There was an edge in her voice, there was worry, and the feeling was working its way deeper and deeper into me too.
“What do you guys think?” Michael asked, staring out across the lawn. “This has got that distinct ‘it’s a trap’ kind of feel to it. Matty, go offer Browning a reach-around. Distract him.”
She looked at him and nobody said anything.
Faisal cleared his throat.
“I’m just kidding,” Michael said. “Don’t do that. Faisal, go give Browning a reach-around,” he said, trying to recover.
“We need to go. Right fucking now,” Matty said, more to herself than us.
“So what’s the plan, then?” Michael asked.
“We show that mean motherfucker what’s what,” Faisal said, raising his eyebrows up and down. “We cut across his property. We have to, right?”
“Doesn’t have lights between his house and the barn,” Matty said. “Which we know because Faisal destroyed them last year,” she said, forcing humor into the conversation, like she didn’t want us to know how scared Lump had her.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t watching where I was sprinting when I was being shot at,” Faisal said, sounding the same way.
There was a black path running through the heart of the farmer’s property, between the barn and the house, where a small utility pole drooped lazy, pathetic wires. “What do you think, Moses?”
And like that, the decision was mine. A decision with an outcome that I could concretely influence. No in-between, no two sides of a story, just a simple choice:
Run wildly into the night or walk quietly through it.
I crouched by the fence and looked across the field. In a dead sprint, it wouldn’t take long for us to get across. Less than a minute. My heart was beating against my chest like it was trying to remind me that the decision was real and actual and dangerous and that there was a literal, loaded gun that might be pointed at us. Whether it was the cheap-beer-flavored confidence or seeing Matty stand up against her past, I looked at them and I said: “We run.”
Matty frowned and said, “We run.”
“Fuck yeah, we do,” Faisal said.
“Ready?” Matty asked as she tightened down the straps on her enormous belly.
We looked back and forth among each other.
“Wait,” I said, throwing my hands out, making Faisal give a false start.
“What?” Matty whispered, looking around to see if I’d seen or heard something.
“I’ll go first,” I said, because Lump needed help. The snowflakes were coming down in heavy clumps and my alcohol-thinned blood was making my body shake and I expected the cold slithering feeling in my guts to flare up, but it didn’t; the feelings that told me to shut up and mind my own business were so faint and far away that I could almost manage to ignore them. “Sneak through—see if he set up landmines or something. I’ll signal the all-clear and get a head start back.”
Matty nodded for a second like she was going to agree with me, then said, “Fuck that, we’re all going.”
We moved as fast as we could and we moved quiet and the plowed, frozen dirt didn’t catch our feet or twist our ankles and, goddammit, we were untouchable.
I tried to stay on the rough grooves of the plowed field but it was impossible to stay completely straight running in the cold dark. Every time my foot slipped and rolled into the uneven lines I expected to hear my ankle snap and an unhinged shriek steam-whistling out of my mouth followed by a monster clawing its way out of the house followed by the sound of me being eaten alive by a dog. But every time my foot slipped, my momentum carried me on; the small white-gray sheets of ice would crack under my shoes and, instead of shattering beneath me and letting me fall, turn into traction. I ran and the broken ice carried me.
We slowed to a creep as we got to the dim corridor running through the farmer’s property.
I took a deep breath.
As I slid past the frosted-over glass door, I saw Browning in his chair, asleep with his back to the huge windows. He’d fallen asleep watching an old home movie. It was a woman and a child at a park, laughing and playing, stuck forever in a moment more important to the viewer than the people who were actually living it.
We were almost through Browning’s dark yard when I thought of Charlie. About just how much I didn’t want to be sixty years old and still staring into the past.
I wanted to be more like Matty.
The nighttime clouds were scattershot and glowed silvery blue and the stars were trying to come through. I could still taste the jungle juice in the back of my mouth and coating my teeth, making my face feel hot and buzzy, like my eyes were swimming in gasoline. I almost leaned into Browning’s truck for support before realizing that it would probably set off the alarm. Instead I crouched, and let my stomach roll over on itself.
