by RJ Crayton
Amadu drove them through the gate, then once they were free of the facility, he turned back and said, “Ah, the three amigos are back together again.”
Chapter 41 - Lijah
Lijah was sleeping fitfully. He knew they were coming for him tonight, but he’d wanted to try to get a little sleep, as he didn’t know, given that they were supposed to go uptop, when he would get a real bed to sleep in again.
This bunk wasn’t perfect, but it was ten times better than what he’d had as he’d trekked through the wilderness to find his mother.
But knowing he’d be awakened soon meant he never really got fully asleep. He was rolling over when he saw a crevice of light slip in as the door opened. He looked up to find Natalie entering. He sat up, and she whispered, “Come on.”
He climbed out of the bed, slipped on his shoes, and followed her out into the too bright hallway. He squinted as his eyes adjusted to the facility’s lights. There were no guards outside his door tonight, and he wondered what Natalie had done with them. He didn’t speak to her, just followed her as she led him through several corridors. This was a stealth mission, so he just tried to keep up with her as she waded through the facility. The thing was, when they got to the stairwell, they went down instead of up.
He was tempted to say her name, to ask where they were going, but he didn’t want to delay them or possibly alert others to their presence. He wondered if they were taking a secret exit that was available to senior admins, and you had to go down before you headed up the hidden escape.
After several flights of stairs, they popped out on a level Lijah recognized. “This is Central,” he whispered, unable to mask his surprise.
She held a single finger to her lips and shook her head. She guided him down the corridor and to one of the doors that was marked LEVEL 3 ONLY. Swiping an electronic card through the reader, she opened the door, and they went in. His mother was sitting at a desk with a row of computers.
“What are we doing here?” Lijah asked.
“You want to get out and you don’t want it traced to me, then we need to cut the facility power, and then you guys can leave through the back door exit.”
Lijah shook his head. “You really don’t mean for us to leave you, do you?”
Natalie nodded. “Yes, I do. I’m going to stay here.”
“What if he figures out it’s you?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“My father isn’t safe,” she said. “Alex has been helping me keep him safe and if I leave...”
Lijah took a step toward her. “We can help your father,” he said.
Natalie laughed. “Lijah, you can barely help yourself.”
That was probably true, but he didn’t like the idea of her sticking behind with Alex. “What if he thought we forced you to come with us? What if we left a note, saying we’d subdued you and forced you out?”
She didn’t respond. He hoped it meant she was considering it. But then she frowned and said, “It’s nice of you to think of me, but I’ll be fine here.”
He turned to his mother, hoping she’d offer some words of backup, something to convince her. But his mother sat silent.
He sighed, and stared at the resolve on her face. “Fine,” he said. “What do we need to do?”
Natalie nodded and turned her attention to the row of computer monitors Shonda was sitting near. There were a couple of keyboards, and Natalie walked over and rested her fingers on one. She turned to Shonda. “You have the code?”
His mother nodded, reached into her pocket, and pulled out a sheet of paper. Natalie picked it up and smiled. “Good work,” she said.
His mother simply nodded, then gritted her teeth. He wondered how difficult the information had been to get. Natalie started typing something on the keyboard, and one of the monitors switched. A moment later, a screen asking for an override password appeared. Natalie turned back to them and said, “Alright, it’s game time.” She pulled a folded piece of paper from her back pocket and unfolded it on an empty space on the desk. She waved Lijah over, and he looked at it. A map.
“I’ve shown your mother, but I didn’t get a chance to show you. We’re here.” She pointed to a section on the map that showed a hallway and three rooms. Then she slid her finger over to a room that seemed on the opposite side as them. “This is the main server room, and that’s where all the stuff is. I’m going to use the override password to shut down everything. None of the keycards will work. They’ll be able to reboot it in five minutes, but that should be enough time for you to escape. They’ll do a search of the facility, but that will take a couple of hours. It’s possible Alex will want to look for you immediately, but his top priority has to be restoring the facility to full working order. Even if he’s interested in finding Dr. Rhodes, he can’t let that show as his top priority. So, that will be time for you to get away.”
