Sanctuary (15 page)

Look, it could have been a lot of things. It could have been the thing with the roll. Heck, she could have seen me letting Chigger lick the bowl.

But I’m not stupid. I knew what it was. I knew what it was the minute Jim Henderson’s gaze landed on me.

Kerchief-Head had told him about catching me in the hallway near where they were keeping Seth. That was all.

We were dead.

It took a little while for it to happen, though. Henderson whispered something back to Kerchief-Head, and she scuttled out of there like a water bug. For a little while, I thought maybe we were all right. You know, that maybe I’d made a mistake. Rob was going on about abominations of nature and how America would never be restored to the great nation it had once been until all Christians banded together, and Henderson seemed to be listening to him pretty intently.

But then I saw something that made my heart stop.

And that was Red Plaid Jacket with the end of his rifle pointed at the back of Seth Blumenthal’s neck as he forced the boy to walk across the barn floor, right up to where Jim Henderson and Rob sat.

Everyone stopped talking when they saw this, and once again, the silence in the barn was overwhelming. The only sound I could hear was the sound of Seth’s sobs. He had started crying again. I saw him look frantically around the barn, and I knew he was looking for me. Fortunately, I was far enough in the shadows that he hadn’t been able to see me, or without a doubt, I’d have been dead.

If I’d known, of course, what was going to happen a minute later anyway, I probably wouldn’t have cared so much. As it was, I was actually relieved Seth hadn’t spotted me. I sunk my fingers into Chigger’s soft fur and willed my heart to start beating again.
Hurry up, Chick. Hurry up, Chick. Hurry up, Chick
!

“Americans,” Jim Henderson said to the assembled masses. I could see at once that he was every bit the orator Rob was. Everyone looked at him with that glazed expression of adoration I recognized from that movie about the Jim Jones massacre. Henderson was these people’s messiah on earth.

“We’ve made some fine new friends tonight,” Henderson went on, slapping a hand to Rob’s shoulder. The only reason he’d been able to reach it was that Rob was sitting and he was standing. “And I for one am grateful. Grateful that Hank and Ginger found their way to our little flock.”

Ginger? Who the hell was Ginger? Then, as a good many heads turned in my direction, I realized Rob had told them my name was Ginger.

He is such a card.

“But however impressed we may be by Hank and Ginger’s professed dedication to our cause,” Henderson went on, “there’s really only one way to test the loyalty of a true American, isn’t there?”

There was a general murmur of assent. My heart thudded more loudly than ever. I did not like the sound of this. I did not like the sound of this at all.

“Hank,” Henderson said, turning to Rob. “You see before you a boy. Seemingly innocent enough looking, I know. But innocence, as we all know, can be deceiving. The devil sometimes tries to fool us into believing in the innocence of an individual, when in fact that individual is laden with sin. In this case, this boy is soaked in sin. Because he is, in fact, a Jew.”

I dug my fingers so hard into Chigger’s coat, a smaller dog would have cried out. Chigger, however, only wagged his tail, still hoping for another crack at the bowl I held. Apparently, nobody had ever bothered to feed Chigger before. How else could you explain how easily I’d won over his allegiance?

“Hank,” Henderson said. “Because you’ve already, in the short time I’ve known you, so thoroughly impressed me with your sincerity and commitment to the cause, I am going to allow you a great privilege I’ve heretofore denied both myself and my other men. Hank, I am going to let you kill a Jew.”

And with that, Jim Henderson presented Rob with a knife he pulled out of his own boot.

A lot of things when through my mind then. I thought about how much I loved my mom, even though she can be such a pain in the ass sometimes, with her weird ideas about how I should dress and who I should date. I thought about how mad I was going to be if I didn’t get to stick around to find out if Douglas ever did anything about his crush on Tasha Thompkins. I thought about the state orchestra championship, and how for the first time in years, I wouldn’t be bringing home a blue ribbon cut in the shape of the state of Indiana.

It’s strange the things you think about right before you die. I don’t even know how I knew I was going to die. I just knew it, the way I knew that eventually, all that snow outside was going to melt, and it would be spring again someday. Rob and I were going to die, and the only thing we had to make sure of was that they didn’t try to kill Seth along with us.

