by Nancy Isaak
“If there’s anything you want me to try and trade for with the Locals, let me know in the next few minutes,” I told him. “I want to leave as soon as possible.”
“The only thing I really need right now is a room and a bed for the next little bit.”
I looked over at him, raising my eyebrows in a question. He shrugged, trying to be nonchalant. “Brandon’s having trouble with all this,” Kieran explained. “He doesn’t like sick people. He’s afraid that I might bring something back.”
“So, he doesn’t want you in the guest house until this is all over?”
“He’s a little weird that way.”
“That’s not being weird,” I grumbled. “That’s just being a selfish prick.”
I noticed that Kieran didn’t disagree with me.
* * * *
It would have made more sense for Connor to accompany me, but he absolutely refused to go anywhere near the Locals’ camp. I don’t know if it was because he thought Joe might still try to kill him—or because the place was filled with too many bad memories.
Either way—Connor wasn’t going.
Which meant Porter.
Again—not the best choice.
I wanted Porter to remain with the guys, taking care of them, not heading into possible danger with me. But the hardhead insisted that he had to come—to make sure that we got the right medicines.
“What if substitutes have to be made?” he argued. “You wouldn’t have any idea.”
“And you would?” I snorted. “Please—you’re not even sixteen and already you’re acting like one of those doctors who knows everything.”
Porter and I were walking along Dume Drive toward two large mansions about a half-mile down. Ru usually had guys stationed there—guarding a trail that they had created between the estates. The route cut across the two lawns, following the cliff edge on the other side until—ultimately—it met up with the three mansions that the Locals had chosen as their own.
“I don’t have to know everything,” Porter stated, hitching his backpack a little higher on his shoulders. “I’ve got the PDR with me and it knows everything for me.”
“What the heck is a PDR?”
Porter gave me a superior look. “And that, right there,” he said, gloating, “is exactly why I have to come. The PDR is the “Physician’s Desk Reference”. It tells me what I need to know about all the different medicines.”
“How did you get one of those?” I asked, both surprised and a little impressed.
He shrugged. “I gave the guys a challenge, for when they went scavenging. First—to find a doctor’s house. Second—to find a PDR.”
“I can’t believe they managed it.”
Porter looked at me, surprised. “This is Point Dume, Jacob—home to some of the richest people in California. That doesn’t just mean movie stars, you know. That means doctors and lawyers, too. Andrei found the PDR in two days, by the way. Also some antibiotics—but they got used up pretty quick.”
“Is that the doctor?” said a quiet voice.
We both immediately froze.
* * * *
They came out from behind the bushes on our left—five guys, all between the ages of thirteen and seventeen. Each boy was carrying a weapon—two had rifles, one a gun, two others held machetes hanging loosely from their fists.
Their clothes were filthy—ripped jeans and stained t-shirts. Most of the guys had let their hair grow long, and two had untidy braids that they’d decorated with shells and feathers.
All five of them had tattoos—like Kieran’s—homemade markings of needle and pen ink. These boys’ tattoos, however, were on their faces—chevrons across the cheeks, circles around the eyes, stars in the center of the forehead.
If they had wanted to look fierce, they had succeeded.
Of course—they also looked crazy.
* * * *
Beside me, Porter started to tremble. He moved a step backward, positioning himself so that I was between him and the Locals.
“Seriously?!” I asked Porter. “You think that’s going to protect you?”
A sixth boy emerged from the bushes.
He had a machete in one hand and what looked to be a submachine gun slung across one shoulder. Like the others, he sported a tattoo on his face—a solid black bar that went from one cheek to the other, straight across the bridge of his nose. His long blond hair was captured in a topknot—similar to those worn by sumo wrestlers or samurai. Unlike the other boys—his clothes appeared to be clean—black jeans and a Genius Bar t-shirt.
“Hey, Ru,” I said, lifting one hand in greeting.
“You didn’t answer the question?” he said. “Is that the doctor?”
“Close as we got.”
He walked up to Porter, giving him the once-over. “You saved Connor?”
“No thanks to you guys,” hissed Porter.
I reached out and gave him a slight punch to his shoulder. “Manners.”
Ru laughed. “I like your doc. What do you want to trade for him?”
* * * *
“Dude, it was a joke! Nobody was going to trade you.”
“Well, it wasn’t very funny,” said Porter, still angry.
“It kinda’ was,” I chuckled. “If only you had seen your face.”
“Shaddup!”
We were walking along the edge of the cliff, following the trail to Ru’s houses. Two of the Locals were in front of us, three behind. I didn’t know where Ru was—I assumed that he’d gone on ahead.
“How come they don’t talk?” whispered Porter, motioning to the Locals accompanying us.
“They talk,” I said. “Just not to us.”
We reached a gate—its bars solid and stretching high over our heads. On each side a tall, filigreed fence stretched out, all the way along the cliff’s edge, as far as we could see.
“This place must be massive,” Porter speculated. “If this is only its gate, I can just imagine what’s inside.”
