I bent my neck, my head touching Becky’s. “We’re almost there,” I whispered. “You’re going to be okay.”
She didn’t respond.
The trees were hiding a small creek, maybe fifteen feet wide, and shallow. There was no bridge, just a ford, and the water wasn’t entirely frozen over.
Jane ran across it easily, hopping from stone to stone like it was second nature. Carrying Becky, I didn’t dare attempt balancing on the slippery rocks, and stepped through the icy water. It was only a few inches deep—just enough to seep into my shoes—but it sent shivers up my legs.
Jane paused at the edge of the trees and I caught up with her. Mouse and the guy were twenty yards ahead of us, continuing up the dirt road.
“There it is,” she said. “Where it all started.”
Breathing heavily, I stared at a large adobe building that stood in a clearing. It was only one story, but probably a hundred feet or more on each side—from where I was, it appeared to be a square. At each corner was a squat tower, two of which were crumpled and broken. The one door was enormous, made of wood and iron. Other than the door, the only break in the thick brown walls were tiny window slits every ten or twelve feet. They couldn’t have been more than four or five inches wide. They had no glass, but a single iron bar ran up the center of each.
I’d seen this building a dozen times—or buildings like it—in every John Wayne Western.
“Fort Maxfield,” Jane said. “You’ll be safe here.”
We crossed the field of snow to the door, where Mouse and the guy stood.
As we approached, I could tell this wasn’t a replica of an Old West fort—this thing really was old. In many places the smooth stucco surface had flaked off, revealing the rough brown interior of the mud walls. Even the massive door seemed to be falling apart, and I could see some obviously recent repairs: one of the massive hinges was brass and shiny, out of place from the other blackened antique metalwork, and a two-by-four was nailed vertically up one side of the door to hold the decaying boards in place.
A wreath of flowers, long since dead, hung just above eye level.
This place wasn’t anything like I’d hoped it would be. It wasn’t safe; it wasn’t welcoming.
The door almost immediately clanked and then swung open, revealing another guy—tall and skinny, his thick black hair dreadlocked.
“Everybody check out, Birdman?” the new guy asked.
The guy with the shaved head nodded. “They’re good. Take them to the Basement.”
The dreadlocked guy looked at me and smiled enthusiastically. “I’m Harvard. Need a hand?”
I nodded, exhausted, and he scooped Becky out of my arms. I followed him along a rough wooden walkway.
The fort had a large open courtyard in the middle—now covered in a blanket of untouched snow. It looked like each of the four sides was lined with rooms, like a motel.
The farther we walked, the older the fort seemed. The adobe walls were crumbling and broken, and the wooden planks under our feet were cracked; about every fifth one was missing entirely. Harvard walked with careless expertise—stepping back and forth, left to right, avoiding weak boards without giving them a second thought. I copied his path, but even so I could feel the wood bowing under my weight.
As we continued around to the far side of the fort, I saw faces peering out of cracks in the centuries-old doors. I looked for others I knew, like Mouse and Jane, but couldn’t really get a good look at anyone.
“Do they watch you guys?” I asked.
Harvard shook his head. “They used to try, but we keep a pretty good eye on it. We have people whose job it is to watch for cameras. We can’t do much about the animals in the camp—you know about those?”
“Yeah,” I said, even though we’d figured it out only the day before. “Raccoons and deer and that kind of thing.”
“Right,” Harvard said. “The good news is we can keep them out of the fort. So far, we’ve never found a bird with a camera in it.” He stopped and nodded toward a room. “Can you get that?”
I opened the door—the antique brass knob like ice—and held it for Harvard.
Becky looked asleep in his arms, her face calm, mouth slightly open. I could hear her raspy breaths as we entered a quiet, dark room.
“Hang on,” a voice said, and I turned to see Jane catching up with us. She gave me an awkward smile and then hurried past.
Coming in from the white of the snow—even in the early morning—made it hard to adjust to the darkness, but after a moment Jane lit a lantern and the room filled with warm yellow light.
It was smaller than the dorms back at the school. The only furniture was a bed—narrow and low, like a cot—and a small wooden table and chair. A cardboard box at the foot of the bed was filled with folded clothes, and cans of food were stacked in the corner, under the narrow slit of a window. The walls were covered with drawings of all sizes, some on paper, others on large pieces of cloth. Some of the pictures were of the town—the fort, the barn, the stream—but others I knew well: the school, the cafeteria, the wall, and the gate. There were three pictures of Curtis, the leader of the Vs. He was still at the school, and I knew he was human.
Before I could ask about him, Birdman and Mouse joined us, stepping inside and closing the door.
“We’re taking a big risk,” Birdman said, looking at me out of the corner of his eye as he passed by. He shoved the bed to the other side of the room and climbed up onto it. “Not everyone in this town gets to live in the fort, but I want to keep an eye on you. Nothing you see or hear leaves this room, okay?”
I nodded. Even here there were secrets. That didn’t surprise me.
Birdman lifted a large cloth picture—a mural—and I saw him prying something off the wall.
“There aren’t many places to hide things,” Harvard said, grinning as he watched Birdman. “But last year we figured one out. This adobe is thick. Most of the walls are more than a foot deep, but because there’s a big fireplace on the other side of this one, it’s more than four feet of solid adobe. It took us months, but we hollowed out the top part of the wall.”
Birdman pulled a square panel loose and then slipped it into the hole it had been covering. He glanced down at me. “It’s not perfect. If they look under the picture it won’t be hard to find.”
“Nice.” I forced a laugh. “The Shawshank Redemption.”
He nodded. “Except this hole doesn’t get you anywhere.” He motioned to me, still scowling, but some of the harshness was gone from his eyes. “You’d better get up there first so we can hand her to you.”
The hole was high enough on the wall that even standing on the bed I could only just see inside. With one foot on the rickety bed frame, I clambered up into the Basement.
It was more like a cave than a room. The walls were all bare adobe—dry, uneven mud—and they’d laid down a few broken wood planks to serve as the floor. It was narrow, probably less than four feet wide, but almost the full length of the room below. The ceiling was low enough that I had to crouch to fit. At each end a tiny slit of light shone in.
“You call this the Basement?” I asked.
Jane handed me a stack of blankets, and Harvard spoke. “Just a little joke. In case someone overhears us talking about it. They’ll think we’ve dug a tunnel or something.”