Storm

NINE

“Everybody inside!” Chris commanded. “Move! Now!”

The entire crowd scrambled for the building where we had been safely sleeping below ground. What had been a barracks would now have to serve as a bunker. It wasn’t a full-on panicked rush. There were no screams but plenty of pushing and shoving.

I went for the cables that were powering the Christmas lights, but Olivia grabbed my arm.

“Where are you going?” she screamed. “Get inside!”

“I’m coming,” I said. “Get out of here!”

She hesitated, as if not wanting to leave me, but Kent yanked her away. The two ran for safety. Jon abandoned his DJ table and was right behind them.

The musical sound of the incoming planes grew louder.

I found the main plug for the lights and yanked it loose, breaking the connection to the generators and plunging the courtyard into darkness. When I turned to head for the building, Tori was there, facing me.

“Does this change your answer?” she asked.

“Can we talk about it later?”

We took off, running for safety.

The courtyard was nearly empty. It had taken only seconds. Tori and I would be the last ones to get inside. We ran to the back of the crowd that was jammed up near the door and had to wait while everyone squeezed through the opening.

I looked skyward, and my knees went weak.

“There they are,” I said, barely above a whisper.

It was a cloudless night with no moon. With Boston dark, the sky was alive with stars. Their sparkling light is what allowed us to see the silhouettes of the dark planes.

“My god,” Tori said.

There were hundreds of them. This was not a search for stragglers; it was a full-on assault.

Tori and I stood paralyzed, staring up at wave after wave of planes that appeared from the west. They flew in perfect formation, wing-to-wing and row after row.

“They look smaller,” Tori observed.

“Not smaller, higher,” I replied. “They’re way up there.”

The doorway was clear. Everyone was safely inside.

Tori and I stood frozen, staring up at the spectacle as the planes kept coming.

“This isn’t about us,” I finally declared. “They’re not here to attack, they’re going somewhere else.”

“They’re headed out over the Atlantic,” she said. “They could be going to Greenland, or England or any one of a thousand other countries.”

We continued to gaze up at the massive fleet, no longer afraid for ourselves but thunderstruck by what this show of force might mean.

“Who is commanding them?” Tori wondered aloud, as much to herself as to me. “What is their mission?”

“Hopefully it’s to wipe out SYLO,” I offered.

She tore her gaze away from the planes and looked at me.

“How can you be so sure that would be a good thing?” she asked.

I wasn’t sure of that at all, but I wanted SYLO destroyed and didn’t much care who did it. I answered her with a noncommittal shrug and kept my eyes on the sky.

The trailing edge of planes finally passed over us as the entire force continued east, headed for some unknown destination and unthinkable mission.

“We have to tell the others it’s safe,” I said.

Tori snickered. “Seriously? It isn’t even close to safe. But at least they can all get back to their fun.”

We entered the building and announced that we weren’t under attack. The news traveled quickly, and the tension was soon gone, though nobody felt much like going back out to dance. The party was over.

Tori and I went to our bunks to find Kent, Jon, and Olivia already there. Nobody was in the mood to discuss what had happened, which was fine by me. All I wanted was to fall asleep and get the image of those planes out of my mind. Instead, I saw something that only added to my anxiety.

“Where’s Jim?” I asked.

The mattress on his bunk was rolled up, and his suitcase was gone.

“Was he at the dance?” I asked.

“I didn’t see him,” Jon said. “But I was busy.”

“He could have been,” Kent said. “It wasn’t like I was looking for him.”

I lay down on my cot but couldn’t relax. Where could Jim have gone? He might have moved to another cot, but that didn’t seem likely because most were occupied. I couldn’t let it go, so I got up and walked the length of the building, scanning each of the cots with the light from my headlamp.

Jim was definitely gone.

When I got back to my own cot, Tori was awake and waiting for me.

“Maybe he decided to leave,” she offered.

“No chance. He was here for the long haul. He told me so every chance he got. I can’t believe he’d just take off. He didn’t even say good-bye.”

“Then he must still be around somewhere,” she said. “We’ll find him in the morning.”

I put my head down on the pillow, but there was no chance I was going to fall asleep quickly. Jim was a fixture at the Hall. He helped to organize it. He had no family left and nowhere else to go. Why would he change his mind and leave?

I eventually drifted off to sleep, and when I woke up the next morning I knew exactly what I had to do, which was the same thing I had done most every day. I was going to see who was leaving on the morning bus.

I tried to get out of my cot without disturbing anyone, but when I stood up, Tori was waiting there, fully dressed. “I’m going with you,” she whispered.

