Contain (21 page)

But I know better.

A few minutes after they leave, I
crack open the door. I expect to see someone guarding it, maybe
even Jonah, but the hallway is empty, at least as far as I can see
in either direction.

I slip over to Bix's door, where the
faint strains of a plucked guitar reach my ears. The instrument was
the only object they managed to save that day, snatched from the
road as they ran for the door of the bus. One of the strings was
recently broken, but Mister Blakeley has been able to adapt his
playing to accommodate the missing string.

I gently tap on the door with a few
fingernails and the music stops. There's a brief exchange of words,
too muffled for me to understand. Then the door opens an inch and
an eye appears. Bix pulls me inside and shuts it behind
me.

“
Were you seen?” Bix asks.
“Did any of Jack's goons follow you here?”

His father smirks as he resumes his
playing, though a bit more softly now. I suppose Bix's
ultra-paranoid act might be amusing to me, too, if it didn’t hit so
damn close to home.

“
Jack had them out in force
this morning,” he explains. “Patrolling the hallways. And guess who
he's got in charge.”

“
Jonah.”

“
The jerk actually followed
me into the bathroom. The bathroom! Wouldn't let me use a stall
until I'd answered all his questions.”

“
Did he happen to mention
anything to you about the stranger at the front door?”

Bix shakes his head. “No.
Just the usual harassment. He, Mister Rollins and his two
boys — god, were they obnoxious! — and Rory Newsom. Susan
Miller was there, too.
Inside
the freaking bathroom even! Would not let me go in
alone. Practically made me piss myself.”

I wonder if he'd be making half the
fuss if it had been Gia Cavanaugh instead. But then again, I
seriously doubt the doctor would have let Jack boss her around,
much less Jonah.

“
The jerk was totally
getting off on it. I hate him.”

Mister Blakely hits a sour note and
stops for a second before retrying the chord.

“
Why does he hate me so,
Finn? All I have to give is love, pure, sweet love.”

His father snorts.

“
I think I've figured out
why,” I tell him. “Something I just learned myself yesterday. It's
because you two weren't supposed to be on that bus.”

Bix gives me a questioning look. “What
bus?”

I tell him about how everyone else
paid for their slots in the bunker. “Everyone but you two. The
driver had been told not to stop for anything, but your van was
stuck right in the middle of the road.”

“
Are you
serious?”

I shrug. “Near as I can figure it,
yeah.”

Mister Blakeley stops
playing and gives me a look of incredulity. “So, you believe young
Jonah has been harboring some kind of resentment all this time
because we never
paid
to be spared the horror of the Flense?”

When I don't answer, he asks, “Why
would he even care about that. I mean, money is a completely
meaningless concept anymore. And I'm fairly certain he personally
didn't scrimp and save to pay for his own spot himself.”

“
He's just mirroring what
his father thinks,” I explain. “It's probably been eating at Jack
every day for the past three years. Same as it’s killed him that my
dad has been the leader.”

“
Can you just imagine their
dinner conversations?” Bix asks. “ 'There go those Blakeleys,
stole their way into the bunker.'  Like buying your way in is
any better. Sorry, dude, but that's just infantile.”

I shrug.

“
Well, that would explain
Jonah's coolness toward you both.”

“
That and he's a prick,”
Bix says.

“
The thing is, though,” I
say, chewing the inside of my cheek, “I kinda feel like we deserve
some of the blame ourselves for Jonah being—”

“
A prick?”

“
For being the way he
is.”

“
You've got to be kidding
me.”

I think about that day on the bus, how
Jonah had acted then, and I can't help but feel a little
guilty.

“
You boys haven't exactly
been very inclusive,” Mister Blakely offers.

Bix rolls his eyes and
chuffs. “Dad would have us singing
Kumbaya
and sharing life
stories.”

“
Well, you know my
mantra:
Hakuna matata
.”

“
I think you mean motto,
Dad.”

“
What's a motto?” I reply,
mostly out of habit. It's a favorite joke of theirs.

“
Notting's a motto,” his
father says, slipping seamlessly into his Jamaican persona.
“Ev'ryting's ahl right.” And he launches into a jazzy version
of
Don't Worry, Be
Happy
. With that raspy voice of his, you
totally expect him to be singing country or blues, not reggae. But
somehow it works.

“
Dad!”

Mister Blakeley laughs, and it's a
deep and hearty sound.

Bix pushes me toward the door. “Let's
get outta here, get some breakfast.”

I suddenly remember that I haven't had
anything to eat since lunch yesterday, but I shake my head. “I
thought you said Jonah's goons were—”

“
Grab me a couple granola
bars and a can of condensed milk while you're up there,” his dad
says.

The door's barely closed behind us
when Bix asks about the stranger.

“
They're bringing him in,”
I say, as we turn toward the stairs. I know I'm not supposed to say
anything about it, but this is Bix. “Dad and Jack are waiting for
him at the front door.”

“
I thought he—”

A door behind us opens and Bren sticks
her head out. “Oh, it's you,” she says and begins to shut
it.

“
Hey, little sister! “ Bix
says, stopping her. “We were just coming to get you. We're going to
get some breakfast. Want to come?”

