Cry For Tomorrow (20 page)

Another quake shook the room, knocking supplies from shelves and moving furniture around. Some of those in the room raised their heads and seemed frightened, others did not react at all. The woman introduced a few moments earlier as Cassie rose to her feet and made her way to the cluster of children.

“I need to take them to the playroom,” she stated worriedly. “They’ll be safer there.” She took several steps in that direction before stopping and turning to face us. “Maybe your little ones would feel safer there as well?” She held out a hand to Jon and Merry.

I nodded. “Yes, I’m sure they would.” I had to nudge the suddenly shy youngsters. “Go with Cassie, it’ll be safer and you can play with the other children.” They both looked at me with big eyes.

“Ooo-kay,” answered little Jon. Hefting his walking stick in one hand, he took Merry’s with his other before following Cassie.

I watched curiously as the group of children docilely allowed themselves to be herded from the room and was painfully aware that only a few of the children responded eagerly or even interacted with those around them.

“It might be better if you left those two with us when you move on,” said Karol with a quick look at Rainor.

I thought about it for a moment and then nodded my head. “Yes, they don’t have any families and it’s much too dangerous for them to follow us around, no matter where we go from here,” I added hesitantly.

“Right, speaking of which,” Jake interrupted, “just what are our plans? We can’t go back to the apartments again without risking getting picked up by the Agency, or even the police, now that we’ve blown a few of them up.”

We all turned our eyes to Rainor expectantly.

“I really wish we had a little more time to develop some trust here before we get down to business, but we don’t have it,” Rainor began as he paced a few steps away. The deep frown he wore made his face look ancient. “Look, I don’t know if I can come up with the right words to convince you to go with me, but you
have got
to trust in your own instincts here. You know that everything is falling apart and if we don’t do something right now, well, soon it will be too late.”

As if for emphases, another earth tremor shook the room.

“When would you want us to leave for this Tereus?” asked Carl.

Startled by his question, I opened my mouth to demand why he would even consider going with us. After all, Carl had absolutely no psi talent. But I caught my breath and held my questions when I felt O’Malley’s hand on my arm. As surprised as I was, Jennie and Jake did a double-take, but held their comments when they saw the old man’s restraining hand on my arm. We exchanged glances and were silent.

O’Malley obviously knew about Carl, but Rainor had no idea that he had nothing to contribute to his venture, and smiled at the younger man in relief.

“It would be best if we left right away,” Rainor answered him. “That way we won’t be hindering these folks if they feel threatened in any way and need to move to a safer location.”

“Great, I’m ready to have a look at this Tereus place you’ve all been ranting about. But, you know what?” Carl took a couple of steps across the room, hobbling as if he’d injured one of his feet. “I really need to take a ten minute break here and get this damned pebble out of my shoe.” He gave a half-laugh as he dropped his backpack and began removing the harness and sword from his back. Leaving his things on a bench near me, he hobbled off toward another bench at the far side of the room and well away from us.

“Right, I guess we could all use a quick break for something to drink and maybe a few of those protein bars your Company so generously hands out,” Rainor agreed in relief.

“We sure have plenty of those,” Karol told us with a smile before walking toward a storage cupboard at the far side of the room. Rainor followed a few steps behind her.

Left to ourselves, finally, my friends and I huddled together.

“What’s up with Carl?” demanded Jake. “Not only is he
never
enthusiastic about things like this, he doesn’t—”

“He doesn’t have any psi ability,” I finished. I turned to get Jennie’s opinion and realized that she wasn’t there. “Jen?”

“Shshshs,” whispered O’Malley, “If I don’t miss my guess, she’s employing that little trick of hers to check out your friend.”

“You know about Jennie’s ability to camouflage herself?” I hissed at the old man in surprise.

“Heck, yes. You bunch of kids have been real careless around the building. I’d have had to be dumb and blind not to notice.”

“Yeah, but we hardly ever even saw you,” Jake said in surprise

“Doesn’t mean I didn’t see you,” O’Malley laughed softly. “You think you’re the only ones know how to put in security cameras?”

