Epitaph Road Page 7

  Not certain what exactly to say, I stood there a minute, silent, before she noticed me. She forced a smile. “How are you, sunshine?” she said.

  “I heard you,” I confessed.

  “What?”

  “I heard you and Mom and Rebecca Mack talking. I was in the attic.”

  She smiled again. This one was small but authentic. “Up to your old tricks.”

  “What’s going on?” I said. “What do Dad and I have to do with it?”

  “Forget what you heard,” Aunt Paige said. “You’ll be taken care of.” She paused. “And so will your dad.”

  “You won’t tell me?”

  She got close. She grasped my shoulders and looked me in the eyes. “Listen, Kellen. I have to go away for a day or two. But you can’t say anything about it until after everyone knows I’m gone. And you have to do exactly what your mom tells you to do, go where she wants you to go. No matter what, don’t try to see your dad.”

  “What about the custody thing?”

  “An empty threat. Don’t worry about it.”

  “When will you go?”

  “You’ll know when you don’t see me.”

  “Where?”

  “I can’t say, buddy. If you think you have it figured out, though, keep it to yourself.”

  We went in for dinner. Tia sat down next to me at the big table, and I wondered if Sunday had let something slip. But neither of them acted like anything had changed. I breathed in, mostly smelling myself, wishing I’d thought to take a shower after a couple of long bike rides and baseball and lawn-mowing and crawling around in a hot attic. But I’d had other things on my mind, and Tia was nice enough not to say anything. She even shifted on her chair, getting a little nearer.

  Two of our housemates were elsewhere, so there were twelve of us, counting our guest of honor, surrounding the table. The conversation was cordial, but it felt artificial. Mom introduced Dr. Rebecca Mack to everyone she hadn’t met. She didn’t say who Rebecca Mack was, but I had an inkling everyone knew.

  Across the table from me, Aunt Paige told a joke about an old-lady patient who wanted to know the location of her heart. Along with the rest of us, Rebecca Mack chuckled at the punch line, but I wondered if she appreciated the humor. I wondered if my aunt was purposely trying to get under this old lady’s skin.

  After dinner, everyone carried dishes to the kitchen and went their mostly separate ways. Mom and Rebecca Mack returned to the office. Aunt Paige headed upstairs. Tia and Sunday asked me to go with them on a bike ride.

  I was tempted. The sun had just dropped below the rooftops across the street, perfect conditions for biking, and I could impress the girls — Tia, maybe — with my knowledge of the city. I certainly hadn’t impressed them with my pitching, but I told them no. Something was about to happen, and I wanted to be there when it did.

  I grabbed Slaughterhouse-Five from my room and slipped into the quiet of the backyard. Beyond the glass of Mom and Aunt Paige’s upstairs window, the light was on but the shades were drawn. I found a chair and began reading. The story grabbed me and pulled me in, but after twenty pages I looked up. The light was off.

  I walked around the side yard to the front. Aunt Paige’s little car, a green Volt-Age Midget, was gone. A strange gray micro-van cruised down the street and slowed at our house. Tinny country music wept out from under its hood. On its side was a familiar logo — a green globe behind silhouettes of a giant woman and miniature man — above the letters PAC. The driver — a red-faced, pig-nosed woman — looked at the house number and pulled up to the curb.

  She and her partner, younger and thinner with skin the color of milk chocolate, got out, eyed me for a moment, and walked to the porch. They knocked, but no one answered.

  “You live here?” the driver asked me. Her blue uniform jacket angled open. She had handcuffs hanging from her wide leather belt. A PAC cop. The enforcement arm of the Population Apportionment Council. I’d heard about them and their strong-arm tactics, but they kept a low profile most of the time. The Council preferred to pay people to comply with sterilization and other regulations.

  If the time came, would I accept their money and conditions? Hide? Head for the hinterlands? If I didn’t pass my trials, I’d have a decision to make.

  I nodded.

  “Is Dr. Rebecca Mack on the premises?”

  “She was here for dinner. I think she’s still around.”

  “Can you get her for us?”

