Among These Bones

by Amanda Luzzader

  “I’ve got a location. Wake up, kids. It’s time to plan.” His face was puffy with the lack of a night’s sleep, but his eyes twinkled. He winked at me and then spun around to face his monitor.

  Chase’s face was tucked into the crook of his elbow on the table where he’d likewise fallen asleep. His face was crisscrossed with lines left from the wrinkles in his shirt sleeve. He smiled weakly and nodded his approval.

  Ruby stirred from a chair she had settled into. She struggled to stand and limped over to Woolly.

  “How far?” Chase asked, his voice froggy with fatigue.

  “Two hours. Give or take,” Woolly said. “A chemical refinery, great big compound up in North Richmond. We’re looking for warehouse 8234-C.”

  “Think it’ll be guarded?” Ruby asked.

  “Definitely,” said Chase.

  Gracie had woken up, too. She climbed onto Woolly’s lap, sleepily wrapping her arms around his giant neck and burying her face in his chest. He shifted her gently so that he could reach the keyboard.

  “It’s a pretty big site,” he said, zooming and panning over an aerial map displayed on his monitor.

  Yawning and stretching, we gathered around him to see better.

  “Several buildings,” he said, pointing. “Entrance here. Checkpoint here. That’s where the guards’ll be. Warehouse is over”—he scrolled the map to one side—“here.”

  I looked at Ruby. She clasped her hands together and rubbed them vigorously.

  “Today’s the day, kids,” she said. “Today is the day.”

  Woolly nodded and patted Gracie’s back.

  Ruby sharply clapped her hands, once, and then started barking orders.

  “Somebody get Glen and that little fart Carlos over here. Chase, you find them maps we swiped a while back.”

  Gracie scampered over to Ruby and said, “What can I do?”

  “Gosh, I dunno, Gracie. Oh, I know—see if you can find us something to eat.”

  I waited for her to give me something to do, but she seemed to have forgotten me. But then I caught her eye.

  She grinned at me with a sort of larcenous squint, then said, “Ah and you. I got something special for you. Come on over here, Al.”

  She motioned me over to a battered ammo box. From inside it she produced a bundle of oily cloth. She unwrapped it to reveal a small revolver.

  “Got you a gun,” she said. “Here. Hold out your hand.”

  I did and she gave me a box with a handful of bullets inside.

  “Let’s go outside,” she said, “and I’ll teach you to use it.”

  The winter sun was just rising and the air was brisk. Ruby seemed to have a kind of pride or satisfaction in having gotten me the gun.

  “Now, we can’t practice as much as we need to on account of not having many bullets and we don’t wanna attract all kindsa attention, but let’s take a few shots.”

  She pressed a button or tab with her thumb and the cylinder fell open. I held out the small box and she removed six bullets.

  “See here?” said Ruby. “These holes? They go in like that.”

  One by one she dropped the bullets into the cylinder. I watched carefully, but her hands moved so quickly.

  “Then ya slap it shut.”

  She tilted the pistol with a smooth motion and the cylinder fell into place with a neat click.

  Before she handed it to me, she said, “First rule is you never point it at no one unless you’re ready to kill.”

  *

  Later that day, when everyone had arrived, we circled around the computer.

  “We’ll come in right here,” said Ruby, pointing at Woolly’s monitor. “Woolly says the serum’s in here. We don’t know where at exactly, but we’ll figure that out. Grab as much as you can, along with anything else that looks useful. But don’t hang around too long. We gotta haul ass on outta there.”

  “Goons? Guards? How many?” asked Carlos.

  “There’s bound to be some security,” said Chase. “But it’s such a remote facility we’re counting on just a few goons—no Agency troops or vehicles.”

  It was already getting dark as Ruby outlined the rest of the plan. Once again, we’d ride out before dawn. I was the only one who could drive a stick and Chase was best with a gun, so he would ride with me in the truck. The rest—Glen, Carlos, Ruby, and Woolly—would ride in the only other vehicle they had, a beat-up old Ford Taurus that used to be a police car. The decals and markings had been removed, but you could see the outline of stripes and lettering on the hood and fenders if you looked at it from the right angle. The holes on the roof where the lights had been were filled in with putty. The old Taurus still had its spotlight though, and Ruby said the car had “great get-up-and-go.”

