Before the Dawn (6 page)

“You can't leave—you'll freeze in those jammies! You're shivering.”

Max shrugged. “I would rather freeze to death than go back.” She turned and started to walk around toward the rear of the house.

Catching up with her, Lucy put a hand on Max's arm. “How about if it's just
our
secret, you and me?”

Skepticism etched Max's face.

“Honest,” Lucy said. “You can hide in the car and when we get home, you'll be miles and miles away.”

“Really?”

“Nobody will ever have run away better! . . . We can do it, Max, if you can stay quiet.”

Max shrugged. “I'm always quiet.”

“You kind of are. Deal?”

Lucy stuck out her hand; this was a gesture Max knew, from Manticore: she shook the other child's hand.

Sneaking another furtive glance at the house, Lucy led the way out front to where a tired old SUV sat in the street. When they got to the far side, Lucy said, “When I open the door, you get in quick. There's a blanket in the back . . . crawl under it and stay on the floor by the backseat. Quiet as a mouse, now!”

“I can be quieter.” To Max's ears, mice were terribly noisy.

“Mom always makes me sit in the back,” Lucy was saying, “with my seat belt on. If we're quiet, we can whisper . . . and if I can get a snack from Aunt Vicki for the road, we can share it. I'll sneak you some!”

“Snack?”

“Food, Max. You
do
eat, don't you?”

A smile slipped out despite her fear. “Yes—and it's been a long time since I did.”

Lucy nodded. “Okay, I'll get ya something. . . . This is exciting! This beats building a snowman all to shit!”

Max's eyes widened, hearing the forbidden word from this kid.

“Now get inside the SUV,” Lucy ordered, “and get under the blanket.”

Lucy opened the door and Max, trained to follow her group leader, did as the other girl had instructed. The inside of the truck was technically cold, but so much warmer than the outdoors. At least she was finally out of the wind and, with the blanket, Max started to get warm almost immediately.

Less than an hour later, the back hatch door flipped up and Max nearly panicked . . . but Lucy's mom didn't look twice at the blanket when she shoved two suitcases into the storage area . . . one of them awfully close to Max's nose . . . and slammed the door again.

Max listened as the mom said good-bye to Aunt Vicki, who also said a loud good-bye to Lucy.

“Get your seat belt on,” Mom said.

“Yes, ma'am,” Lucky answered, her weight dropping heavily onto the seat just behind Max.

Shoving the suitcase away a little, Max silently rolled over and took stock of her small world: the seat Lucy was in sat high, with an unused storage area beneath. Max crawled under the high seat, her head hugging the floor; she looked up to see Lucy looking down at her. The other girl had to cover her own mouth to keep from squealing in delight. What to Max was an exercise in survival was to Lucy a great adventure.

“You okay, Luce?” Mom asked.

“Fine. Just fine.”

The engine turned over and the SUV coughed to life. “It'll warm up in here soon, dear.”

“Good. I am kinda cold.”

“Catch your death making that silly snowman.”

“Didn't you like Frosty, Mom?”

“He was very handsome, dear.”

After a while, the heater was putting out admirably, and Lucy looked at Max, who gave her a little nod. “We're warm enough now, Mom.”

“We?”

“My new friend . . . uh . . . Max . . . uh . . . can't you see her? She's sitting right next to me.”

Mom let out a little laugh. “Another invisible friend?”

Lucy shrugged.

“Honey, aren't you getting a little old for that?”

Another shrug. “Max'll be the last one.”

The banter went on like that for a few more minutes, Lucy slipping Max cookies when Mom was watching the road, Max chewing as quietly as possible. As Max listened to the conversation between mother and daughter—a conversation nothing like the talk between adults and the X5 kids at Manticore. . . . the Mom seemed . . .
nice
—the young stowaway realized just how alien a universe she was entering.

Finally, the talking quieted, and music from the car radio played the country western Max was used to, from the Manticore night staff's boombox. Eventually, Lucy went to sleep, and not long after her, Max drifted off as well.

When Max awoke, the SUV wasn't moving.

