I’m in a wide-open world. There are trees and rolling hills and bright blue sky that is envious of Aubrey’s eyes. But all of a sudden I feel completely trapped. There are fences separating me from the freedom I had once upon a time with a stray mutt I named Yuki, one of the most beautiful words ever invented. It’s Japanese for snow. During the winter months when we were on the road, when the wind whipped the snow into our faces, or when the bright sun reflected off the snow and blinded us, Yuki stayed with me. At night, she slept against me in the tent and kept me warm. If we crashed an abandoned house, she slept at the foot of the bed to guard me. She was my protector. She was a reminder that if I could survive that first, lonely winter, I could survive in this bat-house crazy world.
Now she is out there somewhere, on her own. Does she think of me? Does she miss me? Does she need me as much as I need her?
And that’s when I decide to steal the Humvee.
Eighteen
I have no plan.
All I know is that a military utility vehicle is a little more difficult to operate than I counted on. There’s more car there than I was ever used to driving. Honestly, I didn’t have that much experience before I left my parents’ house. Once I got to the city, if I needed to go anywhere, there was the bus system. The Humvee might as well have been a tank.
I get as far as Aubrey’s barracks when I stop. He’s not outside any more. I have no way of knowing which barrack he is in; I had never thought to ask him. I do the only thing I can think to do, and that is to make noise. I honk the horn and yell for Aubrey to come outside. I do this for what seems forever, but I’m sure it is only a few minutes.
A door opens and Aubrey comes out of Barrack J.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
“Leaving. Come with me.”
“Where are you going?”
“I just want out of here.”
Aubrey looks uncertain. He checks to see if anyone is chasing me. “You stole a military vehicle?”
“I’m stealing it. Are you coming with me or not?” I gun the motor. Aubrey runs around to the passenger’s side and jumps in. I want to hug him, but all I can do is squeeze his hand. We take off as more of the residents of Barrack J and other barracks near it start filing out to see what is happening.
I’m going too fast. Aubrey braces a stiff arm off the dashboard. I want to ask him about Matt. I just don’t have the luxury of asking Aubrey a bunch of questions. Matt could very well be here, but I’ll never know. All I can concentrate on is getting us out of Camp G.
I pass a sign that says “Main Gate” with an arrow pointing straight ahead. Beneath it is another sign that says “Field Hospital” with an arrow that points to the left. I say a heartbreaking goodbye to Matt in my head and drive as quickly as I feel safe doing. It’s probably still way too fast for the winding road, but I don’t let up on the gas. I want out of Camp G.
It isn’t until we get to the wide-open field inside the main gate that I realize my impulse to take the Humvee was the stupidest maneuver I could have made. Besides the guardhouse at the entrance, there are half a dozen heavy armor vehicles parked across the road. At least twenty soldiers stand in defensive formations. While they don’t have their guns pointed at us, they nonetheless look ready to use them. Standing in front of them is my friend, Mr. Yanoloukis.
Ram them, I think, but then realize that would be the second stupidest maneuver I’d make. Besides, I don’t want to harm Aubrey. I dragged him into this, after all. Part of me still feels guilty for what happened to Matt back at Freedom House. And don’t get me started on how I basically dognapped Yuki and then abandoned her.
I slow the Humvee to a crawl, then stop. Yanoloukis approaches the vehicle. He takes one look at me and snarls. “Get out of the vehicle,” he says. “Now. I won’t ask a second time.”
When neither of us moves, Yano waves a hand and a soldier runs up to the Humvee. He pulls Aubrey out of the passenger seat. It is Yano who removes me from my side. We are put in the back of a new Humvee. Yano rides in the passenger seat and a new soldier drives us back through the camp. Aubrey holds my hand.
Once again, we pass the pink barracks Aubrey lives in. I see Shannon pushing a stroller. Adam looks like a wrapped log of bologna. Shannon smiles lovingly up at Gordon. Both are dressed in camp issued fatigues. I wonder if, under his blanket, baby Adam wears similar attire.
