Exit (15 page)

“Thanks, M.”

Rayne grabbed Tim’s hand and led him through Martina’s narrow hall, into her kitchen the color of red peppers, and through the rear door. They hustled down two flights of stairs to the washer and dryer on the ground floor, then another flight of wood stairs to the musty basement with dirt on the floor. A yellow bulb at one corner kept it dimly lit.

“Watch your head,” she told Tim. “The ceiling is low.”

“It looks like a dungeon down here.”

“There’s rotting corpses on the other side. This building is like the Bates Motel, within shouting distance of Harvard. I’d show you, but we’re pressed for time.”

“You’re a marvel, Miss Moore.”

“It’s the company I keep. Can you see okay with one eye?”

“Not really. It’s too dark, or my good eye got messed up in the alley tonight.”

“Put your hand on my shoulder. And keep your head down. You can’t stand up down here. You can’t hit your eye again.”

“Smells like hell down here.”

“Tell me.”

The left side was used for storage, filled with dusty boxes and broken bicycles and forgotten books. The other half, divided by a slapdash wood wall with more holes than Swiss cheese, was empty except for the furnace on one end.

She hunched down, avoiding spider webs hanging from the ceiling. It smelled as if the room hadn’t been ventilated in decades. “Put a hand up in front of your face. It’ll block any dangling cobwebs.”

“Terrific. Sounds like you’ve been down here a few times.”

“Over here.” Bent down, she led him to the far right wall. Directly overhead was the driveway.

“So what’s the plan? We gonna hide down here?”

“No.” She paused to collect her thoughts. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“The drones are upstairs by our second floor window. They can see the bed is spectacularly unoccupied.
Now ya see ‘em, now ya don’t.
Won’t be long before it’s obvious we took off. So, what would they do? My guess, the drones invade the building. Through the front entrance, through an open window. You’ve got a chimney on the roof. Probably long out of commission. But hey, who knows. Can you picture those little shits tunneling down the chimney? Whatever, they’ll get inside the building today. Probably sometime this morning. So it’s just a matter of time before they—”

“Fly past the Maytag washer and zoom down to the basement. They’ll find our clothes draped over a broken, abandoned bicycle. They’ll see us making love on the dirt floor by the furnace, surrounded by empty paint cans and crusty paint rollers. They’ll see an exceptionally understanding woman having sex with a yellow-haired Cyclops.”

“Cyclops,” he echoed.

“Sorry.”

“That’s a little harsh. However, you do have Plan B, right? Because the basement is not happening. We’re trapped rats down here.”

“I do, indeed,” she said, lowering her voice. She pointed at the steps nearby.

Tim squinted in the shadows, looking up. He, too, spoke quietly. “Is this…?”

“Bulkhead doors.” She moved over and carefully slid the rusty bolt, unlocking it. She barely opened it, peeking out, but couldn’t see anything. Too dark.

Tim said, “The car?”

“Yes. I’ll go first, open the doors. Give me a minute. Then get to the passenger door as fast as you can and I’ll have it already open.”

“I’ll take the blankets,” Tim said. He folded them into a tight bundle. “I’ll raise the door open here. Just get out.”

“Give me a full minute.” She held her car keys, fingering the right key. “Ready?”

“Go.” He stood on a step bedside her, reached up, slowly opened one of the double doors. Just enough for her to slip through.

The metal door squeaked in the dark, making her wince. She climbed out. Her hands flattened against the chilly asphalt driveway. She straightened her legs, stood up, and left Tim in the dungeon.

She heard nothing unusual, took a breath, and sprinted across the asphalt. She clicked open the driver’s door, swung inside and shut it, knowing it would make an audible sound. After locking the door, she cracked open Tim’s, waited, soon saw a dark silhouette heading her way.

He threw the blankets onto the front seat. She tossed them into the back as he dove inside. Again she winced at the noise when the door closed, and the car shuddered. Noise was the enemy.

“They might have heard the sound,” she said.

“I know. It’s night; it’s quiet. Sound carries.”

Rayne thought for a second. “If we start the car and pull out of here, the drones will see us. Can’t miss two headlights in the dark.”

“I know.”

“You can’t drive half blind. So get in the backseat and lie down. Put a blanket over you. I’ll lie here. Maybe we can hide for a while and get some sleep. If the drones spot us, I’ll start the car and take off.”

Tim considered it for a moment. “Well, why not? We don’t have a lot of choices.”

She watched him slide over the top of the seat, a human python. He passed her the second blanket. She rested her head on the passenger side, legs bent, her feet tucked under the steering wheel.

“It’s chilly in here,” he said from the backseat.

“Yeah, well.”

“Wish I had a pillow.”

“Wish we were on a beach in the Florida Keys.”

