by Roland Smith
Instead of answering, Butch said something to his men. They started re-coiling their ropes.
“I asked where we’re going,” Grace repeated.
“You and your friend may not be going anywhere,” Butch said, taking his pistol out and pointing it at Dylan.
“You going to shoot us like you did Raul?” Dylan asked with unflinching defiance.
Grace wasn’t sure this was the best way to handle Butch, but she had to give him props for bravery.
“Maybe,” Butch said with a shrug. “So you stumbled across my old friend Raul? That must have been a sight.”
“It was horrible,” Grace said. “Why did you shoot him?”
“Because he’d served his purpose. You might have noticed the jag tats?”
Grace nodded.
“Raul was born in the compound, but he decided it wasn’t to his liking. We were pretty happy to see him show up at Lansa’s jaguar preserve. We’ve been looking for him for a long time. He thought that by cooperating he could save everyone. As you saw, that didn’t work out for him.”
“Then why should we cooperate?” Grace asked.
“First, because you have no choice.” Butch cocked his pistol. “Second, because I’ll shoot Dylan right here, right now, if you don’t. Where’s Marty?”
“I don’t know,” Grace said.
“Wrong answer.” Butch took a step toward Dylan.
“I’m telling the truth!” Grace shouted. “We got separated trying to get away from Yvonne. We followed the footprints here. We figured he’d do the same.”
“Where’s Yvonne?”
“I have no idea. The last time I saw her and her men was west of camp. We were able to get past them and come this way.”
“Is she still tracking you?”
Grace nodded. “We think so.”
“Then why isn’t she here?”
Grace shook her head. “Maybe she’s tracking Marty, and he’s not coming this way. We lost him just outside camp. Why don’t you radio her?”
Butch didn’t answer. Instead he looked up through the canopy for a moment, then lowered his gun. “I’m sure you’re lying through your teeth, like always, but for now I’ll let Dylan live. It’ll be dark soon. We need to get inside.”
“Who else is in there?”
Butch ignored her and waved the triplets to the south.
“Aren’t we going to the gate?” Dylan asked.
“There’s more than one gate,” Butch said. “And if I hear another word from you, I will shoot you in the head.” He pointed out yet another electrocuted monkey. “Or maybe I’ll just push you into the fence and watch you sizzle.”
Dead monkey twenty-one, Grace thought. I hope Marty knows what he’s doing.
Marty had no idea what he was doing, but he wasn’t overly concerned. He was used to not knowing what he was doing. He’d swiped the code and gotten into the compound.
So far so good.
He was fifty feet up yet another tree with a good view of the gate. Earlier, he’d taken a chance by flying the dragonspy in close enough to listen to Grace and Dylan’s capture outside the fence. He’d caught the click of Butch’s pistol and his threat to sizzle Dylan.
I told Dylan not to go with Grace. Next time maybe he’ll listen.
He watched as they started through the gate. A couple of sets of triplets led the way, followed by Grace and Dylan, then the hatchlings, who balked at the entrance. Grace had to go back and coax them into the compound. It took several minutes, but finally one of them shot through the opening like a cannonball, quickly followed by the other. Butch slammed the gate closed.
Grace pointed at the vintage truck. “There is no way the hatchlings are going to climb into the back of that willingly.”
“Willingly, huh?” Butch said. “I could truss ’em up and toss ’em in the back if I want. The only will that matters inside here is my will.”
“Oh,” Grace said. “So this is your place?”
Butch frowned.
Marty smiled. Grace knew how to get under Butch’s skin, but she needed to be careful. Butch might shoot her where she stood. She could no longer rely on Noah Blackwood’s protection. Not after what she had done to him at the Seattle Ark.
“If we walk to wherever we’re going, they’ll probably just follow us,” Dylan said, obviously trying to defuse the situation.
Butch hit him on the side of the head, knocking him to the ground. “I warned you to keep your mouth shut.”
Grace ran over to Dylan.
