“Or something changed his mind.”
I was about to step out of our hiding place and walk over to confront him, when Jim suddenly bolted from the line and ran off.
We watched in stunned wonder to see two of Chris’s cowboys appear from inside the building as if they had been observing the whole time. They were much younger and stronger than Jim and chased him down easily. The two grabbed him by the arms, and there was a brief struggle, but Jim was no match.
I made a move to help him, but Tori held me back. I pulled away from her but stopped when I saw Jim suddenly go limp.
The fight was over. It was like they had given him a tranquilizer, for he instantly stopped resisting and allowed them to lead him back toward the bus. He walked docilely, looking exactly like all of the other people I had seen boarding the buses.
“They were all drugged,” I whispered, trying to contain my emotion. “None of them left by choice.”
I looked at Tori. Her eyes were wide and frightened.
I started toward the bus again, but she grabbed my arm with the strength that came from hauling lobster traps, forcing me to stay put.
“No,” she said with a stern whisper. “Unless you want to end up on that bus too.”
I glanced at Tori’s gym bag. The bag with the gun.
She saw me and put her foot on it.
“Don’t even think about it,” she ordered.
I felt incredibly helpless.
The cowboys loaded Jim onto the bus, sat him in a seat, and stepped off. After a quick wave to the driver, the door closed and the bus headed out for… who knew where?
Ashley joined the two guy cowboys, and they all casually strolled back toward the mess hall as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. They were probably looking forward to a hearty breakfast after a job well done. Before they disappeared inside the building, I heard them laugh.
“What the hell is going on?” I said.
“Obviously they’re shipping people out who don’t want to be shipped out,” Tori said. “Maybe it’s like a transfer to somewhere else so the Hall doesn’t get overcrowded.”
“Do you really think it’s as innocent as that?” I asked skeptically.
“No.”
“Me neither. They’re drugging people, getting rid of them, and lying about it.”
“That’s only half of it,” Tori said. “Where are they taking them?”
I couldn’t begin to guess.
“They come out of that same door every day,” I said. “I want to see what’s in there.”
“What if it’s one of Campbell’s cowboys?” Tori asked.
“We’ll play dumb, like we’re lost.”
“I don’t want to be here anymore, Tucker,” she said, sounding genuinely frightened.
“Me neither, but I want to know what’s going on.”
She nodded in agreement.
We came out of our hiding place and walked quickly across the open space between buildings until we arrived at the door. I grabbed the handle, expecting it to be locked. It wasn’t. We exchanged nervous looks, and I pulled it open.
Inside was a small, nearly empty room with one desk to either side of the door. There were empty bins on both desks that looked similar to the bins I had seen at the reception desk back at Quincy Market, except that they were empty.
“For paperwork,” I whispered. “They pass through here on their way to the bus. They must get processed out the same way those girls process people in.”
“It’s all so… efficient,” Tori pointed out.
“Yeah, until somebody bolts.”
Staying close together, we moved to a door on the far side of the room. I opened it and cautiously peered inside.
What I saw in that next room was far worse than running into somebody who might have caught us snooping around.
“Oh man,” was all I managed to say.
Tori pushed the door open the rest of the way. When she looked inside, she had to grab my arm to steady herself.
“This just… it can’t be,” she said numbly.
There were stacks of suitcases piled along one wall that reached nearly to the high ceiling. Hundreds of them. All types, shapes, and colors. Another wall was full of bins that held used clothing. Shirts were separated from pants. Women’s clothes from men’s clothes. Another set of bins held shoes, underwear, and socks.
I drifted into the room and touched a suitcase that was on the floor in front of the large pile.
“It’s Jim’s,” I said, my voice cracking. I lifted it and added, “empty. I’ve been watching people get on those buses for days. Nobody left with their belongings, and nobody came back. This is all their stuff.”
“It’s like pictures I’ve seen of the Holocaust,” Tori said. “What are they doing to those people?”
I felt nauseated. We’d seen enough. Too much.
“We can’t be seen here,” I said and headed for the door.
Tori was right behind me. We made it out of that horrible room and back through to the outside door without incident. Once outside, we kept walking and didn’t say a word until we were back near the mess hall.
“We’ve got to tell everyone,” Tori cried.
“And say what? Hey, everybody! Looks like jolly old Chris and his merry posse of cowboys are sending people off to their deaths.”
“Yes!”
“No! We don’t know who’s innocent and who’s working with the cowboys or where those people are being taken. If we tell the wrong people, we could end up on the next bus out.”
“So what do we do?”
My mind raced through every possible scenario, from breaking into the place where the records were kept to breaking Chris’s legs. Nothing seemed like a smart move.
Finally, the right idea hit.
“We have to find out what’s going on,” I said. “And who’s in on it.”
“How? It’s not like we can ask Chris.”
“No, but we can follow the next bus to see where it’s taking those people.”
“You mean, like, tomorrow?”
“Yes. We’ll track the bus to see where it goes. Once we know for sure, we can come back and blow the whistle… just before we get the hell out of here for good.”
“What about Kent and Olivia and Jon?” she asked.
“I don’t think we should tell them anything until we know for sure what we’re dealing with. It’ll be a lot easier convincing them to go once we have evidence.”
“Agreed,” Tori said. “It won’t be easy keeping quiet about this for a whole day.”
“I’m more concerned about how we’re going to find a car.”
Tori reached into her bag, and for a second I thought she was going to pull out her gun. Instead, she pulled out a set of car keys and shook them at me.
“When Jon first got the Explorer, I found a spare set in the glove compartment. I thought it would be smart to hold on to them in case of an emergency.”
“I think this qualifies.”
“Yeah, this qualifies.”
Tori and I spent the rest of the day trying to act normal. I worked in the garden directly in front of Quincy Market and she did… whatever she did. The whole day I spent living inside my head, trying to understand why Chris would be getting rid of the very people he was working so hard to protect… or at least pretending to protect. Was he working with SYLO? Or the Air Force? I couldn’t imagine who else might want people sent off to their deaths—if that’s indeed what was happening. It made sense that he was working for one side or the other. But which? And why?
It was all the more confounding when I worried that we might be jumping to gruesome conclusions. Was there an innocent explanation for what we’d seen? If there was, I couldn’t come up with it. Wherever these people ended up, it looked certain that they were being tricked and betrayed.
Betrayed. I knew a thing or two about that, thanks to my parents.
The people in the Hall were being told that this was a safe refuge. They were fed well and protected… until they weren’t. It struck me as incredibly cold to lure people in with the promise of sanctuary only to send them off to another fate, whatever it was. It was beyond evil. What I couldn’t understand was if the intent of the people running the Hall was mass murder, why were they going through the trouble of pretending it was something else?