Out (14 page)

“Grabby?” Jana
finishes for me. “Yeah, probably. But listen, I've been through this, with the
Abbess, remember? You just use the purity/chastity defense.”

“Huh?”

She smiles at
me. “You're a good
Anglicant
boy, right? Clean, pure
of spirit, pure of body. You're saving yourself for marriage. He can't very
well object to that, can he?”

“I don't know—”

“And after you
bring him to the location, we’ll take over. You won’t have to stay overnight
with him at all.” Sam glances at Ben. “We’ll take care of the rest, and you and
Carmen can get out.”

“What do you
mean, get out?”

“You’ll be
smuggled out of Ohio, taken to Canada.” He shrugs his shoulders as if it’s no
big deal. “Once you’re both safe, we can go public, tell everyone what
happened, and use McFarland as a bargaining chip to get recognition. Once
people really see what’s going on, once it’s out in the open, people won’t tolerate
it.”

“Seriously?” I
don’t mean to, but I start to laugh. I choke on it. “You’re going to whisk us
away to an exotic foreign country—”

 
“Canada’s not really exotic,” Ben chimes in.

“—and set us up
as poster kids for your movement? And Carmen…I don’t even know if she’d go
along with this. She has family in California, and I have family here…”

“I already
talked to her about it, last night while you were downstairs with McFarland,”
Jana says. “Don’t be mad. I had to see if she’d be willing before we even
talked to you about it.” She puts a hand on my cheek. “She’ll do it. She has
faith in you.”

My head is
buzzing like it’s going to explode into a million pieces. She believes in me.
We could run away together. I’d be part of a secret operation. McFarland…

Magnus sighs
impatiently. “Really, your involvement will be limited, Chris. Just take
McFarland for a drive. Everyone will be expecting you and McFarland to spend a
nice, long weekend together; they won’t even know you’re missing until you
don’t come back. By that time, you’ll be comfortably across the Canadian
border. We’ll do the rest – you and Carmen can stay hidden; we’ll release the
story and go public.”

 
Leave. Just go to Canada. To be a
Perpendicular. With my girlfriend. I glance at Jana, who won’t look me in the
eye. Could I just leave my family? I mean, David can be a jerk, true, but he is
my dad. And Warren—thinking of not seeing him ever again stabs me. And Jana.
We’ve always fought, but now…I don’t know. I don’t know if I want to leave, even
if it means my freedom. “What happens to McFarland?”

“Why do you
care?” Sam snorts. “If you knew how many imprisonments he’s responsible for,
how many people he’s personally assigned to the Cave, how many —”

“The Cave?”

Magnus sighs
impatiently. “I guess you should know a little more if you’re going to help us
take him out of commission. McFarland is the president of the
Anglicant
church’s ‘community rehabilitation program,’ a
euphemism for the people who run the camps and devise the twisted torture they
mete out. Nobody acknowledges what they really do in public, but they quietly
and efficiently eradicate Perpendiculars from the population.” Magnus’s words
are cold, hard; they hit me and shiver over my skin. “They run facilities in
remote areas so no one knows what they really do, funded by the Church.
McFarland is running for Senate; if he gets elected…there’ll be no stopping
him. We have allies in the House, allies ready to turn to foreign aid to stop
the massacres – not everyone believes this is God’s path. But if McFarland is
elected, he has enough clout within the Church that no one will question him.
Or the Cave. With him in power…the US will only fight harder to keep
Perps
…inhuman.”

“That’s
not…that’s not legal is it?”

After a beat,
everybody laughs. They
laugh
.

Ben claps an
arm around my shoulder. “Legal or not, The Cave exists. They throw you in a
hole. It’s total darkness, or always light, and you’re alone for as long as
they see fit to leave you alone…it varies from person to person, depending on
how badly you’ve pissed off whoever you’ve pissed off. They feed you when they
remember, sanitation is spotty at best, clean water is often kept from the
prisoner, and you sleep on a hard floor.” He shakes his head. “Legal doesn’t
enter into it.”

“No.” This
cannot be true. I think about my parents, good people. They would never allow
this. I don’t want to believe they’d allow it. “I’ve heard they have camps,
but…it can’t be as bad as you say. It can’t be.”

