by RJ Crayton
“What if it’s not?” Elaan asked.
Josh paused as he considered. “We’ll figure it out if it comes to that, but given that we don’t hear anything coming from that side of the door, it’s probably empty.”
Lijah put a hand on Elaan’s shoulder. “I’m sure Josh is right. It’s probably empty. To be on the safe side and minimize our time up there, let’s get dressed here in the stairwell,” Lijah said. “Your uniform is in the backpack. Josh and I will face the door so you can have some privacy.”
They spread out, with Elaan moving several steps down to give the guys room. She squatted and moved the backpack slung over her shoulder to the step in front of her. She struggled a bit with the zipper, as the bag was overstuffed. The first thing she saw was military fatigues. A camouflage shirt, pants, and baseball-type cap. She pulled the three items out and zipped the bag, which closed easily now.
“Got what you need?” Lijah asked. She could barely see him. Josh must’ve set the light on the step closest to the door, so his body blocked some of the light. Elaan told Lijah she had the uniform, and silently felt thankful for the darkness. She wasn’t keen on dressing with the guys in viewing distance. Though, in the grand scheme of things, at most Josh would see Elaan in her bra and panties, which was no scantier than a bikini.
She dressed quickly, opting to leave her T-shirt on under the button-up camouflage shirt. She called out when she had finished, stuffing her blue jeans inside the backpack.
“Us too,” Lijah said, without seeming to check with Josh. Elaan shoved on her hat, which didn’t fit that well with her curly hair in full bloom. Back when life was normal, she sometimes pressed it to make it easier to manage, but that hadn’t really been an option once they were in the compound. They’d not had time to get things like flat irons and hair pomades. She’d been lucky to get a decent shampoo and conditioner included in the supplies they sent down.
She walked up the steps, and Josh smiled at her. Lijah’s expression remained grim, tense. “So, where are we going? Who are we going to see?” Elaan asked.
“Not here,” Lijah said. “I don’t know if this area is monitored. Once we leave the compound, we can talk.” He turned to Josh. “You okay with that?”
“Yeah,” Josh said. “Let’s just get out of here.”
Josh opened the door to the garage; there was more darkness. No one had left a light on for them. Though, this was a garage, not a Motel 6.
The beam of Josh’s flashlight illuminated two vehicles. One was a jeep and the other a large truck. The truck sorta looked like a dump truck, but it clearly didn’t dump, and it was painted army green. If this were an action film, that truck would surely end up exploded.
She was glad when Josh went straight for the jeep. She and Lijah followed. Lijah set his backpack on the shotgun seat, so Elaan climbed into the back. Lijah pulled a flashlight from his own bag and walked over to the edge of the garage. There was a large, rolling garage door for the vehicles and next to it a smaller regular door for people. The regular door had a windowpane, and it appeared completely dark out right now. There wasn’t even the ambient glow usually present when streetlights were on. Elaan wasn’t sure where this garage was situated in relation to the underground bunker they’d been living in. She was pretty sure they’d exited on the opposite side of the building where they’d come in. But she had no clue where that was exactly.
Lijah opened the smaller door and stuck his head outside, keeping his flashlight pointed down at the ground. He turned back to them. “Looks like it’s just a city street. I don’t see anyone around. So, we should be clear to go.”
Josh said, “Alright.”
Lijah closed the door, and then stood looking at the thin section of wall separating the two doors. His flashlight shone on a round black button. Lijah pressed it, and the whir of a motor sounded as the large garage door rolled up, allowing in the night air. Elaan breathed in deep, and relished the cool, fresh air on her face. It had been so long since she’d been in the fresh air. She hadn’t realized just how much she’d missed
Lijah jogged back to the jeep and hopped in. Josh stuck a small electronic device to the dash and then started the engine.
“What’s that?” Lijah asked.
“My dad said it would override the tracking device military vehicles have so they can always find them.”
“For real?” Lijah said, as Josh started the engine.
Josh smiled back, kinda cocky. “For real.”
