Thinner Than Thou

by Kit Reed

  “When we wouldn’t sell, they just moved in on us, and when we still didn’t budge they built that windowless monstrosity you see. It just went up around us. They thought it would scare us off, but this valley is our life.” Theophane waves at the sugar cube. “The original abbey is in the middle of everything they built up around us. We’re deep inside.”

  “But it’s like being buried alive!”

  “We’re contemplatives,” Theophane says. “It doesn’t matter where we are.

  “But you have this tunnel …”

  “We still accept postulants. And we need supplies.”

  Dave says carefully, “And right now, you’re out here.”

  “I came to ask if we can help.”

  “If you can get out, why don’t you just escape?”

  “We’re contemplatives.” Theophane repeats, quietly, “It doesn’t matter where we are.”

  But Dave is advancing on something they can’t see. “So you’ve got this tunnel, and this tunnel goes into the middle of …”

  The old monk nods. “Their headquarters. We’re buried so deep they’ve forgotten us.”

  Dave’s voice is sharp. “It’s the only way in?”

  “Wait! Where are you going?”

  Dave has lifted the trap and is headed down. “In!”

  “I said, wait!” It is a command. Arrested, Dave turns with a jerk.

  “Please. I have to get in.”

  “Why would you want to go in?”

  “My girlfriend.”

  “Our sister.”

  Some time during this exchange Danny has come awake and moved quietly into the little circle. He points. “She’s in there.”

  With a nod, Dave, lifts the trap.

  “Stop,” the old monk says firmly. “You don’t want to go in there.”

  “We’re not afraid of the Dedicated Sisters.”

  “That’s not the point,” he says. “The point is, there’s no point to going in.”

  “Wait a minute!”

  “There’s no point because there aren’t any girls in there.”

  “But it’s headquarters!”

  “Exactly. The only thing in there is the financial center. It’s the center of everything, all of Earl Enterprises.”

  Absently, Betz fingers the logo on her belt. Bo’s rant rewinds and plays inside her head. Her voice is soft. “So it’s true about the Reverend.”

  The monk snorts. “If you want to call him that.”

  Dave is trying hard to come to terms with this. He says, “How do you know? You’re sure Annie isn’t …”

  “Nobody in there but Dedicateds, and only the Dedicated accountants. Oh yes, a few techies. For the computers. Floors of them.”

  “Computers?”

  “This is a very big business, you know?”

  Betz says with a sense of obligation, “And no patients that you know of.”

  “No patients at all.”

  “But, Annie!” .

  “I can guarantee you, you won’t find her in there.”

  “So it’s all about business.”

  Even in the moonlight Theophane can read Dave’s expression. The monk puts a kind hand on Dave’s shoulder, saying, “Believe me, business is all there is.”

  “They’re not hiding any …”

  “I’m sorry. No patients. The. place is full of accountants.”

  “You’re sure there aren’t any …”

  Theophane says gently, “No.”

  The sound Dave makes is not exactly a word.

  When he speaks again, Theophane sounds profoundly sad. “There are a lot of bad things going on inside, but there are no girls trapped here.”

  16

  The basement of the Dedicated Sisters building is about what a fugitive would expect. Labyrinthine. Corridors lead into new corridors and the narrow girl and the wide one don’t have a bread crumb between them to mark the trail.

  “This could be it,” Kelly says as she rounds a new corner. She perks up at the sight of something Annie can’t see. “Down there!”

  The problem Annie can’t state is that Kelly is so big that she can’t see around her. “Where?”

  “That’s gotta be the way out.” Wheezing, Kelly points. The words come out between little gasps for air. “We’re right underneath the lobby, I think. Hurry up, they’re coming!”

  “I don’t hear anybody coming.”

  The more Kelly hurries, the slower she seems to go. “Come on, this has gotta be it!” With a tremendous effort, she pushes herself the last few steps. “Oh, shit.”

  It is another door.