We had gone from surprised to annoyed and were puffing up for an argument when the commotion started.

“Hey! What’s the big idea!” roared Carl. “You’ve got no right to come snooping around me like some damn big invisible cat!”

“Yeah, right, and just what are you doing making telephone calls on a cell phone no one even knew you had?” demanded Jennie. “Who were you calling?”

“Hey, what’s going on man?” Jake was at Jennie’s side, ready to defend her. “First you volunteer for this mission—you
never
risk your ass for something dangerous unless there’s something in it for you—and I’d really like to know
why
you would even think about coming when you have absolutely no psi talent that would help.”

“He doesn’t have psi ability?” demanded Rainor as we all converged on Carl.

“No, he doesn’t. What he does have is a lot of clandestine meetings with people we don’t know,” Jake told him.

“What
you
don’t know is what the hell you are talking about,” Carl growled defensively, “and I don’t have to answer to any one of you!”

“Yes, you do, when it’s
our
lives you’re risking.” Jake was so angry that his face had turned bright red. “When Zack and I questioned you about your absences, you kept implying that you had a couple of girls on the side and didn’t want Halie to know. But you know what? I thought that was a pretty dirty thing to do to her so I thought I might sorta follow you a few times and see for myself what was going on before I told her about it.” He looked at me apologetically. “And you know what I saw? I saw you meeting with women who took folded sheets of paper from you and exchanged whispered conversations and then took off.”

“So, either you have a really bad come-on or you were giving them info on something, or someone,” deduced Jake. “Which was it, Carl?”

“Hey, now you know we’re all good friends here, I would never do anything to hurt any of you,” Carl stuttered and tried to put the small phone in his back pocket, but O’Malley’s hand shot out and snatched it from him.

“How about if we just have a look to see who this boy’s been calling?” he said as he began pushing buttons.

“Hey! Give it back!” Carl lunged for the phone, but Jake and Jennie grabbed him and pulled him away.

“Well now, how about that,” O’Malley glared at Carl. “You want to start ‘fessing up now, or do you want me to read them all these nice text messages you been sending to Agency Central?”

When Carl merely continued to glare at him, O’Malley began pushing the buttons on the face of the small cell phone. “Don’t want to talk about it? Well, let’s see now, how about we start with your most recent text message.
Just entering the compound. looks like freak central. am sending coordinates now,
” he read when Carl didn’t immediately answer.

I could only stare in shocked silence as I watched Carl struggle fiercely against the hands holding him. He kept up the charade for several more minutes before giving up. He was a large man and very strong, but I also knew that part of Jake’s talents was the unusual strength he was able to exhibit when necessary.

When he’d accepted that we had no intention of releasing him, Carl stopped struggling.

“Okay, so what if you do know? You all think you’re so high and mighty ‘cause you got special abilities! Ha! See what they get you now? Are they going to pay for the groceries or get you one of them fancy apartments in New Towne? Hell no!” he laughed. “Hell, the reward I was going to get from just the three of you was enough to get me that new condo! What do you think they’re going to give me for giving them the location of this place? Hell, this is Freak Central!”

“Son-of-a-bitch!” growled Pete. “Karol, I told you we were taking too big a risk in bringing them here!” He snatched Carl by the shirt front. “I think you’d best let us deal with this piece of crap now.”

Jake and Jennie exchanged questioning glances with me before relinquishing their grip.

“Yeah, okay, that’s probably best,” Jake took a step away.

Two other men joined Pete as he twisted Carl’s arm behind his back and began pushing him in the direction of the locked and barred door at the far side of the room.

“Wait—” I swallowed the lump in my throat and forced myself not to look at Carl. “Wh-what are you going to do with him?”

Pete got a real mean look in his eyes and jerked Carl’s arm a little tighter. “Well now, I think we’ll just let your
friend
here spend a little time in tunnel number thirteen until his buddies get here to rescue him. That ought to make him think real hard before he goes getting greedy again.”

“Tunnel thirteen?” I asked, trying not to let anyone know how sick I felt.

