Imprisoned (32 page)

Hansen glared at me and with his jaw clenched, he said, “I. Will. Kill. You.”

My heart pounded at his words because I knew he meant it.

With Hansen distracted, Billy scrambled free. “Not tonight,” Billy said, then he pressed the stun gun against Hansen’s neck and squeezed. Hansen convulsed, then fell to his side. Though his body was still, his eyes were filled with venom as they shifted between Billy and me.

“Let’s go, Morgan,” Billy said. Blood dripped from his nose, and his lip was split open.

I didn’t have to be asked twice and I followed him as he ran in the direction Hansen and the other Enforcer had come from. Grateful beyond all reason to have Billy at my side, I kept up with him, and when we reached the corner of the building, we stopped and peered around the corner.

No one was at the gate.

“They must have been the ones on duty,” Billy said.

“Yeah, but don’t you think the others are looking for us?”

“Of course. But they’re probably still looking inside the building.” He grinned. “And remember, at night they don’t have that many Enforcers on duty.”

“Plus, the others are probably trying to figure out who started the fires.”

He nodded. “Let’s go.” He dashed away from the building and toward the gate and I was right on his heels. When we reached the gate, no guards were near and we were able to race through without being stopped.

Chapter Thirty Five

We kept running—all that time on the treadmill was paying off—and didn’t stop until we’d run several miles. When we stopped I bent over and placed my hands on my knees, panting heavily.

We were in an alley next to a store and all was quiet.

“I can’t believe we made it,” I said, elated to be free.

Billy grinned. “Thanks for getting that Enforcer off of me.”

My elation seeped away as I vividly recalled Hansen’s promise to kill me.

“Morgan, are you okay?”

“He really hates me,” I murmured.

“He was just mad because you bested him.”

I looked at Billy. “No, he
really
hates me. He has since day one.”

“Try not to think about him, okay? Right now we need to focus on where to go next.”

With difficulty, I turned my thoughts away from Hansen and toward what we needed to do now. “I have some supplies at my house.” I thought about the GPS device that had the coordinates to the tunnel programmed in to it, as well as the other supplies I’d stashed.

“We can’t go to your house, Morgan.”

“Why not?”

“They’ll look for you there.”

“Oh.”

“Do you have any other place we can go?”

I pictured the tunnel, which led to the hut and life in my home world. “Yeah, but it’s a four hour drive away.”

Billy’s shoulders slumped. “Well, that makes things a little difficult.”

“But I
have
to go there.”

“Fine.”

I was glad he didn’t even question my demand. “What about you? Do you know of any place we can go?”

He shook his head. “Nope.”

I glanced around. “Do you even know where we are?”

“That would be a big fat no.” He smiled. “No pun intended.”

I half-smiled.

“Don’t you live somewhere around here?” he asked.

“I’m not sure.”

He looked confused. “How can you not be sure?”

“I don’t even know what town this is.”

“Didn’t you pay attention when they brought you to Camp Willowmoss last week?”

“One, it was dark. And two, I’d been tasered and was face down on the back seat of the car.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.” I stepped out of the alley and glanced around. “This could be the town where Connor and Anne took me to the mall.”

“To the what?”

I’d forgotten. In this world they didn’t call them malls. “The plaza. Whatever.”

“Okay. So you remember being here?”

“I said it
could
be that town. It could also be a completely
different
town.”

“You kind of suck at this, don’t you?”

I didn’t know whether to be offended or to laugh at the truth of his statement. I chose the latter. “Yeah, I do. I admit it. I have
no
sense of direction, okay?”

“Clearly.”

“I don’t see you leading us in any particular direction either.”

“That’s because I don’t remember ever being here.”

“What about when you were brought in?”

“Yeah, that was a while ago. And, well, I might have been unconscious.”

“Unconscious?”

“Look, we’ve wasted enough time as it is. We need to keep moving. You can bet those two Enforcers will call in their buddies to come track us down.” He grinned. “As soon as they can get up, that is.”

