The Annihilation of Foreverland (19 page)

“We’re making him stronger,” the Director said. “He needs this to push through his psychological barriers.”

“On what basis do you make these assessments?” Mr. Jones said. “Those barriers were put in place by us! He’s not supposed to remember his past in the flesh, Director. Like every boy on this island, he only recovers them inside the needle, and now you want to remove the barriers that prevent him from remembering in the flesh? Director, I must question your motivations—”

“Question nothing, Mr. Jones,” he snapped. “Every boy on this island is different, each needs the program tailored to his individual needs. May I remind you that you were the one that argued to recruit this young man against my better judgment, that he would bring problems that would be dealt with in an unorthodox manner. Do you recall that conversation?”

Mr. Jones folded his arms, once again. “You are introducing anarchy. I hardly see how that will benefit those involved.”

“Sometimes death provides life, Mr. Jones. I believe that is something we can all agree upon.”

They watched the scene unfold behind the dormitory.

“I’ve had enough. I’m putting a stop to this now.”

The Director didn’t stop him from going to the elevator. The event was over.

Mr. Smith was nonplussed. It didn’t involve his boy. In fact, it was for the benefit of Danny Boy
and
Reed. Therefore, Mr. Smith watched with great interest.

“Danny Boy is Reed’s salvation,” is what the Director told him before Mr. Jones had arrived. “He’s our best chance to draw him inside the needle.”

And the needle was what Mr. Smith needed him to take. Otherwise, he will have wasted his time and money. Money, he had. Time was what he was trying to buy.

So the Director’s argument was very compelling. The pressure they had put on Reed still had not succeeded. The Director and Mr. Smith agreed that Reed was likely to die before succumbing to it. His health was already on the decline and his time was very short. It wasn’t going to benefit Mr. Smith if he destroyed him. He was willing to try anything.

The Director twisted the curly whiskers on his upper lip. The event behind the dormitory was taking an unforeseen turn, but Mr. Smith didn’t flinch. He watched as it unfolded. This made the Director smile.
He trusts me.

“There’s hope yet, Mr. Smith. The two are bonding. Keep them close, let them continue to develop a relationship.”

“What about Mr. Jones? He will not be pleased with this approach.”

“I’ll handle Mr. Jones. Danny Boy made contact with Reed’s ‘problem’ inside the needle. We can’t let that opportunity go to waste.”

The Director didn’t lie. There was a problem. The extent of that problem, however, was not fully explained to any of the Investors. Reed’s problem was a threat to all of them. Mr. Jones, included. If Danny Boy was part of the solution, there would be no discussion about how to handle it.

The boys behind the dormitory fell to the ground as Mr. Jones and other Investors arrived on the scene. Mr. Smith took his leave to attend to Reed.

“He’s worth saving,” the Director said, as Mr. Smith boarded the elevator. “They’re all worth saving.”

Not a lie. But not exactly the truth.

Danny ran toward
s
the only door that opened to the back of the dormitory. Zin must have come out of it to swipe a golf cart. His Investor was going to flip. And Mr. Jones was going to drop a nuke.
That’s right. Danny is not a good boy
.

Maybe they could scout the other end of the Mansion but this time take the cart, drop a brick on the accelerator and send it over the edge. It was a horrible idea, but he’d run it by Zin, see what he thought. If he was game, Danny wasn’t going to stand in his way. May as well have some fun destroying personal property.

He threw open the door—

CRAAACK!

Danny tumbled with lights in his head and the side of his face numb, the tang of iron on his tongue.

“Booooom!” Sid shouted. “Where I come from, that’s called a boom-shot, son!”

Danny touched his fat lips, pulled back bloody fingers. He spit a dark red pool into the dirt.

The camp was throwing high-fives at Sid. One of the guys was down at the corner on the lookout for Investors. James nearly tripped over Danny on his way out of the back door.

“Did I miss it?”

