Dark River (2 page)

“Thank you, dear. I’m lucky to have such a wonderful daughter.”

SCOUTS WERE IN position at the perimeter of New Harmony, and the rest of the mercenaries had just left a motel in San Lucas. Boone e-mailed a message to Kennard Nash, the current head of the Brethren. A few minutes later, he received a response: The previously discussed action is now confirmed.

Boone called the driver of the SUV carrying the first team. “Proceed to Point Delta. Employees should now take their PTS medication.”

Each mercenary was carrying a plastic packet containing two pretraumatic stress pills. Boone’s employees had nicknamed them “pits pills,” and swallowing them before an action was called “taking your pits.” The medication temporarily immunized anyone entering a violent situation against strong feelings of guilt or regret.

The original research concerning PTS was done at Harvard University when neurologists found out that accident victims taking a cardiac drug called propranolol had decreased amounts of physiological trauma. Scientists working for the Brethren’s research group, the Evergreen Foundation, realized the implications of this discovery. They obtained a grant from the U.S. Defense Department to study the drug when used by soldiers in combat. The PTS medication inhibited the brain’s hormonal reactions to shock, disgust, and fear. This lessened the formation of traumatic memories.

Nathan Boone had never taken a PTS pill or any other kind of trauma medication. If you believed in what you were doing, if you knew you were right, then there was no such thing as guilt.

ALICE STAYED IN her bedroom until the rest of the budget committee showed up for dinner. Martin Greenwald arrived first, knocking softly on the kitchen door and waiting for Joan to greet him. Martin was an older man with stubby legs and thick eyeglasses. He had been a successful businessman in Houston until his car broke down on the freeway one afternoon and a man named Matthew Corrigan stopped to help him. Matthew turned out to be a Traveler, a spiritual teacher with the power to leave his body and travel to other realities. He had spent several weeks talking to the Greenwald family and their friends, then had embraced them all at one final meeting and walked away. New Harmony was a reflection of the Traveler’s ideas— an attempt to create a new way of living that was apart from the Vast Machine.

Alice had learned about Travelers from other kids, but was uncertain how it all worked. She knew that there were six different worlds, called realms. This world— with its fresh bread and dirty dishes— was the Fourth Realm. The Third Realm was a forest with friendly animals, and that sounded great. But there was also a Realm of hungry ghosts, and another place where people were always fighting.

Matthew’s son, Gabriel, was a young man in his twenties who was also a Traveler. In October, he had spent a night at New Harmony with a Harlequin bodyguard named Maya. Now it was early February, and the adults were still talking about Gabriel while the kids argued about the Harlequin. Ricky Cutler said Maya had probably killed dozens of people and that she knew something called the Tiger Claw Variation: one punch to the heart, and the other guy was dead. Alice decided that the Tiger Claw Variation was a big fake invented on the Internet. Maya was very much a real person, a young woman with thick black hair and ghostly blue eyes who carried her sword in a tube hanging from her shoulder.

A few minutes after Martin arrived, Antonio Cardenas thumped on the door and walked in without asking. Antonio was a swaggering, athletic man who had once been a contractor in Houston. When the first group moved into the canyon, he had built the three windmills up on the mesa that provided the community’s electric power. Everyone at New Harmony liked Antonio; some of the younger boys even wore their tool belts in the same low-slung way he did.

The two men smiled at Alice and asked her about her cello lessons. Everyone sat down at the oak wood table— like most of the furniture in the house, it had been built in Mexico. The pasta was served and the adults began to discuss the issue before the budget committee. New Harmony had now saved enough money to buy a sophisticated battery system to store electric power. The current system allowed every family to have a stove, a refrigerator, and two space heaters. More batteries would mean more appliances, but perhaps that wasn’t a good idea.

“I think it’s more efficient to keep the washing machines up at the community center,” Martin said. “And I don’t think we need espresso machines and microwave ovens.”

“I disagree,” Joan said. “Microwaves actually use less power.”

Antonio nodded. “And I’d like some cappuccino in the morning.”

