Savage Drift

^{CHAPTER NINE} DEAN

Astrid was saying, “Oh my God,” on repeat.

I seemed to be stuck on, “It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay!” she finally snapped. “She’s totally going to track me down. With that letter she has my real name, my whole story. She’s going to rat me out!”

Her face was flushed and her breathing shallow. She was going to make herself sick with this, I thought, and then I burst out, “Enough! Stop! We have to think about what she said.”

I held her two arms and got her to look at me.

“She said that most women who hear about the testing refuse at first but then change their minds when they hear about the money.”

Her expression shifted into doubt.

“And she said pregnant women who’ve been exposed need special care, Astrid. I think we should come clean with her and listen to what she has to say. We need to think about the health of the baby.”

“Do you think that I’m not worried about the health of the baby?” She was furious now. “I lie there at night and I feel it moving inside me. And I worry so much about what might be wrong! I just want to get somewhere safe.”

“But it is safe here!”

Astrid looked away from me. I went on. “I just… I can’t think that the US Army would take women away without their consent. It would be totally illegal, Astrid. It would be immoral. Wrong.”

I waited for her to say something like, “It’s illegal for them to keep the Os locked up at Mizzou.” Or, “Wasn’t it immoral when the US government made the compounds in the first place?”

Instead she just looked me in the eye and said, “I want to find Jake.”

I fumed.

We searched the camp for Jake and I fumed.

Here I was, totally supporting her, trying to help her to calm down and think rationally, and she was going to turn to Jake at the first disagreement.

Maybe Jake was right. Maybe I was whipped. Maybe I gave in to her all the time. Why else would she shut me down when I tried to talk sense to her?

The man of the hour, of course, was nowhere to be found.

Not in the dining hall. (Thankfully they were still serving breakfast. I wolfed down two bacon and egg sandwiches while Astrid stood waiting irritably, almost tapping her foot with impatience. She wouldn’t eat anything but a banana. Said the smell of eggs made her want to puke.)

He was not on the grounds—that we could see.

And not in the rec hall.

We couldn’t find Alex and Sahalia, either, for that matter.

Finally, we ran into Mrs. McKinley and Mrs. Dominguez, out with the little kids, way, way down on the eleventh green. They were building a playhouse in a thick stand of trees at the edge of the course that bordered the road.

“Astrid! Dean!” All the kids besides Chloe clamored. “Did you see the letter? Isn’t it cool?”

“Yeah,” I told them. “Very cool.”

“Alex says it’s going to help find your parents!” Caroline chirped. “I can’t wait to meet them!”

“Look at our fort!” Max said.

“We building a wall!” Ulysses said, pointing to a wonky construction of sticks leaning against the trunk of a large maple tree.

“Very cool,” I said.

“What’s wrong, Mommy Junior?” Henry asked Astrid.

Either because she was pregnant, or because they had their “big” mom back, they’d taken to calling Astrid Mommy Junior. Usually it got a smile out of her, but not today.

“Have you guys seen Jake?” Astrid asked the moms.

“Yes,” Mrs. McKinley said. “We saw him at breakfast. He said he was going to go with Niko over to the Air Force base.”

Astrid threw up her hands.

“Is everything okay?” Mrs. McKinley asked.

Astrid looked away from her. I knew the expression—if she started to talk about it, she was going to cry.

My heart melted for her. But only a little.

“I just need to talk to him,” Astrid said.

“And I’m helping Astrid find him.” I couldn’t help myself. “See, I take care of Astrid, and I help her get whatever she wants. That’s my job. I do what I’m told.”

Surprise at my sarcastic tone of voice flickered onto Mrs. McKinley’s face.

“Ignore him,” she said. “He’s being a jealous jerk.”

Astrid turned on her heel and headed up to the Clubhouse.

A shuttle for the Air Force base left once an hour.

I followed her.

“You don’t have to come with me,” she said.

“I know that,” I answered.

“So don’t come.”

“I need to talk to Niko anyway,” I said.

It was sort of the truth.

But mostly I went because… because I was a jealous jerk. I was worried about what Jake might do or say without me around.

From what Alex had learned, the main reason that the refugee camp had been established at the Quilchena golf course was that it was a large area of open space close to the Vancouver International Airport South, which was acting as a temporary Air Force base for the USA.

Part of the reason that Captain McKinley had gotten us all brought to Quilchena was that he knew he’d be able to see a lot of his family if we were here. This improvised base was the center of the US Armed Forces effort to support the hundreds of thousands of American refugees housed across the west coast of Canada.

Supplies came and went from this base, refugees arrived and departed on a daily basis, and there were Army offices where you could go to file petitions for transfers and the like.

All you had to do to take a shuttle over to the base was give them your social security number. They wanted to know who was where at all times.

Security was tight at the base, and guards patrolled the outskirts of the camp, so I guess they weren’t worried about us escaping.

I wondered what Astrid was going to do, as the shuttle approached. Would she use her own number or the made-up one that she’d used in the medical offices?

I felt too pissed off to ask.

