“This was not the case.
“The boys continued their lessons through it all. The only time they saw each other, for a while, was in my classroom. Which meant that their anger at each other found no other outlet. I had to break up fights constantly. I had guards rush in and restrain my students in the middle of my lectures. If I called on a boy and he didn’t know the answer, the others would jeer at him mercilessly. If he did know the answer, they would mock him for being a show-off. Then one day a fight broke out that I couldn’t stop. One of the slower boys, but one notorious for his incredible strength, attacked another boy right in front of me. The attacker — his name was Keenan — broke the other boy’s arms in the time it takes to say it. He was jumping on top of his victim, smashing him with his feet. I tried to pull him away and he lashed out at me. His nictitating membranes — his third eyelids, I can see you don’t know the term — were down, and when their eyes were like that I knew they weren’t going to stop. They were going to hit and bite and scratch until everything in front of them was destroyed. Keenan came at me with nothing in his heart but pure, animal rage. I had thwarted him, and he would tear me to pieces.”
Julia gasped. “What did you do?” she asked.
Ellie inhaled deeply. “I drew my sidearm and I put him down like a mad dog. Three bullets in his skull, that was enough. Did I not mention that I was carrying a pistol while I taught? We all were, by that point. Every human being in Camp Putnam went armed at all times. It just wasn’t safe otherwise.”
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS: APRIL 13, T+40:51
The fireplace by Chapel’s right side crackled and popped. Apomotov came in and poured more whiskey into their teacups. Outside the wind from the lake battered at the house, but inside all was quiet. No one spoke a word as they waited for Ellie to continue her story.
“The level of aggression we saw,” she said, looking only into her teacup, “was far beyond anything we’d expected. Anything we’d planned for. These were children! You’ve only seen them as adults. At that age they looked like little seraphs, angels with black eyes. When they turned on each other, or on us, they turned to demons in a moment. We tried so many things. I recommended individual counseling — bringing in a small army of psychologists, child development specialists, social workers. My request was roundly denied. It was too great a security risk.
“The boys kept fighting, and every time they hurt a guard, things just got so much worse. In 1995, they killed one of the researchers, a Dr. Harkness.”
Julia gasped.
“I’m… sorry,” Julia said, when Chapel looked at her. “Just — I knew her. Dr. Harkness. She was really sweet. She used to bring me magazines, Tiger Beat and… and Seventeen. She said being raised by scientists, I needed to see what the real world was like. They killed her? Oh my God. Oh my God… Mom just told me she moved away.”
She shook her head, and Chapel saw a tear roll down her cheek.
“Please,” Julia said. “Just — go on. I’ll be okay.”
Ellie gave her a sympathetic frown, but she clearly wanted to get back to her story. “After that the guards were told to shoot any boy acting violent. They were human beings, those guards, and they rarely did as they were told. At least, at first. In 1996, things changed.”
Ellie drew her feet up underneath her as if they were cold. She took a moment to catch her breath and drink some more whiskey. “I made a mistake. A bad one. It has occurred to me, more than once, that what happened was my fault.
“I know I’m being overly hard on myself. But it happened because of what I did. Or rather, what I didn’t do.
“A group of the boys came to me. Just four of them, a little cabal. They were the smartest of the lot, my best pupils. And they knew what was happening. They understood that normal children — human children — weren’t like this. They said that if they could just get out of the camp, see the world beyond and live like normal children, then they would settle down. That they would overcome their impulses. The leader was a boy named Ian. The smartest of them all, and one of the strongest. You could see in his eyes he was a natural leader. Well, when his eyes weren’t covered by those horrible membranes, you could see it. He had organized this little committee. He came to me because he knew I was the most sympathetic adult in that camp, and the one who was the least tied to the military. He asked me for my help. They had a plan, but they needed certain things to make it happen. They needed to know where the guards would be at a certain hour. And then he told me he needed my sidearm.
“I told him it was impossible, and I refused to help. He saw at once I wouldn’t budge and that he’d made a mistake asking for my gun. So instead, then, he pleaded — begged, on bended knee — that I not tell anyone what he’d asked. He promised that he would forget all about the plan, that he would devote himself to stopping the violence.
“So I kept my peace. Two nights later they rushed the fence. They had no weapons and no idea what they were doing; they simply thought they could climb over an electrified fence and run away. The guards killed one of them and restrained Ian. Two more of them did get over the fence, believe it or not. They fought the guards who came for them. One of them was tranquilized and taken away and I never saw him again. One of them actually got loose, and it was months before he was returned to us.”
“That was Malcolm,” Chapel said, remembering Funt’s story.
“Yes. Malcolm. They caught him again, eventually. The camp he came back to was not the one he left,” Ellie said.
She shuddered but went on. “There had been a gate in the fence, originally. A wide gate you could drive a jeep through. The guards sealed that up. They added a new, outer fence. And in between them they laid mines. Land mines. There would not be a second escape attempt.”
“Wait,” Chapel said. “They sealed the fence? There was no gate after that?”
“I believe I spoke clearly, Captain. After 1996, the fence was complete. After that date no human being ever set foot in Camp Putnam. The guards had decided, you see, that it wasn’t safe. Not even for armed men. Anyone attempting to go in or out was to be shot on sight. And believe me, this time the guards obeyed their orders to the letter.”
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS: APRIL 13, T+41:06
Chapel’s phone started to ring. It surprised him enough he jumped in his seat. He took it out of his pocket and saw that it was still set to vibrate, but apparently Angel could get past that. “Forgive me,” he said. He yanked the battery out of the phone, and it went silent again.
“Someone doesn’t want you to hear this,” Ellie said, looking frightened.
Chapel didn’t blame her. “That’s all the more reason why I need to hear it,” he told her. “A lot of people have spent a lot of time and effort keeping this secret so long. But secrets have a way of festering. This one’s old enough and dangerous enough that people are dying for it. I have to stop that.”
“I suppose someone must,” Ellie said. “There’s not much more to tell, though, I’m afraid. My involvement with Camp Putnam didn’t last much longer.”
“You said you started there in 1990, and that you worked there for eight years,” Chapel told her.
“Yes. Those last two years were… terrifying. My safety was guaranteed, but the boys were trapped in there. They were abandoned. Left to their own self-destructive impulses. When I took the job, I had thought I was working at some kind of high-tech summer camp. By the time I left, I felt like I was a schoolteacher at Auschwitz.”