“Point taken.”

“Tim, don’t talk for two or three minutes. Let’s see if we hear anything. Just in case.”

She lay on the narrow seat, facing the glove compartment. Overhead, she gazed at the stars through the windshield. The glass would start to fog soon from their breath. A sure sign of occupancy to any observant outsider. Well, there was nothing they could do. If they cracked the window to defog the interior, a Tink could fly through. Damned if you do; damned if you don’t. Eight words that summed up their circumstances; their lives.

At least three minutes passed. Aside from a dog barking in the distance, not a sound.

“Think we fooled ‘em?” His voice was just above a whisper.

“Maybe.”

“Wonder how they found our address so quick?”

“I’ve been thinking about that too.”

“A drone flew out of your purse. A tiny Tink.”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m wondering too. It disappeared on me in the lobby. It could easily have flown through the entrance. Those doors are constantly opening through the night. It could have flown outside when we were getting into the cab. You think it could fly fast enough to keep up with a cab on the street?”

“I have no idea, Rayne. None. Hell, maybe it landed on the cab’s rooftop sign and hitched a ride, you know?”

Rayne replied with a sigh.

“But it’s not one anymore,” he said. “There were about a half dozen by the bedroom windows. Like the drone told his little drone buddies about us.”

“Drone buddies? Listen to us; we must sound like two crackpots. How can this be happening? Thirty hours ago we were two normal people leading two normal lives.”

“Rayne, please, no one has ever accused us of being normal.”

“You know what I mean. God I hate being spied on like this.”

It was Tim’s turn to sigh. After a moment of silence, the voice from the backseat continued. “You’re probably the most private person I know. I get the feeling you’re private because you’re tired of all the crazy shit. You don’t want the world’s bat-shit crazies to get past your door and mess up your life. You just want some peace and quiet.”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe I do.”

“I’m no angel. I can be bat-shit crazy too. And sometimes it scares me when I feel myself losing control. Not when I’m alone. Not when I’m with you. But when I’m outside, out in the world, and there’s a stampede of assholes closing in…”

“Quite the image.”

“And they try to set your life on fire.”

“Got it.”

“Private? You bet. The day I quit Ad Ventures Agency was the sanest decision of my life. Lazarus had nothing on me. I strutted out of the tomb. Never again would I be surrounded by ass clowns asking, ‘But, Rayne, why this
art thing?
Drawing, writing a screenplay. You need a real job in a real world. Ads are art, mass consumer art that pays. Why waste your time with hobbies? No wonder you’re not married.’”

“Ass clowns are everywhere. Laugh at ‘em.”

“‘No wonder you’re not married.’ Someone actually said that to me. I’m all of 25. I told him, ‘It’s because I have incurable gonorrhea.’”

“Don’t make me laugh. We gotta be quiet.”

“They made ‘art thing’ sound like polio.”

“Tone it down.”

“My manager would ask, ‘Rayne, why don’t you ever smile?’ One day I had enough and told him, ‘Just because you have erectile dysfunction, don’t take it out on me.’ On my last day at AVA, I stopped at his office door and said, ‘I’m effin’ smilin’ today, big daddy, know why?’ And then I waved bye-bye. I held back. I could have let that smug zero have it. I could have said, ‘When you were an adolescent prick, was this your dream job?’”

“You’re a piece of work.”

“I should have kicked him in the crotch on the way out. An opportunity missed.”

“Like I said, you value your privacy.”

“Yesterday I was sitting with Alex at Au Bon Pain, watching a selfie addict take endless shots of herself.”

“You hate selfies.”

“I hate selfies, celebrities, camera whores, attention whores, spotlight junkies. These are styes in the public eye. And now this, Tim. We’ve got drones, the New Age Paparazzi, chasing after us. Me, of all people? This is my absolute worst nightmare. If someone asked, ‘What’s the worst possible thing that could happen to you?’ I’d say, ‘It’s a toss-up between this…or having sex with Satan.’”

“Seriously, if you had to choose…”

“Wise guy.”

“Let’s get some rest. It won’t be long before sunrise, and the tenants come back here and start up their cars.”

“Later, we need to go to the Cambridge library.”

“Stop thinking. Sleep.”

“After that, the Gateway.”

“Shut up, Rain Angel.”

Her eyelids fluttered, closed. She started to sink into the woozy Land of Nod. But not before she mumbled two syllables that rolled off her tongue like a sigh:
“Al…ex.”

CHAPTER 18

Click.

Rayne’s eyes opened at the sound. The LeSabre was cold, the windows fogged. The sound had come from nearby. Then she heard:

Whump.