  “All right,” said Ruby. “That’s the plan.” Then she added, “Any questions?” but she didn’t wait for us to ask any. “Good. Let’s get a few hours of shut-eye and then head on out.”

  CHAPTER 18

  We stretched and yawned in the darkness, but there was the crackle of anticipation in the dry, chilly air. I stood in the doorway at the back of the haunted house as I watched the others double-check their equipment and murmur last-minute contingencies. Chase and Carlos divvied up their meager stockpile of ammunition. Woolly had a collection of pry-bars, bolt cutters, and sledgehammers in a large canvas tool bag. It clanked heavily as he heaved it into the trunk of the Taurus. At the front of the car, Ruby and Glen had the hood propped up and were checking the clamps on a makeshift hose repair Glen had made.

  “Where are the keys?” said Ruby.

  Glen held them up and jangled them. “I’ll drive,” he said as he slammed the hood closed.

  “My ass,” said Ruby. “Gimme them.”

  As we made ready to leave, I said, “Hey. What about Gracie?”

  “What about her?” Ruby asked.

  “Who’ll watch her while we’re gone?”

  “Oh, she’ll be fine,” said Ruby.

  I laughed incredulously. “You’ve got this place wired with explosives. You can’t just leave her here.”

  Gracie had been sitting forlornly in the dark anteroom of the haunted house as we got ready to go. She was petting a toy stuffed lamb as though it were a cat or puppy. There was water and food in the haunted house, enough to last for several weeks, probably. And there were beds. Gracie seemed consigned to stay there by herself, but she looked up when she heard us talking about her.

  “I can come?” she asked, her back straight.

  “Hell no, you can’t come,” Ruby barked. “Al, if you think we’re going to bring her with us, you’ve lost your mind. This is gonna be dangerous.”

  “I don’t think we should bring her along,” I said. “I’m just saying we can’t leave her here alone.”

  “She’s taken care of herself almost this whole year,” said Carlos. “She ain’t no regular kid.”

  “But she is a kid,” I said. Maybe it was the way Arie had taken care of her that made me feel responsible. Or maybe it was motherly instincts. “Don’t we have anyone else that can watch her?”

  “Lemme come with you!” Gracie said. “I’ll be quiet. And won’t get in the way. I promise.”

  “Ain’t enough room in the car, kid,” Glen snapped. “Not with Woolly and Carlos and alla them guns in back.”

  “No, I already called shotgun,” said Woolly.

  “I told you, jeffe,” Carlos objected. “You gotta be outside to call shotgun. You can’t just call it two days before—”

  “Oh, would you two knock it off,” snarled Ruby.

  “Maybe someone could stay with her,” I suggested.

  “No way,” Ruby said. “We need all the help we can get.”

  “Then what if she rode with me and Chase until we get close to the compound?” I suggested. “We could drop her off somewhere and pick her up on the way back. She’d only be alone while we’re at the warehouse. We’re not going to be in there long, right?”

  “The place’ll be
guarded, Al,” Ruby said. “There’ll be guns.”

  “But only a couple guards, right? Isn’t that what you said, Chase?”

  “Well, I think so, but I don’t know for sure,” Chase answered. “Could be one, could be dozens.”

  “We could give her a radio,” I said. “Leave her with some snacks? I don’t know. I just hate the thought of her being alone so long.”

  Ruby and Chase exchanged glances.

  “I really think she’d be fine here,” said Ruby. “But if yer gonna keep yapping about it and keepin’ us from leavin’, then I guess we can bring her along. But you’re responsible for her.”

  “Hear that, Gracie? Let’s go!”

  Gracie jumped up and clapped her hands together, then ran into my arms.

  When we got outside and unlocked the truck, Chase shook his head and said, “You are nothing but trouble.”

