The Extraction List Page 9

  Though the image of her head snapping against the floor still made me shiver.

  “Goodnight, everyone.” I fell asleep to the hum of Bo’s snoring. The last thing I saw was Cain, hands folded on his chest on top of the blanket, eyes wide open, staring straight up toward the sky.

  • • •

  We awoke with the sun, something that I was growing used to. Back in our normal lives, I would never dream of getting up before ten, unless, of course, I had school. I looked over at Cain, and he was still in the same position he had been in when I fell asleep. His eyes were wide open. Maybe he hadn’t slept at all.

  I shook Mom awake, and soon we were all up and moving. Cain climbed into the driver’s seat, Bo alongside him. Bo slammed the passenger door behind him as he sat down; he definitely wasn’t used to being second in command. Cain told us the plan: “We’re going to meet Jordyn at George’s Place. It’s a general store a few miles out that helps us. Guy’s really good at cooking the books so the government doesn’t catch on.”

  “Does that mean we’ll get to eat?” I asked.

  “Yes, absolutely.”

  I couldn’t help but squeal. We hadn’t eaten since Jordyn’s house, and my stomach was growling in protest. Sure, it hadn’t been that long, but I was used to getting my three meals a day. We had to be careful to ration our supplies, though, because we could only carry a certain amount, only eat enough to not let ourselves starve to death, but not enough to, as Cain put it, “interfere with our speed.”

  I hugged Mom and we settled back in the corner of the van. I could have sat up with Bo and Cain, but I didn’t want to leave her by herself. So we sat in the back, bouncing against the hard metal floor, and played thumb wars like we used to when I was little. I won, of course. I suspected she let me, but I still gloated at my victories.

  Images of Dad floated through my mind too. He was missing this. He chose to miss everything. Not just this fugitive madness, everything: my first art project for the school art fair, my first straight-A report card, just plain old ordinary board game night.

  After the divorce, I got a card a week from him. A card. Bit too late if you ask me. It was basically saying, “I left you and your mom alone, but here’s a Hallmark moment just for you.” Seriously? If I ever saw him again, I’d tell him right where to stick those cards.

  “Mom?” I pulled my thumb away. “I have a question.”

  I paused, wondering if I should continue.

  “Is it wrong that I don’t miss Dad?”

  Mom’s face went blank. I saw Bo look back at her and they exchanged wide-eyed glances at each other.

  “It’s not wrong. It’s a feeling. Never be mad at yourself for feeling something. That’s why they’re called ‘feelings.’ You can’t really help them coming and going. Kind of like how Grandma used to come by and stay for days whether we wanted her to or not, remember?”

  I smiled. “Yeah.”

  “The important thing is however you feel about Dad, you don’t let it control you. Don’t let how you feel about him make you angry inside. Understand?”

  I nodded then snatched her thumb back and we battled once more. Cain watched us in the rearview mirror.

  We pulled into the back parking lot of George’s Place. The van kicked up a cloud of tan dust, and the particles tickled my lungs when I got out. A very tall man stood on a wood platform that was attached to the back of the store, sleeves rolled up, with dirt on his cheeks. He gave a friendly wave, like we were doing something as normal as picking up some milk.

  Cain glided out of the car, not returning the greeting. He went straight up to the man on the platform. “Where’s Jordyn? She should have been here before us.” I didn’t think it was possible, but I could have sworn I heard just a little shake in Cain’s voice. His perfect hands may have trembled too. Just then, the door to the back of the store opened. A smiling head peeked out.

  “Ha! Gotcha!” Jordyn shouted, running up to Cain and throwing her arms around him.

  He spoke sternly, but a smile couldn’t help but creep onto his face. “Don’t do that! This is serious!” He kissed her on the cheek. My own burned a little. “How are you? And your parents?”

  “A little shaken up but okay. Nothing that’s not the nature of the business. They’re going to go into hiding for a while until this dies down a little. Probably go close to the edge of Mexico just in case.” Suddenly she turned and walked toward my mother. She winced, probably waiting for a screaming match, but Jordyn just grabbed her hand. “Claire…I’m sorry about what my dad did. He was just…”

  “Scared? Believe me, I get it. And I understand.”

