Among These Bones

by Amanda Luzzader

  “Yeah,” he said. “I can always use another set of hands.”

  He passed me a baseball bat.

  “Know how to use one of those?”

  I swallowed. “I think you hold the skinny end.”

  “Then let’s be on our way.”

  We walked together further into the business park. There was no one around, but we moved carefully.

  “Here,” said Chase quietly. We knelt beside a retaining wall.

  I recognized the roads and buildings from the map I saw in the gang’s ready room at the haunted house.

  “Which one is it?” I asked. “That one?”

  “No, that one,” said Chase, pointing across the street and up the block. It was a dark-colored building with vines creeping up its metal sides.

  “You sure?”

  “Positive. Why?”

  “I dunno,” I said. “Looks deserted.”

  “Yeah, probably just one guy inside. Patrol vehicle drops them off in shifts. Probably just one goon with a sidearm.”

  Chase produced his pistol. He flicked the cylinder open, then closed. He replaced it in the holster at the small of his back.

  “Have you ever shot anyone?” I asked.

  Chase looked over, but I couldn’t read his face.

  “Probably,” he said.

  “Recently?”

  “Nope. And I’d rather not. So, let’s be careful.”

  He reached into his jacket pocket and got out the little radio.

  “Hey,” I said, pointing to the radio, “can I do it?”

  He shrugged and said, “Sure, okay.” He smiled and handed it to me.

  “What do I say?” I asked.

  “Just tell them Mountain Lion is in ready position,” he said.

  I pressed the soft rubber key and spoke softly into the handset. “The Mountain Lion is in the ready position.” Then I turned to Chase and said, “You realize how perverted that sounds, right?”

  “Let go of the button,” he said.

  I winced with embarrassment, and when I did, there came the burst of static and the beeps. A few seconds later came an answering static burst and beeps, and then another.

  “It worked?” I asked.

  He shrugged again and then nodded.

  “What? I did it wrong?”

  “It’s not ‘the’ Mountain Lion. It’s just Mountain Lion.”

  “Oh. Right. Sorry.”

  “And keep the commentary to a minimum,” he said with a nod.

  “Okay.”

  “When I get the doors open, tell them we’re in.”

  “Okay.”

  “We’ll cross here,” said Chase, “following this line of shrubs. Then to the corner and through that far set of doors. Woolly’ll come in from the west. Ruby from the south.”

  He nodded at the bat. “You said you know how to use that.”

  “I said I’d do my best, coach.”

  “Just keep your eye on the ball,” said Chase. “Let’s go.”

  We rushed across the street, paused, then moved on. The landscaping around the building was beyond overgrown, and it formed a kind of barrier wall around the building. We stayed low and worked our way up alongside the volunteer trees and enormous tangled hedges to the steel door. We crouched in the shadow of the doorway, and from somewhere inside his coat Chase produced a set of steel picks in a leather slip case. He removed two of them and began poking at the lock.

  “Peek in that window,” he mumbled, jabbing his chin at the window beside the door.

  I peered inside over the bottom edge of the window, the glass of which was filmy from neglect. It was dark inside.

  “I can’t see anything,” I whispered.

  “No lights?” he said.

  “No. Nothing.”

  “That’s good,” said Chase. He opened the door. Then he stood and pocketed the lock tools.

  “You’re fast,” I said quietly.

  He shook his head slightly. “Just good.” He motioned me in.

  As I moved into the unlit space within, I came very close to Chase. It felt like we were nose to nose. Then I stepped inside. Chase flicked on a small flashlight and stuck it in his mouth like a cigar. It shined into the room. I moved farther inside.

  “Alison, wait.” He took me by the wrist and pulled me back to him. I turned and faced him again.

  His eyes were sharp and shrewd and brown, and when he looked my way I felt as though no detail about me went unnoticed. But there was kindness in his eyes, too.

  “What is it?” I whispered. His face was no more than an inch from mine.

  “The radio,” he said. “Tell them we’re in.”

  “Oh. Right,” I breathed. “Sorry.”