“You don’t even know where I’m going.”

“You want to see if Jim gets on the bus.”

Enough said.

Soon we were walking together in the gray dusk of the chilly Boston morning. I didn’t miss the fact that she was clutching her gym bag.

“People leave every day,” she said. “Why is this bugging you?”

“Because he didn’t want to leave. If he’s getting out, something happened to change his mind, and I want to know what it was.”

“Glad to hear it,” she said.

“Why’s that?”

“It means there’s hope for you yet.”

We didn’t say another word until we reached the end of the long building and the spot where I’d watched the bus load up and pull out every morning.

There were no deliveries being made that day. There was only the big bus, empty, with the motor running, waiting for its passengers.

I led Tori to the same spot I’d gone every day, behind a large green dumpster that was tucked up next to the opposite building. From there we had a clear view of the bus and the building it was idling near.

“Why are we hiding?” Tori asked. “If this is all legit, we should go over there and bid the people a fond farewell.”

“Yeah,” I replied. “But if it’s all legit, why do they take off at the crack of dawn? They could just as easily pull out at noon.”

“You’re even more paranoid than I am,” Tori said.

“I’m not,” I argued. “I’m just logical, and there’s something illogical about this.”

The door to the building opened, and the same procedure began that I had been seeing every morning. The pretty cowboy named Ashley came out with a clipboard and stood by the bus. She was soon followed by a line of people that shuffled past, offered whatever information she asked for, then continued onto the bus.

Though it was still fairly dark, I could see everyone. The loading process went normally. One by one the people filed by the girl, she checked something on the clipboard, and they boarded. Nothing was out of the ordinary, until the last guy came out of the building.

It was Jim.

I grabbed Tori’s arm. I’m not sure why.

“I don’t believe it,” I whispered.

“Guess he didn’t love it here so much after all,” Tori said.

“Or something changed his mind.”

I was about to step out of our hiding place and walk over to confront him, when Jim suddenly bolted from the line and ran off.

We watched in stunned wonder to see two of Chris’s cowboys appear from inside the building as if they had been observing the whole time. They were much younger and stronger than Jim and chased him down easily. The two grabbed him by the arms, and there was a brief struggle, but Jim was no match.

I made a move to help him, but Tori held me back. I pulled away from her but stopped when I saw Jim suddenly go limp.

The fight was over. It was like they had given him a tranquilizer, for he instantly stopped resisting and allowed them to lead him back toward the bus. He walked docilely, looking exactly like all of the other people I had seen boarding the buses.

“They were all drugged,” I whispered, trying to contain my emotion. “None of them left by choice.”

I looked at Tori. Her eyes were wide and frightened.

I started toward the bus again, but she grabbed my arm with the strength that came from hauling lobster traps, forcing me to stay put.

“No,” she said with a stern whisper. “Unless you want to end up on that bus too.”

I glanced at Tori’s gym bag. The bag with the gun.

She saw me and put her foot on it.

“Don’t even think about it,” she ordered.

I felt incredibly helpless.

The cowboys loaded Jim onto the bus, sat him in a seat, and stepped off. After a quick wave to the driver, the door closed and the bus headed out for… who knew where?

Ashley joined the two guy cowboys, and they all casually strolled back toward the mess hall as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. They were probably looking forward to a hearty breakfast after a job well done. Before they disappeared inside the building, I heard them laugh.

“What the hell is going on?” I said.

“Obviously they’re shipping people out who don’t want to be shipped out,” Tori said. “Maybe it’s like a transfer to somewhere else so the Hall doesn’t get overcrowded.”

“Do you really think it’s as innocent as that?” I asked skeptically.

“No.”

“Me neither. They’re drugging people, getting rid of them, and lying about it.”

“That’s only half of it,” Tori said. “Where are they taking them?”

I couldn’t begin to guess.

“They come out of that same door every day,” I said. “I want to see what’s in there.”

“What if it’s one of Campbell’s cowboys?” Tori asked.

“We’ll play dumb, like we’re lost.”

“I don’t want to be here anymore, Tucker,” she said, sounding genuinely frightened.

“Me neither, but I want to know what’s going on.”

She nodded in agreement.

We came out of our hiding place and walked quickly across the open space between buildings until we arrived at the door. I grabbed the handle, expecting it to be locked. It wasn’t. We exchanged nervous looks, and I pulled it open.

Inside was a small, nearly empty room with one desk to either side of the door. There were empty bins on both desks that looked similar to the bins I had seen at the reception desk back at Quincy Market, except that they were empty.

