Mapmaker (20 page)

“They look human to me,” Cleo said, and for the first time I detected a nervousness in her voice. “If they were animals they would be in a pack or farther apart.”

“They can’t see us in here,” Gretchen said.

Gretchen and Cleo watched the moving infrared dots on the screen. Outside, I could make out the shadows of huge trees and land around us in the early dawn light.

“Someone’s coming close.” Gretchen pulled out a gun, gripping it in her hand. We looked out at the darkness, completely silent in the cabin.

The reflection of two sets of eyes appeared in the dim blue morning light: wolves. They circled the body of the plane not with fear just with curiosity. They sniffed around, but the cold metal scent didn’t interest them and they moved on, disappearing into the woods, leaving no trace but a red trail on the screen.

“It’s clear,” Cleo said, gesturing to the screen. “Darkness is our best cover.”

“Okay.” I was growing increasingly nervous. What had I thought, that I’d be coming here to map the park? Observe the wildlife? Yes, that’s what I had thought, sort of, or wanted to think. Cleo showed me how to strap the weapon to the inside of my arm, where it lay flush against my skin, hidden beneath my sleeve.

Outside, it was freezing. My cheeks burned; I could see icy blasts of my own breath. Gretchen was going to stay by the plane. Cleo placed a small compass in my hand. I didn’t need it, but I took it, anyway. The sun was starting to appear above the horizon; cautiously I started east with Cleo by my side.

On the long flight, Gretchen had warned me not to speak while we were outside. The coats Cleo had given us would hide our body heat from infrared detection, make us invisible. Then again, this entire place was invisible—

A roaring ball of fire shot through the trees.

“Cleo!” I screamed.

An explosion drowned out my voice. Flames burst from seemingly everywhere around me. The air was suddenly thick with black smoke. In that instant, I lost my bearings. I had no sense of direction. I couldn’t see Cleo; I couldn’t see the plane. I tried to make my way through the thick smoke but it was impossible. I couldn’t breathe.

“Cleo!” I shouted again as another ball of fire exploded nearby.

“Go!” Cleo shouted.

I felt the searing heat, very close now, and panic took hold. I ran blindly, trying to outrun the smoke. I looked behind me; I couldn’t see Cleo. I didn’t stop running. I knew the smoke would suffocate me. I ran until I fell from exhaustion. My lungs were tight. I choked for air on my hands and knees, covering my mouth with my shirt, trying to breathe.

As the smoke cleared, I found myself in the woods. I had lost Cleo and Gretchen completely. I was sure they would find me, that I would see her at the “place.” She and Gretchen were prepared for this. They’d been expecting it. That’s what I told myself as I tried to stand, and see through the clearing smoke.

“Cleo? Gretchen?” I shouted their names.

No answer.
Please have made it back to the plane, please be safe
. But another part of me made a grim tally. Again, I’d
put someone in danger. Two people. Cleo had warned me not to come and I’d insisted. As I ran ahead frantically searching for them, I knew she’d been right. I was lost, alone in the woods in Alaska. But Cleo was alive, at least. She’d yelled at me to run. Maybe she was searching for me. Even in the plane they wouldn’t see me in the woods. I had to get somewhere where I might be visible from the sky.

The woods could stretch for hundreds of miles. The smoke was so thick, so heavy, and it lingered. I couldn’t see to orient myself with the sun. I felt my belt; I had the weapon Cleo had given me and my compass. I took out my compass but could barely see the needle …

My ears perked up. The birds had cleared out with the explosion, and the woods were all but silent—except for the sound of rushing water. I stiffened, listening.
The river
, I thought,
the river we had seen on the satellite images
. I knew where it would lead if the images were accurate.

I crawled toward the sound, trying to stay below the toxic cloud of smoke. But when I reached the riverbank, my heart sank. The river was over fifteen feet wide, rushing powerfully downstream from the mountains. Chunks of ice from the glaciers floated in the strong current. On the maps it was a meek stream. In my father’s video, it was slow moving, almost still.