A small door was open to the right side of the gate. We were led through it and along a pathway, set back in a row of eucalyptus trees. Every few yards there was a small alcove—composed of rose bushes—with a Grecian statue invariably displayed in the center.
After five minutes of walking, we reached a small, man-made water feature—now dry. There were statues in the middle—giant porpoises and mermaids, intertwined. No doubt, they would have been spouting water had there been any electricity.
To the right, a table had been set up. Ru was already seated there, with four of his guys standing nearby—guns in their hands.
“Come and have a seat, gentlemen,” commanded Ru, waving to two chairs opposite him. There was a pitcher of lemonade in the center of the table, along with a plate of cookies.
As we sat, Ru picked up the pitcher and poured us each a glass of lemonade. Then he pushed the cookies toward us. “Sorry, they’re not homemade,” he apologized. “Do what we can, right?”
“Exactly,” I said, reaching for a chocolate macaroon.
Beside me, Porter grabbed his own macaroon. His head was swiveling this way and that—taking in the massive estate.
“It’s a little gaudy,” Ru told him. “From what we can tell, it was owned by some Middle Eastern prince. There’s this one room on the second floor in the main mansion—filled with pillows and these silk drape-things coming down from the ceiling. Samuel thinks that it was probably for the prince’s harem.”
A few of the Locals chuckled among themselves.
Meanwhile—from between the bushes, a new boy suddenly emerged.
He had short red hair and freckles and he couldn’t have been more than 10-years old. Running up to Ru, he put his arms around the older boy, whispering into his ear.
I took the moment to look around at the ornamental bushes, towering eucalyptus, and roses that seemed to be everywhere. It was like being seated in one of those botanical gardens that my mother always loved to visit.
When the red-haired boy finally finished his whi
spering, Ru gave him a nod and patted him on the hand. Reassured, the boy turned and raced off, back through the bushes the way he had come.
Ru returned his attention to us. “Sorry about that.”
“No worries” I said, still looking around. “I don’t see the mansion. Is it back there?”
“That’s why we chose it,” Ru explained. “It’s set behind a second wall—impossible to see from the road. I doubt most people on the Point even knew it was here. The houses you guys can see from your rooftop are between the first and the second wall. They’re the guest houses—or maybe the maid’s quarters. We’re not really sure.”
This was news to me—“You can see us on the rooftop?”
“Dude,” he laughed. “I told you before. We keep track of what’s going on here at the Point. Obviously—you do, too.”
“Just trying to stay safe,” I shrugged.
“Aren’t we all?” he agreed, quietly. Then, taking a big breath, he crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. “So—I’m assuming this isn’t just a neighborly how-do-you-do.”
Porter immediately reached into his backpack and pulled out a large book—obviously his PDR. Turning it around, he showed Ru a page. “We need to find this.”
Another page.
“And this.”
Still, another page.
“And this.”
“I see,” nodded Ru. “You came with a shopping list, did you?”
“Well, you have the pharmacy on your side of the Point,” I said. “If you don’t have the medicines, then we’ll head down to the one near City Hall.”
Ru shook his head. “Wouldn’t do you any good. That one’s been emptied. I doubt you’d be able to find a Q-tip.”
“Who did it?” I asked, surprised.
He shrugged. “We’re not sure. That’s still a long way for my guys to go. Plus, there’s a dude over near Corral Beach who likes to take pot shots at us whenever we pass by, so we don’t make the trip too often.”
“Do you think you might have these medicines in your pharmacy?” asked Porter. “It’s important.”
“You have sick guys?” asked Ru.
Porter and I looked at each other, trying to figure out how much we should say.
“Truth is always best,” said Ru—as if he could read our minds.
I nodded at Porter—tell him.
“We have four sick, one pretty much recovered,” he explained. “But we’re completely out of antibiotics and pain meds.”
“Do you know what they have? Why they’re sick?”
Porter shook his head. “It’s just an educated guess,” he said. “The symptoms match up with the flu, though, according to the “Merck Manual” I have.”
“That’s a medical reference book,” I explained.
“I know what a “Merck” is,” Ru said. “Connor’s mom has one in her kitchen. She calls it her medical bible.”
“The problem is,” continued Porter, “that this flu is bad. They’re running really high fevers and it looks like Wester and Ethan—two of our younger guys—are coming down with bronchitis. My fear is that, if we don’t stop it now—even if they do beat it—their bodies will be so weakened that they’ll be open to other infections.”
“And that could affect everyone,” I said, pointedly.
“So, that’s why we need to get into the pharmacy on your side,” said Porter. “To find the medicines.”
“We’ve brought a list of things we can trade,” I offered. “We’ve found a lot of good stuff on our side.”
I pulled out the list that Porter and I had prepared just before we left this morning and slid it across the table to Ru. He barely looked at it before he pushed it aside. Then, he studied us for a moment, looking from Porter’s face to mine.
Finally, he spoke. “The pharmacy’s already been emptied.”
* * * *
Ru led the way along a sidewalk.
