“This is different, Tim. It’s real-life Big Brother stuff, worse than Big Brother in some ways, and a lot of people are up in arms over it. There’re rebel and militia groups chattering all over the place about what a massive overstep of government authority this is, not to mention the flagrant violations of the Bill of Rights.”
“Oh, they’re always squawking. And we’re not involved in any of that,” Tim says, “so what does any of that have to do with what we’re doing now?”
Carlos locks his gaze on Tim. “It’s all part of the same beast we’re fighting against. Helping the doc and this HADroid is letting us screw with their plans a little. Maybe this will prove to be a small scrap, or maybe it turns into something bigger. We’re probing. Looking to see what they’ll do and what this all means. And the more we listen and engage, the more we learn about their capabilities.”
Tim is watching his brother. Looking deeply into his eyes. Measuring Carlos to see if there’s more going on than he’s letting on. “I was wondering why you were so invested in this. I mean, beyond your friendship with the doc.”
“That’s it,” Carlos says.
Tim sighs. “Just be careful, man. Pick your shots. That’s what we’ve always said. Pick your shots and don’t overreach. So where’re you heading next?”
“I really don’t know,” Carlos says. Tim frowns at him, so he adds, “I really don’t know. Maybe Maryland, maybe Knoxville. I might not even tell Patrick and Paula until we’re on the road.”
“You’re that worried?”
“I am.”
A green light flicks to life above the elevator; someone’s coming down. The two brothers watch the light and wait. There’s a bing when the elevator reaches the first floor. The doors slide open; it’s Patrick. He’s a bit surprised to see Carlos and Tim talking right outside the elevator, but steps out and holds up a cigarette.
“Hey guys, you heading back up?”
Tim puts out his hand to hold the elevator doors open. Carlos smiles at Patrick. “Yeah, we’re heading up now. Probably start packing. Need to hit the road.”
“All right,” Patrick says. “I figured as much. I have to get a bag from the car to pack up and I’ll be right up.”
When Patrick disappears down the hallway and out a side door, Tim looks over at Carlos. “Well, I guess this is it then.”
Carlos’s head dips slightly and his eyebrows arch. “Yeah.”
They hesitate. Neither one really wants to break contact, but both are having trouble saying anything of substance. Tim touches his nose then rubs his chin. “Hey, before you go, you wanna see something cool?” he asks.
“Sure,” Carlos says with a shrug.
Carlos has always been a shrugger, so his brother smiles at him.
“I mean, as long as you’re here in Atlanta. It’s right down here,” Tim says, pointing in the direction Patrick went.
“What is it?” Carlos asks.
Tim starts walking and waves at Carlos to follow. “Something maybe you haven’t seen before if you haven’t explored Atlanta much. You’ll like it. It’s awesome.”
Tim approaches a small alcove just off the main hallway, and inside it is a wooden door that looks to be at least a hundred years old. As Tim reaches for the crystal and brass knob, Carlos peers back around the corner to make sure Patrick isn’t coming back up the hallway.
“We’ll have to hurry,” Carlos says. “Patrick’ll be back this way any minute, and if he beats us upstairs he’ll wonder where we went.”
“So?” Tim says.
“I’d hate for him to get the wrong idea and fry everything,” Carlos says. “I have a big budget thanks to the doc, but not so big that I need to be buying new gear at every stop.”
Just then, a flash of sunlight off a windshield catches Carlos’s eye, and a vehicle skids nearly right up next to the glass door at the end of the hall. There’s screeching of more brakes and the sound of shouting and car doors slamming.
“Ah, man, here we go!” Carlos says. He flattens himself against the wall. “Sounds like a raid. I’ve been here before!”
Tim’s eyes grow wide. He throws open the door. Behind it is an ancient staircase, lined in brick, leading down into the darkness. “Down here,” Tim says. “This leads down into Underground Atlanta.”
