Something was definitely in there, beyond the fog.
The echo of the machine guns rang in my ears. We had just witnessed something shocking. Fort Knox was alive. There was no way to know whether it was the kind of safe haven Mr. Hartman’s son told him about, but the army base was definitely occupied . . . and protected.
But that wasn’t what shocked us.
It was the voice that came from the drone.
I looked to Tori and asked, “Am I wrong?”
Tori looked pale. “I don’t think so.”
“Wrong about what?” Jon asked, confused. “What do you think is in there?”
“It can’t be,” Kent said. He was thinking the same thing we were.
“Can’t be what?” Jon demanded to know. “What are you all talking about?”
“The voice,” Olivia said, sounding sick. “Either it was a recording . . . or Captain Granger is alive.”
It was the voice of SYLO.
I’d heard it too many times in my dreams. Or my nightmares. It was precise and emotionless, with a hint of a Southern accent. It was the voice of the man who had invaded my home and trashed our lives. I’d seen the guy coldly gun down unarmed men who tried to escape from his clutches. I watched as he ordered a missile to be fired from a warship that destroyed the town ferry and turned back those who were protesting his occupation of Pemberwick Island.
I listened while he discussed hunting down Tori and I . . . with my parents.
Worst of all, I had been on the wrong end of a vicious helicopter attack on the camp of rebels who were plotting to take back the island from him. It was an attack that killed Tori’s father.
But Granger had been killed too. I saw it. He had chased us across the ocean on a Navy gunship and pounded us with machine gun fire as we skirted our way through the battle between the SYLO Navy and the Air Force planes. To escape, we had made a suicide run between two burning warships as they collapsed on one
another.
We made it out.
Granger didn’t.
We’d seen his gunship explode.
I could accept that Feit was healed by some miracle medicine,
but Granger? How could a medicine, no matter how magical, heal
a man who had been incinerated?
I felt as though someone had grabbed hold of my gut and was
twisting without mercy. Granger was the face of SYLO. He was
calling the shots. Literally. His death had been minor payback for
the misery he’d caused, but at least it had been payback. Hearing his voice brutally ripped open old wounds and ignited
a rage in me that had been simmering for weeks.
“It was a recording,” Kent declared hopefully. “It had to be.
The guy has a scary voice. They probably recorded a bunch of
warnings like that and use them whenever they want to intimidate
somebody.”
“It sure as hell intimidated me,” Jon said, shaky. “And I never
met the guy.”
“Could he be alive?” Tori asked the group, though she was
looking at me.
They were all looking at me.
“No,” I said. “We saw his boat explode.”
I said that with far more certainty than I was feeling. “What could be past that fog?” Olivia asked as she gazed out of
the window at the mysterious white wall.
“It’s not a place we want to be,” I declared. “Not if it’s a SYLO
base.”
Both Olivia and Jon looked glum. They had hoped to find a
secure home in Kentucky. What we discovered was something far
different.
“I . . . I’m not sure I want to go to Nevada,” Olivia said, obviously shaken.
“Let’s not decide anything now,” I said. “I say we find a place
to hole up and rest. We’ll spend the night and decide on what we’ll
do tomorrow.”
I got no arguments. I think it was a relief to put off any decisions, at least for a while.
Tori opened the map and did a quick check of the area. “The closest town is Elizabethtown,” she said. “Head west,
and then find a way to go south.”
Kent didn’t have any sarcastic comments about how tricky it
was going to be. I think he was too numb to complain. We rode in silence as he continued along the edge of the dirt
stretch. We passed the spot where the SYLO trucks had crossed in
front of us to see a paved road that cut across the empty expanse. “It’s like a moat,” Jon said. “A dry moat. I’ll bet it circles the
whole base. They must have leveled everything and cleared it away
so that if anybody tries to approach, they’ll see them.” “So what’s with the smoke?” Kent asked.
“It hides what they’ve got,” Jon said. “They shot down a lot
of those black planes. They must have some serious artillery going
on in there. If it can’t be seen from the air, there’s less chance of
getting hit.”
The sound of incoming fighter jets shattered the silence. They
came in low, directly over our heads, on their final approach for
landing. Their gear was down as they flew wing-to-wing, dropped
closer to the ground, then disappeared into the fog.
I stared after them, straining to see something through the
smoke.
“What are you thinking, Tucker?” Tori asked.
“I’m thinking that base is alive,” I said.
“And?”
“That’s all.”
I was actually thinking a whole lot more, but I wasn’t about to
share it.
