Q smiled. “To a young man, the remedy, of course, seems harmless enough, but you have only a small piece of the picture. I don’t blame you. Even old men can be fools.”
He glanced to his left, and I let my gaze follow. I blinked hard, and my heartbeat pounded. At a solitary table sat three men. I’d seen them only once, but their faces would not leave me. I knew them without their black suits, without their black hats.
One of them knew me.
I forced a smile. “I sure hope you find Tres soon. You know all we know. May we leave?”
“May we leave,” Q repeated. “Perhaps both our desires are best met if you remain with us. Arthur mentioned Tres and Stormi’s unique connection. If he’s looking for you, it only makes sense that he will eventually come to us, at which point we both have what we want.”
“Except that we don’t want to see him,” I said.
Q stood. “That appears to be inevitable. The question is, do you want to meet that criminal alone, or would it be safest for you here. I think the latter. Good night.” He strode toward the door and again the room fell silent. The moment he exited, every man rose, calling his number as he too slipped into the night, which left the three of us alone.
“This Hive of yours is a cult, some kind of freakish place.” Stormi slowly wandered to the center of the room. “Michael Queene’s the leader, the rest a bunch of worker bees from who knows where.” She quieted. “I don’t know what’s worse. Meeting Tres, or being stuck here.”
I nodded, and then frowned. “What do you mean, Hive of mine? I didn’t know anything about this place.”
“You said you did.”
“I said ‘I know a place.’ Generally, not specifically.”
“Tres knew it.”
“Technically and semantically, she’s got you, Jonah.” Arthur nodded.
“Yeah, well, I screwed up, okay? I screwed everything up. But it’s not like I’m the only one who’s been a little secretive.”
“Technically, he’s got you there, Stormi.”
“Arthur, why don’t you ask Jonah how specifically he plans on getting us out of here?”
Arthur looked confused. “She wants to know—”
I stood and stared at Stormi. “Tell her I’m working on an ingenious plan as we speak.”
Arthur cleared his throat. “Apparently, Jonah is, even as we speak—”
“Tell Jonah that I wouldn’t trust his ingenious plan if it was the only ingenious plan in existence.”
Arthur opened his mouth and let it fall shut.
“Go on,” Stormi said. “Tell him.”
“Stormi—”
“Wait!” Stormi stepped forward. “Add in that I am working on my own ingenious plan, so he can give that brain of his a rest.”
“Stormi—”
“Wait again.”
Arthur sat back and folded his arms.
“Tell him that I still do.”
“Your sentence is missing a few needed words, not that you would let me get to them,” Arthur said.
I stepped around the table and walked toward Stormi. “You still do? ’Cause I kind of figured stuff changed. At least it felt like it had, or it felt like you had . . .”
“Still here,” she said quietly, and stretched out her hand. I took it and drew her near, feeling her softness, suddenly wanting to feel much more.
“You two make absolutely no sense.” Arthur shook his head and joined us. “So we’re staying then? The food is good. Q seems nice enough.”
“No, we’re leaving,” Stormi spoke into my chest. “Jonah’s thinking of an ingenious plan.”
She always did know what to say, and her trust kicked me back a few years.
“Wasn’t that thing weird today?”
Stormi and I walked home from school, already the best of friends by third grade.
By “that thing,” she meant the annual scoliosis screening. Girls visited privately with Nurse Loyna, but not the guys . . . oh no, every guy in Gullary Primary was shipped to the gym, where we stripped from the waist up, pressed our palms and leaned over, as if to touch our toes. A special doctor hired by the district slowly wandered behind our posteriors, staring at our spines. Principal Haynes walked beside him with a clipboard.
“Clear. Clear. Monitor. Clear. Clear.”
His voice boomed. I didn’t know who received the dreaded “monitor” labels, as I stared upside down back through my legs, but I pitied each one of them. The term scoliosis itself sounded terminal.