“Well,” Henderson was saying to my boyfriend. “Go on. Take my knife. Really. It’s okay. He’s just a Jew.”

Seth Blumenthal, I have to say, was being pretty brave. He was crying, but he was doing it quietly, with his head held high. I guess after what he’d been through, death didn’t seem like such a bad thing. I don’t know how else to explain it. I kind of felt the same way. I wasn’t scared, really. Oh, I didn’t want it to hurt. But I wasn’t scared to die.

All I wanted was to take as many True Americans down with me as I could.

Rob reached out and took the knife from Jim Henderson.

“Thataboy,” Henderson said, smiling in a sickly way beneath his mustache. “Now go ahead. Show us you are true believer. Stick it to the pig.”

So Rob did the only thing he could. The same thing I’d have done, in his situation.

He threw an arm around Jim Henderson’s neck, brought the knife blade to his jugular vein, and said, “Anybody moves, and Jimbo here gets it.”

C H A P T E R
14

H
ave you ever been to a football game where the higher ranked team was so certain of winning, there wasn’t even a doubt in the minds of their fans that they wouldn’t? And then, through some total miscalculation on the part of the superior team, the underdog got the upper hand?

The faces of the True Americans looked like the faces of the fans of the winning team, seconds after their team mangled some play so horribly, their opponent, against all odds, scored a touchdown.

They were stunned. Just stunned.

“Thanks,” I said to Red Plaid Jacket, as I relieved him of his rifle. “I’ll take that.”

I had never held a rifle before in my life, but I had a pretty good idea how one worked. You just pointed at the thing you wanted to hit, and pulled the trigger. No big mystery in that.

Of course, if you thought about it, there was no reason in the world for us to be so cocky. Okay, so yeah, Rob had a knife to a guy’s throat, and I had a rifle. Big deal. It was still about fifty to two. Well, three, if you counted Seth. Four, if you included Chigger, who was still following me around, hoping for more mashed potatoes, even though I’d put down the bowl.

But hey, we had the upper hand for the moment, and we were going to take advantage of it while we could.

“Okay,” Rob said, as the blood slowly drained from Jim Henderson’s face. Not because Rob had poked a hole in him or anything. Just because the leader of the True Americans was so very, very scared.

“Okay, now. Everybody just stay very calm, and no one is going to get hurt.” Hey, he had me convinced. Rob seemed totally believable, as far as knife-wielding hostage-takers went. “Me and the girl and the kid and Jimbo here are going to take a little walk. And if any of you want to see your fearless leader live through this, you’re going to let us go. Okay?”

When no one objected, Rob went, “Good. Jess. Seth. Let’s go.”

And so started what had to have looked like one weird parade. With me leading the way, rifle in hand and dog at my heels, a dazed-looking Seth following me, and Rob, with his arm around Henderson, taking up the rear, we made our way down the length of the barn. I wouldn’t want to give you the impression that Mr. Henderson was playing the silent martyr in all of this, however. Oh, no. See, people who haven’t the slightest qualm about doing unspeakably horrible things to others are always the ones who act like the biggest babies of all whenever anybody in turn threatens them.

I’m not kidding. Jim Henderson was practically crying. He was wailing, in a high-pitched voice, “You may think you’re gonna get away with this, but I’ll tell you what. The people are gonna rise up. The people are gonna rise up and walk the path of righteousness. And traitors like you, boy—traitors to your own race—are going to burn in hellfire for all eternity—”

“Would you,” Rob said, “shut up?”

Only Jim Henderson was wrong. The people weren’t going to rise up. Not all at once, anyway. They were too shocked by what was happening to their leader even to think about lifting a finger to help him. Or maybe it was just that they really did believe that if they tried anything to stop us, Rob would slit their beloved Jim Henderson’s throat.

In any case, the people did not rise up.

Just one person did.

Kerchief-Head, to be exact.

I should have seen it coming. I mean, it had been way, way too easy.

But I’ll admit it. I got cocky. I started thinking that these people were stupid, because they had these stupid ideas about things. That was my first mistake. Because the scariest thing about the True Americans was that they weren’t stupid. They were just really, really evil.

As became all too clear when I heard, from behind me, the sound of breaking glass.

I realized my second mistake the second I turned around. The first had been in assuming the True Americans were stupid. The second had been in not covering Rob’s back with the rifle.