“And go where?” Lijah said. “How far can we even make it on foot?”
“We won’t be on foot,” his mother said. He heard a jingle so he turned to see her holding car keys. “The director has an escape vehicle, and these are the keys. We’ll drive away.”
Damn. He should’ve known the folks at the top had contingency plans for everything. He hadn’t remembered his father telling him of anything like this, but he didn’t presume his father ever intended to escape and leave others behind. The SPUs were supposed to be the escape. But at some point, they’d decided maybe people would need an escape from the escape. He nodded to his mother and turned back to Natalie.
“So, how do we get to the car?”
She pointed back to the map and traced a line from the room they were in to a small door on the map. “This stairwell goes straight up,” she said. “If everything is working, it requires keycard access. But, in case of power failure, you can manually open it with a key. It’s on the keyring with the car keys.”
It figured. Natalie had it all worked out. She folded the map and held it out to him. He took it. “Are you sure you don’t want to come with us?”
She shook her head. “No. My place is here,” she said. “But if you happen to go back downstate, and run into my father, tell him I’m alright and that he shouldn’t worry about me, or tell random strangers he’s worried about me.”
Lijah chuckled. He supposed Josh and Elaan could qualify as random strangers. “OK, I’ll look him up,” he said. “It’s Lee, right? Lee Payton.”
She stared at him a moment, without answering. “His name is Lee,” she said. “He might want to switch to Radcliffe, too, though.” Then she turned to his mother. “You ready?”
Shonda nodded.
“Alright,” Natalie said. “The coast should be clear out there. It’s not too busy this time of night. I want you to go out and walk to the door. I’m going to shut it down. Stick the key in the door handle. As soon as it goes dark, turn it and head up those stairs. It’s more than a dozen flights, but at the top, you’ll reach the garage and should be able to exit without too many problems.”
Lijah nodded. His mother stood and pulled out a backpack from under the desk. Lijah hadn’t noticed it. It was similar to the one he had when he’d left his first SPU. “My stuff?”
His mother nodded. “And I got one for me, too,” she said, grabbing a second bag and slinging it over her shoulder.
“Thanks for everything, Natalie.”
She blushed. “Don’t worry about it. Just get out of here and to safety.”
Lijah nodded and then opened the door, holding it for his mother. It was now or never.
Chapter 42 - Lijah
His mother had pulled a flashlight out of her bag while they were still in the hall. He’d started to perspire from nerves as they waited for Natalie to do what she had to do. He thought it was a bad idea to wait so openly, but Natalie had planned everything else right, so he didn’t doubt her.
He was silently reminding himself to stay calm. Be cool. Just be cool. Then he heard footst
eps on the tile floor and turned to look down the hallway in time to see Alexander Caldwell facing him and his mother. A look of pure loathing and betrayal sat on Caldwell’s face. He looked like fury and rage rolled into one, and he seemed ready to explode. Lijah’s heartbeat quickened and he reached toward his mother.
Everything went black.
“Shonda,” he heard Caldwell say, but he heard the door swing open and felt his mother tug him through it.
“Shut it,” she said. He did, and the two of them raced up the stairs. This was not how it was supposed to go down. His mother was running decently fast up the stairs, but if he had the lead, he’d go faster. Perhaps fast enough that he could get the car ready for her by the time she reached the top.
“Let me pass,” he whispered. “I can get everything ready for you.”
She mumbled alright shoved keys in his hand, and stepped aside. “Go, baby, go,” she said.
He angled past her and ran as fast as he could. He was beginning to hate stairs, the higher he climbed. He could hear his mother panting behind him but didn’t bother to turn back and look. It was too dark, and he hadn’t taken out his flashlight. He wished he had. There was a railing, which made climbing the steps easier, but it was still hard when it was so dark.