“Monitor. Clear. Clear.” His voice strengthened. The guy was getting nearer. “Clear, Clear. What the—”
His shock occurred directly behind me, and the next thing I knew, he was tracing my lumbar with his thumbs. “Absolutely profound. Why hasn’t this been caught?”
Haynes began fumbling about as if my back was a blight on his record. “It won’t happen again,” he managed.
“What’s your name, son?”
“Jonah.”
“You may straighten.”
I did, and from the other side of the gym, somebody farted. The gym erupted, and several other gas bombs followed. I would have enjoyed it had I not been receiving a death sentence.
“Son, I’ve not seen a case of scoliosis this marked before. Do your parents know?”
“Am I going to die?” I asked.
“No.”
“Then they don’t know.” I exhaled, thankful that I had caught something that would not lead to death, though right then, Peter Yallis and Riley Trew shuffled away from me. Who knew, scoliosis might be contagious.
I told Stormi about it on the way home.
“Well.” She thought for some time. “If you have it, I want it too.”
“No, you don’t.”
“You’re the best-looking boy in third grade. Mom says so.”
“Ms. P?”
“She’s always saying how tall you are. She says how hand-some that curly blond hair is. How strong you are.”
“Strong? How would she know?”
Stormi looked off. “It’s going to rain. We should hurry.” She took off running.
“Stormi! Tell me about the strong part.”
Yep, how early she knew what I needed to hear.
We slowly walked around the courtyard, Stormi’s hand still tucked in mine. In the dark, it wasn’t immediately clear which cabin was ours, but familiarity was already setting in, and the three of us quietly approached the door.
“Nobody else is up?”
“There’s a curfew. Supper, then bed.” Arthur stepped inside first. “Wow, dark in here.”
We felt our way forward, plopping onto our beds. “So, tomorrow we figure out how to get out of here.”
A voice from the direction of the desk: “You may not have that long.”
CHAPTER 13
Some warnings cause the heart to beat with gusto. This warning coupled with a short shriek from Stormi nearly ended me.
I, surprisingly, was first to find a voice, speaking at the shape across the room. “What’s going to happen to us?”
“I don’t know.”
Winston.
“It’s the way of the Hive. Everyone knows a part. Keeps all of them from thinking too hard about what’s being done.”
“I don’t understand,” I continued.
“If you shoot someone dead to rights, you maybe feel it. But it don’t hurt nothing if your job is only to buy bullets.”
“And what’s your job?” Stormi’s voice shook.
“I ain’t come to talk about me. I don’t have much time before quarters are checked.”
“You lied to us.” I straightened and winced as my back expressed its displeasure. “You said there’d be nothing required, but we’re stuck here now. You said we could leave whenever we wanted to and—”
He pushed his hands through his hair. “Shut up, I know what I said.”
My eyes became one with the night, and I could see Winston rubbing his temples. Coming back here tonight hadn’t been easy.
&n
bsp; “Listen.” Winston’s voice dropped. “They will be coming, maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow night. But I think it’s in their nature, so you best be ready.”
“They?” whispered Stormi.
“The Hive. All of ’em. Didn’t know what I was getting into when I took this job. ‘Need a caretaker,’ Queene said. ‘The old caretaker has passed on and we need some young blood to help the older ones around here.’ It was back in ’09, and times were tough, so I took it. I took it. Only way I saw to feed my family.”
“You have family here?”
“No, I ain’t crazy, but they know where I live, where my young ones live. Queene has reminded me of this point several times. You ain’t the only one who’s as good as trapped.” Winston leaned forward. “My job is food runs. Medicine runs. Whatever they need from the outside, that’s what I get. Spend the weekends at home, the weeks out here in this accursed place.”
“But you brought us here.” Here, my naiveté showed bright, but I could not seem to overcome this point. People can be cruel and self-serving; I of all people should have known this.
