S'wanee: A Paranoid Thriller (28 page)

“The experiment, the human trials end today, sir,” Cody stressed. “That’s what they said.”

Cody exhaled. He’d passed the ball, the torpedo of truth, off to the editor of
Newsweek
magazine, who believed Cody and knew he wasn’t crazy because he’d been there. He knew what Ivan the Terrible was capable of. Cody could almost hear the wheels turning over the phone.

“So you’re a freshman?” Crownover asked, covering old ground, and Cody repeated, “Yes, sir,” wishing they could speed things along since the Widow would return any second, and Cody needed help fast, needed to know what to do.

“You’re in Rebel’s Rest, you say?” Crownover asked. “I was in that section, too.”

“Yes, sir. I read that in the
Purple
.”

“How’s Pearl doing?” he asked. “She was brand-new then. Just a young girl.”

“She’s good,” Cody said. “She’s a little older now.”

“Aren’t we all?” Crownover laughed.

“Is my section’s picture still in the hallway?” Crownover asked. “By the stairs?”

“I…I guess so, sir,” Cody answered. “There’s lots of pictures in the hallway.”

“Now, can I ask you something, Freshman Cody?” Crownover said.

“Yes, sir.”

“What kind of stunt is this?”

“Sir?”

“There is no S’wanee.”

“Sir?”

“The school closed its doors in 1972. The year after the tragedy. For good.”

The Widow was in the lobby, still searching for the phantom dog.

“I was in the last graduating class. The trustees sold the campus. They let the old alums visit once a year.” Crownover laughed once. “Very hospitable of them.”

The Widow noticed the front desk was empty. She stopped looking for the dog and started looking for Cody.

“So, Cody, if that’s your real name, I was intrigued by your call but not quite sure the purpose of it…”

The Widow saw him through the office window and limp/loped toward him.

“…unless it’s gallows humor of some sort. Clearly you’ve done your research, which I must say has been a dark little stroll down memory lane in my busy day…”

Cody hung up.

“Your phone was ringing,” he told the Widow. “They hung up.”

He wandered into the lobby. He looked out over the Reading Room where sat the same diligent students he’d seen every day since he started.

He wandered outside. He looked out on students and professors crisscrossing the snow-cleared paths, the same paths they’d crisscrossed since he arrived.

He looked out on Spencer Hall, where white coats scurried as they had since the very beginning.

Cody looked out on a world that didn’t exist at all.

W
ho
were
these people?

“Dude, we’re leading a snowball ambush on Gailor after dinner. You in?”

“Are those fuckers still there? Thought they’d cleared out already.”

Cody eavesdropped on the Rebel’s Rest dinner chatter from the front living room.

“What’s up with that chick from Nevada?” Huger asked. “You gonna get on that before it’s too late, or what?”

“Mebbe,” Banjo said. “I’m sure she’ll be skanking around the Lodge tonight.”

Clueless, naive, so
distracted
with exams and parties and hookups that they had no idea what was really going on here. Some had been alarmed, briefly, by the deaths all around them, but unlike Cody, they had lapsed back into normalcy and complacency and even calm, as if they’d been drugged into forgetting. “You could, ultimately, tranquilize a mass riot with a dose of digital dopamine,” Ross had told the white coats.

Sitting ducks. Forks and plates clinking.

Nobody knew what Cody knew.

“Save room for dessert, folks! I made blackberry cobbler.
Tons
of cobbler.”

But Pearl knew, didn’t she?

Pearl, the Widow Senex, Fletcher—still on the payroll all these years. Serving their new master, whoever it was, decade after decade. Lying to the students they pretended to care about. Cody didn’t feel bad for Fletcher anymore. Nesta was the real victim. She’d been tested on and abused and now her brain sat sliced and pressed between glass for the sick freaks at Spencer Hall to pick at and study.

The same sick freaks who masqueraded as professors. No wonder the classes were so lame.

“You going to watch
Patton
at McClurg?”

“Brah, how many times we gotta sit through that? Can’t they give us
Full Metal Jacket
at least?”

He had to tell them, to warn them they all had to run away. But
where
? They were high atop the Mountain, trapped by the snow and the wilderness and the fortified security gate and Proctor Bob’s crew.