She rose on one elbow, groggy, the blue blanket rising with her. She faced the side window, reached up and, with the side of her left hand, rubbed out a circle of condensation, defogging the glass. She peered through as if it were a porthole in a ship. Ten feet away was a green Toyota. The sound she had heard was the opening and closing of a car door. Behind the wheel sat a blonde about her age. Her name was Missy or Marcy or something or other. Blondie was looking right back at Rayne. Blondie must have walked by Rayne’s car, seen the fogged windows. The only fogged windows on a chilly November morning among the parked cars. What must the tenant think? Seeing Rayne through a porthole, wrapped in a blanket? Rayne was tempted to lower the window, wave her hand, and shout,
“Ahoy!”

Blondie gave her a blank stare.

Screw it.

Rayne could hear Tim faintly snoring on the backseat. Blondie’s car started up, growled, and took off. Rayne blinked, focused her thoughts. A tenant had just left, so it had to be at least seven or seven-thirty a.m. She pinched the bridge of her nose between her eyes, ran a hand through her disheveled hair. Again she thought of how she and Tim must really look like two crackpots. So what?

She sat up, setting her feet on the rubber floor mat. Turning her head, she saw all the surrounding glass was fogged except for the porthole. Curiosity tingled inside her. She faced the front windshield and leaned forward, one hand on the dashboard. With her free hand she began rubbing the slanted glass back-and-forth with her fingertips, recalling a tot doing finger-painting. The peephole expanded, a jagged, sloppy rectangle. Her fingers squeaked on the moist glass, obscuring the view. She stopped, dropped her hand. And saw…

The flat hood of the car had turned into a miniature aircraft carrier.

Through the wet glass, she saw a helicopter sitting on the deck. No, three helicopters. Another helicopter appeared on the horizon, beyond the front bumper, flying toward the hood ornament. Slowing down. Coming in for a landing.

The drones were here, facing the windshield. Looking in at Rayne. The lead drone inched toward the windshield wipers.

Rayne was fully awake now.

She had to hide, get out. She instinctively wrapped the blue blanket over her shoulders, pulled it over her head from behind. A blue cowl. A quick glance in the rearview mirror: a woman wearing a burqa hood stared back at her. Then she slid behind the wheel, turned the key, the engine woke up and coughed.

A grunt from the back. A sleepy voice: “Hey.”

“Shhh. Stay down. Get under the blanket, hide your face.”

Rayne wheeled out of the parking spot, half-turned, and rolled down the driveway alongside her building. Three drones were on the flight deck. The leader drone reached the front windshield, slowly moving up the glass.

Not for long.

Rayne entered the street, kept her head down, and turned a sharp right. She reached forward and hit a button. Blue windshield wiper fluid shot the drone. The wiper activated, swatting away the high tech dragonfly. She hit the gas and flew up the street, seeing the other drones rising into the air above the car. She wondered if a speeding car could shake them off. But she was in the city, and restricted by traffic and speed limits.

From the rear: “Can I get up now?”

“Not yet. The drones are onto the car.”

Her eyes darted left and right. Thinking. At that hour, the city was starting a new day. Traffic was already flowing in both directions on the street. She saw a coffee shop that was open for business, and a gas station. Along the street were trees waving in the wind. Trees. An idea. She looked at the branches bending in the wind. At the next intersection, she turned right and drove into the wind. She didn’t know if it would work, but flying against the wind might slow them down. At present, no sign of drones through the front windshield.

Which doesn’t mean jack shit
, she thought.

“It’s still early,” she told Tim. “We need to get on the internet, and do a search on EyeSoar. My cell is no-frills, no internet access. I wanted to go to the Cambridge Public Library and use a PC, but it’s too early. Any ideas?”

She heard Tim take a deep breath beneath the blanket. “There’s a photocopy shop in Harvard Square. Always open. They have a few PCs you can rent for a session. I used the service once. There’s probably only one employee in there at this hour. Maybe two. The PCs are off in the corner, away from where they work.” He paused, then added, “Why the privacy?”

“I want to search this company without anyone hanging over my shoulder. Alex is missing, and we don’t know where he is.”

“I’m thumbing his number again as we speak.”

“Maybe he’s okay. Or maybe he’s trapped on the other side and his life is at risk. Let’s assume the worst.”

“Already am. Everything’s been heading in that direction.”

“We go to the Gateway and confront the cashier, and threaten to call the police. The cashier plays dumb, says we’re delirious and go ahead and call the cops. Or worse, she says if we make the call, we never see Alex again. He’s dead. End of story. And there’s no way his body is ever found. No body, no crime trail, nothing.”

Another audible inhalation in back. “I see what you mean. The cashier is a space-shot, for real. She looks like an escapee from a long-ago carnival. Let’s call her Esmeralda, she’s got ‘the look.’ And I’m getting no answer on Alex’s phone.”