“I did,” Winston continued. “The Drinking Hole is the only business within twenty miles of this place. Queene wants me there, posts me there to listen. If I hear something unusual, he wants to have a look. The man hasn’t left this compound for decades, but I reckon he knows more than anyone the ways of the outside.”
“You’re the eyes and ears, then. The hands and feet. Then you must know why he keeps us.” Stormi hugged her arms, while outside the night winds howled.
“No.” Winston shook his head. “Though I do know pieces are moving.”
“Chess pieces?” Arthur asked.
“Sure, kid. Whatever. Listen, a few days ago, three of ’em came to me at night. Said they had a pass from Q. Said they needed to attend a family event. In short, they needed a ride. I was gassed and ready, so I took ’em to a tiny armpit town the other side of the state.”
“Gullary,” I said.
“Well, turns out they went without Queene’s permission, and hell broke loose when we returned. The Hive turned inside out and Queene almost lost control.”
“All because three men went to a funeral?” I asked.
“All because three men returned to Gullary.”
The air grew thick. “Returned?”
“Ah, now you see the magnitude of a word. These aren’t the first cells the men here in the Hive have occupied. You once had a prison in Gullary, filled with the most heinous humanity could offer. But a storm came, and their bonds broke away. True enough, some probably died beneath the rubble, but most didn’t, and them that escaped came here.”
Stormi pressed into my side, and Arthur joined us on the bed, breaking all his personal space rules.
I tried to clear my throat, but sound wouldn’t come, and I swallowed hard instead. “We’re living with rapists and murderers and—”
“Nobody here that’s not done something worth being locked up for a lifetime. But credit Queene. He knew these violent inmates couldn’t live as free men, at least not right off. He put them to work, gave ’em religion. Gave them a new purpose working in the Hive. Think of him as the new warden. He gives off confidence, demands order. Yeah, Queene looks calm, but he’s never been, that’s because of your friend Tres.”
“Grandpa Tres,” Stormi said softly.
“Grandpa?” Winston shook his head. “What a tangled web we weave. From stories pieced together, seems as there’s one inmate left alive at storm’s end but what refused to run with the rest. He chose to stay in Gullary though escape was offered.”
“Grandpa Tres.”
“And whatever kept your grandfather there, it’s enough to keep Queene up at nights, or so the men whisper.”
“But how do you know all this?” I asked. “You just buy the bullets.”
“Sometimes, the unforeseen happens. Had a stowaway one weekend. Eighty-eight popped up his head and asked me to drive as far away from here as I could. I did what Queene told me, should that situation arise. We took off, slowly circled around, and I brought him back here, but on the way he told me more than I should know, what that now I’m telling you. About the men. Where they’s been. About Tres and Q and—Oh, shoot, I will never forget his face when he saw me pull up to the garage. The sadness, and I didn’t know. You got to believe me that I didn’t know what they would do to him.”
“What . . .” I realized I didn’t need to know.
“Yeah, he gone. If the guilty three—that’s what they call those that went back to Gullary—if Queene didn’t keep them isolated from the others, they’d be gone too. I believe many of them got religion, found peace. But you can’t force that. Many are here ’cause they’re too scared to leave, but inside they’re who they was. The ugly’s just baked in a little harder.”
“I still don’t see why Tres worries anyone.” Arthur spoke up. “It’s not logical.”
The door flew open. “Perhaps a bit too late for my caretaker to be paying my guests a social call.”
Q stood in the doorway, large and imposing, and Winston shot up. “I miss my family, miss ’em something terrible. Seeing her about Jen’s age, I needed to talk.”
“Visiting hours are over.” Q turned and vanished, leaving the door open.
Winston leaned over, his lips releasing little more than a breeze. “Go on now. Go.”
He too disappeared, closing the door behind him. We huddled together.
“Why would Tres want us here?” I asked. “I don’t care what anyone says, I spent time with him. He wouldn’t want us dead. Stormi, this would be a really good time to know something that we don’t.”
“Do you believe him?” she asked quietly.