“Hell, yeah, you missed it.” Sid shook his hand like it was hot. “I broke up his damn face. You should’ve seen the look he gave me right before I landed the boom-shot.” He high-fived James. “That’s what we call it where I come from.”

Danny got on his hands and knees and spit red. “You don’t know where you come from.” He spit out a chunk of skin. “None of you morons do.”

It got quiet. Sid
squatted down. “I don’t care where I’m from, that’s what we call it.”

He kicked Danny onto his back and got another round of hand-slapping.

“I’m king of this island, Danny Boy,” Sid called. “And you’re the trash. You and Reed, a couple of crazy bastards getting naked. What’s wrong with your brains, son? Did the needle drive too deep? Did it suck the noodle out of your skull?”

“Maybe I’ve seen the truth.”

“Yeah, the truth of your mental illness. What is there not to love about this place, idiot? We got everything we could want, we don’t pay for a thing, and we got the best games in the world. I mean, sue me for not wanting to stay here forever.”

“We get smoked, Sid,” Danny said, spitting. “You forget?”

“Yeah, well we all got to die. That’s a fact, brain surgeon. May as well do it happy.”

The clowns around him agreed. A pack of lemmings.

“The Director is a genius,” he said. “You should be kissing the man’s feet.”

“Excuse me for wanting to know what they’re doing to us,” Danny said.

“Who gives a flying fart?”

Danny was on his hands and knees, again.

“And another thing.” Sid was back down at face level. “You’re getting your ass back in that game room to put us back in first place. I got a taste of that freebee and I like. We want another pass, you hear?”

“Forget it.”

“You might want to think about it because there’s more where this came from.” Sid kicked dirt in his face. “You got to sleep sometime.”

“So do you.”

They laughed. Sid led the way toward the corner of the building where they’d sit their fat asses on the card table and yuck it up. Danny just needed to sit it out until they were gone. He was going to need stitches, but what would he tell Mr. Jones? The truth would probably help the most, but that seemed boring. Besides, Danny sensed the thrill beneath the throbbing in his face. And that’s what made him stand up.

“You forgot something!” He took a shuffle-step to catch his balance then threw up his middle finger. “Take this to the game room with you.”

Sid thought about it. It would be easier to let this one go, but everyone was watching and Danny hadn’t learned his lesson. And that was the whole point. How could Sid really be the king if a little punk gave him the finger and got away with it? If he walked off, Danny wins no matter how many stitches it takes.

Danny sealed the deal when he threw his hands out to the side.
Still standing, bitch.

Sid got a running start.

Danny bent at the knees, balled his fists. He was going to start swinging before Sid got too close. He had no plan after that. But it didn’t matter.

Sid launched himself – feet first.

Danny went flying like a limp doll. Before his wits returned, Sid was on top. He tasted gritty blood, now. Sid planted his knees on Danny’s arms, grinding them into the dirt and sat on his chest. Danny’s legs flailed behind Sid. He grabbed a handful of Danny’s hair and held his head still. A bubbly glob of spit hung on Sid’s lower lip, then fell.

“How’s that, munchkin?” Sid said.

The others gathered around. Their shadows loomed.

“That loogey matches the one I dropped on you in the Haystack. That was from me and you’re welcome.”

The snail slime when I woke up.

The pain radiating from his arms had extinguished the thrill and replaced it with rage. But he was too small to do anything, helpless beneath 180 pounds of Sid. He tried to spit on him but it only landed on his own face.

“Listen, you crazy dwarf. What I say goes. You’ll game and shut your bloody mouth or I’ll spit in your eye every day you wake up. You’ll be begging to get smoked when I’m done with you. You think you can out-crazy me? Well, I got news for you, I’m the real deal. I’m a psychopath. I’ll climb inside you and eat your damn gizzard.”

Danny started laughing.
Gizzard. What an idiot.

