Running Out of Time (9 page)

It took Jessie only a minute to recognize the box high up in an oak by the fence. It moved without wind. Yet, unlike the one she'd seen in the haunted tree all those years ago—the one she'd been spanked for seeing—no one had bothered to paint this box the same color as bark.

It was the thing Ma called a camera.

That was why there hadn't been more guards among the tourists up by Clifton. Miles Clifton wasn't worried about any Clifton resident getting this far. They couldn't climb the fence without being seen.

Jessie hadn't really understood Ma's explanation of cameras, but she knew that if she started climbing the fence, guards would probably arrive even before she reached the sharp points at the top. And Jessie felt sure this wasn't the only camera. If almost every inch of Clifton was watched, so was every inch of this fence. Jessie moved forward—yes, several trees down, on the other side, another box moved soundlessly.

And its glass eye was moving right toward her.

J
essie ducked under a tree branch, but she knew it was hopeless. She couldn't hide well enough in time. And then—the camera stopped moving, just short of the point where it would see Jessie. It jerked back in the other direction, stopped there, and began flowing toward Jessie again.

Jessie crashed back through the underbrush and collapsed, clear out of sight, behind the wide trunk of an oak. Her heart pounded for a long time. She could feel the beating in her ears.

Peeking back at the cameras, she figured it out: They only looked at the fence. Each one must have a small section of fence to spy on, and they turned back and forth all day, just gazing at that one length of fence.

Jessie was thinking of the cameras as being alive, like animals smart enough to be tattletales and dumb enough to spend their entire lives in one tree. Probably that wasn't the
right way to think about it, but she wasn't sure she could understand anything else. How could anything see if it wasn't alive?

That's enough, Jessie told herself. She was getting scared thinking of half-alive things. That wasn't the most important question, anyhow. She needed to think about how to get past the fence and the cameras without being seen.

Frustrated, Jessie picked at a dead piece of bark. She could walk along the fence, to see if it went all the way around Clifton. Even if it did, there might be an area the cameras didn't look at. If the cameras missed the King of the Mountain rock in Clifton, maybe outside …

Jessie's hopes rose for a moment, then she realized how stupid her plan was. It could take days to walk the perimeter of the fence. During that time, Katie and the others might—Jessie tried not to think the frightening word. It came anyway.
Die.

Jessie threw the dead bark into the underbrush, as if that could take away the thought. Her heart started beating faster again.

I can't get over that fence without being seen, she thought. There's no way. I can't help Katie and the others. Ma was wrong to think I could. Oh, please, God, what am I supposed to do?

Jessie didn't realize she was praying—Reverend Holloway certainly never would have approved of her plea. It lacked even a single “thee” or “thou.” She wondered, strangely, if God had any connection with the world outside Clifton.

But something calmed her. She suddenly had the feeling there was a way out, if only she could think of it.

Think about it as a problem in school, she told herself. Or no—a riddle. Nathan and Bartholomew had gone through a phase where one of them had a new riddle every day. Jessie had no idea where they heard them. The riddles always sounded ridiculous, nonsensical, as though they could have no right answer. Then you heard the answer and thought, Oh. That makes sense. It's stupid but it makes sense. Jessie remembered hearing Pa play along with one of the riddles not long ago.

“What eats as long as it lives, but dies as soon as it drinks?” Nathan had asked, carrying wood into the smithy.

Pa paused while his iron heated in the fire.

“Let me get this straight. Any drink kills it? Even water?”

Nathan giggled. “Oh yes. Water most of all!”

Pa shook his head. “Can't be such a thing. Anything alive needs water as much as it needs food. More, even.”

“Not fire! It's fire!” Nathan's shrill voice exploded with laughter, though Pa was at least the tenth person he'd told the riddle to.

Pa pretended to study the flames in front of him.

“Well, I reckon you tricked me on that one. I'm not sure it's fair calling fire alive, but you're right, this fire will eat anything. And as soon as I pour water on it, it's out. I must be pretty dumb, not knowing that with the answer right in front of me.”