I cupped my hands, washing the soot from my face and gulping down handfuls of water. The icy liquid soothed my parched throat. I glanced around, wiping my mouth. Where was the small house my father had found? If I tried to cross the river, the ice would cut like glass, and the force of it would pull me under.

I followed it, like my father had done in the video—four
hundred more yards downstream. The air was full of mist and fog; the landscape looked unrecognizable, much greener than when my father had been here. I was about to retrace my steps, thinking I had made a mistake, when I saw the house.

In the middle of the woods, two hundred yards from the river’s western edge, stood a simple wooden cabin. I stood still, watching it to see if anyone was around. This house was the mystery. It wasn’t on any of the maps. There was no forest ranger patrol hut marked with a red star here on any of the visitor’s website or guides; Cleo had driven this point home on our flight. Nor was there an image of the house on the satellite maps. There were no images of the boulders by the river, there was nothing at all because this was the place that had been blacked out.

This was the place my father had found the day before he disappeared.

At first glance it looked exactly like a park ranger hut. I found myself walking toward it. I summoned what courage I had, thinking of how Cleo would behave in this situation. I fought to feel secure knowing that the weapon she had given me was safely strapped to my arm. I drew closer and saw the telltale green National Park emblem; it was disguised to look
exactly
like a ranger’s hut. The door was ajar.

“Hello?” I called, peeking inside. It was only six by eight, a simple wooden structure with a woodstove against the back wall. Inside was a wooden picnic table and benches. A pile of unused, folded blankets was stacked at the door, along with what looked like an emergency supply of water. A cigarette had been ground out on the concrete floor and the scent of tobacco lingered.

“Hello?” I called out. I had the distinct feeling someone was watching me. Was someone here? I thought I could hear the sound of breathing. I spun around.

A Denali Park Ranger stood at the doorway of the house, cradling a rifle. He was about six feet tall and twenty-five, with reddish-brown hair and a ruddy face from the cold. He wore a forest-green uniform and hat, a metal badge pinned to his chest.

“You’re trespassing,” he said in a low, harsh voice. A second man stepped into the room from a doorway in the back I hadn’t noticed. I lifted my arms overhead, so they would know I wasn’t dangerous.

“I’m just … I’m lost,” I told them. “I need help finding my way back to the camp.”

The two men grabbed me by the shoulders, pushing me forward toward the back of the cabin. I felt the barrel of the gun at the back of my head.

“Please no,” I whispered.

Was he going to shoot me against the wall? Is this what my father had stumbled across? Were these the men who killed him?

One of the men pulled open a door, which was concealed in the wooden boards, and pushed me into a dark closet. The door closed behind me.

The room was pitch-black.

Then I felt the floor sink beneath me.

A bright fluorescent light lit up the ceiling. The room I’d been forced into was in fact a steel box, some kind of elevator. The first ranger stood beside me, the gun still gripped in his hands. There had been no sign of this from outside.

“Where are we going?” I asked. I could feel the downward movement but I was overcome by claustrophobia. The guard didn’t answer. He focused his eyes on the wall. How could this have not been visible from the outside? I hadn’t noticed anything, no electricity cables, nothing, just the wilderness. All I wanted was the door to open. The stainless steel was polished and new, our reflections blurred against the steel.

The elevator stopped. All four doors slid open, revealing a brightly lit hallway made of cinder block.

“Follow me,” he ordered.

How far was I from the surface? I should have concentrated harder. We had been in the elevator for what seemed like an endless amount of time, but we were moving slowly.

The guard led me into a long, brightly lit hallway. The walls were painted a yellowish white, like the hallways of a school. That wasn’t the only part that reminded me of school—there was a specific smell, a mixture of hospital and cafeteria. Rows of long fluorescent lights lit the way along the hall. There were no windows, only closed doors five feet apart. Door after door after door: they all looked exactly alike, no numbers or any other distinguishing features.