  Shockingly enough, Jordyn gave Mom a hug. And she accepted. I looked at the faces of both women, both very different but oddly the same: both tired, both older than their years.

  Though we were all happy to see each other, George brought us back to reality. “I hate to break this up, but we don’t got much time. Let’s get you your stuff and get you outta here.”

  “That reminds me. Claire, let me see your arm.” Jordyn didn’t wait for a protest and grabbed Mom by the wrist, turning it bottom side up, exposing the wounds left by the Taskforce Officer’s cigarette burns. “George, I need some gauze and some antibiotics. Got any?”

  “There’s some in the bag I prepared for you. I’ll grab it.” Seconds later, George was back, bandages and ointment in one hand, bag in the other. “Here you go, dear. I took it out for you so you wouldn’t have to shuffle through it all.” Jordyn smiled and gently wrapped Mom’s arm up like she’d done it a hundred times. She probably had.

  Bo glanced over at Cain. “What are we doing about transportation? I don’t think we should really continue traveling in a police van. Besides the obvious, it smells like…”

  “A dead man?” Cain glared at him.

  “Take my truck. Got a canopy in the back so no one’ll see you.” George pointed to an old black truck sitting between the dumpsters and the side of the building.

  “Thank you very much, George. What about the van though?” Bo nodded politely, and we headed toward the truck.

  George grinned. “Don’t you worry. I’ll take care of it.”

  George waved at us as we drove away from his store and back onto the road. Since Jordyn had returned to us, she took the copilot seat up front, and Cain demoted Bo to passenger cargo with me and Mom. “What is he going to do with the van?” Bo asked while holding on to a storage hook in an effort to keep from bouncing too hard.

  “Scrap.” I didn’t have a clue what that meant. I was about to ask, when Cain answered on his own. “George’s wife is an artist. She makes sculptures. Out of a lotta stuff, like metal. By tonight it will be some nice couple’s entry decoration, coffee table, or lampshade. Or something.”

  “Cain, we have to make a side trip before the next stop.” Jordyn stared, as if there was no room for argument. Cain didn’t see it that way.

  “What do you mean? We always have to stick to the plan. Always. You know that.”

  “I know, but before you got there, George told me something. He heard that there’s twin boys in a boarding school just over the border in the next state over. The place used to be an old hotel.” She pulled out a yellow piece of paper and handed it to Cain. “Even gave me directions. They matched a description of my brothers. We have to check. Please.”

  Cain set the directions on his lap.

  Mom crinkled her forehead. “Jordyn, they can’t be you’re brothers. Children are always boarded in the same state where they’re from.”

  Jordyn turned around in her seat and stared at my mother, sighing deeply. “You really don’t know, do you?”

  “Know what?”

  “Claire, I don’t know what anybody told you, but…it’s not true. Nobody even knows where the schools are, let alone who’s in which one. And people who we’ve worked with are too worried about keeping their kids from getting taken away in the first place to worry about where they would be getting sent to. Whoever t
old you that there’s a neat and tidy map of them somewhere that a normal person can get to lied.” She glared at Bo. I guessed it was no longer my mother she blamed for her family’s situation. “It’s a miracle I found out about this one.”

  As I glanced out the window, a realization hit me. My stomach turned, but in a good way this time. Something I definitely wasn’t used to anymore. “Yeah, Cain, please! We have to go there! If Jordyn’s brothers were only moved one state over, Olivia might have gotten moved there too! She could be there!”

  Mom opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. She just looked at my face and squeezed my hand tight.

  Jordyn looked back at me and smiled. She didn’t ask me who Olivia was…probably didn’t care. But I was sure she appreciated me adding another point to her argument.

  Cain sat silently for a moment. “Alright.”

