Runner Boy | Book 2 | Rider Kid Page 4

  Fuck, shit and damn. What did he say? All the blood is rushing to my head. I can’t hear above the noise inside my head.

  Rachel shoves me. “Now you’ve done it,” she says.

  “Done what?” I have no idea what’s going on. But I get up. I can see people looking at me. Some of them are clapping their hands but I don’t know why.

  Rachel shoves me again. “Go, go.” She’s smiling.

  I work my way toward the aisle. Go down the stairs. I can’t see anything but the steps in front of me. And then there’s a guy at the bottom of the stairs who is waving me forward. I walk through the gate, onto the field. I see the stage, and the men in suits looking at me. Smiling at me. They have no idea who I am or what I’ve done. They called the wrong guy. I don’t belong here.

  There are just two steps up to the stage. Some guy shakes my hand. He says something I don’t hear. People are definitely applauding now, but they don’t know what they’re applauding for. Or who. It’s just noise.

  Wayne steps over to greet me. Shakes my hand. Motions for me to stand next to him while he talks. I realize he’s talking about me. About what I did, or supposedly did. I catch some of it. It doesn’t sound right. I was mostly just trying to stay alive. That shouldn’t be a reason for people to applaud. I shot someone. Shit. That’s definitely not a reason to applaud.

  Wayne stops talking and turns and shakes my hand again. There’s more applause. He tells me to stay on the stage for a minute, so I nod and take a step back. He continues his speech, and I try to look up at the crowd. I find Rachel and she gives me a thumbs up. Rob and Wilson are also looking at me. Rob nods at me, but Wilson doesn’t look very happy.

  I hear only bits and pieces of what Wayne is saying. I hear the words “militia” and “safety” and “volunteer” repeated several times. Then he turns and points at me and says, “You don’t have to do what Mr. Gruen did. You don’t need to be a hero. You just need to be vigilant. If you see something, tell someone. Tell the militia patrolman. Tell your neighbor. Tell your parents. Don’t let people get away with things. No stealing. No violence. No breaking curfew. No immoral activity of any kind. Take care of each other.”

  That draws more applause. This guy is a real crowd pleaser.

  He keeps talking. I’m shifting my weight from one leg to the other, trying not to look as uncomfortable as I feel. I don’t want to be here. It’s like I’m another one of the guys in the suits, standing around. Trying to look important. But I don’t want to be important.

  Finally, he seems to be done. He’s waving his arms and people are clapping. He looks at me and points, then heads off the stage. The crowd quiets, and I’m thinking I should try to get off the stage as quietly and quickly as I can, but a big African-American guy in camo who’d been standing next to me leans over and says, “Follow me. The governor general wants to talk to you.”

  Jesus. What now? Is he going to call me out for being a fraud? Was this whole thing a mistake?

  I nod. “Sure.” What was I going to do? Run? I think about it. But it’s dumb.

  As the crowd finds their way out, I follow the big guy. He’s really broad. Not so tall. About my height. But he outweighs me by a ton. And he’s got a giant head. He lumbers, swaying from side to side. I can’t help but think of him as a brute. Brute force.

  Brute leads me through a tunnel, out to where the buses sit, three of them, with the big 18-wheeler with the generator and the wires leading down through the tunnel and back to the stage. I’m guessing Pounds is in one of the buses. I wonder if we’re going to the same one. But the brute takes me to the last bus, and as I climb in I see that there’s only Wayne, Brute and me.

  The bus has been customized. Instead of rows of seats, there’s a little living room behind the driver’s seat, with a couple of couches facing each other. There’s a wall hiding the rest of the bus, with a door that looks like it belongs in a fancy house.

  Wayne is sitting on one couch. He motions me and Brute to sit on the other one. “Listen,” he says. “Thanks for being here today. The people loved it, and you really helped me make my points.”

  I nod and say, “Sure. Thanks.” What could I say?

  “That was a great thing you did. I commend you for stepping up like you did.”

  “I was just . . . I don’t know. Just mad because the guy was taking Mrs. Hazelwood’s diabetes drugs, and she really needed them.”