  Without taking my eyes off Chase, I lifted the little radio to my mouth and pressed the key. “The Mountain Lion is inside. I mean—Mountain Lion is inside.”

  The others answered back by keying their radios, and then we proceeded.

  “Seriously, though,” I said. “Your signals all have double meanings.”

  Chase turned and went into the darkness.

  I knew there were people in that building, or that there had been recently. For one thing, there were no cobwebs—a dead giveaway. Most buildings and houses abandoned since Year One were draped in thick cobwebs and filled with dust. Most long-vacant buildings had a breach somewhere, like broken windows or doors left open, which allowed astonishing amounts of dirt and dust to accumulate inside. Arie and I had seen houses with so much dirt on the floor that vast indoor gardens of ferns and moss had sprouted.

  And then there was the wildlife. Lots of houses had birds inside. We had seen families of raccoons and skunks and squirrels denning up under beds and in closets. We’d seen houses teeming with mice in such numbers that the floors seemed to surge beneath our feet, and there was a windowless supermarket so infested with bats that we’d had to flee from the place before suffocating in its guano stench.

  But I didn’t have to go inside to know the data center was occupied and cared for. I knew as soon as the door opened. Chronically disused buildings have a certain odor, too, even those that are still weather-tight. A smell of dirt and mildew, but something deeper and richer, too—a loamy smell, the smell of a place made by human hands but ready to be devoured by nature.

  The building we’d broken into was not immaculate, but it had at least been swept occasionally, and there was a heat source, too. I wouldn’t call it cozy, but it was at least ten degrees warmer than it was outside.

  There was an entryway that opened onto a small receiving room, where a corridor stretched to our right and left into the darkness. Chase tapped me on the shoulder and pulled me close so that his mouth was at my ear.

  “No sounds,” he breathed, still almost too softly for me to hear. “Follow me.”

  We went to the left, hugging the wall and walking noiselessly. Chase led the way and I followed closely enough to touch his back. It got darker as we got further inside and away from the windows. Chase held his gun in one hand and in the other he had the flashlight—ready to switch on in front of him. From time to time he stopped for as much as a minute to listen.

  We followed the corridor and then another, stopping, listening, and then moving on. We’d reached an interior corridor, where there were no windows and nearly no light. At times I wasn’t sure if I could see Chase in front of me or if I was only imagining it.

  He holstered his gun and then clicked on his flashlight. “Radio,” he whispered. I handed it to him. He turned down the volume, and held it close to his mouth.

  “Say status,” he said.

  A few seconds later I heard Woolly’s voice faintly in the speaker. “This is Panda. We got nothin’.”

  Then Ruby: “Godmother. Same.”

  “All right,” said Chase into the radio. “Everyone duck down for a sec. I’m gonna bird dog.”

  When two bursts of static came over the radio, we retraced our steps to the intersection of four corridors. There was a small waiting
area, with two frowzy wingback chairs. Chase told me to huddle behind one of them.

  “Stay right there,” he said.

  Next he motioned for the baseball bat. I handed it to him, and he took a few steps up the corridor until he was lost from my view. My breath grew shallow and the seconds seemed to stretch into hours.

  I heard a sharp clack. It resounded loudly but flatly through the corridors. The suddenness of the noise in that stillness made me think a lightning bolt had struck my eardrum, but I knew in fact it was not even as loud as a gunshot. As I heard the soft shuffle of Chase returning, I realized that he had struck the tile floor with the bat.

  Chase crouched behind the other chair and we waited, ears straining to detect any noise apart from that of our own breathing.

  And then there came a sound.

  A door unlatched.

  There came the faint squeak of a door hinge, and we saw the glow of an electric light source at the far end of the hallway. We peered around the sides of the chairs.

  A man appeared. He stepped out of a room somewhere at the far end of the long hallway, and there he stood, looking our way and holding open the door—perhaps for the aid of the light emitting from inside the room, or perhaps because the door might lock behind him. He was much too far away to see us in the dimness behind our chairs, but then he switched on a flashlight and shined it in our direction. I scarcely had time to dodge the beam as it swept over the chair, and I thought for sure I’d been spotted.