And even if they stormed the gate and escaped the campus—or whatever it was—they were in the middle of nowhere, in the freezing cold, and freshmen didn’t have cars (
of course
). And even if they stole cars from upperclassmen, the town police must be under S’wanee’s control because that one cop let Ross off without a ticket, even though he was going sixty in a forty, and he’d clearly hated Ross on sight (
good eye, Smokey
). The town cops would catch them as they fled in their upperclassmen cars.

Upperclassmen.

“How long’s your furlough, Buzz?”

“Just a week. Gonna put in for two. Wish we could re-up here, actually.”

S’wanee could not have tricked several hundred upperclassmen for two-three-four years.

“I wish we could keep the clothes,” one girl said to another, who said, “I’m keeping my Signing dress. They won’t miss it.”

“
Ladies
,” Pearl singsonged from the kitchen. “
Ix-nay
.”

Cody had never seen several hundred. He’d seen maybe a hundred, maybe two, tops. The same ones over and over. In the chapel, at the library, on the sidewalks, at the Lodge. All the same faces, all the time.

Cody thought.

Everyone
knew what Cody knew. Long before he knew it.

The freshmen, the upperclassmen, his own section, his own friends.

They weren’t students at all.

“Banjo, wanna meet at midnight and hit the Lodge together?”

“Good deal, faggola.”

Nobody was studying for exams. Because there were none. Today was the last day of the experiment.

Who
were
these people?

A girl came up from the laundry room. Without laundry. Up and down, all the time, but the free, high-tech machines were always empty.

Cody looked ahead.

•   •   •

Cody had passed the gym lockers in the basement dozens of times with his laundry basket. He had never noticed all the locks on an unlocked campus.

Now he passed with Elliott’s tiny key.

Upstairs was talking and laughing and footsteps, and Cody tried lock after lock. He looked around for cameras, but there were none, since this was backstage. They hadn’t thought to install them here.

The basement door swung open, and Banjo called back, “Huger, I’ll come grab you when I’m done packing.” He padded down the stairs. “Don’t be jerking off.”

Crouched behind a catacomb wall, Cody watched Banjo open his locker. Whistling a tune, he took out files and papers and his cell phone and stuffed them into his knapsack. He took out ripped jeans and a black motorcycle jacket hanging from a hook. He reached in for his wallet and flipped through it and muttered, “Need. More. Gelt.” He emptied the locker and gave it one last look and carried his knapsack up the stairs.

Cody tried the key in the locker left of Banjo’s. He tried the right.
Click
.

Baggy jeans and a green windbreaker hung from the hooks. Cody had never seen Elliott wear either. On the top shelf was a BlackBerry Bold. Cody powered it on and waited for it to boot.

Metal dog tags clinked against the locker door. Cody took a black nylon wallet from the top shelf and un-Velocroed the flap. Inside were thirty-seven dollars and an ATM card and a Pennsylvania driver’s license with Elliott’s picture and the name “Robert.”

Cody scrolled through the BlackBerry and found photos of Elliott/Robert, bird’s-nest hair and all, smiling with family by the Christmas tree, tuxedoed up and smiling with a so-so girl at the prom, bobbing in a life vest next to water skis, smiling and giving the thumbs-up.

There were pictures of Robert/Elliott in fatigues. Grinning from a long cafeteria table with other soldiers. Hamming it up at the karaoke mike with more soldiers as backup. Surrounded by palm trees in front of a sign that said “Fort Jackson.”

Tucked in the back of the shelf, under a dog-eared and well-worn copy of “S’wanee Places,” was a black three-ring notebook labeled “Elliott” on the top and “Must Not Leave Locker” on the bottom.

Inside was a dossier of “Elliott’s” biographical information, some highlighted in yellow, some circled and starred in red. There was a “Mission” page with “Need to Know” across the top. There was a daily work schedule, with “Downtime” 19:00–22:00 weekdays and 15:00–17:00 Saturdays. “Mandatory Mission Update” meetings every Saturday at 12:00 with “Drills” right after and optional ones every morning. There was a scheduled “Shore Leave” in late October and a two-week Christmas break.

There was little else under “Need to Know,” except “Protect Your Cover” on the bottom of the page. There was a “Classified” watermark.

Under “Test Subject” was a color photo of Cody from his Facebook page, right above his own daily class and work schedule, including locations. His hair looked redder than it really was, he thought.

