“Son! No—”
His father’s shouts were cut off by a grunt. Jimmy wheeled around, his boots squeaking. He clutched the desk for balance. On the screen, another man had emerged from around the corner, and his father was doubled over in pain. This man held the long pistol, stooped to retrieve something from the ground, held it to his mouth. It was the portable his father had taken from the room.
“Is this Russ’s boy?”
Jimmy stared at the man on the screen. “Yes,” he said to the screen. “Don’t hurt my dad.”
The room was full of static. The lights overhead continued to throb red.
Jimmy cursed himself. They couldn’t hear him. He pushed away from the desk and grabbed the dangling Mike. “Please don’t hurt him,” he said, squeezing the button.
The man turned and looked directly at the camera. It was one of the security guards. There was a bit of movement peeking out from around the corner of the hall, more people out of sight.
“James, is it?”
Jimmy nodded. He watched his dad regain his composure and stand. His father made a gesture to someone out of sight, patted the air with his palm as if to calm someone.
“What’s the new code?” the man with the radio asked.
Jimmy didn’t want to tell him. But he wanted his father back inside. He wasn’t sure what to do.
“The code,” the man said. He aimed the gun at Jimmy’s dad. Jimmy watched his father say something, then gesture for the portable. The security guard hesitated a moment before handing it over. His father lifted the unit to his mouth.
“They’ll kill you,” his father said, calm as if he were telling his son to tie his boots. The man with the gun waved an arm, and someone rushed into view to wrestle with his father. “They’ll kill us all anyway,” his father shouted, struggling to keep hold of the radio. “And they’ll kill you the moment you open this door!”
Jimmy screamed as one of the men punched his father. His dad fought back but they punched him again. And then the man with the gun waved the other guy away. The room was full of static, so he couldn’t hear the shot, but Jimmy could see the flashes of flame leap out, could see the way his father jerked as he was hit, watched him slump to the ground and become as still as Yani.
Jimmy dropped the Mike and grabbed the edges of the monitor. He yelled at this cruel window on the world while the guards in the silver overalls surveyed the man who had been his father. And then more men appeared from around the corner. They dragged Jimmy’s mom behind them, kicking and silently screaming.
67
“No, no, no, no—”
The room was static and pulse. The two men wrestled with Jimmy’s mother, who lifted herself off the ground and writhed in their jerking grasps. Her feet kicked and whirled. Jimmy’s father lay still as stone beneath her.
“Open this goddamn door!” the man with the portable yelled. The radio on the wall was deafening. Jimmy hated the radio. He ran to it, reached for the dangling cord, then thought better and grabbed the other portable from the rack. One of the knobs said Power. He twisted it until it made the hissing sound, turned to the screen and held the small radio to his mouth.
“Don’t,” Jimmy said, and he realized he was crying. Tears splashed his overalls. “I’m coming.”
It was hard to tear himself away from the view of his mother. As he rushed down the dark corridor, he continued to see her kicking and screaming, her boots in the air. He could hear her yelling in the background as the man radioed again: “Tell me the code!”
Jimmy held the portable’s wrist strap between his teeth and attacked the ladder, ignoring the pain in his shoulder and knee. He found the release for the grating and threw it aside with a clang. Tossing the portable out, he scrambled after it on his knees. The lights above were on fire. His chest was on fire. His father was as dead as Yani.
“Coming, coming,” he said into the radio.
The man yelled something back. All Jimmy could hear was his mother screaming and his heartbeat ringing in his ears. He ran beneath the pulsing lights and between the dark machines. The laces on one of his boots had come undone. They whipped about while he ran, and he thought of his mother’s legs, up in the air like that, kicking and fighting.
Jimmy crashed into the door. He could hear muffled shouts on the other side. They came through the radio as well. Jimmy slapped the door with his palm and shouted into his portable: “I’m here, I’m here!”
“The code!” the man screamed.
Jimmy went to the control pad. His hands were shaking, his vision blurred. He imagined his mother on the other side, the gun aimed at her. He could feel his father lying a few feet away, just on the other side of that steel door. Tears streamed down his cheeks. He put in the first two numbers, the level of his home, and hesitated. That wasn’t right. It was twelve-eighteen, not eighteen-twelve. Or was it? He put in the other two numbers, and the keypad flashed red. The door didn’t open.
“What did you do?” the man yelled through the radio. “Just tell me the code!”
Jimmy fumbled with the portable, brought it to his lips. “Please don’t hurt her—” he said.
The radio squawked. “If you don’t do as I say, she’s dead. Do you understand?”
The man sounded terrified. Maybe he was just as scared as Jimmy. Jimmy nodded and reached for the keypad. He entered the first two numbers correctly, then paused and thought about what his father had said. They would kill him. They would kill him and his mother both if he let these men inside. But it was his mom—
The keypad blinked impatiently. The man on the other side of the door yelled for him to hurry, yelled something about three wrong tries in a row and having to wait another day. Jimmy did nothing, paralyzed with fear. The keypad flashed red and fell silent.
There was a bang on the other side of the door, a blast from a gun. Jimmy squeezed the radio and screamed. When he let go, he could hear his mom shrieking on the other side.
“The next one won’t be a warning,” the man said. “Now don’t touch that pad. Don’t touch it again. Just tell me the code. Hurry, boy.”
Jimmy blubbered and tried to form the sounds, to tell the man the numbers in the right order, but nothing came out. With his forehead pressed against the wall, he could hear his mother struggling and fighting on the other side.
“The code,” the man said, calmer now.
Jimmy heard a grunt. He heard someone yell “Bitch,” heard his mother scream for Jimmy not to do it, and then a slap on the other side of the wall, someone pressed up against it, his mother inches away. And then the muffled beeps of numbers being entered, four quick taps of the same number, and an angry buzz from the keypad as a third attempt failed.
More shouts. And then the roar of a gun, louder and angrier with his head pressed to the door. Jimmy screamed and beat his fists against the cold steel. The men were yelling at him through the radio. There were screams coming through the portable, screams leaking through the heavy steel door, but none were made by his mother.
Jimmy slid to the floor, buried the portable against his belly, and curled into a ball as the angry yelling bled through the steel door. His body quivered with sobs, the floor grating rough against his cheek. And while the violence raged, the lights overhead continued to throb at him. They throbbed steady. They weren’t like a pulse at all.
68
There was a plastic bag waiting on Donald’s bunk when he got back to his room. He shut the door to block out the cacophony of traffic and office chatter, searched for a lock, and saw that there wasn’t one. Here was a lone bedroom among workspaces, a place for men who were always on call, who were up for as long as they were needed.