The Recoil Trilogy 3 Book Boxed Set: Including Recoil, Refuse and Rebel

by Joanne Macgregor

  “No, but a logic flowchart will.”

  Neil snags a pencil and notepad from his backpack, turns to a fresh page and writes Rescue Mission at the top. He draws a diamond-shaped box, with an arrow marked NO coming out of the side and another labeled YES exiting from the lowest point.

  “Can we scale the fence somehow and gain access that way?” Neil asks.

  “Yes. And no,” says Quinn. “I suppose it’s possible to short the electric fence, but we’d be seen for sure, and then there’d be a major shoot-out.”

  Up front, Carlos growls like the souped-up engine of a muscle car, and squeals as we take an imaginary corner at speed. While Neil draws another decision diamond below the YES arrow, I take a moment to scan the street through the windshield. Still deserted.

  “Do we have the manpower — excuse me, the human power — and the firepower to emerge victorious from such an encounter?” Neil asks.

  “No,” Quinn and I say together.

  It’s a stupid question. Neil knows as well as I do that we have exactly one weapon between us, and that I’m the only one who knows how to use it. No one else here could hit the broad side of a barn with a shotgun.

  Neil draws a little skull with X’d out eyes at the bottom of the YES arrow — that’s the end of that line of logic. He draws another diamond to the right of the NO arrow.

  “Could we enter from above — yes or no?” he says, pushing up his glasses with a thumb.

  “No,” I say. “Unless you’ve got a helicopter at your safe house. And even then we’d be shot down.”

  Another NO arrow, another question box.

  My foot jiggles. This is taking too long — we need to move faster.

  “Can PlayState be accessed from below?” asks Neil.

  “What, like via a tunnel? Not that I know of,” Quinn says.

  Neil traces over the NO arrow. “Then you’ve got to go through the door. Like the song says.”

  “Dude, what song?” Evyan’s words are clipped with irritation.

  Neil sings a ditty. “It’s so high, you can’t get over it. So low, you can’t get under it. So wide, you can’t get around it. You gotta go through the door!”

  We all stare at him like he’s nuts.

  “Didn’t any of you go to Sunday School?” he asks in a wounded tone.

  Evyan rolls her eyes, Quinn looks baffled, and I snap, “Neil, if you’ve got an idea, please spit it out in plain English.” And when he doesn’t immediately reply, I add, “Now would be really good!”

  I know I’m being rude, but we haven’t got time to mess around. Carlos is also in a hurry — he shouts at imaginary M&Ms to get out of the way.

  “The logical conclusion is that you have to enter through the front gate,” he says, as though this should be obvious to all of us.

  “That’s your grand plan? Ring the front door bell?” Evyan asks.

  “They’d never let us in, Neil. Worse, they’d arrest the lot of us,” I say.

  “That would be true, if the people at the gate were you.”

  Evyan curses violently.

  I say, “Who else would they be?”

  “The more useful way of phrasing that question is: who would they let in?”

  “Aah,” says Quinn in a voice of dawning comprehension.

  My irritation levels rise, because I’m still totally clueless.

  “The only people they let into the compound are those who they’re expecting,” I say.

  Neil draws another question-diamond.

  “I swear to God, I am done with those little shapes,” snaps Evyan. For the first time ever, she and I are entirely in sync. “I am ready to crumple up that piece of paper and shove it —”

  “Is there a way we can make them expect an arrival tonight?” Neil asks.

  “No,” says Quinn, and his face has that earnest expression he always gets when he’s thinking hard. “We can’t. We can’t.”

  And suddenly, I get it.

  “We can’t because we’re outside the system,” Quinn continues. “But someone on the inside could, someone like —”

  “Sofia!” I finish for him.

  “She could plant a message in the security system that someone is expected?” Neil checks.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “Easy,” Quinn adds.

  “Then the next logical question is: who would they feasibly have to admit, in the middle of the night?” Neil asks. “Who would you need to be?”

  “Some emergency service. Like a doctor, maybe! If someone was sick, they’d have to admit a doctor,” I say, excited that there may be a way in after all.