The back page was a long, dense “Mission Consent” form, signed and dated by Robert.

The mission ended today.

Cody gripped the banister as he crept up the basement stairs. He listened at the door as the dinner crowd slowly migrated out the back. “When’s your flight tomorrow?” someone said, and someone else said, “They should at least throw us a party.”

They were all soldiers, assigned to a secret mission with very little “Need to Know.” They were props, undercover extras with random code names. Blindly following orders, military-style.

“We gotta stay in touch,” someone said. “I’ll Facebook you when they let us,” someone else said.

Cody snuck toward the foyer stairs, increasingly wobbly. He passed the framed photos in the hall. A black-and-white of the 1971 Rebel’s Rest section, all smiles with the names below. There was the athletic Olympian John Crownover; the very dapper Appy Apperson. Pearl, young and thin, beamed from the side.

“Do you still have my Club Monaco blouse?” one girl asked another, who answered, “I totally forgot about that. Yes, it’s
drib reflooben suitcase ankrakglob
…”

In the photo was an Arthur, an Elliott, very different boys with the same names. There was a Caleb, a Paxton, a Bishop, a Sinkler. There was an Emerson and a Huger. There was a girl named Skit and a Vail and a Houston.

There was an Asian girl named Cynthia.

“Arn klak merofisso binflockel…”

The grandfather clock struck eight p.m.

He had to get out of here.

•   •   •

He would leave everything behind. He only needed his ID (his
real
one), his cash (thank you,
thank you
, Mom), the clothes on his back. He’d take his new student kit as evidence, including “The S’wanee Call” DVD. On it, he knew, were background glimpses of his “friends,” including Beth, which was why she looked so familiar at first. Props, extras, liars all.

He’d take his iPhone, even though it was busted, and he definitely needed his laptop, which still worked fine. He’d send his mother an e-mail so she could call the cops in the
next
town to come rescue him, after he somehow snuck past Proctor Bob’s men. There had to be more than one way out.

His hand went into spasms, and he rubbed it.
Calm down, Cody
.

He grabbed his new tweed jacket. He’d need it for warmth. He needed his wool knit cap, too, because his hair was still wet.

Why was his hair wet?

He looked in the mirror at his wet hair and red cashmere sweater.

Hadn’t he been wearing his green one?

When did he take a shower? When did he change clothes?

Why did he do either?

Downstairs, the grandfather clock struck the hour.

It had just struck the hour a few minutes ago, before he came upstairs. What was wrong with the damn clock?

He checked his gold Seiko. Eleven p.m. When he’d come upstairs moments ago, it had been eight p.m. Hadn’t it?

The log cabin was silent.

His green sweater was wadded on the floor. Ripped down the front.

Next to it, on top of his orange backpack, was a kitchen knife. A big, chopping knife. A Wusthof.

Pearl’s missing Wusthof. The blade was red and wet and gleaming.

He checked the time on his laptop. His watch was right.

Ross’s thesis proposal was still on the screen. Against his will, Cody clicked on the link at the bottom, and his Troller remembered the password to the secret page with the grid of twelve QuickTime screens. They were no longer numbered; they were named.

He clicked on “Caleb,” which showed a nighttime surveillance view of a tall, blond, athletic runner with fluorescent safety armbands catching his breath on the edge of Morgan’s Steep. Up behind him came a fellow runner, skinnier, with red hair and “Guns N’ Roses” on the back of his T-shirt. Cody hit the stop button.

“Vail”—a girl overlooked the Quad from high atop the Observatory balcony. A scrawny kid in a sweater and khakis talked to her and comforted her. Cody hit stop.

“Skit”—by the Burwell Fountain, a visibly drunk girl approached by a tall, thin boy with an orange backpack. From his clutched right hand flashed the blade of a large kitchen knife. Stop. “Bishop.” “Emerson.” “Sin.” “Houston.” In Manigault Park. In Abbo’s Alley. In a cabin. By the fire circle. All partially shrouded in fog. Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop.

“Elliott”—in his bedroom.

“Unknown”—a glowing, night-vision view. A twin bed. A naked girl with short dark hair thrashing. A naked boy trying to calm her, his hands around her neck. Stop.

“Banjo”—in his bedroom, packing, turning to his door. His cocky smile melting away. Time-stamped 10:42 p.m.