  “I’ll see if I can find her.” I left them standing on the porch and went inside. I rapped on the office door, still closed.

  Mom opened it. “We’re in the middle of something, Kellen,” she said, but she didn’t need to tell me that.

  “Some PAC cops are here,” I said. “Looking for Dr. Mack.”

  “Oh.” Mom swung the door wide. Rebecca Mack was already on her feet, scurrying toward me. She swept past and toward the front door, Mom in her wake, me tagging along.

  Dr. Mack asked the cops to come in. “She’s upstairs, I believe,” she said. She turned and saw me. “Can you take these officers to your aunt’s room, Kellen?” she said.

  It wasn’t really a question, although for a moment, half numb with disbelief, I considered disobeying the command. I didn’t want to be a part of this, whatever shape it took. But then I remembered Aunt Paige’s dark window, her missing car. “Sure,” I said, and led them up the stairs.

  I knocked. Relief eased my pulse when no one answered. I pushed open the door and turned on the light. It was obvious nobody was there, but the cops went to the closet and bathroom, making sure. The young one — BLEVENS, her name tag said — even peeked under the bed. Brilliant.

  “Where else would she be?” the older one — STOUDT — asked me.

  “I don’t know.” I didn’t mention Aunt Paige’s car. If she’d made her getaway, she needed a head start.

  The cops pushed past me, so I followed at a distance. As I descended the stairs, I heard them telling Rebecca Mack and Mom that Aunt Paige wasn’t in her room.

  “Search the house,” Dr. Mack ordered.

  Mom touched a key on her e-spond and held it to her ear, waiting. “She isn’t answering,” she told Rebecca Mack as I got downstairs. Mom left, and I heard her moving from room to room. She went upstairs and returned, ignoring Dr. Mack’s glare, and hurried outside.

  In a moment she was back. “Her car’s gone.” She looked at me. “Did she say anything to you, Kellen?”

  I started retelling the joke Aunt Paige told at dinner, the one about the old lady and her heart.

  Mom gave me the vile eye. “About where she was going.”

  I decided I was out of favor, suddenly. “No,” I said. “I didn’t see her after dinner. Maybe she went back to work or something.”

  “I don’t think so,” Mom said.

  “Why does it matter?” I asked. “Why are you — they — looking for her?”

  “We need to find her, Kellen,” Rebecca Mack said. “It’s important. Are you sure she didn’t tell you anything?”

  “Why would she?” I asked. “I’m a kid — a guy — with a runaway mouth.”

  She gave me a long look, but I resisted flinching. I stayed in character: wiseass kid whose mother — but no one else — thinks he walks on water. “You’re right,” she said finally. “Why would she?”

  The two cops returned empty-handed. The cuffs clanked uselessly on Stoudt’s belt. She and Blevens walked to the front porch with Mom and Dr. Mack, mumbling and muttering. I stared at the back of Mom’s head. I was having a hard time digesting the idea that she could have a role in putting Aunt Paige behind bars. Or locked doors, at least.

  When Mom and Rebecca Mack returned, they went straight back to the office. I stood in the foyer, imagining them sending out advisories and all-points bulletins like the police in the old cops-and-robbers movies. I imagined them adding Aunt Paige’s name to the list of most-wanted criminals, posting her picture with front and side views on the Net.

&
nbsp; From the stuff I’d overheard, I thought I had an idea of where she was going. She wanted to warn Dad about something. Which was good, I guessed, except Rebecca Mack and Mom knew what I knew and more. They knew why the fugitive criminal wanted to warn Dad.

  So they’d be on her trail. They’d be watching the ferries and roads. They’d try to find Dad and wait for her to show up. I didn’t know why they wanted to keep her from talking to him, but I knew they were serious about it.

  Reflexively, I reached in my pants pocket and fingered my e-spond. But I couldn’t call or message him. He didn’t have a phone of any kind. He preferred it that way, and where he lived and worked, the service was sketchy anyway. He didn’t own a computer, either, so e-script was also out of the question.

  I couldn’t reach him. Aunt Paige couldn’t reach him. It was in person or nothing. But even if I’d been able to talk to him, what would I have said? Hey, Dad, I’m hereby giving you an official warning, but I don’t know what it’s about or what you can do about it.

