Chapter Three
I guess they carried me all the way back to the deer camp after they knocked me out, because when I woke up that’s where I was again. Only this time I wasn’t taped up in a cardboard box that I could cut my way out of. I was lying on a creaky old metal hospital bed, with my left wrist handcuffed to the bed frame.
“That’s right; you won’t get away so easy this time, you slippery little fish,” the blonde girl from the car told me. She was standing at the foot of my bed, and there wasn’t a trace of a smile on her lips now. She was probably right about that, I thought to myself, but I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of seeing that I was afraid.
“Where am I?” I demanded, giving her the nastiest scowl I could manage. She did smile then, and it wasn’t a very nice smile either.
“I don’t see why I should tell you anything, Zach,” she said. Somehow I wasn’t surprised she knew my name, but I let it pass. She was trying to score points, and I wasn’t going to play that silly little game with her.
“Fine, then. Don’t tell me anything,” I said calmly. I knew they wanted something from me, and that meant they’d have to tell me what it was sooner or later. All I had to do was wait, and she’d have to spill the beans whether she wanted to or not.
I could tell my answer annoyed her, but that was good. People will sometimes say things they didn’t mean to say if you can get them riled up.
“The question you ought to be asking is why you’re here, and there’s no secret about that one. You’re here to join us, and this time there won’t be any last minute escapes,” she said sweetly. I didn’t have to ask her what she meant by that. I knew only too well.
That news rattled me a bit in spite of myself, and I couldn’t resist asking her a question.
“But why? I already told everybody I didn’t want anything to do with that stuff. I won’t make trouble for anybody, I just want to be left alone,” I told her.
“’Fraid it doesn’t work that way, honey. Not for you, anyway,” she added as an afterthought. That made me want to ask her what was so dadgummed special about me, but I saved that for later. When you’re talking to an enemy you should never let them know what you’re really interested in. It gives them the upper hand. I learned that from reading The Prince last year in English class. All that political intrigue and stuff bored me to tears at the time, but right now my tongue was the only weapon I had, so I figured I better make it count.
“You can’t make me if I don’t want to; I know how it works,” I said, changing the subject.
“Maybe not, but if you ever want to leave here and go home then you’ll agree. Otherwise. . . “ she shrugged.
“You can’t keep me here forever,” I said.
“We can keep you as long as we need to, honey, and that’s all that matters,” she said, with another one of those hateful smiles.
Deep down, I was seriously afraid she might be right about that. Out in the middle of nowhere like this, who would there be to help me? Nobody, that’s who. Justin thought I was in Glenwood, and what would he do when he got there and I was gone? I was sure he’d look for me, but it was the longest of long shots that he’d ever find me in a place like this. He wouldn’t even be able to call the police to help. All they’d do would be to call my parents. Fat lot of good that would do me.
I thought about all that in the space of a few seconds, and I soon decided the only thing I could do right then was pretend to go along with it for a while. They wouldn’t trust me, of course, but they might let their guard down enough to give me a chance to escape again. If I was sullen and resentful then that would never happen.
I changed my tack.
“So you’re telling me if I agree to this, then you’ll leave me alone and let me go home?” I asked.
“Sure, if that’s what you want. But you won’t, Zach. Not after you become one of us. I can promise you that,” she told me confidently.
Now came the difficult part, so I picked my words carefully.
“Well. . . I might do it if it means I never have to deal with yall’s ugly faces anymore, but there’s something I want first,” I finally told her. She frowned a little bit.
“You don’t have a lot of room to ask for much, Zach,” she said. Then she seemed to think better of it.
“But if it will get you to do this willingly, and if it’s not too unreasonable, then we might be able to make a deal. What do you want?” she asked me.
