Among These Bones

by Amanda Luzzader

“Just get her inside,” said the other.

  The bald man did as he was told, and they dragged me in. My legs turned to water then, and I collapsed sobbing. I kicked and swatted at them. It had little effect.

  CHAPTER 12

  They tried dragging me deeper into the building but I screamed and caught hold of the door jamb. The tall one plucked my hands from the door and the short one got my legs. They wrangled me inside and shut the door. Then the only light to see by was that which filtered in from the small, high windows, but I know I saw a human skull impaled on a spear. Then another. Then a line of them, like a fence.

  I twisted hard and they dropped me and so I thrashed and thrashed. They picked me up again, but my foot connected with someone’s groin.

  “Ow, Jesus, fuck,” the bearded one squawked. “Glen, hold up. Chica just nailed me in the cajones, man.”

  They dropped me, but the one called Glen stepped on me and leaned forward until his weight compressed my ribcage. The other one bent over and steadied himself, his hand on the wall. He blew hard through his pursed lips as he reached down between his legs and gingerly readjusted himself.

  “Glen, man,” he said between gasps. “Who is this, anyways?”

  “Caught her sneaking around up by the tunnel,” said Glen jerking his chin.

  “Well, chill for a second, will ya? I think she thinks we’re gonna rape her.”

  Glen snorted and took his foot off me. He crouched down and jabbed at my face with his finger. “You’re the one who was snooping around. I got a wife.”

  The bearded man knelt beside me. “Chica,” he said. “You don’t look like no spy. Who are you?”

  “Who are you?” I spat back.

  He stood up and ran a hand over his bald head.

  “Well. Fair enough. I’m Carlos.” He touched his chest with his palm. “This is Glen. He got a temper, but don’t be a’scared of him. Now. Who are you?”

  “I’m looking for someone,” I said.

  “That’s not really what I asked, but, okay,” said Carlos. “Who?”

  “You wouldn’t know her. Now let me leave.”

  Carlos shook his head slowly. “We need to know why you was out here.”

  “I told you. I’m looking for someone.”

  Glen lunged at me and bellowed, “Who!”

  Carlos got between us.

  “Her name’s Ruby,” I blurted. “She told me to come.”

  Their eyes widened, and the two of them traded a hard look. Glen licked his lips.

  “Jesus, Chica,” said Carlos. “Why didn’t you just say so?”

  He grabbed my arm and helped me to my feet. We continued down the darkened corridor, Glen leading the way and Carlos behind me. There were a number of dark corners. I couldn’t say how many. Then we descended a roughly built wooden staircase into a tube-shaped brick passageway lit from above by a string of gloomy yellow utility lights. Along the way I saw alcoves to either side where shadowy figures lurked, frozen in menacing poses. In one alcove there was what had to be mannequin zombie. In another I saw coven of motionless witches.

  “Haunted house,” I said quietly.

  “Yeah,” whispered Carlos. “The old haunted house ride. Creepy down here, huh? I hate it.”

  “Shut up and keep walking,” said Glen over his shoulder.

  We passed by a vampire figure whose grotesque store-bought rubber mask was half-obscured by a shroud of real cobwebs. There was a lady mannequin who’d been hacked in two by an ax murderer, her papier-mâché entrails dusty and desiccated.

  Then I heard voices ahead. The passageway turned a corner and there in the bend was an opening blocked by a black velvet drape. Carlos parted the drape and I spotted Ruby in the small room beyond.

  She was practically a stranger to me, a woman I’d met only a couple times, briefly, and yet I laughed suddenly at the sight of her.

  It was a small concrete room with a single light bulb hanging from the ceiling. A workroom of some sort, adjacent to the ride. Dim light bulbs shown here and there, bathing the place with the dusky luster of a conspirator’s lair.

  Somewhere out of sight an electric generator hummed. Ruby leaned over a table, examining a large map through her bifocals. There was a candle burning at the center of the table, and when I looked closer, I could see that the map was actually a set of building plans. Ruby looked up and wrinkled her nose to reposition the spectacles. When she spotted me with my face red and hair wild, she straightened up and dropped her arms to her sides.