  A lying, cheating, abusive monster —

  this plague was too good for him, a blessing on me.

  — ANONYMOUS NOTE STAPLED TO THE FOREHEAD OF HENRY POOLE

  (2033–2067),

  DISCOVERED AUGUST 13, 2067

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  It was nearly dark by the time Tia and Sunday returned. I’d migrated to the front porch, and although I resisted shouting Hey! this time, I surprised them when I walked out of the shadows. “You missed some excitement,” I said. I told them about the cops and Aunt Paige. I didn’t tell them about my eavesdropping or where I thought the escapee was heading. I wanted to share, but I wasn’t sure how far to go.

  “I’m gonna go check my mail,” Sunday said. “Sorry about your aunt, Kellen.” She gave me a little wink, like Here’s your opportunity, knocking. She went inside, leaving the door open, and ran up the stairs.

  Tia stayed. “It’s nice out here,” she said. “Is Dr. Mack still around?”

  “In the study with my mom.”

  “She gives me the creeps.” Tia sat down on a low canvas chair. I could barely see her face, but I noticed a glistening layer of perspiration on her forehead, a remnant of her long bike ride. My fingers itched to test the warmth of her skin. But all I managed to do was pull over another chair and sit next to her.

  “Me, too,” I said.

  “Do you know she’s famous?” Tia said.

  “I guess. She’s got a big-time job.”

  “But I mean she’s really famous. She was around when this whole thing began. After Elisha, when the governments were just trying to figure out how to pull everything together and move along, she and a few other women took their ideas everywhere, pointed out what had changed for the positive, talked about how to make that change permanent, planted their philosophies and strategies deep, got them adopted for the long haul.”

  “Does this have something to do with your new theory?” I said.

  “It’s not exactly my theory. But yes.”

  “You won’t tell me what it is?”

  “I should do more research. And the bike ride gave me time with my thoughts, but I should do more thinking, too.”

  “What if I tell you something?” I said. “Tia.”

  Her face turned to me in the shadows. I could smell her — shampoo or soap or something. Not sweat. Whatever, it was light and fragrant and intoxicating. I breathed deep and held it in. “Something important?” she said.

  “You decide.” I told her the rest of my story — the accidental overhearing, the attic eavesdropping, my conversation with Aunt Paige.

  “Your dad’s a loner, right?” Her voice was alive.

  “Yeah.”

  “But he’s living near a population of throwbacks?”

  “Afterlight’s the name of the community. On the Olympic Peninsula.”

  Tia stood. “Your aunt’s computer is in her room?”

  “Still there. I saw it when the cops came.”

  “You think your mom’s still in the study with Rebecca Mack?”

  “I don’t think they’re coming up for air.”

  “Let’s look.” She pulled me from the chair. Her hand was warm.

  “What about your theory?” I said as we rushed into the house.

  She didn’t answer. We cruised past the closed office door slowly enough to decide that Mom and Rebecca Mack were still in there, then climbed the stairs two at a time but quietly.

  Tia sat down at Aunt Paige’s computer while I paced, one eye on the open doorway, one ear alert to sounds of someone coming our way. I heard voices, but I recognized them as a couple of our housemates whose room was at the end of the hall.

  When I got over to the desk, Tia had a screen up, but it was a page of medical records, headed with the photo of a young woman. “Give me a minute,” she said. “Your aunt has files everywhere.”

  She thought a moment, tapping a pencil on the wood surface of the desk, then attacked the touch pad so fast her fingers blurred. In an instant, another screen appeared, but she touched a prompt and jumped to another.

  This one was some kind of bulletin. CONFIDENTIAL, it said in bold letters across the top, which made me even more nervous than I already was. I slipped over to the door again, listening and looking, and hurried back to the desk.

  “This is what your aunt was talking about,” Tia said. “The quarantine advisory.”

  I crouched down to peer over her shoulder. She didn’t move to give me room, so I was forced to get nearer. Which gave me something else to think about.

