Do-Gooder

by J. Leigh Bailey

  “Did they hurt you?”

  “Why do you care?”

  He was still waiting, so I must not have said that out loud. Which was probably good. No need to air the family’s dirty laundry in front of the guys with guns. However, I only had dirty laundry. I tugged at my sweat-soaked, blood- and dirt-smeared shirt.

  “Isaiah?”

  “Fine.”

  He squinted at me.

  I didn’t want to tell him, but he needed to know. “DKA.” I knew he’d know the acronym, and I knew it was unlikely the guys with guns would. On the screen, his eyes widened, and he opened his mouth to say something, but I didn’t get to find out what.

  “That’s enough,” Shorty growled, stepping in front of me. “You have your proof. Now, where are my canisters?”

  “I don’t have your canisters.”

  “That is too bad,” Shorty said. He made a small gesture at his side, and one of the guards—Mike, I think—lifted his gun.

  “But I can get them!” Was that panic in Dad’s voice?

  The gun lowered.

  “But I’ll need time.”

  I drew my legs up in front of me, looping my bound hands around my knees. I lay my head on the dirty denim of my jeans. “I don’t have time,” I whispered.

  I don’t think anyone heard me.

  “Twenty-four hours.” Shorty’s tone brooked no arguments.

  “I’ll need at least three days.”

  I didn’t have three days. I couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment of no return, but three days would be pushing it. I curled up tighter. It had gotten so damn cold in here.

  “Thirty-six hours.”

  “Forty-eight.”

  All these numbers, like a countdown. Ten… nine… eight… then kablooey! Sarin gas over the Sahara.

  I wanted to go home. Absolutely. But with every concession Dad made, the sooner a weapon of mass destruction—maybe several—would be let loose.

  I thought of the kids I’d played with when I’d lived in the Central African Republic.

  I thought of the refugees I’d seen last week.

  I thought of the amount of time I had left before I hit that point of no return.

  I was fucked either way.

  “Don’t,” I said. Then louder. “Don’t. Don’t do it, Dad. You can’t let them… they’re trying to make sarin!”

  “Shut him up!” Shorty hissed, and Snake Eyes tried to cover my mouth.

  I squirmed and kicked. “It’s too late for me!” I shouted, hoping the computer’s mic wasn’t as crappy as the speakers. “But save Hank! Please. You’ve gotta save… him.”

  My head spun and all the breath came whooshing out of my body. For the second time that day, I blinked out.

  Chapter 18

  “I can’t believe we’re going to do this.” My smile is probably big enough to see from the moon. No one could blame me, though. Henry looks ah-may-zing in the black tux. And tonight, he’s all mine. Well, mine and 250 other students attending my high school’s prom.

  It might be a little risky taking a boy to prom, but it isn’t against any of the rules. I’d checked.

  Any risk is worth it. I have the smartest, sweetest, hottest boyfriend ever, and tonight everyone is going to know it.

  “It’s all good,” Henry says, straightening the bow tie of my own black tux. His hands are cool and his voice is… cold.

  His face is a perfect mask. Beautiful but empty.

  No. That’s not right. Henry is warm. Caring.

  “What’s wrong, Hank? Why are you acting this way?”

  “What way?” His voice is deep, sexy. Emotionless.

  “This way.” I wave my hand up and down, indicating the whole of him and his actions. “Don’t you want to go? I wouldn’t force you to do something you don’t want to do.”

  He smirks. “Look. It’s a simple transaction. You get what you want. I get what I want.”

  “…A SIMPLE transaction. You get what you want. I get what I want.” Henry’s voice, sharp and cold as broken glass, broke through my sleeping brain.

  I didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t remember what happened after the video chat with Chuck. My stomach cramped, drawing a groan from me. I curled up tighter, my arms wrapped protectively around my stomach.

  The conversation in the hut—who was Henry talking with?—halted.

  Drowsiness swept over me again. Whatever was going on didn’t involve me.

