The fort, p.2
The Fort, page 2
That annoys me. “How many times do I have to tell you? It can be twenty-five or twenty-seven, but never twenty-six!”
Ricky is mystified. “What’s wrong with twenty-six?”
I’m disgusted. “Didn’t they teach you anything in magnet school? Twenty-six is two times thirteen! That’s the unluckiest number!”
He stares at me. “You have triskaidekaphobia!”
“I do not! I have OCD!”
“Triskaidekaphobia means you’re afraid of the number thirteen,” he persists.
“I’m not afraid of it,” I retort. “I respect it, because I know it can kill me.”
“How about this?” C.J. suggests. “I’ll walk twenty-five paces, Evan’ll walk twenty-seven, and the fort should be halfway between us.”
“Pretending doesn’t work,” I grumble. “We all know it’s twenty-six, so it’s still bad.”
We leave the path and push through the underbrush. I’m trying so hard not to count steps that I’m practically tap dancing. The other guys are used to me, but not Ricky. He’s looking at me like I’m a clown. I’m not, you know. A lot of people have OCD—adults too, not just kids. Maybe that Russian space capsule will bounce off Dr. Breckinridge’s herb garden and land on Ricky.
Not counting is almost impossible for a guy like me. In fact, I’m almost up to a hundred and fifty when Jason groans, “Ohhhhhh!”
“Our fort!” adds Evan in true pain.
The location was a perfect, U-shaped recess in the rock, big enough for all four of us. We made the roof out of old shower curtains from C.J.’s house—a little moldy, but totally waterproof. We attached them to the rock with railroad spikes and tied the front to two skinny trees that were almost like matching pillars for our grand entrance. The walls were formed by a piece of plywood on the left and an old NO TRESPASSING sign on the right.
At least that’s what it used to look like. It doesn’t look like that anymore. It doesn’t look like much of anything. The rock formation is still there. The stones we brought in as seats have sunk into the mud from all that rain. The walls and roof are gone, blown away by the wind. A few pieces of the NO TRESPASSING sign—each about the size of a postage stamp—are scattered at the base of a nearby elm tree. Strips of tattered shower curtain flutter from branches thirty feet up.
That’s all that’s left of our fort.
“I warned you guys,” I tell them resentfully. “Twenty-six paces is asking for trouble. And now our fort is in the toilet.”
Jason shrugs. “We can rebuild it. You know, bring in a couple more shower curtains—”
C.J. shakes his head. “No good. Mom and Marcus switched to glass doors when we redid the bathroom.”
Evan sighs. “What’s the point? It’ll just blow away with the next storm.”
“Or get crushed by a Russian space capsule,” I can’t help adding. Once I get hooked on a subject, it’s very hard to put it out of my mind.
“Forget it,” C.J. decides. “This is an ex-fort.”
“Hey!” comes Ricky’s voice. “Check this out!”
In all the agony about our fort being destroyed by the storm, none of us noticed Ricky drift away. That’s because it isn’t his agony, because it isn’t his fort. Face it—it isn’t anybody’s fort anymore. Right now, our unwanted guest is about twenty feet behind us, in what probably used to be a clearing but is now covered in underbrush. He’s hacking at the ground with the heel of his sneaker. Then he drops to his knees and starts digging with his hands. What a weird kid!
Evan is the first one over there. “Will you cut it out, Ricky? If you come back covered in mud, my grandma’s going to blame me!” He glances down at the place where Ricky’s digging and squats right next to him. Suddenly, the two of them are scrabbling in the dirt together.
“Get over here, you guys!” Evan calls. “He’s found something!”
I’ve completely lost my count, so I have no idea if this is good luck or bad.
Evan and I dig like crazy, clearing the mud and weeds away from the hard surface underneath.
Jason leans over and brays “What is it?” directly into my ear. The guy has no volume control. Everything comes out at eleven.
I knock on it with my fist. “It’s definitely metal. Feels like a big square plate. The runoff from the storm must have uncovered it.”
“Big deal,” yawns C.J., the one with the messed-up face. “Somebody threw away a piece of metal. Whoop-de-do.”