“Who? Winston? Yeah, I mean, don’t you?”
“Didn’t it all seem odd, him in here and Q showing up right then? He was so willing to tell us everything, but he’s never gone to the authorities? There’s the family explanation, but his cover was so thought out.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “If they check the cabins, we can’t leave. All we have are a bunch of vehicles without gas.”
“Nineteen.”
We both looked at Arthur, who turned cheery. “Nineteen. He stores the gas. Thirty keeps the keys.”
“How?” I asked.
“I know people think I’m stupid, you think I’m stupid, but didn’t Michael Queene make you uncomfortable with that voice? I took it upon myself to find out what he knows, which you two couldn’t do sitting in here, I might add.”
I’d not felt the desire to kiss a guy before, but the urge overwhelmed and I planted one on his cheek. “You got Q to tell you all that. Ma would call you a blessed child.”
Stormi stood and paced. “So we know who has what we need. We don’t know which cell they’re in. Unless you found that out too.”
“No, I didn’t. We need to stay awake tonight. One of us all the time.” Arthur peeked out the door. “Knowing who’s who doesn’t help if we’re dead. If we make it until morning, we go to work with the men. They yell their numbers on the way in to meals, so we should be able to figure out who the two are. We can track them back to their cells, and the next day when they go off, we grab what we need.”
“And none of this goes to Winston, right?” Stormi grew excited. Hope returned to her words.
“Agreed.” I sealed the matter, and then paused. “Arthur, I’m not sure what we’d do without you. Sorry for the way I made you feel small and stupid.”
“I accept your apology, as long as you take the first watch.” He jumped into bed. Stormi slapped my back and did the same, leaving me vertical—well, almost vertical. It could be worse. There was danger all around, but I was held fast by a true friend and a girl I loved.
Loved?
I walked toward the door, my mind fixed on that word, wondering when I should use it. Talk about danger.
CHAPTER 14
I stayed awake all night, my eyes peering out the cracked door and into the darkne
ss. Truth had fallen from Winston’s lips—the Hive was peaceful. Hard to fathom some great evil lurking about in the hearts of men, but then again, looks were deceiving. Even Gullary had turned, shifted, become less my home and more a quicksand. We’d only been away a few days, but the tether that had held me fast bound me no more. Now free floating, I could sense how secretive we’d been. Something lay under the surface.
Perhaps every place had its secrets.
My granddad and I crossed but briefly in this life.
Memories of him are light and vapory, more gas than solid. I remember his smell, and the Old Spice aroma that lingered in his car and his home. I remember his chair, brown and mahogany. How I wanted to sit in it. How I was warned not to.
I just can’t remember his wife.
My grandmother had lived; the existence of Dad makes that a certainty. According to pieces gleaned from a hundred clipped conversations, she outlived Granddad by a mile. But that was all I knew. To our family, she was shadow. Never mentioned, her nothingness never explained.
Yes, I had asked.
“Sometimes your own kin chooses to vanish.” This from Ma, who knelt in our backyard garden. She had glanced both ways before crossing this street.
“Vanish?” I was twelve, and the thought felt adventurous, holding the same terrible intrigue as a kidnapping. “Where is she now?”
Ma buried her trowel and pushed back to a sit. “The definition of vanish means she has disappeared.”
“Do you know where she is?”
Ma reflected for a long time. “Ask your father.”
From him I received nothing but a condescending smile, as if I had waded into territory too deep for me. Her chapter seemed closed.
Until a letter arrived two years later. Dad assembled Ma and me.
“Jonah, it appears that your grandma passed. The funeral has already been held.” I recall him glancing sharply at Ma at this point, but thought nothing of it at the time. “I want you to know about this remarkable woman.”
This dramatic 180 continued for months. Dad poured story after story into me, about the great travels of my historic grandma, the awful and tragic search she undertook through Mexico to find a treatment for Granddad’s souring mind. She was a hero, Dad said. I should never forget that.