Contain (19 page)

“
They were supposed to be
at the airport. That's why we waited, for them to show
up.”

“
You left without them,” I
cry. “How could you leave without them?”

“
The pilot couldn't wait
any longer. The risk was too great. We had to get on that plane
instead.”

My thoughts are swirling, a jumbled
mass of information and images and emotions, but they still catch
on his last spoken word. “What do you mean? Instead of
what?”

He sighs deeply and shakes his head.
“The spots were very expensive. We only managed to obtain two. Your
mother and I were trying to scrape up enough money to buy three
more, but the end came much sooner than we expected.”

I stare at him. There's a roaring
noise inside of my head. I can't seem to think.

“
I made the first choice,
Finn. It was supposed to be Leah. I couldn't bear to think of your
little sister exposed to whatever unknown disaster might occur. She
was just a little girl, eight at the time. She got the first
slot.”

“
And the second?” I ask, my
voice no more than a whisper. “Who did you pick for the second
spot?”

“
I told you, it wasn't my
choice. I let your mother decide. I realize only now, long after
the fact, how terrible it must have been for her to choose between
you and your brother. She tortured herself for weeks before finally
deciding.”

“
Who, Dad?”

“
You. She picked
you.”

I'm stunned. I open my mouth, but I
can't speak. The breath has been stolen away from me. Harper was
the perfect son. He was athletic, funny, smart. I was the weaker of
us twins, frail, always struggling in school. I wasn't social. What
did I have to offer in a post-apocalyptic world?

“
She should've picked
Harper.”

I can see from the look on his face
that he would have. It doesn't surprise me.

“
She said she chose you
because she calculated that the three of us would've had the best
chance to survive on our own.”

And suddenly the world comes crashing
down even harder on me. My mother didn't choose to save me; she
chose to keep Harper to save them.

And now I understand my father's
distance all these past years. Because of me and my bloody nose,
he's here instead of Leah.

“
I guess I'm always
screwing things up.”

Dad's plan for bringing the stranger safely inside while protecting
the rest of the bunker requires using the keeper station on Level
Six as a sort of air lock. It's a glassed-in monitoring room
overlooking the power plant with access from both the catwalk
outside and the hallway just beyond the bulk food storage
area.

Getting Mister Williams there will
require directing him to the helipad between the dam and the power
plant. “There's a set of narrow stairs built into the side of the
quarry wall,” Dad explains, when Mister Resnick stops by later that
evening to finalize the plans.

I lay on my bedroll expecting Jack to
force me to leave, but he settles into our only chair with a
disdainful smirk, then proceeds to ignore me. He probably relishes
the fact that it's burning me up inside knowing he's gotten my
father to cave.

To be honest, I couldn't have cared
less at that moment. I'm still bitterly angry that I hadn't been
told about my parents' prepper plans for me and Leah sooner. I’m
mad that we weren’t included in any of the
decision-making.

“
He'll have to climb over
the chain link fence here,” Dad says, “next to this small
outbuilding. I believe it's a supply shed of some sort, but I can't
be sure. The diagrams Mister Gronbach left me aren't as detailed as
I would have liked. But then again, his illness came on quite
suddenly.”

Jack grunts and waves his hand
impatiently, urging him to continue.

“
The fence isn't
electrified, but there's razor wire on top, so he'll either need to
cut it or throw something over it so he doesn't slice himself up.
After that, it's a straight shot to the stairs.”

Dad coughs lightly into his hand and
straightens his back. Jack still doesn't speak.

“
He'll have clear
visibility for several hundred feet around himself until he gets
inside the compound. After that, once he's over the fence and
making his way to the stairs, there are lots of potential hiding
places. And we know the fence has been breached at least once
before, we just don't know exactly where.”

“
There are no more
Wraiths,” Jack asserts.

“
Whether that's true or
not, he should be aware of the vulnerabilities.”

Jack sighs petulantly.

“
The greatest risk comes
once he's on these stairs, because there's nowhere to go but up or
down. If any infected show up at one end, he'll have no option but
to head in the opposite direction. And if he's caught in
between—”

“
We'll advise him to keep
an eye out, though it won't be necessary.”

It's obvious Jack's not thrilled with
the arrangement, since he's not getting any of the exterior access
codes. He’s got the code to enter the keeper station from the
hallway, but only Dad knows the outside one, and he's still
refusing to turn it over. But at least Jack isn't pressing the
issue. He probably sees the compromise as a step toward that
end.

“
The stairs end here and
extend out to the helipad,” Dad continues, “which is situated in
the middle of the catwalk connecting the power plant and the
dam.”

“
The skyway we use when we
check the turbines?” Jack asks.