  Wayne smiles. “Sure. I get it. But most people, they wouldn’t do what you did.”

  “I don’t know about that. You made it sound like a bigger deal than it was. I wasn’t trying to save anybody. Except maybe myself.”

  He shakes his head. “That’s fine. But listen, here’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I understand you have a route, delivering . . . what? Papers?”

  I say, “All kinds of stuff. Packages and whatnot.”

  “Right,” says Wayne. “So this route takes you all over the county. You see things. Talk to a lot of folks, right?”

  “I guess so,” I say.

  “Perfect,” Wayne says. “I want you to do a little favor for me. Will you do that?”

  “I guess. What kind of favor?”

  “Just keep your eyes open. That’s all.”

  I nod. I don’t like where this is going.

  “This is Major Williams” He motions to Brute, who nods. “Major Williams is a good man. Been with me since Iraq. Right, Major?”

  “Yes, Colonel. Er, yes, Governor General,” says Williams. He and Wayne both grin.

  “So, Brady, when you see anything, you report it to Major Williams. Okay?”

  “See what?” I ask. I definitely don’t like this.

  “Anything.” He sounds annoyed. “Guy steals a purse. Or a—I don’t know, a chicken.”

  “A chicken?” says Williams.

  “Yeah, or steals anything. Or some guy hits somebody. Or he seems to be trying to shake somebody down, make him pay for something he doesn’t need.”

  I frown at him. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen anything like that.”

  Wayne shakes his head. “Maybe somebody is using you to deliver stolen property. Or drugs, say.”

  “I don’t ask people what’s in the packages.”

  “Well, maybe you should,” Wayne says, clearly mad at me now.

  Williams tries to calm things down. “Look, kid. All we want is for you to let us know if you see anything that’s out of the ordinary. Maybe it looks innocent, but it just doesn’t feel right, you know?”

  I nod, trying to keep these guys from getting too pissed.

  Wayne seems a little calmer when he says, “Whatever it is, you report to the major, all right? Even if it’s just a hunch. Like, maybe a woman is out alone after curfew.”

  “Curfew?” I say.

  “After dark,” says Wayne.

  “So, like prostitutes?” I’m trying to understand.

  “No. Any woman. Shouldn’t be alone after dark. Not safe.”

  I give him a look, but don’t say anything.

  He ignores me and says, “Or, if you see a bunch of fags hanging out.”

  “Gay people?”

  “Yeah, hanging out. Like they do.” He gives me a look now, thinking it’s obvious what he’s talking about. But this is pissing me off.

  “I don’t know if people are gay or not,” I say.

  Wayne gets in my face. “Look, kid, if you don’t want to do this, we got a lot of other jobs in the militia. Isn’t that right, Major?”

  Williams nods. “Sure.”

  I’m backpedaling now. “No, no. I’m just trying to understand what you want, is all.”

  Wayne asks, “How often do you get into town? Here. This town.”

  “Once a week or so,” I say. It’s actually more like two or three times a week, but I don’t want to promise too much.

  “Okay. So you report in to the major once a week. Just tell him what you’ve seen this week. I’m going to be around awhile too, but I’ll be moving down to Indi
anapolis as soon as we can get it so it’s livable again. You report to Major Williams down at City Hall. Not too tough, right?”

  “Right. Sure,” I say.

  7

  102 days until the Pulse Anniversary

  Rachel and Rob are hanging around outside the bus when I come out. I can’t read their faces, so I don’t know if they’re both still pissed at some of what was said on the stage, or if they’re about to congratulate me for being called up. Probably something in between.

  “So, did they give you a medal?” says Rachel as I approach. “Pat you on the back and say, ‘Good boy’?”

  “Or did they tell you to never do that again?” asks Rob. Both are stone-faced.

  “Neither, I guess,” I say. “Worse.”

  “What could be worse than an attaboy from an asshole who puts women in the same class as the infirm and weak?” says Rachel.

  “Yeah,” adds Rob. “And who thinks being gay is a crime.”

