Minders (31 page)

“He’s faking,” one of the guys said and aimed a hard kick right at Ford’s groin.

Ford howled and writhed in pain. His mouth filled with the metallic taste of blood, his head exploded with shrieks and lights, and unending agony swept over him. He sank into oblivion.

• • •

His eyes were still closed when Sadie regained consciousness.

Ford
,
she whispered in his head.
Can you move?
She felt all the different nerve impulses running through him, but she knew she was only getting a fraction of his pain. It was enough.

The wind was picking up and she could smell rain on the way. She wished she could reach across the boundaries that separated them and cradle his head. She wanted to sit him on the toilet in his bathroom and carefully clean every one of his wounds. She’d try to make him laugh as she did it, think of any stupid thing she could to distract him from the pain. She wanted to brush the hair from his forehead and gently kiss him on the lips.

Come on, Ford
, she said, putting every ounce of her mind and her will into reaching him.
You can do this. You have to do this.

Can’t… move
, she heard him think.

He was conscious, and she could hear him
.
Sadie gulped back a sob of relief.

He was lying on his back in the scrappy grass of the empty lot, pieces of broken glass and debris littered around.

Ford, you have to move.
Sadie didn’t think she’d ever concentrated so hard in her life.
If we stay here you’ll pass out again, and you’ll be picked up by Serenity Services. Think how upset your mother would be. And Lulu.

“Don’t upset Lulu,” he murmured. He pushed himself up to a sitting position on his elbow. His head swam, and his stomach heaved. He was about to lie back down when he repeated, “Lulu,” and dragged himself onto all fours.

You’re doing great
,
Sadie told him, not sure if he was hearing her and not caring. A section of fence still lingered along the property line, and laboriously he hauled himself up it until he was standing. Pain shot through his ankle. “Got to keep moving,” he said through clenched teeth, wavering unsteadily on his feet. “Keep mov—”

His eyes fluttered, and his legs began to buckle at the knees.

Ford!
Sadie shouted sharply.

His eyes snapped open and he called “Present!” like a student waking up in class.

It had worked.
It had worked
. Sadie laughed, and he started to laugh too and mutter, “Present!”

How had that happened? Was that even possible?

Later
, she told herself.
Later you can think about that. Now you need to get him home.

Somewhere to the south of them more fireworks began to pop. Clutching a decaying fence plank, he leaned out to get a view of them.

“Pretty,” he said to no one. His eyes started to close.

Ford!
she shouted.

“Present,” he answered again.

Sadie remembered seeing a bus stop just beyond the next corner, but the lot between them and it was empty, and without anything to hold on to she had no idea how they’d get that far.

Ford let go of the splintery board, took two steps unsupported, and fell down.

Poor boy. Right on your caboose
, Sadie commiserated.

“Choo choo,” he said, amazing Sadie again. He had heard her. He had to have heard her.

Later.

Crawling on all fours, he pulled himself to the abandoned house in front of his tree house and dropped down to rest on its short stack of concrete stairs. The first drops of rain started to fall as he sat there. Propping himself on the handrail of the stairs, he stood and pushed off.

He staggered forward and was about to go sprawling when he caught a crooked NO PARKING sign. He stood, eyes closed, hugging it, the rain stinging as it hit the cuts on his face and arms. When he opened his eyes, the corner was in sight, and the bus stop beyond it.

Ford, you have to keep going
, Sadie told him.
You can do it. You can’t stop now.

“Present,” he said, but it was more like a yawn than a word.

I mean it
, Sadie told him.
You’re in a no-parking zone. Look at the sign.

He laughed, then grimaced as a bolt of pain shot from his ribs. But he unwrapped his arms from the sign and with a supreme show of effort pushed off and made it the rest of the way to the bus stop.

The bus came, finally, and he dragged himself on, apparently not looking much worse than the other drenched commuters because no one paid any attention. Sadie talked and told every joke she could remember to keep him alert enough to notice when they reached his stop.