  Annie may be feeling weird and unsteady, but poor Kelly is puffing with exhaustion. Like many people her size, she’s so used to conserving energy that the sprint to this point—the way out, it has to be—almost did her in. And why were they running? Something Kelly heard—or thought she heard. There is no telling now. Where she had been the sweet, cool leader, Kelly is close to the end. She gave everything she had to get this far, and her hopes are developing hairline cracks.

  “I don’t feel so good,” she gasps. “I think it’s my heart.”

  “No it isn’t,” Annie says, pushing open the door.

  “Is this it?”

  “No.” More corridor stretches. She pulls Kelly inside and slams it behind them like an air lock designed to keep alien monsters off the ship.

  Kelly sinks to the floor in a puddle of flesh. “Leave me here and save yourself.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “I can’t run any more.”

  “Kelly, we’re almost there!”

  Kelly moans, “I don’t care. Go ahead, you can make it.”

  “Shut up.”

  “ … wherever it is.”

  “Forget it. I’ll wait.”

  So Annie has to sit here on the-basement floor with her friend for several minutes, waiting tensely with her back pressed against the door until Kelly is ready to get to her feet and struggle to the end of this new corridor. Like a cutting horse, Annie nudges her around the last corner, where another hallway stretches. This damn basement is nothing more than a series of unkept promises. At the far end of the hall they’ve just entered … right.

  Giving no clue as to what’s beyond it, a closed door waits like a hostile relative. Annie tries for hopeful but hits a note of false cheer. “Hey, this could be it!”

  “In your dreams.”

  “Really. The last door.”

  “Yeah, right.” Lunging the short distance to the closed door, Kelly grabs the knob for support. All the heart goes out of her in a big sigh. “OK. The End.”

  “Get over yourself.” Annie pushes Kelly aside and tries the knob. The door opens and, like the light in a refrigerator, a forty-watt bulb in the high ceiling goes on, casting a dim light. “We’re here.”

  They are looking into a basement room. Set high in the far wall, there is a single window, the kind architects plant in the cellars of large and small buildings to admit a little light.

  “Or not,” Kelly says.

  “Chill. Two more minutes and we walk free.”

  Or do they? Hard to tell. Annie has no way of knowing whether this window opens at ground level or whether it’s one of those basement windows sunk at the bottom of a light well. When she climbs up there and gets it open, can she and Kelly worm their way out and walk free or will they come out into a well with an exit staircase or will they be stuck at the bottom of some walled enclosure they have to scale to get out?

  Kelly’s voice rises anxiously. “Do you see anything?”

  “Not really. It’s dark in here.”

  “Come on, what do you see?”

  She squints. In this light, she can barely make out the window, let alone what waits outside. “Kelly, it’s night.”

  “Like, is it sidewalk out there, or parking lot or gravel or what?”

  “You’d better pray for sidewalk, Kell.” Approaching cautiously, Annie looks up. The window is covered with chipboard, just
like the one in her girly hospital room upstairs on the ANO ward, except that nobody has bothered to paint a cheerful landscape down here. Spray-painted black, the board is fixed in place with four oversize screws. “Oh, man. It’s sealed.”

  Instead of groaning, Kelly surprises her. “Don’t sweat it. I’ve got a thing for that.”

  Using the nail file Kelly (clever Kelly!) has brought with her and retrieving the spent IV needle she slipped into the pocket of her gown, Annie goes to work. She pushes an empty wardrobe carton over to the window and, standing on it, begins working on the screws. While Annie works, Kelly sits with her back against the door, recovering. In a . way, it’s reassuring. At her size, Kelly can help without doing anything. Spent as she is, she can still function as a human barrier. All she has to do is lean.

  “Hurry,” Kelly says unexpectedly. “I think I hear something.”

  Annie breaks several fingernails, without budging any of the screws. “I’m trying, Kell.”

  Now that she has both of them here, within a few feet of freedom; now that she’s lost control of the situation, Kelly has begun to fret. “I think I hear something coming, do you hear something coming?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “What if it’s the cart!”

