Broken Angel (11 page)

DAY THREE

Caitlyn, unlike you, I could not entirely endure the solitude inflicted upon us by the deep and rugged valleys of the Appalachians. In the years before we joined the collective, on Sundays, at times, I would lock the door and leave you in the cabin for a few hours and go to church. I first went because it was the safest way to lose myself anonymously in a small crowd; I could listen to others and make small talk when pressed, without placing myself into an intimate conversation or friendship. The music offered distraction. I enjoyed listening to unsophisticated preachers and dissecting their sermons for errors in logic, syntax, science, and omission. That was my weekly entertainment. Yet truth is a diamond; even mishandled, smeared with grease, or buried in mud, it cannot be marred and waits for one with a cloth to polish it clean. That was how God spoke to me again. Through those ignorant preachers. I finally understood, despite their manipulative distortions.

As a scientist, I had never found it difficult to acknowledge that there was a Creator behind this universe—the marvels of DNA, the exquisite dance of electron and proton, the boggling forces of gravity and light; all of it forced many of us in science away from agnosticism. Yet to comprehend that this Creator loved us more deeply than I loved you, Caitlyn, gave my life renewed meaning.

Deep in the Appalachians, I had found the most important diamond any man can find—God loved me and forgave me, even with you as a daily reminder of how terribly I had sinned…

TWENTY-TWO

A
s the fog of morphine faded, Jordan’s nerves shrieked with a pain that brought him back to consciousness. His throat was so constricted, it felt like each breath was a red-hot iron into his lungs. His body raged with thirst. His muscles were like heavy granite, and he couldn’t even turn his head.

He was on his back. Narrow cracks of light pierced the darkness around him. Trying to make sense of it, he blinked.

He willed himself to lift his right hand. Nothing.

It wasn’t only that he was constricted by bindings. His hand simply
would not
move. Nor his fingers. No amount of willpower could force them to wiggle in the slightest. Nor his toes.

He tried to speak into the darkness. But his jaws were slack, his vocal cords mute. He was totally paralyzed.

Yet Jordan’s nerves registered enough sensory awareness to feel where the weight of his body pressed on his back and his buttocks and his legs. He realized, too, that even if he could speak, there was a gag around his mouth.

If he was paralyzed, why did he still have sensations? What had happened? He remembered the dogs rushing toward him, remembered bits and pieces of moving through the night as he alternated between consciousness and the welcome relief of a black void without time. He even remembered a bed and a man leaning over him. Then the black timeless void again. Until now.

More blinking as he ignored the screaming pain and tried to make sense of where he was.

His vision became accustomed to the darkness, and he could see peripherally that whatever enclosed him was hardly more than the width of his body.

As if he’d been put in a cheap, unlined coffin.

“I heard people just disappear,” Theo said. He was on the horse, now sitting behind Caitlyn, his hands gripping the sides of her cloak. “Or they become floaters. But no one explained that. What’s a floater?”

Billy led the horse by the reins, walking. After taking care of the bounty hunter, he’d walked all night, letting Caitlyn and Theo sleep in the saddle.

“There’s a dam as part of the divide,” Caitlyn said. “One of the rivers that feeds the lake comes from the Clan area. It’s how the Clan gets rid of people who enter their valley. Strapped on planks of wood, floating down to the lake on the river. Floaters.”

The sky was just beginning to turn from black into the first shades of gray, showing the dark outlines of the tops of the mountains on each side of the narrow valley.

“What about people who disappear?” Theo asked. He still shivered, as if morning could be nudged along by shaking it. “Do they make it out? How do they make it out?”

“I don’t have the answers. Billy? What do you know?”

Caitlyn watched Billy’s broad back leading their way. She felt warm gratitude at his uncomplaining endurance. She’d been awake for a while in the saddle, holding the unregistered vidpod in her other hand to establish their position.

Billy turned toward her but smiled shyly and ducked his head, unable to meet her eyes. “Don’t know. Nobody knows how the Clan does it…or if they do, really. Sheriff Carney says it’s all just stories. But if someone makes it Outside, we’d never know, right?”

His first words, all night.

He smiled again. She felt compassion and wanted him to relax. “I’m glad you’re with us.”

“Where are we?” Billy asked, as if unable to accept a compliment.

Without road signs and vidpod GPS, an artificial software voice directing them, Caitlyn knew he couldn’t tell. But the GPS signals gave the location to both those traveling—and those watching them.

“I’d rather not tell you,” Caitlyn said. “But we’re almost ready to go up into the hills.”

A half mile ahead, according to her vidpod, maybe twenty more minutes of travel, there would be a fork, with one road leading into an even narrower valley. It wasn’t much of a margin. In less than half an hour, nightly curfew would be lifted, and other travelers would be on the road.

“She’s like that,” Theo mumbled. “She keeps secrets.”