“For paperwork,” I whispered. “They pass through here on their way to the bus. They must get processed out the same way those girls process people in.”

“It’s all so… efficient,” Tori pointed out.

“Yeah, until somebody bolts.”

Staying close together, we moved to a door on the far side of the room. I opened it and cautiously peered inside.

What I saw in that next room was far worse than running into somebody who might have caught us snooping around.

“Oh man,” was all I managed to say.

Tori pushed the door open the rest of the way. When she looked inside, she had to grab my arm to steady herself.

“This just… it can’t be,” she said numbly.

There were stacks of suitcases piled along one wall that reached nearly to the high ceiling. Hundreds of them. All types, shapes, and colors. Another wall was full of bins that held used clothing. Shirts were separated from pants. Women’s clothes from men’s clothes. Another set of bins held shoes, underwear, and socks.

I drifted into the room and touched a suitcase that was on the floor in front of the large pile.

“It’s Jim’s,” I said, my voice cracking. I lifted it and added, “empty. I’ve been watching people get on those buses for days. Nobody left with their belongings, and nobody came back. This is all their stuff.”

“It’s like pictures I’ve seen of the Holocaust,” Tori said. “What are they doing to those people?”

I felt nauseated. We’d seen enough. Too much.

“We can’t be seen here,” I said and headed for the door.

Tori was right behind me. We made it out of that horrible room and back through to the outside door without incident. Once outside, we kept walking and didn’t say a word until we were back near the mess hall.

“We’ve got to tell everyone,” Tori cried.

“And say what? Hey, everybody! Looks like jolly old Chris and his merry posse of cowboys are sending people off to their deaths.”

“Yes!”

“No! We don’t know who’s innocent and who’s working with the cowboys or where those people are being taken. If we tell the wrong people, we could end up on the next bus out.”

“So what do we do?”

My mind raced through every possible scenario, from breaking into the place where the records were kept to breaking Chris’s legs. Nothing seemed like a smart move.

Finally, the right idea hit.

“We have to find out what’s going on,” I said. “And who’s in on it.”

“How? It’s not like we can ask Chris.”

“No, but we can follow the next bus to see where it’s taking those people.”

“You mean, like, tomorrow?”

“Yes. We’ll track the bus to see where it goes. Once we know for sure, we can come back and blow the whistle… just before we get the hell out of here for good.”

“What about Kent and Olivia and Jon?” she asked.

“I don’t think we should tell them anything until we know for sure what we’re dealing with. It’ll be a lot easier convincing them to go once we have evidence.”

“Agreed,” Tori said. “It won’t be easy keeping quiet about this for a whole day.”

“I’m more concerned about how we’re going to find a car.”

Tori reached into her bag, and for a second I thought she was going to pull out her gun. Instead, she pulled out a set of car keys and shook them at me.

“When Jon first got the Explorer, I found a spare set in the glove compartment. I thought it would be smart to hold on to them in case of an emergency.”

“I think this qualifies.”

“Yeah, this qualifies.”

Tori and I spent the rest of the day trying to act normal. I worked in the garden directly in front of Quincy Market and she did… whatever she did. The whole day I spent living inside my head, trying to understand why Chris would be getting rid of the very people he was working so hard to protect… or at least pretending to protect. Was he working with SYLO? Or the Air Force? I couldn’t imagine who else might want people sent off to their deaths—if that’s indeed what was happening. It made sense that he was working for one side or the other. But which? And why?

It was all the more confounding when I worried that we might be jumping to gruesome conclusions. Was there an innocent explanation for what we’d seen? If there was, I couldn’t come up with it. Wherever these people ended up, it looked certain that they were being tricked and betrayed.

Betrayed. I knew a thing or two about that, thanks to my parents.

The people in the Hall were being told that this was a safe refuge. They were fed well and protected… until they weren’t. It struck me as incredibly cold to lure people in with the promise of sanctuary only to send them off to another fate, whatever it was. It was beyond evil. What I couldn’t understand was if the intent of the people running the Hall was mass murder, why were they going through the trouble of pretending it was something else?

The day passed without incident. I avoided Jon, Olivia, and Kent only because I knew it would be hard not to warn them about what was going on. Olivia would panic and want to bolt instantly. Kent would probably want to take a swing at Chris. And Jon, well, Jon might just come up with a logical explanation for it all, but I didn’t want to risk telling him for fear he would tell everyone else, and then Chris would be coming for us.

They would all know soon enough.

When I woke up early the next morning, Tori was already dressed and sitting on her cot with her arms curled around her legs and her gym bag over her shoulder. I gave her a quick wave and got dressed. While trying to make as little noise as possible, the two of us once again climbed out of the basement and stepped out to the predawn morning.