Silence.
There’s tension in the room too, as if everyone is waiting for something. Sam
steps forward, gets uncomfortably close to me.

“You don’t
believe it.” His voice, a gravelly whisper, grates against my ear. “You. Don’t.
Believe it.” Smell of sweat, dirt, wet wool from his blue cap, all mingle with
his hot breath on my face. “I was there. I was there. Two months. I didn’t see
another living person for 61 days. They threw food down at me like I was an
animal. They hosed me down with ice cold water every couple of days, and I sat
in cold mud.” He rolls up his shirt sleeve, exposing a jagged scar nearly four
inches long on the inside of his forearm. “I used a rock to open up a vein,
bleed to death, make it stop. But I didn’t. They didn’t want me dead. They
wanted me to suffer.”

 
My God. My brain cannot accept what he says,
but it’s true.
 
There’s that scar,
glaring at me, as cold and hard a truth as Magnus’s facts. That people I know
and love contribute to such cruelty is unthinkable. That my own fathers…would
they do this to me? Would I be thrown down a pit just because of what I am? I
feel panic building up, thinking about all of this.

“So, Chris,
even if you don’t believe me, believe that it happens. And you are needed to
stop this.”

What do I say
to this? How can I answer? Images tumble behind my eyes, images of cruelty and
blood and icy water, Carmen’s face, David’s face, Jana’s eyes, the smell of
autumn and the scent of decaying flesh, dark void, screams. I can imagine it,
and it makes me sick.

“You’re looking
a little green. Sit,” Sam says, impatient. He guides me to a wooden crate that
serves as furniture. “You’re a bit delicate, aren’t you?”

Jana turns to
him, the big sister ready to kick some ass for little brother. “Don’t be such a
jerk,” she yells. “He didn’t even know about this until a few days ago. Give
him a little air.”

 
“We don’t have time for him to adjust!” Sam
screams. “I understand. It’s horrible. It’s inhuman. But we have a shrinking
window of opportunity here, and if we don’t jump on it, we won’t get another
one for who knows how long.”

I wipe sour
spit from the corner of my mouth with the back of my sleeve, and stand, woozy. “Why
is the window closing?”

Magnus jumps
in. “McFarland will fly back to California soon. It’s harder for us to move
around there…much more fully equipped
Perp
League
operatives in that area, and they crack down on anything they think is slightly
rebellious. But here,” he says, smiling, “nobody has really heard much from us.
We’ve been quiet and respectful and obedient, and when we strike it will be huge
and no one will see it coming.”
 

Ben adds, “But
once we do strike, that will be it. They’ll crack down with a vengeance. So we
have to make it count.”

Jana squeezes
my arm. “We’ll join you as soon as we can.” She gazes into my eyes. “You won’t
be alone, remember. Carmen will be with you.”

The idea is
beautiful. To be with Carmen. Freely. Time to explore each other. Whatever’s
between us. Her beautiful smile, her fierce heart…so brave…

“What about
Dad?” I whisper as if we’re the only two people in the room. “You’re just going
to leave everything we’ve ever known and go to Canada? With him?” I gesture
toward Ben, who arches his eyebrows and purses his lips, then shrugs.
 

“What else can
we do?” she asks desperately. “Maybe when things change we can come back, but
for now…” She lets the answer hang in the air.
 

 
I’m far from brave. I’m not even particularly
strong. I could turn my back on this, pretend I don’t know anything…go back to
how it was. I could forget Carmen…could I? I glance at these faces, tight with
worry and conviction. The image of the Cave, the scar on Sam’s forearm, the
idea that we’re not even human—how could I not be
human?
Something suddenly clicks within my chest. Some puzzle piece
that was waiting on another piece with just the right dimensions to run into it
a synchs up, and creates a coherent map of my life.

This
is
my normal.

I can’t run
away from it. I can’t.

“Tell me what
you want me to do.”

Driving home,
my cell phone buzzes. It’s David. I feel guilty answering it, which is a great
omen of how I’m going to do as some super espionage operative. “Dad’s calling,”
I tell Jana.

She keeps her
eyes on the road. “So answer it.”

“I can't.”

“Why not?”

“He...he's
going to know.” I stare down the cell phone. It seems malicious.

