Part 19 (2/2)
Devon went next.
I tried to approach the grate, but my leg had stiffened up in the last few minutes, and I found I could barely move it. The grate seemed to be moving around a bit. Rippling, like water. I hoped it would stand still long enough for me to squeeze past it.
The white-haired man looked at me with concern, then reached out and pressed the back of his hand briefly against my forehead. The fine white lines between his eyebrows deepened.
”I'll take her,” he said.
Isaac hesitated, then nodded. With a strong arm the white-haired man drew me close to him, holding me tightly against him as he urged Isaac through the opening. His coat smelled of things that were not raw sewage, which was nice.
”I apologize for what is going to seem an undignified exit,” he said to me, as Isaac went over the edge. Holding me close to him, he squeezed through the narrow opening. Barbs of rusty iron sc.r.a.ped my skin as he pulled me along with him. Great. Teta.n.u.s too. This trip just got better and better.
He closed the gate carefully behind us and reached in through the bars to lock it again. Then without warning he picked me up and threw me over his shoulder, head first, so that I wound up hanging down his back. I grabbed onto his coat, dimly aware that if we jumped down into the river like this it would be really hard for me to swim. But he didn't jump. He walked to the edge of the tunnel, grabbed hold of something off to one side, then swung himself around the opening. It didn't look like there was anything next to the pipe but a pretty steep hillside, but apparently he found some kind of foothold.
And then we stood very still. Well, he stood very still. I hung with my b.u.t.t in the air, very still.
Over the sound of the water I could hear people approaching. The goons must have had heard the gate open, and they were coming to investigate. I prayed my companions had gotten out of sight in time.
I heard people moving around inside the pipe. Saying things I couldn't make out. Then they left. We waited until we could no longer hear them, and then we waited some more. And some more. The blood rus.h.i.+ng to my head, meanwhile, made for an interesting sensation. Kind of like an internal roller coaster.
Finally he began to move again. I was aware of him climbing down the embankment, then carrying me a short way along the sh.o.r.e. We came to a big canoe, and he laid me down inside it. Then he pushed off, and we were on the river. The sun warmed my skin. Nice, very nice. I shut my eyes for a minute then felt the canoe jostle as more people climbed into it. Three in all. I opened my eyes but couldn't see anything clearly. Feet pressed against me on all sides as my companions packed themselves into the narrow s.p.a.ce. Not such a big canoe after all.
And then the strange man with the white ponytail pushed us away from the sh.o.r.e and let the current carry us south. Away from Luray. Away from pursuit.
Away from Tommy.
No! I screamed inwardly. No! This isn't what's supposed to happen!
I opened my mouth to protest, but no sound would come out. My tongue was hot and swollen.
”When we get to where the water's clear,” the man said, ”the three of you are going to take a dip. I won't bring someone who smells like fresh manure into my home.”
But I smelled like fresh manure, too. Didn't that matter? Wasn't I going home with them?
”Who are you?” I heard Isaac ask him. ”Why are you helping us?”
There was silence for a moment. Then soft laughter.
”I thought you'd have guessed that by now,” he said. ”They call me the Green Man.”
That's when I pa.s.sed out.
22.
OBFUSCATE GUILDHOUSE IN LURAY.
VIRGINIA PRIME.
THEY PUT A BAG over Tommy's head when they moved him. But that was a good thing, he told himself. You put a bag over someone's head when you didn't want him to see things he might report on later. There was no point in doing that if you intended to kill him. Right?
He kept telling himself that. Over and over again. But it wasn't enough to fend off a tide of raw panic as they dragged him from his cell, blind and bound, and carted him off to unknown places. He probably would have p.i.s.sed his pants in terror if he hadn't just emptied his bladder before they arrived; as it was, the more sensitive bits of his anatomy pulled up so tightly against his body that it felt like they were trying to take shelter inside him.
Where were they taking him? He asked, but they wouldn't say. He might as well be whimpering questions to the wind.
He knew he should pay attention to the world around him, memorizing whatever details of sound or smell he could identify, in case he needed to find this place later . . . but that was easier said than done. And besides, what good would it do? He hadn't been hooded when the aliens brought him through the crystal gate, so he wasn't under any illusion about where he was. Or, more accurately, where he wasn't. Even if he managed to get away from these people, it was going to take a lot more to get him home than a brisk walk through a bad neighborhood.
He knew when they took him outside, because the heat of the sun started to turn his head-bag into an oven. Then he was led up a couple of steps into an enclosure that was marginally cooler. From the echo of his movements, it sounded like he was in a small s.p.a.ce. A van, maybe? No, because when it started moving he heard the clip-clop of horse hooves on pavement. For a moment the sheer incongruity of it distracted him from his fear. Was he was being transported from one alien stronghold to another in a horse-drawn carriage? Seriously? What kind of low budget aliens were these, anyway?
The noise of the surrounding city was m.u.f.fled by carriage walls and the bag, but it sounded like a crowded place. He thought briefly about screaming for help, but then he figured that the odds of someone responding to a m.u.f.fled cry from inside a vehicle in the middle of a crowded city were not nearly as high as the odds of his captors hurting him if he tried it. The last thing he wanted to do right now, bound and helpless, was p.i.s.s them off.
Eventually the outside noises faded, and the carriage began to move uphill. After a while Tommy could tell it was entering a cool, dark s.p.a.ce. Then it stopped.
He heard the door open. ”Is this the boy?” someone asked.
”It's a boy,” someone else responded gruffly. ”Are you the one who signs for him?”
They pulled him from the carriage, and there was more walking. More stumbling. They were indoors now, and once or twice he had to go down a staircase, a precarious feat that required he feel for each stair with his toes.
Then they put him in something that felt like an elevator, but didn't sound like an elevator. Heading down.
The air in the lower level was chilly. As the sweat of fear evaporated on Tommy's skin he s.h.i.+vered, and the bag was finally removed from his head. He blinked as his eyes adjusted to the dim blue light.
He was standing in a cave. Well, mostly a cave. Someone had laid down a smooth concrete floor and stuck eerie glowing b.a.l.l.s to the ceiling, then put metal bars across the openings of several natural alcoves. Call it the world's creepiest jail. The door to one of the alcoves was open and Tommy didn't need a degree in rocket science to know that they wanted him to go in there.
Were they going to lock him up and leave him alone down here? It was a scarier thought in this surreal environment than it would have been aboveground. Despairing, he tried to come up with an alternative to entering the cell-any alternative-but he couldn't think of any option that these guys were likely to accept.
They untied his hands and let him walk into the alcove of his own accord. It was a long and narrow s.p.a.ce, with black, ominous shadows at the far end. The short walk through the door felt like a death march.
The door clanged shut.
”There's a journal on the table,” came a voice from behind him. He turned around and saw a man with a deathly pale face, whose eyes and voice were devoid of any emotion. Two men stood behind him, equally dispa.s.sionate. Clearly scaring the h.e.l.l out Tommy was just a job to them. ”You will record your dreams every day. For so long as your information has value to us, you will be kept alive.”
”What if I don't dream anything?” he asked. Not because he thought the answer would enlighten him, but as a stalling mechanism. Every minute he kept the man talking was one less minute he had to be alone down here. ”This place isn't exactly conducive to sound sleep.”
The cold eyes stared at him, unblinking. A lizard's gaze. ”Then we will turn off the lights until you do dream. Do I need to demonstrate what that would be like?”
”No,” he whispered. ”I'll take your word for it.”
As the man began to turn away from him, something flitted in between them. A wisp of smoke, that moved against the air currents in the room. A hint of shadow, that didn't have the shape of a shadow.
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