Children of the Underground Read online

  I heard one set of footsteps. The mark was alone. I had been afraid that he would be walking down the hall with one of his students. I put that fear aside. I stepped away from the lockers as I heard the footsteps round the corner toward me. I stood up straight. I put one hand on my purse and grabbed the wrist of that hand with my other hand. I arched my back slightly. I wanted to get his attention.

  I saw the mark turn the corner. Michael was already supposed to be waiting outside, staring through the classroom window, waiting for our entrance. “Mr. Ford,” I called out to the mark, using the name that he’d given himself as a teacher in this city, even though I knew it wasn’t his real name. He heard my voice and looked at me for the first time. Until then he had been walking with his head down. He hadn’t expected to see anyone—not then anyway. He knew, like I did, that this hallway was usually empty at this time of day. “Can I help you?” he asked, looking me over, trying to find me in his memory.

  “I wanted to talk to you about the track team,” I said, trying to follow my script as much as the mark would let me.

  “Are you a student here?” the mark asked. I stepped closer to him, hoping he would do the same. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to simply talk him into following me into that classroom. I needed to entice him somehow. He didn’t move closer, but he didn’t move away either.

  “I’m new,” I said. I looked into his eyes to see if they might tell me something. All I saw was confusion. “I’ve seen you coaching the other students,” I said, taking another small step toward him. We were close now, close enough that if he turned away from me, we were bound to touch. Would he be so pure that he wouldn’t even consider what I was offering him? I’d read his file. I couldn’t believe that would be the case.

  “What would you like to know?” the mark asked. His voice didn’t waver.

  I had thought about this part of the conversation in my head. I had tried to think of what to say to him, but everything that I thought of sounded like a line from a bad romance novel. None of them sounded real. I needed this to seem real. We were so close that I could feel his breath on my neck. He’d been sweating, and I could smell him. It wasn’t an appealing smell, though if it were someone else in a different situation, I might have thought differently. Not knowing what to say that wouldn’t sound ridiculous, I simply reached down and ran my hands along the waist of his shorts. Then I reached down farther and cupped his crotch with my hand. It was forward, but I didn’t have time for subtlety. I moved my hand and immediately felt a twitch and a growth beneath it. The mark’s instinctive response to my hand on his crotch gave me the courage to continue. That response wasn’t the only reason that I’d chosen this approach, though. Dressed for track practice, the mark had only one place where he could hide a weapon. His shirt was tight enough to see his muscle definition in his upper body beneath his clothes. If a weapon were under his shirt, I’d see it. His socks were too short to hide anything of any real danger. That left his shorts: the waist and the crotch. I felt everything. He was unarmed. I left my hand there for a second. Then I looked up at him. The look on his face surprised me. I could still see confusion on it, but now it was confusion tinged with anger. I pressed on, hoping that he was simply angry with himself, knowing that he wasn’t going to be able to resist, that he was going to cross this line like he’d already crossed so many in his life.

  “Do you want to talk about it in the classroom?” I said, motioning to the door behind us. He looked back over his shoulder at the closed door. Then he turned and looked back at me. My hand was still resting on his crotch. The blood hadn’t receded. If anything, it had grown.

  “Okay,” he said in a voice that was only half convincing. He was beginning to make me nervous, but I decided that I couldn’t go back now. I’d compromised too much already. I walked toward the door to the classroom. I didn’t want to turn my back on the mark, so I took my hand off his crotch and placed it on the small of his back, leading him toward the door, making sure that he was walking next to me and not behind me. I kept telling myself that all I had to do was open the door and walk inside, and Michael would come. That was the plan.

  I opened the door. It opened outward into the hallway. We stepped together into the classroom. I heard the mark close the door behind us. I glanced out the window for a second to see if I could see Michael. I didn’t see anybody. I had to hope that he’d moved so quickly, I didn’t have a chance to see him, that he was already on his way. I turned back to the mark, unsure of how far I would have to take this charade before Michael arrived.

  I felt the sting on my face before I saw or heard anything. It wasn’t until I was tumbling, already halfway to the ground, that I realized what had happened. The hand had swung from seemingly out of nowhere. I’d heard the sound as his open palm connected with my cheek. My purse, with my gun in it and the key to the door, flew off my shoulder and slid away from me across the floor. I thought about trying to crawl for the purse, but worried that the hand would strike me again. I could still feel the tingling on my cheek and began to feel the soreness in my jaw as I rolled over to face him again. He was standing above me, his face flushed with anger. I could see his chest moving up and down with labored breaths. He was struggling to contain his rage. He took a step toward me and I flinched reflexively.

  “Who are you?” he yelled.

  “I’m a new student,” I said, almost choking on the words.

  “Fuck you,” he responded to my lie. “I know you from somewhere. Who are you?”

  I struggled to get to my feet. I grabbed the desk next to me and pulled myself up. The mark stepped around me, placing himself in between me and my purse, knowing that I could have a weapon in there. Slowly I stood up. He’d hit me hard. I’d never been hit that hard before. My vision was still blurry. My head throbbed. Where was Michael?

