Children of the Uprising (3 page)

Christopher motioned toward the hatchet on the ground. “I might see if I could reach that if I were you. You'll need it to try to fend off the bears and the coyotes, because nobody is going to find you here. If you're lucky, the bears will come first. They'll be a lot quicker than the coyotes.” Christopher turned and walked away again. This time he didn't turn back.

He walked for another fifty yards or so. Then he started to jog. Then he started to run. When he got back to his car, he opened the car door, reached inside, and grabbed his phone. He called Evan.

The phone rang twice before Evan picked up. “Yo, man, what's up? You change your mind about Tracey?” Evan spoke into the phone before Christopher said a word. Christopher could still hear the man in the woods crying out for help, but it was a quiet, distant sound.

“No,” Christopher answered, trying to control the panic in his voice. “I need a favor.”

“Okay,” Evan said, a bit confused. Christopher wasn't one to often ask for favors.

“I need you to call my parents and tell them that I'm staying at your place tonight. Tell them that you're taking me out as a surprise or something. After you talk to them, call me back.”

“What's going on, Chris?” Evan asked.

I just killed two men in the woods,
Christopher thought but didn't say. “I'll tell you later. This is important. Will you do it?”

“Why can't you just call your parents?” Evan asked. But Christopher couldn't. He knew it. He'd break down on the phone with them.

“I don't know,” Christopher answered. “I just can't. Will you please call them?”

“Okay. I'll give you a call right back.” Evan hung up. While Christopher waited for Evan to call him back, he assessed the damage done to his car. The whole driver's side was still clinging to the tree he hit, the metal bent around it. He couldn't drive the car anymore. Even if he could get the car to run, it would be like driving a neon sign. Christopher lifted his head and eyed the other car. He walked over to it. The keys were still inside. The car had some scratches on the door but was otherwise in remarkably good shape. Christopher opened the driver's-side door and got inside. His phone rang.

“Evan,” Christopher said, picking up the phone before the first ring had finished.

“Dude,” Evan said, “is something wrong?”

“Did you talk to my parents?” Christopher asked.

“Yeah,” Evan answered. “They bought it.”

“So they were okay?” Christopher asked. He was breathing more heavily now than he had been when he'd been hiding in the woods.

“They're fine,” Evan said, frustration leaking into his voice. “Are you going to tell me what's going on?”

“As soon as I can,” Christopher said. “I promise. Not now, though. Not tonight. I promise to call you tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Evan said. “I hope there's a good story behind this.”
So do I,
Christopher thought before hanging up the phone. He turned the key in the car's ignition. The engine began its low rumble. Then he pulled the jet-black car back onto the road and headed for home.

Christopher parked the car a mile from his house and walked the rest of the way. He didn't dare bring the car any closer. He didn't dare tell his parents what had happened in the woods. Somehow he knew that he needed to keep them in the dark to protect them. When he reached the edge of his yard, Christopher stopped and stared into the brightly lit house. He watched the shadows of his parents as they moved from room to room. After only a few minutes his parents began to turn off the lights in each room. First the living room went dark. Then the kitchen. Then the upstairs bathroom. The dim light coming from their bedroom stayed on the longest, but that too eventually went out. Christopher waited for another half an hour after the lights were turned off before he walked the rest of the way to the house.

The birthday cake Christopher's mother had baked for him was still on the kitchen counter, covered in plastic wrap. It was a German chocolate cake, Christopher's favorite. He was tempted to lift the plastic wrap and cut himself one slice—just one. He didn't do it, though. He didn't want to mess with his parents' heads any more than he was already about to. As quietly as he could, Christopher made his way up the stairs toward his bedroom. He moved through the darkness in his house even more easily than he had through the darkness in the woods. He knew every inch of this house. He knew which floorboards to step over to avoid creaking. He knew to lift the door to his bedroom as he opened it to keep the hinges from making noise.

