Mind Games (22 page)

“So, you’re not going to tell The Leader about this?” Max asked.

“No, Max. I’m not.” Then Dallas turned to Cameron. “You mind helping clear the road?”

Cameron joined Dallas atop the highway and they each took a carcass. They moved the wolves towards the ditch and kicked them down towards the largest body.

“There,” Dallas said, taking another puff from is cigarette, “A complete set. Now, Max. Listen. If The Leader knew what kind of shenanigans have gone on tonight, Stan and I would get just as must heat as the both of you. I cut the exterior cameras before I came out here. Even Sheri will have no idea what happened.” Dallas spat into the grass. “Besides, the heist is just around the corner. And I can’t have you two locked up that night.” Then he slung the shotgun over his shoulder. “Stan, have some manners. Pull up your pants. Let’s get you guys back underground...where you belong.” Dallas produced the remote from his pocket. “Leave it up to Max to trick Stan with the old breaker board trick. Now,” he said, walking back towards the others. “We don’t want to disturb anyone else.” He maneuvered the joystick down with his thumb, causing the mechanical tree to lock into its standby position. “It seems the The Mechanical Trap is working again. Mission accomplished.”

Cameron stretched his neck. “What about beyond the pines? Has the storm died down at all?”

Dallas stopped and turned around. “You mean the wind? Nope. Damn wind took my hat.”

“Why so glum?”

Sheri closed the oven with her hip and placed a Carmel Apple Crunch Custard on potholders. “What’s the matter, cat got your tongue?”

On the way into the freight elevator, Cameron faked a minor injury. At the end of the Unit Two shift, he purposefully tripped over the ledge of the elevator’s doorframe and howled in pain. He dropped down to the floor and gritted his teeth in his planned agony.

Dallas sent him to the kitchen.

Sheri gave Cameron an ice bag wrapped in a dishtowel and placed it on his ‘swollen’ ankle.

It was the same ankle that sported Stan’s tracking device. The faked injury served two purposes: 1. An excuse to talk to Sheri in the kitchen and 2. A chance to possibly freeze the tracking device.

“Listen Cameron,” Sheri consoled. “You hurt your ankle, not your mouth, so tell me what’s going on.”

He removed the dishtowel from the icepack and placed the cold surface directly against the blinking tracker. The ice bag touched his flesh and sent a shivering sting up through his nervous system.

“I just tripped in the elevator.”

“Oh, you’re not the first. When they installed that thing, I knew it was going to be hazardous.”

Cameron pressed harder. “I’m sure I’ll be fine,” he said.

“Lord knows how many people have just about fainted down there in the tunnels. Yes, the ventilation has improved greatly, but I still wonder if enough oxygen is pumped down there for everyone to maintain a healthy state of mind.”

“Sheri, tell me, do you like t
o
ca
n
things?”

“Like vegetables? Fruit? Oh yes. Yes I do. I’ve made pickled horseradish, pickled sauerkraut, pickled olives, pickled green beans, peaches, ghost peppers, garlic, and of course, pickled rabbit’s feet.”

Any wicked witch would have been envious.

“As you can tell, it’s one of my many hobbies. However, some of the things I’ve pickled over the years have gone rotten, but I keep them anyway. It’s always best to stay on the safe side of botulism. My aunt Sue ate a bad jar of pickled pepperoni. That woman just didn’t know when to say ‘when.’ No will power. Shame, shame.”

Could this conversation possibly be any stranger
?
He thought
.
Yes. Yes it could.

“And another thing,” Sheri dug her thumb into the crust of the Carmel Apple Crumble Crunch Custard on the stovetop and took a bite. “Hmmm. Needs more cinnamon. When Bill was still alive, he’d help me seal jars before we put them in the cellar. But Bill would sometimes clip his toenails at the same time, so that’s one of the reasons I don’t open the pickled garlic anymore. I’m afraid it went bad from the...”

“Wait, the cellar?” Cameron could feel the tracking device on his ankle becoming even more rigid. The ice was working.

“What about it?” She wiped his slobbery thumb on her apron.

“You said you saved a lot of your pickled foods.”

“I did. They are all lined up down there in mason jars like little trophies. There’s a tale behind all of them too. I sometimes go down there and check the dates on the jars just to reminisce.”

“Really? Can you show me?” Cameron still believed he could find Jen locked up somewhere in the compound. He wanted to rule out certain areas, and the cellar Max had mentioned during one of their checkers games was a fair place to start.

Sheri leaned against the counter and pulled her glasses off, cleaning them on her apron. The greasy apron merely smudged her glasses further. “Why would you want to go down to the cellar?” A wave of suspicion washed over her wrinkled face. “It’s kind of musty down there. Not much to see really.”

Through the uneasiness of Sheri’s body language, Cameron assumed she was hiding something. “Look, I just want to see some of your pickled trophies. That’s all.”

“With your leg in this condition? I don’t think so.” She sprinkled some flour on the counter and glanced at a recipe for her next dessert.

“I’m already feeling better.” He removed the ice pack. The tracker no longer blinked. The LED was dimmer now and held solid. Frozen.

“No, you need to rest. Honey, it may look fine now, but in a few hours, your leg will look like a bloated blimp. I’m not a nurse, but I’ve seen it before.”

Sheri dusted her hands off and cracked two eggs into a mixing bowl.

“Besides, if I took you down there, you could get injured again, and I’m not going to be the reason you miss any work in the replica.”

“Sheri, does The Leader know how many desserts you make for yourself?”

“Sure he does. What? You think you can blackmail me with that? No, The Leader supports my baking pursuits. Just because I don’t share all the desserts with the workers doesn’t mean I sit here at night eating entire pies by my lonesome.”

