Schism (25 page)

He let out a laugh. “I guess that would have been a better way of saying it.”

“So when will you leave?”

“Tomorrow, when you all leave. Maria said she’d get me enough gas to get back to Aspen and then all the way to New York.”

“So you’ve already told Maria that you’re not coming with us?”

“And Ben and Jim. I figured that since New York is really their territory and their past, I needed to tell them first.”

“So Maria knows. And if Susan knows, then Charlie knows. And if Jim knows, then Morgan knows.”

Brian looked guilty. “Um, yeah.”

“So basically, everyone already knows you aren’t coming with us. I’m the last person you’ve told?”

“Well, I didn’t want you to try to talk me out of it.”

“I wouldn’t have tried to stop you if you had explained all of this to me.”

But he raised an eyebrow skeptically. “Really? I would’ve tried to stop you if the situation were reversed.”

“You would?”

“Of course.” He paused, then said, “I like you, Andy. A lot.”

“Oh.”

Brian smiled broadly at her and she was suddenly struck by how handsome he was. She’d hadn’t noticed before.

“Just think about that…while I’m gone.” Without waiting for an answer, he turned and left the room.

“I will,” she whispered to herself.

***

Around eight o’clock in the morning, a large tanker truck pulled up to an intersection half a block away from the two houses. Behind it was parked a truck with a small trailer attached.

Charlie and Susan were first to spot the trucks. Maria was outside with Julio and Carmen.

“Don’t tell me that that’s what I think it is,” Charlie said as he pointed at the tanker with astonishment.

Maria laughed. “And it’s completely full, too.”

“God, how many gallons is that?” Susan asked, equally in awe.

“Gallons? I don’t know, but I think around thirty thousand liters.”

“How in the world did your friends get so much gas?” asked Susan.

“They stole it in the middle of the night. It came all the way from Venezuela.”

“They stole it?” Susan and Charlie repeated at the same time.

“Won’t they get caught?” Charlie added. “Or killed?”

“No. My friends aren’t going back to Juarez. They’re going to Miami after they drop us off in New York. They’ve got friends and relatives there.”

She glanced back at her three friends who were gathered at the front of the tanker and talking to Julio and Carmen. “We all decided together that it was time to leave. The danger just isn’t worth it anymore. They are going to take care of Julio while we are in New York.”

“Why isn’t Carmen going with them?” asked Susan.

“She wants to stay with me. Plus, Julio has good friends going to Miami that he misses, and he’s getting too old for me to tell him what to do.”

“Whoa, is that thing full?” Brian asked as he and the others approached.

“Just about,” Maria confirmed, smiling with satisfaction.

“What’s in the other truck?” asked Andy. Maria frowned and gestured for her and Ben to follow and headed toward the smaller trailer. She opened the back of the trailer with Ben’s help, and Andy saw something she’d never seen before: kilograms upon kilograms of illicit drugs. More precisely, three hundred kilos of high-grade cocaine, heroin, and marijuana, all wrapped and vacuum-sealed.

Frozen with his arm still in the air from lifting the trailer door, Ben was stunned. “Holy…”

“That’s…that’s a
lot
,” Andy said with her eyes wide open.

“Well, you said to get as much as I could get,” Maria said as she climbed into the trailer and made a sweeping gesture with her arms. “This should be enough to get some people talking, I would think.”

Still in disbelief, Ben stepped up to join Maria inside the trailer before gingerly placing his hand on top of the stack of wrapped heroin. He seemed afraid to touch it.

“Sad that this is what it takes to do something good,” Maria said as she turned and hopped out of the trailer. “It’s time to find another way.” She walked past Andy and headed back to the rest of the group, leaving them alone.

Ben looked down at Andy, then back at his hand still touching the stack of heroin. “This is what killed my sister.” His voice wavered slightly.

“You sure you want to do it this way?” she asked cautiously.

“No, I’m not sure, but I don’t know of another way right now.” He stepped out of the trailer.

“Okay, then we won’t worry about it until we need to.” She stepped up and closed the trailer door. “Let’s just get to New York first.”

Brian put his things in Jim and Ben’s truck, which they were lending to him.

“Just make sure you bring it back in one piece,” Ben joked after handing over the keys.

“I will, I promise,” he said and then hugged Susan goodbye.

She forced a smile and said, “Don’t stay there long. And watch out for yourself.”

“Yes ma’am,” he replied in jest in an effort to maintain his composure. “You be careful.”

She gave her brother one more hug. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.” He then said goodbye to everyone else before getting inside the truck.

Andy was the last to speak to him. “I’ll take good care of her,” she promised.

“Thank you. I’ll worry a lot less knowing that.”

She gave him a hug, which wasn’t unexpected since both Morgan and Maria had also hugged him farewell. But when she pulled away, he sneaked a quick kiss to her cheek before slipping into the driver’s seat. “Be careful,” he muttered to her as he started the engine.

Andy stood still and touched the spot on her face where his lips had been. She didn’t notice Morgan come up beside her until Katie made a few noises in her mother’s arms.

“I know Ben likes Brian well enough, but I’m sure he’s glad he won’t have any competition for a while.”

Andy didn’t respond.

Chapter XX

“
M
an, I’m beat.” Andy rubbed her eyes one at a time since she was driving. The clock on the dashboard read 11:57. “It’s midnight already? Where did the time go today?”

“Want me to drive?” Morgan asked even though Katie had just fallen asleep in her arms.

“No, let’s not wake her. I’ll be fine,” she replied with a yawn.

“How much farther is it?”

“Not far. We should be crossing the Delaware River in a few minutes.”

