He had stopped looking at me and begun to look past me, looking over my right shoulder.
“They brought in street people and travelers and minor criminals and other mountain families, and they collared them too,” I said. “Marc! Do you hear me?”
“I don’t believe you,” he said at last. “I don’t believe any of this!”
“Go and look at what’s left of Acorn. Look for yourself. Go to one of the other so-called reeducation camps. I’ll bet they’re just as bad. Check them out.”
He began to shake his head. “This is not true! I know these people! They wouldn’t do what you’re accusing them of.”
“Maybe some of them wouldn’t. But some of them did. All that we built they stole.”
“I don’t believe you,” he said. But he did believe. “You’re making some kind of mistake.”
“Go and see for yourself,” I repeated. “Be careful how you ask questions. I don’t want you to get into trouble. These are dangerous, vicious people. Go and see.”
He said nothing for a few seconds. It bothered me that he was frowning, and again, not looking at me. “You were collared?” he asked at last.
“For seventeen months. Forever.”
“How did you get away? Was your sentence up?”
“What? What sentence?”
“I mean did they let you go?”
“They never let anyone go. They killed quite a few of us, but they never released anyone. I don’t know what their long-range plans were for us, if they had any, but I don’t see how they could have dared to let us go after what they’d done to us.”
“How did you get free? You don’t escape once someone’s put a collar on you. There’s no escape from a collar.”
Unless someone deals with the devil and buys your freedom, I thought. But I didn’t say it. “There was a landslide,” I did say. “It smashed the cabin where the control unit was kept—my cabin. The control unit powered all the individual belt control units somehow. Maybe it even powered the collars themselves. I’m not sure. Anyway, once it was smashed and buried, the collars stopped working, and we went into our homes and killed our surviving guards—those who hadn’t been killed by the landslide. Then we burned the cabins with their bodies inside. We burned them. They were ours! We built every one with our own hands.”
“You killed people…?”
“Their names were Cougar, Marc. Every one of them was named Cougar!”
He turned—wrenched himself around as though he had to uproot himself to move—and started back toward the corner.
“Marc!”
He kept walking.
“Marc!” I grabbed his arm, pulled him back around to face me. “I didn’t tell you this to hurt you. I know I have hurt you, and I’m sorry but these bastards have my child! I need your help to get her back. Please, Marc.”
He hit me.
I never expected it, never saw it coming. Even when we were kids, he and I didn’t hit each other.
I stumbled backward, more startled than hurt. And he was gone. By the time I got to the corner, he had already vanished into the CA Center.
I was afraid to go in after him. In his present frame of mind, he might turn me in. How will I get to see him again? Even if he decides to help me, how will I contact him? Surely he will decide to help me once he’s had time to think. Surely he will.
SUNDAY, JUNE 3, 2035
I’ve left the Eureka-Arcata area.
I’m back at the message tree for the night. I brought a flashlight so that I could have light where I wanted it without taking risks with fire. Now, shielding my light, I’m reading what’s been left here. Jorge and Di have left a number, and Jorge says he’s found his brother Mateo. In fact, as with Justin, his brother found him. On the northern edge of Garberville where there are still big redwoods, Mateo found Jorge’s group sleeping on the ground. He had been looking for them for months. Like Justin, he had run away from abuse, although in his case, the abuse was sexual. Now he’s wounded and bitter, but he’s with his brother again.
There was no news from Harry. Too soon for him to have gotten back, I suppose. I phoned him several times, but there was no answer. I’m worried about him.
I wrote a note, warning the others to avoid the CA Center in Eureka. I wrote that Marc had been there, but that he wasn’t to be trusted.
He isn’t to be trusted.
I made myself go back to the CA Center on Wednesday of last week—went back as a sane, but shabby woman rather than as a dirty, crazy man. It took me too long to get up the courage to do that—to go. I worried that Marc might have warned his CA friends about me. I couldn’t really believe he would do that, but he might, and I’d had nightmares about them grabbing me as soon as I showed up. I could feel them putting on the collar. I’d wake up soaking wet and scared to death.
