by Tracy Deebs
He’s got a country accent, small-town Alabama, I think, and now that I get a better look at him, I realize he’s not much older than I am. Figuring it can’t hurt, I lay on the country pretty thick myself. “My dad got snake bitten a little ways out of town. Rattler. We dropped him and Mom at the hospital, and my brothers and I are going to try to find a hotel room nearby.”
Behind me, Eli chokes at the brother comment, but the guy doesn’t hear him. Thank God.
“There’s not much open around here right now,” he tells me. “Your best bet might be to spend the night in the hospital waiting room.”
“If you think that’s best, then that’s what we’ll do.” I flutter my eyes at him a little, feeling like an idiot, but it seems to work because he smiles at me. That or he really does buy the country-girl act. “But my dad’s college roommate has a farm outside of the city. We could go there, if you think it’s safe. It’s where we were headed when Dad got hurt.”
“Where’s it located?”
My brain tries to freeze as panic sets in, but I force myself to think through it. “On Willow Road,” I improvise. “It’s called Willow Farms.”
“Oh, I know that place!” The other soldier speaks up for the first time. “It’s the biggest co-op in town. But it’s not on Willow Road. It’s off of East Cooper.”
“Oh, right. Sorry. I’m messed up, worrying about Dad.” I blink fast, then bravely—and unsuccessfully—attempt to battle back tears. “Do you know, is East Cooper close enough that we can make it tonight? Or should we just go back to the hospital and sleep in the waiting room? We’ll do whatever you think is best.”
I swear, his chest actually puffs up a little at that. Both of theirs do, and it takes all my willpower not to laugh.
“Well, it’s about twenty minutes from here on the side streets.” He turns and points back the way we came. “But you’re going the wrong way. You need to head that way, make a left on Bradley and then a right on Hillside. Follow Hillside a few miles and you’ll run into Cooper. Make a right and then just follow it all the way.”
“Thank you so much.”
The first guy nods. “But you need to be careful.” He pulls out a sheet of paper, scribbles something on it. “If anyone else stops you, show them this. But don’t go joyriding around the city. I’m writing that you’re going to East Cooper. That’s as far as you’ll be allowed. Understand?”
“Yes. Of course. We really appreciate it.”
“Good luck.” His eyes soften just a little. “And I hope your dad’s okay.”
“Thank you. Thanks so much. And you stay safe, too. Okay?”
He nods, completely professional again, as he slaps a piece of bright-yellow duct tape across the hood of my car. “This should keep you safe for tonight. Now make a U-turn and I’ll cover you.”
I nod, wait for them to step away from the car. Then I roll up the window with a wave and whip the Bronco around.
“Holy crap,” Eli says. “What the hell was that?”
“Thanks for jumping in, by the way,” I say, shooting a dirty look behind me. “Did you at least get the directions?”
“We did,” said Theo, and I can hear laughter in his voice. “And why should we have stepped in? You were doing fine by yourself, playing the damsel in distress.”
“I thought it was more femme fatale, myself,” Eli comments. “All that eye batting, I was afraid you were going to take off under your own power.”
“Yeah, well, at least we’re not on our way to a military jail. That’s something.” I glance at the paper, realize the soldier’s given us his version of a hall pass, which is weird and not nearly as comforting as it should be. I mean, why is it even necessary?
“But what are they doing off base?” Eli asks. “Those weren’t National Guard guys.”
“No,” I agree. “They were wearing air force uniforms.”
“There must be more,” Theo tells him. “Or they wouldn’t have been worried about us making it to the farm.”
Even before he’s done speaking, I realize how true his words are. I brake abruptly and watch as a tank—a tank!—rolls down the street. It’s followed by a truck very similar to the one we just saw, but this truck doesn’t stop. The passengers shine flashlights toward us, but the yellow tape seems to satisfy them. I wonder what would have happened if it didn’t. Could I have sweet-talked another soldier, or would our number have been up this time?