Because when I spun around, what I saw was Kerchief-Head standing there with two broken pieces of my mashed potato bowl in her hands. The rest of the pieces were all over the floor … where Rob also lay. The bitch had snuck up behind him and cracked his skull open.

Hey, I didn’t hesitate. I lifted that rifle, and I fired. I didn’t even think about it, I was so mad … mad and scared. There was a lot of blood coming out of the gash in Rob’s head. More was pouring out every second.

But I had never fired a rifle before. I didn’t know how they kicked. And it is not like I am this terrifically large person or anything. I pulled the trigger, the gun exploded, and the next thing I knew, I was on the floor, with Chigger licking my face and about a million and one handguns pointed at my face.

Whatever else the True Americans might have been, lacking in firearms was not one of them.

The worst part of it was, I didn’t even hit Kerchief-Head. I missed her by a mile.

I did, however, manage to do some major damage to the “Don’t Tread On Me” flag.

“If you’ve killed my boyfriend,” I snarled at Kerchief-Head, as a lot of hands started grabbing me and dragging me to my feet, “I’ll make you regret the day you were ever born. Do you hear me, placenta breath?”

It was childish, I knew, to stoop to name-calling. But I’m not sure I was in my right mind. I mean, Rob was lying there, completely unconscious, with all this blood making a puddle around his head. And they wouldn’t let me near him. I tried to get to him. I really did. But they wouldn’t let me.

Instead, they locked me up. That’s right. In that little room Seth had been locked in. They threw me right in there. Me and Seth. In the dark. In the cold. With no way of knowing whether my boyfriend was dead or alive.

I don’t know how much time passed before I stopped kicking the door and screaming. All I know was that the sides of my wrists hurt from where I’d pounded them against the surprisingly sturdy wood. And Seth was staring at me like I was some kind of escapee from a lunatic asylum. Really. The kid looked scared.

He looked even more scared when I said to him, “Don’t worry. I’m going to get you out of here.”

Well, I guess I couldn’t blame him. I probably wasn’t exactly giving off an aura of mature adulthood just then.

I crossed over to where he was sitting and sank down onto the bed beside him. Suddenly, I was really tired. It had been a long day.

Seth and I sat there in the dark, listening to the distant sounds of the women banging pots and pans around in the kitchen. I guess no matter what kind of murder and mayhem was happening over in the barn, dinner still needed serving. I mean, all those men needed to keep their strength up for making the country safe for the white man, right?

Finally, after what seemed like a million years, Seth spoke. He said, in a shy voice, “I’m sorry about your friend.”

I shrugged. I didn’t exactly want to think about Rob. If he was dead, that was one thing. I would deal with that when the time came, probably by throwing myself headfirst into Pike’s Quarry, or whatever.

But if he was still alive, and they were doing stuff to him, the way they had to Seth….

Well, let’s just say that whether Rob was dead or alive, I was going to make it my sole mission in life to track down each and every one of the True Americans, and make them pay.

Preferably with a flame-thrower.

“How …” Seth scratched his head. He was a funny-looking kid, tall for his age, with dark hair and eyes, like me. “How did you find me, anyway?”

I looked down at my Timberlands, though I wasn’t exactly seeing them, or much else, for that matter. All I could see was Rob, lying there with his head bashed in.

“I have this thing,” I said, tiredly.

“A thing?” Seth asked.

“A psychic thing,” I said. Which is another thing. If Rob were dead, wouldn’t I know it? I mean, wouldn’t I feel it? I was pretty sure I would.

But I didn’t. I didn’t feel anything. Except really, really tired.

“Really?” In the moonlight, Seth’s face looked way younger than his thirteen years. “Hey, that’s right. You’re that girl. That lightning girl. I thought I’d seen you before somewhere. You were on the news.”

“That’s me,” I said. “Lightning Girl.”

“That is so cool,” Seth said, admiringly.

“It’s not so cool,” I told him.

“No,” Seth said. “It is. It really is. It’s like you’ve got kid Lojack, or something.”

“Yeah,” I said. “And look what good it’s done for me. You and I are stuck in here, and my boyfriend’s out there bleeding to death, and another kid is dead, and possibly a cop, too—”