Authors: Chris Jordan
“Um, not directly, but I’ll, um, see what I can do.”
“Fantastic! Tell you what, you’re ever in Dayton I’ll buy you the biggest steak dinner you ever seen. Thirty-two
ounces of prime, grain-fed steer. Or we could do the pork rib barbecue. Your choice.”
“Sure, I’ll keep that in mind. Could you excuse me? I’m, ah, running late.”
“Eldon and Missy Barlow! As a personal favorite to me.”
“Yes, yes. If you’ll just go along to the Hive.”
“Absolutely,” Shane says, letting the man get by him. “Free hot chocolate, cookies. Wouldn’t miss that for the world.”
Five minutes later Randall Shane has found an exit from Profit Hall. As he steps out into the beautiful, frozen landscape of the Conklin Institute, his eyes scanning the mountainside residences for activity, he’s thinking two things.
One, there’s a pretty solid chance that a security cruiser will be dispatched to warn, and/or question the Barlows about the presence of a potential troublemaker, and with any luck he’ll be there to see it happen.
Two, he really, really regrets leaving his new down parka at reception, because if something doesn’t happen in the next fifteen minutes he’ll be frozen solid.
12. When The Night Turns Blue
He’s trying to dance the cold away, stamping his feet and flapping his arms, when the flinty-eyed grab-and-go queen shows up, all decked out in an ankle-length parka, fake-fur earmuffs, and long and very pink wool scarf.
“What in the name of God are you doing out here?” she wants to know, clapping her mittens together “We’re having a cold snap! You’ll get frostbite!”
“Just clearing my lungs! Stuffy in there!” Teeth chattering, Shane tries to respond cheerfully.
“I thought we got all the nuts in Southern California,” she says, staring up at him. “Apparently they kept a few in Ohio.”
Shane grins like a madman. Maybe if she thinks he’s crazy she’ll leave him alone. Whatever, he’s invested now. Has to stay out in the open ground where he’s got a clear view of the surrounding community, the terraced streets rising above the campus. Looking for any sign of security response that might lead him to the Barlow residence.
“You know what the temperature is?” she demands, her California tan turning almost as pink as the scarf. “In the last hour it’s fallen to five degrees! That’s without the windchill. With the wind it’s below zero.”
“Feels good!” Shane tells her, hugging himself. “Gets the old heart pumping!”
What gets his heart pumping is the sight of a BK Security cruiser speeding along one of the upper streets. The cruiser stops, dome light strobing, beneath a massive, multilevel ski lodge. His eyes are watering so badly that he can’t see much more than that. Does the responding officer get out and ring the bell or whatever? Is the lodge even occupied? He can’t tell, but it’s a place to start.
“You’re right, I better get inside!” he says, abruptly excusing himself. “It’s c-c-cold out here!”
Then he’s running in huge, loping strides, across the hard-frozen ground, heading for the entrance to Domicile One.
There’s a new crew at the reception desk, but Shane manages to retrieve his parka with a minimum of fuss.
Although he’s again disconcerted to find that staff people he’s never seen before seem to know him by sight.
“Did you enjoy the seminar, Mr. Gouda?”
“Yeah, yeah, it was great. Opened my mind to a whole new way of thinking.”
“Wonderful. You don’t want to miss the welcome party. They’re expecting you.”
“Me personally? Really? That’s great. Just got to get something out of my car.”
“One of the staff can take care of that, Mr. Gouda,” the desk clerk says, holding out his hand for the keys. “That way you won’t miss the party. Just follow the arrows back to the Hive.”
Really, it’s like dealing with robots. Polite, personable young robots who won’t take ‘no’ for an answer. In open defiance, Shane zips up his parka. “It’s a personal matter,” he says, striding out the door, car keys in his fist.
A glance back reveals that the desk clerk has already lifted a phone, no doubt reporting an uncooperative guest.
