The secret runners, p.23
The Secret Runners, page 23
This may surprise you, but I know about the tunnel and how it works. I visit the other world sometimes.
I looked up from the note.
“No way…,” I said aloud.
Both Red and Jenny looked at me questioningly, but I held up my hand and kept reading.
Like every little brother in the world, I watch my sisters constantly, especially when they sneak out at night. That’s how I discovered the tunnel.
Sometimes I would steal my mom’s gem and use it to enter the tunnel. Other times I’d take Misty’s.
I saw you once when I was inside. I was up on the roof of the natural history museum, but I was wearing my hood, so if I were spotted I wouldn’t be recognized. Another time, I shrieked at your brother down the well. Sorry about that. But I found that screaming crazily at someone was the best way to scare them off.
I know Misty is unhinged. She can hate like no one else. Because of her, I spent a whole summer at military school and everybody thinks I’m a porn-addicted freak. And she hates you because Bo likes you. This is why she unleashed Griff on you. This is why—I suspect—you are missing now: she has left you stranded inside.
I actually tried to warn you about Griff, with a message in your toy kangaroo, which I grabbed in the future. But maybe that was a bit too unclear or maybe you never saw it.
As I leave Plum Island today, I am taking with me one last thing: my mother’s gem.
I am going to leave it for you in a secret place so you can find it in the future, open the exit, and get back to the present. If I can help you get back and mess up Misty’s plan, it would make me very happy indeed. My final revenge on her for that summer at military school.
I can’t tell you in this letter where I will leave your gem, in case it falls into the wrong hands. All I can say is that I have left it in a place that only you will notice and know.
I’m not sure where—or when—I will see you again, Skye, but I wish you luck, and I thank you for being nice to me at a time in my life when few others were.
Best wishes,
Oz Collins
March 16, 2020
I stared off into space, thunderstruck.
Oz had taken his mother’s gem with him when he’d fled the Retreat.
There was a way out of here.
A place only I would “notice and know.”
I handed the letter to Red and Jenny. They read it as I thought some more.
Oz had been the figure in the hoodie. Like Red, I’d assumed the shadowy figure in the hoodie and the shadowy bald man—Griff—had been the same person. But they hadn’t. Oz had worn the hoodie, while Griff, having shaved off his mop of red hair, was the bald guy.
When she’d finished reading the note, Jenny came to the crux of the issue right away. “Why does he say a place you would notice and know, not just one you would know?”
“That’s the question,” I said.
What would I notice that no one else would? What did Oz know about me—from our few interactions—that he could use in such a way?
And then I got it.
“Stephen King,” I said aloud.
“What?” Jenny said.
“If we want to get back to our time, we have to go back to the city,” I said firmly. “Back to my apartment. Back to my bedroom.”
BACK INTO THE DARK WORLD
The next morning, after a glorious sleep in a clean bed under a solid roof in a quiet house, Red helped us load up the dinghy with extra gas and food.
It was sunny for now, but black clouds loomed on the horizon.
“A big storm’s coming,” Red said, handing us a pair of plastic ponchos. I thought I saw him glancing at one of the warehouses beside the dock as he spoke.
“Thanks,” I said, stowing the ponchos on the boat.
I turned to Jenny. “Are you sure about this? You could stay here, you know, in this time.”
Jenny said, “First of all, if my dad is going to die, I don’t want him doing so thinking I went missing. If I can, I want to find him so he knows I’m safe, and then see out the gamma cloud with him. If you’re gonna face the end of the world, you want to do it with the people you love.” She shrugged. “I also wouldn’t mind seeing Misty again so I can slap her in the face.”
We boarded the dinghy. Red’s family—still clearly curious and confused—watched from a distance.
Red handed me a pistol. “Just in case you run into some of the nastier survivors out there. I wish I could give you both a gun, but this is all I can spare.”
“I appreciate it.” I jammed the gun into the back of my jeans.
Then I looked my brother in the eye. Wherever I went now, in place or in time, I didn’t think I’d ever see him again. He knew it, too.
“You’ve done well for yourself, Red,” I said. “I’m proud of you. Proud of what you’ve become.”
“Thanks.”
“Good luck with this place. Bring civilization back. Someone has to.”
“We’ll try,” he said. “You take care of yourself, Blue. If you get back and find Dad, tell him that I did okay.”
“I will,” I said.
We embraced one last time, and then I hopped in the dinghy and, with Jenny by my side, we powered away from Newport, leaving its armed citizens and fortified bridges behind us. Red stood on the dock watching and waving until we disappeared behind the headland.
* * *
—
Our journey back was slow and tough.
It began to rain not long after we left Newport, and when the storm hit and the sound became too choppy, we had to take shelter at an inlet for the night.
The rain continued throughout the next day, but the wind died down a little, so we were able to work our way back down the sound.
After almost a full day of travel, the ruins of New York City appeared on the horizon: a line of jagged skyscrapers—some of them broken—rising into the grim stormy sky.