It was cold. Winter was definitely on the way. We walked quickly away from Faneuil Hall, looking around constantly to see if we were being watched. No alarms sounded. Nobody came running. We retraced our steps back to the parking lot where we had left the Explorer several days before.

“You’d better drive,” I said. “You’ve got more experience.”

That was an understatement. I wasn’t even old enough to have a license. Neither was Tori, but she had been driving her father’s pickup truck all over Pemberwick Island to deliver lobsters. I had no doubt that she could navigate the empty streets of Boston. The question was, could she trail a bus without being seen?

“Is the other gun back there?” Tori asked.

I lifted the back hatch to see… nothing.

“The cowboys must have found it,” I said uneasily.

Tori reached into her gym bag and pulled out the Glock. She reached in again and took out the fully loaded clip that held seventeen bullets. With one quick movement, she slammed the clip into the handgrip and locked it into place.

“I never shot a person,” Tori said. “But I’m willing to try.”

We got into the Explorer. Tori fired up the engine, and seconds later we were rolling back toward Faneuil Hall.

“Pull up near the dumpster,” I offered. “But keep close to the building.”

Tori drove with the headlights off, which made it tricky to see where we were going. The last thing we needed was to slam into a light post. Or a bus. Soon we were gliding close to the building with the dumpster. Tori drove up onto the sidewalk, crossed the brick pedestrian walkway, and pulled to a stop a few feet short of the end of the building.

“I’ll kill the engine, and we can watch from outside,” she said. “When the bus pulls out, we’ll get back in and follow.”

“Do you think you can shadow them without being seen?” I asked.

“I have no idea,” she said impatiently. “It’s not like I’ve done this before.”

She turned off the engine and pulled out the key. When we got out of the SUV, we left the doors open. Getting back in fast was going to be critical.

We crept to the dumpster and took up our familiar position to see that the bus was back and people were already being loaded.

“Jeez, we just made it,” I whispered.

“It’s going to be a full load,” Tori pointed out.

There were many more people than there were the day before. Maybe twice as many. It made me a little nervous to think that Chris might have caught wind that we were on to him and decided to increase his numbers. But there was no way he could have known. Or so I hoped.

Nothing else was out of the ordinary. The girl checked off the names of the victims, they boarded the bus, and the door closed.

“That’s it, let’s go,” Tori said.

We ran for the Explorer and quietly closed the doors after getting in.

“I’ll circle around toward the street they took off on yesterday,” Tori announced.

She hit the gas and rounded the block that was near the same route the bus had taken the day before. She pulled to the side of the road and waited.

I held my breath.

Seconds later, the bus rolled by in front of us.

“And the chase is on,” she declared.

Tori waited a few seconds, then took a quick left onto a street that ran parallel to the route the bus was on.

I rolled down my window in the hope of hearing the bus even when we couldn’t see it. It worked well enough; we could hear the steady, low rumble of its engine.

We soon hit an intersection that forced us to turn directly onto the street that the bus was on.

“Don’t follow too close,” I said. “It’s not like we can get lost in traffic.”

It was still fairly dark. I hoped that would help us blend into the city.

Tori let the bus get several blocks in front of us. It made a few turns, but we saw them all and were able to keep pace.

“It doesn’t look like its leaving town,” I said. “It’s not headed toward the interstate.”

The driver didn’t obey traffic rules. The bus turned the wrong way onto one-way streets and didn’t even slow down for stop signs.

Tori did an awesome job keeping up. There was no way of knowing if the bus driver had seen us, but I felt as though we were doing okay.

“We were here the other day,” Tori pointed out. “It’s turning onto Storrow Drive.”

It was the same route, parallel to the Charles River, that we had taken the day we arrived in Boston. It was also the route we took between Fenway Park and Faneuil Hall.

“Stay on the local streets,” I said. “If we follow it onto Storrow Drive, they’ll see us for sure.”

I had set an almost impossible task for Tori. We had to drive on the far side of buildings from the bus while trying to keep pace. If there had been traffic, we never would have been able to do it. As it was, all we had to do was swerve past abandoned cars. We traveled like that for several minutes until we saw the bus take the curve that led toward Fenway.

Tori was able to stay focused and shadow the bus from a few blocks away, using the buildings to shield us from sight. When the bus turned onto Yawkey Way, there was no doubt in my mind. Its destination was Fenway Park.

Finally, the bus slowed and stopped in front of an entrance gate to the old ballpark. There were a few abandoned cars a block away, so Tori pulled upbehind one. We were a safe distance away but had a clear view of the bus.