The abject terror of Hansen getting his hands on me got me moving and I began jogging. We had no idea where we should go, but we knew to stay close to the buildings and soon we entered a residential area.

“We’re probably going to have to find someone to give us a ride,” I said, trying to catch my breath as we jogged. I glanced at Billy. “But you’re going to have to get cleaned up. No one will want to give us a ride with your face looking like that.”

“I know.”

The occasional bark of a dog was the only sound to break the silence of the early hour. No one was out and no cars passed us.

“Hey,” Billy said. “Slow down for a minute.”

I was more than happy to—my lungs felt like they were on fire. We slowed to a walk.

“See that house over there?” he asked, gesturing with his chin.

The house had a For Rent sign posted in the curtainless window. “Yeah.”

“I think it’s empty.” He headed in that direction. “Let’s check it out.”

We stepped onto the porch and I noticed a lock box on the front door. We went to the front window and peered in. The room held no furniture.

“Let’s go in the back,” Billy said.

I followed him to the gate and we slipped into the backyard, then walked around to the back door. There were no blinds or curtains on the back door and no furniture in the house.

“Yeah, no one’s here.” Billy reached for the door, but it was locked. “I could use that knife right about now.”

“Last I saw, it was stuck in Hansen’s back.” I giggled at the insanity of it all.

Billy shook his head and gave me a half-smile. “Come on.”

I followed him to a garage door. He held the locked knob and rammed his shoulder into the door. The noise seemed extra loud in the silent night air and I feared he would wake the neighbors. “Shhhh.” I listened for any sound of a neighbor stirring.

He ignored me and rammed it two more times and it finally burst inward. He grinned at me, apparently pleased with himself, and held the door open for me to go in first.

Still nervous about the noise he’d made, I went in and Billy followed me, closing the door behind him. It didn’t shut properly now, but it stayed in its frame so I hoped that would fool anyone who happened to glance that way.

Light from the street lamps filtered in through the four square windows at the top of the garage door, enabling me to see that there was nothing in the garage. Billy walked over to a door that most likely led to the house and turned the knob. Of course it was locked. He turned and looked around the garage.

Like I said, there was nothing there—no car, no tools, no junk, nothing. But Billy walked to the wall next to the door and looked at a small faucet.

“What’s that for?” I asked.

“This is where you hook up a washing machine.”

I nodded.

“I guess we can use it to clean up.”

“Good idea.”

He turned on the faucet and cleaned the blood off of his hands and face—I thought it was all
his
blood, since Hansen had been doing all the punching—then took the bandage off of his arm  and rinsed the wound, then placed his mouth under the running water and took a big drink. He turned off the faucet and turned to me. “You have more bandages, right, Morgan?”

I patted my pockets, making sure I hadn’t lost the remaining first-aid supplies, then nodded.

“Good. You should probably put a fresh one on your arm too.”

“Okay.” I drank from the faucet until my thirst was slaked.

We both checked our arms where we’d cut out the chips—the gashes we’d made looked like they might take a while to heal—then spread some ointment on them and placed large bandages over our wounds.

“We only have enough stuff to change it one more time,” I said, as I put the remaining supplies back in my pocket.

“We’ll figure something out.”

“What should we do now?”

“We have to keep moving.”

“How long do you think they’ll search for us?”

“We assaulted two of their Enforcers—they’re going to be really pissed.”

Fresh worry coursed through me. I
had
to get to that tunnel before they found us. Hansen’s words kept running through my mind.
I. Will. Kill. You.
There was no doubt he meant it and I was certain he was capable of it. “We need to find a way to get to Fox Run.”

“What’s in Fox Run?
Where
is Fox Run?”

“It’s where I lived before my family moved to Timber Hills.”

“Okay. And what’s so special about Fox Run? How is that a safe place?”