AS ALICE CLEARED the table of dirty dishes, she glanced at the wall clock over the sink. It was late Wednesday night in Arizona, which meant Thursday afternoon in Australia. She had about ten minutes to get ready for her music lesson. The adults ignored her while she quickly pulled on her long winter coat, got her cello case, and went outside.

It was still snowing. The rubber soles of her work boots made a crunching sound as she walked from the front door to the gate. A six-foot-high adobe wall surrounded the house and vegetable garden; it kept out the deer in the summertime. Last year, Antonio had installed a large gate with carvings of scenes from the Garden of Eden. If you stood close enough to the dark oak wood you could see Adam and Eve, a flowering tree, and a serpent.

Alice pushed the gate open and passed beneath the archway. The path up the canyon to the community center was covered with snow, but that didn’t bother her. The kerosene lantern she carried swung back and forth as the snowflakes kept falling. Snow covered the pine trees and mountain mahogany; it transformed a pile of firewood into a mound that looked like a sleeping bear.

The community center was made up of four large buildings around a courtyard. One of the buildings was the Upper School for older students, eight rooms that were designed for online learning. A router in the storage room was connected to a cable that led to a satellite dish on the mesa above them. There were no telephone lines at New Harmony, and cell phones didn’t work in the canyon. People either used the Internet or the satellite phone kept at the community center.

Alice turned on the computer, removed her cello from its carrying case, and positioned a straight-backed chair in front of the Web cam. She connected with the Internet and a moment later her cello teacher appeared on the large monitor screen. Miss Harwick was an older woman who had once played for the Sydney Opera.

“Have you practiced, Alice?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Let’s start with ‘Greensleeves’ today.”

Alice drew the bow back and her body absorbed the deep vibration from the first note. Playing the cello made her feel bigger, more substantial, and she could hold on to that power for a few hours after she stopped playing.

“Very good,” said Miss Harwick. “Now let me hear section B again. This time focus on your pitch in the third measure and—”

The monitor screen went black. At first, Alice thought that something was wrong with the generator. But the electric lights were working and she could hear the faint hum of the computer fan.

While she was checking the cables, a door squeaked open and Brian Bates walked into the room. Brian was a fifteen-year-old boy with dark brown eyes and blond hair down to his shoulders. Helen and Melissa thought he was cute, but Alice didn’t like to talk about things like that. She and Brian were music friends; he played the trumpet and worked with teachers in London and New Orleans.

“Hey, Celloissima. Didn’t know you were practicing tonight.”

“I’m supposed to be having a lesson, but the computer just went off.”

“Did you change anything?”

“Of course not. I went online and contacted Miss Harwick. Everything was okay until a few seconds ago.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll fix it. I’ve got a lesson in forty minutes with a new teacher in London. He plays for the Jazz Tribe.”

Brian put down his trumpet case and pulled off his parka. “How are the lessons going, Celloissima? I heard you practicing on Thursday. It sounded pretty good.”

“I’ve got to come up with a nickname for you,” Alice said. “What about Brianissima?”

Brian smiled as he sat down at the computer. “Issima is a feminine ending. It’s got to be something different.”

Pulling on her coat, Alice decided to leave her cello at the community center and go back to the house. A door from the performance room led to a storage closet. She stepped around a potter’s wheel and left the cello leaning against the wall in a corner, protected by two plastic bags of ceramic clay. That was when she heard a man’s voice coming from the performance room.

Alice returned to the partially opened door, peered through the gap, and stopped breathing. A big man with a beard was pointing a rifle at Brian. The stranger wore brown-and-green camouflage clothing like the deer hunters Alice had seen on the road to San Lucas. Dark green camouflage grease was smeared on his cheeks, and he had special goggles with a rubber strap. The goggles were pushed upward on his forehead, the two eyepieces combining into a single lens that reminded her of a monster’s horn.

“What’s your name?” the man asked Brian. His voice was flat and neutral.

Brian didn’t answer. He pushed back the chair and got up slowly.

“I asked you a question, pal.”

“I’m Brian Bates.”

“Anybody else here in this building?”

“No. Just me.”

“So what are you doing?”

“Trying to go online.”

The bearded man laughed softly. “You’re wasting your time. We just cut the cable to the mesa.”