  “My sister’s a doctor,” Neil says, surprising me again. I’ve never thought about the lives of the rebels beyond their involvement in the resistance. “But she would not be keen to join a liberation mission, and besides, we live clear across town. If we had to wait for her to join us before we set off, we wouldn’t make it in time.”

  “Okay, so who else might come to the gates?” Quinn says.

  “Someone making a delivery?” Evyan suggests.

  “Nah,” I say. “Not at night. Besides, ASTA get their deliveries mainly by drones. PlayState would be the same.”

  “An official transport. A purification center disposal unit?” Quinn suggests, but then immediately shoots the idea down. “No, that won’t work, they have special vans and trucks, and where would we get one of those?”

  Truck. The word sparks something in my brain.

  “How about,” I say, “if they had a plumbing emergency?”

  Three faces turn to look at me. Quinn is smiling, Neil nodding, Evyan has an eyebrow raised. Carlos is now beeping an imaginary horn, and fiddling with every button and dial remaining on the dashboard.

  “Look over there.” I point through the windshield. “It’s a plumber’s truck.”

  “You think the keys will be inside?” Neil asks.

  “It’s possible,” I say.

  There’s a lot less theft these days, with people off the streets. Crime, like most everything else, has redirected itself online.

  “We won’t need the keys,” says Evyan, and I’m shocked to see she’s grinning widely. Have I ever seen her smiling before?

  “Are you going to hot-wire it?” Neil asks.

  “Hullo? 1990 called — it wants its technology back,” Evyan says, digging around in her backpack. “You can’t hot-wire cars built this century, dude.”

  I glance at the truck — it doesn’t look new, but it’s not that old.

  “Then how?” I ask.

  “Jammer and clone key programmer.” Evyan holds up two small objects.

  One looks like the sort of remote control device my mother had to open our garage’s electric roller-door — in the days when Mom still drove and left the house. The other is a palm-sized gadget with an LCD screen and some cords dangling from it.

  “What the heck are those?” I ask. “And why do you have them?”

  Evyan merely says, “Stay out of sight until I signal you, then come running.”

  Chapter 4

  Out past curfew

  Evyan scrambles out of the van and heads off down the street toward the flatbed truck. I clamber up front and get Carlos to duck down behind the dashboard with me. There’s a rumble of thunder from somewhere in the distance, but inside the van, all is quiet. I glance back at the other two. Neil is stroking his beard and smiling vaguely at his flowchart, while Quinn is writing the message to Sofia.

  “Tell her to disable the cameras covering the entrance to the building and the lobby inside,” I tell Quinn.

  He nods and asks, “What’s the name of the plumber — can you see?”

  “Royal Flush Plumbing.”

  Evyan has just reached the truck. As she passes it, she swings her hip into the driver’s door. A car alarm shatters the silence, but Evyan is already ducking behind the railings of the old subway entrance. A minute passes, then a short, dumpy man appears from the entrance of the apartment block, holds
out his own remote key, and switches off the alarm.

  Silence is restored. He walks around the truck, presumably checking it hasn’t been broken into, and then walks back toward the apartment, relocking the truck with his remote.

  Nothing happens for a couple of minutes, then Evyan emerges from her hiding spot, walks casually up to the truck, opens the driver’s door and slips inside.

  “She’s in!” I tell the others.

  “Here’s the note for Sofia,” Quinn says.

  I pass the paper to Carlos, who stows it back in his underwear.

  “Give it to Miss Tallulah straightaway, and tell her it’s really urgent. Do you understand?” I hand over the rest of the candy.

  Up ahead, the truck’s lights are flashing.

  “I think she’s done it!” I say, amazed at the ease with which Evyan has committed grand theft auto.

  We grab all the bags, exit the van and run up the street to the truck. Its engine is purring, and Evyan has killed the lights. She fiddles for a minute with the padlock securing the two metal flaps that cover the flatbed’s back, and then the lock pops open with a soft click.

  “How did you do that?” I ask as Quinn tosses our bags into the back.