When the feeling passed, I howled, silent, for all the living ghosts.
I howled for them all.
The stars didn’t shine any brighter but they didn’t disappear. And while it looked like they were frozen in place—while everything looked frozen forever in place—they were moving.23 Every second I stared at them, their light got hundreds of thousands of miles closer, as though if I stared for long enough they’d stop being stars and start being suns or galaxies or planets and all the abstraction would fall away and everything would make perfect, undeniable sense.
But they didn’t become any clearer and maybe that was okay.
I stood. I moved into the moonlight, away from the farmhouse.
“Okay, Lump. We’re coming and you’re not going to get caught by Test,” I said, huffing into the wind. “Then we’re going to find our deer.”
The yellow glow of the house washed over us and we moved low, stealth-running along the edge of light, past the rusted Chevy, over the chew toys, along the row of burn barrels, by the empty chicken coop.
I snapped my head back and stared at the chew toys and swatted at Faisal’s back. I pointed at the toys. We stopped and stared at the industrial-strength rubber chew ring. The corner of the barn was chewed up and down for almost four feet and the giant piles of shit were unquestionably outside of the animal pen next to the cattle barn.
“Those are new,” he said.
The growl that came from under the steps of the house sounded like the night sky was ripping apart. Like the rusty hinges on the gates of hell. Like a giant fucking dog trained to eat teenagers. I looked for glowing red eyes staring out of the dark but there was only that sound.
“Are you shitting me…” Michael said.
“Matty,” Faisal said, “do you still have your knife? We might have to knife-fight a dog.”
“I don’t want to knife-fight a dog!” she said.
The beast emerged. The animal that came out from the porch steps was less dog and more bear. At some point in its ancient, hateful life it had been a bloodhound but had since chosen to forgo empathy and kindness in the name of slobbering violence.
“Looks like Farmer Browning owns a big dog,” Michael said.
“That’s not a dog, that’s a horse,” Faisal said.
Michael took a slow breath and knelt down. He pulled a half-eaten bag of Fritos out of his coat. “Besides, what’s the line from Lethal Weapon 3? ‘Boldness, be my friend’?”
“No, you already said the line from Lethal Weapon 3.”
“Mike. What are you doing?” Matty asked through gritted teeth.
“Well. We can’t knife-fight a dog. Porcupines, okay, but not dogs. I think I should try and make friends with him.”
“Make friends?” Matty said.
“Yeah. Now, don’t run; he’ll only chase you down and kill you.”
“Stop quoting Lethal Weapon,” Faisal hissed.
Michael got on all fours and held the bag of snacks in his mouth and made whining noises over the Fritos. The dog took three very swift, low, and utterly silent strides toward him, its murderous eyes void of sympathy. Michael made more whining noises and started tossing s
mall, crumbly handfuls of Fritos at the dog. The snacks bounced off the unflinching animal’s snout and ears.
“Who’sagoodboy?” he said, putting his ass up and hands flat on the ground. “Or, girl. Who’sagoodgirl?”
The hound’s lips pulled back and we saw every one of its dingy yellow teeth. Behind the dog, in his own world, the farmer was still asleep in front of the TV.
Michael rolled over and bent his arms and legs like a submissive dog, still whining and tossing Fritos at the enormous bloodhound. The dog let loose a single nuclear blast of a bark and the television screen inside paused almost immediately, sending static bars through the woman and the child.
“Ah, fuck,” Michael said, sounding like he’d honestly thought his plan would work.
The dog lunged at him and the outline of the farmer’s head was gone from the now-rocking armchair. Faisal pulled him up just as the animal filled the space he’d been occupying. “Run run run,” they both started yelling.