Kent found a road the led us west and away from the dry moat.
We traveled through more farmland until we found a major road
that led south.
“Time to start looking for a hospital,” Kent said.
“No,” Olivia said quickly. “I can’t spend another night in a
place like that.”
It wasn’t exactly a densely populated area. The buildings were
few and far between. While Kent navigated past multiple bomb
craters and downed planes, Tori continued to scan the map. “There’s a library,” she announced. “Would that work for
you?”
She asked the question with total sarcasm, but at least she was
honoring Olivia’s request. It seemed like their moment of mutual
emotional support was brief, and over.
“Whatever,” Olivia grumbled. “Anything’s better than spending another night in a cold, dark hospital.”
Tori called out the directions to Kent until we arrived at the
Hardin County Public Library. It was a big brick building that rose
up in the middle of empty farmland.
“Looks like another hospital,” Olivia said with no enthusiasm. “Tough. We’re staying here,” Tori declared and got out of the
car.
The tension between them had definitely returned. Inside, we found it was a warm, inviting place. Olivia was right.
It was a welcome change from the antiseptic hospitals we’d been
staying in.
“Only one problem,” Jon said. “No beds.”
“Or food,” Olivia added.
“How about if Kent and I find a store while you guys figure out
how we’ll sleep,” I suggested.
Olivia glanced at Tori.
Tori stared her down.
“I’ll come with you guys,” Olivia declared.
“Whatever,” Tori said. “I’m starving. Hurry up.”
The three of us went back to the Explorer and drove on. It
took a while to find anything that resembled a town, but we eventually came upon a big place called the E. W. James Grocery Store.
We loaded up a cart with bottled water, powdered drinks, cereals,
cans of tuna fish, and various types of crackers. I also found some
packages of dried seaweed, figuring it might be our best shot at
getting some vegetable-based vitamins. Olivia scowled, but I took
it anyway. Kent went for more Doritos and cookies. Whatever. When we brought our bounty back to the library, we found
that Tori and Jon had set up a comfortable place to sleep in the kid’s section using pillows and cushions they had gathered from all
over the library.
“You going to read us a bedtime story?” Kent asked, while putting his arm around Tori.
Tori gave him a cold look, and he backed off.
We brought the food to a small kitchen that was probably for
the staff. We all silently grabbed whatever box, can, or jug we wanted
and ate. There was no attempt to make it a civilized meal. When
we were done with whatever we were eating, we’d drop it down for
somebody else to grab. It was more depressing proof that we were
moving further away from civilized behavior.
It gave me the resolve I needed to make a move I had been
planning since the moment I’d heard Granger’s voice. It was something I had to do alone. If the others found out, they would stop
me. I was certain of that.
When we were finished with our uncivilized meal, we left the
empty containers where they had fallen and drifted back into the
library.
“I want to show you something,” Tori said to me. She led me to the reference section. It was getting late in the day,
and the library was growing dark. We had to put on headlamps in
order to read. Tori pulled out a heavy book and opened it on a table.
We sat together, staring at the text by the light of our headlamps. “What is this?” I asked.
“A Latin-to-English dictionary.”
I had almost forgotten.
“Sequentia yconomus libertate te ex inferis obendienter,” I
said. “Does this tell you what it means?”
“Not exactly. I found meanings of individual words, but I have
no idea about tenses or conjugations. All I can do is string them
together in some rough translation.”
She flipped through pages and said, “Most of what Luna told
us is correct.
Sequentia
roughly means ‘the following.’
Obedienter
can be translated to mean ‘obediently’ or something.” “What about the gates of hell thing?” I asked.
“
Libertate te ex inferis
. That could mean ‘liberated or protected
from the gates of hell.’”
“So the wild card is
yconomus
.”
Tori stopped on a page she had dog-eared. “I found a definition but it took a while. I guess it isn’t that common.” “As opposed to all the other really common Latin words we use
all the time?”
“I mean not common for Latin. I had to look through a couple
of dictionaries before I found one that had it.”
“So what does it mean?”
She pointed to a spot on the page.
I read, “
Yconomus.
A ‘guardian.’”
I looked at her and added, “What the hell does that mean?” “Put it together like it was English. These guardians obediently
protect us from the gates of hell.”
I let the concept roll around in my head for a few seconds. “So
SYLO thinks they’re protecting the world from falling through the
gates of hell?”
“Or guarding the gates of hell so they don’t open up.” “Bull,” I snapped. “You don’t protect people by imprisoning
them and killing them.”