Morgan nodded, although she had no idea where the Delaware River was in relation to Princeton. She’d been too busy dealing with Katie the entire trip to have a chance to look at a map.

Between driving in a slow-moving caravan, tackling the spotty road conditions stretching between New Mexico and eastern Pennsylvania, and stopping multiple times to check the safety of bridges to ensure they could support the immense weight of the tanker, the journey had been exhaustingly long. What normally would have been a three-day trip had taken them six, and once they arrived, they’d still have to find a decent place to live.

Andy glanced back at Jim in the rearview mirror. He was asleep in the backseat. “I’m glad someone’s getting some rest,” she said quietly to Morgan.

Morgan craned her neck to look. She smiled down at Jim but said nothing, and returned her focus on Katie and the road ahead.

They were in the last vehicle. In front of them was the other pickup truck, which Ben was driving along with Charlie and Susan. Maria, Julio, and Carmen had remained with their Juarez friends in the tanker and trailer.

Andy mused how the drive west the year before had seemed far less arduous, and she could only attribute this sentiment to the excitement she felt last year of heading somewhere new and mysterious with the two young men they had met along the way. But now they were like soldiers going to war, and all the inevitable difficulties they would face seemed more real as the battlefield approached.

After crossing the Delaware River, they passed through Trenton and continued on with surprising ease until Princeton appeared in the distance. They got off the highway just south of the university, and the four vehicles pulled over to the side of the road. Everyone stepped outside and regrouped near the front of the tanker.

“Now what?” Susan asked once they were all gathered.

With a flashlight in hand, Ben placed a map of New Jersey on the ground and positioned the light on the center. Everyone huddled together to get a better look.

“We need to hide all this gas somewhere,” he began, taking charge. “It’s too big to take into the neighborhoods without risking others seeing it. The less people who know we’re here, the better.”

Andy pointed to something on the map. “What about one of these parks? Or this golf course?”

Ben stroked his chin with his free hand. Out of everyone, he seemed to be the most alert. “Yeah, that could work. It’s not exactly hidden, but it’s better than putting it in some parking lot. We’ll find a warehouse or somewhere else later, but for tonight, let’s just get it off the road.”

He looked at Maria and each of her friends. “You guys okay with that? I mean, it’s your gas.”

“No, it’s
our
gas,” she corrected. “My friends will only take what they need to get to Miami.”

“Okay, then we’ll put the tanker here,” he pointed to a spot on the map, “the Princeton Country Club. It’s just down the road.”

***

That next morning, Maria said a tearful goodbye to her friends and Julio. After their departure, she spent the rest of the day comforting Carmen, who was particularly upset to see her brother leave.

“I hope I did the right thing by letting him go,” Maria confided in Morgan.

“It’s impossible to know what the right decision is anymore, but you’re doing what you think is best,” Morgan consoled. “And you wanted to protect him from any possibility of being exposed to the virus now that he’s of age.”

Biting her lip, Maria still wasn’t certain, but there was little anyone could say to ease her mind. Everyone was uncertain if the journey was all for a foolish pursuit. Only the fear of a potential repeat of the outbreak kept them motivated.

That night, after a long day of settling in, Ben announced that he was heading into the city. He didn’t expect anyone to go with him, as everyone was still worn out, but after gaining a second wind, Andy felt the desire to see the New York she’d been visualizing for days.

“Take your pistol and wear something to conceal it,” he instructed her. “We might be walking once we reach Manhattan.”

Despite the summer heat, she brought a lightweight sweatshirt with her, which she tied around her waist to conceal her Glock. They also brought some bottles of water, dried fruit and beef jerky, two bikes, and two sleeping bags, just in case. Ben also took a kilo of cocaine with him, which he divided into ten smaller bags of a hundred grams each. He weighed each carefully with a food scale he had picked up at a Wal-Mart in Oklahoma for this very purpose. The rest of the drugs had been hidden in the garage of one of their new homes.

Ben drove, since he knew the way. Little was said during the drive. Many hours of comfortable silence had already passed between them within the confines of a car. The darkness gradually lessened as street lamps and lights within homes became visible from the highway. It seemed contradictory that the person responsible for restoring this light could be so dark and twisted.

“Where are we going exactly?” she asked as they passed Newark Airport.

“Jersey City. We’ll have to park there since we can’t drive through the Holland Tunnel.”

“Why not?”

“Because only the Directors and certain people in the Infantry are allowed to drive cars in Manhattan. Not even Fixers can drive in the city. Jim spent every day working on cars, but he wasn’t allowed to drive them except to make sure they worked. The only way he and Karen could get around the city without walking or biking or taking the subway was if I drove them.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No, I’m serious. It’s meant to control the population, like a lot of other things—but it wasn’t always that way.”

They crossed Newark Bay and into the peninsula of Bayonne just south of Jersey City.

“So what happened?”

“It started because of the Holland Tunnel.”

“Sorry?”

“Well when the tunnel was built about a hundred years ago, a ventilation system was installed to remove the carbon monoxide emissions created by all the cars passing through. Without it, drivers would asphyxiate before they could get through the tunnel, especially if they were stuck in traffic. When the virus was released and people died while passing through the tunnel, it became clogged with thousands of vehicles and dead people. You can imagine the smell in the summer heat. But without power, the ventilation system wasn’t on, and it ending up taking weeks to clear both directions of the tunnel. So until power returned to the city, no one dared to drive through the tunnel even after it was cleared, and by the time Sean got the power back up, everyone was used to crossing the tunnel on foot or on bikes. And with gasoline running out and with the subway working again, he decided to outlaw driving in Manhattan entirely.”