Carlos can hear the door down the hall being thrown open with a bang just as Tim grabs him and pulls him onto the dark staircase. The laptop satchel bangs against his back as he’s yanked clear of the door. Tim closes the door just before several sets of footsteps thunder past the alcove, running toward the elevator.
Carlos leans back against the cold door and notices that its inner face is steel. Solid. Tim reaches past him and throws the lock. Only way for the feds to open it now is with a key, and they’ll have to get that from the property managers. They can’t kick this door down. And getting a key will take time.
In the complete darkness, Carlos hears Tim race down the stairs.
“Wait!” Carlos says in a whisper. As loud as he can manage without being heard through the door. “I have to…”
He pulls out his phone and presses the side button. A red icon appears on the phone’s screen. Carlos hits the red button with his thumb, activating the black box upstairs. Or at least, he hopes he activated it. The concrete and brick he saw in the split second of light before the door slammed shut. The steel door. Who knows?
“We have to move!” Tim says from below him.
At the bottom of the long staircase, Carlos fiddles with his phone and brings up the flashlight app. The strong beam of light illuminates a stone hallway that breaks to the right. Tim and Carlos turn that way and find another brick staircase leading down.
The walls are ancient, from an older Atlanta of another time, and lined with brick two thirds of the way up. Above the old brick is a cemented archway, stained with moisture and mold and the imprint of time.
They bound down the stairs as safely as they can manage, and at the bottom they find another dark hallway. If Carlos’s sense of direction is correct, it leads under the street that runs in front of the building. Twenty more feet and they hit an intersection of century-old brick hallways.
Tim pulls up and grabs Carlos by the arm.
“Here’s where we split up,” Tim says. “This was all built a hundred years ago or more. There’re tunnels going everywhere under the city. I’ll head this way. It leads to a parking garage where I have a car. I’ll try to meet up with my team, if any of them get out or are released.”
“And where am I going?”
“That way,” Tim says, pointing in the opposite direction. He pulls out his own phone and turns on the flashlight app. “That tunnel leads to the shopping area of the Underground. There’s a coffee shop down and on the right. You can’t miss it. It’ll be packed with tourists and workers at this time of day. Hide out there and I’ll try to have someone meet you.”
“Someone? Who?”
“Gabriella. She’s with Anonymous, but she works with us and she’s a badass. She knows this town and she can get you out.”
Carlos removes a ball cap that was folded in his back pocket and pulls it down on his head. The bill is bent into a peak, and his eyes are hidden under it. There’s a cursive “A” on the front: an old Atlanta Braves baseball cap. “And what about my people?” he says.
“Patrick probably got nabbed out at the car,” Tim says. “Unless he stopped for a smoke and they didn’t see him somehow. Paula will be arrested, no doubt, but hopefully they won’t have anything on any of us and they’ll have to let her go. I’ll try to get some people to find out what’s up. Of course you know that we can’t make inquiries. Not personally. But we have ways to find things out.”
Carlos raises a hand slightly, fingers outstretched. “I’ll be in touch,” he says as he turns to leave. Everyone who lives this life knows the risks, and knows what to do if they get caught.
Tim walks away in the other direction but after a few steps he stops, turns, and shouts
at Carlos.
“Brother,” he says, stopping Carlos in his tracks.
Carlos turns and shines his light on Tim.
“Someone up there must have talked,” Tim says.
“Yeah,” Carlos says as he turns again to leave. “Someone.”
* * *
Once or twice over the last few days I’ve had the thought that maybe we’re actually going to get away with this. Like maybe the government is going to give up looking for us and leave us to live out our lives in peace. But deep inside, in the part of me that’s jaded and cynical and pickled in years of booze, I know that this thought is just another lie I’m telling myself. So I bury that thought deep again, back with the other lies. Back where I keep the memories of what life could have been like, if only things had been different.
Because I know: they’ll never give up. The people who are after Ben and me will never quit.