  I look at each of them and say, “Boy, wait till I tell you about the conversation I just had.”

  On the walk back to their house—I’m going to stay over tonight, as I do on many of my trips to town—I tell them what happened in the bus, including the part about me being Wayne’s spy. I swear them to secrecy on that. If people find out I’m supposed to be spying on them for the governor general, then they’ll quit using me for their deliveries.

  We’re all in a foul mood when we get to the house, a little three-bedroom ranch in a neighborhood just a bit south of downtown Lafayette. The neighborhood is old and kind of run-down, but the house is okay. Some of these old neighborhoods in what was considered low income areas are now the most desirable places to live, as long as a well has been dug for the community. Rachel’s neighborhood well is just a half block from the house. Plus, it has an old electric pump and a small ethanol-fueled generator so the whole neighborhood can get their daily supply of drinkable water.

  Some of the nicer suburban neighborhoods have one big advantage—they have septic tanks, so sewage isn’t as much of a problem as it is in the inner city neighborhoods that are on the sewer lines. But in Rachel’s neighborhood the sewer lines have been diverted so the sewage flows into the Wabash River. Not exactly environmentally friendly, but at least it’s better than when the sewers were backing up and stuff was running in the streets and people were getting the Pulse Flu.

  I’ve heard they’re trying to get the sewage treatment plant up and running again, but the electronic controls are all burned out from the pulse, and even if they get those repaired there isn’t enough fuel to run the generators to run the big pumps they need. So for now the Wabash River is a big sewer.

  Mrs. DuBonnette, Rachel’s mom, is home when we get there. She’s an attractive woman for someone in her forties, tall and thin. Her hair is no longer red, like it was when I met her. Now it’s brown with quite a bit of gray showing. But it looks good. She’s a bit of a flirt, it seems to me. I thought she was coming on to my dad back when we first met, on the road from our home in Cincinnati to West Lafayette, where my older sister Chrissie was a student at Purdue. Maybe her flirtations are at least part of the reason she’s divorced from Rachel and Rob’s dad. I’ve never asked Rachel about that, nor do I have any intention of saying anything. Rachel has a bit of a temper, and I don’t want to get on her bad side.

  Like just about every other person in town, Mrs. DuBonnette has a garden. She’s working at growing an assortment of vegetables, like tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, carrots, and peppers. We find her digging around in the dirt, planting, weeding, or whatever. Rob asks if Wilson came home. She tells him that he did, but seemed very upset after seeing the president’s speech, and went off to his bike shop.

  When she comes in from the garden we tell her about the speech, including the part about me being called up to the stage. She hadn’t heard about my little adventure in Juniper with the guns and all that, and is a bit freaked out by it, but she’s thrilled that I got to go on stage.

  “I’ll give you an extra tortilla tonight to celebrate,” she says to me. “And maybe we can find some whiskey, too.”

  Next to home gardens, the next most popular thing is to have a home still, to make ethanol, supposedly, but most also brew up something they call whiskey. I don’t know, but based on the taste, I think it would be better to save it to burn in a generator or old car than to drink it.

  For dinner we’re having what we eat most nights at Rachel’s. It’s because it’s what we have around here—corn and soybeans. The corn is dried and ground into a flour, to make a tortilla. The soybeans can be prepared a few different ways, but what Mrs. Dubonnette mostly does is grind the dried beans up into a paste and smear it on the tortilla, and then fry it. It’s not as tasty as it sounds. Fortunately, she got a big bottle of Frank’s hot sauce from somewhere, so we add that generously to get some flavor. We wash it all down with the whiskey that she pulls out of the cupboard, and before long we’re all singing songs and dancing around like nothing shitty happened today.

  Wilson doesn’t know what to make of us when he gets home. He shakes his head, makes some tsk-tsking noises, grabs a leftover tortilla and heads for bed. Rob follows soon, and Mrs. DuBonnette, Rachel and I finish the last of the whiskey before Mrs. DuBonnette disappears into her room.