  “I don’t think she’ll be a problem,” I said.

  “I wasn’t talking about her,” he replied.

  “Oh,” I said, “in that case I agree with you.”

  Chase regarded Gracie warily as she climbed into the passenger-side jump-seat of the cab. I tightened my ponytail and started the truck.

  We drove out of Thrill Harbor and along a back road. We kept our headlights off, driving slowly. Ruby and the others followed us in the Taurus. Chase gave me directions and he relayed them to Ruby using the walkie-talkie.

  The drive was tedious, down narrow dirt roads and over the grown wild farm fields blanketed thinly with the remaining snow. We wound through the quiet, motionless traffic jams of the paved highways. Some of the time we drove with the running lights on and sometimes with no lights. Gracie lay curled up in the jumpseat and was asleep most of the time.

  It took us more than two hours to drive just forty miles. The sky had just began to turn pink when we closed in on the North Richmond industrial park.

  “Okay,” said Chase. “In a half mile or so we’re gonna hit an intersection. There’s a ranch house there. We’ll drop off Gracie.”

  “Gracie?” I said. “Wake up, sweetie.”

  Chase keyed his walkie-talkie and said, “We’re stopping.”

  Gracie looked so pathetic there in the front yard of the dilapidated ranch house. She wore a heavy winter coat and boots, and her hair was wild. My heart broke a little, and I began to doubt my idea of bringing her along instead of leaving her in the relative safety of the haunted house. We left her with a blanket, a jug of water, and a few wild apples.

  “Go on in the house, Gracie,” I said, trying to sound like everything was fine. “You can watch through the window. We’ll be back soon.”

  Gracie turned to the house but then shook her head. “It’s too scary.”

  I had to chuckle a little at that, considering she’d been living for several weeks in the haunted house of a derelict amusement park.

  “It will be light soon,” I told her. “Will you go in then?”

  “Okay,” she said.

  Ruby waved goodbye, and she and the others in the Taurus drove off, planning to circle around and approach the warehouse complex from the far side.

  I got back into the truck, but stayed still watching Gracie for a few moments trying to build up the courage to leave her.

  Chase rolled his eyes and said, “Jeeze, quit it, wouldja? She’ll be fine. She’s a tough little runt.”

  I sighed and started the truck. We drove for a few miles. It was getting light.

  “There’s a road up here a couple miles,” said Chase. “It turns off to the right. You’ll see the complex of buildings. There’ll be a chain link fence around it.”

  We came to the road and I turned.

  “Okay. This is it. In a couple miles, you’ll see the fence. I’m gonna need you to drive through it.”

  “What do you mean ‘drive through it’?”

  “I mean drive through the fence.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. You’ll need to be going faster, though.”

  I gave it some gas.

  “Faster,” said Chase.

  “How much faster?”

  “Fifty. Sixty.”

  “We won’t crash?”

  “That’s up to you,” he said, without taking his eyes from the road ahead. “When we get through the fence, you’ll see a little building kinda off by itself. That’s where we’re going. Stop right by the door. As soon as we’re through the fence, put on the brakes. Not too hard, though.”

  I looked over at him. He gave me a sly smile. Then he reclined his seat and put one foot up on the glove box.

  The speedometer read sixty when I saw the compound. It was some kind of processing facility, like a cannery. There was an old factory and a series of warehouses. It was coming up fast.

  “See the gate?” said Chase. “That’s where we’ll go through.” He’d slouched back in the seat with his arm draped over his knee, as if we were on a summer road trip.

  “I don’t think I—”

  “Don’t think, Al,” he said with a wave of his hand. “Just go on through.” He stole a glimpse of the speedometer. “And don’t slow down.”

  I pressed the gas pedal.

  Chase put his seat back upright and from under his coat he removed a pistol. Not like Ruby’s or mine. It was in better shape, well cared for. He let the cylinder fall open, eyed the chambers, and slapped the cylinder home again. Then he got out his radio.

  “This is Mountain Lion,” he said. “We’re here.”

  The Tacoma thundered down the road, throwing up bits of asphalt and debris.