I keep on digging. I’m not sure why I’m being so stubborn. Maybe it’s this: Evan and his buddies have made it pretty clear that I’m about as welcome in this group as a bad stomach flu. And if this metal plate turns out to be something interesting—or even valuable—then those guys won’t be able to make me feel so useless. Okay, it’s probably just junk, but what if it isn’t? What if it’s the top of a metal box with something cool inside? Like a time capsule. Or a secret grave. For all we know, it could be a million dollars cash from some long-forgotten bank heist!
Evan is working as hard as I am, and so is that Mitchell kid—although he’s digging from a distance with a long branch.
“What’s this?” Evan asks. There’s a slot in the metal near the edge of the plate.
All at once, it comes to me—like one of those optical puzzles where you have to see the hidden image. The slot—a handle!
I stand up, fix the fingers of both hands into it, and heave with all my might. For the first couple of seconds, it won’t budge. Then, with a crunching sound, the earth and stones around the edges break away, and the trapdoor rises up on its rusty hinges with a creaking sound.
“No way!” Jason booms.
All five of us gather around, gawking into the hole.
There’s something there—an underground chamber. A metal ladder, bolted to the wall, descends into the darkness. I pull out my phone and turn on the flashlight app. The ladder stretches about twelve feet straight down to a metal floor, and—
“Is that a welcome mat?” Evan breathes, squinting into the gloom.
“Someone lives here?” Jason asks in amazement.
“I don’t think so,” I answer. “At least not anymore. I’m pretty sure the trapdoor was covered by dirt before the hurricane washed it away. Only one way to find out.” I swing a leg over the side and step down to the first rung.
“Maybe this isn’t such a great idea,” Mitchell says nervously. “There could be wild animals living down there.”
“With a welcome mat?” C.J. challenges.
“I’m going too,” Evan decides. “If anything eats Ricky, I’m better off facing it than trying to explain to my grandmother that I lost him.”
I step carefully at first, but the ladder seems sturdy. Holding my phone light in my teeth, I clamber down until I’m standing on the welcome mat. Evan scrambles after me and we stand opposite each other, frozen in time and a little bit scared.
“Hello?” I sound like a first grader.
“Anybody get eaten yet?” Mitchell calls from above. His voice seems distant.
I brandish my phone so I can light our way. Before I can look around, Evan yanks down a heavy metal toggle switch on the wall. There’s a loud click and the whole place lights up like it’s high noon. I close my eyes from the sudden brightness, and when I open them again, I’m in another world.
There’s a whole house down here—or at least a whole apartment! It must be almost thirty feet long, clad in metal, lit by bulbs in the ceiling. There’s a full kitchen, complete with a sink and running water, and, in a small alcove behind it, a chemical toilet.
There’s a living area, with a futon couch, and even one of those bulky old-fashioned TV sets with a squarish screen, rounded at the corners. The floor is decorated with a rug—a little dusty, but fancy, probably expensive—Persian or Chinese. Not that I’m an expert, but some of the families from my old school owned a lot of pricey, high-end stuff. It’s not hard to recognize that kind of thing once you’ve seen it a few times.
“Are you guys okay?” we hear C.J.’s voice call from the surface. “Where’s all that bright light coming from?”
“Come on down,” Evan invites him. “You’re not going to believe it.”
Jason climbs down and stands, blinking and staring. “Whoa, what is this place?’ he hollers, and the echo reverberates off the metal walls. The guy is loud enough in the regular world. Down here, he’s a human bullhorn.
C.J. is next, followed eventually by a reluctant Mitchell, who looks like he’s expecting at least a Bengal tiger to leap out of the chemical toilet and swallow us whole.
“Okay, I don’t get it,” C.J. admits. “If nobody lives in this place, why is it here? Who builds an underground house in the middle of the woods? Who builds any kind of house if they’re not going to live in it?”
“This is bigger than my dad’s apartment,” Jason puts in. He opens a kitchen cabinet to reveal a stack of elegant china plates and a row of crystal glasses. “Nicer too. Except the TV. That’s a piece of junk.”