“Is your dad a spy?” Elaan asked, and as weird as it sounded, she was serious. “Where does he get all this stuff? Equipment to listen to transmissions, to block transmissions. It’s like he’s got James Bond’s team working for him.”
“Q,” Lijah said.
“What?” Elaan asked.
“Q was James Bond’s tech guy.”
“I don’t care,” she said, wondering why Lijah felt the need to vomit knowledge anytime he was stressed. “That’s not the point. How does your dad have all this stuff?”
Josh didn’t answer. Instead he put the vehicle in drive and slowly edged forward. “Everyone keep a lookout,” he said. Elaan considered asking Josh the question again, but she didn’t think he’d answer, and she didn’t feel like nagging him for answers. Besides, she wasn’t sure she could handle any more surprise at the moment. It was probably better she didn’t know where Kingston got his tech. She sat back in her seat in silence.
They were all quiet as Josh eased the vehicle out of the garage. Lijah seemed poised to go out and press the button again so the garage door would close, but as soon as they’d come to a complete stop outside the garage, the door began to close on its own accord.
“Where to?” Josh asked.
Lijah looked around. “Take a right,” he said. “I think I know where we are. There’s a place not far from here where we can go to chat.”
Chapter 13
They drove a few fairly deserted streets, seeing mainly warehouses and buildings with no lights on. Not even the external neon signs. No one was out, not even a stray bum. Elaan had known Martial Law was in effect, but the ramifications of what that meant hadn’t hit her until they were out. She still wore her watch. She tried to look at it in the low light but couldn’t make it out. It had been close to 9 p.m. when she left her room with her father. It couldn’t be more than 10 o’clock now, but it was completely deserted.
Since there were no people, that meant there had to be patrols. And if soldiers were on patrol, wouldn’t they get caught? Yes, they looked like military, from head to ankle. But they were all wearing gym shoes, and she was pretty sure folks in the army wore boots or something more standard issue than multicolored Nikes. Anyone who got a good look at them would know they were imposters.
“Lijah, Josh,” she said. “We should get off the road. If patrols catch us, they’re going to know we’re not military.”
Lijah turned to her. “I know,” he said, leaning in so he could be heard over the wind rushing through the open-air vehicle. “We’re not far from the Bladensburg waterfront. We can park there, talk, and decide what to do next.”
They drove on, all of them tensing when another military vehicle passed them going the opposite direction. But it didn’t stop or even slow as it passed their jeep. Apparently, being in a military vehicle at night dressed as soldiers meant you were ignored. Hiding in plain sight, as the expression went, apparently worked. Or maybe it worked when they didn’t know to look for you. There was no way anyone could know they’d left the compound.
They drove a few more minutes, with Lijah directing Josh, before finally turning into a long parking lot, bordered on the right by the Anacostia River. Elaan recognized it. Her class had done a semester-long project along the riverfront as part of the ecology unit. They’d visited the waterfront three times to learn about the Anacostia watershed and help plant vegetation along the river’s banks. Lijah had done the trip, too, when he’d been in eighth grade. The waterfront was pretty during the daytime, but
it looked ominous in the dark.
Josh pulled the vehicle off the paved road and down an incline so they were closer to the water. The vehicle would’ve stood out as a loner in the parking lot, but here on the path nestled behind trees under the cover of night, it would probably go unnoticed unless someone was specifically looking for it.
They all sat in the vehicle, the engine off, not speaking. Finally, Josh looked at Lijah and said quietly, yet forcefully, “Who is this woman your dad wants us to go to, and why does he think she can help us?”
Lijah bit his lower lip, then turned around and focused in on Elaan. “You have to remain calm and quiet when I speak, OK?”
Her face tightened, annoyance bubbling to the surface because he’d directed that comment toward her. She would not be treated like the weakest link. “I’m fine, Lijah,” she said, trying to sound strong, trying to sound the way her mother might if confronted with such a situation. “Tell us who we’re going to see and why.”
He half laughed at that. “The why is obvious once you know the who,” he said.
