When I got home that night, Skeeba was crying, huddled on the floor in the middle of the living room. She stopped when she saw me.
“What’s happened?” I asked.
“Petor. There was a sweep.”
“Yes, there was a sweep. But that was hours ago. During school. He–”
“He skipped.”
“What?”
“Mather told his mom Petor skipped today. He got picked up—”
“How does Mather know?”
“He knows. Petor wasn’t in school. And Petor didn’t come home.”
“Have you checked the neighborhood? Have you called the hospital? Don’t just–”
“Just what? Mourn the loss of my child? Taken by those beasts to who knows where? Sorry if that’s all I’m doing.”
“You know I don’t mean it that way. But you are jumping–”
“I’m a frog, I jump, I jump! Sure. There is a sweep and then he doesn’t come home. I jump!”
“Petor doesn’t skip school.” I know this is a lie, but I say it anyway. Anything to stop my sister’s tears.
“He did today. Where are you going?”
“To find him.”
Skeeba shook her head. “You’re insane. I’m telling you, he was in the sweep.”
“Then I guess I know where to look.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Whatever I can.”
The city was always awake and moving, but after one a.m. people got discreet. We never knew when a crackdown might come. I slid through the shadows toward the school because I could not think of where else to begin. The sweep had been about noon, a few blocks south of the school, right through the heart of the neighborhood. I’d seen plenty of Petor’s classmates on the streets during the day, and I knew if they were part of the light markets then they were out hustling the darks, too. The money’s better, temptation stronger. I saw Mather and his brother Edward in a doorway. Edward made to run when he saw me, but Mather shook his head and he stayed put.
“What did you see?” I asked.
“Enough. When them grays came through this morning.”
“Yeah?”
“Sure. Pete was at Oakland Park and Cleveland, right where they dropped. It was fast. They pulled in fifteen, maybe twenty. Angsely. Hershey. Butch. Plus a few I don’t know. Pete was right up front. He kicked up a storm but that don’t make no difference to the grays, you know. Thirty seconds later they’s up up and away.”
“Any signs?”
“In red on black. ‘LBB.’”
“What’s that?”
“Fuck if I know.”
“K. Thanks.”
“Whatcha gonna do? Can’t do nothing. Those weren’t no Department boys.”
“No?”
“Fuck no. Ain’t no LBB in the divisions.”
I mulled it over. He was right. “Contractors?”
“Hmph. Or freelance. Gotta be.”
“Freelancers. Fuck.”
“Got that right. Whatcha gonna do?”
I pushed off, thinking. Freelancers were a nightmare because you never knew who they were working for or where they were going. The divisions could be bad enough, but at least their missions and locations were public record. When I was fifteen I’d been nabbed and impressed by the Third Ohio. Knowing that the Third was based near Athens came in handy when I made a run for it. Having a direction to travel simplified things, maybe saved my life. Freelancers could be anywhere. Everything was worse.
Well, maybe not everything. Because the divisions were government, once they had you, they had you. Their data was thorough. So when a Third Ohio training sergeant had been killed when Beeno and Carmody and I escaped, we were fucked. They knew exactly who they were searching for. Carmody was killed on the road back; Beeno was caught, tried, and executed a month later. I got back to the city, but never really came home. I survived, but barely, with no official identity, home, or job. A shadow life on the margins of the city.
I told myself Petor could be in luck. Freelancers were probably not as efficient at identifying the people they impress. Limited data.
I thought Marco might be able to give me something on LBB. I went to the Splits first. Three places later I found him, shooting dice behind Mason’s. I found it hard to believe that the raggers he was working had any money to lose, but Marco knew what he was about. He could smell a buck under a pile of shit. They gave me the evil eye when I came up, like they thought my presence was going to stop their good times with Marco. He didn’t even stop shooting while we talked.
“LBB? Stay the fuck out of that.”
“Who are they? They bagged Petor in a sweep.”
“Shit.”
“Who are they?”
“You remember those fundie nutsacks that called themselves the Arm of the Lord?”
“Them Nazis? Yeah.”
“Well, these guys are an offshoot. A conservative offshoot. The Lord’s Black Boot. Something like that.”
“Freelancers?”
He laughed. “You say that as if someone would hire them.”
“What do they do, then?”
“Stomp around preparing the way for the second coming. Which mostly means lynching unbelievers, I think.”