This caught Sid off-guard. Danny’s cheek lit up with a loud smack. But it only made him laugh harder. He didn’t care about pain. Sid would have to break his teeth out to get him to shut up. And that’s what he was about to do, pulling his fist behind his ear—
Sid went rolling across the ground.

Elbows flying.

Danny was back on his hands and knees, catching his breath, listening to grunts and the slap of skin-on-skin. Sid was on feet, dragging someone with him.

Reed.

His shirt was pulled over his head, revealing his bony chest. Sid pushed him into the group and two of them pinned his arms behind him. Reed’s face was gaunt. Yellow-darkness hung beneath his eyes. He was out of breath.

“A hero, huh?” Sid paced closer. “Hold him still, let me show you what we do to heroes.”

He pulled his fist behind his ear, again, lined up a shot that would break Reed’s entire face—

They all dropped on the ground.

Sid, Reed, and all the rest. They fell like dead bodies.

“It’s all right, Danny Boy.” Mr. Jones was on one knee. “We got things under control.”

Golf carts pulled up and old men unloaded, each one of them going to their camper. They rolled them over, cradled their heads. Their eyes were rolled back and the Investors talked to them. Slowly, they came out of the tracker-zapping stupor and their Investors – each with his own look of disapproval – guided them away.

“Come along.” Mr. Jones helped Danny up. “Let’s get you to the doctor to have a look. Don’t worry about those boys, it’s all right now.”

Each of them was up and being cared for, tended to. All of them, except one.

Reed was alone and still unconscious.

It was Danny’s second time inside the Chimney.

Mr. Jones took him to the big, silver elevator shaft in the center of the first floor. He held Mr. Jones’s handkerchief to his mouth. It was white with major splotches of blood. They went to the second floor. Danny didn’t see a stairwell. Either Mr. Jones was too tired to walk or this was ultra-security. The only way up was in the elevator.

Five floors in the Chimney. The third one was where I woke up. The second one is the doctor’s office. The fifth one is the Director’s penthouse. What’s on the fourth?

The second floor was silent. Four hallways radiated from the center like spokes. They went down one of them and stopped outside an office door with a row of chairs against the wall.

“Would you have a seat, Danny Boy?” Mr. Jones asked. “I’d like to speak with the doctor.”

Danny grunted through the handkerchief. Mr. Jones helped him into one of the chairs and went inside the office. Danny couldn’t hear them talking. He flicked his tongue over his bottom lip, felt the hole carved out of it when Sid’s fist crushed his face against his teeth. Mr. Jones assured him that would never happen again. If Sid he got within fifty feet, an alarm would sound on his tracker. If he got closer than twenty, he’d get knocked out.

Danny wouldn’t mind testing the system. Maybe sneak up on him while he was in the bathroom, watch him crumple up on the toilet. He’d be in trouble – major, big time – but it would be so worth it. So, so worth it.

He laid his head against the wall and closed his eyes. He was sinking in the chair, exhaustion weighing him down. He was breathing heavily when the elevator doors broke open. Two sets of footsteps came down the hallway. One was dragging a foot.

“Hello, Danny Boy,” Mr. Smith said. “How’s your mouth feeling?”

Danny shrugged. He could answer, but the bloody rag was a good excuse not to speak without being rude.

“Listen, son. You’ll be all right. We’ve got a real sharp doctor on the island that will have you back to normal in a snap.” Mr. Smith snapped his fingers to illustrate his point. “No one hurts for long around here.”

Mr. Smith turned to Reed, mumbled something about sitting. “Let me go inside and talk with Mr. Jones and the doctor, all right?”

He winked at Danny, smiled, and went inside.

Reed hunched over, hiding his hands in his lap. The silence was enormous.

“You didn’t have to do that back there.”

Reed didn’t respond. Danny took that as a sign to shut up. He said thanks. Move on. Danny pushed his tongue into the hole in his lip. The bleeding had stopped but he kept the handkerchief to his mouth.