  But all at once the flashlight winked off, and I poked my head up to see. He’d gone back into the room and the door was closing behind him. Then it was dark again.

  “I flushed him,” said Chase into his radio. “Stand by.”

  Ruby and Woolly acknowledged.

  “All right,” whispered Chase. “All we gotta do is get him to come out again without phoning in. He wasn’t acting too worried, was he?”

  “He didn’t seem worried at all,” I said.

  “Yeah. Okay. Here. Take the bat.”

  I took it from him.

  “Now,” he continued, “we’re going to go to that door.”

  “Which one was it?”

  “Seventh one on the right. Pay attention. We’re going down to that door. Then it’s me on the right side, you on the left. Got it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll make a sound. A knock or something. Homeboy comes out. You clobber him.”

  “Clobber him?”

  “With the bat, yeah. We can’t kill him. He might be useful. I mean, don’t worry—if he’s armed and he draws, I’ll take care of him.”

  “No, it’s not that.”

  “What then?”

  “I can’t just bash someone on the head,” I said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I can’t do that.”

  “Are you shitting me?”

  “He’s a person, Chase. A living being.”

  Chase snorted. He stood up.

  “Gimme the bat,” he spat. I held it out in the dim light and he snatched it away. He came out from behind the chairs, opened his mouth to say something, but then only scoffed and shook his head. He turned and walked away. I saw his outline for a moment, and then he vanished into the dark hallway.

  “Wait!” I hissed. I followed him.

  “Thought you had my back,” he said. He was whispering, but only just.

  “It’s not that,” I said.

  “Ah, just shut up awhile.”

  He walked fast. No more creeping silently. I tried to keep up, and I knew he’d stopped only when I blundered into him from behind.

  Chase’s flashlight came on and I saw his face. Tight and annoyed, but calm somehow. He put his flashlight in my hand.

  “Shine it on the door,” he said. “Like where his face will be when he opens it. Shine it in his eyes.”

  “You’re not going to hit him, are you?”

  “Just do it.”

  I did as he said.

  Chase reached out to knock on the door, but then he paused and turned to me.

  “A ‘living being’?” he asked.

  I held the flashlight. Chase knocked on the door.

  “What did you think we were gonna do with the bat?” he added. “Play some slow-pitch?”

  The man came to the door. He squinted at the flashlight glare. Chase hit him with the bat.

  It was quick, efficient. It made me flinch, but it wasn’t angry or brutal. The bat came down on the man’s head with a wet, meaty sound, and he began to sink to the floor as if a patch of quicksand had materialized beneath him. Chase caught him by the shirtfront and eased him down.

  “Don’t just stand there,” Chase hissed at me. “Help me get him inside.”

  There was a gash on the man’s brow, just at his hairline. It bled steadily, pooling around his eyes and leaving burgundy dots and smears on the floor as we dragged him into the room.

  The data center was just that one room. It looked as though it was once a large meeting room, but now it was lined with computers, perhaps fifty of them, set up on long folding tables. And they weren’t the kind of computers I’d pictured, beeping and tall with spinning reels of tape. Instead it was as if everyone in the neighborhood had brought in their home computers. The cases were of different sizes and colors and no two alike. Wires and cables snaked between them and in chaotic webs across the floor and it reminded me very much of the cobbled-together systems Arie used. There were monitors and keyboards here and there, and there was a dull soft hum of computer fans. The room was warm with their exhaust.

  Chase disarmed the unconscious goon. He’d had a small pistol tucked into his belt. Then Chase checked the room to see if there was anyone else around. It was as he’d said—one goon with a sidearm. We emptied his pockets, then Chase radioed the others and told them where we were. We found a length of stray networking cable and bound the man hand and foot. With much effort we moved him to the center of the room, turned him onto his side, and left him there like some heavy and inconvenient piece of luggage. He lay still awhile, half-awake and muttering.