“Why would they be sweeping kids?”
Marco shrugged. “Recruits for the Lord’s army?”
“Where would I find these assholes?”
“You really want to?”
“Pete,” I reminded him.
“Right. Well, they’re tolerated as nolanders. I hear they have a compound a few miles outside. Southeast. Groveport-ish.”
“Tolerated? They must be useful to someone.”
“The man always has a use for violent bigots.”
I nodded and turned to go.
“Whatcha gonna do?”
“Everyone keeps asking. I’ll let you know when I figure it out.”
“Hold up.” Marco grabbed his winnings and got to his feet. The raggers grumbled. Marco flipped them off.
“That’s at least a dozen miles. I’ll give you a lift to the line.”
His car was at the corner. We went slow and dark. The old electric motor ground loud enough that I was sure the guard would be down on us at every turn, but Marco seemed to know. He stayed off main drags and slunk down alleys and side streets. Only once, in Merion Village, did we see a patrol. Marco cursed and slalomed through a few fast turns and shut down in an empty driveway. We never saw the patrol again.
Marco knew better to go all the way to the line, which is always heavily guarded. He parked on a little residential street in Obetz, about a quarter-mile from the chain-link barriers that separated the neighborhood from the old outerbelt and the world beyond.
“How you getting out?”
“Climb, I guess.”
“You have no fucking clue what you’re doing, do you?”
He was right. I hadn’t been out–hadn’t even thought about it–in over twenty years. And even then it had been in the belly of a troop transport.
“Come on.”
He led me down the street and, instead of turning right, toward the line, he went left back into the neighborhood.
“You think getting yourself killed is going to help Pete?”
There was nothing to say to that.
“You can’t climb out. Drones will pick you off like a pigeon. You can’t fly it. Only way over is under. You carrying?”
I shook my head.
“Jesus, dude. Here.” He reached in his pocket and pulled something out. He offered it. It was a long handle which gave spring-loaded birth to a blade when I touched a button.
“Be careful with that,” he said. “I want it back.”
There was a bit of moonlight. We came to a vacant lot that led into an overgrown greenspace. I guess it was once a park. To one side, I could make out a group of junkies sleeping off their latest triumphs alongside a decayed swing set. Marco steered the other way, toward a cluster of trees. He searched along the margin until he found what he was looking for, then plunged into the dark of the wood.
“Put your hand on my shoulder. Follow close. Feel with your feet and walk careful.”
The ghost of a trail was pocked by holes and roots. As we went further, the trees thinned and rocks replaced the roots. He shrugged me off his shoulder and pointed. Soon we were scrambling down a short, steep slope into a tight gully. I could hear water trickling ahead.
“They call this a run. I call it a wet ditch. Anyway, it goes through a drainage tunnel under 270. Way back when, it was just the city engineer’s way of getting the water past the outerbelt and into Alum Creek. The mouth of the tunnel is outside. But after the line was drawn and they put up the fence, a friend of mine dug a wormhole. It takes you under the fence and right up to the mouth of the tunnel. Belly through the hole under the line, run the tunnel under the freeway, and you’re out.
“No one knows it’s there, ya know? You don’t know it’s there. Don’t get caught. Don’t tell anyone.”
I nodded.
“Once you’re out, find the railroad tracks to the southwest and follow them to Bixby Road. It’s not far. Go right on Bixby. You’ll come to the LBB compound on the left. A mile or so, I guess.
“How do you know all this?”
Marco shoved me down and forward, and then it was there in front of me, a narrow space between rocks that seemed to part by magic. The space drew me forward and then there was more, and I crawled forward on my knees. Before long the way tightened and I had to drop and drag myself forward on my belly, propelling myself with what footholds I could gather in the soft ground behind. I wondered what would happen if the tunnel suddenly came to an end; there was no room to turn around, and I doubted I had the arm strength to shove my way out backwards.
Luckily, the tunnel didn’t end–it just dumped me back out on the surface. I lay on the ground, gasping and staring up at the night sky. The sight of the stars filled me with joy. It had seemed like I had been underground for days, but my watch told me it had been just a little over twenty minutes.