Christopher walked into his bedroom. When the men had started chasing him, Christopher remembered the key and the note. He opened the top drawer of his desk. He silently pushed aside the papers that were lying inside. He reached for the back of the drawer. His fingers felt the envelope. The envelope had some weight to it. Christopher pulled it out, being even more careful now not to make noise. If his parents heard him now, he would have no way of hiding what he was doing. He opened the envelope. He found the key inside with the note that he had never read. He took out his cell phone so that he could use it as a flashlight. He thought the note might have answers for him. To his dismay, it didn't contain any message at all. The only thing that was written on the paper was an address in Montreal and a number.

Christopher took the key and the note and put them in his pocket. Then he gathered up a few changes of clothes and his cell phone charger and threw them in a backpack. Even if the note was a bust, he figured the key had to lead to answers. He looked around the room to see if he should take anything else, not knowing when he would be able to come home again. His breath began to tremble over his lips. He was almost overcome with a surge of emotion, but he willed it to stop. He'd spent his whole life training to never let himself break like that. Even as a child, his parents told him, he rarely ever cried.

Christopher took a deep breath and walked out of his room. He walked past his parents' bedroom, stopping for only a moment to listen to them breathe. Then he walked silently down the stairs and out the front door.

Christopher sat in the café across the street from the bank. He ate his breakfast and eyed the other people in the café. He listened to the sound of forks and knives clinking on cheap china. He felt like he could hear every spoon that rattled against the edge of a coffee cup. No one appeared to be looking at him. They were looking at their plates, at their food, at the waitress. They talked to each other. Christopher could still feel eyes on him. Somebody was watching him. He just couldn't tell who. He had hoped that the feeling of being watched would end after he faced down the men in the woods. He'd hoped that he'd already seen enough, that it was now over. But it wasn't over. Christopher knew it. He stabbed his fork into his eggs and felt eyes on him. The guys in the woods weren't alone.

Christopher felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. He took it out and looked down at the message on the screen. It was from Evan: “where the hell r u? this story better b epic . . .” Christopher put the phone back in his pocket. Epic didn't begin to describe it. Christopher wouldn't even know how to describe it. Terrifying would be a start. Confusing. Christopher looked out the window toward the bank. People were beginning to move around inside. It was almost eight in the morning. Christopher hadn't slept, hadn't even considered it. He wasn't tired. The way he felt, he wasn't sure if he'd ever sleep again.

Christopher ate the last two bites of his breakfast. He reached into his pocket again, reaching past his phone, and ran his fingers over the cool metal of the key. A real key to a safe-deposit box. It seemed so antiquated, like trying to kill someone with a hatchet. Christopher stood up. He had already paid. He eyeballed the room one more time before leaving, trying to see if anyone looked like they were going to follow him. Nobody moved. Christopher knew that this didn't mean that no one was watching him. It only meant that they were good at it. His phone buzzed in his pocket again. He ignored it. He didn't have anything to say yet, but the answers were close. He could feel it. He only needed to survive the next hour.

Christopher stepped toward the door to leave. Despite the noise and chatter in the café, everything seemed calm. As he stepped closer to the door, someone in a booth near the exit stood up behind him. The stranger began to follow right behind Christopher. The stranger was close, close enough that he could reach out and touch Christopher if he wanted to. Christopher made it to the door and pushed it open with one arm. Then he stepped aside, holding the door open for the stranger behind him, motioning politely for the stranger to exit first. Christopher had never liked being followed, but he really didn't have any stomach for it today.

“After you,” the stranger said to Christopher, his tone oddly formal. The stranger was relatively young, no older than twenty-seven or twenty-eight. He was at least six feet tall, a good two inches taller than Christopher. He had dark hair and dark eyes and was wearing a light jacket despite the warm summer weather.

“No, thanks,” Christopher replied. “I left something at my table,” he lied.

The stranger took a deep breath and shook his head. “I spend way too much time in this business sitting in cafés.” The man looked straight at Christopher. “What do you think you forgot, Christopher? There is nothing at your table.”

Christopher felt his heart speed up again, the same way he'd felt it last night while being hunted in the woods. “I'm not going outside with you,” Christopher said to the stranger. He didn't even bother asking the stranger how he knew his name. He had half expected the man to know it. The man scared him, maybe even more than the men in the woods. The way the stranger carried himself scared him. The stranger was calm. Everything in the woods had been utterly insane, but the stranger was the picture of sanity. To Christopher, after all the waiting and the paranoia, after what he'd done to those men in the woods, nothing was more frightening than sanity. “If you're going to kill me, you're going to have to do it right here in this restaurant.”