Yano points at the intersection that leads off to the field hospital. The driver slows and makes the turn. Up ahead I see a white, four-story building. Two smaller buildings have been erected separately, but connect to the taller one with second-floor walkways. I am assuming this is the field hospital as we shoot passed it. The road extends away.
Up ahead of us I see a very tall fence, at least twelve feet high. From the slight rise in the road and the angle of the Humvee as it descends it, I can see that the fence makes a pentagon around a structure that looks like a pushed over Y. There is a guard tower in every corner of the enclosure. Coils of razor wire curl endlessly above the top horizon of the fencing.
The driver slows at a guardhouse outside of the main gate. There is one of those familiar barrier arms painted in black and yellow stripes. No one comes out of the guardhouse. The arm rises. A motor kicks on and the main gates slide open. We drive through. When I look over my shoulder, the gates are closing once more.
The butt end of the toppled Y appears to be the entrance to the building. Above two metal doors is a hand painted sign that reads “Detention Center.” The doors beneath it are gray. Each has a narrow, vertical window with wired-glass panes in them. No one stands guard outside these doors. For the most part, the place looks abandoned.
Yano gets out of the Humvee. He motions for Aubrey and me to do the same. As I am crawling out from behind the passenger seat, I notice the driver. He un-grips and then re-grips the steering wheel. Although it is not all that hot outside, I see a little bead of perspiration trickle down his temple. The new driver is nervous about being here.
“That’s all, Private,” Yano says. The Humvee drives away.
“Don’t either of you get any other ideas,” Yano says to us. He removes his pistol from his hip holster. Yano goes up to the third step and faces what looks like a video camera. Beneath it is a number panel. He pushes several numbers and leans close to the camera. A blue line slides over his eyes. There is another one of those ominous clicks, and the door on the left opens. Yano turns to us.
“All right,” he says. “Inside.” Yano stands off to the side. Aubrey goes through the door first. Yano stops me as I go through it. He yanks my arm and twists it behind my back. “Not so tough with me when I’ve got a gun, are you, you little bitch?”
Aubrey has stopped. He turns around and starts for Yano when Yano raises his handgun. He points it first at Aubrey and then at my head.
“What you going to do, tough guy?” Yano asks. “I can kill you both.”
“You’ll kill no one,” LC Allison says. She has come out of a room at the far end of the corridor we are in. Yano reluctantly puts his gun back into its holster. LC Allison takes measured steps, keeps an even pace. Her boots clomp-clomp-clomp along the tiles. She stops when she reaches us.
“Just what did you think you were going to do?” she asks me.
“I don’t know,” I say. “All of a sudden I just wanted out.”
“Out? Where are you going to go? The world outside the gates is a dangerous place.”
“How safe is it in here, Aunt Alice?” Aubrey asks.
Her smile takes on a bit of the devil. “It’s Lieutenant Commander Allison, Nick,” she says.
Nick? This surprises me. I had never thought of it before, but I guess Aubrey’s first name could be Nick.
LC Allison continues. “Safer than you know. But that safety comes at a price, and part of that price is being able to follow the rules we have within these grounds. Come with me. There’s something I want to show you.”
We walk in formation down the long corridor. LC Allison leads. Aubrey and I walk side by side behind her. Following us is Corporal Yanoloukis. The hall is dimly lit. It stretches about half a football field before we reach a brightly lit, circular room. It has a cathedral ceiling. Two metal staircases lead to and from a balcony circling above our heads. A single catwalk extends across the circular walk above our heads.
There is a mosaic design in the tile floor. It’s a large star inside a ring. Elite Forces emblem.
We are at the spot where the two arms of the Y branch off. There are two doors: one for the left branch, one for the right branch. The left branch has a simple hurricane push bar, a large window, also lined with crisscrossing, diagonal strands of wire. The right branch is a solid metal door. A white, triangular sign with red warning stripes along the border is screwed into the plating. In the center of the triangle it reads, “Authorized Personnel Only.”