“
The roof of it, yes,” Dad
answers. He points to the relevant section of the hand-drawn
diagram, smoothing it with the side of his hand. The paper had been
rolled up and neglected on one of Dad's shelves in the corner by
his bed all these years. “He'll follow the catwalk toward the dam,
where I'll leave the outside door open.”

“
And that's the spillway
where we dumped Gronbach's body?” He doesn't even seem to be paying
attention to my father, or even engaged in the briefing.

“
Yes, as long as the
water's running through the sluice gates, anything thrown over the
side will get washed downstream.”

“
I remember it like it was
yesterday.”

Of course you
do
, I think to myself. He's been nursing
his resentment ever since.

After only a brief pause, Dad presses
on. “Once inside the keeper station, we'll be able to talk face to
face with Mister Williams. He'll be able to shut the door to
protect himself from anything outside, and we'll be protected from
him in here. We should stock it with a bedroll and some food and
water, which will provide for his comfort and safety until we
decide what to do next.”

“
What does he do when he
needs a toilet?” I ask.

“
He can hang it over the
railing,” Jack jokes, dismissing me with a wave of his
hand.

“
We should remove anything
inside the room that he can use to shatter the glass,” Dad goes on.
“It's reinforced, but not unbreakable. Jack, I want to emphasize
that the more he cooperates, the quicker we'll all be able to trust
each other and move forward.”

Jack leans back, and the
aluminum-framed plastic lawn chair creaks under the strain of his
weight. He rubs his chin thoughtfully for a moment. Then he reaches
out and sweeps the diagram from the floor and stands.

“
I want you by the front
door as soon as first light,” he announces. “When our friend shows
up again—”

“
If
he does,” I say. I'm not convinced he will, given how he
threatened to leave.

“
Once he returns, you'll go
over the instructions with him,” Jack says, still ignoring me.
“Then we'll go below to wait for him. In the meantime, everyone
else is to be restricted to quarters.” He turns to me. “Everyone.
No exceptions.”

“
But—”

“
Not now, Finn,” Dad
quietly tells me.

Jack nods once, curtly. “This plan is
to remain between us for now. I don't want a circus
downstairs.”

“
Don't you think Doc
Cavanaugh should know?” I ask. I think about what she'd told me
earlier about testing his blood. “I'm sure she'll want to examine
him.”

“
Examine?”

“
See if he's
infected.”

Jack shakes his head.
“First things first, Finn. We bring him in, question him.
Then
she can have
him.”

He turns on his heels, steps over to
the door, and places his hand on the knob. But before he leaves, he
turns and warns my father that there's no changing his mind
now.

“
He won't!” I snap, jumping
to my feet. “Just worry about keeping your own word.”

A million things are going through my head. At times such as this,
when I can't seem to get my thoughts in order or when I just can't
sleep, I'll usually go walk the empty hallways. Even, on occasion,
going all the way down to Level Nine. But I can't even leave my
room.

And I can't get away from my
father.

I know he's not sleeping, because he's
not snoring. I wish he would, even though it'd probably irritate me
if he did, knowing that he could sleep after telling me the truth
he'd withheld from me all these years. But it irritates me even
more knowing he's lying there awake, not eight feet away from me,
as acutely aware of every move I make as I am of his.

Finally, I can't stand it anymore. I
ask, “Who would you have chosen, if it had been you deciding
between me and Harper?”

After a long while, he shifts in his
bed and sighs. The wooden boards beneath him creak. From the vent
overhead, warm air whispers in from the boiler room deep below.
Water rushes through the spillway, a constant harsh whisper, like
an endless winter wind. And the turbines chug away, not so much a
sound, but a vibration that reaches my mind through my body's
connection with the dam.

I wait for his answer, but it never
comes, and so I know without him telling me that he would have
saved Harper.

Only then am I finally able to
sleep.

* * *

This time, the dream takes me further back, to a point long before
we reach the van, yet sometime after our departure from the
evacuation center. It's a strange place for the memory to start,
but as the dream wends its sinuous way through the dark passageways
of my mind just as the bus navigates the winding mountain pass, I
begin to understand why my subconscious has brought me
here.

“
Your arm hurt?” Dad
asks.

I look down at my hand. I've been
rubbing the ache in it without realizing it. “A little,” I reply. I
think about how the vitamin shot wouldn't have bothered Harper a
single bit.

“
Yeah, me, too,” Dad says.
He rubs his own arm, but I know he's faking it for my
benefit.

I turn and stare out the
window at the night's gathering gloom, and I wonder if we'll stop
somewhere for a break. I don't want to stop. I don't
ever
want to stop running
away from the horrors I've witnessed along the road that day. But I
also don't want the driver to fall asleep at the wheel and run us
off the road. We've been going now for nearly eleven hours, and he
must be exhausted.