“Turn left here,” Theo tells me, and I do, glad one of us can still think. My brain is working overtime at the realization that our government has turned the military on its own citizens. How bad does the situation have to be for them to roll tanks down the center of the road like it’s an everyday occurrence?
I turn onto East Cooper and it’s dark, empty. I flip on my brights and keep driving for what feels like forever. Thirty miles and a couple of gallons of gas later, we make it to the end of the road and a sign that is lit up by what I think are solar-powered lights. It reads, WELCOME TO THE WILLOWS and is the same sign that’s in the picture of my dad and me. I shudder in relief.
But I no sooner stop the car than three men with guns walk out of the shadows. One gestures for me to roll down the window.
“Pandora.” Theo’s voice, rife with warning, comes from the backseat.
“I know.” But it’s not like we have any other choice—if they’re part of the farm, then we have to talk to them. And if they’re not … I shake my head. I’m not even going to think about that possibility right now.
I crack my window.
“You need to turn this car around and go back the way you came, miss,” one of them tells me. He’s old and looks tired, but his grip on his gun never falters. “We’re not open to the public right now.”
“Please,” I tell him. “We’ve come so far to get here. We don’t want anything from you, just …” What? What do we want?
The second guy steps in front of the car, looks at the plates. “You’re from Oklahoma?”
“Actually, we’re from Texas.”
“What are you doing here?”
I don’t know what to say to him that won’t sound completely absurd. In the end, I go with a small truth and hope it’s enough. “My father sent me.”
“And who is your father?”
“Mitchell Walker.”
I wait for a flicker of recognition to pass over their faces, but at first nothing happens. Then the third man moves toward the car, leans down to peer in the window. I turn on the overhead light so he can see our faces.
“Are you Pandora?” he asks. “Mitch’s girl?”
I’ve never heard anyone refer to my father as Mitch before, but I’m not about to let that stop me. “Yes, sir.”
He studies me for a second. I’m not sure what he’s looking for, what attitude I need to project, but he must be satisfied because he nods and turns to the other two. “Let them in.”
He gestures for me to put the window down more and I do, despite Theo’s warning growl from the backseat. “Follow this road for about a mile, then turn right. You’ll see a house at the end of the trail. I’ll radio to Jean, tell her to be expecting you.”
“Thank you.”
He shrugs. “Jean would skin me alive if I left Mitch’s little girl out here in the middle of this mess.”
And just that easily, we’re in.
The men step back, open the gate for us, and we drive slowly through.
“Am I the only one who thinks this is bizarre?” Eli asks a couple of minutes later as we cruise along the well-lit road. “I mean, your dad is a cyberterrorist, and yet these people act like he’s their best friend.”
“I’m going to go out on a limb here and say they don’t yet know he’s trying to destroy the world.”
A woman is waiting on the porch when we pull up to the house. I don’t recognize her, but she rushes down the steps before I can even yank the keys from the ignition. She pulls my door open and then I’m surrounded by her, yanked out of the car and into
a vanilla-scented hug that goes on and on.
At first, I look frantically at Eli, who is now standing behind her, looking bemused. It’s no different from how I feel. But eventually the calming scent of her seeps past my defenses, and I find myself relaxing despite myself. It’s been so long since a grown woman has hugged me this way—maybe forever—and though I didn’t know it, it’s exactly what I need after everything we’ve been through.
I close my eyes, burrow a little closer as she pats my back and makes soothing noises. Eventually she pulls away, but she seems as reluctant to let go as I am to have her do so. “I know you don’t remember me, Pandora, but you were such a delightful child. I loved every second of the month you and Mitch stayed here and hoped I’d get to see you again. Though,” she says with a sad smile, “not exactly under these circumstances.”
I’m reeling from her revelation. If my father and I were here for a month when I was a kid, where was my mother? Why hadn’t she come along? And why didn’t I know that they were separated or whatever?
The whole thing seems odd, and I feel the tension creeping back like it had never left. Why is this woman so happy to see me? What does she want from me? I can barely get myself through the day right now, let alone find a way to give her whatever she needs.
