Children of the Underground Read online

  He hasn’t come back yet. I have to believe he will. I have no choice.

  Three

  Twelve of them were sleeping in the house that night. As far as Evan and Addy knew, they were the only two that made it out alive. Dutty was gone. So were Soledad and Kevin. So were the others.

  Evan woke up in a strange bed, the smoke choking his lungs. He could already feel the heat from the fire. It took him a moment before he remembered where he was. Then he heard the gunshots. Everything was chaos. He heard running and screaming. The smoke filling the room made it hard for him to see. He looked across the room to the other bed. It was empty. His friend’s absence only added to the madness. Evan sat up in his bed and shouted his friend’s name. There was no answer. Evan’s shout was followed immediately by a coughing fit as the smoke crept into his lungs and his body tried to expel it. More gunfire. Evan rolled off the bed and onto the floor. He yelled his friend’s name again, sure that this time he’d get an answer.

  Addy heard Evan calling out through the smoke. She was already making her way toward him. It was a relief to hear his voice. Addy crawled along the floor beneath the smoke and bullets. She knew what room Evan was in, but until she heard his voice, she had no idea if he was still there and still alive. Hell, she had no idea if the room would still be there. For all she knew, the room could have already been eaten by the fire. She tried to crawl quickly, but her inability to pull in a full breath slowed her down. She felt the heat and smoke in her lungs, leaving little room for air. Her eyes stung. Tears ran down the sides of her face. She heard more gunshots. She didn’t know if the bullets were finding targets or were simply cutting like missiles through the smoke. She heard Evan call out again. She knew that he wasn’t calling out for her but she was going to him anyway. She’d made a promise.

  Addy crawled toward the sound of Evan’s voice. As she neared him, she saw his body slumped on the ground next to the bed. He was only ten feet in front of her. She could see his chest heaving, trying, like hers, to find usable air. “Evan, are you okay?” Addy shouted through the dark gray haze, though her shout came out not much louder than a raspy whisper.

  “Addy,” Evan called out, his eyes searching for her through the chaos. “I’m okay. What about—?” Evan began.

  Addy cut Evan off before he could finish. She knew what he was going to ask. He was going to ask about him. “He’s gone,” she shouted at him, shaking her head. She knew what the words implied. She knew what Evan would think when he heard them. She wanted him to think it. At that moment, death was better than the truth—it was more expedient anyway.

  Evan could barely believe what he’d heard. How could his best friend be gone? Evan froze. It didn’t make sense. Things like this didn’t happen—not where Evan came from. Addy saw Evan freeze. She’d expected it. She knew Evan wasn’t used to any of this, not like her. He hadn’t grown up with the violence and the death and the paranoia. If they were going to escape the fire and the bullets, she knew that she was going to have to lead him out.

  Addy crawled closer to Evan, pulling her body next to his. He was lying on the floor, his face as close to the carpet as he could get it. He was trying to catch his breath, like a drowning man gasping for air. “We’ve got to find a way out of here!” Addy shouted at Evan, trying to break through his paralysis. “We’ve got to make a run for it!” Addy reached out and grabbed Evan’s hand. Evan felt her hand land on top of his. In the growing heat of the room, Addy’s hand felt almost cool. “Are you ready?” she asked him. He was young and strong and wasn’t about to let himself die lying on the floor. He didn’t ask Addy where they were running. He simply nodded.

  They stood up together and ran.

