dresser and dropped the papers into the space beneath. Then he replaced the drawer. Not the safest hiding place in the world, but the best he could come up
with on such short notice.
As he stepped toward the light switch by the door he remembered Weezy’s
remark about seeing someone in her backyard last night. Not terribly
surprising, coming from Weezy. But what if …?
He started tiptoeing toward the window, then stopped.
Why am I tiptoeing?
He walked the rest of the way, then crouched until the sil was at chin level. The moonlit cornfield looked just the same as last night. Nothing moving. But he
realized anyone standing in the corn rows would be as good as
invisible and stil have a clear view of his room. That had never occurred to him
before, and it gave him a crawly feeling in his gut.
Thanks a lot, Weez.
He shook off the feeling. Sil y. Nobody out there.
Stil , he pul ed the shade, then undressed in the dark. He crawled under the
covers before turning on his bedside lamp. He wanted to let the Spider take him away from al these spooky feelings. The Spider’s world was safe in that if
things got too weird, Jack could always close the cover.
But real life had no covers. What did you do when life got too weird?
1
“Jack! Jack, wake up!”
Jack opened his eyes in the dark. An insistent tapping accompanied the frantic,
harshly whispered words.
“Come on,Jack! Wake up!”
Where was he? He felt the pil ow under his head, the sheet pul ed up to his
shoulders …
Bed.
“Jack, please!”
He jackknifed to a sitting position. The voice … coming from the window. He
looked and his heart jumped when he saw a head silhouetted in the
moonlight.
“Who?”
“It’s me—Weezy. You’ve got to—”
“Weez? What are you doing out there?”
“Helicopters, Jack! Over the Pines. They were carrying some kind of equipment.” “So?”
“They’re right over our mound!”
A second head appeared at the window.
“C’mon, Jack.” Eddie’s voice. “We’re gonna go take a look.”
Jack glanced at his clock radio: 1:10 in the morning.
“Are you guys nuts?”
“Yeah,” Eddie said. “Nutsacious. And so are you. That’s why we’re here.” Weezy said, “We’ve got our bikes. So get dressed. Wear dark clothes. Let’s go!” “Do you know how dark it is in there?”
“We’ve got flashlights. Bring another. Come on. We’ve got to see what they’re
doing to our mound.”
Jack thought for a second. He didn’t know how Weezy knew they were over the mound, but he did know his folks would kil him if they found out he’d
sneaked off into the Barrens at night.
But what were helicopters doing over their mound in the middle of the night? What couldn’t wait until morning?
He jumped out of bed.
Wel , why not? Not like he was going to be able to get back to sleep now anyway.
“Be right there.”
2
As usual, Weezy led the way. She kept her flashlight beam trained ahead as she rode, but Jack figured she knew the trail so wel she probably could have
found her way by the moonlight.
He stayed close behind, holding his own light in reserve, in case Weezy’s ran out. Eddie brought up the rear.
“Look,” Weezy cal ed back, flashing her beam along the sand. “Tire tracks. And recent too.”
Jack saw what she meant. Some of the deeper sand stirred up by the tires was stil dark and damp. The cars or pickups or whatever they were had to
have come through within the hour.
At first the Barrens had been dark and silent, the overhanging pine branches blotting out al but a few rays of moonlight. But neither lasted.
The silence was the first to go.
They were passing the trapper’s spong, and Jack was wondering if he’d reset the traps, when he began to hear a faint, low-pitched thrumming noise
that grew steadily louder as they rode. This graduated to the unmistakable whup-whup-whupof helicopters.
And then Jack began to catch flashes of bright light through the upper branches. He couldn’t imagine where they could be coming from until he realized
the copters were using their searchlights to light up the ground.
Without warning, Weezy veered to the side and hopped off her bike. She was leaning it against a tree when Jack pul ed up beside her.
“Why’re we stopping?” he said, raising his voice over the racket.
Weezy motioned her brother to get off his bike. “We should walk from here.”
“Bikes are faster,” Eddie said.
“And more easily noticed. We don’t want to be seen.”
Eddie laughed. “Why not?”
“Because then we’l be chased home.”
Jack could make out Eddie’s face in the light through the branches. He looked insulted.
“No way! It’s a free country. We can watch if we want.”
Weezy rol ed her eyes. “They don’t want anyonewatching.”
“That’s stupidacious. And besides, how do you know?”