  Mom and I looked at Bo. He sat looking straight ahead, cheeks flushed. “What happened to sticking with the plan? We’re in enough danger as it is. And you want to make an extra stop? No way! Yes, there’s a school there, but Claire’s right, there’s no way your brothers are there. It would be a complete waste of time.” He slammed his fist into the side of the van. If the van hadn’t been so bouncy, he may have noticed me jump at the sound.

  Cain stopped the truck in the middle of the road. Luckily there were no cars behind us. He turned around and got inches from Bo’s face. “We’re going.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The road seemed to stretch on for miles when suddenly Cain made a sharp left onto a dirt road, if you could even call it a road. It looked more like a trail that was barely big enough for a car to fit through. If I had reached out the window, the trees would have swallowed my hand whole.

  Finally we made it to a place where we could pull off and park the truck. The road still stretched on in front of us, but Cain explained that we didn’t want anyone knowing we were there, so the rest of the side trip would be on foot. “What if someone drives by?” I asked.

  “That’s just a risk we’re going to have to take.”

  Bo rolled his eyes at Cain’s answer, but said nothing.

  The grass crunched under my feet as we made our way through the brush in the direction of the school. Of course I was last in line. No one wanted me to be seen if things went bad. Cain led, followed by Jordyn, Bo, and my mom. Just as we thought for sure George had led us in the wrong direction, there it was.

  I swore I’d seen it in an old movie, back from when Dad and I had our horror movie nights that Mom didn’t know about. It was Dad’s way of bonding without actually having to speak to me. We would sit with a bowl of popcorn between us, watching the work of the practically ancient greats on his old video cassette player. He said that was the way horror movies were meant to be watched: grainy, with faded colors. That’s where I thought I had seen the school before.

  Cain had me, Mom, and Bo stay hidden in the brush around the school while he and Jordyn searched for a way in. While huddled in my hiding place, I couldn’t help but peek through a crack in the bushes at the fortress before us.

  A large iron fence wrapped around the grounds and its door towered over us. A gargoyle head that held the gate door handle in its mouth smiled a menacing grin. The grass in front of the school was tall and falling on itself, like it hadn’t been mowed in months. Weeds sat nestled every so often in the grass, huddled together in groups like they would be lonely without each other.

  The windows of the school were tarnished with dirt. It already looked like mold was trying to spread over them, sealing out the light forever. I squinted to see past them and into the school, but I was only met with blackness. I pictured Olivia’s face staring at me through the grime and misty glass. I shook the image from my mind as quickly as it came. I couldn’t bare thinking that my best friend might have lived in a place like this, surrounded by strangers and brick, like a ghost who couldn’t seem to make its way home.

  The silence scared me more than the school itself. From how Mom described the schools, I expected laughter. I expected jungle gyms, soccer fields, even children dancing around maypoles or something equally as sugary sweet. But there was nothing. All I heard was the chirping of the birds and the leaves blowing by in the wind.

  Cain shouted at us as he approached. For Cain to risk shouting, he must have been sure of one thing: “There’s no one here.”

  Mom sucked in her breath. “What do you mean there’s no one here? It CAN’T be deserted, it just can’t. That’s impossible. There’s supposed to be children running around all over the place.”

  Jordyn followed behind Cain, hands on her hips. “Well, there aren’t. It’s empty.”

  Mom’s knees buckled and Bo had to steady her. “Where are they?” I could barely hear the words emerge from Mom’s mouth, softly and with great effort. But then she righted herself and started marching toward the school. Jordyn had to run to keep up.

  “Where are you going, Claire?” Bo shouted, taking off in a sprint toward her. Cain and I followed.

  “I’m going to find out where they are. There has to be something in there that will tell us. This isn’t right.” Jordyn and Mom quickened their pace and were gaining distance on us. I didn’t know my mom was so fast.

  We reached the door within seconds. It seemed to be stuck, but between Jordyn and Mom were able to yank it open, practically falling backward in the process. I expected a cloud of dust to explode from inside, but none did. Cain must have noticed too. “They must have left fairly recently.”