His question was both reasonable and sincere, but as I looked at his face, I imagined how his expression would change if I told him the truth.
Yeah, so, Billy. You see, I’m not from this world. I’m from a parallel universe. A world where it’s not illegal to be overweight. And I want to get back there. And you see, there’s this tunnel? In Fox Run? Yeah, it will take me there—kind of like an express train to crazyville, but you have to trust me on this.
Instead I said, “I can’t really explain right now, but that’s where I need to go.”

Skepticism was clear on his face.

If he thought that was sketchy, then he
definitely
wouldn’t want to hear the truth. “Look, I understand if you have a better idea. But, well, I’m going to Fox Run.”

He was quiet for a minute, then he nodded. “As a matter of fact, I don’t have a better idea. So Fox Run it is.”

Relief gushed through me and I realized that I didn’t want to have to make the journey alone. When we got to the tunnel I would deal with telling him the truth, but for now, we would just focus on
getting
there. I thought about Fred—the man who had given me a ride from Fox Run to Timber Hills, the man who had enlightened me on the idea that I was in a parallel world, the man who had given me his phone number—and wondered if he would give us a ride. The night the Enforcers had taken me away I’d been looking for the slip of paper with his phone number. It had to be in my room somewhere—I just had to get to my house to look.

Plus, if I could convince Billy to go to my house, I could get the backpack I’d prepared. Most importantly, I could get the GPS device that had the tunnel coordinates programmed in to it. “Billy, I know of someone we could call to give us a ride to Fox Run.”

His eyebrows went up. “You do? Who?”

“It’s this man who gave me a ride once before. But his phone number is at my house.”

“Oh.” His face showed his disappointment. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to go there.”

“But what if we went now? And then we watched the house until morning? If we could make sure none of the Enforcers were there, it would be safe.”

He chewed on his lip and stared at the wall, then his eyes met mine. “I guess it’s worth a try.”

If Billy agreed, I reasoned, it must be safe. “Okay.”

“How far is your house?”

“Well, that depends on where we are.”

He laughed and shook his head. “Back to that old discussion, are we?”

I smiled.

“Let’s find a gas station that’s open all night and see if we can get a map or something.”

“Okay.”

We left the garage, making sure no one was around, and walked back the way we had come. It looked like the center of town and that seemed the most likely place to find a gas station. Sure enough, we saw a place with its lights on.

“I’ll go in by myself,” Billy said as we approached the building. “If both of us go in with these bandages on our arms, it might look suspicious.”

“How are you going to get a map? We don’t have any money.”

“I’ll figure something out.”

I nodded, trusting him completely. I waited around the back of the building, out of sight. Five minutes later Billy came waltzing toward me, a big smile on his face. His enthusiasm was contagious and I smiled back, though I had no idea if he actually had good news.

“It looks like your town is fifteen miles east of here.”

That was a long walk. “Then why are you smiling?”

He laughed. “Because now we know which direction to go.”

“That’s what you think. Did you forget I’m directionally challenged? East could be to the left, right, whatever.”

“Luckily for you, I
have
a sense of direction.” He pointed in the direction we’d been going. “And east is that way.”

“How do you know?”

“My internal compass, Morgan. My internal compass.”

I smirked. “Whatever.”

We started off at a jog, wanting to make good time. I still loathed running, but at least I had a good reason to be doing it—and I was doing it by choice. “How did you figure out where Timber Hills is, anyway?” I asked, the idea suddenly occurring to me that the clerk in the gas station may also know where we were going.

“They had a bunch of maps near the door. I just opened one up and looked.”

“Oh.” That was easier than I’d thought. “And the clerk didn’t care?”

He laughed. “I didn’t ask her.”

After several miles we found ourselves going down the sidewalk of a wide street lined with houses. Eerie quiet surrounded us, making me edgy. With no one around, we stood out. It was true that people jogged all the time in this world—one thing that wasn’t so different from my home world—but not usually at three o’clock in the morning.

“Hold up,” Billy whispered.

I slowed to a walk next to him, wondering what he’d seen.

He motioned with his head toward a pair of bicycles lying in a nearby yard. “What do you think?”