Mercifully, I heard the sound of the potty door slam. Kent got on his hands and knees to peer around the corner.
“C’mon,” I urgently whispered.
Kent held up his hand to keep me back for a few more seconds, then motioned for me to come forward.
“He went inside the clubhouse,” he whispered. “Let’s make our way around the outside. I want to get close to the ambulance before you go after Sleeper.”
He didn’t have to tell me twice. I jumped up and ran for the fence, staying low, relieved to be moving. I ran parallel to the fence, jumping over obstacles, willing myself to appear as nothing more than a fleeting shadow. I wasn’t frightened. The Ruby gave me a feeling of invincibility. This wasn’t good because we were extremely “vincible.” That much had been proven by Marty Wiggins. And Peter Nelson. And Kent’s father. And, and, and.
I ran up to one of the large military trucks that were used as troop transports and hid there. From that vantage point I could see the ambulance parked in front of the clubhouse. A guy wearing a red EMT-like jumpsuit with a SYLO logo on the sleeve entered the driver’s side. He wasn’t armed, which gave me hope.
It didn’t last. My stomach sank when I saw a SYLO soldier who was armed open the rear door of the ambulance and climb in back. He was riding shotgun. Literally. The ambulance rolled past the clubhouse and up to a small guard shack near the front gate of the country club. The driver spoke a few words to the guy in the shack, after which the iron gates swung open and the ambulance drove out. The gate remained open long enough for another ambulance to drive in and stop in front of the clubhouse. The back door opened and a SYLO soldier jumped out along with a lady who was the perfect image of somebody’s grandma…except that her hands were cuffed behind her back. I didn’t recognize the lady. She was yet another unfortunate victim of the quarantine—and now a prisoner of SYLO. The soldier roughly pulled her into the building and the ambulance drove off to get back in line.
“My God,” I whispered. “This is just crazy!”
“They don’t trust anybody,” Kent replied. “Doesn’t matter how old they are.”
The ambulance did a U-turn and parked back in front of the clubhouse. The EMT-looking driver got out and the ambulance was left unguarded.
Kent said. “I think they just wait there until they get called out to pick somebody up.”
“So we could be waiting here all night,” I said.
“Or it could take off a minute from now.”
“I’m going for Tori,” I said and started to move.
Kent grabbed my arm and said, “If that ambulance goes, I’m on it. With or without you.”
“I’ll be back,” I said and took off.
The women’s area was set up on the next fairway over from the medical area. I knew that from watching where the women went at the end of the day. It was easy to see pretty much everything through the fences. I made my way there quickly, always keeping an eye out for anybody in a uniform. I got as far as the gate that led through to the women’s area when I saw my first patrolling guard. It was a woman who stood like a sentry near the closed and locked gate. She didn’t look as though she was going anywhere soon, so I had to find another way through.
The answer was simple. I climbed the fence. None of the interior fences had razor wire. There was no way we could climb our way out of the compound to freedom without getting slashed, but moving between fairways was easy, especially when fueled by the Ruby. I was up and over the fence in seconds. Getting Tori back over wouldn’t be as easy.
There were five barracks, all similar to mine, and I had no way of knowing which one Tori was in. My only option was to search. I had to hope that if any of the women prisoners were awake and saw me, they’d think I was one of the laundry elves coming to pick up the day’s work. I sprinted to the first building, took a deep breath, and entered.
My only strategy was to get in and out fast. With luck I’d be moving so quickly that I would appear to be nothing more than a shadow, though I couldn’t move too quickly or I might not spot Tori. I zipped in, sprinted between the two rows of cots, quickly checked out the sleeping women on one side then did an about-face and repeated the process while checking out the other side on the way back.
No Tori. At least I didn’t think so. One sleeping lump didn’t look much different from another. I was able to see most of the faces but some of the woman had their blankets up over their heads. I could have missed her but I had to play the odds and keep moving. I flashed into the next barracks and did the same thing. Still no luck. I was beginning to think I would have to come up with a different plan.
I went into the third barracks and sprinted along the row of cots. The last bed on the right held a woman with the blanket covering her face—and a USM cap resting on the footlocker. I moved quickly to the side of the cot, knelt down, and gently pulled back the blanket.
The sleeping woman wasn’t sleeping. Touching her was like releasing the catch on a coiled spring. She lunged forward, hands first, and closed her fingers around my neck in a powerful grip that had to have come from hauling lobster traps her whole life. Her eyes were wild with fear and I have no doubt that she would have strangled me if I hadn’t had ridiculous strength from the Ruby. With one hand I grabbed her wrist; the other I clamped over her mouth.
Tori’s mouth.
“We’re getting out of here,” I said with a strained whisper as her hand stayed clamped around my throat.
It took a second for her to register what was happening. I watched her eyes. They went from terrified to knowing. She released her grip. I let her go and without a second’s hesitation she hopped off her cot fully dressed, slipped on her sneakers, grabbed her hat, and led the way out of the barracks. It was as if she had been waiting for me.
She didn’t say a word until we left the building. I took her by the shoulders and guided her to the shadows on the side of the barracks and out of sight.
“What’s the plan?” she asked in a whisper.
