He’d tried to explain to her that, at twelve, it wasn’t legal for him to take her truck on the county road that ran past her place, even if Jeff’s dad had taught him how to drive on Aunt Flo’s fifteen acres when they’d all been up here as a family the year before. Not that there was all that much to it. You just pulled the gearshift over to “D,” put your foot on the gas and away you went.
“That’s ridiculous,” his aunt had said when he protested. “Your legs are long enough to reach the pedals. You’re taller than I am, and I don’t have any trouble driving the truck. Good Lord, if you’re this tall now, I can’t imagine what you’ll be when you’re eighteen. Your father told me you used to go to the go-kart tracks all the time, so I know you know how to drive. And most important of all, that garbage isn’t going to walk itself to the dump.”
“But if the police stop and ask for my driver’s—”
Aunt Flo waved a hand, dismissing his concerns. “The police will understand. If they stop you, you tell them I’ll rent them a boat for free for the afternoon to go fishing. The police don’t do anything anyway. There’s no crime around here. They might as well sit out in the lake with their pole in their hands.”
She snickered.
Jeff drove the truck around the camp, loading the full cans. Then he steered the old Ford out to the end of the driveway, where it met the paved road, and where one might see a car every ten minutes. Jeff turned right and headed for the dump.
He looked over at the empty seat next to him and wished that Pepper were there.
Pepper had been his dog. She’d only gotten to ride in this truck once.
She was a four-year-old black and white border collie. Her right eye was surrounded with white fur, her left with black. That one trip she took with him in this truck, at the beginning of the summer, was enough to see she loved it. She’d stick her head out the passenger window, nose into the wind. The only thing she had loved more than the ride to the dump was the dump itself, where she could run about chasing squirrels and rats and seagulls.
If she were there now, she’d be reveling in the scents of the countryside, taking short breaks from the window to dash over and lick his face.
He loved Pepper so much.
But Aunt Flo didn’t like dogs, and that was her one condition before agreeing to take Jeff in after his parents died. She would not have that dog living under her roof. Another home would have to be found for her. So a week after Jeff got there, he had to give her to a family back in the city that lived on his street.
Jeff thought about Pepper, and Aunt Flo, and this new life of his, and got so wrapped up in his thoughts that he failed to notice a huge pothole just ahead.
The front right wheel dropped into it.
BANG!
A millisecond later, the back right wheel dropped into it.
BANG!
And then Jeff heard a distant crash. He glanced into the rear-view mirror, and there was one of the garbage cans, on its side in the middle of the road, trash strewn everywhere.
Jeff couldn’t leave a mess like that all over the road, so he hit the brakes. But before he got out of the truck to run back up the road to clean up that mess, he touched his forehead to the top of the steering wheel and closed his eyes.
He wanted to cry.
He hated it here.
He hated it here so much.
He missed Pepper.
But even more than Pepper, he missed his mom and dad. Losing your parents when you were just a kid, well, that just sucked.
Two
When he first escaped The Institute, Chipper’s immediate goal was to put as much distance between himself and the White Coats. Then he could figure out a way to get to his destination.
Legs pumping, he tore across The Institute’s lush grounds, heading for the main gate, which was closed. That didn’t worry him too much. The gate was designed to keep out people and cars, but there was plenty of room between the bars for him to slip through.
The guard had evidently been given a heads-up, because he’d come out of his tiny windowed office, no bigger than a phone booth, and was positioning himself in the middle of the gate, which was a good thirty feet across. He placed his feet far apart, bent slightly at the knees, arms outstretched, looking a bit like a hockey goalie without the pads and mask, clearly thinking he could intercept Chipper.
Chipper aimed himself straight at the guard, then, at the last second, pivoted left, then right, causing the guard to throw himself in the opposite direction. The man hit the pavement and watched helplessly as Chipper squeezed between two black iron bars and scurried out onto the sidewalk.
Chipper glanced back for a fraction of a second, to see what the guard might do next.
He did exactly what the dog feared he might. He took out the gun he kept holstered at his side, raised it, took aim through the gate, and squeezed the trigger. Evidently he’d not gotten the message that Chipper was too valuable a piece of property to have bullets going through him.
The Institute was situated on a large piece of land, and once inside the compound, there was a sense of being in the country. It offered a rural, tranquil feeling, at least for those who were able to roam the grounds and were not kept in cages in windowless rooms, yet it was actually situated within the city, occupying an entire block. The streets surrounding it were filled with cars and buses and taxis, the sidewalks cluttered with pedestrians.
Which was why, when that shot rang out, and the bullet hit the sidewalk just to Chipper’s left, ricocheting off the cement, several people screamed and dived out of the way. Chipper altered his course, hugging the buildings, where the guard wouldn’t be able to see him until he was well outside the gate.
By that time, Chipper would be at the corner.
When he got there, he turned left then darted out into the street. A bus screeched to a stop as Chipper cut across several lanes of traffic. Once on the other side, the dog spotted an opening, then a set of stairs.
Chipper glanced up, saw the sign. SUBWAY.
He had been equipped, during his time with the White Coats, with a great many talents. Being able to recognize words and letters from more than a dozen languages was actually one of the simpler ones. Just one of many things he’d been outfitted with.
Chipper bounded down the stairs into the underground concourse, weaving his way between people coming out and going in. He ducked in front of a young man carrying a skateboard and zipped under the turnstiles.
“Hey!” someone yelled.
The dog kept going. Echoing from below, the whooshing sound of a train pulling out of the station. By the time Chipper arrived at the platform, the train was gone. He glanced left, at the southbound line, then right, at the northbound. He would take whatever train arrived first.
He regularly glanced back up the stairs, wondering if he had been followed. The White Coats wouldn’t be able to keep up with him on foot. He ran too quickly for them. There was probably a team heading to The Institute’s garage, where they kept a fleet of big, black SUVs.
The dog looked at the other people on the platform and sniffed, his nose overwhelmed with their smells and the scents of the subway itself. Oil and metal and soot and dirt. He figured if there were anyone down here from The Institute — one of the actual White Coats, or the other ones who went around in dark suits — he’d catch a whiff of them. The Institute had a bleachy, antiseptic aroma about it. Chipper had heard workers say they couldn’t get the stink off them, even after they’d gone home.