“For now, I just want a lead, clues.
Anything.”

“Head to the Post Office in the Square. The copy shop is nearby.”

She drove against the wind as long as possible, then turned right and headed into Harvard Square. She parked the car on Mt. Auburn Street. The Square was waking up to the sound of traffic.

“Enough of this.” Tim pulled the blanket away and sat up, leaning over the front seat. “You look like a nun.”

“I covered my head as best I could. I was hoping we could sneak out of there unnoticed. But I doubt that happened.”

“That’s the place with the FedEx sign in the window.
CopyCat
.”

She looked at the four-story building up the street. Plate glass windows fronted the copy shop on the ground floor. “Stay here and rest. This shouldn’t take long.”

“Well…”

“Go back to sleep.”

Rayne headed into
CopyCat
. The shop’s large floor space was filled with white and beige copy machines, reams and boxes of paper, but she saw no other customers at that early hour. Two male employees were running jobs. Soon she sat at a computer by the window and was on the meter. She went onto Google and searched
EyeSoar
, getting two unrelated links with a similar spelling. There was only one hit for
EyeSoar Unlimited
, which she expected. Whatever their intentions, they were a very new player in the business world—in this world. She pulled up the page. At the top in screaming letters:

EyeSoar Aims High!

She saw a heading right below: “
Police UAV Drones
.” Beneath that: “
Remote Aerial Platform Tactical Reconnaissance Police HellCOPters
.” She assumed that last entry was a play on words. These days, who could tell? Fluency in spoken and written Internet was one step closer to speaking Martian. The ensuing article was about homeland surveillance and security. This sentence jumped out at her: “
Get your man with unmanned aircraft. Give ‘em hell. Send in the HellCOPters. Here at EyeSoar, we provide Hell on Earth.
”

She scrolled down. A picture popped up: Major DeZasta shaking hands with the head of the Cambridge Chamber of Commerce. Smiles all around. The mustached Major resembled Joe Stalin in a pinstripe suit, with eyes colder than Siberia. The Major commented:

“
The HellCOPters will beef up your police force. Our Choppers from Hell are perfect for tactical operations, criminal pursuit, crowd control and riffraff reduction
.”

“Fuck…me…” Rayne said, eyes nailed to the monitor.

“Excuse me?” A skinny man in baggy pants stood nearby, wearing a bright red T-shirt with a picture of a kitten asleep atop a photocopy machine, and the logo:
I’m a cool cat—a CopyCat!

Rayne waved him off. “Nothing.”

She continued to scroll down, pausing at the Mission Statement.

“Our Mission is to provide the latest state-of-the-art technology of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Drones and surveillance equipment to maintain Homeland Security at the most competitive prices. Our vision is to be drone visionaries. We will keep the baddies in our vision. We do not spy on normal citizens; instead, we allow citizens to be normal. We will respect civil liberties while taking uncivil liberties with the evildoers. Security, thy name is EyeSoar.”

Rayne stopped and rubbed her eyes. The mission statement was Martian mumbo jumbo.

The head of the Chamber of Commerce was quoted:
“Cambridge, Massachusetts is commonly referred to as the most entrepreneurial place on earth. It will soon be known the world over as the home of Harvard, MIT and EyeSoar. The HellCOPters will take us to new heights. If you’re ever in danger, remember, don’t call the cops…call the HellCOPters!”

Rayne stopped reading. She needed a motion sickness bag. A barf bag. She turned and looked out the window at the street. People headed to work in the morning sunshine. Above the city, the sky was uncluttered with machines. She wondered if it wouldn’t be long before the view changed, and drones were as common as clouds.

It was time to tell Tim the uplifting news.

She absently tapped the page-down key one last time. Up flipped a screen. A picture of a man in a black blazer and shirt, offset with a skinny red tie. A fluffy strip of orange hair, suggesting a deranged rooster, topped a shaved head. The caption beneath the photo:
“Come fly with us!” urges C.C. Seymour, Minister of Security at EyeSoar Corporation.

She studied the picture. Seymour looked like the ultimate selfie addict with his hair styled as a mini-drone. She rose wearily and went to the counter. “How much?”

“Sixteen minutes, twenty dollars,” the skinny cool cat said.

“That’s outrageous.”

“Ten bucks per quarter hour.”

“And because I went one minute over…” She pointed at the picture on his T-shirt. “Cat burglar.”

He lowered his voice so his co-worker couldn‘t hear. “Screw the rules. Make it ten. Cash or credit?”

Maybe later that night she could call in a drone strike on the copy shop. She paid cash and exited the shop. When she stepped onto the street, she headed back to her car. The Buick was empty.

Tim was gone.