  Chase sat down at a workstation and began scrolling absently through the system. I flopped down in a corner of the room and pouted as Ruby arrived and then Woolly a few minutes later.

  Ruby checked on the goon and sorted through his liberated belongings. Then she approached and stood over me.

  “What’s the matter with you, Kiddo?”

  Chase scoffed but didn’t look our way.

  I didn’t answer.

  “What happened?” Ruby demanded.

  “She got all soft when I told her she had to konk this clown on the head.”

  “I don’t like violence,” I said.

  “You said you wanted to come,” said Chase.

  “I didn’t know I’d have to do something like that,” I said. “I’m the driver, remember?”

  “You’re not a driver,” he shot back. “You’re a scared little girl who happens to know how to drive a stick.”

  “Ease up, Chase,” Ruby ordered. “So what if she don’t like beating up on people?” She rubbed my back. “Al, you can ignore him. He’s a sweet fella, but he’s also a real prick.”

  “She should have stayed with the truck,” Chase insisted.

  “I didn’t want to stay in the truck alone,” I shouted. “Okay? I guess that makes me a big chicken.”

  Woolly came in. “You two again?” he said.

  “Stay the hell out of it, Woolly,” said Chase.

  “Everybody shut the hell up!” Ruby hollered. The room got quiet. “Now. Get to work.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Woolly sat in the room’s only chair. It was an old creaky rolling office chair and it seemed ready to buckle under Woolly’s prodigious mass as he scooted up to a computer workstation. Chase took a knee beside him. Woolly plugged a small memory stick into a port on the computer case and after a few moments, he began typing furiously.

  Ruby was watching over the goon. I sat in my corner a
nd watched Woolly. He typed one command and then another. They appeared as long strings of green letters and symbols, and after each one Woolly hit the Enter key with his pinkie.

  But it didn’t seem to be going well. On the monitor, there was a procession of error messages and failure notifications. The computer beeped as if annoyed or disappointed.

  Woolly let out a soft curse and typed some more.

  “We got the goon,” said Chase, tilting his head in that direction. “Let’s wake him up. Get his credentials.”

  “Nah. Don’t trust him. He might give us some contingency command or fake account that sends out an alert. Let me see if I can get in without him,” said Woolly. “Then maybe we’ll talk to him.”

  He typed some more and the computer emitted a series of beeps that I was sure did not indicate anything good. Woolly cursed again and shook his head.

  This went on for what seemed like an hour. Chase kibitzed at Woolly, pointing at the screen and making suggestions. Woolly shook his head sternly. They bickered back and forth.

  Woolly said, “I keep telling you—that might work for a sysadmin, but this is basically a guest account. Gotta be careful or I’m gonna hit a tripwire and red flags are gonna start going up all over the Agency network. Is that what you want?”

  Chase had no reply.

  “I didn’t think so.”

  “Okay,” said Chase, “but I doubt they’re going to be checking often enough to—”

  “Chase.” Woolly interrupted him, voice raised. “Shush. Gimme a minute.”

  Chase threw up his hands and was quiet.

  “Give me a minute,” Woolly reiterated, “to myself. Go away. Let me think.” He made a shooing motion.

  Chase got to his feet and walked away in a huff. He stood a short distance off, but kept an eye on Woolly’s computer monitor. I kept watching.

  Woolly’s fingers burst into motion and pages of text appeared on the monitor, as if Woolly were consulting some manual or operator notes. He scrolled through numerous pages of text, nodding at times, rubbing his whiskers. Chase began to pace.

  “You got this, Wool,” said Chase.

  Woolly dismissed him with a wave of his beefy hand. He typed something and the text on the monitor vanished.

  Then Woolly bowed his head. I thought he might be saying a prayer. But then, with his eyes still closed and head down, he began to type. Slowly and without looking at the monitor, he entered a short command on the keyboard and tapped the Enter key with his pinkie. He entered another command, and another. There were no cross-sounding beeps or long error messages.