“I'm not going to kill you, Christopher,” the stranger said, not at all surprised that Christopher thought such a thing.

“Then what are you here for?” Christopher asked him. The stranger's words didn't make him feel any better.

“I'm here to keep you from going inside that bank,” the stranger said, motioning over his shoulder at the bank across the street.

“Why?”

“Because if you go inside that bank, you'll be dead within half an hour of leaving it,” the stranger said calmly and quietly. The two men stopped speaking for a moment as an elderly couple walked out of the café. Christopher stood there, barely breathing, still holding the door open with his outstretched arm. The old man tipped his hat to Christopher as he walked by.

“I don't understand,” Christopher whispered to the stranger once the old couple was gone. The confusion was almost as bad as the fear.

“Follow me,” the stranger said, “and I'll tell you as much as I can.”

“Why should I trust you?” Christopher asked the stranger.

The stranger shrugged. He leaned in toward Christopher and spoke in a low whisper. “If I want you dead, you're dead whether you follow me or not. If I'm telling the truth and I actually want to help you, then following me is your only smart move. You don't have to trust me. You just have to realize that you are outclassed and extremely short on options.” When the stranger finished speaking, he looked into Christopher's eyes. “Either way, it's been an honor to meet you,” he said. Then the stranger walked past Christopher's outstretched arm and through the open door toward the street. Christopher only waited a second before following the stranger outside.

The stranger was already at the end of the block when Christopher stepped out of the café. He timed it so that Christopher caught only a glimpse of him before he turned the corner, just enough so that Christopher would be able to follow him. It was clear to Christopher that the stranger had experience with this, meeting people, persuading them to follow him, and then leading them away. The stranger had, in fact, done this dozens of times before but never with someone exactly like Christopher. After all, no one else was exactly like Christopher.

Christopher looked both ways down the Montreal street. He saw the stranger turn and Christopher followed him. Instinctively, Christopher matched the pace of the stranger. He didn't rush to catch up. He tried to walk calmly, to appear to be moving without the agonizing purpose he felt in his gut. He did his best to control the adrenaline pumping through his veins.

At each corner, Christopher turned in the direction the stranger had gone just in time to see the stranger turning again. Together, they walked farther and farther from the bank. Christopher put his hands in his pocket and ran his fingers over the key again. He remembered the stranger's words.
If you go inside that bank, you'll be dead within half an hour of leaving it.
He looked around to try to see if anyone else was watching him. He glanced behind him to see if he was being followed. Nothing. He saw nothing. He knew how little that meant, though. He made it to the corner and turned toward the stranger again.

It went on this way for another fifteen minutes, the two men weaving through the city streets. Eventually, Christopher saw the man walk into a hotel on Sherbrooke. Christopher could see the lush green of the hills running up toward the top of Mount Royal and the miles of park running down beneath it. He still didn't speed up. For a second, he doubted whether or not he should really be following this stranger inside. What if it was a trap? Sometimes you have to take your chances. Christopher kept walking. He couldn't listen to his paranoia every time it told him not to do something. If he had, he wouldn't have been able to move for the past ten years.

Christopher entered the hotel. The lobby was buzzing with people. He looked around to see if he could see the stranger. People all around him were sitting beside their luggage on the lush furniture, waiting to check in or waiting to check out. Christopher's eyes darted over them. A small queue of people was at the front desk. Then Christopher's eyes moved to the elevator bay. He saw the stranger standing alone inside an elevator. He got only a quick glance at the stranger before the doors closed. The stranger made eye contact with Christopher and held up four of his fingers.

Christopher walked quickly over to the front desk, cutting in the line of people waiting. “Can you tell me where the stairs are?” he asked the closest person behind the desk, a short woman with neatly done hair.

“The elevator bay is just over there, sir,” the woman said to him before turning back to the queue of customers.

“The stairs,” Christopher said. The woman looked back up at him, annoyed. “I have a thing about elevators,” he finished.

“Keep going past the elevators,” the woman said. “The stairs are on your right.”