  “Glen, what in Sam Hill is this?” she shouted.

  Glen scratched the back of his neck.

  “Well?”

  “She was wandering around outside,” he muttered.

  Next to Ruby there stood a stout man with a round boyish face fringed with curly blond whiskers. He regarded me with a cool, Zen gaze. Behind them on the floor there was a coarse pallet and a man was lying on it, his head pillowed by a leather jacket. He had one arm thrown across his face, but he wasn’t sleeping. Nobody could have slept through Ruby’s tirade.

  “Well, a’course she was,” Ruby squawked, throwing up her arms. “I told her t’come!” Ruby’s honking voice reverberated harshly in the small room and Glen recoiled as if bombarded by a hail of needles. Ruby scowled at him. If he’d been closer, she probably would have smacked him.

  She limped over to me. “Actually, sis, you’re lucky Glen found you. We’ve got the front entrance wired with explosives that’d blow ya here t’kingdom come.”

  “Oh my God, why would you do that?” I asked.

  “To keep out wanted guests,” answered Ruby, as though the answer was obvious.

  “But what about the new year? No one will remember.”

  “That’s just it, sweetheart. This time I don’t intend to forget,” Ruby answered, tapping her forehead with a finger.

  “She kicked Carlos square in the nuts,” Glen tattled quietly, tilting his head at his companion.

  “Yeah, but that was totally my bad,” said Carlos. He waved a dismissive hand, but then he touched himself down there and winced a little.

  “Alison, are you all right?” asked Ruby.

  I nodded and joined her at the table.

  “So. What’s she here for?” Glen asked warily.

  “She’s got twice as much brains as you do, for starters.” She turned to me again, jabbed her thumb at the stout fellow and said, “This here’s Woolly.”

  Woolly was wider than two of me, maybe three. His arms were slab-like and his legs were thick as tree trunks, but his eyes were bright and thoughtful. He wore a black t-shirt and baggy denim shorts.

  I nodded and he nodded back, closing his eyes and bowing ever so slightly.

  Ruby gestured at Carlos and Glen. “These two knuckleheads y’already met.”

  They nodded and murmured diffident hellos.

  “Everybody, this is Alison. She’s a friend I made. A good egg. And smart.” She rubbed my back and winked at me. “Had a feeling you’d come.”

  From behind Woolly stepped a young girl with curly blond hair and dirty cheeks.

  “Hey, I know you,” I said.

  The girl looked up at me shyly. “You’re his mom,” she said. “The tall boy. He died, huh?”

  “Gracie, shush,” said Ruby, nudging the girl. Then Ruby turned to me and in a low voice said, “We heard about your boy. Awful sorry ’bout that.”

  “He used to give me apples,” said the little girl in a soft voice. “But then he stopped.”

  “This here is Gracie,” said Ruby.

  It’d been a while since I’d thought about the wraith-like little girl Arie had fed from our back porch like a stray cat. Neither of us ever had ever known her name. Gracie acted as though she knew me, and I wondered how much she’d watched us and our house. The motherly part in me wanted all at once to pick her up and take care of her. Not just because of her cherubic face and sweetness, but because she was a link to Arie.

  “So, you’re here to help, ain’tcha, hon
ey?” Ruby asked me.

  “Actually,” I said, unshouldering the backpack, “I can’t stay. I just wanted to ask you something. See, my son kept this journal. You remember? We both wrote in journals.”

  Ruby nodded, her brow furrowing.

  I unzipped my pack and fished out Arie’s secret red notebook. “I found one that Arie wrote, and I can’t understand it.”

  Ruby frowned and shot me a quizzical expression. She took the notebook from me and perched herself atop a stool by the table. She adjusted her glasses and flipped through the pages awhile. Gracie peered over Ruby’s arm.

  It was only lines and lines of numbers. 55, 8, 12, 102, 10, 2.

  Pages and pages like that. Nearly the whole notebook. Ruby scanned the notebook, then regarded me over the top of her glasses.

  “Is this all ya come for?” she asked.

  “I need to know what it means,” I said. “You seemed to know—things. What do you think this means?”