“I have to,” Caitlyn said.

“Why?” Billy asked.

Caitlyn didn’t answer. She was doing her best not to think of all the reasons, not to think of Papa, not to think about what they were fleeing or what was ahead. She wanted to stay numb, without allowing the weight of the seriousness to push through and allow the grief to cut at her again.

Theo leaned forward. Although the early morning air was humid and warm, his teeth chattered as he spoke. “All of it’s secret. Who she is. Why the bounty hunter wants her. She doesn’t really want us with her, but she’s afraid if she doesn’t keep us near, we’ll tell the authorities the last place we saw her.”

“Is that true?” Billy asked her. She saw by his wide, honest face that there was no possibility of guile ever hiding his thoughts.

“I don’t know why Mason Lee wants me, but as you can see, it’s not to be friends.” A slight shiver took her as she remembered the knife plucking at the fabric above her belly, the hot breath of the bounty hunter, and the unnatural excitement gleaming in his eyes.

Billy waited a few seconds. “And the rest of it? That you don’t want us?”

Caitlyn wished Theo hadn’t been so direct. The letter from her father had been very specific. He wanted her to travel in secrecy.

“I won’t run away on you, I will tell you that.” When the time came, she’d ask them to let her go.

“She can read,” Theo said. “Did you know that?”

“Theo!” The boy had a natural ability to exasperate her. Caitlyn’s voice was softer as she addressed Billy. “I can’t tell you what’s ahead. I don’t know, and I have to protect whoever will help get us Outside.”

“You really think you can get us Outside?” Billy asked. “No one makes it past the divide.”

A twenty-five-foot-tall electric fence surrounded the entire perimeter of Appalachia, its top laced with coils of barbwire. There was a quarter mile of cleared land on each side to reach it, mined with motion sensors and heat detectors, monitored by security cameras. All of the technology had been tested and proved for decades along the U.S.-Mexico border.

“Have you seen the divide?” Theo asked Billy. “I’ve only heard about it.”

“Once, when we were kids. The church took us there and explained that the fence was meant to keep Outsiders from getting in. One of the boys got a whipping for saying Outsiders never try to get in. We were all forced to take turns with the whip.”

“We can’t get too close.” Theo shook his head violently. “We might end up floaters. I heard the Clan always gets people who try to make it past them. They trap them, and sometimes they barbecue ’em and hang them from trees.”

“We’re not going into the Valley of the Clan,” Billy said. “Right?”

Both looked at Caitlyn for a response.

“You don’t have to come with us,” Caitlyn said to Billy. “I’ll understand if you want to turn around now.”

“Are you kidding?” Theo blurted. “They think he burned the livery. That’s five factory years. He let you throw his vidpod into the trees. When they find it, that’s another two factory years. He nearly killed a bounty hunter. Ten more years. If he turns back now, he’ll be in a factory until he dies of old age!”

Billy’s eyebrows furrowed deeply. “I got nowhere to go. Except with the two of you, so that’s where I’m going.”

“It’s worse than that.” Caitlyn tapped the unregistered vidpod. Although it could not be tracked by Bar Elohim, it still accepted the universal broadcast messages. One had been sent across Appalachia a few hours earlier. “There’s already a fugitive alert.”

She showed them. Billy’s photo filled the small screen. He looked earnest and slightly dazed. A reward was offered to anyone who sighted him. Yet another reason they needed to be off the road before curfew lifted.

“A man named Mitch Evans was in the livery,” Caitlyn said. “He died in the fire. Billy’s wanted for murder.”

TWENTY-THREE

P
ierce opened the door of his temporary housing. He held a cup of coffee in his hand. Bad coffee. He missed Outside. This country was so controlled, his cell phone couldn’t access Outside, nor could he get an Internet connection. It was an information vacuum here. With bad coffee.

The sheriff stood in the hallway. Clean, pressed uniform. Straight posture. Nothing on Carney’s face betrayed any indication of what he was thinking. Nor did it show the least signs of exhaustion.

Impressive,
Pierce thought. The guy had to be in his fifties. The night before, he’d been knocked out and dragged from a fire. Then he spent an hour at the blaze helping firefighters and another half hour supervising the removal of a charred body from the feed room. Plus another hour reviewing surveillance tapes of the scene. The only thing about Carney that hinted at the previous night’s events was the smell of smoke, probably from his hair. Pierce had been there too; showering and shampooing three times hadn’t done much to get rid of the smell.

“I’ve sent an alert out to every town,” Carney said. “Right after dawn, each sheriff will be sending people down all the roads. There’s a vidpod warrant out on my deputy. A mandatory alert, which every person in Appalachia will see. The reward offered is big enough that he won’t be able to move anywhere.”