I step back, gesture to Eli and Theo. “These are my friends.” I introduce them and she practically beams.
“So nice to meet you boys. Get your bags from the car and come on into the house. You must be exhausted—from what the radio says, it’s crazy out there.”
“It’s been a long day, ma’am,” Theo tells her as he pulls our backpacks from the car, hands them to me and Eli.
“I can only imagine. This Pandora’s Box thing, it’s foolish.”
“Foolish?” I echo. It seems like a huge understatement.
“Your father is a great man, Pandora, but this …” She shakes her head. “It’s absolute craziness what he’s done.”
“Does everyone know?” I ask, wondering if we’ll be safe here. Jean seems to be taking this in stride (which makes me think my father isn’t the only crazy one), but I can’t see others being so understanding of my presence. And since I’m trying to stop the madness, I don’t relish being murdered in my sleep for the crime of being Mitchell Walker’s daughter.
“Of course not. I didn’t even know for sure until you showed up. It’s just, I know Mitchell.” She shakes her head, walks back up to the porch. “We don’t need to talk about this now. There will be plenty of time tomorrow. Let’s get you fed and bathed. We’ll talk after you’ve slept.”
I want to talk now—there’s no time for niceties. But as we follow Jean into the kitchen, which is warm and homey and delicious smelling, it becomes obvious that she has her own agenda and nothing I do is going to budge her from it. For now, that agenda means that Theo, Eli, and I do nothing more strenuous than lift a fork.
Within minutes, we’re seated around the kitchen table eating plates of reheated vegetables and cheese lasagna. There’s bread, a quickly assembled salad, and glasses of cold homemade lemonade. We try for manners, but after a few bites we fall on the food like it’s been a year since we’ve had our last decent meal instead of just a couple of days. We don’t talk beyond a quickly murmured thank-you, and Jean doesn’t press us. She just watches us with sad, knowing eyes, making sure to keep our glasses and our plates full.
When we’re finally stuffed—which takes a lot longer for Theo and Eli than it does for me—she offers us homemade peach cobbler. I decline, but the guys somehow make room for it.
I settle back and watch them eat dessert with abandon, all the time conscious of Jean’s eyes on us. I don’t know what to say to her, don’t know how to ask her why I’m here. The farm is huge, with seemingly endless acres of land. I have no idea where to begin looking for the code I need to unlock the next powers.
I need that code, have to find it, have to keep going before it’s too late. It’s so easy to relax at this table, to enjoy delicious food in a room that is neither too hot nor too cold, but I can’t forget that we’re the exception tonight. That outside this house, men are standing guard with guns in an effort to keep their land safe from others—from people who don’t have the luxury of ice-cold lemonade and steaming-hot lasagna. People who are suffering because my father thinks they’re expendable.
I shove away from the table so fast that my chair legs scrape against the warm wood of the floor. “Thank you for dinner, Jean. I appreciate it.”
Theo and Eli look at me in surprise, but their mouths are too stuffed with cobbler to say anything.
“You’re dead on your feet, you poor thing,” Jean says. “Let me show you to your room.” She turns back to Eli and Theo. “Help yourself to more cobbler—I’ll be back to check on you in a few minutes.”
We walk down the halls, and her slippers make a soft, swishing sound against the wood. I could get used to that sound, to what it feels like to be looked at as more than a bargaining tool. I expect her to ask me things as we walk, expect to ask her a few things. But instead, we make the trip in silence, like both of us are too afraid to speak what’s on our minds. I know I am.
She leads me to a room done in shades of aqua and yellow. There’s a huge bed in the middle of the room, covered in what looks to be a handmade quilt, and fresh flowers on the dresser—as if she’d been expecting me all along.
“The bathroom is through here,” Jean says, leading me to an open door. “There’s shampoo and soap. Let me know if you need anything else.”
“That’s great.” I put my backpack on the dresser. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” Her smile is soft. “I’ll see you in the morning, for breakfast.”
“What time?”
“Whatever time you get up, honey. You look like you could sleep the clock around.”