  The others crowded close and leaned in to see. Somebody slid the candle closer.

  “Was this kid on drugs?” asked Carlos.

  Ruby socked him on the shoulder. “Idiot,” she hissed.

  He rubbed his arm.

  Ruby removed her glasses. “The question you should be asking is why would he be needing to write in code.”

  “Is that what it is? Can you read it?”

  “No,” said Woolly, shifting heavily. “No one can.” His voice was deep and coarse, but he had clear, refined diction. “Not without the key.”

  “Key?” I asked.

  “Every code has a key,” he said gently. He grabbed the waistband of his shorts and tugged them up, but they drooped again.

  I looked at the journal. “So, how do I figure out what it says?”

  “You don’t,” he said. “I’m sorry to break it to you this way, but that’s the whole point. He’d have to give you the key. Or you’d have to find it yourself. Whoever wrote this—your son?”

  I nodded hastily.

  “Your son used a key to encrypt his words into these numbers.” He tapped the journal with his finger, which was nearly as thick as my wrist. “Each number is a letter or a word. So, his words are all there, but they’re hidden, locked. Find the key, unlock the words.”

  “What would the key look like?”

  “Like a codebook. Or any ordinary book. Or just a chart. Depends on what he decided to use.”

  Ruby passed the journal to Woolly.

  “I could study it a little,” said Woolly, flipping the pages of the notebook with his thumb. “Then I could maybe tell you at least what kind of cipher it is. Wouldn’t help you decrypt it, but it might make it easier to figure out what he used as a key.”

  “You would?” I said, “Oh, thank you.”

  “Now, hold on,” said Ruby. “Woolly, you got plenty to do right now.”

  Woolly nodded and gave the notebook back to me. “She’s right. I’m sorry. Maybe another time.”

  “Alison, I’m real sorry, too,” said Ruby, “but we’re sort of in the middle of something here. Fact, I was hoping you could help us.”

  I stared at Arie’s journal. There comes a moment when you think your pain couldn’t possibly be worse. That you’ve reached an end to it. Like when Gary told me about Arie. I thought that was the bottom. But then you discover that pain can exist in deep, hidden pockets. Unexpected blooms of misery that appear suddenly, and you begin to wonder if there is a limit to how much you can hurt, or if eventually it will just kill you. What was in the journal? Was it a secret Arie had carried all year? Was it Arie himself?

  I didn’t plan to hurt myself, not with the new year so close, but I saw death in a new way after that: a sweet release. I was surprised by how often I thought about it after that. If I didn’t keep myself distracted—didn’t stay busy—that’s where my mind would go.

  “I understand,” I said finally. “Thanks for your help.”

  I turned my face as I went so that they couldn’t read my expression. Then I shoved the notebook in my bag and headed for the doorway and the black drape.

  “Glen, show her how to get back out,” said Ruby.

  Glen had lit a pipe and there was the sweet odor of leaf tobacco in the air. He joined me at the doorway.

  “Hey,” Ruby called to me.

  I stopped.

  “You never seen his body, didja?” she asked.

  I turned around. “What?”

  “Your kid. J’ever see him? After, I mean. Not to be mean, but, didja?”

  I shook my head.

  “Didn’t think so.”

  “Why?”

  “Look. I’m not saying he’s alive,” Ruby said. “I’m just saying if you didn’t see his body, how do you know he’s really dead?”

  “Why would they tell me that?” I asked.

  “Why would he be writin’ in a code?” Ruby asked.

  The man on the floor sat up and sighed. “When they can control your memories, they control everything.”

  “Chase, get up. Come help figure this out,” Ruby said, rotating the blueprint one way, then another. “It’s gonna be the new year and I’ll still be standing here try’na read this here floor plan.”

  The man rose stiffly and joined her at the table. He was tall and fit, but his clothing was disheveled and he wore a three-day beard.

  “Chase, that there’s Alison. Alison, this here’s Chase.”

  He shrugged at me, as if he had no choice but to admit his identity.

  “Help me with this, Chay,” said Ruby.

  “Floor plans?” he asked while tousling Gracie’s hair. “How’d you get these?”