Thankfully, I think, for now we are only going through the door to the left.
We are standing in a vestibule. There are two more heavy metal doors. LC Allison turns. She is wearing her Cheshire grin and she softens her voice to calm us. In many ways, she reminds me of an elementary teacher I had.
“I think you both know where we are right now,” she says. “This is the stockade, a jail. This is where we deal with the rule breakers.”
LC Allison turns and looks into another security camera. She also taps her finger over a number pad. When she touches the last key, the numbers she has touched light up blue. The blue light from the camera slides over her eyes. Again, there is a click and the door pops open.
It feels stuffier in this new corridor, even though this place also has a cathedral ceiling. The hall is wide. Every ten feet or so there is a new metal door with a tiny wired-glass window in it. Occasionally there is a face behind the glass. Above us, a balcony walkway makes a complete rectangle. Three bridges stretch between the two sides, spaced about twenty feet apart. Upstairs there are more cells.
LC Allison doesn’t stop at any of the doors. I want to, though. I want to look inside and see if my sister is in one, if Matt is inside one, if anyone I may have encountered when I was on my own is in one. There were some people I met who I did trust, but back then I wasn’t ready to group with anyone. Back then I was still angry. After the last two weeks, I remember why I preferred being out amongst the runners. At least with a runner I knew what to expect.
When we reach the end, she takes us up a set of metal stairs that curves up along the wall. At the top, we are greeted by a wall-length window that looks out on the grounds. The view of the rolling, tree covered hills and the blue sky and loping fields is amazing. It isn’t until she leads us up to the window and we look down that I discover the horror the view holds.
Below us is a scaffold built ten feet above the ground. Spaced evenly along a crossbar are the hanging, lifeless bodies off three people. Their feet dangle through opened trapdoors. LC Allison nods to the lone soldier on the scaffolding. This soldier moves slowly, from dead man to dead man, removing black pillowcases from their heads.
Denny.
Scarecrow Jimmy.
Mr. Gumm.
“I told you before, Robin,” LC Allison says. “This is how it is now. Don’t get any ideas.”
Nineteen
My one-room apartment is gone.
Aubrey and I are put into separate cells on the second floor. We’re across from one another. We can stare into each other’s window across the open canyon between us. I feel bad that I got him sequestered.
I can’t even begin to explain the onset of claustrophobia. If I felt suffocated in the apartment, it is nothing compared to being in a cell. I have two windows in my room. There’s the one in the door that looks out at another door: Even though it’s Nick’s, which I’ve started thinking of him as in my head, it’s still a door. The other window is about a foot over my head and isn’t much wider than the front of a cereal box. My room is just narrow enough that I can’t stretch completely from wall to wall without bending my knees. It’s ten paces long.
There is a metal toilet in the corner beneath the wall window. A short cinder block wall hides me when I’m using it, but the upper half of my body can be seen. A small, metal sink is in the corner across from it. I stand on the toilet and try to crawl up the wall to look out the wall window, but there’s nothing to hook my fingers into for support. I can’t see anything but sky; I never knew how lonely sky could be.
A fold down table, the size and shape of the kind on a plane, is on the wall across from my bunk. It’s just far enough from the edge of the bed to make it impractical for me to reach. A circular seat pulls out of the wall for me to use when I want to sit and eat my meals. Most of the time I just move the food to my bed and eat off the tray.
I don’t know how long we’re going to be in here, but it already feels like it’s a life sentence. At least a dozen nights have gone by since we were incarcerated. You can forget due process and civil rights under a militant regime. If my dad had pulled a stunt like grounding me for this long, there would have been hell to pay. Here, in the Camp G Detention Center, I would only make it difficult on me.
I’ve heard what being difficult does to someone who gets on LC Allison’s bad side. A few nights after I was locked up, I was awakened by some gut-wrenching screams. They came from a man. He begged over and over again to go back into his cell. I listened to him scream and cry as they took him down the hall. The last thing I heard was a despondent, “No!”