Just this morning April Troyer stopped by and told Mr. Shetler that men were in Drury Falls asking around about strangers. Asking if there was anyone new in town. And that has me worried. But April said that the Amish are notoriously closed-mouthed, and that unless one of the Englischers or a store owner talks, no one should know we’re here. Except… now both April and the Shetlers are worried about me. April about who she might want to build a life with, and the Shetlers about who they’ve brought into their household. They wonder why the worst kind of Englischers are out looking for Ben and me.
Then I think about Gordon the Night Watch, the crazy old homeless guy who called me Kenny. Maybe he’ll talk. He’d probably give us up for a bottle of gin or vodka. Maybe he already has.
But I’ve got nowhere else to go. So when Mose asked me about it, I lied. I assured him that we’re not in any trouble. But I could tell he was still concerned. Like he didn’t believe me. Like maybe he was starting to wonder if perhaps our whole strange story rings just a little false.
“I hope you don’t bring us any trouble from the Englischers,” Mose said to me.
“I hope that too,” was all I could say.
Mose didn’t pressure me to say more, and I didn’t offer any other reasons why someone might be asking about us.
Instead, I told him about last night’s barn dance. Changed the subject.
I suppose you could call it a dance. Some of the younger men and women danced, but most didn’t. There was a small “band”: two men playing on harmonicas and a third doing some calling, sort of like what you’d see at a square dance. Barking out commands in the Deutsch. But the dancing was strange to me, and it didn’t look anything like a square dance. Mose laughed when I told him that part. But I guess this is how they do it, at least in this Amish community. How they meet one another and eventually pair up. It’s how they do something that might be considered “improper” by some, without actually having it organized and sanctioned by the community or the church. And everyone stayed in the barn. No one snuck out to make out or drink booze or engage in anything truly improper. At least as far as I saw.
Everyone’s done it, I’m told. Communed innocently with the opposite sex at a barn function. And it’s probably even how Mose Shetler met and got to know Sarah, his wife.
The young folk danced, and the rest of us just hung out and talked. Some in groups, others in pairs.
And I got the opportunity to talk to April Troyer alone. She’s nice. And she seems to like me, even though she doesn’t know me at all. She asked some questions about my childhood, but she didn’t pressure me to talk a lot about it. I take it from the looks from the Amish youth, and from some of the comments I overheard, that April and I are somewhat of a thing. That’s funny. I think we’ve said less than ten sentences to one another all told. But she did ask me if I’d be getting a farm soon. If I’d be taking a wife.
I told her I hoped to, but that was all I could say.
April is a beautiful girl, with thoughtful brown eyes and a content look about her that kind of defines her for me. Not the look that says she has everything she wants, but perhaps that she has everything she needs. I’m sure she’d love to have a husband and a farm to call her own, but I can see in her that she doesn’t need them. That she’s satisfied with her family and her life. She’s a little younger than me, but not by much. Not enough to make a difference. But I don’t even know if I should be allowing my thoughts to go too far down this road. Not with people looking for Ben and me.
Mose was happy to hear that things went well, and he got that gleam in his eye again when I talked about April. So he didn’t bring up the men in town anymore after that, and I was glad for it.
Today I’m looking out over a pumpkin field, and I like the way the dirt and the pumpkins feel in my hands. We’re turning the pumpkins as we work down the rows, making sure they’re all uniform without white spots from sitting on the ground too long. I’m told these will be sold to the Englischers once fall rolls around. For their fall festivities. That’s what I’m told anyway.
You’ll make a hell of a farmer, but probably not a good husband.
Thanks, Cruella. Thanks for that.
I look over at Ben and John. They’re joking and kidding around as they work the rows. Strange, the way they’ve hit it off. But I guess mentally they’re around the same age. I wonder what young John would think if he knew the man he’s talking to, the man he’s befriended, is actually a top secret defense robot.