“Right, you see we’re so close to the rifts here that we’ve been getting more than our share of phantoms coming through, and they’re not all big pets like Rainor’s little serpentines there,” Pete informed us.

“Yes, that’s true,” interrupted Karol. “To gain entry into the over-world, most of the phantoms must pass through the curtain or barrier between the dimensions, which seems to act like some kind of filter. Those that do are rarely dangerous or aggressive, but these creatures entering through that particular tunnel are different. Rainor says the curtain is damaged in that area and isn’t properly filtering the ghouls before they pass into over-world. So many of them proved to be violent and dangerous that we renamed it number thirteen and sealed it with the lead door.”

“Right,” sneered Pete. “The spooks down there may not actually kill him but they sure will give him the scare of his life.” When he saw the looks on our faces, he added, “but don’t you worry, we’ll leave the lock off so his friends will look in there and maybe let him back out when they get here.”

“Hey! You can’t do this to me!” shouted Carl as he was dragged toward the big door. “You just wait, you bunch of spook-lovers! When my friends at the Agency are through with you, you’ll be just as mindless as that bunch of mangy freaks!”

After what we had just learned, none of us felt any inclination to interfere as we watched Carl being pushed into the mouth of the black tunnel waiting to swallow him.

“Here, take this!” Pete growled as he tossed Carl a large flashlight.

Carl caught the flashlight and immediately flipped its switch. We could see the bright beam of light striking the cold stone of the tunnel walls in the brief space before the door slammed shut.

“That was more than he deserved,” spit Jake. “I’d have left him to sweat in the dark.”

“Oh, he didn’t do him any favors,” smirked Karol. “The phantoms are drawn to the light. It won’t be long before they find him.” She spun away and started across the room.

“Okay, Rena, Cassie! Get everybody into the tunnels, we’re about to have company,” she shouted.

Even the nearly comatose freaks scattered about the room responded to Karol’s orders and began stumbling about in confusion until she and the other two women expertly gathered them together and began herding them toward the two open doorways to the left-side of the room. All except the two tall, bearded men I’d noticed earlier docilely obeyed. The two, one tall, with a mop of shaggy sand-colored curls, the other shorter and stouter with lanky, black locks drooping over his collar, watched Rainor’s every move.

Karol noticed them and took a step in their direction, evidently intending to herd them along with the others but when she saw the fanatical glaze of their eyes she turned away, shaking her head. “Rainor! If you have any hopes of getting these people to Tereus, then you’d better take them now, before any of the others decide to follow you through,” she called over her shoulder.

“Okay folks, we won’t be going with them.” Rainor informed us when we would have followed Karol and the group of freaks disappearing into the semi-darkness of the two tunnels. He drew a large, shiny key from one of his pockets as he waved us in the direction of the closed doorway adjoining the one Carl had been pushed through.

I had taken a step to join him when I noticed Jake examining the sword Carl had abandoned on the bench. “It would be a shame for it to go to waste, and there’s no telling who or what we might encounter on this little trip,” I said when he looked up at me.

“You’re right, he doesn’t need it now,” he shook his head, plainly trying to contain the anger he felt. “I still can’t believe he did something like this.”

“Me either,” I told him as I wrapped an arm around his shoulders and hugged him to me. “We trusted him and he betrayed us. That’s something that will always hurt.”

Jake nodded without looking me in the eyes as he wrapped the straps of the harness around the sword. “Coming?” He nodded in the direction of Jennie and Rainor across the room as he tucked his new weapon under one arm.

I watched my friends shuffling towards the doorway and hesitated. I just wasn’t ready to join them yet. “I’ll be along in a few minutes.”

Jake gave me a curious look and for a minute I thought he was going to argue, but then he seemed to think better of it. Nodding his head to let me know he understood, he turned away. I settled on a bench set off to one side of the room where I had a clear view of Rainor, who was still fumbling with the key and lock. Dusty jumped onto the bench and lay down at my side with her head in my lap and watched me with patient eyes. She was good with taking a break from all these strangers.