I’m forming an opinion about that. “I don’t think it’s junk. I think it’s just old—all TVs were like that before flat-screens were invented. See that machine on the shelf underneath it? That’s a player for videocassettes—like they used to have in the seventies and eighties.”
“My grandparents have one,” Evan confirms. “It’s in a box in the basement, but Grandpa won’t throw it out. I guess it cost a lot when he bought it.”
“Don’t you get it?” I persist. “Expensive plates, expensive glasses, expensive rugs, expensive stuff from a long time ago. This place used to belong to some rich guy—someone who could afford to have it built, and hooked up to electricity, and filled with all the comforts of home. And the reason it’s abandoned is because he’s probably dead.”
Mitchell shudders. “I don’t want to be in some dead guy’s house. It could be haunted.”
“Not unless he died in it,” C.J. points out. “Do you see any old bones around here?”
Evan is kneeling in front of the TV. “I wonder if this thing works. Where’s the remote?”
“There isn’t one. Everything was buttons back then.” I join him and try to press the on button, which turns out to be a switch you have to twist. There’s a click, and the screen lightens a little, but there’s nothing on it.
“Figures,” Mitchell puts in. “It’s broken.”
I turn the channel dial, clicking past one through twelve. Nothing. That’s when I notice the light on the videocassette player. “There’s a tape in here!” I exclaim, and hit play.
Finally, we get something on the screen. First, a procession of upside-down numbers, followed by a weird line of distortion that starts at the bottom of the screen and slowly climbs all the way to the top.
“This is a really boring show,” C.J. announces with a smirk that makes the injured side of his face look grotesque.
And suddenly, we see—
“A guy!” Jason bellows, rattling the metal walls.
The man on the screen is probably in his sixties, with white hair and steel-rimmed glasses. He wears a fancy three-piece suit and sits at a carved desk in what looks like a posh office, with lots of dark woods, red leathers, and gleaming glassed-in bookcases.
“There’s our rich dude,” Evan supplies.
He starts to speak, but there isn’t any sound. I scramble to twist the volume knob, and a commanding voice comes from the small speaker—this is a person who’s used to being in charge.
“… so if you’re watching this, I have to conclude that I’m dead, and America is under attack. I won’t apologize for the fact that I can’t speak Russian or Chinese, or the language of whoever is in charge here. I’m sure your translators will figure it out soon enough.”
“Who is that old guy?” Jason asks in confusion. “He looks kind of familiar.”
C.J. snaps his fingers. “You know what? I think that’s Bennett Delamere.”
The name means nothing to me. “Who’s Bennett Delamere?”
Evan provides the answer. “Founder of DelaCraft Auto Parts. Half the town works there. Or at least they did till the layoffs started.”
“Including my mom,” Mitchell adds mournfully.
“Is he dead?” I ask.
“I’m pretty sure he died a long time ago,” Evan replies. “But I don’t think that’s what he’s talking about here. What’s all this stuff about America being under attack? And speaking Russian and Chinese?”
The facts are starting to come together in my head. A mysterious underground hideaway. Bizarre talk about an invasion and speaking Russian or Chinese. An old-fashioned videocassette playing on technology from the seventies or eighties—
“I know what this place is!” I blurt. “It’s a bomb shelter from the Cold War!”
“What’s a cold war?” Mitchell asks. “I mean, besides when my mom turns down the thermostat to save money on our heating bill?”
“I remember it from social studies,” C.J. interjects. “The Cold War was that time when the Americans, Russians, and Chinese were all afraid we were going to nuke each other!”
“Right!” I agree. “And a lot of people built underground bunkers like this one so they could survive a nuclear war!” I point to the screen, where Bennett Delamere is threatening the “invaders” that America will rise again. “It would explain this weird message.”
“It makes sense, you know,” Evan muses thoughtfully. “Everybody says Bennett Delamere was kind of eccentric. And a rich guy like him would have plenty of money to carve a place like this in the middle of the woods and deck it out like a vacation house.”