  “From my contact,” said Woolly. “If we can crack into this base, we might be able to figure out where they keep this uncut serum—if it exists. Maybe we find a lot of stuff.”

  “If Arie’s alive,” I interrupted, “then where would he be? How can I find him?”

  Ruby sighed and pressed her lips together. “Listen, sweetie, I feel for ya. But we’ve got things here that can’t wait.”

  “Neither can I,” I said. “It’s almost the new year. If I don’t find out now, I never will. Please. He’s all I have.”

  They all stared at me for a few moments.

  Ruby pulled the glasses off her face and chewed the inside of her cheek. “We could use a hand here,” she tapped the plans with the folded-up glasses. “Maybe we can help each other.”

  “Okay,” I said. “What can I do?”

  “I don’t know,” said Ruby chuckling. “What can you do?”

  “Let’s table this for now,” said Chase. He stretched and scratched himself sleepily. “Let’s focus. If that serum is sitting somewhere, then let’s go get it.”

  They seemed to forget I was in the room.

  “Can’t,” said Ruby. “We don’t know exactly where it’s at. There’s six, eight buildings here. Big ones. And these plans’re old. Serum could be anywhere. And there’s fences. Guards. Locks. God, this is a big problem.” She indicated the plans with a nod. “So. Where’s it gonna be?”

  Chase scratched his whiskers and grimaced. “All right. There’s gonna be an office. This much storage space, there’ll be records, you know, manifests. Probably on a computer. A database. Or maybe just a spreadsheet. We have to start there.”

  Woolly nodded.

  They bent over the table and scanned the plans. I took a step forward, but none of it made any sense to me. I’d crossed the Zone boundaries countless times with Arie, but these people were planning to break in and steal things—directly from the Agency, it seemed. Serum? Why steal it? The Agency was going to give it to all of them whether they wanted it or not. Just thinking about what would happen if we were caught talking about these things made my mouth dry.

  “There must be fifteen offices here,” said Woolly. “One here. A couple here. Most of these warehouses have office space. We could spend an hour just trying to find the right one.”

  “Yeah,” said Chase. “We’ll never
find it staring at twenty-year-old blueprints.”

  “Then how?” said Ruby.

  They all stood motionless for a while.

  “Electricity,” said Woolly.

  “Ah,” said Chase, nodding. “Right.”

  “Whaddya mean?” asked Ruby.

  “They can’t power the whole site,” said Woolly. “They can barely supply power at all. We just need to figure out which building has power, lights. That’s where the computer will be.”

  “Woolly,” said Ruby, “go figure that out today. Take Carlos.”

  Woolly nodded.

  “Alls we need now is a vehicle to get it out of there. Chase, didja find us somethin’?”

  “Of course I did,” he said. “And it’s a truck. But.”

  “Why am I not surprised,” Ruby said. “But what?”

  “It’s a manual transmission,” Chase said.

  “So?”

  “I—can’t drive a stick.”

  “You kidding me?” she said.

  “I guess I never learned. Or maybe I’ve forgotten how. I tried. Nearly dropped the tranny. I suppose I could try again, practice. But right now, I really can’t. Can you?”

  “Well. No.”

  “Me neither,” said Carlos.

  “I can,” I said.

  “Woolly,” said Ruby. “Tell me you can.”

  “Sorry, Boss. I’m thinking I was more of a public transit sort of guy.”

  “Glen,” said Ruby, her tone acid. “I know you can barely find your ass with both hands, but I don’t suppose—”

  He shook his head. “Nope. Back to square one. Maybe we should spend our last days on earth enjoying life.”

  “Ruby,” I said, my voice raised. “Hey. I can drive a stick.”

  They turned their heads in unison to face me.

  “Rube,” said Chase, jabbing his thumb at me, “who is she again?”

  “Chase,” said Ruby, “shush.”

  “I mean, I think I can,” I said. “I don’t actually remember ever driving one, but you just step on the clutch, put it in gear, then let off the clutch and step on the gas—right?” I did an awkward pantomime.

  Ruby put both hands on the table. “Alison, this is really important. Do ya really think ya can?”

  “Yeah. I do. When do we leave?”