At last, I went to a used-clothing store and bought an old black skirt and a blue blouse. From a cheap little shop, I bought some makeup and a scarf for my hair. I dressed, made up, then dirtied up a little, like maybe I’d been rolling around on the ground with someone.
At CA, I got in line with the other women and ate in the small, walled-off women’s section. No one seemed to pay any attention to me, although my height was much more noticeable when I was among only women. I slumped a little and kept my head down when I was standing. I tried to look weary and bedraggled rather than furtive, but I discovered that furtive wasn’t all that unusual. Most of the women, like most of the men, were stolid, indifferent, enduring. But a few were chattering crazies, whiners, or frightened little rabbits. There was also a fat woman with only one eye who prowled the room and tried to grab bread from your hands even while you were eating it. She was crazy, of course, but her particular craziness made her nasty and possibly dangerous. She let me alone, but harassed several of the smaller women until a tiny, feisty woman pulled a knife on her.
Then the servers called security, and security men came out of a back room and grabbed both women from behind.
It bothered me very much that they took both women away. The fat crazy woman had been permitted to go about her business until someone resisted. Then both victim and victimizer were treated as equally guilty.
It bothered me even more that the women were not thrown out. They were taken away. Where? They didn’t come back. No one I spoke to knew what had happened to them.
Most troubling of all, I recognized one of the security men. He had been at Acorn. He had been one of our “teachers” there. I had seen him take Adela Ortiz away to rape her. I could shut my eyes and see him dragging her off to the cabin he used. There had to be many such men still alive and free—men who were not at Camp Christian when we took back our freedom, then took our revenge. But this was the first one that I had seen.
My fear and my hate returned full force and all but choked me. It took all my self-control to sit still, eat my food, and go on being the lump I had to seem to be. Day Turner had been collared after a fight that he said he had had nothing to do with. Christian America officials made themselves judges, juries, and, when they chose to be, executioners. They didn’t waste any effort trying to be fair. I had heard on one of my earlier visits that the all-male CA Center Security Force was made up of retired and off-duty cops. That, if it were true, was terrifying. It made me all the more certain that I was right not to go to the police with the true story of what had been done to me and to Acorn. Hell, I hadn’t even been able to get my own brother to believe me. What chance would I have to convince the cops if some of them were working for CA?
After dinner, after the sermon, I managed to make myself go up to one of the servers—a blond woman with a long red scar on her forehead. She was one of the few who laughed and talked with us as she scooped stew into bowls and passed out bread. I asked her to give my note to lay minister Marcos Duran. As it happened, she knew him.
“He’s not here anymore,” she said. “He was transferred to Portland.”
“Oregon?” I asked, and then felt stupid. O
f course she meant Portland, Oregon.
“Yeah,” the server said. “He left a few days ago. He was offered a chance to do more preaching at our new center in Portland, and he’s always wanted that. What a nice man. We were sorry to lose him. Did you ever hear him preach?”
“A couple of times,” I said. “Are you sure he’s gone?”
“Yeah. We had a party for him. He’ll be a great minister someday. A great minister. He’s so spiritual.” She sighed.
Maybe “spiritual” is another word for fantastically good-looking in her circles. Anyway, he was gone. Instead of helping me find Larkin or even seeing me again, he had gone.
I thanked the server and headed out into the evening toward the home of the 88-year-old man where I was still staying. I had left my spare clothing and my sleepsack in his garage. For once, I was traveling light. My backpack was half-empty. I walked automatically, not thinking about where I was going. I was wondering whether I could reach Marc again, wondering whether it would do me any good to reach him. What would he do if I showed up in Portland? Run for Seattle? Why had he run, anyway? I wouldn’t have hurt him—wouldn’t have said or done anything that could damage his lay-minister reputation. Did he run because I mentioned Cougar? Maybe it had been a mistake for me to tell him what happened to us, to Acorn. Maybe I should have told him the same thing I had told the police. “Well, I was walking north on U.S. 101, heading for Eureka, and these guys…”
Was it so essential for him to be important in CA that he didn’t care what vicious things CA was doing, didn’t care even what CA did to the only family he had left?
