‘Okay.’ Fred pockets the phone. ‘Let’s go.’

  He opens the van door, and that’s when I see Kyle’s body inside.

  CHAPTER 40

  I wait for years, watching as you gorge yourself, and then I hit you where you love. What am I?

  I scramble in and practically fall onto the corpse. And it is a corpse, already cold from the night air.

  ‘Kyle!’ I shake him. Slap his face. ‘Kyle!’

  No response. My vision is blurry, but I can tell that his flesh is pale.

  ‘Help me!’ I shout, like the Guards don’t know what’s happening. ‘Kyle’s dying!’ I can’t say the word dead. Can’t even think it.

  The others ignore me, hustling into the van and buckling their seatbelts. Fred is in the driver’s seat. He releases the handbrake and starts us rolling down the gravel driveway.

  I put my ear to Kyle’s lips. Not breathing. A finger under his jaw. No pulse. I plant my hand on Kyle’s ribs. I’ve seen enough open chest cavities to know where his heart is. I push down, over and over.

  ‘Lux.’ Cedric touches my arm gently. His eyes look hollow in the fluorescent light from the bulb overhead.

  I shake him off. Keep pumping Kyle’s chest, using every bit of my strength. Hitting him so hard that I might give myself a heart attack.

  ‘He’s dead,’ Cedric says.

  I keep pumping. These days they teach chest compressions only, not mouth to mouth. But Thistle kept me alive with CPR one time, and she used mouth to mouth. I put my lips over Kyle’s and huff into him.

  His chest rises partway, like a half-inflated bouncy castle, then sags immediately. I try again. The air won’t stay in his lungs.

  ‘Look.’ Zara rolls Kyle’s head sideways, so I can see the back of it. It’s smashed in—a mess of blood and brain matter. As though someone clubbed him with a bowling ball.

  ‘No!’ I keep pumping, because I once met a woman who had survived a gunshot wound to the head. Impossible things happen. I can barely breathe. I’m choking. The son I only just met can’t be gone already.

  ‘There’s no coming back from that,’ Zara says.

  I thump Kyle’s chest over and over, tears and snot streaming down my face. Not just from the pepper spray anymore. I love him. I don’t know why, but I do.

  The van bounces as we reach the turn-off to the dirt road. My hand slips off Kyle’s chest and I hit the floor. I try to get back onto my knees, but it’s like my arm is made of rubber.

  My airway is tight. ‘Someone help him!’

  No one does.

  ‘Jesus, Lux. I’m sorry.’ Donnie is hazy, but he sounds moved. He doesn’t think I’m a cop anymore. A cop wouldn’t care about a dead criminal. I’ve convinced them that I’m on their side—but too late. I lie next to Kyle and put my hand on his arm. Close my stinging eyes, like I can imagine him back to life.

  You never told him, says the cruel voice in my head.

  Shut up.

  He died not knowing.

  Shut up!

  It’s not just that he died not knowing who I was; it’s that he died not knowing who he was. This boy from Ackerly never got the chance to become someone good.

  Someone squeezes my shoulder as I cry.

  Hours pass. Eventually streetlights start sweeping past the windows. Other cars cruise by. Sirens on the wind. We must be approaching Houston.

  Lying on the cold floor, I don’t intend to speak, or do anything, ever again. But eventually I hear my own voice: ‘What happened? To Kyle?’

  ‘He fuck
ed up,’ Fred says flatly from the driver’s seat. If he has any feelings about leaving his mother behind, he’s keeping them buried deep.

  My voice cracks. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He left the slaughterhouse door unlocked. I’ve told him a million times to be careful about things like that.’

  Fred’s eyes must have been on the road this whole time. He hasn’t sensed the mood shifting in the rest of the van. The others might not have cared about Kyle’s death before—none of them seemed to like him while he was alive—but they care now. My grief is contagious. Plus, Donnie and Cedric don’t think I’m a cop anymore, which might make them feel guilty about putting me through the grinder.

  Guilt and grief are inward emotions. They make you ask uncomfortable questions of yourself. The easiest way to deal with those feelings is to turn them outwards. Transmute them into rage.

  ‘The prisoners got out,’ Fred continues, oblivious. ‘I hit him. He tripped, bumped his head on a rock.’ He sighs. ‘Poor kid.’