Together they counted the steps between the bus stop and his apartment, him out loud, her in his head. The two flights of stairs required the most effort, but finally, sweaty and bloody and dirty, Ford mounted the top one, scraped his key into the front-door lock, and fell face-first onto the couch. He muttered “Present” one last time before passing out.

Sadie didn’t want to think back over the night. She lay very still, listening to his heartbeat and his breathing, letting the familiar rhythms of his body enfold her. She closed her eyes and whispered very quietly, “I love you, Ford Winter.”

She began to sob.

CHAPTER 24

WEEK 5

F
ord had been out for almost six days, when Sadie went into his subconscious in search of James. If anything could help rouse Ford it would be roiling him from inside, she thought, and there was clearly something to roil with his brother.

The great hall was quiet when she went through, all the images moving slowly and everyone talking in low voices, if at all. She felt like they were in suspended animation, lacking the will or force to spur them to action. She elicited a tiny bit of curiosity from a handful looking for news, but most were absorbed in themselves. She said hello to Plum as she went by but only got an “Oh, brother” in response.

James was by the shore of the pine-fringed lake, looking out at the icehouse, when she found him.

“You again,” he said. “I’m not sure I should talk to you.”

“Why?”

“It’s been strange down here since you came last time. Look around. Things are dying.”

Sadie shivered. “Since when? Because of me?”

“You can’t just come in and poke at things and go. It’s an ecosystem. You kill what you touch.” His tone was reproachful.

“That’s not true. You’re just saying that to make me feel bad. You want me to go away.”

He looked away from her, his mouth petulant. “Maybe.”

She stayed quiet for a moment, listening to him sigh. Finally she said, “What happened that day on the lake? At the icehouse?”

He rolled his eyes, tossing his blond hair back. “God, you ask the worst questions.”

“What was it?” she pushed.

“Ask
him
,” he sneered, pointing upward.

“I can’t. He’s sick.”

He nodded to himself. “That explains the Geronimo.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a piece of the mind that drops off when there’s been trauma. Like a flyer bailing out of a bomber. Takes the important documents with him and parachutes out before the crash. We had one the other day.”

Sadie looked around. “Where is he?”

“Think I saw him hanging around the weighting room on the plain. Most things start there before getting settled in. Lucky for you he didn’t land in the lake. Lots of times that’s where Geronimos end up. Sink deep, don’t see some of them again for years.”

“Ah.”

“Weighting room’s over there,” he said, pointing behind him.

“Okay.”

He looked angry. “Why aren’t you going?”

“Tell me about the icehouse.”

“You have to ask him, I
told
you that,” he whined. “But I’ll give you this: He knows what he did and what he didn’t do, he’s just lying about it.”

“Why?”

“Talk to the boss,” he said, pointing up.

“Could you at least tell me about the beer cans? They look like they’re all identical.”

“Multiples,” he corrected. “This place is lousy with them. Repeated patterns, same object showing up in different places, sometimes as a distraction, sometimes to stand in for something else. Like say you have—”

“Pine trees.” Sadie pointed toward the lakeshore.

“Sure. Could be a reminder of a great day you spent at the lake with your brother when you learned to skip rocks, or a symbol of winter, or the feeling of pining for someone. Keeps it efficient, one thing, lots of associations. Shortcut for the imagination.” He yawned. “Never touch them myself.”

“Multiples?”

“No, the beer cans.”

She’d bent to look at them closer, and when she stood up, James had disappeared. She walked toward the plain he’d indicated, where there was a structure with a wide arch entrance and clusters of wood benches inside. It looked like photos she’d seen of the waiting room at Central Station before it was abandoned. A couple of figures she didn’t recognize huddled together like refugees on one bench.

She spotted Ford on the other side of the space. He sat alone, shoulders curled in, repeating, “Howdy?” His eyes were wide and looked panicked.

“Howdy,” Sadie answered.

He looked at her like she was nuts. “Howdy fine?”

“Howdy, I’m fine too,” Sadie answered.