“Lijah, you’re not making any sense,” Josh said, squinting in the darkness to see him better.
Lijah looked at Elaan again. “Mom,” he said.
She waited for him to say more, but he didn’t. Mom didn’t make any sense. Their mother was nothing but a pile of ash somewhere.
“Your mother’s dead,” Josh said, verbalizing Elaan’s concern.
Lijah shook his head. “Dad told everyone she was dead, because he didn’t want people to know.” Lijah’s voice trailed off.
“Know what?” Josh asked, staring mystified at Lijah.
“Know that she was Dayton’s sister, or that she’s a carrier.”
Chapter 14
Elaan’s heart was beating so fast she felt like she’d just run a marathon. She had to be hearing things. Her mother alive. Dayton’s sister. A carrier.
Alive.
Alive.
Alive.
That word reverberated through her head. Her mother wasn’t ash somewhere. Her mother hadn’t died alone and scared. Her mother hadn’t died at all, according to Lijah. “She’s alive?” Elaan asked, needing to hear him say it one more time. If he said it again, she couldn’t be hallucinating it.
“Yes,” Lijah repeated, clearly irritated.
She sat there, the darkness enveloping her, trying to comprehend what it meant. “So, Dad lied to us?” she started, but realized that wasn’t true. “He lied to me. You both lied to me,” Elaan said, hurling her words like weapons.
“Keep your voice down,” Lijah whispered, his face a mix of regret and impatience. “I didn’t know initially that she wasn’t dead. They hadn’t intended for me to know. They hadn’t wanted either of us to know. When we first went into quarantine, I thought she was dead, just like you did. I thought she’d spent a hellish last few days alive, blood pouring from every orifice, feverish, vomiting, and sick beyond anything imaginable. But that was just a lie, like so much of the bullshit she uttered.”
The venom that had been there when he talked about their mother was there again. And she was finally beginning to understand where it came from. He had known she wasn’t dead. He had known she’d let them believe she’d died of this disease, even though it wasn’t true.
“So when did you find out she was alive?” Elaan asked.
“When dad was gone,” Lijah said. “It was shortly after Kingston moved us to his lab. He didn’t know Mom was alive. He’d moved us in the hazmat suits, and put Josh and me each in our own cage in the lab.”
Lijah stopped speaking, bit his lip, as if the memory pained him. “We had been out of the quarantine for two days, and I hadn’t been able to reach Dad because he was at his meeting at the Pentagon. Kingston had done an early detection test that showed we didn’t have the virus. Most people don’t know they have a test that can detect it that early, but it’s so expensive to perform, it’s generally only used in high-risk situations, as quarantine and waiting will give you the same information. Since we weren’t sick, he could give us the vaccine, and if we had to go back out at the end of our quarantine period, we’d be safe. It was the perfect thing, what everyone would have wanted. I knew there might be risks. It was a trial, but the prospect of a panacea was too good to really listen to any nagging feelings, especially when there was no contradictory information. So, I said yes and took the vaccine, thinking it was for the best. It would take three weeks to be definitely effective. Josh and I would automatically be required to be in quarantine those first two weeks. Even if we had to go back into the population immediately after, the vaccine would probably have taken effect. We’d certainly have been in much better shape than most other people. I’d done this thing that I thought was going to work out for me. Only, it didn’t.”
Lijah took a deep breath and continued. “That night I was in my little cage, trying to sleep, wondering if the vaccine was working, if it was slowly doing its job of making me immune to the disease that had taken my mother. It was almost midnight and Josh was asleep. Kingston had returned to the scientist housing. I was playing a game on a tablet Kingston had put in with me. I’d almost forgotten I had my cell phone in there with me. Kingston had managed to retrieve it from quarantine when he signed us out. When I first got to his lab, I’d used it to call Dad. Only, I hadn’t been able to reach him because he was at the Pentagon. I was in the middle of a Respawnables battle when I heard my phone ring. I went over to the little table in the room, picked up the phone and looked at the screen. The call was from a blocked number, which was strange. Then I thought it was probably Dad. The number was likely blocked because he was calling from some secret bunker. When I answered, I heard only breathing. It was odd, but I still thought it might be Dad, with a bad connection, so I asked, ‘Dad, is that you? Dad, are you alright?’ But there was no response. I hadn’t been particularly worried about Dad’s lack of response because Kingston said security was tight at the Pentagon when meetings were in person, especially with all the illness. But, something about the breathing, about the way the person on the other end sounded, it worried me. So, I said something like, ‘Dad, I’ve been trying to reach you? Are you OK?’ And that’s when she spoke. She said my name. I was shocked. I almost couldn’t believe it, but there was no denying it was her voice. No denying she was alive.”