Tensing, she peeked out from beneath the seat, and saw no sign of Lucy's feet hanging down. Crawling back into the rear of the vehicle, she discovered that the suitcases were gone, too. She listened, but all she heard was silence punctuated by traffic and night sounds.

Max was alone again. Slowly, she crawled out from under the blanket. A glance out the window told her it was the middle of the night; she determined that the Barretts were probably behind the numbered door in front of the SUV, which was parked in a stall indicated by white lines painted on black paving.

Getting out of the vehicle, with all the caution her training had bestowed her, nine-year-old Max climbed down and stretched her tired legs. Being folded up under the seat had taken its toll on her muscles and bones; but on the bright side, she was warm and dry, and judging from the inner calm she felt, Manticore was far behind her. She really didn't require this much sleep, but the girl was sort of . . . saving up, not knowing what awaited her. Making sure she was unobserved, she began exploring a little, keeping the SUV in sight at all times.

The weather here was slightly warmer than in the place they'd left, and the snow had practically disappeared, just patches here and there. The SUV sat in the parking lot of a two-story U-shaped concrete building, with the Barretts' numbered door right in the middle of the bottom of the U. Only twenty or so cars occupied the large lot, and most of them had license plates from the state of Utah.

The girl found a glass door marked
LOBBY
, peered through and saw lights on, inside. She tried the door and found it unlocked; but when she opened it, a buzzer buzzed. Ducking back outside, behind a parked vehicle, Max watched through the window as a young blond man in a white shirt and tan pants came out of a rear room, looked over the counter at the door, shrugged, then went away again.

Beyond the counter, in the center of the lobby, Max saw a table with a large bowl of fruit in the center. Her stomach rumbled with anticipation. She looked again at the door with that annoying buzzer.

Her training had taught her that no obstacle was unconquerable. She considered the problem for what felt like a long time, her eyes darting to the fruit more often than she would have liked; she should have better control. What was she, a child? Finally, she decided there had to be another way in, and she started around the building to find it.

At the far end of the left upright part of the U, she found what she wanted: another door, this one accessible only by the insertion of a keycard; it didn't seem to have a human guard, and that alone would make it easier.

She retraced her steps to the Barretts' SUV, and searched the inside, looking for what she needed. She didn't find a screwdriver, but in the glove compartment she did come upon a small pocketknife.

That should be adequate.

Five minutes later she had the front cover off the keycard box, had crossed the wires and accessed the hall, then followed it to the lobby where her reward waited in the fruit bowl. After ducking back down the hall with the entire bowl, she quickly devoured two bananas and an orange, leaving the peels as evidence of the hungry animal who'd scavenged here.

Then Max explored long enough to find a bathroom and get a drink of water from the sink, before making her way back to the SUV, a banana and two apples still tucked in her arms.

She nibbled her fruit until finally Lucy and her mom showed up and Max slipped under the blanket, and then they were on the road again.

Lucy wanted to whisper, but Max shook her head, not wanting to risk it. Her belly full, this strange world seeming to the X5-unit surprisingly easily dealt with, Max disappeared under the blanket and slept, contentedly.

Eight hours later, when the vehicle finally stopped for good, and Lucy and her mom had disappeared again, Max climbed out of her hiding place to find herself in a land of sunshine, warmth, and palm trees.

Training videos had shown her country like this before, but it had been an abstraction—she'd never seen anything like it in person. As she stood outside the SUV, she let the sunshine bathe her face, hands, and legs. She couldn't recall ever being so warm in her life, and she loved it.

Max was standing before a small frame house, smaller than the one where she'd met Lucy; parked in the yard was the SUV, which stood between her and the street, a long, blacktop road with one-story houses lining either side for as far as she could see.

Though they were out of her view, Max heard kids laughing, somewhere. Thinking Lucy might be with them, she took one step before the sound of a woman's voice stopped her.

“You must be hungry.”

Max whirled to see Lucy's mom standing behind a screen door. “Uh . . .”

A kind adult face, with echoes of Lucy's, bestowed a smile nearly as warm as the sunshine. “It's all right, honey—Lucy told me about your trouble.”