“And who are you?”

“I wouldn’t worry about that, pal. If you want to grow up and get laid, own a car, stuff like that— then you better answer my questions. Where’s the Traveler?”

“What traveler? Nobody has visited this place since the first snowfall.”

The man motioned with his rifle. “Don’t be cute. You know what I’m talking about. A Traveler stayed here with a Harlequin named Maya. Where’d they go?”

Brian shifted his weight slightly, as if he were going to sprint for the door.

“I’m waiting for an answer, pal.”

“Go to hell…”

Brian jumped forward and the bearded man fired his rifle. The gunshots were so loud that Alice jerked away from the door. She stood in the shadows for a full minute, the sound still vibrating through her body, and then returned to the light. The man with the rifle was gone, but Brian lay on his side, as if he had fallen asleep on the floor, curled around a bright pool of blood.

Her body was the same, but her Alice-self— the girl who had laughed with her friends and played the cello— had suddenly become much smaller. It felt as if she were living inside a hollow statue, looking out at the world.

Voices. Alice stepped back into the shadows as Brian’s killer returned with six other men. They all wore camouflage clothing and radio headsets with little microphones that curved around to their mouths. Each man carried a different kind of rifle, but all the weapons had a laser-sighting device attached to the barrel. The leader— an older man with short hair and wire-rimmed glasses— was talking softly into his headset. He nodded and switched off the transmitter clipped to his belt.

“Okay, Summerfield and Gleason are in position with the thermal sensors. They’ll stop anyone trying to escape, but I don’t want that to happen.”

A few of the men nodded. One of them was testing his laser sight, and a little red dot danced across the white wall.

“Remember— the weapons you’ve been given have been registered under the names of people who live here. If for some reason you have to use an unregistered weapon, please keep track of location, target, and number of shots fired.” The leader waited until his men nodded. “Okay. You know what to do. Let’s go.”

The six men went away, fitting the goggles over their eyes, but the leader remained in the room. Pacing back and forth, he spoke occasionally on the headset. Yes. Confirmed. Next objective. The leader ignored Brian’s dead body— almost as if he hadn’t noticed it— but when a thin line of blood trickled across the floor, he gracefully stepped over it and kept moving.

Alice sat down in a corner of the storage room, drew her knees up to her chest, and closed her eyes. She had to do something— find her mother, warn the others— but her body wouldn’t move. Alice’s brain kept producing thoughts, and she watched them passively as if they were fuzzy images on a television screen. Someone was crying, talking loudly— and then she recognized a familiar voice.

“Where are my children? I want to see my children….”

Returning quietly to the door, Alice saw that the leader had brought Janet Wilkins into the room. The Wilkins family came from England; they had just joined New Harmony a few months ago. Mrs. Wilkins was a plump, fussy woman who seemed to be afraid of everything— rattlesnakes, rockslides, and lightning.

The leader held Mrs. Wilkins’s arm tightly. He guided her across the room and made her sit down on the straight-backed chair. “There you go, Janet. Make yourself comfortable. Can I get you a glass of water?”

“No. That’s not necessary.” Mrs. Wilkins saw the dead body, and then she turned her head away. “I-I want to see my children.”

“Don’t worry, Janet. They’re safe. I’ll take you to them in a few minutes, but there’s one thing I need you to do first.” The leader reached into his pocket, pulled out a piece of paper, and handed it to Mrs. Wilkins. “Here. Read this.”

A video camera on a tripod had been placed in the room. The leader set the camera five feet away from Mrs. Wilkins and made sure that she was in the viewfinder. “Okay,” he told her, “go ahead.”

Mrs. Wilkins’s hands were shaking as she began to read: “ ‘In the last few weeks, members of New Harmony have received messages from God. We cannot doubt these messages. We know they are true….’ ”

She stopped reading and shook her head. No. Can’t do this. Standing behind the video camera, the leader drew a handgun from his shoulder holster.

“ ‘But there are disbelievers among us,’ ” Mrs. Wilkins continued. “ ‘People who have followed the teachings of the Evil One. It’s important that we perform a cleansing act so that all of us can enter the Kingdom of Heaven.’ ”