  Addy’s plan was for them to run for the door. She couldn’t think of any other way out. She probably should have known that their attackers would have the door covered. Once standing, Evan and Addy could barely see anything but smoke and, dancing amid the smoke, the red lasers from the sights of their attackers’ guns. Even holding hands, Evan and Addy had trouble seeing each other. They could hear the crackling of the burning fire, though, and they could hear the gunshots. They kept running. As they neared the door, the sound of the gunshots became more frequent and they could hear the sounds of people moaning. Then Evan lost his footing and toppled to the floor, pulling Addy down to the ground with him. Evan looked back. He’d tripped over a body. Now that he was on the ground, below the line of smoke, he could see the bodies lining the hallway. He counted four of them. Then he heard a scream, and both he and Addy knew that it was the scream of someone being eaten by the fire. More bullets flew in through the open door. Whoever was attacking them was literally trying to smoke them out of the house. The attackers stood outside with their guns and their uniforms, waiting for anyone who managed to escape the fire through the door. They must have started the fire by shooting some sort of firebomb through a window while everyone was sleeping. Then they watched the door, picking people off as they ran out, like plastic targets in a carnival game. The gunshots weren’t single shots. They were rips of automatic fire, sounding like a snare drum from hell, gunning down everyone who emerged from the smoke. Evan looked at the bodies, trying to see if he could identify the body of his friend, but even below the smoke it was far too hazy to tell.

  Evan and Addy were still clutching each other’s hands. “The window,” Evan shouted. It was on the other side of the room, away from the door.

  “They must have that covered too,” Addy yelled before coughing a violent, spastic cough.

  Evan looked around them. He couldn’t see any flames, only smoke, but he learned quickly that he didn’t need to see the flames in order to feel their heat. His skin was roasting. “We burn in here or we take our chances with the window,” he said to Addy. More gunshots echoed through the air like an exclamation point on Evan’s words. The screams seemed to have stopped for the time being.

  “We’ll have to break the window,” Addy said. “We’ll never get it open.” Each word was an effort. “We can throw something out to distract them and then jump.”

  “There’s a chair in the corner,” Evan said. He crawled over and grabbed the chair before dragging it back to Addy.

  “We’ll do it together,” Addy said to Evan. “On one, we break the window.” She took a breath. “On two, we throw the chair out. On three, we jump.” They both knew that they couldn’t fit through the window at the same time. “I’ll go first,” Addy said, aware that if their attackers had the window covered, going first was a death sentence.

  “Okay,” Evan said. They didn’t talk about their ability to run with lungs full of hot ash. They would either run or they would die. It wasn’t something they needed to discuss.

  Evan and Addy stood up, their heads lifting into the blinding smoke again. They each held on to one side of the chair. “One,” Addy called out, and they swung the chair in the direction of the window. Even through the smoke, their aim was true. The window shattered. They held on to the chair, knowing they would need it to create their diversion. As soon as the glass broke, smoke was sucked out of the cracks in the glass. For a split second, Addy and Evan felt like they could breathe again. A split second after that, they heard gunshots pummeling the wall next to the window. It didn’t matter. They had no time for backup plans. “Two,” Addy called out, and they threw the chair out the broken window. As the chair fell toward the ground, it was chased by another rip of gunfire. “Three,” Addy yelled, and jumped out the window. Without a moment’s hesitation, Evan jumped after her.

  Addy’s leg caught on some glass as she leapt through the window, cutting a small gash into her skin, but she barely noticed. The fresh, smoke-free air acted like an elixir, a cure-all to any pain. When Addy landed, she heard the sound of the bullets hitting the wall next to her. She rolled away from the sound. From where they were positioned, their attackers didn’t have a direct line of sight at Addy and Evan. Instead, the attackers were
shooting at them at an angle, plugging holes into the already ravished building but missing their true targets. Evan landed only a short moment after Addy. In that moment, Addy’s eyes began to clear. She closed her eyes tightly and let the tears wash away the ash. When she opened her eyes again, she could see the two men with guns running toward them. They were wearing LAPD SWAT uniforms. Addy reached down and grabbed Evan. “Run,” she shouted with as much force as she could muster. Then she dragged Evan to his feet and they ran.

  Four

  I have a book that I bring with me wherever I go. I read it every day. It describes the stages of a baby’s development. Every morning I wake up and count the days since you were born, so that I can read about each new thing that you might be doing that month or that week. I read it so that I know everything I’m missing. Since they stole you from me, I missed your first smile. I missed hearing you laugh for the first time. I missed watching you learn how to crawl. I’ve missed so much already. I don’t want to miss any more.