  “Let’s go!” Evyan urges.

  She gets behind the wheel again. Quinn climbs inside the cab of the truck and slides over to make room. I follow, but Neil says, “I’m not coming.”

  “No?” Quinn says.

  “No. I don’t want to have more to do with that than I have to.”

  He gestures to my rifle as he says it, but it’s hard not to feel that what he really objects to is me. Whatever. I’m glad he’s not coming with us — he’d be more of a liability than an asset, no two ways about that.

  “I’ll go ahead to the safe house and get things ready. Here, take this.” Neil leans over me to hand Quinn a cellphone, and shows us he has another. They’re those cheap disposable types with preloaded airtime that you can buy from Smart Vendor machines.

  “Do you always carry a pair of burners around with you?” Evyan asks, sounding impressed.

  “No,” says Neil. “I always carry at least three. I’ve programmed my number on speed-dial number one. Text me when you’re out and clear, and we’ll decide on a meeting spot.”

  “Can’t we just finalize that now?” Evyan asks.

  Quinn and I both shake our heads. “In case we get caught, we should know as little as possible,” Quinn explains.

  “Speaking of which,” I say to Evyan, “this is going to be dangerous. It’s entirely possible that we’ll get caught or … worse.”

  “I know that,” she says, looking ahead at the road.

  “You should go with Neil, it’ll be safer.”

  “Do I look scared?”

  “Fine, don’t say I didn’t warn you.” I pull Carlos up onto my lap.

  “Why’s the kid coming with?” Evyan asks.

  “We’ll drop him off at Tallulah’s on the way.”

  “He ran here — he can run back. Scram, kid.”

  Carlos makes to get out, but I put an arm around his waist and hold tight. “No, Evyan. It’s dangerous out there. We’ll give him a ride.”

  “It’ll only take a minute or two to drop him off,” says Quinn. “Bye, Neil, good luck.”

  “Just look out for rats and drones, okay?” I say.

  Neil says something as he closes the door. I can’t hear perfectly because Evyan’s revving the engine, but it sounds like, “May the goddess be with you.”

  “The goddess?” I ask Quinn as we set off, shaking my head at the enigma that is Neil. How can someone be both so brilliantly logical and so unbelievably flaky at the same time?

  Carlos leans forward to open the glove compartment, searches through its contents, finds a packet of gel-filled liquirats, and crams a fistful into his mouth. Quinn reaches around the boy. pulls all the papers out of the compartment, and examines them — ever the intel agent analyzing the information.

  “Where did you learn to pick locks and steal cars?” I ask Evyan.

  “I learned how to pick locks in juvie.”

  “What’s juvie?”

  “Juvenile detention — kiddy-prison. God, you are so vanilla!”

  “And stealing cars?” Quinn says.

  She gives him a grin and says, “Why d’you think I was sent to juvie in the first place?”

  Fabulous. I’m on the run with a hot rebel, a sugar addict, and a convicted felon.

  After we’ve dropped Carlos and his candy rats off at Tallulah’s, we head south, in the direction of PlayState. As we drive through the mostly deserted streets, I snuggle up close to Quinn, reveling in the sensation of being near to him again.

  “What have you got there?” I ask him.

  “Registration and license” — he tosses two documents back into the glove compartment — “and something even better. It’s an all-hours permit for Cletus Mayberry, plumber, and one assistant, to travel outside of curfew hours in the business of attending to plumbing emergencies.”

  “Good find!” says Evyan, fist-bumping Quinn.

  It is good. If we’re stopped by a curfew patrol, we have a free pass. But I’ve spotted a problem.

  “Cletus is a male name, which means Quinn will have to be the plumber,” I say.

  “Your pipes are my pleasure, ma’am,” Quinn drawls in a broad Southern accent, giving me a sexy wink.

  “And the permit only allows for one assistant.”

  “That’ll be me,” Evyan says quickly.

  “Why you? Why not me?” I ask, peeved.

  “Because you don’t look old enough to be a plumber’s apprentice,” she replies. “What are you, fifteen or something?”