Then there was a man looming in front of me—a huge man, tall and broad and wearing a CA Center Security uniform. I stopped just before I would have slammed into him. I jumped back. My impulse was to run like hell. This guy looked scary enough to make anyone run. But the truth was, I was frozen with fear. I couldn’t move. I just stared up at him.
He put a huge hand inside his uniform jacket, and I had a flash of it coming out holding a gun—not that this guy needed a gun to kill me. He was a giant.
But his hand came out of his jacket holding an envelope—a little white paper envelope like the kind mail used to come in. Back when we lived in Robledo my father sometimes brought home paper mail from the college in such envelopes.
“Reverend Duran said to give this to anyone tall and Black and asking for him by name,” the giant said. He had a soft, quiet voice that made his appearance less threatening somehow. “Looks like you qualify,” he finished.
I had to make myself reach out and take the envelope.
The giant stared at me for a moment, then said, “He told me you were his sister.”
I nodded.
“He said you might be dressed as a man.”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t quite form words yet.
“He said he’s sorry. He asked me to tell you that you could get a bed at the Center for as long as you needed one. I’ll be around. He’s my friend. I’ll look out for you.”
“No,” I said, getting my voice to work at last. “But thank you.” I stood straight, never knowing when I had crouched in my fear. I extended a hand, and the giant took it and shook it. “Thank you,” I repeated, and he was gone, striding back toward the Center.
I didn’t stop to think. I tucked Marcus’s envelope into my blouse and walked on. You didn’t stand opening things on dark streets in this part of town. I kept my ears open now, and paid attention to my surroundings. The giant had caught up with me, passed me, and gotten in front of me and I hadn’t heard a thing. That kind of inattention was beyond stupid. It was suicidal.
And yet I had almost relaxed again by the time I was only three blocks from the old man’s little house. I was tired, full of food, looking forward to my warm pallet, and eager to see what my brother had written.
Then, through my preoccupations, I began to hear footsteps. I swung around just in time to startle and confront the two men who were creeping up behind me. My gun was out of reach in my backpack, but my knife was in my pocket. I grabbed it and flipped it open before these guys could recover and clean the street with me. They weren’t big, but there were two of them. I put my back against someone’s redwood fence, and let them decide how much they wanted what they thought I had. In fact I was carrying not only my gun but enough money to make them happy for days, as well as Marcus’s note, and I wasn’t eager to give up any of it.
“Just put the pack down, girl,” one said. “Put the pack down and back away from it. We’ll let you go.”
I didn’t move. To take my pack off, I would have had to lower my knife and trust these two not to jump me. That I didn’t dare do. I didn’t answer them. I wasn’t interested in talking to them. I hated hearing the one call me “girl.” It was what Bankole called me with love. And here was the word in someone else’s mouth with contempt.
I don’t know whether or not I was being stupid. I know I was scared to death and I was angry. I tried to stoke the anger.
I saw that one of them had a knife too. It was an old steak knife, but it was a knife—made for cutting meat.
The one with the knife lunged at me. An instant later, the other lunged too—one to cut, one to grab.
I dropped to the ground and stabbed upward into the belly of the knife-wielder. As I jerked my knife free, not looking, not wanting to see what I had done, I rammed my body backward against the legs of the other man—or against where his legs should have been. I only hit one of them—enough to trip him, but he seemed to recover without falling. Then he did fall. He toppled like a tree as I scrambled to my feet.