Pa hung his head in mock shame. Then the iron reached the right shade of red orange and he pulled it out and began pounding. He moved skillfully, keeping the rhythm even as he grinned at Nathan.

Now Jessie bit her lip, wishing she hadn't conjured up
such a memory. She didn't have time to miss Pa and Nathan and the rest of her family. She had to get past the fence.

Distantly, she heard the drone of another car moving along the road from Clifton. Something clicked. As far as she knew, the fence had only one break, by the guardhouse. There was a human guard there, not a camera. Maybe …

Without a firm plan, Jessie moved through the underbrush toward the guardhouse. She crept slowly, trying not to rustle the bushes. She'd always heard Indians were good at walking through the woods without making a sound, but it wasn't a skill she'd learned. The guard didn't turn around, though, and the cars were going by too fast for anyone in them to notice.

Finally Jessie reached a bush opposite the guardhouse. She was close enough to see the hair on the back of the guard's neck. It was black and bristly. He was wearing a loose-fitting shirt, suspenders, and britches just like Pa wore, but Jessie knew that didn't mean he was from Clifton. It was like Mrs. Spurning wearing a long skirt; Mrs. Spurning and this man both looked a little uncomfortable in their clothes.

Another car pulled up. The guard turned to the driver, and Jessie ducked lower in the bush.

“Welcome to Clifton!” the guard said. “Parking's at the top of the hill. The ticket window's right inside the front door of the guest center. Tours are available every thirty minutes, on the hour and half hour.”

An arm reached out from the car and seemed to be giving the guard money. Jessie wasn't sure what that was for. Did people actually pay to watch Clifton? Jessie gasped.

“That's quite a fence you have there,” a man's voice
growled. “I was afraid I'd turned into the state prison by mistake.”

Jessie saw the guard look toward the fence. She listened intently to his answer.

“Oh, our fence isn't that big,” the guard said. “It's just that we have something of a game preserve around Clifton—the same number of bears, wolves, deer, you know, that would have been here in the 1800s. There's no danger, but some of Clifton's neighbors are farmers with livestock and they're happier with a fence between us.”

Jessie waited for the man in the car to say that was ridiculous. Everyone knew there were bears and wolves and deer everywhere. Weren't there? The man only grunted.

“Look, Jamey. See the man's funny costume?” a woman's voice said from the car.

That bothered Jessie. She couldn't see the woman or Jamey, but she'd bet anything they had on stranger costumes than the guard's ordinary clothes.

Then the car drove on and Jessie returned to studying her escape route. The guard seemed occupied in his booth, so she risked moving to another bush with a better view.

The road split into two here, with the guardhouse in the middle. A long thin rail hung about three feet off the ground, reaching from the guardhouse almost to the bushes by Jessie. As two more cars drove up, Jessie watched the process. People would pay, the rail would lift magically, by itself, then it lowered again as soon as the car was past.

Jessie thought about witchcraft again, and pushed the thought away. Probably there was a pulley involved, or something like that. The inside of the Clifton mill would look like
magic, too, if you didn't know how much water turned the wheel outside. Still, Jessie didn't like the moving rail.

She waited for a car to leave, most curious about what happened then. Finally a big yellow one—one of the monster maybe-limousines Jessie had gawked at earlier—roared down the road. It was packed with schoolchildren now. It slowed down, almost stopping. The driver seemed to be easing it over some large bump. Then it sped up and disappeared. Evidently, there was no rail to stop people on the way out.

Jessie frowned. That meant she couldn't hide in a car while it stopped for the rail. Well, she still had another option. She could hike back up the hill, hide in one of the empty cars, and wait for it to leave.

If that was her plan, she needed to start walking. But something made Jessie stay near the guardhouse. She'd lose so much time walking all the way back up the hill. Then what if she hid in a car that didn't leave for hours and hours? She could lose a whole day, a day that could make a lot of difference to Katie and the others.