I can’t think about that right now though, so I think about Gordon the Night Watch and I picture him spilling his guts to the feds. Telling them he saw two men fitting our description. Telling them that we’re living with the Shetlers. Does he know we left town with Mose? Somehow, I bet he does. Then, in my mind’s eye, I see helicopters and tanks coming up the road. Black APCs and Humvees. Soldiers with guns looking to clean the slate.
They’re not really there, but I can imagine them.
You’re going to get all of these people killed, all because you’re falling in love with an Amish girl.
* * *
Carlos is hiding as far back in the coffee shop as he can get without going through the double doors marked “Employees Only.” Who knows where those doors lead? Maybe nowhere, but wherever it is, it’s still underground and not a help at the moment. He nurses his coffee and reads a small pamphlet that was lying on the table when he sat down.
He’s not really reading it. Just scanning it without it registering at all. He’s already read it a dozen times over the last half hour. Sweating it the whole time, expecting the bombs to drop or some team of operators to blast their way into the café. So he looks at the pamphlet yet again. There’s some sale on boots and leather goods at a shop in the mall, and at the bottom is a coupon for a restaurant down here, down under the city. A restaurant that’s made like an old sailing ship, even though it is, in fact, far from any ocean or sea.
Out of place, he thinks, like me.
Humans are clever, even when they’re devising ways to kill one another or enslave their fellow men. Like this Transport Authority, or whatever it is. The next step in the evolution of all-powerful government.
But that’s a thought for another time.
For now, he watches as the pretty girl with the blue bandana weaves her way through the crowd and pulls up the chair opposite him. She sits down without saying a word.
“Can I help you?” Carlos says. It’s all he can think of to say.
“Laptop,” is all she says in return. Kind of a chopped command. No foolin’.
Carlos cuts his eyes back and forth, as if to say, You must be crazy.
“Give me your laptop right now,” the woman says. “Or I’m gone and you’re on your own.”
Carlos stares at her until it looks like she might stand up to leave, but before she can do that, he reaches down and pulls the laptop from his bag and hands it to her. It must be Gabriella. Who else could it be?
The woman works without speaking. She opens the computer, inserts a small dongle into one of the USB ports, and boots up the machine.
> “My password is—” Carlos says before he’s cut off.
“I don’t need it,” the woman says.
A few stone-cold frozen moments as the machine boots, and then she’s off and running. After a minute or two of her tapping on the keys, she flips the computer around so that Carlos can see the screen.
“You’re being tracked,” she says. “Location and everything.”
Carlos sees a scanning graph and a bunch of data, but before he can really study it, the woman flips the computer back around and types some more.
“It’s a good thing you’re so far under the ground here,” she says. “Unless they’re down here too, they can’t track you here.”
“What is it?” Carlos says. “Who is it?”
The woman looks up from her work, and her brown eyes lock on to his. “I don’t know, and I don’t want to know,” she says. “But someone you work with. Someone close to you.”
His head drops, and she taps a few more keys before she slams the laptop shut and leans forward. “The tracking software is gone. It was good stuff. Your virus software and any other hackware you had running would have never found it.”
Carlos shakes his head, but he doesn’t speak.
“There was something else, too,” she says.
“Don’t tell me,” Carlos answers. He already knows. Someone planted something he was supposed to get caught with. Something incriminating.
The woman sits back in her seat and her sand-brown eyes find Carlos’s. “Yep. Some interesting files were there. The kind of thing that gets you either twenty years, or a great job with the government.”
“There shouldn’t have been any files resident on the hard drive, and I already had a great job with the government,” Carlos says.
“Well, whoever did that job set you up nicely.”
“For a fall,” Carlos says.
“For a big fall,” the woman says. “I’m Gabriella.”
“I figured. What next?”
Gabriella stands up and pushes her chair in under the table. “We get you out of Atlanta, for starters. They have to be on their way. Probably figured you fled on foot at street level, but they’ll figure it out soon enough. We need to move.”
Brother, Frankenstein Page 15