The dog leapt up and tackled Michael to the ground, tearing at his coat pocket until the other snacks burst out like a zebra getting gutted on a National Geographic special. Faisal pulled him back up, leaving behind the dog, which was whipping a handful of Slimjims back and forth. The back door of the farm burst open and the farmer did, in fact, have a shotgun clenched in his hands.
A very stupid part of me thought about waving my hands and telling him to aim for me since, little did he know, I was bulletproof.
A blast of orange-yellow sparks licked out of the gun that the farmer had pointed at the sky and because it had nothing to echo off of, the shot shredded the night around us. The dog bounded after us until the slack on its leash ran abruptly out. It snapped back and let loose a volley of deep, ass-puckering howls as we made for the tree line.
We put whole worlds between us and the farm before we stopped. Matty punched Michael in the heart and said, “What were you thinking!” and then started laughing because, despite its best efforts, the beast couldn’t stop us. The beast had, in fact, been nearly tamed.
“Had to try,” Michael said, smiling and trying to catch his breath.
There was blood in our faces; we’d stared the hound down and come out alive.
I straightened my back, pulling my hands off my knees, and looked toward the distant farmhouse. “For what it’s worth,” I said, “that was a Mossberg, not a Browning.” They looked at me and for a half second I thought I’d said something stupid or lame or overly factual. Like they knew my whole story and what happens to my friends.
“Fucking Farmer Mossberg,” Michael said.
And then they laughed.
We laughed and I couldn’t tell if I was hot from running or cold from sweating, but I knew that I didn’t care because this time, when the hounds came running, we moved together.
But as we headed into the woods toward camp, our laughs died out quicker than they had at the start of the night.
“See?” Michael said. “Nobody even had to go try to seduce the lonely farmer.”
Faisal put his hand over his face and muttered, “Dude. God damn it.”
Matty started shaking her head, looking down the road and anywhere but Michael.
“What, no. Wait,” Michael said. “I’m kidding. Are we not laughing about this yet?”
“No, Mike, we aren’t laughing about this yet,” Matty said, still looking well down the road.
“Guys!” Faisal stage-whispered. “Not the time. Not the place. Talk about this later.”
But I knew something they didn’t: they were already talking about it. They were miles into the conversation, miles ahead of other people who never brought anything into the light and who spent years bottling up steam and pressure.
The trick would be to keep talking before one of them got shot.
THIRTY-SIX: HELLO, DARKNESS
THE CAMP WAS DARK except for the entrance, which was lit by a single dingy bulb bolted to a utility pole. As we ran under the pole it flickered out. Nobody stopped to question Matty’s godlike powers and nobody made any more jokes.
We cleared the gravel lot, flanked the welcome center, crossed the fields, and followed the path to the nurse station because none of us quite believed that she’d try to pull something this big—I must have missed her the first time, and she was here, safe, where she belonged. But of course it was empty.
“Maybe she showed up and they sent her back to the cabin. If that’s what happened, then she probably didn’t know about the camp-in tonight,” Michael said in a voice so calm and reasonable that Matty wouldn’t look at him. Like she wanted to tell him that calm was not what this situation called for. “Probably found it empty and decided to sneak out. She’ll be fine. She’s just being us,” he said, extending his hand. “I bet you an actual, real-life billion dollars that she’s back and in bed though.” She didn’t shake his hand.
“Okay,” Matty said as we got to the cabin. We stood in the bright circle cast down by the cabin’s front light. “I’ll be right back.”
She eased the door open and slid into the dark. Our eyes all went off in different directions. Michael spit a wad of phlegm into the snow.
“So this sucks,” Faisal said after nobody volunteered anything else to say.
“I think if we can survive your grievous, arrow-related injuries, we can survive a child sneaking out. I mean, we used to sneak out,” Michael said, eventually looking up at his friend. Rallying in the face of uncertainty.
“We do sneak out. We are snuck-out right now,” Faisal said back.