Shane hurries out to his vehicle, hoping it will start. Fortunately the Grand Cherokee is equipped with a good battery—plenty of cranking amps—and although it hesitates and then shudders sluggishly, the engine somehow manages to chug to life on the first try. Not waiting for a warm-up, he guns the beast a few times, watching the tachometer spike, and then puts it in gear. No squeal of tires—the Big Cheese is just going for a little old sightseeing ride—but a firm application of the throttle pedal.
He’s keenly aware of the tracking device clipped to the visor, and would dearly love to heave it out the window, but doing so would automatically alert security, and that
will happen soon enough, thank you. He’s also thinking he’s never before in his life been in such a controlled environment. This is the kind of total surveillance the old Soviets and Maoists only dreamed about. Call it a silicon curtain, with every obedient citizen reduced to a pulsing dot on a monitor, guided from one indoctrination to the next. Not for nothing was Arthur Conklin an expert in insect hive dynamics. His followers might preach a kind of Darwinian individualism—the self above all—but when it came right down to it they were obsessive about instilling group behavior into would-be Rulers, from the very get-go.
The interior of the Cherokee has all the warmth of a walk-in freezer—how long does it take these things to warm up?—but he doesn’t have time to fully appreciate his discomfort before decisions are upon him. There’s a circular road around the campus, and no immediate clue as to where it joins the road that rises up the mountainside, providing access to the residential area. Should he go left or right? He decides to retrace the way he came in, figuring the residential access must split off somewhere back before the signs that had so helpfully guided him down into the campus the night before.
Speaking of night, the shadow cast by the setting sun is rapidly crawling up the mountainside, leaving the valley dimmed. Ominous, somehow. Four in the afternoon and already the lights are coming on. No doubt the temperature is dropping even further. All of which confirms his decision not to attempt a recon on foot.
Randall Shane, human Popsicle. We found him after the spring melt, your honor, no idea how he wandered off, or what he was looking for.
By the time he’s found his way back to the entrance to
the valley, the interior of the vehicle has warmed up sufficiently for his breath to stop showing. And there, unmarked, the road does indeed split off, a narrow fork of well-sanded tarmac curving away, and upward. Grateful to the rental agent who suggested he opt for four-wheel drive, he sets out on the elevated road. After the first steep rise the roadway levels off, hugging the mountainside, and he’s able to see down into the valley below, where the lights of the campus beckon like a nagging teacher.
Return to your seat, grasshopper. Drink your hot chocolate, nibble your cookies, and obey, obey, obey.
Well, screw that. He’s not here to expose some money-sucking self-improvement scheme, however cleverly presented, he’s here to develop enough evidence to justify a search warrant, hopefully bring in the FBI, or at the very least the Colorado state detectives. Some law enforcement entity that can cut through the crap, find Haley Corbin and her kid before the whole place goes Jonestown.
He comes around a curve and encounters the first residential complex. Condo units, from the look of it. Slowing down, he tries to picture where he is, relative to how it all looked from the campus. If he’s not completely disoriented—and there’s no guarantee of that—the big ski lodge is considerably farther along, in an area of stand-alones, not condos.
Shane speeds up, telling himself not to outrace his own headlights. The shadow of night has already found its way far up the mountainside, and although low-pressure sodium lights mark the edges of the road it would be fairly easy to make a mistake, find himself vaulting into eternity.
A couple of switchbacks farther up, he starts to see single residences. As if the smaller condos are starter
homes for the lowly Level Ones and Twos, the impressive ski lodges reserved for high-ranking Rulers. He keeps eyeing the campus below, trying to get his bearings—it can’t be much farther—when he comes around a corner and finds his windshield painted by a flashing blue lights.
He immediately slows, gives a wide berth to the security cruiser parked at the curb. As he passes he can see the officer yakking into a handheld. A quick glance reveals that the large residence is shuttered, without lights.
Damn. He keeps going, not wanting to attract the cruiser’s attention—small chance of avoiding that, in this neighborhood, but what the hell—and waits until the flashing lights are out of sight before pulling over to assess the situation. Is it possible that he’s got it all wrong? That the mysterious Barlows either have nothing to do with Haley’s disappearance, or they’ve stashed her someplace else, maybe far removed from Conklin?