Max's first instinct was to run, just run; but the only other adult female she'd ever spoken to outside the gates of Manticore—Hannah—had helped her. And, like Hannah, this woman didn't seem upset with her—had called her “honey,” an apparently affectionate designation that the woman had also granted her daughter.

Right now, in fact, the woman held open the screen door for Max—held it open wide.

“Wouldn't you like to come in?” Lucy's mom asked, displaying a wide toothy smile. “Maybe get something to eat?”

Tentatively, Max approached the woman; getting her first close look at the “mom,” Max couldn't help wondering if all moms looked like this. Perhaps five foot five inches, and 125 pounds, with dark brown brown hair piled high, Lucy's mom had her daughter's wide blue eyes, full lips, and those same long eyelashes. She wore a pale blue dress with small pink flowers on it.

“I shouldn't,” Max finally managed.

“Look, Max. . . . It is
Max,
isn't it?”

Max nodded.

“Is that short for Maxine?”

“I don't think so.”

The woman's smile lessened but did not disappear, and she still held that door open. “Look . . . Max. Lucy's told me you have nowhere else to go, and that the people you were staying with before will hurt you if they find you. Is that right?”

Another nod.

“Then you need a new place to live, don't you?”

Max looked down the street as if the answer might be there somewhere; but why would these almost identical houses hold any better answer than this one?

Finally, Max nodded a third time.

“Then . . . would you like to stay with us?”

She shrugged. She didn't know how to respond to that.

“Well, come in, dear . . . have some food, and we'll talk. Work it out.”

Max looked the other way, up the street, and found no potentially better answers in that direction, either. Haltingly, she took a step toward the house. With the screen door open, she could smell the aroma of roast beef as it wafted through the home, curling its finger invitingly. . . .

The desire for a real meal overcame her misgivings and Max strode into the house.

The living room was small. Though bigger than Hannah's, this one was less immediately inviting. The smell of old cigarettes hung in the air; the source seemed to be a worn-looking overstuffed chair to her left, which had a couple of empty beer cans sitting on a table next to it, no doubt adding to the stale odor of the room.

Still, the aroma of the beef beckoned, overcoming the tobacco odor, and Max followed Lucy's mom into a small dining room to a wooden table with four matching chairs. Though the food looked the same as what she'd received at Manticore, it smelled much better: roast beef, carrots, mashed potatoes and gravy, and fresh-baked biscuits.

Lucy, looking guilty and perhaps apprehensive, sat on the far side of the table, and her mom moved toward the far end, pulling out the near-side chair for Max as she went by.

“Lucy's dad won't be here for dinner tonight,” the mom said. “He's working—he's a truck driver.”

Max nodded. She wondered if that meant he was like the man whose truck she'd hidden in.

“He'll be home tomorrow. Do you like roast beef, Max?”

Swallowing saliva, Max said, “Yes, very much.”

“Well, dig in. Lucy, give her a hand. . . . Plenty to go 'round.”

Piling her plate high, Max dived in and thought that she'd never eaten anything that tasted this good.

“So, dear—were you born in Casper?”

Max turned toward the mom. “Casper?”

“You know—the town where you met Lucy?”

“No, I wasn't born there.” She said this with assurance, though inside herself, Max had doubts: since she'd known nothing of mothers and births before yesterday, who could say?

“Judging by what Lucy says,” the mom said, “and from that smock you're wearing, you escaped from an institution . . . an orphanage?”

“What's an . . . orphanage?”

“A place, dear, where children without parents live.”

“Yes. Yes, it was an orphanage.”

“And they were cruel there, dear?”

“Oh yes.”

Lucy's mom moved her food around on her plate with a fork, but didn't eat anything; her eyes were damp, and moving side to side, in thought.

Then the mom said, “We tried to get a nice girl like you, through . . . official sources. But they wouldn't let us. My husband . . . has a drinking problem. I guess you have a right to know that.”

Why would anyone have trouble drinking?

Then the mom blurted, “Would you like to stay with us?”

Still chewing, Max just looked at her.

“You and Lucy could be like sisters.”

Max glanced over at Lucy who was nodding emphatically, a wide smile on her face.

“We can't have any more children, Lucy's dad and I, and God knows, we could use another hand around here.”