  “Are you going to hit me again?” I asked. I felt weak and small. Even after all of the exercising and all of the planning, he still made me feel weak. He was sweating. I could see his forehead glistening. My vision was beginning to focus again.

  “If you tell me who you are, if you tell me the truth and I like the answer, then I won’t hit you again.”

  “That’s a lot of ifs,” I said, not meaning to sound smart.

  He raised his hand again and stepped toward me. This time, his hand wasn’t open; it was balled into a tight fist. If he punched me as hard as he’d slapped me, I might never wake up. As he stepped toward me, I remembered. I reached down with my left hand, lifted up my shirt, and pulled my knife from its sheath. The mark was coming toward me so quickly he almost ran into the blade. He stopped short, and I lifted the blade of the knife so that it was inches from his face.

  “You don’t have the stones,” he said, looking me up and down.

  “I don’t need them,” I said. “If you scare me enough, I won’t need courage for this—just fear.” He took another step toward me anyway. I slashed at his face, opening up a gash on the closest thing to me, his nose. I hadn’t been aiming. I hadn’t had time to practice with the knife, other than quickly pulling it from its hiding place along my waist. The mark stopped again. He reached up and touched his nose with his hands. Then he held his fingers in front of his face, staring at his own blood.

  “Who are you?” he asked again. “I know you’re not one of Them. If you were, I would have killed you already.” I believed him. What was left of my innocence saved my life. “Why do I recognize you?”

  “How do you know I’m not one of Them?” I asked, trying to buy time.

  “I can smell Them,” he said, his facing turning mean and cold. He was talking about Michael. He was talking about your father.

  I knew why he recognized me. “You teach initiation classes for the War?” He nodded. “Then you’ve seen my picture.” I watched him, waiting to see the recognition in his eyes. Until that moment, I didn’t know that both sides taught their people about us.
/>   “You’re the one with the baby?” That’s what he called you: the baby. They all knew. They all talked about us. “What do you want with me? I didn’t have anything to do with your kid.”

  He was wrong. He was so wrong. “You know about my son,” I said. I felt brave, filling up with righteous anger. “And you fight in this War. And you still don’t do anything about it. That means that you have everything to do with my kid.” I looked down at the purse on the ground. By positioning himself between me and the purse, he had left open the path to the door. I could have run for it, but I couldn’t risk leaving the purse. The mark was quiet, trying to digest the situation. Over the silence, I heard a shuffling noise of a man with a limp walking from out in the hallway. Michael was moving slowly but he was coming. My gun was in the purse. I promised Michael that I wouldn’t signal him to come unless the mark was unarmed. The last thing I wanted to do was to arm him with my own gun.

  I walked in a circle around the mark, keeping the tip of my knife pointed toward his face. His eyes didn’t show fear. Instead they showed cunning. He was trying to plan his next move. He didn’t want to hurt me, but he would if he had to. I took one small step after another toward the purse on the ground. His eyes flashed toward the purse for a split second, deciphering my plan in an instant. He moved quickly, lunging forward. I took a stab at him again, plunging the knife about a quarter inch into his chest and pulling it out again. I fell back for a second and I reached down and grabbed the purse. The mark looked down at the wound in his chest. Then he looked up at me again. I could see that all the hesitation that he’d had about hurting me was gone. I was his enemy now. I’d read about what he did to his enemies.

  Michael had to be right outside the door by now. I ran for it, knowing that I didn’t have time to reach into the purse and pull out the gun. The mark was right behind me. He took two steps after me and then stopped. When I reached the door, it was already open. Michael had opened it. He was standing there, his knife drawn.

  “What the fuck is this?” the mark said out loud to me, as if I’d betrayed some sort of trust. Then to Michael: “You can’t use her to trap me. You can’t use an innocent as bait. That’s against the rules.”

  Michael looked at the mark. The mark was already bleeding in two places. He looked down at me standing almost next to him. Michael’s eyes moved to the cheek where the mark had struck me. Michael must have seen something there, a bruise or a reddened handprint. “I’m not a big fan of the rules,” Michael said. His voice was quiet but loud enough for the mark to hear him. Michael wasn’t being witty. He was stating a fact. The rules had killed his best friend. The rules had kept him from living a new life. Michael wasn’t a fan of the rules.

  “You can leave, Maria,” Michael said as he stared at the mark. “Get the door on your way out.”

  I stepped outside the door and closed it behind me. I leaned my back against it and rifled through the purse for the key. My hands were shaking. I heard some commotion coming from inside the room, desks screeching along the floor. I heard a loud banging sound. I turned for a second and looked through the small rectangular window in the door. I saw the mark. He was coming toward me. Michael was behind him, but the mark was faster. I didn’t have time to keep looking for the key. Instead, I turned. I leaned my back against the door with all my strength and will. I reached down and grabbed the doorknob with both hands, trying to keep it from turning. A split second later, I felt the doorknob begin to twist beneath my grip. I felt every muscle in my body, all those muscles that I’d been training over the past months, tighten as I tried to keep the doorknob from turning. It turned anyway. All I could do was slow it down as it slipped beneath my fingers. Then I felt a push against the door. I braced my feet on the ground and pushed into the door with everything I had. The mark was less than two inches behind me, separated from me by two inches of cheap wood. I pushed against the door with all of the strength I had, with more strength than I had ever had before.