  I remember kneeling on the dirt in our front yard in New Mexico, my head resting in your father’s lap after the life slipped out of him. I could still taste his last breath on my lips. I couldn’t move. I wished that they’d killed me too. I knelt there, looking at the horizon in the direction they had taken you. It didn’t seem real. They came out of nowhere and stole you from me. For nine months you grew inside me and then, after only a few weeks, they came and took you away. The last image I have of you, crying as that brute held you upside down by your leg, your body covered in your father’s blood, will be burned in my memory forever. I can still hear you cry in my sleep. As much as that sound hurts me, I never want to forget it. It’s all I have of you.

  I don’t know how long I knelt there before finally getting up and stumbling back to the empty house. I remember the sky was dark. My knees ached. They were covered in hard red dirt. My whole body throbbed. When I got to the house, I did the only thing that I could think of to do. I called for help. I picked up the phone and dialed 911. I told them that my one-month-old son had been kidnapped and that his father had been murdered. I didn’t tell them who your father was. I didn’t tell them about the War or the Rules. I didn’t tell them that they took you from me because I was under eighteen and that, according to the Rules of the War, any baby born to a mother under eighteen had to be given to the other side. I didn’t tell them that your father’s best friend took you so that he could give you to your father’s enemies. It would make me sound crazy. I told them only what would make sense in a sane world. Then I sat down and waited for the sirens. I was convinced that the world would help me, but the world isn’t on our side, Christopher. At best, it’s neutral. At worst, it’s against us.

  I knew something was wrong when the sirens never came. Eventually, a single police car pulled up in front of our house, carrying only two police officers. No posse was coming. They weren’t going to round up the townsfolk to chase after the men who had taken you. The police car pulled up the driveway slowly and stopped without a sound.

  I stood on the front porch and watched as two officers stepped out of the car. They didn’t look at me. They stood next to each other for a moment, staring at the car. I could see the shattered windshield and your father’s body by the moonlight from the porch. The police officers were closer to the carnage, only a few feet from the car. One of the officers, a lanky blond man wearing aviator sunglasses despite the darkness, walked over to the car and began circling it. He started on the passenger’s side, walking slowly as he went, looking inside each of the unbroken windows on the passenger’s side. He ran a finger along the car as he walked, as if inspecting for dust. He passed the trunk, turned, and began walking toward the open driver’s-side door.

  When the blond officer finally made it to the open driver’s-side door, he knelt down and peered inside. He knelt there for a moment, staring at your father’s lifeless body. Then he angled his head so that he could look through the bullet hole in the front windshield. He knelt down like that without moving for some time before standing up and slamming the driver’s-side door shut. That instant before he slammed that door was the last time I saw your father, except for in my dreams.

  The inspection complete, the blond officer walked back to his partner. His partner was shorter than him and had darker skin. He wore dark sunglasses that matched his partner’s. The blond officer leaned into his partner. They spoke in whispers. Then they finally turned toward me and started walking up to the porch. As they walked toward me, I remembered the other two dead bodies on the porch that I hadn’t mentioned when I called 911, the bodies of the men that your father killed while trying to save you. They were mere inches from my feet. How was I going to explain them? I could feel my heart pounding in my chest as the officers walked toward me, getting closer with each step. Everything was wrong. The police were wrong. The silence was wrong. I’d made a mistake. The cops hadn’t come to help me. I was alone.

  The cops stopped at the bottom of the steps leading up to the house. I could barely make out the name printed on the badge of the darker-skinned officer. It said GONZALEZ. The blond officer’s badge didn’t have a name on it. When they stopped walking, Officer Gonzalez took a quick glance down at the bodies. The blond officer didn’t even bother. Somehow they’d known what to expect. “You called the police, ma’am?” Officer Gonzalez said. His voice was calm and oddly formal. I didn’t know how to respond to his question. Of course I called the police. My yard was littered with dead bodies. I suddenly felt like the script for this moment was written somewhere, but no one had bothered to tell me my lines.

  “They killed my husband,” I was able to mumble eventually, no longer caring what I was supposed to say. Fuck their script.