The placement of the wormhole’s end was perfect, well into the shadows of the tree-skirted edge of the outerbelt. Behind me was the brightly-light stretch of barren earth, bulldozed smooth, interrupted by a series of chain-link barriers, and patrolled by guards carrying automatics. Traffic on 270 ahead was light, and in the gaps between passing trucks I could hear the burble of water to my left. I crawled through the dark to the concrete edge of the drainage ditch. I lowered myself into the trench and found myself in ankle-deep water. Ahead, I could make out a denser blackness where the run entered the tunnel.
The tunnel’s darkness was as complete as that of the wormhole. I went slowly, arms extended, palms out. I was amazed with each step that did not result in a collision. After an age, a gray patch appeared and grew on the horizon. Before long I emerged. This end was in the open and bathed in moonlight. It wasn’t long before I came to the tracks. I had to step carefully when crossing the bridge over Big Walnut. As the tracks left the woods, I followed them across a meadow and down a slope. Ahead, in the moonlight, I could see a grey line that I knew must be Bixby. I was glad to see the old lights lining the roadway were no longer working. I stuck out on a course parallel to the road, staying in the brush along the verge.
It wasn’t far.
The whole grounds were lit by tall light poles. It looked like it was once a school or a church, or maybe both since there were two buildings. There was no sign, but there were a bus and a big air cruiser in front, each marked with a black and red logo featuring a stylized “LBB” grouped around a cross. The whole place was surrounded by fifteen-foot chain link, the top generously garnished with razor wire. I took the lesson of my recent experience and looked downward. I didn’t see anywhere along the front that looked good, so I crossed the road and went around.
The good news was that I did not see guards, human or canine. Apparently, they felt the fencing was enough to deter intruders. The bad news was that their confidence seemed justified. There were no low points along the ground that might provide an entrance. There was only the front gate. No gaps, no openings. It was either figure out a way to get in the gate or go up and over.
I chose a spot along the back line, a section near the larger building—a long, low place—in a corner near the only burnt-out light pole on the grounds. It wasn’t much darker than any other section of the barrier, but the dead fixture still felt reassuring. Plus, this building, which a closer examination had further convinced me had once been a school, seemed the more likely place to have been pressed into service as a dormitory for whatever kids these goons had abducted.
The climb wasn’t hard. Chain link affords plenty of finger and toe holds. But when I got to the top, the razor wire stopped me. My first attempt ended with a couple of light cuts on my left forearm. The second with a nastier gash just above the right elbow that left me gasping. I held on and tried to regroup, but my third foray came to a quick end with a sudden, deep slice into the third and fourth fingers of my left hand. I made my way back down clinging for dear life with my right hand with an occasional assist from my blood-streaked left thumb. I dropped the last few feet and scrambled for the shadows, where I tore strips of the bottom of my shirt for bandages.
It was then that I heard a rattle and bang from the compound. A man in a black jumpsuit exited the front building and crossed the grounds toward the air cruiser. A doberman followed in his wake. He opened the door, allowed the dog to hop in first and piled in. The engine hiccuped a couple of times then hummed to life. The thing shuddered, rose into the air, and flew toward the city.
I guess I was being a bit slow, because it wasn’t until then that I reflected on how there is more than one way to get over. So I set off down the road. I may not know much; I may, indeed, be a stupid, helpless motherfucker. But even I know how to boost a floater. You don’t live in the city much past age twelve without learning how to fly.
The trick was how to find a floater out here in the boonies. But of course I wasn’t really outlanding. I was in the burbs, and a residential area wasn’t hard to find. Forty minutes later I was on my way back in a Toyota two-seater. It wasn’t the fastest thing around, but the LBB cruiser was built for lifting power, not speed would be easy to outrun if it showed up, so I wasn’t worried. If I was able to get Petor and get back in the driver’s seat, we’d be ok.
I came down a few hundred feet behind the compound in the shelter of a tree line. I could see that the only real cover inside was a huge woodpile in the rear of the back building. It would have to do. A faint line of grey was starting to show on the horizon. I didn’t like that one damn bit.
My razor cuts on my arms and hand stung more than ever as I flew over the fence, reminding me of how stupid I’d been. I dropped in behind the woodpile and slipped out of the machine. There was a double door in the back of the building. A heavy chain was wrapped through the handles and secured with a padlock, a shitty one that only took a moment to pick.