  “I don’t think I would have done it, you know.” Wendy sits Indian-style on the grass, plucking the tiny petals off a dandelion one at a time. She looks happier than I’ve ever seen her. She wears jeans and a yellow-and-pink T-shirt, and her blonde hair is long again, the way it was before she hacked it all off. Her face is free of makeup, and I’ve never seen her look better. In the streaming sunlight, she looks positively angelic.

  I rest on my back, my head on her folded legs. “I’m glad.”

  “Question.” It’s Wendy’s voice, but that’s not her thing. That’s something Henry and I do together. The question-answer thing.

  I play along anyway. “Shoot.”

  “Why didn’t you tell anyone the gun was mine?”

  “Because I didn’t want you to get into trouble.”

  “But you got into trouble.”

  I shrug. Dissecting it now won’t change anything. I did what I did and paid the consequences. And now I’m back and enjoying a sunny summer day with a friend.

  “My dad knew it was me.”

  Wendy’s whispered confession makes me sit up. Too quickly. My head spins and I have to wait a minute before I can look at her. “What?”

  “It was his gun. When they confiscated it from you, he recognized it.”

  “It wasn’t registered to him.” If it had been, the police would have found out before they dropped the charges.

  “No. He’s got a big gun collection and not all of it’s registered.” She presses a finger to her lips. “Shh, don’t tell.”

  A cloud passes over the sun and instead of sunlight and grass, I smell dank and rot. She pops the empty dandelion head into the air. It flies forward and lands at the foot of a gravestone. Wendy Miriam Sorenson.

  “What happened?” I grip her shoulders. My hands hold too tight, but I can’t lessen their force. “Jesus, Wendy. What did he do?”

  “He knew.” She whispers again. “And I couldn’t… I couldn’t…. So I did it.” She shakes her head, a tear tracking down one smooth cheek. “I’m sorry your sacrifice was for nothing.”

  She presses two fingers to my cheek until I turn my head. Next to her gravestone was another. Isaiah Charles Martin.

  “Fuck.”

  “TOO LATE. I was too late.” I couldn’t get that image of the twin headstones out of my mind. I couldn’t get the image of Wendy out of my mind. What if something happened to her while I was here? There was no one there to protect her from her stone-faced father.

  I didn’t fall asleep again right away. Lethargy weighed me down and made it nearly impossible to move. Something told me I had to stay awake.

  Henry. That was it. Henry had been hurt.

  Mrs. Okono betrayed him—us—and then he’d been knocked out.

  How long ago had that happened?

  There was something else.

  Oh, yeah. Chuck. He had forty-eight hours to return the canisters. But how long had I been out? Had it been two days?

  “Henry?” My voice cracked and croaked. I tried again. “Henry?”

  Nothing.

  It took a minute, but I was finally able to roll over enough to see the entire room.

  Henry wasn’t there.

  My heart beat in a queasy thump-thump-thump that echoed in my head and in the empty room.

  Where was he?

  Would Shorty have hurt him to get back at me? At my dad?

  He couldn’t be dead.

  My head swam as I battled against hyperventilating. Passing out again wouldn’t help anyone.

  Light filled the room
, and I shut my eyes against the glow.

  Something dropped into one corner and something larger—God, let it be Henry—slid against the wall and onto the ground.

  I pried my eyes open, but I couldn’t make them focus. I caught a flash of red and a blurred form that must have been Henry. He knelt on the ground, using one arm pressed against the wall to hold him up. His hand slid and he slumped forward until he was on all fours, his body heaving.

  Gagging, choking dry heaves. The kind that made it feel like your body tried to expel your intestines out your mouth. I could sympathize.

  What was wrong?

  “Hank?” My voice was wheezy, barely audible, but Henry heard. He whipped his head up. I still couldn’t focus—I think the jelly helmet covered my eyes again. One moment he hunched on the floor, the next he sat next to me, something red in his arms.

  My backpack.

  “What did you do?”

  I was glad I couldn’t see better. The red blob that was my backpack was bad enough, but if I’d had to see the bag in detail, I’d have thrown up. Empty stomach or no.