I stared hard at them. We were going back in.
* * *
—
We reached Rikers Island just as night fell.
It was still raining hard, but that actually turned out to be a blessing, since the rain drove the unruly inhabitants of the prison indoors and we were able to pass by the island unseen. Although, just to be safe, we turned off the engine and paddled silently along the Bronx shore.
Then the wind came up again and another full-blown storm hit, even worse than the one from the day before: rain, forks of lightning, thunderclaps, raging winds.
Just as the river around us was getting whipped up by the wind, we pulled our trusty little dinghy in to Pier 107 on the eastern shore of Manhattan and climbed out. We would go on foot from there, trekking back to the San Remo via the Upper East Side.
The wind blasted down the canyons of the city, and the rain flew sideways as we came to Central Park.
We crossed the park, and eventually my home came into view: the San Remo.
With a final look at each other, Jenny and I went inside.
HOME
The hallway outside my apartment was dark and dank. Rain poured outside, drumming against the broken window at the end of the corridor. The occasional flash of lightning lit up the space like a strobe.
We approached the front door cautiously.
It was ajar.
It wobbled slightly, buffeted by the wind entering the apartment through its shattered windows.
Gripping my pistol tightly, I pushed open the door with its barrel.
The hinges squealed loudly. I swore silently. If anyone was here, they would have heard—
A hand shot out from the darkness and grabbed my wrist, dislodging the gun from my hand. It clattered to the floor.
I spun to see Griff standing right beside me, no longer wearing his stars-and-stripes hockey mask and gripping his crossbow in his other hand.
“Hi, Skye,” he said before he punched me in the face and I fell to the floor, my nose gushing blood.
“I thought you might come back here,” he said. “Trying to find a way out, I imagine. But if I couldn’t get out, neither can you.”
He stood astride me, aiming his crossbow down at my face just as Jenny came bursting through the doorway and crash-tackled him, bumping his crossbow just as he fired it and the arrow—a twelve-inch-long ultra-stiff carbon-fiber bolt—slammed into the floor with a powerful whump! one inch from my right ear.
It quivered, sticking straight out of the hardwood floor.
Griff grunted as he hit the ground with Jenny on top of him. They separated and began to stand, but Griff was faster, and as he rose to his knees, he backhanded Jenny with one big fist, knocking her out.
I took the opportunity to leap onto Griff’s back and wrapped my arms around his neck, trying to break it. Fat chance. He just dropped us both backward, slamming me back-first onto the floor under his bulky frame, knocking the wind out of me.
Then he knelt on top of me, and in that moment I knew that unless I did something right then, something lethal, I was dead. Kill or be killed. Nothing more, nothing less. And so I did the only thing I could think of.
I kicked Griff in the balls, grabbed him by the back of the neck, rolled sideways, and with all my strength, slammed his face into the floor.
Did I aim for the arrow sticking up from the floor? It’s hard to say. I definitely saw it out of the corner of my eye in the split second before I did it.
As Griff’s forehead hit the floor, the blunt end of the arrow was thrust up into his left eye.
The arrow penetrated Griff’s eye socket, shot up through his brain, and then came bursting out the back of his skull.
Facedown on the floor, both arms limp, Griff’s body shuddered gruesomely, spasming before finally going still. A pool of blood oozed out from under his face. It looked like his head had been nailed to the floor by the arrow.
I rolled away from his body to check on Jenny. I shook her gently, and her eyes fluttered open.
“Did we…did we get him?” she asked.
I nodded at Griff, facedown in the pool of his own blood, the arrow sticking out the back of his head.
“Oh, we got him all right,” I said.
* * *
—
When I was sure Jenny was okay, I hurried into my bedroom.
I saw the books on the shelves, my eyes zeroing in on my prized Stephen King collection—arranged in order of publication, the one truly personal thing Oz Collins knew about me, the one thing he knew I would notice.
And there it was.
Misery.
As Oz knew, it was my favorite Stephen King novel, and it was wedged between Rose Madder and The Green Mile.
Only that was the wrong spot.
Its usual place, in order of publication, was between The Dark Tower II and The Tommyknockers.
Something only I would notice and know.
I grabbed Misery and opened it…to find the pages of my favorite novel hollowed out.
And inside the void that had been created was a single amber gem.
Starley Collins’s gem.
“Oh, Oz,” I said aloud, “thank you.”
Jenny and I dashed out of the San Remo and headed directly for the private conservancy garden behind the American Museum of Natural History.
I figured we could go to the exit cave there, stand in the section of tunnel beyond the portal, place the gem in the pyramid, and then simply step back through the portal to the present.
But when we arrived at the conservancy garden, I stopped short.
I’d forgotten that Griff had been here.
The fence surrounding the garden had been flattened, and the thing that had toppled it—a garbage truck, driven here long ago by the vengeful Griff—lay on top of the hatch in the garden.