Unless deploying the storm shutters is to keep away the prying eyes.
Only one way to find out.
Shane is trying to find a place to park his vehicle, somewhere it won’t be noticed, where he can recon the shuttered ski lodge without freezing to death, when the night turns blue with lights.
13. Ruler Weems Says It’s Up To You
There was this show on A&E once, about the Stockholm syndrome. You probably already know what that is, but in case you don’t, that’s when people taken hostage start to identify with the bad guys who are holding them. The term
comes from this incident in Sweden where bank robbers kept people hostage for five days, and by the end the victims were defending the bad guys. It sounds totally whacked, but apparently it has do with what happens to people under stress, and how they gravitate to those with power.
In my particular situation, I seem to have gotten it backward. Missy Barlow, who helped abduct me, and who is holding me prisoner in her own home, has got it into her silly little head that we’re best friends.
When the cop first rings the doorbell, she clutches me and whispers, “Oh my god! They’re coming! You’ve got to help us!”
We’re hiding upstairs in the master bedroom—way too many mirrors, if you ask me—pretending the house is unoccupied. Shades drawn—electronically activated, actually—lights on low, we’re sealed inside. Which means, obviously, that no one can answer the door. But we can see the cop on the monitor, leaning on the buzzer and shouting into the intercom, wanting to know if anybody’s home.
“What do they want?” Missy whimpers. “Eldon, make them stop!”
Her husband, who is slender and somehow heterosexually effeminate, looks to be on the verge of tears. “How do you suggest I do that?” he hisses. “Just be quiet, maybe they’ll go away.”
Missy clings to me like a long-lost sister. “Tell him to make them stop,” she begs, then turns plaintively to her husband. “Oh my god, I wish we were somewhere else! Eldon, why can’t we be somewhere else?”
That makes Eldon roll his eyes, and glance to me as if
he expects sympathy. What’s with these people? Can’t they get anything right? Have they forgotten what they did to me? And why do they think I’d share their desire to have the cops—okay, the local security officers—go away?
“It’s Eva,” Eldon says. “Somehow she knows about you.”
“I don’t know Eva from a hole in the ground,” I remind them. “But that’s a cop ringing your doorbell, not some high priestess.”
“Eva’s not a high priestess,” Missy corrects me. “She’s…she’s Eva, okay? She’s dangerously crazy, okay? People she doesn’t like, people who get in her way? Bad things happen to them. Plus the cops are on her side. Right, Eldon?”
The doorbell stops ringing, and on the monitor we watch as the cop walks away and is swallowed up by the darkness. My captors collapse like a couple of rag dolls, gasping with relief.
“Oh my god!” Missy whimpers, flopping back on their enormous bed. “Oh my god!”
“Maybe I should go out before he leaves,” I suggest. “Give myself up.”
“Are you crazy? They’ll kill you!”
“You don’t know that.”
For his part, Eldon shrugs, never meeting my eyes. “You can do what you like,” he says, speaking very carefully. “Ruler Weems said it’s up to you.”
I’m angry enough to do it, just to spite them. On the other hand, the strange little man they call Ruler Weems made an impression. He’s manipulative and charming and obviously can’t be trusted, but he did seem genuinely concerned for my safety. What if they’re right? What if my life really is in
danger? Part of me wants to reject everything they say—they
kidnapped
me!—but some other, cautious voice in my head urges me not to be too hasty. Despite the uniform, that wasn’t really a cop at the door. It was a Ruler security officer, supposedly controlled by the very same people who blew up Noah’s school. The same people holding him captive, feeding him lies, grooming him to be their new Messiah. The New Profit, that’s what they call him. How sick is that? And according to Weems the same people killed my husband. They must know that given the chance I’ll blow their ugly little world to pieces and do everything in my power to see that they spend the rest of their lives in prison.
To do that, I have to survive. I have to live for my son.