by Sean Oliver
Her purse. It was a Louis. She wasn’t leaving it.
SIXTY-EIGHT
LAWRENCE SENSED THE Circle was headed for the final Transition that Markus always spoke about in the vaguest of terms. He’d guaranteed them this day would come and that it would be their only chance to make their cause an immortal calling. He spoke of trust—of trusting him, and the energy they’d invested in the Circle. Lawrence did, to a degree.
He looked at the other members. They were more lethargic that day. Markus was not around for most of it. The air was dead quiet, with lots of members ambling around, in need of direction. Many in the group seemed to come unplugged when Markus was not giving specific tasks, hugs, and assurances. Now there they were, without having gotten any of that for a while, just sitting around or walking the surrounding forest. Lawrence didn’t particularly want any directives nor did he want a hug. When Lawrence was left alone, he thought.
Today’s thoughts were surrounding entropy. Everything around him seemed to be breaking down. Markus hadn’t even sent anyone up into the lookout towers for the first time in days, and Lawrence didn’t sense it was because things were suddenly better or safer.
Lawrence was sitting on the steps of the cabin he shared with four other men in the Circle. His one mate was in the cabin napping—odd for members to do so in broad daylight. Agatha usually didn’t let them. But she too was out of sight.
The other guys were out on a walk or maybe handling a haul out of the fields. Lawrence sat and watched the scene around him. The Circle was not looking like a place where people were invested that day. It looked like everyone was remembering something before finding the Circle. Lawrence was, anyway.
The steps were getting uncomfortable, the untreated wood indenting the underside of Lawrence’s legs. He thought about a walk, but he was tired. Even after living in their enclave in the forest, Lawrence had managed to keep some excess weight on. The damn rice. He had so much of it, sometimes asking the members in the kitchen cabin to deglaze whatever was in the pan they’d cooked and just pour it over a massive bowl of rice. He’d forego the fish or whatever else was cooked.
His ass hurt, but he wasn’t getting up. The day before he’d taken a nice walk, well off the compound. He’d explored a fair distance and found the fisherman who Evelio secretly told him about a few days ago. Just as Evelio had guaranteed, Lawrence found Lupe at his makeshift dock tending to a vessel barely larger than him. He set out two times a day, every day. He looked to be at least as old as Evelio. Lupe said he would be down there again at nightfall the following night, and willing to help Lawrence with the secret trek Evelio had arranged.
Lawrence’s walk back to the compound the day before was riddled with unfriendly terrain and insects the size of small helicopters. The path was wildly steep—he didn’t realize how high above sea level their camp was set up. Made for a good vantage point but a real shitty climb, and he was still sore from his journey the day before. Right then, he was just fine dropped down on that cabin step, with the aching buttocks.
The porch behind him creaked and a pair of dirty, bare feet stepped beside Lawrence. Tommy sat down. They both looked out at the lifeless compound.
“You going?” Tommy asked. Lawrence sat and thought about saying nothing at all. But Tommy was pretty with-it. Lawrence wondered what was on the kid’s mind.
“Where?”
“Our next thing.” Tommy turned to Lawrence who kept looking at the camp.
“Are they ready?” he asked Tommy, gesturing to the wandering members.
“Think we have to be.” Tommy stood. As he stepped down, Lawrence reached out and touched his arm.
“Son, why are you going with them?”
“I came here for a new tomorrow, and I got one for a long while. I think it’s run out. You seen Markus lately?” He waited. Lawrence nodded, following his train of thought. “We’re done here. We’ve gotta leave this behind and start again, man.”
“There’s a whole world to do that in, son.” Lawrence pointed out beyond the bushes. Tommy shook his head with a smirk on his face.
“Nah, man. I might run into myself out there.” He waved to Lawrence, turned and walked to the center of the green. He’d made his decision.
So had Lawrence. Their tomorrow would not be his.
SIXTY-NINE
“I TERRORIZED TRISHA. I attacked her.”
Deanna brought her hand to her mouth as she slammed her eyes shut and doubled over. Confusion, terror, grief—more and more, Trisha’s disappearance had brought those emotions to the forefront for Deanna, but this revelation was the apex. Her own father was saying these words as they both sat in the dark of his kitchen, with coffee cups in front of them. They’d been there for a while. The last sip Deanna took was cold but neither George nor Deanna was sipping much.
Rose was already asleep and the lights were out in much of the house. A reading lamp from the living room spilled some light into the kitchen and the soft glow of the light from the range hood was giving them both a golden hue.
George had confessed to his part in Trisha’s misery. She was his daughter’s best friend, like a part of the family herself. But she was in that building, interrupting something of which she was not a part.
“What did you do to her?” Deanna asked.
“I scared her, Dee. I didn’t want anything to happen to her. She had no idea but they would have gotten rid of her. I wanted her to quit or transfer. As young and smart as she was, she could’ve gone out of the city and gotten a job in Millburn or Cranford. They were closing in on her.”
“Who?”
“Everyone.” They sat and heard the faint sounds of one of the late night TV talk shows coming from Rose and George’s bedroom.