That was just the opportunity I’d been waiting for. I didn’t really want anything from them, of course; I was just playing for time. But I couldn’t ask for something stupid or that would blow the whole thing. It had to be something they could believe I might really want, and hopefully something only they could give me. It couldn’t be anything too easy or it wouldn’t gain me any time, and it couldn’t be too hard or they’d refuse. That sounds like a tall order, I know, but I thought I had the perfect thing in mind.
“I want to see my sister first,” I told her. I could tell that wasn’t something Blondie was expecting to hear, but she was good at hiding her surprise.
“I see,” she finally said, half to herself. She thought about it for a while longer, seeming to chew it over in her mind.
Then she looked at me for a long time, like she was trying to decide if I was for real or not. Maybe it helped that in my heart of hearts I really did want to see Lola; I don’t know. Whatever the reason, Blondie seemed like she made up her mind to go along with it, at least for the time being.
“I’ll have to see about that before I give you an answer,” she finally said. That was about what I thought she’d say, so I just nodded.
“In the meantime I’ll let you loose for a little bit, but you better not try anything. There’s no way out of this room except through the door, and you certainly won’t get out that way. I suggest you be good this time. If we’re going to start trusting each other then it needs to go both ways,” she told me.
I tried to look very solemn and serious at that, but inside I was overjoyed. I didn’t even crack a smile, though. If I did then she might not turn me loose.
She pulled a key from her pocket and unlatched the handcuffs that held me to the bed, then slipped them in her pocket along with the key. I sat up, rubbing my wrist where the metal had chafed it.
“See, we can be nice to each other instead of having to do things the hard way, can’t we?” she asked.
I think I liked her less and less the more she talked, so I didn’t say anything to that. I can’t stand people who look down their noses at everybody and think they’re so high and mighty, and Blondie seemed like exactly that kind of person.
She didn’t wait for an answer, thankfully; just knocked on the door to have somebody on the other side let her out. I heard the snick of a heavy-duty lock when the door shut behind her.
As soon as her footsteps faded away down the hall, I jumped up and started to explore the room to see if there was any way out. I had no intention of waiting to see what her answer was about Lola. If I found a way to bust out of there, I meant to take it. I knew what they wanted now, and the worst they could do was catch me and lock me up again. I wouldn’t be much worse off than I already was.
It didn’t take me very long to eyeball the whole place, and I have to say things didn’t look too good. The walls were plain cinder block, painted over with three or four layers of off-white paint, and the only windows were some narrow slits too high up on the walls to even see out of. I think a cat would have had a hard time squeezing through one of them. There was a rusty steel door that led into a bathroom, which had the same cinderblock walls and slitted windows as the main room.
For furniture there was nothing but the old metal hospital bed that looked like it came from a salvage yard. There were no sheets on the mattress, no pillow, and just a plain wool blanket to cover up with. The rest of the room was totally empty.
The floors were concrete, partly covered by some brown and white tiles that had come lo
ose in places. The door that led outside into the hall was a big monster of a thing, metal except for a diamond-shaped window about the size of my palm. Just big enough for them to be able to look in and see what I was doing whenever they felt like it. There was no keyhole on my side of the door.
I sat down on the bed again and thought about it a while. I wasn’t ready to give up just yet, but I was blessed if I could think of a way to get out of there.
Sometimes when you go stale on a problem, it helps to think about something else for a while. I might not be able to figure a way out of there just yet, but I could still chew on some other things I didn’t have the answers to. Like why the wolves wanted me so bad, for one thing. There was something about me in particular that had their knickers in a knot, something which didn’t apply to Justin or anybody else. Blondie had admitted that much. But what could it be?
Try as I might, I couldn’t figure out anything all that special about me. It couldn’t be because I might tell somebody about them. Nobody would believe me anyway, and besides that, Justin had known about them for years and nobody had ever kidnapped him or caused him any problems just because he knew too much.
So if it wasn’t that, then what was it? That part still baffled me.
I laid back on the mattress and laced my fingers together behind my head, staring up at the ceiling while I thought. It was one of those ceilings with blown plaster all over it with little sparkly things embedded, and they glittered in the light from the windows.