  I heard that punch. I was right there. I didn’t even go back to check if Kyle was okay.

  ‘Poor kid?’ There’s a dangerous tone in my voice. The others hear it and tense up.

  Fred doesn’t. ‘It’s a shame. He would have been willing to take the heat off us, as you know.’

  A second ago I was burned out: physically, emotionally and intellectually exhausted. I haven’t slept or eaten. But anger is an inexhaustible fuel source. It’s like nuclear power—every time you think it’s died away, it comes back to kill somebody.

  I sit up.

  ‘Lux,’ Donnie warns.

  ‘You killed him.’ The words burn on the way up my throat, like vomit.

  Fred glances at me in the rear-view mirror, eyes narrowing.

  I launch myself at him, teeth bared. Donnie lunges at the same moment, trying to stop me. I claw at Fred’s face, but he leans away and I miss, my hand digging into the headrest of his seat.

  ‘Christ, fuck!’ Fred yells.

  Donnie grabs me before I can try again. Pins me to the wall by my neck. ‘Cool it, Lux.’

  ‘You killed him!’ I scream at Fred. ‘Why would you do that?’

  ‘I just explained that,’ Fred says, looking annoyed. ‘I—hey, what the hell?’

  He stops the van. There’s some kind of parade in front of us. No, not a parade. A protest. People are carrying tiki torches, waving cardboard signs that I can’t read in the dim light. Some are carrying guns.

  Fred puts the car into reverse, his gaze on the wing mirrors. I can hear sirens in the air. Shouts. Breaking glass.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Cedric asks.

  ‘Our escape plan is what’s going on,’ Fred says.

  ‘Why here? Why not at the courthouse?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Fred swings the van around and drives into a side street.

  Donnie still has me against the wall. ‘Are you good?’

  I glare at him.

  ‘Lux,’ he says, ‘you gotta calm down, okay?’

  After a pause, I nod, and he releases me.

  I rub my throat. ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘You remember Emmanuel Goldstein?’ Cedric asks.

  ‘Yeah.’ The fictitious anti-mascot, designed to make people angry. He’s a child molester, an abusive husband, an illegal immigrant, a racist cop who shot an unarmed Black teen, depending who you ask.

  ‘He just got off on a technicality,’ Cedric says. ‘He’s about to be released from the Herbert W. Gee Municipal Courthouse.’

  I’m struggling to understand, and more than that, I’m struggling to care. ‘I thought he wasn’t real.’

  ‘He’s not.’ Cedric licks his lips nervously. ‘But when Fred pushed the button, hundreds of posts went live and thousands of messages went out. Hundreds of angry protestors should be converging on the courthouse right now. All the police will be there, a nice long way away from our escape route. At least, that was the plan.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Donnie stares through the windshield at the protest march in the distance. ‘Why are they here?’

  I shouldn’t be surprised. Inciting a riot for personal gain is exactly the sort of thing these assholes would think of.

  ‘Shit.’ Fred has spotted a pair of police cars. He turns into a side alley to avoid them.

  ‘Maybe it’s not us,’ Zara suggests. ‘Could be an unrelated protest.’

  ‘At exactly the same time?’

  I don’t care about this. Kyle is dead. Nothing matters except that. Fred has to pay.

  But I’m outnumbered and unarmed. The only way to hurt him is with the truth. And the escape plan—start a riot to distract the police—is familiar. The last piece of the puzzle falls into place.

  I clear my throat. ‘Hey, Rick.’

  Fred glances at me in the rear-view mirror.

  ‘I thought so,’ I say. ‘Frederick is your full name, right? Frederick Allister. Your friends used to call you Rick. Before you shaved off the beard, and cut your hair short.’

  Zara looks suddenly interested. She hadn’t known this.

  ‘So what?’

  ‘You started hitting your ex-wife, Lynne, after she got pregnant. I think that’s when she started to remind you of your own mother, the one who never loved you enough. Eventually Lynne left. And you tried to kill her. Shot at a bomb you’d planted under her car.’

  I had assumed it was a coincidence, Fred filling the house with the same explosive mixture Rick used. But it wasn’t—Fred used that compound because he is Rick.

  ‘Ex-wife?’ Fred squints, feigning confusion.