I remember reading about the highest security prisons in the world, that they were underground. Is that what this was? A prison? Was this where Connor was? I was completely afraid of this place but at the same time I felt a spark of hope.

The guard opened one of the doors. Inside was a room with a sand-colored sofa, a black-and-white geometric rug, a painting of a ship at sea on the wall. My eyes were immediately drawn to a large window open halfway, with a view of
a field with a red barn in the distance. I could feel summer air coming through it.

“Wait here,” the guard said. “Someone will be here to see you soon.”

The guard left the room. My jaw dropped; he left the door open. I was sure he would be keeping guard outside the hallway door, but when I went to look he wasn’t in the hallway. No one was. The hallway of doors stretched as far as I could see. I looked at the ceiling, at the walls; surveillance cameras were mounted at every angle.

I was afraid to step over the threshold, back into the hallway. Nothing was stopping me, it was just a feeling that kept me from trying to escape right then. I sat down on the bed. I was surprised no one had asked me for my coat. I looked out the window at the pretty meadow. The blades of grass blew in the warm summer breeze; the air smelled of freshly cut grass and rain. Two cardinals sang from the branch of the tree.

The scene was so beguiling that I lost sense of time, or that I was alone, but mostly that what I was looking at was not real. We were not in western Massachusetts; there was no meadow outside this window. Yet the smell and the feel of the air, even the sound made it seem like it was completely real. For a minute or two, I watched, thinking it was real, too.

“Tanya.” A woman’s voice startled me.

“I’m Dr. Luanne Preston. It’s so nice to finally meet you. We have heard so much about you.” She smiled at me, a bright smile of perfectly straight teeth that looked very white against her plum-colored lipstick.

“What?” I heard myself say.

She was tall, with shoulder-length salt-and-pepper hair
turned under at her chin. She was pretty, too, in her fifties or early sixties. She wore a lab coat over a matching pale blue skirt set, clear stockings, black patent pumps, and a strand of pearls around her neck. “We know about you, Tanya. And now we’d like you to tell us what exactly you know about us.”

“I … I don’t know what you mean.”

“Everything will be fine. You will be safe here with us, but you need to cooperate. Do you understand?” The doctor smiled after every sentence. She pulled up a chair and sat down in front of me. Another woman, a nurse, with curly short brown hair and a pale round face sat on a chair in the corner, transcribing.

I nodded. My palms were sweaty. I took a deep breath, trying to force myself to be calm. “I really don’t know anything about this place,” I said.

It was the truth. I had no idea from the maps that there would be an underground building or compound or whatever this place was.

“You just stumbled upon us?” She laughed at her own joke. She ran her finger along the string of pearls as she laughed.

“I was looking for … what happened to my father.” I couldn’t hide the anger in my voice as I spoke. “Was he killed here?” Tears welled in my eyes.

“We’ll answer all your questions about your father soon enough. And on that front, you have nothing to fear.”

“My father …” I didn’t know what I felt. It was close to rage. These people had robbed me of my sole parent. They had put Beth and me through unspeakable suffering.

“Tell me who else knows we are here,” the doctor persisted.

“What about Connor?” I stood up, but the guard
reappeared in the door. My knees buckled and my legs nearly gave out from under me.

She flashed an easy smile, almost as if she were a coach and I’d missed an easy shot. “We ask the questions, okay? Tell us the information we need.”

I couldn’t speak. I seethed with hatred. I hated her phony smile, her voice, and her cruel eyes. I would never tell her a thing.

“Tanya, let me explain,” she continued. “This can be a very nice place to be. It can also be a not-so-nice place to be. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” I forced out.

“I need the names of the two people who brought you here this morning.”

“Harrison Worth,” I snapped. “Alison, his secretary. They’re the ones who brought me here. That’s the truth.” In a way, it was.

The woman stood up abruptly, pushing her chair behind her. Her smile disappeared. She glanced at the nurse and the guard, who both exited.

“That’s enough for now. Maybe you’re hungry, Tanya? Something tells me you’ll remember more after lunch.”