By the end of the stairwell, every leg muscle burned, and his abs were twisted in agony, but he’d gotten there. He opened the door, which let him into…well, he couldn’t see. He reached into the backpack and pulled out the flashlight. Once the room was illuminated, he could see it was a garage, a simple two-car garage. In one stall was a four-door hybrid car, and in the next stall was a military jeep. He turned and ran toward the garage door and tried to pull it open. It didn’t budge. “Fuck.”
“Lijah,” he heard from the stairwell. “Are you alright?”
“Yeah, Ma,” he called back. “Just trying to figure out how to get the door open.”
“It’s probably got a lock,” she called, her breathing heavy. “I don’t hear anyone coming. I’m just pausing here. It’s a lot of stairs.”
Hell yeah. He wished he could’ve paused. But they had to get out of there. Lijah shined his flashlight on the door. Yep. Locked. It appeared a simple twist of a lever would unlock it. He did so and tried the door again. This time it rolled up. And he could see a tree-lined street. It seemed as if it was a residential neighborhood. This was weird.
He looked back to the car, and hoped the key worked for the hybrid. He needed to get as far away as he could. The door was unlocked, so he climbed in, inserted the key fob, and pressed start. The sweet hum of the engine. Thank God.
He turned in time to see his mother climb through the stairwell door. He hopped from the car and walked toward her. “You alright?”
She nodded. “Yeah, let’s get out of here.”
Lijah helped Shonda over to the car, and they edged out of the garage. Lijah was considering whether to get out and close the garage door, but when he looked in the rearview mirror, he saw Caldwell standing there. “Holy shit,” he said as he floored it, tearing them as far away as he could as fast as he could.
Chapter 43 - Elaan
Amadu had turned away from the rest of the convoy after about twenty minutes of driving and taken them along several back roads and then up a mountain. Josh had become disconcerted enough that he asked Amadu, “Do you know where you’re going?” Amadu had responded in the affirmative, and twenty minutes later, they had arrived at a cabin somewhere near the top of the mountain.
“What is this place?” Elaan asked as she looked out the window at the cabin, which had lights on.
“It’s home of The Slam Report,” Amadu said. “And where we’re going to stay, until they expose Thoreaux.”
Elaan stared even harder. The Slam Report.
“What’s The Slam Report?” Josh asked.
“It’s a website, one that’s been spreading information about Thoreaux, but my mom said very few people are still connected and get information.”
Josh turned to her, curious how she knew this information that he didn’t. She was about to explain about Alex when Amadu said, “Come on. We need to get inside.”
They got out of the car and followed Amadu to the door, where he knocked and then we all waited. A few moments later, the door opened, and Elaan gasped. “Greg!”
He smiled at her. “Yes,” he said, and took a step back. “Come on inside.”
The three of them quickly filed in. It was a cozy central room with a fireplace, a sofa, two chairs, and to the side was a desk with a lot of electronic equipment: computers, monitors, a microphone, and it looked like even a camera.
There was a hallway off the room; she presumed it led to some bedrooms. It was warm and toasty in here, even though the fireplace was empty at the moment.
“What are you doing here?” Elaan asked. The last time she’d seen Greg was the day before she left the D.C. compound. She didn’t even know him that well. She was better acquainted with his wife, Nina. She had been instrumental in Elaan, Josh, and Lijah escaping the facility. If it hadn’t been for her, she wouldn’t have known she was wanted. Though, in the end, Elaan had been sent to the Virginia facility anyway. Still, Nina had saved Josh and Lijah. They would’ve been murdered without her warning.
“You guys should get settled. There are three bedrooms in the back. I’m the first bedroom on the right. You guys can divvy up the remainder how you see fit. I just need to monitor radio traffic and make sure you guys aren’t being sought.”
Elaan looked over at the equipment, and she could hear the low hum of chatter coming out of one speaker. It was probably like a police radio, where the channels were open and you could listen to ongoing communication. Amadu nodded his assent and headed toward the back, with Josh following. Elaan did the same, Amadu headed into the first bedroom on the left, and Josh seemed to be heading after him, when Elaan grabbed his arm and said, “Would you mind bunking with me?”