The doors opened into a locker-lined school hallway. I moved carefully through the dark and sidled up to a door. Through the narrow window I saw a classroom with neat rows of chairs facing an old-fashioned chalkboard. The ten commandments were scrawled in various handwritings along the board, and the walls were covered with colorful posters with bible verses. A large map with the legend “The Holy Lands” hung from a stand to the right of the teacher’s desk. I slid down the hall to the next room and saw a chart giving the facts on “The U.S.A. in Biblical Prophecy” and a poster showing a picture of two boys holding hands over the message “None Dare Call it Sin!” Another showed a boy leaving a bunch of protestors on one side of the street as he crossed to the church opposite which proclaimed “Get on the Right Side of the Future!” I slid inside for a closer look. There was a shelf of books next to it, science curriculum like Abortuaries of New York, Scientific Creationism, and The Negro Brain. There was an adjacent room in the back. Glancing inside I saw a stack of old board games and a heap of bedraggled stuffed animals.
I kept going down the hall until I came to the intersection of two corridors. I peeked around the corner. There was a man standing in the middle of the hall outside a pair of double doors. His back was to me, and I could see the awkward bulge of a handgun holstered on his hip. I moved as quickly as I dared, sure that he would turn and see me before I could strike, but he did not. I had the knife against his throat and his gun in my hand in an instant. I pistol-whipped him and liberated a flashlight and a ring of keys from his belt. One of the keys opened the lock on the double doors, which led to a gymnasium. I pulled the sentry’s unconscious body into the room, trussed him up, gagged him, and dumped him in the corner.
A black shadow loomed at the opposite end of the gym. I hit it with the flash and saw that they had erected a makeshift stage and surrounded it with folding chairs. There was a huge black cross towering in the center of the stage. The body hanging from it was not made of plaster. Instinctively, I snapped the light off. But I knew it was there, so I had to turn it on again.
It was a boy, maybe fifteen. He was tall and lean and his skin was ghostly pale. As I drew nearer I saw he had not been nailed to the wood. He was tied around the arms just below his shoulders and also around his waist. The ropes were so tight his arms looked blue. His face was bruised and swollen. A sign above his head read onanist.
He was not breathing.
To the right of the cross was a pillory, and to the left what appeared to be a whipping post. The floor of the front of the stage was cluttered with blood-smeared rags, whips, and other implements that I tried not to look at too closely. In the far corner, behind the chairs, I saw a door.
It led to a stairwell. I kept the light pointed low and close to the wall and walked carefully. I came to a landing where the stairs turned. I was only about three steps down from the landing when I heard a faint scratching ahead. I brought the light up and saw the doberman just as I heard the growl. I leapt back to the landing again and fumbled the stiletto out of my pocket. The dog sprang as the blade snicked.
My left arm came up in a defensive reflex. The teeth intended for my throat closed on my forearm. The light dropped to the floor and went out. Fang met bone, and I screamed. Instinctively, my right hand rose and struck the beast in the neck. It gave a shocked yelp as it released my arm. I hit it a second time, then a third. The animal’s claws scrambled against my shirt and it fell, weakly, at my feet. It was only then that I realized that I was clutching the stiletto in my right hand. The dog’s breath rattled in its ruined throat as it bled out.
I listened to its final rasps, then I listened deeply into the silence that came after. I held my breath and strained my ears for another growl, the scrape of another claw on the stairway. Nothing came. I felt around until I found the flashlight. I gave it a shake and it came back on. Grasping the handrail and trying to ignore the agony in my arm, I continued down.
At the bottom of the stair, there was a closed metal door. I pressed my ear against it, but heard nothing. I grasped the door’s crash bar and leaned in slowly. I felt it grind forward; it squeaked faintly as levers shifted. The floor catch raised, and I slowly pushed the door open. An inch. Two. Three. Faint light glimmered through the crack. I looked in.
It had once been a locker room. The lockers had been removed, and all that remained of them were metal wall brackets. The room had been converted into a dormitory. Night lights in outlets provided dim illumination. The length of the room had been filled with three rows of cots. And in each cot was a kid.
I stepped in, holding the door open with my shoulder, knowing the lock would be set from the outside. A couple of the kids sat up as I looked around, others stirred in their bunks. They seemed so small there in the big room, the space diminishing them, highlighting their fragility and powerlessness. They try to act so tough at this age. It’s easy to forget sometimes that thirteen isn’t much.
