When he awoke, it was still dark. Brian was driving more slowly than he should have been, and Gary tapped him lightly on the shoulder. “What’s up?” he whispered. Reyn and Stacy remained dead asleep in the back.
“It’s been going on for a while,” Brian said. “Wait a sec.”
“What?” Gary didn’t know what he was talking about.
“There!” Brian pointed through the windshield where, several yards ahead, at the edge of the illumination offered by the headlights, a lone man wearing beige peasant clothes and using a large hooked staff as a walking stick strode purposefully along the side of the road.
“That’s the sixth one I’ve seen in the last ten minutes.”
Gary felt chilled.
They passed the man, and though Gary watched carefully through the side window, the man did not turn to look at them as they went by, gave no indication at all that they were there. Glancing in the side mirror, Gary saw the walking man’s form, lit red by the taillights, recede eerily into the darkness. He had been dressed like the men who had kidnapped him, like the people at the farmhouse, like the two men they had captured who had given them the address where Joan was being held.
Gary’s voice when he spoke was quiet. “What do you think that’s about?”
Brian said nothing, only pointed to a green sign coming up on the right.
BITTERWEED 45 MILES.
Nineteen
They had escaped from the Home at night.
Joan had been awakened by her dad, who, with a finger to her lips, bade her get up. Her mom stood behind him, holding a lantern. Joan had not been told this would happen, but it was not entirely unexpected. Like herself, her parents had never seemed happy here, and recently she had noticed them avoiding certain people and spending more time conversing together in low murmurs long after Bedtime, when everyone was supposed to be asleep.
Her mom had been born in the Home, like Joan, but her dad had come here voluntarily, and sometimes, in secret, he told her stories of the world Outside. Father, Absalom and the other Teachers told of the world Outside, too, but theirs were cautionary tales, meant to frighten. Her dad’s stories were different. Personal reminiscences. Funny, exciting, but more wistful than anything else. And Joan found herself longing to experience the type of things her dad had. The more she heard and the more she learned, the more stifling life at the Home seemed, and every day it grew harder to follow the rigid rules or feign interest in the mundane tasks required of her.
Though fear of punishment made her outwardly compliant at all times.
Her parents’ dissatisfaction, too, seemed to be increasing, but it was when Father had called her in for a personal conference, when she had told her mom and dad what he said, that she really sensed a change in their attitudes. The difference was subtle and probably not noticeable to anyone other than herself, but all of a sudden discontent became disengagement, and though they continued to go through the motions of their daily routines, they no longer seemed a part of that life. Which was why she was not surprised when her dad woke her up in the middle of the night, put a finger to her lips and whispered for her to get dressed; they were leaving.
Joan’s heart was pounding as she slipped out of her pajamas and put on the new clothes she had sewn for herself last week. There were things she wanted to bring with her, stuffed animals she’d made, pictures she’d drawn, stories she’d written, but she knew without asking that she would have to leave everything behind, that they would be traveling light.
In the darkness, her parents whispered to her the details of the plan they had concocted. Her dad, it seemed, had been overseeing workers at the Farm for the past week, and while doing so, he had taken the opportunity to stash food, water and other survival needs in backpacks that he’d hidden in the bushes at the edge of one of the fields. Enough for a week. The original plan had been for them to strike out on foot and then try to hitch a ride with someone driving by, preferably someone just passing through on their way to one of the coasts. But as luck would have it, the brakes on one of the farm trucks had gone out yesterday, and Joan’s dad had been in charge of getting them fixed. He had done so—and while buying brake pads in town, he’d had an extra key made. He had hidden the key in one of the backpacks and had parked the truck on a trail off the side of the road between the Home and town. He had told Father that the truck needed a new master cylinder, something he could not do, and that he’d left the vehicle at a garage.
Now the three of them needed to get out of the Home, strike out across the fields, pick up the backpacks and walk down to where the truck was hidden. After that, they would be free to go anywhere they wanted.
“We’ll go far enough away that no one will ever find us,” her mom said. “Not even Father.” The words were reassuring, but her tone was not, and Joan could tell that her mom was as scared as she was.
“Do you understand?” her dad asked.
Joan nodded silently. She looked around her room one last time, at everything she would have to leave behind.
Seeing the look on her face, her dad smiled kindly. He told her that he had also taken her favorite stuffed animal, a bunny that her mom had made for her when she was born and that she’d had for all these years, and had hidden it in her backpack with the other stuff. Joan had never loved him more than she did at that moment, and she threw her arms around his neck and held him tight. “I love you, Daddy,” she whispered.
“I love you, too,” he whispered back.
Holding her mom’s thin hand, she waited until her dad had opened the door and checked the hallway to make sure it was clear, then walked with her parents out of the room. They strode purposefully but not hurriedly, not wishing to arouse suspicion. Should someone spot them, it would appear that their family had been summoned by Father or was engaged in performing an assigned duty. Luckily, they encountered no one else, and they walked in silence past the doors of other residences until they neared the end of the third hall.
Still holding her mom’s hand, Joan dragged her feet, holding back, trying to slow down. She didn’t like where they were going, and though she knew this was the fastest way to get outside, she wanted to turn around and leave the Home through another exit. Ahead, she could see a shadow wavering on the wall, a small, strangely shaped silhouette formed by a candle backlighting an unseen figure standing in the corridor that branched off to the right at the end of the hallway. She was afraid to go around the corner, but her mom squeezed her hand tight, pulling her forward, and Joan held her breath, bracing herself for what she might see.
It was an adult, not a child, but it was one of the Children, and no more than three feet high, with ungainly feet and an oversized head. A man, he grinned dumbly at them, not knowing who they were, not caring what they were doing, and Joan’s muscles tensed as she passed by him. She couldn’t look at that horrible dumb smile, and she did not relax until they were past the figure and out of the corridor. Glancing at her mom’s face, she saw sadness there, sadness and regret. Her mom, she knew, had a soft spot for the Children. She was one herself, though not so bad off as many of the others, and Joan squeezed her fingers tighter around her mom’s hand to show that she understood.