“Why did you really come back to school after the heart thing?” Deanna asked. “Was it for this?”
“I can’t say for sure. But anytime I thought about retiring…there it was?”
“What?”
“April 5th. It couldn’t shake it.” George went on to explain the hacienda photos he’d seen and how the trip was going to work—with sixty teachers and their brightest sixty students heading a few hours west, to land Albrecht had purchased, to start the self-sustaining community of tomorrow. They’d stay hidden and educate their kids on-site. A hundred-twenty people living off the land and free of technology, allowing them a unique clarity that no one in today’s society has.
“And everyone is going along with this?” Deanna asked.
“No choice. It’s something inside us. It makes these decisions.”
“The kids? What about the parents? The police?” George held up a hand and cut her off.
“I know, I know.” He just looked down and shook his head. Deanna watched him struggling to come to grips with this whole thing, as well.
“How could you care for children in the goddamn woods?”
“Nurse Debbie. Guidance counsellors. We care for children now.” He rolled his head after hearing himself say it. It was ridiculous.
“Those kids would have been destroyed. How would you have lived with yourself?”
“I wouldn’t have,” he said as he looked up and met her eyes. She nodded and left some silence.
She’d been afraid to ask it, but it was sitting in her throat, choking her.
“Where’s Trisha?”
George shook his head. “Sweetheart, I swear to you I don’t know.”
“How much do you actually know?”
“It comes in gradually, as that smoky feeling comes on more strongly. It creates an instinct.”
Deanna pounded the table. “Can’t you just decide not to do this shit?”
“You don’t question instinct, I don’t think.”
Deanna and her father looked everywhere but each other. She listened to the TV across the house, the hum of the refrigerator as it kicked in. She closed her eyes and thought of nothing but the sounds. At once, her entire body ached from the attack in her bathroom earlier. But her mind stayed bla
nk—a curious result of far too much having been shoving into it. There was one thing that did pop up.
“April 5th is tomorrow,” Deanna said, as she opened her eyes.
“Not really.” George looked at the clock and gestured to it.
12:14 a.m.
“The buses are ordered,” George said. “The boxes of clothing are stored in the library. Bank accounts emptied. Ties cut. Everything’s ready.”
“And the kids?”
George sighed. “Their parents signed the permission slips and they will get on the buses willingly. They will wave to their parents and…well…” He didn’t attempt the words.
“They’ll be kidnapped.”
“They’ll start a new life. They’ll eventually emerge and change the world.”
“We are going to the cops,” Deanna said. “Get dressed, I’m calling that detective.”
George reached out and grabbed Deanna’s hand.
“And report what? A field trip? Some professional development sessions? Nothing illegal has happened and won’t happen until that camping trip goes longer than the parents’ signed up for. By then, they’ll be off the grid.”
“You keep saying, ‘they.’ Am I to assume you’re not part of this any longer?”
“No, I’m not. I think I can keep fighting that feeling off. But they don’t know it yet. I have to find a way to stop him.”
“Who?”
“Elias Albrecht. You stop him, you stop everything.”
“I can do it with you.”
“No way. You’re staying here. Leave everything behind until this is finished. Stay in our house with Mom.”
“Hell no,” Deanna said.
“You’re not even authorized to be in a school building while you’re written out on leave.”
“You also weren’t authorized to have my friend kidnapped.”
George exhaled. He shook his head. “I never wanted her hurt. I had no idea—”
Deanna stood abruptly gathering her stuff. She’d heard enough. She flew into the dark of the living room.
“Where are you going?”
“Home,” she said.
George rose and followed.
“Dee, it’s not Jared who’s there. He obviously couldn’t fight off this thing. It has him.”
Deanna slammed her jacket and purse down onto the carpet.
“What damn thing? How long has he had it?”
George gestured for her to keep it down as he looked toward his bedroom. More sounds of laughter from the TV, though no sign of Rosemary.
“He’s always had it,” George sat, winded from the stress of the past half hour. “He never knew what it was and it really wasn’t anything—like an itch you always had in a certain spot or maybe a twitch in your leg you ignored your whole life because it was just there. But it’s on full blast now, and it’s got him.”
She sat on the couch, across from him. She was listening to his breathing becoming more labored.
“Deanna, you already had your car pushed into oncoming traffic because you wouldn’t leave that building. You’re a target.”
“I’m out on leave now.”
“But you found the pictures and you know what he did. You’ll try and stop him, and stop the trip. There are sixty Jareds walking around the world tonight, getting ready for their new life. You mess with them, and you’ll be gone by tomorrow night.”
George and Deanna sat looking around, feeling the sides of the box they were in. Deanna was no longer scared. She thought about Trisha, Jared, and now the fact that her own apartment and her beautiful lobby was being withheld. She was trapped, claustrophobic, and quite angry.
“Sleep in the guest room,” George said as he stood.
“Yeah, right.”
“Well, go in the guest room and lay awake until the sun comes up, then. And not a word to your mother. You had a fight with Jared, if she asks.”