  “Officer Heywood here,” Officer Gonzalez said, motioning to the blond officer. The blond officer didn’t move, standing there like some sort of grotesque statue. “Officer Heywood inspected the car and determined that your husband died in an accident.” Officer Gonzalez looked up at me when he said the words your husband to let me know that he knew that your father and I weren’t married. They knew everything. They were in on it.

  “An accident?” My voice was trembling now. “There’s a bullet hole in the windshield!” They can’t cover it all up, I kept telling myself. They can’t.

  “We see all sorts of crazy crash patterns in windshields, ma’am. Sometimes it makes it look like things that didn’t happen, happened.”

  I tried to stare into the officer’s eyes to shame him, but all I could see in his sunglasses was my own pathetic reflection. “And what about my son?” I asked, fearing that I already knew the answer to the question. “What are you going to do about my son?”

  Officer Gonzalez took a pen and a pad of paper out of his pocket. He flipped through a couple of pages. “As far as our records show,” he said, holding the tip of the pen to the paper, “you don’t have a son.” The words hurt worse than if he’d punched me in the stomach.

  “I have a son,” I said, knowing that it wouldn’t help, saying it just to hear the words. “I have a son and they took him!”

  Officer Gonzalez took off his sunglasses. He had soft brown eyes that turned down at the sides. His voice remained painfully calm. “Did your son have a social security number?” he asked. I shook my head. “Do you have any of his medical records? Do you have the hospital records of his birth?” I shook my head again. You weren’t born in a hospital. You were born at home. They knew that. Your father demanded that you be born off the grid. He thought that it would protect you. He thought that if no one could find a record of your birth, they might leave us alone. He was wrong. He should have known that they would use it against us. They use everything against us.

  “No,” I answered, my voice broken. I wanted to collapse on the floor and roll into a ball. If it weren’t for the dead bodies already lying around me, I might have. “I don’t have anything. I don’t have any records,” I said, looking Of
ficer Gonzalez in the eyes, gathering what little strength I had, “but Christopher exists and he’s my son, and don’t you dare tell me different.”

  Officer Gonzalez returned my stare. I saw pity in his eyes. “Go home,” he said, shaking his head. “Forget all of this ever happened. This isn’t your fight. Go home.”

  I could feel my lips trembling. “What about them?” I asked, gently kicking one of the bodies at my feet.

  “We’ll take care of them,” the blond officer answered.

  “Go inside,” Officer Gonzalez ordered me. “We’re going to call someone to tow your car away and to clean up the mess here.” He looked down at the bodies again as he spoke. “I’ll knock when we’re done. Then we’ll be out of your hair.”

  I didn’t know what else to do, so I obeyed. I went inside. I sat on the couch and cried. An hour later, I heard a knock at the door. I didn’t bother to answer it. I waited for the silence. I needed the silence. Then I stood up and walked to the front door again. I opened it and looked out. The bodies on the porch were gone. The car with your father’s body in it was gone. They’d cleansed the death from the yard. It was dark outside and cold. I could feel a breeze blow across the porch. I hugged my arms around my shoulders but I knew I wouldn’t feel warm again, not for a long time. I noticed a short note, written on Officer Gonzalez’s notebook paper, stuffed into the knocker on the front door. I took it down, unfolded it. Don’t be a hero, it read. It won’t end well. Go back to where you belong.

  I took the note and crumpled it in my hand. I tossed it down onto the ground in front of the porch. The wind picked it up and I watched as it sailed away into the night.

  I don’t remember how long I stayed at the house in New Mexico. It might have been a week. It might have been longer. I had never felt so hopeless in my life. Eventually, I picked up your father’s journal and began rereading it. I read it over and over again. I searched inside it for clues, for anything that I could grab hold of that might lead me to you. I still had all of the money that your father and I had been saving. It was meant for you, for your future. If I didn’t use it, you’d have no future. I needed to move. I needed inertia. I wasn’t getting any closer to you wallowing in my own misery in New Mexico. I read your father’s journal one more time. Two days later, I walked into town and got on a bus heading for New Jersey.