He turned back and smiled. “I’d love to,” he said, and she felt glad. She didn’t like the idea of being alone in a strange cabin in the woods.
They went in the remaining bedroom and set their bags on a bed. It was a pretty sparse room, with two twin beds, one pushed against each the left and right walls. No desk, one window, and one closet. She walked over to Josh and whispered, “What do you think he’s doing here?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I thought he was pretty much a devoted soldier, a love and country and all that kind of guy. But what Thoreaux is doing is very anti-American. At least the pre-virus America. So, maybe he feels compelled to go against him.”
Elaan nodded. That was one explanation. Another was that he was a double agent. That fear percolated within her. Her mother said those who still had access to The Slam Report were those in the SPUs and the occasional cluster of people. But online access was nowhere near as ubiquitous as it once was. “Do you think we should trust him?” she whispered.
Josh turned and looked at the open doorway. “There’s only one person I trust, right now, and she’s my bunkmate,” he whispered, as he took her hand. “Let’s stick together.”
* * *
They’d settled their things and returned to the main room, waiting on Greg. He looked about the same as last she’d seen him. Tall, with curly black hair, a thick build. Today he was in jeans and a long-sleeved Henley shirt. He didn’t smile as he listened to the radio with his headphones.
After a couple of minutes, Greg took the headphones off, dragged his chair over and joined them. He looked at Josh and Elaan sitting close to each other on the sofa, and then at Amadu in the chair. He extended a hand toward Amadu. “I don’t think we’ve met. I’m General Greg Sterling.”
“Amadu Abowelyan,” Amadu said, extending his hand. That was the only time Elaan had ever heard Amadu’s last name, and she was not even going to make an attempt to pronounce it.
“What are you doing here?” Elaan asked. She thought her father had said most of the people in the SPU had died from
an outbreak. She’d thought that included Greg, but her father had been taken before the outbreak. She decided to ask based solely on what she herself knew. “Last we heard, you had an order to bring me to the immune facility.” She purposely left out the orders for Josh and Lijah. It seemed best to pretend those requests hadn’t happened.
He nodded. “That’s true,” he said. “But, obviously, I wasn’t interested in following any orders from Thoreaux once I actually reached the communications hub.”
Elaan raised an eyebrow, but it was Josh who spoke. “What happened at the communications hub?”
Greg shook his head and gritted his teeth, as if the memory still bothered him. He sighed and said, “I got access to communication. I mean, the stuff I was supposed to have and the stuff I wasn’t. There was a reason we weren’t getting information down in the SPU.”
Incredulity was written all over his face. “We had a central hub that had been monitored by civilian staff. They were apparently bored and took to monitoring and relaying communications that they weren’t supposed to. They had an entire log of snippets of conversations that painted a very clear picture that Thoreaux wasn’t helping people. There were even rumors that he’s how the president, our real president, became infected and died. The staff at that tower were helping The Slam Report, and that’s when Thoreaux’s men had them executed. But the workers left physical evidence before they were taken away. A tiny drive was shoved in a panel box at the comms tower. I wouldn’t have found it if the men who’d been in the tower hadn’t been clever.” He smiled wistfully. “They must have realized they’d been found out, so they jammed the signals coming from our end. A cursory look at the room made it seem like signals were going two ways. In reality, they’d manually overridden a wire, and we weren’t getting anything in or out. It was really clever the way they wired it. And I’m not a comm tech, so the fact that I figured it out at all was almost sheer luck. I couldn’t figure out everything they did, but I was able to get communication reestablished between the tower and the private comm room in my suite. I was trying to figure out how to reconnect everything when I found the drive. It was marked ‘SOS.’ I figured it could explain what happened. I loaded it and when I watched it, I knew Thoreaux couldn’t be trusted.”