He turned his face away from her, holding the toes of his bare feet and murmuring to himself. Sadie bent closer to hear but just kept getting, “Howdy fine,” “Howdy fine.”

“
What are you trying to say
?”
she asked, desperate to know the important piece of information his brain sent to safekeeping before losing consciousness. “Say it again,” she implored.
Howdy fine, how define, how—

CHAPTER 25

H
ow’d they find me?”

Ford woke with those words like a swimmer breaking the surface of a lake, wide-eyed, gasping, and thirsty. He’d been unconscious for five and a half days.

It was two thirty in the morning, although time had ceased to have any meaning in the Winter house. One day slipped into the next, someone always sitting in the chair next to the couch in case something—anything—happened.

“Who?” Lulu asked. She was the one on watch when his eyes opened. When he showed a sign of actual consciousness, not another false alarm, she called over her shoulder, “Mom, he’s awake,” and turned back to him to say, “Don’t look in the mirror when you go to the bathroom, you’ll be scared.”

Ford took a deep breath, and Sadie felt him wince at the pain it triggered in almost every part of his body. “Good to know,” he said. He looked down at his arms and hands, which were criss-crossed with cuts and abrasions. There were bandages with smiling suns on both forearms, and one with Snoopy taped over his right knuckles.

Sadie had never been as grateful for anything in her life as she was for Ford waking up. She was overwhelmed by her love for him, by her relief, and by the vacuum left by worry and fear, but she pushed all of that aside to concentrate on Ford.
Whatever you feel doesn’t matter
, she told herself.
You’re here to be with him.

To observe him
, she corrected.

The first thing she observed was that the pain, which had registered as a fairly unobtrusive set of noises while he was passed out, was now like a noisy cityscape. Every time he moved, some kind of discomfort zigzagged through him, setting off different noises depending on its type and calibrated in volume to its intensity. Sharp pain sounded like a truck horn, throbbing pain resembled an extended bleating, stinging was the piercing jangle of bells.

Lulu gave him a tour of his primary injuries. “You have a bruise on your stomach that according to the Internet means at least two of your ribs are broken. The only thing to do is put ice on it, which we have been, and take aspirin, which you did about three hours ago, although you were a baby about it.”

Ford smiled, setting off shrill bells. He reached up to touch his cheek and discovered another bandage. “Thank you for taking such good care of me,” he said.

His mother came in then, looking even more exhausted than usual. She was carrying a bowl, which she set on the trunk in front of him.

“Good, you’re up.” Her tone was completely flat, her face expressionless. “You should eat this. You’ll need something in your stomach.”

Ford’s heart started to pound fast, and Sadie knew he was nervous. He was desperate for his mother to understand this hadn’t been his fault, he hadn’t picked this fight. “Thank you,” he said, trying to catch her eye, but she wouldn’t look at him. “Mom, I want you to know how—”

“Eat your soup.” Her flat gaze moved to Lulu. “I’m going to lie down. Make sure your brother finishes that. And no gabbing, he needs to sleep.”

His head turned to watch his mother leave the room, and a sharp thrust of pain overwhelmed him, filling his mind with blaring truck horns. Sadie saw his vision go misty and wished she could steady him.

His eyes refocused a moment later, on Lulu, who was watching him with unconcealed worry.
Show her everything’s fine
, Sadie heard him think and wanted to kiss him. He licked his dry, craggy lips and said, “What day is it?”

“Tuesday.” Lulu scooched her chair toward him and whispered conspiratorially, “Mom found you on the couch Thursday morning and you’ve barely moved since then. And neither has she. She sat right next to you the whole time. I think she might have prayed. She even started to
draw
again.”

Ford moved his eyes to the bowl of soup, and Sadie felt a lump in his throat and tears prick at his eyes.

“Are you crying?” Lulu said.

“Yeah, no, it’s just—” He swallowed back the lump. “The pain.” But it wasn’t, Sadie knew. He reached for the soup and made a show of eating it. Holding the spoon caused a bus-sized horn blast, so he raised the bowl to his mouth and slurped.