  I sleep on the couch when I stay over. Officially. But I sneak into Rachel’s room whenever she lets me. I’m pretty sure her mother knows. Rob and Wilson know. But nobody talks about it.

  Rachel’s lovemaking is particularly frenetic tonight, fierce even. I respond, at one point feeling like I’m being too rough. But no, she bites me so hard I’m sure I’m bleeding. Part of our feverish intensity might be the whiskey, but mostly I think it’s that there’s something we can both feel, something new. As bad as life has been these last months, we can both sense that life is making another change. Unexpected, and not positive. It’s as if our bodies need relief, need a release, before we have to face changing realities again.

  8

  Pulse Anniversary 5:23 p.m.

  I sit in the corner of my cell, trying not to think about how much my head hurts. I pick at the blood—on my shirt, on my face, in my nose. I need to come up with a plan, but how can I? I’m a captive, and I don’t know who my captors are or what they have planned for me. Are they going to torture me? Execute me? Put me on trial?

  Hey, here’s a plan. Get the fuck out of here and run like hell. That should work. I’ll get right on that.

  I’m trying to figure out how long I’ve been here, how long since I was smashed in the face. It can’t have been that long because there’s still some light coming in my little slit of a window. So it’s still daytime, unless it’s tomorrow, and then I’m really screwed up. In the middle of this heavy thinking the little panel in the door slides open and a bottle of water appears. I stand and take the water, realizing how thirsty I am. I can see a face on the other side of the window, peering in. Maybe trying to get a good look at me. But he doesn’t say anything. The panel slides closed. It’s very dark on the other side of the window, so I don’t get a good look at the face. It’s pretty dark in here, so he didn’t get much of a look either.

  I’m really thirsty, I realize as I chug the water down.

  It hurts my face to swallow.

  9

  101 days until the Pulse Anniversary

  When I get home I’m greeted by my father. Well, greeted is maybe not the right word. He lays into me.

  “When were you going to tell us what you’ve been doing?” he says, and then continues, not waiting for my reply. “Jesus. Gunfights? In the middle of town?”

  “I— um. It wasn’t my idea,” I say, stammering out what I know is a weak response.

  “I heard about it in Lafayette yesterday, even before the president thought you deserved some sort of recognition. I don’t know what he was thinking.”

  “You were in Lafayette yesterday?”

  “I was meeting with some of the president’s peop
le about financial stuff. Currency valuations and whatnot.” He was, and is again, a banker. He’s been working with some of the other bankers to create a currency for us to use, since the pulse wiped out all the banking, investment and other financial information. They’ve even printed some new money, called “chits,” to use to supplement the IOUs and handshakes and promises that people have been using for trade purposes.

  “They’re talking about how you’re such a great marksman. Christ. How many men did you shoot?” I can’t tell if he’s really pissed, or just wants to give me a hard time.

  “I don’t know. Maybe three or so.”

  “You shot three men and didn’t bother to tell us?” Now he’s definitely pissed. “What, you think that’s all right? Shoot a few people and then go about your day?”

  “NO.” Now I’m pissed. “It’s not okay. I never said it’s okay.”

  “‘Never said’ is right. Your mother found out from a neighbor last night. Nearly gave her a heart attack. She worries about you. And then this happens?”

  He looks into the dining room, the little alcove off the main living room, to see if Mom’s there, I guess. I look over and see Chrissie, who’s apparently doing some homeschooling with the twins, Clark and Claire. She trades off with Mom on the schooling bit, teaching the math and science stuff, while Mom handles English and history. I’m supposed to be taking some advanced math from Mia, Chrissie’s friend and the reason we’re all able to live here in her house, but I’m not very regular at doing my lessons.

  I can see all three of them staring at us. My sisters look like they’re freaked out, but my brother is excited.

  “It’s not what you think, Dad,” I say.

  “What? That you’re some kind of hero? Is that what you want me to think? Like President Pounds said. Huh?”

  “I’m no hero. I’m just . . .This guy took Mrs. Hazelwood’s diabetes medicine. I couldn’t just let him take it.”