Crux

72 INTO THE STORM

Friday November 2nd

Rangan hustled the children down the hall, following the path that Holtzmann had sketched out for them. Their minds were chaos, disorganized, scattered. He’d told them this was coming, but they were still so hard to herd. The fire alarm blared and blared, making everything worse, pushing itself into the kids’ minds. He made them hold hands, Tim just behind him, holding Rangan’s hand, chained all the way to the back, to Bobby. Alfonso came in the middle. The other boys would have left him, and that pained Rangan, but Alfonso was the one who’d suffered the most, and Rangan was going to get that little boy the fuck out of this place.

Ahead they were coming up on the security desk. Rangan clutched the taser tight. If shit was gonna go bad it was gonna be here. They turned the corner and he made ready to jump out, to throw himself at the guard. But the station was empty. The bank of screens showed Rangan and the kids on one display, but no one was here to see it.

Then they were past it, at the elevator. Rangan waved Holtzmann’s badge and the door opened, and then they were all cramming in. Rangan hurried them along, pulled them all into the elevator, then pounded the button for P1. He waved the badge again and P1 lit up. The doors closed and they descended.

The doors opened again onto a nearly empty garage. They piled out of the elevator and Pedro dropped Tim’s hand and the chain was broken. He stopped and forced the boys to chain up again, counted them to make sure he had them all. Then they hurried across the garage, the way Holtzmann had told him, Rangan half dragging the boys until they reached the stairwell. He yanked on the door and it was open. They took the stairs up, opened the next door, and suddenly they were outside.

The wind hit him immediately. Gale force. Outside the trees were bending hard, their branches all pushed in one direction. Sharp pinpricks of rain sprayed painfully into Rangan’s face. The sound of the storm was a constant roar. A boom sounded from some place, then a cracking sound. He looked around to get his bearings, thought he understood where they were going. He reached out with his mind to the kids, did his best to hold them together, to focus them. He showed them in his mind where they were going, showed them that they had to hold hands, and then they were off.

He felt the wind and rain take their toll on the boys. They were all in slippers, not proper shoes. They were completely soaked from head to toe in seconds. Their slippered feet slid on wet asphalt. Halfway across the open square, Parker raised his hand to shield his face from the stinging of the rain and the human chain broke. Rangan made them link up again, even in the pelting rain and the harsh wind, made them hold hands and started them forward again.

They made it another hundred yards, almost to the trees, when he felt a sharp wince of pain from behind him. Jose! Jose was down on the ground. He’d tripped on a curb. The boy had hit his head and there was a bloody scrape on his brow and he was crying.

Rangan shoved the taser into the pocket of his prison pants, then hoisted Jose up over his shoulder. The boy was heavy! He grabbed Tim’s hand again, made the other boys link up, and then they were into the trees.

Leaves blew around them. The wind and rain were less here, but they still stung. Twigs and rocks hurt the boys’ feet but he made them keep moving. On the other side of the trees they’d find…

There. They came out of the trees, and ahead was the side gate to the complex. It was a chain link affair, barbed wire at the top, with automated stations to allow ingress and egress on either side. There was a guard booth, but Rangan couldn’t see anyone in it. A pale red light glowed on the card reader on the station on this side. This was it.

“Come on, boys,” he shouted out loud and into the howling wind. He reached out with his mind to enfold them, to push them forward.

He dashed out of the trees, into the road, to the station, Tim’s hand still in his own, Jose still on his shoulder. The rain lashed him with increasing fury. The wind came on strong enough that he almost lost his feet. He was soaked now, soaked to the bone, shivering from it. He felt misery and cold and fear and confusion from the boys behind him.

Then he was there. Rangan let go of Tim’s hand, fished out Holtzmann’s badge, swiped it against the evil red eye of the scanner, and waited. And waited.

The red eye blinked at him, stayed red. Nothing happened.

Fuck!

Rangan swiped the badge again. And again. He jammed it up against the reader, swiveling it around.

“Come on, you piece of shit!”

Then abruptly the red eye was green. Rangan turned his head. Slowly, slowly, the gate was swinging itself open.

He shoved the badge back into his pocket, grabbed Tim’s hand, and dragged the boys through the widening crack, not waiting for it to open fully. They ran out across a road, into more trees, through the trees. Jose was heavy but Rangan kept the boy on his shoulder, kept moving, kept consulting Holtzmann’s map in his mind.

Then they were out of the trees, climbing an embankment up to a road. And there was a beat-up old white van there, and a man was jumping out of it, reaching his hand down to Rangan, to help him up, to take him and the boys away to safety.