After a while that ceiling gave me an idea. Plaster is tough, but it’s nowhere near as tough as concrete blocks. I might be able to knock a hole in it, if I could find something to do it with and a place where nobody could see me.
I knew the main room would never do, because of that danged window in the door. Anybody might walk by and see what I was doing, at any time. Even if I took my shirt off and used it to cover up the window, I figured that would be a surefire way to make the wolves suspicious enough to open the door and come in there, and if they did then it would wreck everything.
There was still the bathroom, though. I got up and moseyed in there and shut the rusty door behind me. That took care of not being seen. Sure enough, it had the same kind of ceiling as the other room, and I glanced around to see if there was anything I could use to dig a hole in it.
That bathroom was about as bare as a picked bone, I have to say. There was absolutely nothing in it except the commode, a sink, the bathtub, and a metal medicine cabinet which turned out to be completely empty. Nothing sharp or useful at all.
I thought about breaking the mirror on the medicine cabinet or smashing the lid of the toilet tank against the floor to get a sharp piece I could use, but I didn’t waste half a second giving up on those ideas. Smashing things would make way too much noise, and I didn’t dare attract attention. I thought longingly of my pocket knife, or one of the ten million screwdrivers Justin had in his workshop. I think I would even have settled for a paperclip at that point.
My pockets were stripped empty this time, though. The wolves had taken everything I had except for a few pieces of lint.
I wasn’t ready to give up yet, though. I took the lid off the toilet tank and looked inside there. Toilets have a couple of moving parts, and sometimes a few of them are metal.
Just as I thought, there was a thin metal rod that connected the floater thingy to the water valve. I stuck my hand down inside the tank and found that I could unscrew the whole thing from the valve if I twisted hard enough. It was slimy and nasty and hard to keep hold of, but after a few minutes I had the metal rod loose, with the floater still attached to one end of it. The floater was supposed to unscrew from the rod the same way, but it had been on there so long it wouldn’t come free.
I finally gave up trying to get it off. I had one sharp end, and that’s all I needed.
I put the lid back where it came from and then gingerly climbed up on top of the tank itself. It was none too sturdy, and I had to be careful not to move too much because every time I did, the tank swayed and wobbled and acted like it was about to dump me on the floor. I used one hand to steady myself against the medicine cabinet till I was sure I wasn’t going to fall.
When I was sure, I took the floater rod and started scratching at the ceiling right above me. It’s hard to dig a hole in gypsum board, but if you’re determined and if you’ve got something halfway sharp, you can do it.
Plaster dust kept sifting down on my face and making me want to sneeze, but at last the rod poked clean through to the other side. I went after it with doubled energy after that, till I made a hole big enough to stick my thumb through. I hooked a finger around the back of the plaster and pulled down. It wouldn’t break and I was afraid to put my weight into it. I didn’t want to go crashing to the floor if it broke loose all of a sudden.
I attacked it with the rod again, working all around the edges till I could get my three middle fingers inside. Then I pulled with all my strength, and just when I thought I was about to give myself a hernia, a palm-sized piece of plaster broke loose in my hand.
“Awesome,” I said to myself, whispering so nobody could hear me.
I set the piece of plaster on top of the medicine cabinet and started breaking off more pieces. After that it didn’t take long at all before I had a hole in the ceiling big enough for me to stick my head through, and finally it was big enough for my whole body.
I stopped my demolition work and reached up to grab hold of two rafters with my hands, and then I pulled myself up till I could sit on one of them. The whole thing only took maybe thirty minutes.
I found myself in a crawl space not much more than five feet high. It was awfully dark up there, and blistering hot, too. I could see rafters stretching off for a long way in both directions, and there was a metal roof right above me that was giving off heat like a demon. I was already sweating.