  Jordyn ran her finger across the top of a nearby table, and a thin layer of gray dust came up with it. “Not THAT recently.”

  The entryway was decorated like an old Victorian living room. Red velvet couches lined a brick fireplace. Huge vases sat in each corner, with long, stiff, brown twigs sticking out of each top. Each vase had its own remake of a famous painting circling it: the Mona Lisa, the dripping clocks, the Sistine Chapel…and the screaming man with the white face. They didn’t seem too appropriate for what was supposed to be a place for children. I wondered what comfort they thought the children would take in the red velvet couches and fancy decorations. When the nightmares came, I doubted they would want to wrap their arms around a vase.

  A painting of President Gray hung on the wall, staring down at us, almost willing us to turn back the way we came. I glared at him, hoping in some cosmic way he could feel it wherever he was at that moment. I wished it hung lower so I could have spit on it too.

  There was a door labeled “East Wing” in the corner of the entryway. There was a thin layer of grime on the window, but not enough to block my view entirely. I gently pushed open the door to reveal a huge hallway. There were about eight doors on each side of it, and then it turned a corner. Dead bolts sealed each door, but all of them had a window and I went through door by door, peeking through each one.

  The first one I looked in was a classroom—but not the classroom that Mom described when she had talked about the boarding schools…where Olivia was supposed to be. Desks were scrunched together, so crowded that I doubted the kids had been able to walk between them without turning sideways. The classrooms Mom described had bright colors, flowers, and at least windows to the outside. This room had none of the three. The walls had no posters to speak of. The only plant that I could see had crunchy leaves that, if I had touched them, would have crumbled into pieces.

  The next few rooms were classrooms, practically identical to the first. Finally I came upon a kitchen. It reminded me of a mess hall in a prison. Rows of tables sat facing the lunch line, every table made of metal. Again, no windows…just steel upon metal upon cement. Even the gate from the eating area to the kitchen was made out of chain-link fencing. I shuddered when I noticed something shiny hanging from the middle of the gate.

  It was a combination lock.

  After the kitchen area, I peeked into a room that was different from all the others. It was still a classroom, but I noticed that in farthest, darkest corner there w
ere blankets and pillows. Next to that was a stack of canned food, oatmeal, and other food that I couldn’t make out the label on. Also, unlike the other rooms, the bolt lock on this particular door had been busted open. I was about to tiptoe inside when I felt arms wrap around me and someone pressed their hand over my mouth.

  The man pulled me inside the room, dragging me backward. When the door shut behind us, he finally whirled me around so I could see his face. Gray sandpaper covered his chin, and the gray hair on the top of his head pointed in all different directions, swirling in spiral patterns. His red flannel shirt looked like it hadn’t been washed in days. Beer and fish seeped out of his pours. His cheeks sunk inward and the bones looked sharp. “Who are you? What’re you doing here? Are there more of you?” He shook me with each sentence and didn’t seem to mind that my head banged against the wall each time. Beads of sweat flung from his brow and landed in my eyes.

  I was about to answer him and say anything to get him off of me when Mom and the others burst through the door. She ran over to me and yanked me from his ever-tightening grasp, kicking him even after I was free. “Get away from her! Who are you?” Mom clung to me, and I squeezed her back, like maybe if we squeezed each other hard enough we could both disappear from that place. Cain stepped in front of her and motioned to both of us to move farther behind him.

  “Answer her,” Cain said.

  The man straightened himself up, backing away from us as fast as he could. “Harlow. Imma security guard at this place.”

  Cain stepped toward him.

  “I’m sorry about the girl. Just that I’ve been the only one here for the last couple months. Wasn’t expectin’ anybody.”

  “Well then, you can answer some questions for us.” Cain pushed Harlow down into one of the children’s desks. It squealed under his weight, like a pig protesting on his way to the slaughterhouse. “Where are the children?”

  Harlow scoffed. “Hell if I know, but they haven’t been here for a couple months now. I came in one morning to start my shift and everybody was gone.”