“Where’s Lee?” Pierce asked. Pierce gestured for Carney to step inside, but the sheriff stayed where he was in the hallway, hands relaxed at his side.

“Stopped by my office this morning and told me he was done. He gathered his men and dogs and left town an hour ago.”

“From what I heard, Mason Lee never quits. Told me himself, more than five times a day.” Pierce’s coffee was getting cold, but he drank it anyway, then hid his grimace at the taste. Starbucks had been a monopoly as long as anyone could remember. Appalachia wouldn’t even let them inside the divide.

“He said his broken arm made it impossible to be part of this.”

“Suddenly the pain is too much? Everyone talked about how he had it set without anesthetics.”

“Maybe it wasn’t the pain. Maybe it was how it got broken.” Carney lifted an eyebrow, clearly waiting for how Pierce would respond.

Pierce expected that the waitress at the diner had watched his encounter with Lee from a hidden viewpoint. The noise of the crashing table had only scared her from sight, he imagined.

“A man like him needs to be careful,” Pierce answered.

“So does a man like you,” Carney said. “A man like him is apt to appear out of nowhere and strike like a snake. Don’t like it much that I owe him my life. Nor that I might have to protect yours.”

“I’ll be fine on my own, Sheriff.”

“You won’t be on your own.” Carney pulled his vidpod out of his shirt pocket and gestured to indicate that it was recording. “You and I will be working together more closely until you leave Appalachia.”

Under the scrutiny of Bar Elohim, Pierce understood.

“Make sure to be at my office as soon as you’re ready,” Carney continued. “I’ll expect you there.”

Carney gently set the vidpod on the floor, stepped inside Pierce’s apartment, and shut the door with a loud click. He walked past the couch where the fugitive had died earlier, moved into the bathroom, turned on the shower, walked back to the doorway of the bath, and waited for Pierce to come closer.

“I’m your baby-sitter.” Carney spoke in a low voice. “I don’t expect you to like it, but that’s the way it is. The sooner I can get you out of Appalachia, the better it will be for the both of us.”

“Fine with me.” Pierce held his coffee mug tighter. “What have you got on your deputy and the horses? What about that kid with the girl? Any ID? You guys have face recognition software, right? Database of everyone in Appalachia?”

“Not so fast. I’d like to know about the canister. Mason had it when he came into the livery with the girl. Showed up clear on the surveillance footage.”

“Doesn’t work that way,” Pierce said. “I’m not your resource. You’re mine. Go ahead and confirm it with Bar Elohim.”

“It does work that way.” Carney’s hands and arms weren’t relaxed any more. His hairline shifted as his face tightened. Slightly. A man had to be watching close to see it. Pierce filed the poker tell away. “We might as well make that clear. I’m not afraid of Bar Elohim. There’s more to all of this than meets the eye, and I want to know what’s happening. You don’t like it, I’ll book you on murder charges, and you’ll be in the jail cell waiting for me to return from collecting the deputy. You might think you have the juice to get released, and you do. But how many days do think it will take for the international politics to work themselves out?”

“Who’d I kill?” Pierce wasn’t sure whether to be amused or irritated by the older man’s plan.

“No one. I just lay charges.”

“Not much evidence for a murder charge.”

“None,” Carney said. “But it’ll still take time to clear your name after an accusation from the sheriff. Then, too bad, it will appear like I made a big mistake. Nothing I won’t survive. And about the time the murder charge gets cleared, I’ll put in a couple of heresy indictments, and Appalachian politics will force Bar Elohim to take my side until that’s sorted out. You’d spend a week in jail. Maybe two. Understand?”

Pierce nodded. He would have made the same threats himself. “I understand you won’t be treated like hired help. Fair enough.”

“The canister.”

“You want the deputy,” Pierce said. “I want the girl. I’ll help you with what you need. But the canister is off the table. And really, you don’t want to know.”

Carney’s hairline dropped fractionally. Pierce took this as a good sign, and he started with a basic question. “Who was the boy with her? His face showed up on the footage clearly too.”

“Had him on an electronic warrant. He’s a factory runaway. Best guess is she found him somewhere in the woods.”

“And your deputy?” Pierce said. “I’d like to know how she convinced him to help.”

“Me too,” Carney answered. “All I can tell you right now is where he threw his vidpod. About a mile away. Don’t expect to find his body with it, but had to send someone to look.”

“And the horses from the livery?”

“All except one are accounted for. GPS shows it’s stationary, a few miles outside of Cumberland Gap. Want to walk there? Or do you know how to ride a horse?”

“I saw an official vehicle parked by the courthouse. Each town has one, right? We could be there in a few minutes. Mason Lee told me the procedure. You get the engine computer unlocked via satellite.”

“Just so you know, if we take the car, it also unlocks the live video and audio monitors inside.”

Pierce gulped the last of his coffee. “Horse sounds good.”