They were both down, one curled around his belly wound, groaning, and the other making no sound at all except his rasping breathing. The steak knife stuck out of him just below the breastbone.
Shit.
I fell to my knees, my body a flaming mass of agony, from other people’s knife wounds. I twisted away from them both, crawled away from them on all fours, dripping tears at the terrible, terrible pain. I dragged myself around a corner and sat there on the broken concrete for a long time. I was shaking with the pain, gasping with it until at last, it began to ease. I got up before it was altogether gone. I went to the old man’s garage as quickly as I could. The pain was gone by the time I got there, and the anger had long since gone. There was nothing left but the fear. I got my things together as fast as I could, stuffed them into my pack, and headed out of town. Maybe I didn’t have to leave. Maybe the tramp who had been living in the old man’s garage would never be connected with the two dead or soon-to-be dead men on the street nearby. Maybe.
But I would not risk a collar.
So I ran.
So I run. I had to check the tree before I headed for Portland, and I’m going to stop at Georgetown. Then I’ll take an inland route and avoid Eureka. Meanwhile, here are the words my brother left me:
“Lauren, I’m sorry I hit you—really sorry. I hope I didn’t hurt you too much. It’s just that I couldn’t stand to lose everything again. I just couldn’t. That keeps happening to me. Mom and Dad, the Durans, and even Acorn, where I thought maybe I could stay. And I couldn’t see how anyone connected with Christian America could do what you say has been done. I could barely stand to hear you say it. I knew it was just wrong. It had to be.
“And I was right. The people who do the kind of thing you described are a splinter group. Jarret has disclaimed all connection with them. They call themselves Jarret’s Crusaders, but they lie. They’re extremists who believe that reeducating heathen adults and placing their young children in Christian American homes is the only way to restore order and greatness. If Acorn was attacked, these are the likely attackers. I’ve talked to my friends in CA, and they say it isn’t safe to probe too deeply into what the Crusaders are doing. The Crusaders are a kind of secret society, absolutely dedicated, and ruthless. They’re courageous people. Misguided, but courageous. I’ve been told they really do find good homes for the children they rescue. That’s what t
hey call it—rescuing the children. They take them into their own homes if necessary and raise them as their children or they find others to raise them. Problem is, they’re a nationwide group. They send the kids out of their home areas—often out of their home states. They’re serious about raising these kids as good Christian Americans. They believe it would be a sin against God and a crime against America to let them be reunited with their heathen parents.
“I’ve heard all this second- or third-hand from at least half a dozen people. I don’t know how much of it is true. I don’t know where Larkin is, and don’t have any idea how to find out. I’m sorry about that, sorry about Bankole, sorry about everything.
“You probably won’t like this, Lauren, but I think that if you really want to find your daughter, you should join us—join Christian America. Your cult has failed. Your god of change couldn’t save you. Why not come back to where you belong? If Mom and Dad were alive, they would join. They would want you to be part of a good Christian organization that’s trying to put the country back together again. I know you’re smart and strong and too stubborn for your own good. If you can also be patient and join us in our work, you’ll have the only chance possible of getting information about your daughter.
“I have to warn you, though, the movement won’t let you preach. They agree with Saint Paul in that: ‘Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach nor to usurp authority over the man but to be in silence.’ But don’t worry. There’s plenty of other more suitable work for women to do to serve the movement.
“Some of our people have relatives or friends who are Crusaders. Join us, work hard, keep your eyes and ears open, and maybe you’ll learn things that will help you find your daughter—and help you into a good, decent life as a Christian American woman.
“I don’t know what else to tell you. I’m enclosing a few hundred in hard currency. I wish I could give you more. I wish I could help you more. I do wish you well, whatever you decide to do, and again, I’m sorry. Marc.”
And that was that. There wasn’t a word about his going to Portland—no explanation, no good-bye. No address. Had he, in fact, gone to Portland? I thought about that and decided he had—or at least the server who told me he had believed what she was saying.