“If either one of you says another word, I’ll kill both of you,” Butch said. “The hatchlings are trapped. They can’t get out of here. I don’t care where they go. We can round them up anytime we like. Now get in the truck!”
Grace and Dylan climbed into the cab, the triplets piled into the back, and Butch took off through the trees with the hatchlings running behind. The dinos lasted about a quarter of a mile before dropping back, then giving up completely to jump onto a small deer flushed into their path by the passing truck.
Marty left the hatchlings to their dinner and followed the truck to the lake, where everyone piled out. Butch pushed Grace and Dylan down the dock to one of the boats.
Inside or outside? Marty thought.
It was an important decision, and he wasn’t sure which way to go. It was getting dark, and he was pretty sure he could slip the dragonspy through the door of the building without Butch seeing it. But then what? If the bot got stuck inside the building, he wouldn’t be able to use it to clear his way to the lake. There were hundreds of people inside the compound, many of them now making their way to the village after their fieldwork. Sneaking around them without the dragonspy would be difficult, if not impossible. And he still had to get across the lake to the island. Sauntering down to the dock and stealing a boat wasn’t going to work. The dock was in the center of the village, and there were at least a dozen people hanging around there. He’d have to circle the lake and find another way across.
He followed the boat with Grace and Dylan across to the island. When they got there, Butch prodded them up to a giant metal door with his pistol and punched in the code. The door slid open. He pushed them through.
In? Out? Everyone else is inside. My parents might be inside. One swipe and I’ll have eyes inside.
Marty did not take the swipe. The giant door slid closed as if the concrete building was swallowing them.
* * *
Luther’s legs were getting tired and his feet were beginning to blister. He sat down on an empty water bottle crate and pulled off his sneakers and socks.
“Whew!” he said, holding the socks at arm’s length. “We need a washer and dryer down here! Or a box of socks! These are a little ripe. Toxic actually.”
He examined his feet and discovered a nasty blister on his left big toe and another hot spot on his right heel. He decided to forego sneakers for the time being. The cool concrete felt good on his bare feet. Sitting down also felt good. He wondered how many miles he’d walked.
I bet it’s a hundred miles!
“I could use a pedometer, too,” he said. “It’s a thing that measures how many steps you’ve taken. Got that?”
He’d been making requests like this for hours, not expecting, or getting, any answers, so he was pretty shocked when the corridor door burst open.
Wow, that was fast!
For a second, he actually thought a box of socks was going to come flying through the door. Instead, it was Dylan Hickock and Grace Wolfe.
“Company,” Butch said, grinning and slamming the door closed before Luther could utter a word.
Luther ran over and tried the door, but of course it was locked. There wasn’t much he could have done anyway with Butch on the other side. He turned and looked at Grace and Dylan. “How’s it going?”
“How’s do you think it’s going?” Grace shouted, getting to her feet.
“Just being polite.”
“Are you alone down here?”
Luther shook his head. “Laurel, Ana, Doc, Jake, Buck, and …” He hesitated. “Sylvia and Timothy.”
Grace wasn’t sure she had heard Luther correctly. Her knees got wobbly, and for a second she thought she might faint. A hand reached out to steady her. Dylan. “They’re alive?”
Luther nodded.
She had given up hope long ago, but had said nothing to Marty, or Wolfe, or anyone else about it. Sylvia and Timothy had been her parents up until a few months ago. Mom and Dad.
“How are they?” Grace could barely get the words out of her mouth.
“Thin,” Luther answered. “They could use some sun. A little weak. But good.”
Grace looked around the dimly lit room. She knew where she was from Rose’s sketches. “Seventeen rooms,” she said.
“How did you know that?” Luther asked.
“My mother’s Moleskine.”
“Where’s Marty?”
“He’s outside. We —”
“Hold it!” Luther said, with a look of panic. He pointed up at the shadowy ceiling. “This is Grace O’Har — uh, I mean, Grace Wolfe and Dylan Hickok, but you probably already know that.”