  “Kelly, don’t!”

  “What if—”

  “Just don’t.” As she works, Annie is considering their situation. It’s fine for her to be standing on this empty carton; even though she feels hugely fat at ninety pounds, the carton supports her weight, no problem. But what happens when she gets this window uncovered and it’s time for Kelly to climb up? Three seconds of Kelly and the carton will fall into accordion pleats. When she’s done here, Annie will have to scour the basement for a crate or ladder strong enough to hold her friend, and if she does find something, and if she’s strong enough to lug it back, can Kelly make it up on top of the thing and wriggle over the sill? You don’t think about the problems of your friends’ size, really, until something like this comes up. Oh hell, if her big friend can make it up to the ledge, will she fit through the window or will she get stuck? And even if she does fit, what if they come out into one of those well thingies Annie is worried about and they have to climb to the top to get out? What if … Uneasy now, she puts on her perkiest, most cheerful tone. “Oh, cool. The first one just came loose.”

  The big screw tinkles to the floor.

  “Shut up,” Kelly hisses “They’ll hear!”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “They’re after us, I just know.”

  “Shut up,” Annie says crossly. “They don’t even know we’re gone.”

  “But what if somebody checked and we’re gone?”

  “They’ll never find us here.”

  “I think I hear voices.”

  “They don’t even know we’re missing, so chill.”

  “Bed check! It’s gotta be midnight out there!”

  The second screw comes out and she clamps it in her teeth, talking around it. “Keep it down, Kelly, or they’ll hear us.”

  “Who will, Annie? Annie, are they coming? Do you think they can hear us? Did you hear it too?”

  “Hear what?”

  “Did you hear the cart?”

  Screw number three. She slips screws two and three into her pocket. “No no, but shhh anyway. Just in case.”

  “Like, you hear the cart and you aren’t telling me?”

  “Kelly, could you just be quiet a minute so I can do this?”

  “I don’t know how I’m going to make it up to that window.”

  “I’ll give you a boost.”

  Kelly snorts. “As if. What’ll we do?”

  “Think of something,” Annie says, fidgeting with the last screw. When it comes out the board will fall out of the frame and they’ll be free. Well, she will. “Come on, you’re the smart one.”

  “So I’m, like, supposed to solve this?”

  “Have to. You’re very smart.”

  “That’s all right for you to say, I’m also very fat.”

  “Don’t say that, you’re wonderful.” Annie works on with the tears running down. One more minute and they’ll fill her eyes up to the top so she can’t see. “Look, if I can’t find something for you to climb on, I’ll come back with a ladder or something, you know, like a rope.”

  “No you won’t. You’ll just leave me here.”

  “I would never do that.”

  “Promise?”

  “Didn’t I just promise?”

  In the next second, Kelly surges to her feet. “Are you sure you don’t hear anything?”

  “No. Really. I don’t.” Then she does. As the last screw falls to the cement floor with a little metallic tinkle, Annie hears the familiar, inexorable rattle of the cart. The cart! My God, what is that thing? Is it something the Deds wheel out whenever kids try to escape? Does anybody ever get away? Have there been dozens and dozens of failed escapes from these places? What will the Dedicated Mother do to her .if they catch her? She doesn’t know. She has no idea. She wishes she did, but there isn’t time to weigh this problem now, the positives and the negatives, the probability ratings of success and failure in this particular escape. She barely has time to jump back as the board covering the window falls inward and, to keep from being knocked over backward, she bats it off to the side. It clatters to the floor with a thump that is followed by complete silence as Annie stops breathing. Even short-winded Kelly stops breathing, sliding silently back into place so that her huge, soft body barricades the door. Whoever is trundling the cart stops trundling it, yes that was definitely the mysterious cart rolling down the hallway toward them, Annie is certain of it now that the rattle has stopped.