  I reached over and grabbed his hand. “Damn it, Hank. What did you do?”

  He shrugged off my weak grip. “I did what I had to do.”

  Ice water churned in my guts.

  I closed my eyes and cried. Tears may not have poured from my eyes, but my soul registered the loss.

  The stupid, self-sacrificing son of a bitch.

  Chapter 19

  The cold from the dark and foggy Washington, DC, streets seeps into my bones. I know I’m in DC because I can see the Washington Monument in the distance. I’m definitely not on the tourist path. I’m pretty sure this is the part of the country’s capital outsiders don’t know exists. The stench of rotting garbage, urine, and burning metal assaults my nose, and I tuck my face into my hoodie. It’s cold. The kind of damp cold that makes joints ache and breaths puff out in a white mist.

  A group of kids—ages anywhere from fourteen to eighteen—sit under a building’s overhang. They don’t talk. Not a word. They shift and pull sweatshirts closer around bony shoulders to ward off the chill.

  A car creeps down the street and comes to a stop in front of the kids.

  They talk, though I can’t hear the words. Some kind of agreement is made, and one of them stands up and passes his sweatshirt to one of the others. He’s tall, thin, and his long brown hair hangs to his shoulder blades.

  My chest seizes. Henry.

  The passenger-side window rolls down, and Henry leans in. A few moments later, Henry nods, opens the door, and slides into the car.

  I shout at him to stop, to turn away. To come with me.

  I WRAPPED my arms around my middle to soothe the stabbing pain in my stomach.

  “Damn it, let me talk to the scientist guy. I know there’s one here.” Henry’s angry voice pulled me out of sleep, though the dregs of the dream tried to pull me back.

  A low, indistinct voice answered him.

  “Look, let’s be real here. He’s dying. Dead hostages bring no ransom.”

  The door slamming ushered me back into dreams.

  “It’s not like he cheated on you.” Elbow planted, chin in hand, Wendy looks at me from across the small table. Twangy country music plays from a beat-up jukebox across the room. She uses a little stir straw to circulate the ice cubes in her glass of Coke. “It’s not like you two were dating.”

  “That’s not the point. Not. The. Point,” I emphasize, stabbing my own stir straw at her with each word.

  “It is the point. Besides, even if you were going out, how can you be mad at him for doing what it took to save you?”

  “I don’t want him to have to save me. He needs to stop saving me.”

  Loud laughter booms from the other side of the room. I slink in my chair. Chuck and Shorty are having some kind of bonding moment at another small table. Chuck has on some kind of cheesy, green poker visor, and Shorty deals cards. The pot in the middle holds pictures in frames. Mrs. Okono. Henry. Wendy. Me.

  “He’s kind of hot.” Wendy points at Henry’s picture.

  I nod. So hot. “Yeah, but he’s just like Chuck. Another do-gooder, out to save the world.”

  “It doesn’t mean he would ignore you just because your dad did.” Wendy takes a sip of her Coke. Looking at me over the rim, she says, “Besides, you like that about him.”

  “Do not.” I cross my arms over my chest and slouch in the chair.

  A bartender sets up at the bar next to us. He’s a slight, pale man with stringy blond hair and a ratlike face. He has the look of an absentminded professor or scientist, especially when he starts to pull out bottles and glasses, adding liquid to glasses in a seemingly random pattern.

  “A little of this, a splash of that. Just what you need to feel yourself again.” He plops a glass full of a noxious blue liquid in front of me. It hisses and fizzes.

  I look from Wendy to the bartender. “Um… what is this?”

  “It’s good for you.”

  That’s the same thing Mom says about prune juice. The argument doesn’t work for her, and it certainly isn’t going to convince me to drink this concoction.

  “Just a sip or two, mind. You don’t want too much. This cocktail has quite a kick.”

  “JUST A sip or two. After about twenty minutes give him some of the juice. Then, twenty minutes later, another hit of the insulin. Alternate the water with the juice and the insulin. Electrolytes would be better, but we don’t have anything like that.”