“Kent is at the clubhouse. We’re going to hijack an ambulance.”
Tori nodded in understanding. She didn’t question. Just the fact that she was sleeping in her clothes meant that she was ready for anything. My coming to get her was far less of a surprise than I thought it would be. I suppose I would have felt the same way. It wouldn’t have surprised me at all if she had come for me.
“I’ve got to find my father,” she said.
“I don’t think he’s here,” I replied. “I’ve been looking. He’s nowhere in the men’s area or the recreation fairway and I didn’t see him at meals. Have you?”
Tori shook her head. “No, but I’m not leaving without him.”
“I get it, but I wouldn’t know where to begin looking. Not now. We’ve been lucky so far; nobody’s seen us. That won’t last.”
Tori was staring right into my eyes.
“What’s wrong with you?” she asked.
“What do you mean?” I replied, suddenly self-conscious.
She continued to stare at me as if searching for the answer to a question she couldn’t quite grab hold of. Two seconds later, she had it.
“You’re on the Ruby,” she stated flatly.
“I am. Kent and I both are.”
“Damn. Are you okay?”
“Sort of, though I feel like I swallowed jet fuel. I did it to get us out of here. If you want, I’ll stick around to keep looking for your father, but whatever we do, we have to do it now.”
Tori started to argue but then thought better of it.
“Thanks for that,” she said. “And for coming to get me.”
“I knew where to find you. I can’t say the same about your father.”
“Okay, I get it,” she said. “Let’s get out of here and hope the rest of the world will help us get him out.”
I hate to admit it but I was relieved that we didn’t have to find Mr. Sleeper. Not that I didn’t want to rescue him, but looking for him would probably have sunk us all.
“One way or another, we’ll get him out,” I said. “I promise.”
“You can’t make a promise like that,” she said sternly.
“I can promise to try.”
Tori nodded. “I’ll hold you to that. How do we get out of here?”
I grabbed her hand and ran for the fence that would lead us back to the medical fairway and the ambulances.
“Whoa, slow down,” she whisper-yelled.
I had to consciously force myself to go slower because there was no way she could keep my Ruby-fueled pace. It didn’t take long for us to get back to the area I had climbed over earlier.
“There’s a guard outside the gate,” I explained. “Can you climb up the—”
She finished my sentence by hopping up on the fence and scaling it with the confidence of a cat. I stayed below in case she slipped. When she reached the top, I hyper-climbed up and back down the other side to get under her again. A few seconds later, she joined me on the ground.
“That’s just wrong,” she said with dismay.
It was, but I wasn’t about to stop and debate my decision to use the Ruby. We hurried back the way I had come, retracing my steps until we got back to the truck to find Kent still there, cautiously peering at the ambulance that hadn’t moved.
“I was about to give up on you,” he said without taking his eyes off the vehicles.
“Nice to see you, too, Kent,” Tori said sarcastically.
“There’s been some activity down there,” Kent explained. “But no driver.”
Tori looked around the enclosure, the wheels turning in her head.
“Why aren’t there more guards?” she asked. “It’s a prison. Shouldn’t there be more security?”
“Who cares?” Kent said. “That’s their problem.”
“Maybe now’s the time to get in the ambulance,” I suggested.
“No,” Kent shot back. “We could be sitting there for hours. We’ve got to—wait! Look.”
A SYLO guard walked quickly to the ambulance, opened the rear door, and climbed in.
“They’re getting ready to roll,” Kent declared. “Get down there and take him out before the driver shows up.”
“What do you mean, ‘take him out’?” I said skeptically. “I’m not some ninja.”
“You don’t need to be. Not with the Ruby. Open the door fast and punch his lights out. He won’t know what hit him.”
“Why don’t you do it?” Tori asked.
“Because I didn’t take it.”
At first I thought I hadn’t heard right.
“Wait—what?” I asked.
“I didn’t take the Ruby,” Kent said.
I grabbed him and spun him around to face me.
“Are you serious?” I screeched in an intense whisper.
“Why should we risk both our necks? I took the chance of smuggling it in—the least you could do is use it. And one of us has to be thinking straight.”
I wanted to punch the living crap out of him.
“That’s why you needed me,” I said, seething. “You didn’t want to take it yourself.”
“I nearly died on that stuff,” Kent said through clenched teeth. “It killed my father. No way I’d take it again.”
It suddenly made sense why he had been lagging so far behind ever since we had left the barracks. I was angry enough to hurt him, especially since I was fueled by the Ruby. He was lucky. Tori got to him first. She grabbed him by the throat and forced him to look at her.
Kent’s eyes bulged under the pressure.
“If anything happens to Tucker because of this,” Tori snarled. “I’m coming after you.”
“Then let’s make sure nothing happens and get the hell out of here,” he said in a strained whisper.
Tori pushed him away and Kent fell back against the truck, hitting his head and letting out a pained whimper.
“We’re on the same side here,” he complained. “Try to remember that.”
“I could say the same to you,” Tori shot back.
I snuck a peek around the corner and saw a guy who had to be the driver walking down the clubhouse stairs, headed for the ambulance. There wasn’t time to think or question.