“Who are you talking to?” Dylan asked, looking up at the ceiling.
“We’re being watched and listened to,” Luther said. “I’m not sure who’s on the other end, but they’re kind of like a genie. If you need something, all you have to do is ask, and it shows up in one of the rooms. Well, not everything. About an hour ago, I asked for a couple of cheeseburgers, but they haven’t materialized yet.” He looked up at the ceiling. “But I’m still hopeful.”
“You mentioned Laurel,” Grace said. “But you didn’t say anything about Wolfe.”
“Butch took him someplace else. Haven’t seen him since I got down here.”
Grace looked up at the ceiling and decided that if they were listening, it was time to reinforce her lie about Marty. “We don’t know where Marty is,” she said. “We were trying to get away from Yvonne —”
“Yvonne’s in Brazil?”
Grace nodded. “Along with some military thugs. They were after us and we got separated. We found your tracks and figured that Marty would follow them, too, if he found them.”
“Maybe they stuck him with Wolfe.”
“That must be it,” Grace said, knowing it wasn’t. She was pretty certain that Luther knew it, too, and was playing a game for the camera and the genie.
“Follow me and I’ll take you to the other inmates.”
Grace and Dylan followed.
* * *
As soon as the sun set, Wolfe began the tedious and painful process of sawing through the plastic flex-cuffs. Luckily, the knife had just enough serration for the job.
Having worked with captive animals for most of his life, Wolfe knew a great deal about cages. He knew how to build them. He knew how to take them apart. But before he began disassembling his cage with the knife, he fed the bearcat. He wasn’t sure why, aside from the fact that the bearcat now expected Wolfe to feed him.
By the third meat toss, there was a shift in the bearcat’s behavior. His aggression seemed to melt away as if it had never existed. He rubbed his shaggy head against the wire mesh. Wolfe took a chance and hand fed him a piece of meat. The bearcat took it gently, without so much as a growl.
“Progress,” Wolfe said. “I’m betting you’re not nearly as fierce as you look.” He slowly put his hand out and touched the bearcat’s mane. The bearcat leaned in closer. Wolfe scratched him behind the ear.
“Big, tough, mutant bearcat.”
Wolfe glanced back at Nine. He was watching the scratching intently from his platform. Wolfe tossed him a piece of meat, thinking Nine would ignore it, as always, but the chupacabra surprised him. He sniffed it, then gulped it down in spite of having his own pile of meat untouched in his own cage. Wolfe tossed him a second piece of meat. Nine gobbled it down as eagerly as the first, then took a small step toward the wire mesh.
Wolfe smiled. “Who’s training who? If you think I’m going to scratch you behind the ear, think again. Wish I had time to see what you’re up to, but I have to go.”
He split the rest of the meat between the bearcat and Nine, then grabbed his knife and started unscrewing the brackets holding the front mesh in place.
* * *
Violet stared at the girl following behind the odd boy named Luther.
“She’s exactly like me,” she said.
“She looks like you,” her father said. “But she is nothing like you.”
Another lie, Violet thought. But she was used to this. Her father had been lying to her since the day she was born. They were watching the young people on the monitors as they moved from room to room.
“Who’s the boy with Grace?”
“Dylan Hickock. Another bad person.”
He didn’t look bad to Violet. None of them looked, or acted, like bad people. They looked like people she wanted to get to know — people she wanted to talk to face-to-face.
“The boy Marty you told me about? The son of Timothy and Sylvia?”
Her father shook his head. “He is still at large. By now he may be dead. The forest beyond where we live is a very dangerous place.”
“But I can keep the ones that are here?”
“For now, but not forever. You’ll be leaving our little paradise one day soon, and you cannot take them with you.”
Her father had been telling her this for years.
“To the Ark.”
“Yes, to the Ark.”
She pointed at the screen. “What will happen to them?”
Her father shrugged. “No one lives forever.” He gave her a wink. “Well, almost no one lives forever.”
“You and I will live a long, long, time.”
“Yes, we will.”