Jack thought the answer was pretty obvious, but he let Weezy tel her brother. She stepped closer and got in his face.
“Can you think of any other reason why they’d go to al this trouble at night when it would be so much easier during the day?” When Eddie didn’t answer,
Weezy looked at Jack, then back at Eddie. “So, can we al start walking?”
“Let’s go,” Jack said. “We’re wasting time.”
He took the lead now. With the lights ahead as a beacon, they no longer needed flashlights or Weezy’s keen sense of direction. He kept to the side of
the firebreak until he noticed a deer trail angling toward al the activity. He took it.
This path was much narrower … branches scraped against him as he passed. He was glad he’d worn ful -length jeans instead of cutoffs, but wished
he’d picked out a rugby shirt instead of this T.
As the three of them neared the site, the noise of the copters grew even louder. Ahead and above they looked invisible—black fuselages against a
black sky—with their searchlights seeming to come out of nowhere.
But another sound gradual y joined the mix—the throaty, up-and-down roar of diesel engines.
Construction equipment.
As they closed in on the mound area, Jack lowered to a crouch, then turned and motioned Weezy and Eddie to do the same. When he reached a break
in the trees he came to a sudden stop. Weezy bumped him from behind. He heard her gasp as she saw what he saw.
Just a hundred feet away, the burned-out area of the mound was ablaze with light, il uminating the dozen or so men walking back and forth among the
charred pine trunks. And among those trunks, a backhoe furiously dug up the sand.
He felt Weezy grip both his shoulders and squeeze—hard.
“Our mound!” she said softly, leaning over him, so close he could feel her breath on his ear. “They’re tearing up our mound!”
Not our mound anymore, Jack thought. Pretty soon it wouldn’t even bea mound.
He watched the backhoe systematical y tearing up the ground, its yel ow arm swinging up and down, ramming its bucket into the mound, pul ing out a
yard of sand, then dumping it to the side before backing up for another go. If a tree had grown too close, the backhoe’s tractor simply pushed it aside or
knocked it down.
Weezy said, “That must have been what the helicopter was carrying when I saw it.”
Men fol owed in its wake of destruction, some with
rakes, some with hoes, some with baskets. Some wore police uniforms with black leather belts that
circled the waist and crossed the chest, others wore dark suits and narrow-brimmed hats. They’d poke through the turned-up sand and every so often one
would stoop to pick up something. Mostly they tossed whatever they found aside, but every so often one would cal the others over. They’d al cluster
around and look at his find for a few seconds, then place it in one of the baskets and go back to work.
“They can’t do this!” Weezy said. “They’re going to ruin everything!”
She stepped around Jack and started toward the mound. He grabbed her arm and pul ed her back.
“Are you nuts? You can’t stop them.”
“I can try. They’re ruining everything! They’re—”
“Hey!” said a gruff voice behind them. “What are you doing here?”
3
Eddie squealed. Jack jumped and turned to find a flashlight beam in his eyes, the glare blotting out whoever was holding it.
“Did you hear me?” the voice said, louder. “What the hel are you kids doing here?”
“We-we-we saw the copters,” Eddie said. He sounded scared, his we-can-watch-if-we-want attitude of a few minutes ago vanished.
“Damn!” the man said. After a pause, he pointed to three state police cruisers parked on the fire trail. Jack had been so intent on the backhoe, he
hadn’t seen them. “Al right, get over there.” The man gave Eddie a shove in the direction. “March.”
Eddie stumbled away, his path angling away from the mound. With the light out of his eyes, Jack could see that the man wore a NJ State Trooper
uniform. It looked loose on him, as if he’d lost weight. After a few heartbeats’ hesitation, Weezy started to fol ow. Jack fel in line between her and the
trooper.
A state cop … al he could think of was how this would end: The trooper knocking on his front door in the middle of the night, his father answering, the
trooper explaining where they’d found his son, Dad yanking him inside, grounding him for life, maybe longer.
Oh, this was bad … very bad.
As they reached the nearest police cruiser, a man in a dark suit came over.
“What the hel ’s going on?” he shouted over the sound of the copters.
The trooper jerked his thumb at them. “Saw the choppers. Told you we should have made a southern approach. How many more peepers we gonna
have to deal with before the night’s over?”
The suit stepped closer and played a flashlight over them. The beam lingered on Weezy.
“They’re just kids—dumb piney kids.”