Elaan surveyed Lijah’s face, disbelief still clinging to her brain, but a gnawing ache was replacing her shock. The depths of Lijah’s deceptions began to settle in on her. Josh’s secret, his own secret, hadn’t been her business, so she could understand Lijah’s choice not to tell her. But, their mother. Their mother was entirely Elaan’s business. How could he lie to her about their mother? “You talked to her after you thought she was dead? You talked to Mom and then you still let me believe she was dead. You watched me ache and grieve for her when you knew she was alive and well, when you could have said a single word and made so much hurt and misery go away for me...”
“Elaan, it wasn’t my choice,” he said, his own voice rising in anger. “If I had a choice, I would have told you everything. How she just abandoned us, not giving a damn. That she was the reason that Dad was gone. The meeting he had, the one he had at the Pentagon while we were in quarantine; it was for her. He wanted to plead his case in person, about the reversal of the carrier policy. He wasn’t there for us, because he was there for her.”
Elaan squinted in the darkness at him. Was he for real? “What did she say to you? When you spoke to her, what did she say?”
Lijah snorted derisively. “She said she was sorry that she let me think she was dead,” he spat. “She said all the things a person should say. I doubt she meant it, but she said it. She told me she was a carrier and that she had to get away from people, that she had to leave, or they were going to kill her. She said she called because she couldn’t reach Dad either. She knew he was going away for a few days, so she had called to check on us in quarantine. She said she was aunt Isadora, so she could get inform
ation.” He looked at Elaan. “She’d learned that you were still in quarantine and listed as ‘No signs of disease.’ But, when she asked about me, they told her I was no longer in quarantine and that they didn’t have any additional information. She panicked at that point.”
Elaan was confused. “Why would she panic?”
“Because the only reason you leave quarantine early is because you’re sick and you’re going to die,” Lijah said coldly. He sighed, and grimaced when he spoke next. “She told me she’d been so worried about me, and that she was sorry I was sick. I told her I wasn’t sick, that I had been moved to Dad’s lab for monitoring there, instead. She told me that was good, that I needed to stay safe, to stay healthy. Then, she got all nervous and said she shouldn’t have called, that she’d ruined this burner phone and she’d have to get rid of it. She told me to stay safe, to stay in quarantine, to stay away from the sick, and she told me she loved me and hung up. Only, if she loved me, she would have told me the whole truth.”
Elaan put a hand on Lijah’s arm. “She told you a lot,” she said. “More than she told me. And she didn’t know you had taken the vaccine.”
“No, she didn’t, because she didn’t ask. She didn’t care enough about me to find out. She cared only about satisfying her own curiosity, not with helping me. I take responsibility for my choice to try the vaccine. It was reasonable given what I knew. But I also see her for who she is. She claims to be about truth, when she’s about nothing but lies. She didn’t trust the people she claimed to love. She didn’t trust us enough to tell us she was alive when they were concocting their plan to hide her. She didn’t tell us early enough that she hadn’t died of the disease, that the quarantine they’d put us in was just for show. You know, I wouldn’t have even left with Kingston if I’d known that she hadn’t died. If she had been honest with us about her health, we could’ve made decisions for ourselves that made sense. She kept us in the dark when it mattered most. Especially for you. Did you ever even wonder why Dad got you tested to see if you were immune?”