Impatient with herself, Jessie watched several more cars come and go. Why? How was she going to get a better plan? She promised herself: I'll start walking after the next car goes by. Then it would disappear. One more, she thought. And then, one more.

Finally a different kind of vehicle came down the hill. It was bigger than most of the cars Jessie had seen, but not quite as big as the maybe-limousines the schoolchildren rode in. On the side, it carried a picture of sliced bread and the label F
LAVOR
B
EST.

Flavor Best? Jessie thought. Was that even a word? Thinking hard, Jessie watched the bread car slow down, like all the others had done before they passed the guardhouse.

Then—it stopped.

The vehicle still rumbled, as though it could jump forward at any minute. It reminded Jessie of horses that constantly pawed the ground when you made them stop. You knew they'd rather gallop on. But the vehicle didn't move. A man stepped out from the left side and walked to the guardhouse.

“How about those Reds?” the bread man asked.

“Oh yeah! Two on base, and then—”

They might as well have been speaking a foreign language, as much sense as it made. Jessie listened only to make sure they kept talking. This was her chance. The bread man was blocked by the wall of the guardhouse. The guard faced away from Jessie. Jessie gripped her pack and dashed out from the bushes.

Jessie's feet only touched ground six times, and she ran doubled over, but she felt like she was in open view for hours. Finally she reached the back of the guardhouse and crouched again. She listened hard, heart thumping.

“Seven errors!” the guard was saying. “Seven!”

“But in the fifth inning—”

Jessie tuned them out again. They hadn't seen her. That was all that mattered.

The door nearest Jessie was in full view of the two men, so Jessie decided to circle the vehicle and go in the other side. She reached the back of the vehicle, and paused to look for cameras before she went on.

“Unit ten, unit ten, what's your location?”

The voice came from inside the vehicle. Jessie froze.

“There's that SOB I was telling you about,” the bread man said. “We never needed radios before and now he has to know where we are every single second—”

His voice got louder. He was walking back toward Jessie.

Jessie's knees shook. She should dive back into the bushes. But she was so close!

A knob on the back of the vehicle dug into her back. She shifted slightly and realized it was some sort of lever. Maybe, maybe …

Recklessly, Jessie jerked the lever this way and that. Finally it gave way, and a door opened into the back of the car. She saw racks loaded with bright loaf-shaped packages, but no man. Without allowing herself to wonder where the “unit ten, unit ten” voice had come from, she slipped in the door and pulled it almost closed behind her. It didn't latch.

Seconds later, the voice came again.

“Unit ten, unit ten—are you in your truck?”

Just then, the bread man climbed in the front and picked up a small black square.

“Unit ten to base, unit ten to base. I'm in my truck. I'm leaving Clifton Village right now.”

So this kind of vehicle was called a truck, Jessie thought. But what was that voice?

“You were supposed to be at North Elementary twenty minutes ago.” The crackly voice seemed to come from nowhere.

“It's not my fault. I've told you how slow these people out here are,” the bread man said into the box.

In spite of her awe at the mysterious voice, Jessie almost
giggled. The bread man sounded as whiny as Chester Seward when Mr. Smythe scolded him for forgetting his books: “It's not my fault. My sister's supposed to carry them.”

The bread man put the black box down, said a few words Jessie thought must be bad even in the 1990s, and shoved a stick by his chair.

The vehicle lurched forward. Jessie peeked out and saw the fence slide past. One of the camera-boxes jerked toward the truck, but Jessie yanked the door shut—in time, she thought. She waited, clutching the door, but nobody screamed for the truck to stop. No guards came running. The truck was going too fast for anyone to catch it, anyhow.

Jessie had escaped Clifton.

The vehicle gathered speed. Wind blew violently back toward Jessie, rattling the wrappers on the racks of bread. It was all she could do to hold on to the unlatched door. She was sure she'd never been in anything moving this fast in her life—well, not that she could remember.

The vehicle went still faster. Jessie's rejoicing turned a little sour. She'd escaped Clifton. How was she going to escape this wild bread truck?