  It’s OK, she tells herself. Freedom is just outside the window. Kelly is leaning hard against the door and it’s going to be a while before the Deds manage to move the door and ease her aside with it. In the time that takes, Annie can worm her way out the opening no problem, she can escape and go for help. She’ll come back for poor Kelly, she’ll go to the cops and she will bring reinforcements, she will! She’ll get out and then, by God, she’ll go on the TV or get the National Guard or something, I promise, Kell! and she will by God come back with help for her friend and her people, whoever she gets, will come in by the main gate of this rotten prison hospital and find her smart, nice, queen-size new friend and whatever it takes, they’ll break her out.

  The rattle has stopped. Furious, heavy knocking shakes the door. The voice may be female, but it is huge. “WHO’S IN THERE.”

  Kelly hisses, “They’re here!”

  The voice outside is joined by other voices.

  “Kel, I have to go now.”

  “WHOEVER YOU ARE, IDENTIFY YOURSELF!” The sound intensifies. There are a dozen people knocking now.

  “I know that,” Kelly says.

  Poised with one hand on the sill and the other on the window latch, Annie looks back at her for approval. “But I’ll be back for you.”

  Kelly’s grin is as foolishly hopeful as it is gallant. “I know you will.”

  “WHOEVER YOU ARE, OPEN THE DOOR.”

  “I promise!”

  “Go! Get moving, girl.”

  “I am, I just have to open this fucking window. I just …” Tugging, Annie yanks it open at last and where the falling chip board didn’t topple her, the flood of debris coming in through the open window does. Traprock, she supposes, or maybe the junk that piles up around foundations in this kind of situation, like, probably kids threw candy wrappers and stuff into the light well and this is just trash. In a minute the little shower of dirt and rubble will clear, she thinks. The thing will open up and they’ll get that first wave of fresh night air.

  “THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING. OPEN UP!”

  “Hurry.”

  “I am!”

  The last bits of shale shickle to the floor as the Dedicated Sisters storm the door and Kelly slides with it in spite of herself and in a fail ure of balance, falls over on her sid
e. With the weight removed, the door to the last avenue to the only open window in the installation at Wellmont inches open under the combined force of the Dedicated Sisters massed outside, determined to move poor Kelly’s intractable bulk.

  Flailing, Kelly wheezes, “Fuck.”

  “Oh, God!”

  Knocked over by the little flood of debris, Annie is on her back on the cement floor now, regarding the window, which is being held open by a boulder that has tumbled into the gap. The big stone fills the window frame, protecting them so that instead of drowning the girls in the basement room, sand sifts in around the edges, suggesting. what lies outside. Their escape route is sealed. There is no fresh air coming in around the boulder, no hope of freedom beyond. Instead of opening on the night, this basement window opens on solid layers of sand and shale. With no idea how the information comes to her, Annie Abercrombie comprehends the breadth and the depth of her situation.

  The Dedicated Sisters’ installation at Wellmont may be built like a conventional high-rise, but top to bottom, from basement to penthouse offices, the whole building has been constructed from the top down. The Deds’ entire miserable, ersatz convent at Wellmont is underground, with the basement level twenty-some stories below the surface of the earth.

  17

  “Excuse me. I’m Marg Abercrombie and—”

  “Sorry, Ma’am, you can’t be here.”

  “Sister Dolores Farina sent me.”

  “Who?”

  Confronted by a lanky guard in orange coveralls, Marg draws herself up. The result is more impressive than it used to be. Her time on the road has hardened her jawline and made her thinner. Her last, best lead has brought her to an adobe guardhouse set in the middle of a wasteland; the old Marg would be in tears by now but hardship has made her tough. “I said, I’m Marg Abercrombie, and—”

  The guard raises his hand to stop her. There is no badge on his pocket but his manner is forbidding and official. “Do you have a pass?”

  “A pass?” The desert sun is blinding. Squinting, she surveys the landscape, the miles of razor wire separating her from whatever lies inside the gates, the long, tin-roofed building in the middle distance, the only other sign of civilization that she can see. From here it looks like a tobacco shed.