  ‘Whoa, Lux.’ Cedric pats the air. ‘Fred wouldn’t do that.’

  ‘Because of the bomb, you got classified as a terrorist,’ I say. ‘Suddenly the FBI were after you. So you worked out a way to distract them. You faked a Facebook post from a congresswoman threatening an assault weapon ban. The plan worked, maybe better than you could have hoped. Armed protestors turned out en masse in Hermann Park. There was chaos and violence. The feds were too busy to chase you. By the time the dust cleared, you were long gone.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Fred asks, still looking perplexed.

  He knows what I’m talking about. But he can’t shut me up without stopping the car. And if he does that, the protestors might catch up and block the road around us. Then the police might want to know why there’s a dead body in the van.

  The other three Guards are listening to me, still puzzled. Maybe wondering if I’ve lost my mind.

  ‘But you hadn’t realised your baby son was in the car. You nearly killed him by mistake. That rattled you. So you got some therapy. Anger management classes. You came out with a better understanding of anger—not just how to control it, but how to sell it. Rage to riches.’

  ‘You were married?’ Donnie asks Fred.

  ‘No,’ Fred says. ‘He’s full of shit.’

  ‘Your idea was a website that gives subscribers the chance to vent their anger on criminals. But real criminals are hard to catch. So you grab regular people and exaggerate the bad things they’ve done. That’s easier.’

  ‘Those crimes really happened,’ Fred objects. ‘You can look them up.’

  ‘No doubt,’ I say. ‘But your prisoners weren’t the real perps.’

  He’s not trying to convince me; he’s trying to convince the others. And it’s not working. Cedric and Donnie and Zara are looking from me, to him, to each other, and back to me. No longer sure who to believe.

  ‘There’s no such person as Druznetski, is there?’ I continue. ‘He’s just like Goldstein—you made him up. A fake source for all your information about the prisoners. To make them seem guilty, for the subscribers—and for the other Guards.’

  ‘You’re not thinking straight, Lux,’ Donnie says, but he’s starting to look uneasy.

  ‘Those people weren’t innocent,’ Fred says, and I think he probably believes it. No one’s innocent.

  ‘Abbey Chapman was, when Lux abducted her.’ I don’
t know if the others will notice that I’m referring to myself in the third person, and I’m too far gone to care. ‘Lux sent you the videos, and you made up a story to go with them. That’s why you told me to keep her background a secret from the other Guards. They needed to believe she was guilty of something. What about Reese Thistle? What did you say she had done?’

  ‘She was a murderer,’ Donnie says. ‘She killed the kids she was supposed to be babysitting.’ He looks at Fred for reassurance.

  ‘Shut up, Lux,’ Fred says instead. There’s something I haven’t seen on his face before—anger. The old Rick is coming back.

  I don’t shut up. ‘But your site was too successful. The CIA noticed what you were up to.’

  The other Guards look alarmed—especially Zara. She reaches into the front of her dress, where she keeps her gun. I don’t know if it’s just a threat or if she actually intends to shoot me before I expose her.

  I talk faster: ‘So a CIA agent shows up one night, and accidentally walks past one of your cameras. He has a dossier, which ends up in Samson’s possession. It’s full of profiles—not just of the Guards, but the prisoners, too.’

  ‘This is all complete fantasy,’ Fred says. But I can see that the others don’t believe him.

  The van is accelerating, the whine of the engine building to a crescendo.

  ‘According to the dossier, all the prisoners are innocent. Samson doesn’t trust any of the others, because it seems like one of them is a CIA spy. Not you, though, since you’re the founder—you wouldn’t infiltrate your own organisation. So early the next morning, he shows you what he found. He tells you Druznetski has been lying, and the prisoners aren’t guilty.’

  ‘But they were,’ Donnie says to himself. ‘They must have been.’ He tortured innocent people. Murdered them. Put them through a meat grinder. He can’t bear the thought of it.

  ‘You ask Samson if he’s showed the dossier to any of the others. He says no—he’s not sure who to trust.’ I meet Fred’s gaze in the rear-view mirror. ‘And you kill him.’

  Donnie looks from me to Fred and back. He’s like a casserole dish about to bubble over. Too soon to tell who’ll get burned.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Cedric says. The anger has reached him, too. It’s like an airborne pathogen, infecting everyone in the van.