Cameron raised his eyebrows accusingly.

“Ok, you’ve got me,” Sheri said, “I’ve done that once or twice, but I often share with The Leader too. That’s why he’s been packing on the pounds. I like to us
e
a lo
t
of butter.”

“So you’ve seen him?”

“You are curious today, Cameron. Yes I’ve seen him. It’s been two years since he took over my house, so of course I’ve seen him.”

“What does his face look like?”

“Well, he’s got quite a…um…his teeth aren’t exactly straight.” She pretended to clean her bifocals again, smudging them further. “What, you want me to draw of picture of him for you? He’s really gained weight since the early days, and I do feel bad about that.”

“You’ve never seen his face. Max told me no one has.”

“Well, Max can be a real smart Alec, but you’re right. I’ve never seen his face.”

“And The Leader won’t mind if you take me down to the cellar.”

Sheri bit her lip and broke eye contact.

“What are you so afraid of?” Cameron said. “You think I’ll steal some of your precious canned food? I’m interested in these old houses. It would be cool to see how the foundation was laid. No trouble.”

“What about your ankle?”

“Don’t worry about me.”

Sheri looked into the living room as Unit Two enjoyed their board games and banter. Dallas was seated, playing Chinese checkers with his back to the kitchen.

Sheri’s orthopedic shoes squeaked as she stepped towards Cameron.  “Fine. I’ll take you down there, but we have to be quick about it.”

Cameron removed the ice pack, stood and followed her to the back of the kitchen that curved out of view from anyone in the living room. Cameron knew he only had minutes before the ankle tracker thawed. They’d have to be quick.

Sheri’s veiny hands reached into a cookie jar hiding behind the toaster. She popped it open and removed a small key, rusted from age.

She inserted the key and turned it, pushing the cellar door open to darkness below.

Sheri went first.

As she led Cameron down the rickety staircase, he tried his best to maintain his limp, using the wooden railing for support and hopping with his “good” foot.

When they reached the bottom, Sheri felt around in the darkness for a beaded chain. A quick pull flooded the cellar with light from the swinging bare bulb. Jagged shadows sneered in response to the light.

Just as Sheri explained, five large wooden shelves stood in the middle of the room and were entirely full of canned foods. Cameron thought he saw a pair of eyeballs floating in one of the jars, but it was only his imagination.

Olives. They were only olives.

The muted colors of the jars blurred together amidst the stacks, and the pungent stench of vinegar was enough to knock out a small pigeon.

Bare cement bricks blocked in the perimeter of the walls. The floor was covered in dead centipedes and crusty worms. Sheri kicked a stiff rat into the corner and yanked down a few cobwebs from the ceiling.

Stacks of firewood lined the wall, leftover from when the freight elevator used to be a fireplace. Two broken barrels and a set of ladders leaned in the corner to their right. Cameron stepped forward onto a tattered rug that was so worn its pattern had become nothing more than an unraveled jumble of threads.

“See, this is it,” she said. “Not much of a destination really. Was it what you expected?”

Cameron didn’t answer. He scanned the cellar, seeking out any significant details
:
Signs of a struggle? Pieces of Jen’s clothing? The smell of her perfume? There had to be something.

He tried not to trip an
d
actuall
y
injure himself on the old rug.

What he saw made him shudder.

Limp, furry skins hung from metal racks at different heights.

They were young creatures.

Rabbits.

The bare bulb continued to swing, but there was still more behind the shelves of jars that Cameron could not yet identify. The darkness absorbed the light too quickly.

Sheri shuffled past him and pulled another chain, lighting up the back of the cellar. The racks of rabbit skins, though less foreboding in the light, still reinforced that Sheri’s sweet side had a nasty edge to it.

Motioning to the cracked foam speakers of an outdated stereo system, Sheri spoke in her bubbly style, which made the cellar no less scary.

“Bill listened to music while he skinned the critters from his hunt. After he passed, I had to learn how to pursue the beasts myself. The Leader allows me four hours every Wednesday evening to go out and hunt for more. As you can see, the woods were rather kind to me last week. I shot twenty-four total. A new record for me.”

On the floor behind the racks, Cameron noticed two identical trunks. They were padlocked with shiny, modern locks.

“What’s inside the trunks?” he asked.

“I’m not supposed to say, but you’re a good boy, Cameron, so I can budge a little on the rules.”

She walked around the rabbit racks and sat on the first trunk, thumping the second with the palm of her hand.

“All that food upstairs doesn’t pay for itself. Every two weeks, The Leader sends Dallas to the store for more ingredients. I write up a list for him, give him some cash, and off he goes.” She gestured towards another locked door behind the second trunk. “Then, he loads up the pantry.”

“Is there a woman down here?”

Sheri’s head jolted forward and her smile vanished. “What?”

“The woman from the city. Is she in the pantry?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Cameron hobbled towards Sheri. “I think you do.”

“No really…I…”

“The systems manager of security at the Empire Bank. You guys have her here. Where is she?”

Sheri stood up. “Oh, her? Sweetheart I don’t know.”

“She must have to eat. Where do you bring the food?”

Sheri was flustered. “I really have no idea...”

“Open the pantry.”

“Cameron…”

“Open it now!”

“Alright. Fine.”

As Sheri pushed one of the money trunks aside and unlocked the pantry door, Cameron glanced down at his tracker device. The light was less dim now, but still solid. In a moment, it would reactivate and Stan would notify Dallas. Sheri would probably also get in trouble for taking him into the restricted area.

The pantry was rather spacious, and the food was organized according to boxes, cans, snacks, and raw ingredients.

Two deep chest freezers hummed in the back. Cameron made Sheri open them. To his relief, they were only filled with frozen food.