When Michael responded, you could tell he couldn’t get away from the situation. He wanted to joke and keep making light of things, but there was a weight to everything that kept pulling his attention to the trees. “Yeah, but when we were in fifth grade…”
“… all we wanted to do was break into the mess hall,” Faisal said, steering the conversation toward something we could handle. None of us seemed quite able to look the situation in the eye, to think honestly about the seriousness of the situation should Matty come out empty-handed.
“It sounds like you were having the exact same experience then as you are now,” I said. “Were you breaking into the mess hall for snacks because you smoked weed on top of the rope wall?” I could hear Charlie saying, Give them something else to pay attention to, even though I was right there with them, watching that creeping uncertainty close in around us.
“Of course not. That’s ridiculous,” Michael said, trying to smile.
“Preposterous,” Faisal agreed in an impossibly comfortable tone.
“We convinced our Camp Buddy, Aaron Jenners, to sniff a ton of glue so he’d pass out, and then we broke into the mess hall because we’d heard that was where they kept the confiscation box,” Michael said pointing at Faisal.
“It was supposed to be the El Dorado of porno mags and Jolt and cigarettes. A pornucopia.”
“What’d you find?”
“We couldn’t get in,” Faisal said. “We thought about knocking out a window and making it look like a bear broke in. Like we’d trash the kitchen and Mike’d shit on the floor but secretly it was a thin cover for our caffeine porno heist.” He changed topics without breaking stride. “I’ve gotta pee again.”
“Why are you always peeing?” Michael asked him.
“You know when you blow up a rubber glove and the finger inflates?” Faisal asked.
“Don’t say what I think you’re going to say,” Michael said.
“That’s how bad I’ve gotta pee. It’s in the tube. It’s just,” he flicked his finger out. “Straight out, full of pee.”
“All five of them,” I said, because it was easier than thinking about Lump being actively gone.
None of us laughed. Not really. We laughed the way we thought we were supposed to, as if laughing and joking could keep the ice from groaning and cracking beneath us.
Matty swung out of the cabin, her pregnant belly gone, cutting our quiet laughter off.
“She’s not there. I ch
ecked everywhere.”
“She’s still out?” Michael said, not trying to pretend that everything was fine.
“It’s almost two in the morning. Jesus. This is bad,” she said, finally looking at us. She held up a handful of papers. “I found this on her bed—which, by the way, had a bunch of pillows under the blanket like a goddamn prison break.”
I took the handful of papers. The first was a new poster—one with the word DRAFT written across the front in bold red letters. It was a FOUND poster with a caption that read:
Attention everyone! Good news: I have saved the day.
After that, a few torn-out pages from a puzzle book that dealt with code-breaking, followed by a few drawings of airplanes and one self-portrait of a small child with an aviator hat. I passed the papers around and tried to take a deep breath.24
“Come on,” I said, heading toward the rec center. The zipper on my coat had started to come down and night cold made the thin, scratchy fabric of the referee shirt feel frozen against my body. Like the vertical bars on the shirt were cold, solid steel.
Nobody really said anything.
We checked the rec center and when Matty came out a few minutes later, nobody needed to ask if she’d found her. Her face said it all.
“Did you talk to the other girls?” I asked. “See if they talked to her?”
“They all just groaned and said they hadn’t seen her and then went back to sleep.”
“You said that her last text was all numbers? Like a code?” Faisal asked, holding the sheet up.
“Yeah. Except it’s not the same code from the papers on her bed. She either kept the page with this code on it or made up her own. What about the FOUND poster?”
“What about it?” Michael said.
“Why would she make it before she found the deer?”
“Because she’s a hyperconfident little troublemaker who is trying to ruin all of us,” Matty said.
“We should check the barn anyway.”
“We have to check it all,” Matty said, talking faster than usual. Her breath kept coming out in heavy clouds from her nose. “It’s getting late and it’s getting cold.” She shook her head. “We have to look everywhere.” She pulled in deep breaths and let them out slowly. Deeply in, deeply out.
Unstoppable Moses Page 19