Its tires had indeed been deflated, causing the huge rust-covered vehicle to lie flat on the hatch. There was no way in the world we could move it.
Twenty-two years of unchecked shrub growth had climbed up and around the garbage truck, making it part of the garden and actually hiding the hatch even more completely than it had been hidden before.
“What do we do now?” Jenny asked.
“The well,” I said. “We go back to the well and get into the tunnel. We’ll be able to get to the exit portal and our time that way.”
* * *
—
We raced back into the park, across the Transverse, and around the Swedish Cottage.
We pushed through the bushes surrounding the clearing and beheld the low brick well.
Verity’s body still lay slumped against it, her lifeless eyes open in a stupid stare, one leg gripped by the bear trap and the arrow lodged in her heart.
On the ground around her and the well, still partially concealed by a carpet of brown leaves and twigs, were the other five bear traps from the Met exhibit.
“Stay here,” I warned. “Let me find a safe path between the traps.”
Jenny hung back as I edged carefully forward, cautiously pushing the carpet of leaves aside with my toes until I arrived at the well…just as a figure rose up from behind it and aimed a pearl-handled pistol directly at my heart.
Misty.
* * *
—
Misty’s eyes were deadly. She held her mother’s gun with an assured grip.
“I’ve been coming here the last few days,” she said. “Just for a couple hours a day. I saw you in the tunnel, Skye. I don’t know how you got away from that roof, but you did. So I’ve been coming here to check up on you.”
“Have you told Griff yet that I’m going to bring him your gem?” I said. “Have you lied to him yet?”
“I have,” Misty said. “And he gets so angry, Griff. So angry. And in case you’re getting any ideas, my gem is hidden in a crevice in the tunnel—one of the thousands of tiny crevices in there—so you won’t find it and get out using it.”
I’d had enough. “Listen, bitch, I’ve traveled way too far for way too long to play stupid games with you now. If you’re gonna kill me, just kill me, okay?”
“Okay,” she said lightly as she reaimed the pistol and pulled the trigger.
* * *
—
Nothing happened. The gun didn’t fire. It just clicked.
Misty frowned, but I knew what had happened. She didn’t have a round in the chamber.
Classic city-girl error. Anyone who’d grown up in the South or in a hunting family would never make that mistake, but a spoiled rich kid from the Upper East Side—especially one like Misty who had probably learned everything she knew about guns from the movies—clearly would.
I wasn’t going to let her rectify the situation. As Misty frowned quizzically at her pistol and reached for the slide, I bounded forward, leapt over the well, and threw myself at her.
We went tumbling to the leaf-covered ground, and as we did, a cluster of brown leaves exploded upward. I had clipped one of the bear traps hidden underneath them and—snap!—the trap’s metal jaws sprang shut with terrifying force inches from my hip.
But Misty still had the gun, and as we landed in the carpet of leaves, she yanked on its slide, chambering a round, and suddenly that gun was live.
I grabbed her gun hand with both of my hands, holding it at bay. I glimpsed Jenny over on the other side of the clearing, too far away to be of any help.
Her arms shaking, fighting against mine, Misty began to bring the gun around toward my face.
I tried to resist, but whether it was exhaustion on my part or just sheer strength on hers, Misty was too strong, and the gun’s barrel came closer and closer.
I clenched my teeth as I struggled against her, but it was no use. In a few seconds, Misty was going to shoot me in the face.
Fuck it, I thought, and I shifted my weight suddenly, rolling the two of us across the leaf-covered ground—rolling and rolling—until Misty’s head came down in the middle of a pile of brown leaves and clang! the leaves erupted, fluttering upward, and a pair of steel jaws came blasting out from under them, clamping down on her neck in a single brutal instant.
Misty’s body slumped immediately.
That she was dead, there was no doubt.
Mercifully, the leaves that Griff had used to conceal the trap shielded most of the grisly sight from my view.
All I could see were Misty’s eyes, staring up at the sky, unblinking and lifeless.
Jenny picked her way carefully over to my side. “Fucking hell,” she gasped, looking at Misty’s body. “Now, that is what she deserved.”
I just shook my head. “You got that right.”
* * *
—
A few minutes later, Jenny and I sat on the rim of the well.
We had pulled as many branches and stalks as we could over to it and laid them across it, trying to conceal the well from this future world. I had also taken Misty’s keys from her: the ones that opened the hatches at each end of the tunnel.
Jenny went down the well first. I lingered for a moment on the rim, giving that strange world around me one last look. I thought of Red and of Bo and of the journey I had survived.
And then I climbed into the well, pulling the last branches across it behind me.
Down the well and into the tunnel.
My heart leapt when I saw the exit doorway at the far end. Jenny and I came to the ancient portal, and I inserted Starley Collins’s gem into the pyramid. The curtain of light sprang to life, and as we stepped through it together, I closed my eyes with relief—
* * *