I probably could, but that’s not going to happen. Not for a while, anyway.
Jean starts to leave, but at the last second she pauses at the door. “You’re a lot like your father, you know. The way you look, the way you talk. The way you stepped up and are doing what needs to be done with this game.”
“What do you know about Pandora’s Box?”
Her expression grows shuttered. “Same thing everybody does, I expect.” She closes the door behind her, and though I need a shower desperately, I don’t move for the longest time.
Like your father? The words echo in my head, make my skin crawl.
Is it true? I wonder. And if it is, what am I really doing here? Stopping Armageddon or falling right into his trap? When, ten minutes later, I finally head into the shower, I still don’t have the answer. Even worse, I don’t know if I ever will.
34
Day Five
I awaken early, heart racing, blood pumping, a scream lodged in the back of my throat. The closet light I left burning went out sometime in the middle of the night, and I am all alone in an unfamiliar room. In the dark.
The same old tightness rises inside me, and I sit up quickly, groping for the large lamp I remember seeing on my nightstand. I finally find it, cool glass beneath my burning fingertips. I fumble for the switch, knowing all along that it won’t go on. That I’m stuck here, in the dark, on my own.
Click. The switch turns once. Nothing.
Click. I turn it again. Dim, golden light fills the room, and has my too-wide pupils blinking at the sensory assault. Yet even as I struggle to see, I breathe a sigh of relief. Not completely in the dark. Not yet.
The old-fashioned windup clock on the dresser reads five fifteen. I’ve slept only four hours, but it’s going to have to be enough. I brush my teeth, wash my face, slip on a pair of jeans over the underwear I slept in. I add a blue cotton blouse—my last clean shirt—and then, because I’m cold, slide the purple hoodie over my head.
Seven minutes have passed. Not enough time. I think about staying in the room, messing with Pandora’s Box or washing my dirty clothes in the sink. But I’m not in the mood, not now. I can
’t breathe in here. I want to be outside, where I can feel the earth beneath my toes and the crisp, cool morning air in my lungs.
I grab a flashlight from my backpack and make my way slowly down the hall and out the front door. It will be dawn soon. Already I can see the beginning tendrils of morning snaking their way across the inky darkness of the sky.
I sit on the porch and wait for the light.
Dawn finally arrives, with a burst of reds and pinks and golds as it streaks triumphantly across the sky. It lights up the world around me, chases away the last of the dark, and I realize that though the farm has hundreds, thousands, of acres of land to harvest, Jean has planted a personal garden in a heated greenhouse not too far from the front door.
I walk to it, smiling at the neatly labeled plants. Lettuce, broccoli, carrots, tomatoes, squash, strawberry, watermelon, just to name a few. She has almost everything out here, growing in rich, beautiful soil. My fingers itch to bury themselves in the earth, and I refuse to deny them, deny myself, this simple pleasure.
So in the midst of chaos and fear and indecision, in the midst of the darkest dawn of my life, I drop to my knees and begin to harvest.
I pick ruby-red strawberries, bursting with sweetness and size. Shrug out of my hoodie and create a makeshift basket for them with the sweatshirt. Then I move on to the tomatoes and green peppers and finally the blackberry bushes lining the edges of the greenhouse.
“You like to garden.” Jean’s soft voice comes from nowhere, but instead of startling me, it just makes me smile.
“I love it. I grow a bunch of herbs and vegetables back home.” A flash of sadness as I think of my own flourishing garden and wonder if it’s going to go to waste or if Homeland Security is going to ransack it like they did everything else, just to be mean.
“The last time you were here you picked apples. Your dad balanced you on his shoulders and you brought in four or five bushels, one right after the other. He kept trying to talk you down, to get you to stop, but you were having so much fun he wouldn’t force the issue.”
The memory creeps into my mind. Slow and sticky like spilled syrup, it works its way into my synapses until I can’t believe that I ever forgot it. We were out here, alone save for Jean and her son, Matthias, and my dad took me down to the apple orchard.