One boy, one of the bigger ones, stood from his bunk and crossed his arms, staring across the room at me. It was a challenge. I smiled and tried to look friendly–not simple with a stiletto in one hand and dog’s blood all down the front of my shirt. The silence stretched.
A blur of movement to my left brought me around. I started to raise the knife, then dropped it as Petor dashed into my arms. I let him stay there for a moment, closed my eyes and clutched him hard.
Keeping him in my grip, I started backward. A lean. Almost a step. It felt wrong to leave the others, a cheap betrayal worthy of only the lowest cretin, but I was hardly prepared to lead a mass breakout. Sneaking out was possible. Trying to free the whole group would turn into a disaster.
Other boys drew closer, eyes wide. I stooped and picked up the knife, clacking it shut and sliding it back into my pocket. One, the bigger boy I’d noticed earlier, was moving quicker than the rest. I recognized him now, a kid from Petor’s school, a couple of years ahead of him. Snit they called him, or something like that. He rushed the door, his determined expression showing that he had grasped my intent before the others. I shoved Petor out behind me and scuttled out, pulling the door by the crash bar as I went.
There was a startled rush–hissed words, sudden movement–inside, but the door did not clank shut behind me. I saw the fingers smashed against the frame and, God help me, I let it go. I knew there would be hell to pay, for Snit and the others and perhaps for Petor and I as well. I knew. But if I could stand to slam the door in his face, I could not on his hand. That was all the difference there was, and it was all the difference in the world.
The door rattled open behind us, but I was not watching it. I pivoted, grabbed Petor by the shoulders, and started him toward the stair. I shushed the questions on his lips and maneuvered him onto the first step, making sure he grasped the rail as we began to climb. Behind were snuffs and shuffles of movement. I told myself they had nothing to do with me, ambient chaff filtering pointlessly through the dark. I was not equipped to consider the fate of the doomed.
We made the top of the stairway without encountering resistance. The tail of kids behind us sniffed and scuffled more audibly the further we went. There was a burst of whispers behind us when someone tripped over the dead dog. I did not point the flashlight at the stage or its dreadful occupant when we reached the gymnasium. We were halfway to the exit when a loud clatter came banging on our wake: someone had knocked something over. It was all that was needed. Somewhere else in the building, down some other hall that was neither long nor distant enough, a dog began to bark. I pushed Petor ahead and hissed run.
We made it through the corridors and back to the yard without meeting anyone, human or canine. The eastern sky was pink. I trailed Petor around the woodpile toward the waiting Toyota. Boys, I knew, were spilling out of the door behind us, following even though I had nowhere to lead them. When we rounded the corner he was there. He was so thin, he looked like an old stick someone had glued a beard on. Then I saw his eyes, which shone with the fire of a thousand bad ideas. He snarled rather than spoke as he charged us. He closed too quickly for his own good; I don’t think he even saw the gun before I shot him. He gasped and gurgled and dropped. Behind me, Petor was yelping. I heard dogs barking and voices, too, rising with them. But there was no one else there with us for the moment, and the moment was all we needed. I shoved Petor into the passenger seat and hopped behind the stick. The machine shuddered and began to rise.
I told myself not to look, but I did. As we climbed, I saw the boys coming from the building, and from above I could also see the group of men circling from the front, their dogs racing ahead. They saw me too, of course, and a number of them began firing. I zigged and zagged and kept rising. The men, if they were smart, would know that rounding the boys up as peacefully as possible was in their best interest. Dead or injured recruits had no value. But I figured these were not thoughtful men, or even rational ones. And the boys? They were boys–young and impulsive with, if I were honest, little reason to surrender quietly.
So I watched. God help me, I watched. I weaved about while Petor cried and the boys charged the fence. The dogs snarled, the rifles barked, and the ground was marked with crimson. A few of the faster boys, I thought I spied Snit among them, made the fence and climbed using those generous handholds toward the waiting wire. None of them made it down the other side.
A bullet crashed through the Toyota’s windshield, spider-webbing my view. Beside me, Petor had gone quiet. He had seen more than enough. So had I. I told myself that if it had been just me, if I didn’t have to protect Petor, that I’d have gone back down and found some way to help. Then I pointed the car north and floored it. We would ditch the vehicle and crawl back to the city through faint morning light.
[Image Credit : Photo by Filipe Nobre on Unsplash]
by 
0 Comments