  I speed-read the notice. Tia was right. It was an advisory sent out by the Council to doctors, hospitals, government officials, law enforcement agencies, emergency response teams, the National Guard, the Coast Patrol, all of them based in Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia. “They make it sound like a drill,” I said, still reading.

  “Your aunt didn’t think so.”

  No. And why would the PAC cops be after her if it were just a drill? I got to the specifics. Nearly the entire peninsula, from the southern tip of Hood Canal north to the Strait of Juan de Fuca, from Puget Sound on the east to the Pacific Ocean on the west, would be quarantined. No traffic of any kind — highway, logging road, trail, ferry, private boat, aircraft — would be allowed in or out for a minimum of two weeks.

  “Done?” Tia said.

  “Yeah.”

  She scrolled to the next page. I found what I was looking for: a date. The “drill” was to be initiated on June 21. Less than two days away. No wonder Aunt Paige was in a hurry.

  Tia logged out. “Come on,” she said, and I followed her down the hall, relieved to be away from my aunt and mom’s room, but not relieved about anything else.

  Sunday was sitting on her bed, making faces into her e-spond, when we walked in. Her idea of messaging apparently involved dramatics. “You want me to leave?” she said innocently.

  “No,” Tia said, not looking at me. We took turns telling Sunday what I’d overheard, what happened with Aunt Paige and the PAC cops, what we found on her computer.

  “She went to warn your dad, you think?” Sunday said. Her e-spond was forgotten.

  “I know she did,” I said. “But I don’t see how she’ll get to him. They’ll be waiting for her. She’s driving, and there’s really only one road in.”

  “Maybe she’ll leave her car,” Tia said.

  “And hike?” I said. “She doesn’t have time.”

  “I don’t get the whole quarantine idea,” Sunday said. “It sounds like they’re expecting an outbreak of something contagious and deadly.”

  I realized I didn’t get it, either. Exactly what kind of catastrophe could scientists forecast so confidently?

  “Elisha’s Bear,” Tia said.

  “But how can they predict that?” I said.

  “You wanted to know my theory,” Tia said.

  In my dreams, you are always alive, and young.

  I feel your hands on me.

  I awake a
nd curse the morning.

  — EPITAPH FOR RAUL “SONNY” SANCHEZ

  (APRIL 12, 2023–AUGUST 9, 2067),

  BY GUADALUPE SANCHEZ, HIS WIFE,

  NOVEMBER 22, 2068

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “Both of you were curious,” Tia said, moving to her desk, touching her computer to life. Sunday and I hovered. “I wanted to do more research so we’d know for sure, but let me show you what I’ve found so far.”

  “When did you come up with this?” I said.

  “While we were still in Nebraska we had a teacher — remember Hernandez, Sunday? — who encouraged independent study. And I found some stuff doing a PE history project that just seemed too neat and coincidental. I didn’t know what to do about it, though. I just kind of let it go.

  “Then today in class the San Francisco video and discussion stirred up my interest again. Not the information itself, so much, but the fact that Anderson was so into it. And when I looked at our take-home — the junkyarddog stuff — I got the impression she was trying to tell us something important.”

  I felt like asking a million questions, but I didn’t want to risk looking dumber than I already felt.

  Tia turned to face her computer display, where excerpts from that day’s take-home — excerpts I hadn’t yet read — suddenly appeared. “Did you look at the whole lesson?” she asked me.

  “No,” I admitted. “Half, maybe. My brain got full.”

  “Where did you leave off?” Sunday asked.

  “We’d just invaded Mexico. But I’ve got the whole thing printed out. Hold on.”

  I raced down the hall and back. When I returned I had the printout in my hand. I liked having an assignment on paper. I liked looking at it, folding it up, sticking it in my pocket, carrying it around, unfolding it whenever I wanted. It was the book thing, all over again. Maybe I really was a throwback.

  But Tia wasn’t impressed. She stayed focused on her monitor. “You stopped right before it got interesting,” she said to me. She scrolled up and stopped at an entry while I found it on my printout. Sunday crowded in close. Whatever we were looking for, she must have missed its significance the first time.