I step over to the kitchen and begin opening cabinets and drawers. The largest unit turns out to be a pantry that is jammed full of canned food, stacked floor to ceiling. There are soups and stews, beans and vegetables, whole meals in tins and in freeze-dried packages. “See?” I announce. “This is enough food for someone to shelter for months.”
“People who live in underground bunkers shouldn’t eat beans,” C.J. comments in that deadpan voice of his. “It’s the musical fruit, you know.”
I sniff the air. “It’s actually pretty fresh down here. There must be some kind of circulation fan somewhere. This Delamere guy might have been kind of a wing nut, but he sure knew how to build a bomb shelter.”
“He was a jerk,” Mitchell says bitterly. “According to my mom, Canaan used to be the best town in the state until DelaCraft Auto Parts started laying people off.”
On the TV, Bennett Delamere finishes off with “You may have killed me, but there are plenty more red-blooded Americans to pick up the torch of freedom and drive you from our shores. God bless America!” The screen goes dark, and there’s a whirring sound for a few seconds, before the video begins all over again, upside-down numbers first.
Evan leans over and hits pause before the tape can restart. The image of Bennett Delamere freezes, his index finger at full wag, his mouth open in mid-word.
“What a chump,” C.J. comments. “He spent all this money to protect himself against a bomb that never fell and a war that never came.”
“Money doesn’t care who owns it,” Jason agrees. “I’d give anything to have a place like this.”
“Actually,” I say slowly, “you do have a place like this. This place.”
“Get a grip, Ricky,” Jason sneers. “Like Bennett Delamere would give it to us.”
“Bennett Delamere is dead,” I remind them. “He doesn’t need it anymore. And nobody else knows about it. At least I doubt it. If it wasn’t for the hurricane, that trapdoor would have stayed buried forever. Guys—twenty minutes ago, you were all moaning and groaning because the storm blew away that collection of shower curtains and keep-out signs you called a fort. Don’t you see that we’ve just found the greatest ready-made fort in the history of the world?”
They stand there, staring at me like I’m speaking Norwegian.
Mitchell is the first to find his voice. “I know what you’re up to. You’re ticked off because you weren’t a part of the old fort, so now you’re trying to weasel in on the new one!”
“Mitchell,” C.J. chides gently. “He has a right to be part of this fort. He found it, remember?”
“Okay.” Evan is all business. “If this is going to be our fort, we have to lay down a few ground rules—”
“Underground rules,” Mitchell amends.
“Rule number one: Total secrecy. Nobody except the five of us is allowed to know about this place. If any parents get wind of it, they’ll start asking questions about whether or not it’s safe, and before you know it, they’ll shut us down. And no other kids either, because they might tell their parents.”
Jason speaks up. “But obviously, I have to tell Janelle.”
An angry babble from the others shouts him down.
“Janelle is the last person you can tell,” Evan informs him sternly. “Her dad’s a cop, and we can’t let the authorities find out about this place. We don’t own it, you know.”
“Yeah, but Bennett Delamere is dead,” Jason argues. “And I remember hearing that he never got married or had any kids.”
“Still,” I reason, “there must be some nephew or cousin who inherited his millions. That would be the owner of this place—even if that person doesn’t know it.”
“Let’s keep it that way,” Evan adds, “by making sure Janelle never has a chance to mention it to dear old Dad.”
Jason doesn’t look happy. “Janelle says honesty is the most important thing in a relationship.”
“You won’t be lying,” I assure him. “You’ll just be leaving a couple of details out.”
“Besides,” Mitchell says, “the old fort was guys only. So that rule automatically transfers to here.”
“What rule?” Jason complains, his booming voice resonating. “The old fort only existed for, like, six hours before the hurricane wrecked it! We never even got to hang out there!”
C.J. puts his hands over his ears. “If we’re going to be spending a lot of time down here, no yelling is going to have to be rule two.”
Jason glares at him. “How come all the rules have to be about me, huh? Why don’t we have a rule about not scraping half your face off? Or no—what’s the thing about the thirteens? Tris—triska—”