  “Don't slow down,” said Chase. He didn’t shout it at me. He didn’t seem excited or panicked, nor did he act as if anything particularly unusual was happening.

  With my face frozen in a test-pilot grimace and my arms locked out straight, we rammed the gate. There was a heart-shaking crash, the chain link fabric made a high ringing sound with the impact, and we were jolted forward into our seat belts with the deceleration. The side windows of the truck shattered as the fencing wrapped around the truck, sending crumbs of safety glass flying like sea spray. The clattering chain link gate clung to the hood and fenders like some destroyed animal, and there was a deep thudding as the gate posts were wrenched from the ground like great steel carrots.

  We rocketed into the compound.

  “Brakes,” said Chase. “Brakes!”

  I stomped the brake and we were pitched forward once more. I felt sure that the truck bed would flip up behind and over top of us. Chase braced himself hard on the dash with one hand and held up his pistol in the other as the truck swerved sideways into a juttering skid.

  From somewhere in my mind came the impulse to steer into the skid and so we swerved in that direction, and I somehow avoided over-correcting.

  “This building,” cried Chase, signaling desperately, but by then we were almost past it. “Stop stop stop!”

  I stood on the brake pedal, pulling myself up on the steering wheel so that my butt came out of the seat. The wheels locked up and the tires made a rough howling as we shuddered to a stop.

  “Stay right here!” he shouted. “Stay put!”

  The passenger door had flown open before we came to rest and Chase was gone from his seat before I managed to look over. I suddenly felt very concerned for him and I craned around inside the truck to see where he’d gone.

  It was a small brick building with floor-to-roof windows on all four sides—a dispatch office of some kind—and I’d overshot it by a hundred feet or so. Chase sprinted toward it. He flung open the door and went in, and through the windows I saw a struggle. I thought I heard shouting, and then there was gunfire.

  The truck had stalled when we’d skidded to a stop, and it took a few tries to get it started again, but when I did, I u-turned to better see what was happening. Inside the office, two people had taken hold of Chase. They held him by the arms. A third trained an assault rifle on him. Through the glare of the morning sun on the window, I thought I saw Cha
se look my way.

  I’d only known him for a short time, and so far I wasn’t too impressed. He was rude and self-important and reckless. But as I sat in the cab of the Tacoma, with the rubble of broken auto glass in my lap and the steering wheel gripped tight in my bloodless fists, I knew I had to help him. Whether it was because I wanted to find Arie or because I cared for these people, something reflexive and maternal ignited inside me.

  I slammed the truck into gear, stomped on the accelerator, and the let the clutch pop out. The rear tires chirped on the pavement and I aimed directly at the building as the little truck surged forward. With a little over a hundred feet before impact, I got it up to only about thirty miles an hour, but that was enough to elicit terrified sideways expressions from everyone inside the building, including Chase.

  The two who were holding him jumped out of the way, and Chase did, too, but the other man turned in my direction and pointed the rifle at me. I saw pale orange flashes as he fired at me, but the nose of the Tacoma came blasting through the tall window, and I hit him square-on. The rifle flew away spinning, and the man was tossed like a limp doll through the window on the far side of the small office. He landed on the pavement outside, where he squirmed in pain among the glittering shards of window.

  Much of the brick front of the building was pushed into the office space, and half of the ceiling collapsed. I jumped from the truck, pulling the gun Ruby had given me from my waistband. I stepped through the dusty bricks and glass and into the ruined office. Dust still hung in the air, and pieces of the ceiling and roof were still falling. Chase rose up in the debris and turned to me. He was coated with chalky dust and particles of glass. His eyes were wide and wild and incredulous.

  The other two men had their hands up, and they struggled to their feet.

  I waded swiftly through the rubble to the goon nearest to me, pointed the gun directly at his face, and shouted, “Where’s Arie? Where’s my son, you sons of bitches?”

  The two men glanced at each other. I clicked the safety off the gun.

  “Answer me!” Rage and anger bubbled up inside of me, ready to overflow.