There was no use trying to hide the hole in the ceiling, so I didn’t bother. If anybody came in the bathroom then my goose was cooked, plain and simple. And I knew sooner or later somebody would come, if only to check on me. That’s why I didn’t have a second to waste.
I stood up as best I could and started stepping carefully from rafter to rafter. That was ticklish business, because I knew if I stepped in the wrong place I’d end up crashing down through the plaster into the room below me.
That didn’t happen though, because every so often there were ventilation grates that opened into the rooms below. They let in just enough light so I could sort of see where I was going, after my eyes adjusted.
They let noises come up into the attic, too, and when I heard Blondie’s voice I froze for a second. She was talking to somebody in the room right under me, in that same prissy, superior tone I hated so much.
At first I was tempted to ignore her and go on my way, but then I heard my name.
“You might as well go ahead and tell me, honey. Zach already decided to help us,” I heard her say. Maybe I’m too curious for my own good, but I couldn’t help wondering what it was I was supposed to be helping them with. It was certainly news to me.
I forgot all about trying to get out of the attic, at least for the moment, and crept a little closer to the vent and leaned down close where I could hear better. It was a long shot, but there was always the chance I might learn something useful.
I could see into the room a little bit, but not enough to catch a glimpse of the girl or who she was talking to. All I could see was the edge of the sink in the bathroom and a slice of the open door.
“Laura, you’re such a liar. If Zach already told you where it is then you wouldn’t still be asking me. But you’re wasting your time, because I already told you fifty million times I don’t know anything,” I heard someone else say. It was a boy’s voice, and he sounded a little bit younger than me. That was all I could tell.
Right after that, I heard the sharp smack of a hand against bare skin. There was no way of mistaking what it was. There’s nothing quite like that
sound.
“You’re so stupid, Cameron. You could save yourself so much pain and trouble if you’d just cooperate. You know we’ll find it anyway sooner or later,” she told him.
“I told you I don’t know where it is,” he said, in a voice that maybe shook a little bit but still sounded very sure. I could imagine the girl gritting her teeth, and then she slapped him again for good measure.
“That’s a taste for later,” she hissed. He didn’t answer, and after a few seconds I heard her walking across the tile floor away from me.
“I’ll leave you to think about that for a while. I’ll be back later to see if you’ve changed your mind,” she told him. I heard the door open and then slam shut behind her, and then the room below me was quiet.
I wondered why she’d been so nice to me earlier, if this was the way she treated her other prisoners. Maybe she was just waiting to see if I could be talked into doing what she wanted, and she’d only get nasty when she decided being nice wasn’t going to work.
I don’t like it when I see people getting mistreated. It makes me mad, and I want to do something about it if I can.
I made a quick decision.
“Hey kid. . . Cameron,” I called out, torn between wanting him to hear me and not wanting my voice to carry too far. I don’t think he heard me, so I called again, a little louder. That time I heard the bed creak.
“Who’s there?” he said out loud.
“Don’t say anything. Just come in the bathroom,” I told him. He must have wondered what was up, but he didn’t argue about it. After a few seconds I saw a boy in bare feet and a ratty white t-shirt come into the bathroom. There was a red hand print on his left cheek where Laura had slapped him twice. He had blond hair and he wasn’t as young as I thought he was. He looked about the same age as me, more or less.
“Look up here. At the vent,” I told him. He didn’t act surprised. Just shut the bathroom door behind him and looked up at me. He had bright blue eyes almost exactly the same color as mine, and I remember thinking it was unusual at the time. I doubted he could see me in the dark attic, so I stuck my hand down close to the grate and waved at him. He’d be able to see motion at least.
“Who are you, and what are you doing up there?” he asked, getting right to the point.
“I’m here to help you get out of this place if you want to,” I told him.
“Yeah? How?” he wanted to know.
“I’ll break the ceiling plaster and you can climb up here in the attic with me. Just make sure it doesn’t make any noise when it falls,” I warned him.
It didn’t take him long to make up his mind.
