Page 59 of The Midnight Hour
“You okay, Rubes?” I ask my youngest daughter gently, putting my arm around her shoulder and holding her close for a few precious seconds. I’m jolted by how tall she is; she comes up to my chin now. She nods, her hair brushing my cheek. “It’s going to be okay,” I tell her, a promise I know I can’t make, but will do my utmost to keep. “It really will.”
She nods again, without saying a word. I give her shoulder one more squeeze and then let her go because we need to move.
Adrenaline fuels me forward, gives me a purpose I know I don’t really feel, not if I let myself stop and think for two minutes, but I can’t now, because how long is it before Stratton is found? Before the game is up and we are tossed out on ourown, with nothing, forever? Questions and reassurances can come later, I tell myself, as we hurry down the darkened street and I pretend even to myself not to notice how Daniel is lagging behind, breathing heavily as he tries to keep up.
By some miracle, we avoid any curfew patrols and make it to the warehouse, where Sam is waiting, looking apprehensive but resolute, his breath creating frosty puffs in the cold night air. Nicole and Ben are standing next to him, their bodies both hunched, their arms wrapped around their middles. When Nicole looks at me, I see she has a black eye. My breath rushes out. I guess they’re coming with us.
There are several boxes of supplies stacked around Sam; I can’t see what they hold, but hopefully stuff that will be helpful. It’s better than nothing, anyway.
“How did you get into the warehouse?” Mattie asks him.
“It’s just a keycode. I watched the guy lock it up the other day. He didn’t seem to care.”
I breathe out; can it be this easy? It feels wrong, somehow, and yet I so want it to be easy. Or if not easy, then at least possible. I need it to work, because it’s hard enough, not knowing where we’re going or what it will be like when we get there.
“And the car?” Mattie asks.
Sam shrugs. “I don’t know how that part works. We’re behind barbed wire, and I don’t have any bolt cutters. There are some weaker points than others, but…” He trails off, shrugging, before continuing doubtfully, “If Kyle hotwires a car, he can drive it here, I guess, but someone is bound to hear it. And then we have to get out of here somehow, and with all this. I don’t know how we’ll do it.” He nudges a crate with his foot.
“Not without someone noticing anyway,” Daniel says. His tone is wry but he’s huffing and puffing and holding his side in a way I’m trying not to notice. Mattie notices, though; I can tell by the way her eyes narrow, and her lips press together. Just like me, she doesn’t say anything. “I’ll tell you what,” Daniel says,and now he sounds intent, although with a hint of that old wryness. “Let’s leave here in style.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Mattie demands, and Daniel just smiles.
“Trust me,” he says, and I know we will. It’s not like we have another choice.
We find out what he intends just a little while later. Kyle joins us at the warehouse, echoing our fears about the noise of starting a car; he doesn’t want to do it until we’re ready to go, because there are patrols roving around the base and it will make too much noise.
We decide to take the crates to the car, even though it’s at least a ten-minute walk and it’s freezing cold plus they’re heavy; it feels safer to load up there and then just go. Although how we’re going to go, I still don’t know, because, no matter what Daniel said about exiting in style, the base is enclosed by barbed wire, all the gates padlocked. I don’t let myself think about it too much because there’s too much to do, and I’m trusting that Daniel—and Sam—really do have some kind of plan.
Nicole and Ben work silently alongside us, neither of them speaking. At one point, I pause, wanting to say something, but Nicole gives a pre-emptive shake of her head as she hefts a crate. I guess there will be time later, if I even want to share those kinds of confidences with this woman.
Twice while we’re hefting crates we hear voices and see the menacing sweep of a flashlight arc across the parking lot, and we all hit the ground, flat on our stomachs, Mattie cradling Phoebe to her. I’m not afraid, even when the patrol is close enough to hear the men’s voices; I feel too disembodied to feel fear. In the same way as I was out on that road with the blown-out bridge, I’m separate from myself, a spectator to what is happening, distantly wondering how it will all unfold.Maybe that’s the only way to get through moments such as this one.
The patrol moves on, and we keep working, breath coming in frosty puffs, fingers numb with cold. I’m conscious of time passing, unspooling like a thread, the bobbin bouncing away from us, out of reach. It’s been over an hour since we put Stratton in that closet. We didn’t even gag him; he could have been discovered by now, and they might already be looking for us, ready to mete out whatever justice Michael Duart’s faceless committee decides is appropriate.
Finally we are loaded up and in the car, a battered, black SUV that seats eight but is taking nine, with Phoebe on Mattie’s lap.
We wait, breaths held, hearts racing, as Kyle crouches by the steering wheel and starts tinkering with wires. Daniel is at the wheel, and I glance at him, concerned; although he’s long since caught his breath, he’s still holding his side.
A sputter, two, and then the engine coughs to life and turns over. Kyle flings himself into the back, and Daniel steps on the gas so we lurch forward, and Mattie lets out a little shriek of surprise.
“How are we getting out of here?” Nicole asks in a low voice. It’s the first time she’s spoken since we saw her outside the warehouse. She has her arm around Ben and he is burrowing into her, looking more like a little boy than I’ve ever seen him.
“You can’t go over it, you can’t go under it…” Daniel murmurs and I give him a look. He’s quoting the old childhood story of Ruby’s,We’re Going on a Bear Hunt. She loved that book.
“Daniel—”
I break off as Daniel floors the engine and the car shoots forward.
Someone shrieks—maybe even me—as we start speedingtoward the fence, four ragged lines of barbed wire. At least it’s not chain-link, I think numbly, just as floodlights suddenly come on behind us, illuminating an armed patrol that is running right at us. Not us, I realize, seconds later, but toward cars. They’re not letting us go without a fight.
I barely have time to process that before our car hits the wire, and for a terrifying second I think we’re going to ping back like the snap of a rubber band. The car simply isn’t strong enough to break the barbed wire or rip the fence posts out. From behind us, an engine roars to life.
No one speaks and Daniel’s knuckles are white on the steering wheel and then with a pop the fence flies free and so do we, the car careening down the road, leaving the NBSRC behind us—except, of course, we’re being chased by two vehicles, and it’s clear our pursuers have guns when a bullet scrapes the side of the car, and I realize they’re trying to shoot out our tires.
“Dad,” Sam gasps, although I’m not sure what he’s trying to say because another bullet shatters the window right by my head and Daniel reaches out and pushes me down so my forehead smacks against the dashboard and for a second I’m stunned, my head pulsing with pain.
Daniel weaves wildly over the road, trying to avoid being hit, while I stay crouched down, scrunching my eyes shut against the pain still thundering in my head.