“Thanks,” Christopher said and began moving quickly toward the stairs.

Christopher ran up the first two flights of stairs, taking two or three steps at a time. When he got to the third floor, he began to walk again, trying to calm down. His head was spinning. The bank. The mystery safe-deposit box. The men in the woods. The stranger. He felt his phone buzz in his pocket again. Evan. His parents. What was he going to tell his parents? He blocked it all out and counted the steps as he climbed them. He tried to decide if he could take the stranger in a fight if it came to that. He didn't know. He could usually size someone up pretty quickly. With the stranger, he had no idea.

The stranger had chosen a room close to the elevator so that he could get in and out quickly without being seen. Christopher was still climbing the stairs when the stranger reached the door to his room. He unlocked the door with his key and stepped inside. The stranger wasted no time. He walked into the bathroom first. He pulled the shower curtain back, revealing the empty bathtub. He opened the cabinets under the bathroom sink and peered inside. Then he walked back into the main room. He opened the closet doors, staring into the closet's dark corners. He dropped to the floor and lifted up the bed skirt, peering under the bed. Finally, the stranger walked over to the windows. He pulled the thick curtains wide open. Light cascaded into the room from outside. The stranger pulled the bunched-up curtains away from the wall at the bottom, running his hand along the insides of the folds. He felt nothing. Then he let the curtains drop back into place and pulled them closed again, shutting out the light. The room was clean. The stranger walked back toward the door, finally ready to greet his guest.

When Christopher got to the fourth floor, he slowly pushed his way through the door leading from the staircase into the hallway. It was a long hallway. The carpet was an ugly golden color with a maroon pattern crisscrossing over it. The doors on either side of the hallway were evenly spaced. Christopher couldn't see any windows, only the dim lights from the ceiling. There were so many doors. Christopher stood alone in the hallway. He didn't see any sign of the stranger. He was unsure of what he was supposed to do. He thought about moving down the hallway, placing his ear on each door, trying to figure out which door was the right one, but that seemed absurd.

Christopher was about to take a step forward when he heard a clicking sound coming from one of the doors at the other end of the hallway. His first instinct was to hide, but the only place to hide was the stairwell and Christopher refused to ever go backward. Instead, he girded himself, readying to charge like a bull. The door swung open. The stranger stepped out from behind it, into the hallway. Without a word, he waved Christopher toward him. Christopher moved silently toward him. As Christopher approached, the stranger stared down the hallway toward the elevators. Finally, when Christopher was only a few steps from him, the stranger looked at Christopher again. “Get inside,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. He held the door open as Christopher slipped past him.

The room appeared to be in a shambles. The closet doors were all open. The bathroom door was open too, and the shower curtain was pulled back. The room appeared empty. The curtains were drawn. The only light in the room came from a small lamp sitting on the desk. The stranger closed the door behind him. “Can I get you something?” the stranger asked Christopher, stepping around him to get to the minibar.

“No, thanks,” Christopher answered.

“You sure?” the stranger asked again. “A water? An orange juice?”

“I'm fine,” Christopher said again. He didn't want a drink. He wanted answers.

The stranger pulled a bottle of water out of the minibar for himself. “Okay, then let's get started. Take a seat.” The stranger motioned to the plush chair across from the desk. Christopher sat down in it. The stranger sat at the desk. He began strumming his fingers on the desktop's dark wood. “Where to start?” the stranger asked himself. He looked back up at Christopher and smiled slightly. “You know I do this. I convince people to come and talk to me and I tell them about what I can do for them, what we can do for them.” The stranger shook his head and smiled. “But I've never talked to anyone like you before.”

“What does that mean—someone like me? What did you mean when you said it was an honor to meet me?” Christopher asked. He had an endless list of questions running through his head, but these were as good a place to start as any.

The stranger started talking. He enunciated every word to avoid any more confusion than was necessary. “Your father was a soldier in a War that you've never heard of. He met your mother when she was very young. Your mother gave birth to you in contravention to the rules of your father's War. Because of this, your mother decided that she couldn't raise you herself. She thought you would be safer if she hid you with someone else, but hiding from the War is not that easy—especially in your case.” The stranger spoke the words as if he'd rehearsed them.