  “That doesn’t seem very scientific,” Henry said. He sat next to me, holding my hand. I always liked it when our hands touched. The connection. The warmth.

  “I’ll be honest, we may already be too late.” The heavily accented German voice rang a bell. His words barely registered, but the voice….

  I struggled away from Henry. Away from Rat Man. I wanted to demand he get his mass-murdering, weapons-of-mass-destruction-creating hands away from me. But the internal mechanism that translates thoughts into words seemed to be malfunctioning.

  “Shh…. You’re going to be fine.” Henry tried to soothe me, but I refused to be soothed. Henry didn’t understand. It was already too late, so his sacrifice was for nothing.

  I DIDN’T remember much beyond that. Not my dreams. Not what went on around me. Maybe I’d actually been in a coma. Did people dream in comas? I had flashes of memory.

  Henry waking me up and making me drink some obnoxiously sweet fruit juice.

  Henry waking me up and making me drink a cup full of water.

  Henry waking me up and injecting me with my emergency insulin.

  Henry waking me up and making me drink some obnoxiously sweet fruit juice.

  Henry waking me up and making me drink a cup full of water.

  I wished he’d leave me alone. Just let me sleep.

  Chapter 20

  THE GUARDS swept in, guns at the ready. Shorty strode in behind them. He pointed at me and barked, “Let’s go.”

  Two of the guards slung their rifles behind their backs by the strap. Each grabbed one of my arms and hauled me to my feet. I was mostly lucid at this point—whatever formula of fluids and insulin The Scientist and Henry had pushed on me seemed to have helped. I hadn’t fallen into a coma at least. But my body was not happy or healthy. The pain in my stomach reminded me in no uncertain terms just how pissed my body was.

  Even in the short time we’d been here—had it really been just a week?—my muscles had visibly shrunk. That’s what happens when your fucked-up metabolism didn’t have enough calories to burn. Damn, it happened fast. I trembled with cold, even in the heat of the rain forest.

  The combination of pissed-off stomach, atrophied muscles, and fuzzy-headedness meant that even if the guards were able to get me to my feet, it didn’t mean I was able to stay up. My knees buckled, and the guards were forced to take a firmer grip.

  “Hurry up,” Shorty snapped. “Your father is waiting.”

  Henry stood up. He’d kept h
imself to a far corner whenever he wasn’t pouring liquids down my throat. Maybe because I refused to acknowledge him when he tried to talk to me.

  I didn’t have anything to say to him. Not anymore.

  “No!” Shorty’s hand shot out. “You stay.”

  Shorty might as well have shot Henry. All color drained from Henry’s already pale face, and he hunched over as though he’d taken a bullet to the stomach. The tortured look in his wide eyes said it all.

  Betrayed.

  Again.

  “What about Henry?” I pulled against the arms that restrained me. “What’s going to happen to him?”

  No answer. I might as well have not been there for all the notice Shorty gave me. The other guards ignored me too.

  I dug in my feet. “Henry!”

  “Move it!” Shorty barked.

  “What about Henry?” I let my body sag, hoping the dead weight would slow things down.

  “The deal was for you. The other,” Shorty said, pointing to Henry’s dazed form, “he is insurance.”

  I stared at Henry, a horrified ache settling in my chest. I couldn’t leave him behind. But what could I do? Nothing. I was absolutely useless. I swallowed hard, searching for something—anything—to say to make this easier. I had no words.

  Henry stepped forward, scooping up the red backpack. “You’ll need this.” He didn’t look at me as he handed it over.

  I grabbed his hand instead of the bag. “We’ll figure something out. I promise.”

  It was an empty promise and Henry knew it. “I know,” he said. Bleak eyes told me he had no hope of a rescue or a happy ending.

  Pain rung in my head, making nausea surge in my belly. I touched my head where someone—probably the evil-eyed Snake Eyes—had hit me with the butt of his assault rifle. My vision swam and nausea churned.

  I let myself be dragged forward because I didn’t have anything else I could do.