Jack heard a sneer in his tone and felt a flash of anger. He wasn’t a piney and he wasn’t dumb.
“Not pineys,” he said. “We’re from Johnson.”
The suit waved his hands in the air. “Ooh, now there’sa metropolis.”
“We happen to be on private land,” Weezy said. “We know Mister Foster and he lets us come here whenever we want.”
Jack glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. They’d never once seen Old Man Foster.
“Yeah?” the suit said. “Wel , if we could find him we could check that out, but he’s a hard man to track down.”
“I’m sure he wouldn’t like you digging up his land.”
The trooper said, “Doesn’t matter what he likes. This is a crime scene and we’ve got warrants. It’s al nice and legal.”
“Then why are you doing it at night?” Jack said.
Weezy chimed in, “Because you’re not looking for evidence, are you. You’re looking for something else.”
“Enough of this crap,” the suit said, sounding annoyed and surprised. He turned to the trooper. “Lock them in your unit until we’re done.”
Jack’s gut tightened. Locked up?
“We wanna go ho-home,” Eddie said.
“You wil ,” the suit told him. “But not til we’re finished here.”
The trooper opened a rear door and pointed to the backseat.
“In. Now.”
Jack thought of bolting—not back down the fire trail, because he didn’t know how fast the trooper was, and he might not be able to outrun him on a
straight course. But he was sure he could duck into the brush just ten feet away and disappear among the trees before the guy knew what happened. With
his dark clothes and the sound of the helicopters and the backhoe drowning out any noise he made, he could circle around to the bikes and hightail it out
of here.
Get home. Sneak back in the window. Slip under the covers. Pretend nothing had happened. And avoid being grounded for life.
Yeah … he could do it.
But it meant running out on Weezy and Eddie. Sure, the distraction he provided might give them a chance to bolt too, but he couldn’t count on it. If he
escaped alone, he’d never be able to look them in the eye again. Never be able to look himself in the eye either. Didn’t want to look in the mirror and see
a guy who deserted friends.
Better to be grounded for life.
Eddie was first to go in. He resisted, whining a little, but a shove from the trooper got him moving, sliding to the far side. Weezy went next, settling in the
middle. Jack was last.
“You kids wanted to see what’s going on. Wel , now you’ve got box seats.”
Jack leaned against Weezy so the door wouldn’t bang him when the trooper closed it.
It sounded like a prison cel door slamming shut.
4
As soon as the trooper turned his back, Jack tried the handle—it moved but didn’t open the door. Across the car Eddie wiggled his.
“It doesn’t work!”
“That’s the way police cars are built,” Jack said. “To keep crooks from jumping out. There’s an emergency door release up front”—he tapped on the
thick plastic barrier that confined them to the rear compartment—”but we’l never reach it.”
Weezy was staring at him. “How do you know so—?” Then she nodded. “Oh, I get it. Your deputy friend.”
“Right. He locked me in the back of his cruiser once—just to let me know how it feels. But he also showed me a switch on the door that can undo it.”
“Wel then undo it!” Eddie said.
“You can’t reach it when the door’s closed.”
“What if they’re not cops?” Weezy said in a wondering tone.
Jack looked at her. “Of course they’re cops.”
“What if they’re just pretending to be? Those guys in suits sure don’t look like state cops. What if they’re some secret government agency—?”
Jack waved his hands. “Don’t start with that stuff, Weez. Things are bad enough already. We don’t need a conspiracy too. We’ve got uniformed
troopers driving state trooper cruisers. Let’s leave it at that, okay.”
“I’m serious, Jack. You ever see a trooper with such a bad-fitting shirt? And if a government agency is high enough up, don’t you think it can come in and
commandeer a few cruisers for a night?”
A far-out story, Jack thought, but not impossible. That guy in the suit … he had an air about him that gave Jack the creeps.
“Yeah, but—”
“Let’s just hope they’re real y going to let us go.”
Jack felt his chest tighten. “What are you talkingabout?”
“Yeah, Weez,” Eddie said. “Cut it out, wil you. You’re scaring me. You’re always scaring me.”
“I’m not trying to scare anyone.” Her calm tone was scary in itself. “But it’s pretty obvious they’re not looking for evidence. So what arethey looking for?
Something they don’t want anyone to know about if they find it?”
“Fine,” Jack said. “But that doesn’t mean they’re going to keep us prisoners.”
Secret Histories yrj-1 Page 18