She watched as the newcomers entered the room with the others. Sylvia and Timothy ran over and threw their arms around the girl who looked like her.
* * *
Grace had wondered what her reaction would be upon seeing her former parents alive and well. Her doubt came from the fact that they had lied to her for her entire life. She understood why they’d done it, but on some level she was still angry about it. She needn’t have worried. As soon as she saw them, she burst into tears, returning their hugs, shocked at how thin and frail they were. She could feel every bone in their bodies and was afraid she would hurt them if she squeezed too hard.
Laurel Lee was next. Grace hadn’t seen her since Noah had flown her off the Coelacanth and taken her to the Ark. Laurel was sitting at a table with Ana. Grace ran over and gave her a hug.
“Bittersweet,” Laurel said, returning the hug. “It’s wonderful to see you, but I wish it wasn’t here.”
“What are you doing?” The table was covered with scraps of paper.
“We’re working on a lexicon of the Trips’ language in case we get a chance to communicate with them.”
“The Trips?”
“Triplets. Luther came up with the name.”
“Actually, Wolfe came up with the name,” Luther said.
“Anyway,” Laurel continued. “I think I’ve come up with a pretty good vocabulary. Why don’t you and Luther pull up a chair, and I’ll show you what we’re doing.”
Grace loved languages and was eager to see what they were up to.
Luther, not so much. “I’m sure it’s fascinating, but I think I’ll continue my rounds. Last loop, I scored two new people. Who knows what I’ll —”
“I think you should take a load off your feet,” Buck said, stepping into the room.
“Maybe in a little —”
“We talked about this,” Buck said.
“Oh yeah, that’s right,” Luther said, reluctantly pulling out a chair next to Grace and sitting down.
Laurel pushed a piece of paper across the table. “This is what I’ve come up with so far.”
Grace looked down at the paper and tried to hide her surprise, because it had nothing to do with the Tr
ips’ language. It read:
We are escaping in one hour.
Marty had made it past the village without being spotted and was a quarter of the way around the lake. Getting across to the island was looking unlikely. The dock appeared to be the only place with boats. He sat down on a stump to rest and figure out the best way to proceed. He was thinking about swimming across when an alligator as big as a small ship hauled itself out of the water, scaring him half to death.
“Holy crap!”
He fell backward off the stump and scrambled for the tree line, not stopping until he stumbled over an exposed root and face-planted on the forest floor. He would have broken his nose if the ground hadn’t been soft. He flipped over onto his back, gasping for breath. Alligators weren’t supposed to be that big. He couldn’t believe he’d been about to take off his shoes and go for a swim.
Marty sat up, wiped the rotting muck out of his eyes, and got to his feet. He wasn’t thrilled about heading back to the lake, but he didn’t have any choice. That’s where the island, the building, and hopefully his parents were. He put his headlamp on and stumbled through the forest for a hundred yards before angling back down to the lake, hoping to avoid another encounter with the giant gator. The coast was clear, but he didn’t take any chances. He stood twenty feet from the shore as he scanned the lake. The village was lit up like a Christmas tree with campfires. He looked across at the island. The building was completely invisible in the dark. If he hadn’t seen it in the daylight, he wouldn’t have known it was there.
What’s up with that?
He flipped through the pages of Rose’s journal in his head with his eidetic memory. Several of the sketches had been drawn from the vantage point of a window.
So where’s the light from the windows?
He slipped on the spyglasses and sent the dragonspy across the lake to check it out. Halfway across, he had another shock. An alligator launched itself out of the water and snapped a bird out of the air like a trophy trout snagging a mosquito. This meant that there was more than one giant gator, they could see perfectly at night, and they were hungry. Marty wasn’t sure if he’d be safe on the lake even if he did find a boat. He continued to the island and quickly discovered why the building was dark. Every window was covered with a steel shutter that looked like it could withstand a nuclear blast. He was about to fly the dragonspy back to shore when a light came on from someplace and temporarily blinded him.