“It’s safe to say they’re not here to catch a game,” I said.

Two bulky men stepped out of the gate and approached the bus.

“Oh, that’s not good,” Tori said.

They were dressed in gray, military-like camouflage fatigues and wore black berets. From that distance I couldn’t see whether they had any insignias or patches to identify them. From each of their belts hung what looked like a two-foot-long black baton. They didn’t appear to have any other weapons. When they stepped up to the bus, the door opened and the victims stepped out. Knowing how Jim had been tranquilized, it now looked obvious that they all had been drugged in some way, for they shuffled along in line, zombie-like, toward the entrance.

“What the hell is that?” I asked, pointing above the stadium.

There was a giant steel frame peeking up above the stands. Next to it was the top of what looked like a construction crane.

“Did you see that before?” I asked.

“I don’t remember,” Tori admitted. “But it isn’t normal. It’s like something is being built inside the stadium.”

“That fast?” I said. “I swear that wasn’t there a couple of weeks ago.”

The last of the victims got off the bus, and the two soldiers, or whatever they were, followed them inside. The bus door closed, and the vehicle pulled out, its mission complete.

“We gotta go inside,” I said.

“I knew you were going to say that,” Tori replied.

We got out of the Explorer and jogged toward the stadium. We didn’t go to the same gate that the victims had entered. Instead, we found a set of stairs leading to a higher level and ran up. Our search for a way in didn’t take long. Every last gate was wide open. We slipped inside and found ourselves in the deserted mezzanine. There were no Fenway Franks sizzling or game programs being hawked. There were no peanuts, popcorn, or Cracker Jacks to be found. The place was dead.

Tori and I moved cautiously, hugging close to the walls. There was no telling when one of those soldiers might appear. As we made our way closer to the tunnel that passed under the stands and led to the field, we could hear that the stadium wasn’t as dead as we thought. There was activity happening on the diamond, and it wasn’t a baseball game.

“It sounds like a construction site,” I whispered to Tori.

There was the distinct sound of machinery and hammering and drilling that jumbled together into a storm of white noise. We moved cautiously along the tunnel until we got our first view of the field.

It looked nothing like it did when the Red Sox were playing.

We came out onto the second level of the stadium to look down on what was definitely a construction site. The entire field, including the baseball diamond and the outfield, was gone. In its place was the skeleton of the massive structure that we had seen from outside. It was the frame of a giant dome that covered most of what used to be the field. Metallic, silver skin was being applied to the outside but had only gotten a third of the way to the top, which allowed us to see inside. Looking through the girders showed us that the interior was going to be a vast space, like a circus tent. Or a giant steel igloo. On one side of the dome was the frame of a giant door that had yet to be installed. It looked big enough to drive a truck through.

As incredible a sight as this was, there was something else going on that was even more stunning.

“That’s how it went up so fast,” Tori said, numb.

Workers were scattered throughout the construction site. Hundreds of them. They were all laboring under the watchful eye of several more soldiers. Many of the workers I recognized from the Hall.

The truth became all too clear. People from the Hall weren’t being executed; they were being used as slave labor to build this monstrous structure. It suddenly made sense why we were being treated so well. We were being fed and kept healthy so we could build this contraption.

The realization that we were being groomed as slaves wasn’t the most disturbing truth we discovered. The workers were moving with impossible speed. Men lifted girders that had to weigh ten times their body weight. Women were hauling material and wielding jackhammers that were almost as big as they were. They swarmed over the structure, dangling from the frame, moving pieces into place with inhuman strength. It was like watching a movie play out in fast motion. It was an impossible sight…

…that was all too possible.

“It’s the Ruby,” I said, stunned. “They were all forced to take it.”

The purpose of the Ruby had suddenly become clear.

“How great is this?” came an enthusiastic voice from the tunnel behind us.

It was a voice that I recognized but never expected to hear again.

Tori and I froze. She knew the voice too. Neither of us wanted to turn to see if it was true.

“I heard you landed at the Hall, but I’m surprised to see you here at Fenway so soon. You weren’t scheduled to start work until next week.”

“This is impossible,” Tori said in a strained whisper.

I knew it wasn’t. Nothing was impossible. Not anymore.

“But that’s cool,” the guy said. “We can always use a few more hands.”

I turned slowly. Though I knew who I would see, it was still a shock, for we had witnessed him being shot dead on a bluff overlooking the ocean and tumbling into the sea.

“Welcome to Fenway,” he said with a warm smile.

Mr. Feit had risen from the grave.