Jana pulls the
Escalade over and jams on the brakes, then snatches the phone from me. “Hello?”
she says calmly.

She nods and
rolls her eyes as she listens. David’s voice buzzes from the phone.

“We went to get
gas, and were going to go to the store, but we had some engine trouble.” She
lies so smoothly. It’s admirable, and horrifying. I doubt that I’ll be as good.

She keeps
talking. “Well, you know, the normal kind of engine trouble. It just sputtered
and stopped working.” Jana tries her best to sound like the frustrated,
stranded driver. “If you'd get the stupid thing serviced by a mechanic—”

More talking
from David. Jana grabs my arm, her eyes wide. “Oh, you have an unexpected
guest? Mr. McFarland?” She extends her middle finger and shakes it maliciously
at the phone.

McFarland is at
the house. Maybe even sitting in my bedroom, waiting for me to come home. The
knot in my stomach starts twisting in upon itself.

Jana,
meanwhile, is chatting as if nothing has happened. “We got some help on the
road, so I think we'll be able to drive back,” she’s saying. “We'll probably be
about fifteen minutes. We're not far.” She claps the phone shut. “I wish his
face would melt off like that guy in Raiders of the Lost Ark. The Nazi bastard.
He's no different.”

“Geez, Jana.”
Even considering who David is, that’s pretty harsh. “I mean, he is your father.”

She stares
calmly ahead.
 
“He's not my father,” she
says evenly. “He's the fucking devil.”

We pull into
the driveway about ten minutes later and park behind a rented black
Mercedes-Benz. Jana pauses for a minute to check her makeup. The tight, angry
pull of emotion on her facial muscles contracts; she consciously smoothes the
frown on her brow, relaxes her jaw. She is someone else.

Or, more
accurately, this is the Jana I’m used to seeing. In the woods, the sister who
lit up like a firefly in the presence of a boy, that was someone else, someone
I’d never met. It makes me think about what else I don’t see.

“He's in there,”
she whispers.

“I’m supposed
to meet Carmen after supper.” The memory of kissing her floods back into my
brain, and blood rushes to my head. “How am I going to do that if he’s here?”

She bites her
lower lip, thinking. “It’s lunch. You think he’ll stay till dinner?”

“Maybe.”

“I don’t know.
I’ll come up with something.” She turns to me, puts a hand on my cheek. “Don’t
be afraid. We’re doing the right thing.”

The right
thing. I guess. All I know is that I want to see Carmen, I don’t want to see
McFarland, and I feel sick.

 
We come in the back door, and Warren’s in the
kitchen making a pitcher of Margaritas. “Glad you got back okay,” he says over
the whir of the blender. “David said you had some car trouble?” He pushes a
button, knocks the frozen lime-green concoction off the sides of the glass
container, and pours it into two waiting fishbowl glasses. “California people.
They like their Margaritas. We’re having Mexican for lunch.”

“I didn’t know
he was coming back,” I say as casually as possible.

Warren shoots
me a glance. “Neither did I,” he says with a tinge of annoyance. “But David
wants him to get to know our family.”

Jana squeezes
my arm as she passes me. “I’m going to my room. To study.”

“What?” I
squeak. I thought she was going to help me! “Can’t you stay down here with us?
I’m sure he’d like to get to know you too.”

She grins
wickedly. “I doubt that. I’ll peek in a little later, see how everything’s
going. I’m not hungry anyway. And I hate Mexican food.”
 
She stalks out of the kitchen, leaving me
alone to face McFarland.

“Don’t worry,”
Warren says as he hands me a frosty glass. “I talked to David, and he
understands that you won’t be pushed into anything. I made it very clear.” He
frowns, probably remembering what was no doubt a loud fight about this
particular subject. I’m sure David didn’t let it go that easily. Well, things
would be much easier now that I was going to get McFarland to go on a weekend
getaway. Things would at least smooth out at home. I clutch the paper in my
pocket where Magnus
Karrell
had written down the name
of the place and time I am supposed to have McFarland…delivered. Christ, how
was I going to make that happen?

I walk into the
parlor and deliver the glass to McFarland. “Chris! So good to see you again.”
He sips at the fishbowl. “Just like home. Your father knows his tequila.”