  The mark was trying to escape certain death, and I was using my new muscles to stop him. I didn’t want to think about what would happen if he got out. I didn’t hear Michael stab him. I remembered the sound from that night in St. Martin, how I heard the stabbing sound from much farther away, but this time I didn’t hear it. I was too tired. The door was too thick. All I heard was the mark’s grunt as the blade entered his body. The pressure on the door weakened. The mark was still pushing but not as hard anymore. Finally, I heard a higher-pitched, whimpering sound, like the sound of a dog who’d been disciplined by its master. Then the pressure on the door let up completely. The muscles in my legs gave way and I crumpled to the ground.

  Michael was able to push the door open enough to slip through it. When he opened the door, a trickle of blood seeped out into the hallway. “I thought you said you had the key,” Michael said, as I sat there on the ground, spent.

  “I couldn’t get to it in time,” I answered. He looked down at me and almost laughed.

  “No matter,” he said. “The job’s done. We need to get out of here.” I couldn’t stand up. My strength was gone. Michael leaned down and grabbed me under one of my armpits. He lifted me to my feet, ignoring the pain in his leg. “You did good,” he said as he slung one of my arms over his shoulders to help me walk.

  I didn’t look back at the door, at the blood or at the body. “What took you so long to get here?” I asked Michael.

  He didn’t answer me and we limped away together.

  Thirty-three

  That night, Michael wanted to go out to celebrate. I didn’t believe that we had anything to celebrate. “You have to celebrate,” Michael said to me, without much joy in his voice. It made me remember the Michael that your father had described in his journal. If felt like Michael was trying to remember that Michael too.

  “This is ridiculous,” I said to Michael as we walked to South Street. “We should be hiding.”

  “You sound like Joe,” Michael said.

  I refused to be insulted. “Joe was smart.”

  Michael stopped walking. He turned to me so that we were facing each other on the sidewalk. “He was,” Michael agreed. “Joe was always more disciplined than me, and look where that got him.” He paused long enough for the silence to confirm that I had no response. “Just a few drinks,” Michael promised. “It’s important.” I didn’t understand how it could be important, but if it was important to Michael, it was important to me too.

  Michael picked the darkest, dingiest bar we could find. He let me pick our seats, so we went to the table farthest from the door in the back. The jukebox was blaring loud enough that neither of us could hear anyone in the bar but each other. Michael went to the bar and ordered our first two drinks. He returned with four glasses in his hands: two pint glasses half-full of Guinness and two shot glasses with a mix of Baileys and Irish whiskey. He put the glasses down on the table, a pint glass and a shot glass in front of me and a set in front of him. He sat down on the graffiti-riddled bench and picked up his pint glass. He lifted the pint glass and held it halfway across the table. “To a job well done,” he said with all the enthusiasm of a man delivering a eulogy. I lifted my pint glass and clinked it against his. I made the only toast that I could think of.

  “To not drinking alone,” I said. Michael smiled. He put the pint glass back on the table, picked up the shot glass, dropped it in the pint glass, and chugged. “I still can’t believe I’m doing this,” I said before following suit. The taste of the drink hit me right away. The effects of the alcohol didn’t take much longer. Michael got up and got us more drinks.

  “How does it feel?” he asked me.

  “How does what feel?” I asked, assuming he must mean more than the effects of the alcohol.

  “Your first job,” he said.

  I looked down at the drink in my hand. I swirled the thick liquid around the glass. “It wasn’t my job,” I said to Michael without looking up at
him. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay,” I finished, knowing that I was trying to convince myself as much as Michael.

  “Whatever gets you through the day.” Michael laughed.

  “How do you do it?” I asked Michael, throwing it back at him.

  “How do I get through the day?” Michael laughed again, more genuinely this time.

  The bar was filling up. The music was still loud enough to cover our voices. Even so, I lowered my voice into a new whisper. “How do you kill people and then move on like nothing ever happened?”

  Michael took a sip of his scotch and shrugged. “I’m a child of paranoia,” he said. “It’s what we do.”

  I shook my head. It wasn’t true. “Joe struggled with it,” I said. “Even before he met me, Joe struggled with it.”

  “Does that make it better?”

  “Yes. It does.”

  Michael finished the drink in his hand. “You’re right, Maria. Joe struggled with it. Even in the beginning, when revenge is enough for most people, it wasn’t enough for Joe. So he bought all that good-and-evil crap they feed us. He had to, or he would have snapped. He had to believe that everything he did was righteous.” My mind flashed back to the kid that your father killed in the field in Ohio. It was the last thing that boy ever said: I’m not like you. I’m righteous. Then your father shot him in the head. “But if that’s how you get by, you’re going to struggle with doubt.” Michael’s voice got weak for a moment. “I loved Joe for that. I loved Joe because he wanted to be good.”

  “What about the people who don’t buy into the good-and-evil stuff?”

  “Some people get off on the power. They like to play the game, whether they believe it or not.”

  “Jared?” I guessed. Michael didn’t respond.

  “But what about you? How do you get by?”