On one side was a giant river-rock wall—on the other side, apparently, was the ‘prince’s mansion’—although we couldn’t see it. There were wooden doors set in along the wall, but those had no windows and needed keys for entry.
“It’s completely enclosed,” explained Ru. “The wall goes all the way around. From what we can see, there’s a tunnel that comes out near the front gate. That’s how they drove their cars in. Only problem is, there’s one of those heavy metal gates at both ends—electronically operated. If there’s a manual override, we haven’t been able to find it. And, of course, these wooden gates you see here are locked shut.”
“But you’ve got the keys?” I asked.
“We do now,” he nodded. “When we first came, though, we had to go over the wall. That busted our balls for a while until Connor figured out this Jenga-thing—like he put this box here, that thing there, this board leaned that way. A couple of guys just wanted to go find a ladder, but Connor’s all like—just give me a minute, it’ll be quicker this way. And he was right. Got us over the wall a couple of minutes later.”
“It’s that spatial thing of his,” I said.
“Connor told you about that, huh?”
I nodded.
“How’s he doing, by the way? He’s not one of the sick, is he?”
“He’s fine.”
“I figured as much. We’ve seen him moving around in the yard.”
We reached the end of the mansion’s wall. As we turned the corner, I saw the two large houses we could see from our roof. They were set a little farther back, along their own paved road.
Dead center of both houses—was the cage.
* * * *
There had to have been twenty guys standing around the cage—a few with tattoos and ratty clothes like the ones accompanying us. Most, however, were dressed like the redheaded boy—clean and tidy—just normal kids trying to exist in an abnormal world.
“Wow,” I said, surprised. “I didn’t realize that you had so many guys.”
“Tribe’s growing,” acknowledged Ru. “Those five over there—we found them camping out on Zuma Beach two days ago. That black guy, with the burns on his legs—came down Decker Canyon. Got jumped by a couple of creeps, tried to set him on fire.”
“My god,” whispered Porter beside me, horrified.
“Yeah,” Ru nodded. “It’s getting brutal out there. That’s why we’ve always been so careful here on the Point. Don’t want the riff-raff getting in.”
He grinned at us. “Guess you guys are the exception.”
* * * *
“We’ve been watching you build it,” I said. “Trying to figure out what it’s for.”
Ru pulled on one of the cage’s bars. It held firm. “Worried that it was for you?” he grinned.
“Maybe,” I admitted.
“It’s for me.”
Porter and I both turned, surprised to find that the owner of the deep voice was Joe—the guy who had been tasked to kill Connor in the Pavilions’ parking lot. He was bare-chested, his torso covered in tattoos—some homemade, others he must have had previously, because they looked professional.
His dark hair was just past his shoulders now, but he wore it in a braid—the sides shaved so it appeared as a faux-mohawk. A thin gold hoop was threaded through his upper lip and he had another one through his left eyebrow.
“Man, do I have a girl for you,” I said.
“If you mean Cherry Winslette,” whispered Porter into my ear, “she’s gay, you know.”
I nudged Porter, silencing him. “It was a joke, dude.”
Joe came forward, one hand moving slowly along the cage’s bars as he approached. He had a machete tucked into his belt and I couldn’t help but notice that it was red along the edge. I hoped that it was paint, but I had a feeling that it was dried blood.
“What do you mean the cage is for you?” I asked him.
“My birthday present.”
“Joe will be eighteen on April 1st,” said Ru. “Do you know what that means?”
“We’ve been told,” I admitted. �
�But we don’t know if it’s really true.”
“Neither do we,” said Ru. “Joe will be our first guy turning eighteen.”
“So, you’re going to put him in a cage?”
“It was my idea,” said Joe.
“We don’t know what happens when a guy turns eighteen,” said Ru. “Maybe they disappear, maybe they don’t. Maybe some crazy supernatural being that no one can see shows up and takes them away.”
“And if that’s true,” I continued for him, “then maybe it won’t be able to get at Joe if he’s in the cage.”
“Nobody knows anything,” Ru shrugged. “We’re just trying everything we can.”
“Either way,” said Joe. “It’ll make for a good show.”
* * * *
“Here we go.” Ru unlocked the side door to the large garage. “Careful,” he cautioned. “It’s a little dark inside. Give your eyes a few seconds to adjust while I light us a couple of candles.”
The garage was enormous—with a polished tile floor and European imports angled all along both sides.
“Oh my god,” I whispered. “That’s a Bugatti Brescia over there!”
“The prince was a car nut apparently,” said Ru, handing us each a small candle. “He’s got another garage on the other side of the property. That one holds the Domestics.”
“Is that a Delahaye?” I raced across to a tear-drop shaped vehicle. It was shiny green, spotless—perfect. “This one car is like—millions of dollars,” I whispered, in awe. “There’s only a handful of this particular model in the whole world. Like I’ve only ever seen them in pictures.”
“Well, it’s mine now,” said Ru. “But I tell you what. If you can drive it out of the garage, I’ll give it to you. No strings.”
And—as stupid as it sounds—I stood there for a good two minutes, trying to figure out a way to actually make that happen.