“I’m going,” I said.
“You sure?” Tori asked.
“No, but it’s as good a plan as any. After I get inside, wait a second and then follow me.”
“What are you going to do to him?” Tori asked, wide-eyed.
“I don’t know. But whatever it is, it’ll be fast. I’ve got that going for me.”
I gave her a wink.
She gave me a nervous smile.
Before I could second-guess myself, I took off running. The more effort I put out, the more the Ruby produced. I covered the distance in what seemed like a second and yanked the rear door of the ambulance open. Kent was right about one thing—the guard didn’t know what hit him. I jumped in and tackled him like I was headed downfield on kickoff coverage. That much I knew how to do. The guard let out a grunt because I probably knocked the air out of his lungs. He hit the deck so hard I wouldn’t have been surprised if I’d broken some ribs.
Seconds later I was joined by Tori and Kent. They jumped inside and closed the door.
“What the hell are you doing back there?” the driver said.
There was a partition with a sliding glass window between the cab and the back of the ambulance…that the driver was sliding open. In seconds he would look back and see us all.
Kent reacted first. He grabbed the rifle from the dazed guard, jumped to the front of the cab, and leveled the weapon at the face of the startled driver.
“Drive,” Kent said with a slight quiver in his voice that betrayed his nervousness. “Just like normal.”
The driver’s eyes went wide.
“No problem,” he said quickly. “I ain’t no hero.”
The driver started the engine and a second later we were moving. I didn’t believe for a second that Kent would actually shoot the guy. I doubt that he’d ever fired a rifle except maybe on a shooting range. But as long as the driver didn’t know that, we’d be okay.
The stunned guard moaned. Tori stuck her knee on his neck and twisted his arm behind his back. Where did she learn to do that stuff?
“Easy,” she said. “Your rifle is aimed at the driver’s head. Don’t do anything stupid.”
The guard strained to look up and see who his tormentors were but Tori dug her knee in and he backed down. He wasn’t going to be a problem.
I held my breath as the driver rolled up to the guard shack.
“I can hear everything you’re saying,” Kent warned him.
We came to a stop and the driver lowered his window.
“Evening,” the guard in the shack said. “Got a lead on somebody?”
“Yup,” the driver said casually. “They just keep turning up. It’s gotta stop sometime.”
“Let’s hope so,” the guard said. “Be careful. Good hunting.”
Good hunting? These SYLO characters were cold.
I imagined the gate swinging open. We were seconds away from being outside. The driver had done exactly what we needed him to do. We could only hope that he hadn’t given some secret signal that would have alerted the guard to the fact that there were a couple of escapees on board. I held my breath for what felt like an eternity, and then the ambulance rolled forward. A quick glance through the back window showed that we had left the compound.
“Now what?” the driver asked.
“The Blackbird Inn,” Kent replied.
Tori and I exchanged glances.
Kent looked back at us and as if reading our minds said, “Relax. There’s a reason.”
I had put our lives into Kent’s hands. He had already shown his true colors by lying about the Ruby and using me. It was difficult to know how far we could trust him. I had to hope that as long as we were together, we had the same goal. Staying alive.
It didn’t take long to get to the Blackbird Inn. The driver pu
lled up to the front and stopped.
“Need some help with your bags?” he asked, sarcastically.
Kent jammed the barrel of the rifle through the window and clipped him on the side of the face.
“Ow,” he screamed. “What was that for?”
“For being clever,” Kent said coldly.
Kent scared me sometimes.
“You got the guard?” Kent asked.
“He’s not going anywhere,” Tori replied.
“C’mere, Rook,” Kent ordered.
I moved to him and he handed me the rifle.
“If this clown so much as farts, shoot him.”
I took the weapon and Kent moved to the back of the ambulance.
“Where are you going?” Tori asked.
“I’ll be right back,” he replied and jumped out of the van.
I turned my attention to the driver, who looked at me with wide, scared eyes. I had never held a gun on anybody before. It was a frightening feeling of power. I could pull the trigger and end somebody’s life. Bang. Just like that. I could. But would I?
“You’re not going to shoot me, are you, Chief?” he asked. “You look kind of squirrely.”
With the Ruby surging through my body, I wasn’t in my right mind and I think the driver sensed that. He looked at me like I was some deranged lunatic, and maybe at that moment I was. I had been sitting still for too long and it was driving me crazy. I kept fidgeting and shuffling, doing anything I could to keep from crawling out of my skin.
“Take it easy,” the driver said. “We’ll do whatever you want.”
The guard that Tori was holding finally spoke. “Tell us what you want and we’ll do what we can.”
“I want you to shut up,” I snapped at him.
It was like the words had come out of somebody else’s mouth. Tori thought so too, based on the surprised look she gave me. The Ruby was doing a number on my body and on my head as I fought to stay in control.
Thankfully the rear door opened and Kent climbed in. He came right to me and took the rifle back.
“Drive out to Quahog Beach,” Kent ordered. “Don’t break any traffic laws.”
“You got it,” the driver said and got us back under way.
Nobody said a word on our way to the beach. I was dying to know what Kent had planned but didn’t think he’d explain it to us in front of our captives.