He headed off toward the bedroom. Deanna stayed put in the living room. She looked around what was once her childhood home. She felt only warmth whenever she took the time to do so. In that living room, on a much older carpet, she’d been princesses, female wrestlers, and cartoon characters. The house was a modest split-level fortress that Rose and George built around her, and George had just become a destructive crack in the castle wall.
Deanna sat and looked at the grotesque, fully assembled puzzle in her mind for a long time. Her sore throat subsided as she thought about Trisha, a beautiful soul who made the mistake of trusting someone she had no reason to be wary of. Her tire was flat and she needed help. Deanna saw it all now—the final piece placed.
Trisha didn’t need to call anyone for help because one of the two people who would have gotten that call was already there.
SEVENTY
MOORE WAS CONCERNED by the lady standing in the school lobby, but he couldn’t quite deal with that yet. He was sitting at the security desk of downtown Carson’s P.S. 2, holding the phone to his ear. O’Malley, on the other end of the call, was saying nothing. Moore saw Irish in his mind’s eye, shaking his head in disappointment.
“Okay,” he told Moore. “I’ll be in touch.” Moore knew that O’Malley should have been ranting and raving. He knew that any cop would lose it on his partner if they blew the single, solitary piece of new evidence in a highly publicized case. But the detective didn’t. He was quick and formal, like he didn’t want to show his hand.
Moore was right back where he belonged—at a school security desk. Just a couple of weeks ago he was working on a case. The investigative jaunt out to Albrecht’s house was like a date with a lady so out of his league that he actually started to believe he was someone else.
But he wasn’t.
The school couldn’t have been more than ten years old. The terrazzo floors glistened and the walls were clean. It was colorful, too, with consideration given to the aesthetics. Sections of the lobby had windows that ran ceiling to floor, allowing daylight to burst in. The whole place suggested life. It was all a far cry from the decades-old institutional monolith to which Moore had reported for weeks.
On this day he was back in his coveted home school. The environment was conducive to productivity it felt good just being in there. All the teachers that walked past the security desk did so with a smile and a nod at the very least. He was back, and anything going on beyond the sunny courtyard before him may as well have been happening on Mars.
Then that call to O’Malley ended all his comfort. Moore looked over and spotted that familiar face standing by the entrance of the large lobby. Looking at her dropped another world onto his lap. Moore stood came from around the security desk and walked to her.
“What brings you down here?” he asked.
“You still have the laptop I found?”
Moore sighed and looked back to the security station at the heavyset female guard checking someone in.
“Jade, I’ll be right back.” The woman gave him a thumbs-up. He turned back to Deanna. “Let’s go talk.”
Moore prepared to tell a second person that morning about his losing Trisha’s laptop. The conversation with Deanna would be easier than the one he had with Detective O’Malley earlier.
Moore walked out of the school entrance and to an empty part of the front courtyard as Deanna followed. There was enough chill outside to make one zip their coat. The day was starting unseasonably cold, and the forecast Moore heard predicted a night dipping below the forties. It was April and winter had not relinquished its grip.
In the courtyard there were benches and some patches of grass on the perimeter of a concrete walkway. The courtyard sat between the school entrance and the school playground across the way. Some of the older kids rode the slide or jumped on a swing for a second on their way into the building. Moore should have been telling them to get off and get into the building. He stood by a bench and didn’t sit, so Deanna didn’t either.
“It shouldn’t surprise you that someone didn’t want me to have that laptop,” Moore began. �
�It was stolen from me. The evidence I came across about its theft from your friend is now also suddenly missing…as in the whole archive of camera files.” He looked at her, letting her take the next step.
“And you are probably standing there wondering if I know who did that.” She served the look right back to Moore. “Well, I don’t. But I can probably guess.”
“What is going on over there?” he asked.
“Tonight the teachers and staff members are taking sixty children onto buses and driving them far away. They are going to be keeping those kids on a commune they set up and not returning them to their parents.”
“Who is?” Moore asked.
“All of them. The whole staff. I told you we were different, and we are.”
“What about your father? Is he like them?”
“Like you,” George said from behind Moore. The guard turned, not sure whether or not to punch him in the face for destroying evidence.
“What I saw on that camera recording ain’t like me,” Moore said to the principal. “I don’t steal laptops.”
“No, it wasn’t like you, Mr. Moore.” George stepped closer. “You probably should use that clenched fist on me. I think I would, if I were you. But before you waste our time with that business you should know there are sixty people in P.S. 21 who couldn’t break away like I did, and they’re ready to steal a bunch of kids.”
Moore stood with his jaw clenched.
“And it’s going down tonight,” George said. Deanna stood beside her father as Moore looked out beyond them. Children in their blue uniforms raced toward the doors. A prim, young lady with braids, probably in kindergarten or first grade, turned and waved meekly to her daddy as she entered the building. A mom trudged up the walkway managing a couple of active little gentlemen, one on each arm.
“You don’t have to believe us,” Deanna said. “You just have to help us.”
“Sounds crazy, I know,” George said. He turned to watch the main entrance at the start of the day, as well. He saw the same smiles, waves, tears, and hugs that Moore did. He turned back to Moore. “But imagine if we’re right.”