“Unless they were guarding against something even worse,”
Tori countered.
“Are you serious?” I asked, incredulous. “They chased us
down. Granger tried to kill us. He killed your father. How is that
justified?”
“I don’t know,” Tori cried, shaking with emotion. “But there
has to be some explanation for what’s happening. Feit said SYLO
was putting us on a road to destruction. Do we believe that?” “From what I’ve seen? Sure.”
“Feit’s a liar!”
“They’re murderers, Tori. Did you forget how they strafed the
rebel camp? And then tried to incinerate us with a flamethrower?” “Feit said half of the rebels were his infiltrators.”
“They shot you, Tori. Let me say that again. They . . . shot . . .
you. What is it about any of this that makes you think they were
trying to protect us?”
“Because
they
didn’t wipe out three-quarters of the world’s
population.”
“Okay, so they’re less bad than the Air Force. Good for them.” “What if SYLO knew what the Air Force was planning? What if
they took over Pemberwick Island to protect it?”
“Protect it?” I shouted. “By cutting us off from the outside world
and killing people who tried to leave? That’s not exactly heroic.” “But the Navy was shooting the black planes out of the sky.” “Sure they were,” I countered. “SYLO set up a base on Pemberwick. They were protecting their own butts. The Air Force
wasn’t attacking a bunch of lobstermen and rich yacht people, they
were going after SYLO. SYLO brought the war to our door.” “Yeah, and the Air Force brought it everywhere else. It was the
Air Force that killed Quinn, remember?”
“Because SYLO brought them to the island. Those robot
planes might have done the deed, but SYLO was just as guilty.
They’re all guilty.”
We were getting nowhere.
“I’m not sticking up for the Air Force,” I said. “Or whoever
is commanding them. But I’m not letting SYLO off the hook. Or
Granger. You may be able to put all that aside, but I can’t.” “Granger’s dead,” Tori said flatly.
“Yeah. Granger’s dead. I hope.”
We both backed off to take a breath and cool down. “I’m going to Nevada tomorrow,” Tori declared. “If you want
revenge as much as you say, you’ll come with me.”
“Check with me in the morning.”
Tori stared at me for a good long time, as if debating whether
or not to say something.
“What?” I asked.
“I need you, Tucker,” she finally said. “I’ve never said that
to anybody before. Not even my father. I can’t imagine going on
without you.”
It was exactly what I wanted to hear . . . and the last thing I
needed to know.
“I love you, Tori,” I replied.
I don’t know why I said that. It just came out. Maybe it was
because I wanted to avoid going down the road she had just put
us on. It was a road that would mean a commitment for us to stay
together. That was a promise I couldn’t make. Or maybe it was because I meant it, because I did. I loved Tori, though I didn’t know what kind of love it was. She had become my closest friend in the world. I would do anything for her. I guess I wanted her to
know that.
She leaned over and gave me a hug. It wasn’t all romantic or
anything. It was more of a way to show how close we were. It felt
good.
“I love you too,” she said. “I’ve never said that to anybody
either.”
With that, she backed off and left me to wrestle with my own
confused feelings. I wished I could say that I wanted nothing more
than to be together with Tori. After all we had been through, we
had developed a bond that went beyond friendship. Maybe even
beyond love. We owed our lives to each other. If not for Tori, I
wouldn’t have survived. It’s as simple as that. She could say the
same thing about me. We may have argued and disagreed, and having Olivia as a wild card in the mix didn’t make things any easier,
but the bottom line was that ever since things starting to hit the fan
on Pemberwick Island, we took care of each other. In spite of her
occasional anger and disappointment in me, I fully believed that
she couldn’t imagine going on without me.
I felt the same way, except that I
did
have to imagine going on
without her. I wanted us to stay together, but there was something
I wanted even more, and if I truly loved her, I was going to have to
betray her to get it.
I looked back at the dictionary and the entry for
yconomus.
A guardian. I didn’t buy that SYLO was guarding anything but
their own skins, but Tori’s thinking wasn’t entirely wrong. SYLO
was
guarding Pemberwick Island. I’d bet they were guarding Fort Knox too, based on the Air Force wrecks outside the base. The question was why? Why did this war happen in the first place? What
was truly at stake?
As I sat there in the dark, I felt more certain than ever that I was
about to make the right move. I was tired of guessing and speculating and wondering. I wanted answers.
And I wanted revenge.
The one thing I didn’t want was to put Tori and the others in