  “I’ll be seventeen next month!”

  “Whatever, we still don’t have a pass for a third person.”

  “Then what?”

  In answer, Evyan pulls the truck into a dark side street and, keeping the motor running, engages the handbrake. “You’ll have to ride in the back.”

  I wish I could think of a good argument against this plan, but I can’t.

  “Sorry,” Quinn tells me softly as I climb into the flatbed. He looks more like a wild pirate than ever, silhouetted against the lightning-streaked sky with the wind in his hair.

  I shove the bags and backpacks behind some stacked lengths of guttering and lie down uncomfortably on the corrugated truck bed floor. There’s just time to wave goodbye to Quinn before Evyan slams the panels closed and I’m left in the darkness.

  “Don’t lock it,” I hear Quinn say.

  Yeah, don’t lock it, I think. I’m already feeling trapped and claustrophobic. What if, when we get to our destination, Evyan can’t pick the lock again? Or says she can’t?

  I hear two doors slam, and then the truck is rattling down the road, with me bouncing around in the back, and thunder reverberating all around us. I can only hope that Tallulah gets the message to Sofia okay, and that Sofia has enough time to plant an alert in ASTA and PlayState’s system that the gate guards should expect the arrival of Royal Flush Plumbing.

  The ride feels like it goes on forever, and is so bumpy that I reckon Evyan must deliberately be aiming for potholes and speed bumps. The only thing more uncomfortable than rolling around in the darkness, banging elbows and knees against the plumbing equipment, is when it starts raining, and cold water leaks through the gaps between the panels, splashing down onto me. And the only thing worse than that is when the truck starts slowing to a stop. Because that’s when the banging of my heart begins — a rapid, percussive accompaniment to the strident blare of a police siren.

  Chapter 5

  Out of sight

  Crap.

  I shine my flashlight inside the confines of the enclosed flatbed, desperately searching for a way to hide in case the cops decide to check back here. Pipes, wrenches and shovels, a white toilet seat with attached lid, a toolbox — there’s nothing large enough to conceal me. Then I register the long ladder hanging from ho
oks mounted on the low sides of the truck. I tilt it up, squeeze myself behind it with my rifle on my back, and drop it back down, just as the truck comes to a halt.

  Evyan keeps the engine running and gives it a couple of loud revs. Is she deliberately keeping its noisy to cover any sounds I might make? I stab an arm through the spaces between the ladder rungs and drag the toilet seat up against the side of the ladder. It’s a start, but my legs must still be visible.

  “Good evening, ma’am, sir.” That must be the cop’s voice. “Please turn off the engine.”

  The truck goes silent, but now I can hear the radio loudly playing a rap song. I pull a coil of yellow PVC piping up to the ladder to hide my legs, and open the lid of the toilet seat so that double the length of the ladder is covered. But this leaves my face visible through the oval center of the seat.

  Outside, the cop says something, then repeats himself more loudly. “I said, kindly lower the volume.”

  The music is turned down and I hear Evyan say, “Is there a problem, officer?” I’ve never heard her sound so respectful.

  “You’re out past curfew. Papers, please.”

  I’m too scared to pull a shovel or the fire extinguisher closer — for sure they’d make a noise that the cop would hear, even over the sound of the rain. All I can reach that is light enough for me to lift, rather than drag over, is a plunger and a silicone glue gun. Working as quietly as I can, I lift them and arrange them against the toilet seat gap.

  “Cletus Mayberry?”

  “That’s me, sir,” Quinn replies.

  “And you are?”

  “I’m … Eve, his assistant.”

  “Your pass seems to be in order. Mind me asking why you aren’t driving, sir?”

  “I never did think there was much point in keeping a dog and barking yourself.” Quinn is speaking in the accent again.

  “Where are you folks headed?”

  “We’ve been called out on a plumbing emergency to PlayState, on the south side.”

  “You have any proof you’re expected there?”

  Why is this cop so suspicious? Why isn’t he in a rush to get back into his dry cruiser?