“Sure, I’m game,” he said.
He quickly climbed up on the tank lid just like I had, and stood there ready to catch any pieces that might fall. I put one foot on the plaster right about where I judged his head was, and then gradually put more and more of my weight on it till I felt it start to crack. I was careful to keep my other foot on a rafter and hold on with both hands to the roof struts so I wouldn’t fall through the ceiling when it broke.
Which it finally did. My foot punched through and I almost kicked Cameron in the face, if he hadn’t ducked just in time. No big pieces fell, just a few little globs that didn’t make enough noise to matter. Cameron grabbed the edges of the hole and pulled down several big chunks of plaster, and as soon as that was done, I gave him a hand and hauled him up into the attic with me.
“Come on, let’s find a way out of here,” I said. Introductions and chit-chat could wait till later. The wolves might discover one of us missing at any time. Cameron nodded without saying a word, and I went back to feeling my way through the dark.
It wasn’t long before we came to the end of the building. There was a wooden louvered window there to let air circulate into the attic, but it also gave us a chance to see outside without anybody being able to tell we were there.
I peered through the cracks and saw a few other buildings and a couple of cars, but no people moving around. None of the buildings seemed to have windows except for those same little slits like I’d seen in my room. Maybe that’s because it was a deer camp and they wanted to keep people from breaking in through the windows during off-season; I really don’t know for sure. Whatever the reason was, it was a good thing for me and Cameron. Even if there were people inside those other buildings, they wouldn’t be able to see us even after we got outside. We needed every piece of luck we could get.
But in the meantime, there was no way to get out through those dadgummed louvers. They were nailed together tight, and unless we had a hammer they were going to stay that way.
“Are we getting out this way?” Cameron whispered.
“I don’t think we can, without a hammer or somethin’. Come on and let’s look for the door instead. There’s got to be one here somewhere,” I whispered back.
I knew there had to be an access panel or a trap door or some such thing, if we could just find it. People had to come up there for maintenance and stuff now and then, didn’t they?
We were both sweating so much by then it was running down and getting into our eyes and making them sting, and my whole t-shirt was soaked. I couldn’t see Cameron well enough to tell whether he was as bad off as I was, but I’d be willing to bet on it. It was so hot it was hard to breathe, and I knew neither one of us could handle that for very long. We’d pass out from heat exhaustion if we didn’t find a way out soon.
By and by we stumbled across an area where the floor was finished out with plywood, and there were some boxes and things stacked up. There was a trap door off to one side which I guess led down to the main floor of the building, but when Cameron tried to open it we soon found out it wouldn’t move an inch. Locked, I’m sure.
“This thing’s not coming open, dude. It won’t even budge,” he told me.
We felt around the edges of the door to see if there was a key or a latch or anything else that might let us open the trap and get out, but there wasn’t anything. I bet it was probably locked with a hasp and a padlock down below, because when you got to thinking about it, why would anybody ever need to unlock the door from the top side?
At that point I was frustrated and starting to get a little scared that we wouldn’t be able to find a way out, after all. I even seriously started to think about breaking down through the ceiling somewhere into one of the other rooms and trying to sneak out through the front door.
That’s when I found the pipe.
It was just a stick of galvanized metal water pipe, old and rusty and no particular use to anybody, I don’t guess. You know how attics always collect junk like that which nobody really gives a hoot about but nobody ever wants to throw away. The pipe was about three feet long, and the only reason I found it at all in the pitch dark was because I stepped on it and nearly brained myself on the rafters when it rolled out from under my foot.
Luckily I caught my balance before I killed myself, and when I groped around on the floor to see what it was I’d stepped on, I felt the pipe. I grabbed it in my hand and picked it up.
At first the only thing I had in mind was to use it for a weapon to defend myself if I had to. A piece of steel pipe can make a mighty fine club, in a pinch. It took me a few minutes before I realized it could make a mighty fine pry bar, too.