I glare at him, but he pretends not to
notice. Finally, I cave. “Come on.”

Bren disappears for a moment. I can
hear her arguing with her mother. Then she reappears with her
sweater in her hand. “Let's go.”

“
So your dad changed his
mind?” Bix asks me.

Bren gives me a puzzled look, and I
find myself explaining the plan all over again.

“
I wonder why Dad didn't
say anything about it to Mom,” she muses.

“
Maybe he doesn't know.
Jack did say it was supposed to be just the two of
them.”

We're almost up to Level One when I
stop and turn around and begin to head back down.

“
Where are you going?” Bix
asks.

Dad's warning to me is blaring loud
and clear in my head— not the one about behaving, but the one about
keeping an eye on things.

“
Level Two,” I say. “The
monitors.”

* * *

As I had hoped, no one is attending to the security cams, though I
do feel a little disappointed by this fact. It sure didn't take
long for people to take advantage of the vacuum in leadership and
start slacking off. Even Bren acts a little surprised that no one's
here.

The schedule says the current shift
belongs to Susan Miller, so that might explain the
deficiency.

“
Too busy perving around
the boy's bathrooms,” Bix grumbles. I have a sneaking suspicion
that Susan's no longer invited to his threesome fantasy.

“
Just shut the door and be
quiet,” I whisper.

I step over to the monitors and am
about to sit down when Bix steps in front of me and makes a grand
gesture for Bren to take the chair. I want to knock myself upside
the head for being so insensitive. I settle for knocking him
instead, and he retaliates by giving me a cheesy grin.

When we're settled, I flip the cam on
the front door to split screen, giving us a view of both the inside
and outside. We normally just skip the former view, since there's
really no reason to watch the empty hallway.

There are three men standing there in
a huddle. I instantly recognize Jack and Dad. They're all talking.
Jack's gesturing and his mouth is going.

“
Too bad there's no sound,”
Bix says. He starts imitating Jack’s voice, making him sound much
stupider than he really is, but Bren tells him to shush.

The third guy is Chip Darby. He points
at the number pad for the front door and shrugs. Dad shakes his
head and waves his hand furiously in a negating motion. It looks
like Jack's still trying to get Chip to override the security code,
though I can't understand why.

“
Wonder what Jack'll do if
the stranger doesn't show up,” Bix says.

My eyes flick over to the other half
of the screen. The image is smaller, a little squished
side-to-side, but it's clear that the ramp is empty. The sun still
hasn’t risen high enough to breach the tops of the walls, and the
whole area is cast in shadow.

While we wait, I fill them in on the
rest of the details of my father's plan. They both agree that it's
worth a try talking with the stranger, as he might have valuable
information, though they also concede that we need to be careful
not to put ourselves at risk.

Bren doesn't like the idea of bringing
him inside at all, but she's especially leery about him coming
through the back door. She's not sure the glass is enough of a
barrier.

“
It's really the only way
to make sure of our safety,” Bix reasons, making it sound like it
was his plan all along.

I stare at the view of the catwalk
over the spillway. There is no split image on that screen, since
the security camera for the keeper station has long since been
disassembled to make Doc Cavanaugh's ophthalmoscope.

The sun rises on the downstream side
of the dam, but eventually it reaches high enough to illuminate
half of the loading ramp. And still the stranger doesn't show up.
Bix's stomach growling gets so bad that Bren suggests going up to
the kitchen to grab us all some food. I can tell Bix is bored and
wants to go with her, but she shakes her head. “Just me,” she says.
“If I’m alone, Jonah won't give me a hard time.”

It makes sense, but her mention of
Jonah in this way irks me nonetheless.

Finally, around midmorning, the
stranger appears around the corner at the far end of the ramp. He
just stands there for several minutes, peering around him, like
he's unsure if he wants to try again. He's clearly very nervous.
And when my father hails him from the intercom, he jumps nearly a
foot in the air. When he does commit, he sticks to the narrow band
of shadow along the left side, scuttling forward with his eyes
constantly scanning the tops of the walls and the ramp opening
behind him.

Dad leans into the intercom and speaks
into it.

“
Wish I could tell what
he's saying,” Bix complains.

“
He's supposed to be
telling him about the stairs down to the helipad.”

At first, there seems to be a lot of
arguing. The man raises his hands in frustration, but finally nods.
Once more my father speaks, and this time the man appears to be
listening carefully.

When Jonah appears on the inside
camera, his father angrily shoos him away. Bix laughs, but I can
tell he's not very amused. We're all very tense.

Then, with a final dismissive wave of
his hand at the camera, the stranger turns and slinks back up the
loading ramp. A moment later, he's disappeared from our
view.

“
What now?” Bren
asks.

I point to the other screen from the
camera outside Level Six, and say, “Now we wait to see if he makes
it.”

As we wait, I try to imagine the stranger making his way over the
chain link fence, or perhaps finding the gap where the Wraiths once
broke through it. How long would it take? Five minutes? Ten? I
assume he might have some difficulty at first, but if it were me,
I'd want to be quick about it.