She entered her real SS number on the sign-in sheet the driver held out.

She looked at me and shrugged.

“They know everything else about me,” she said.

She was giving me an opening.

But I was still too mad. What did she think Jake would say that was different from what I had said? He wouldn’t be any nicer or more understanding about it. What did she want from him—now or ever?

At the base, it didn’t take long to find Niko and Captain McKinley, but Jake was nowhere to be seen.

The captain looked really annoyed. Niko was basically trailing behind him as he did some kind of equipment check on a large transport helicopter.

“You don’t have to approve of my plan to help me,” Niko was arguing as we approached.

“I’m not risking my job to help a seventeen-year-old kid go on some wild goose chase,” McKinley snapped.

Niko was sixteen, but I wasn’t about to correct him.

“Hey, guys,” I said as we drew near.

“Is Jake with you?” Astrid asked.

“He’s visiting someone he knows at the motor pool,” Niko said. “It’s out behind this building.”

“Ugh,” Astrid said, rubbing her back. She looked miserable.

“Hey,” I said. “Why don’t you sit down and I’ll go get him?”

“No. I’ll go. I want to talk to him alone.”

Okay, fine.

I exhaled through my mouth, trying to keep my cool.

She headed back outside.

“What’s going on?” Niko asked. “You fighting again?”

McKinley ducked away to the chopper, probably happy to have Niko off his tail for a moment.

“Yeah, I guess. Hey, did you see the letter?”

“No, what letter?”

I told Niko and Captain McKinley about it.

“Do you think it could help me get Josie out?” Niko said, getting excited.

“Maybe,” I said.

“I bet if I brought it to the press at Mizzou—showed them that the ‘presumed dead’ girl from The Monument Fourteen was actually inside—they could put pressure on them to let her out. Captain McKinley, don’t you think?”

“I think that the publicity might help you to get her transferred here. Which would be safe and legal,” McKinley said.

Niko threw up his hands.

Captain McKinley stopped what he was doing and came around to the front of the chopper.

“How’s Astrid?” he asked. “Kara said she’s not been feeling well?”

“She’s been having some cramps. I got her to go over to the clinic today.”

“She didn’t want to go?”

He was leaning on the nose of the chopper now.

“Ahh.…,” I stalled. I didn’t want to tell the captain about Astrid’s paranoid fantasies about the Army. It seemed like he would be insulted.

“She’s heard about some women being pressured to do testing.”

That was the least direct way I could put it.

“But she’s feeling all right?”

“She’s had some cramping. The nurse said she needs more vitamins and rest. I got to see the baby on the ultrasound.”

“Isn’t it amazing?” McKinley asked.

“Blew my mind!”

“I remember seeing the twins, all nested in together. Arms and legs all a jumble. Once they were sucking their thumbs! Both of them!”

There was a glow on his face as he remembered the sight.

Astrid came back with Jake then.

She looked furious.

“Dean!” Jake said, cheerfully, and I instantly saw he was drunk. “I hear we’re famous!”

“Is it even noon yet?” I asked.

“Never too early for a friendly game of cards,” he drawled. “And look, I won!”

He had a fistful of cash.

He tried to put his arm around Astrid.

“Don’t touch me,” she nearly shouted.

“Whoa, whoa, calm down,” Jake said.

“Astrid, I think we should go back,” I said.

“To where?” she asked, her frustration spilling over. “There is nowhere safe for me to go! That nurse is probably waiting at the tent!”

“Really,” I insisted. “We should go.”

I didn’t want her spouting the abduction stuff in front of Captain McKinley.

“Niko.” Astrid turned to him, begging. “Would you take me with you? Take me out of here to go get Josie? We can leave tonight! I’ll go with you!”

Niko didn’t know what to say.

But then Captain McKinley came around the corner of the chopper.

“Astrid, what’s wrong?” he asked.

“There’s a nurse who knows my name, she knows I was exposed, and she was pushing me to sign up to let the Army scientists do experiments on me and the baby—”

“Are you sure—”

“And NO ONE will help me! Everyone thinks I’m being paranoid.”

Captain McKinley rubbed his hands over his face. Then he dropped them.

“I’ll take you,” Captain McKinley said. “I’ll take you both tonight.”

“What?!” I cried.

“I’m supposed to fly this afternoon, but I’ll push it back a few hours,” Captain McKinley said, his voice calm, quiet, and dead serious. “Go back to Quilchena. Pack your stuff, say your good-byes.”

“Wait a minute, wait. What?” Jake said.

“They’ve been running women out. At night,” Captain McKinley told us. “I’ve seen them do it, a couple of times. I asked about it and they said that it was none of my business, and that the women have all consented to testing, et cetera, et cetera.”

Astrid swayed on her feet. I reached out and held her arm.

“But?” she asked.

“I’ve been asking myself. If they had given consent, why were they all drugged?”

We agreed that Captain McKinley would drive past the eleventh hole, where the kids’ play fort was, around 10 p.m.

What we couldn’t agree on was how many of us were going.