Chapter 23
The creek was not the most direct way to the safe house. But Solomon was sure that the two men who’d attacked him back at Cabin D4 had found out by now that he was no longer there. They were hunting him, and it was more likely that they thought he was on foot. So he stayed on the water for another half hour at least before deciding to stop and climb into the woods lining an empty road that he remembered from the maps they’d studied during training. If he had it all correct in his head, he would be able to follow it to the safe house.
Before he went, Solomon knelt and washed off with creek water every part of the canoe on which he’d left fingerprints, then shoved it back into the stream. Maybe when it was eventually found it would be returned to its owner. Or so he hoped.
The blue zones thankfully didn’t have a curfew the way the red zones did, so he was able to walk the thirty minutes to the safe house without worrying about getting picked up for being out at night. He went more slowly the closer he got as the forest on either side of the road started to thin out. It was hard to shake his red zone sense that he was doing something wrong by being out so late. There were houses every once in a while, along the side of the road, and he started to look at the numbers on their mailboxes. He was getting close. A few minutes later, he saw a single-story house made of pale pink stones. A car was in the driveway. He could just make out the address, and it matched what Manal had given him.
Now it was time to wait. He got as close as he could while staying hidden within the nearest stand of trees, then got down to take cover from the undergrowth. He’d slept a lot while in the African woman’s basement so even though his body was stiff from lying on cement, he felt alert, especially after his recent escape from Cabin D4. The hours passed, and he waited, and watched, and waited and watched.
Then he saw someone. Someone getting out of the house and going to the car. It was nobody he recognized, and he’d at least recognize him if he were one of the fifty soldiers he’d trained with. So the blue zone had taken over the safe house. Rising to his feet, Solomon crept, half bent over, across the small road between the trees and the house’s lawn, then got behind a tree about fifteen feet away from the house. There was a window that he wanted to look through.
When he looked through it from around the tree trunk, he was stunned. Everyone was right there. He could see Rithvik and it looked like everybody else, too, from the other figures lying prone in the room. The lights were off so he couldn’t quite tell whether or how they were restrained but they had to be, based on what Manal had told him. He didn’t get it. Had the blue zone really put a squad of captured red zone soldiers in a room with a window? A window made of ordinary easy-to-break glass? Why?
Because it was a trap.
Solomon took a deep breath, and mentally inventoried what he had on him. A hand grenade. A sound grenade. His pistol. Several other pistols. A multi-tool. A few knives. His headlamp. There was an exterior crawlspace door near him at a corner of the house, with a lock on it. He put on the headlamp, pulled out the flathead screwdriver attachment to his multi-tool, then crawled over to the crawlspace door and positioned the attachment in the lock’s mechanism. He applied pressure, wincing when the lock yielded with a click. Hopefully nobody was around to hear it.
The crawlspace was tight and he could barely fit into it. Should he try? Maybe he was being deeply stupid. Maybe he was literally crawling into a trap. But after a few minutes, he found himself through the crawlspace and in a dimly lit area underneath the house. Dust particles floated by his face and he had to stop himself from sneezing. A duct was attached to a floor vent nearby. As silently as he could, he detached the duct from the vent. When he peered through the grate, it was a bathroom. He tried again with another duct. This time, he saw someone’s hands cuffed behind his back.
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“Hey,” he whispered. “It’s me, Solomon. I’m here to help.”
He pulled out his multi-tool. He could push the grate up and out of the way from below but it was too small for him to get his arm through so he slid his multi-tool across the floor toward the hands in front of him. Good, another hand, with a cuff on it, was picking it up. Solomon pushed a knife in, then a pistol, and kept going until all he had left was his own pistol. He started crawling back outside, with his pistol in his hands in front of him. He was almost out when he heard the crash of a window breaking. His entire body froze. Ahead of him, framed by the open exterior crawlspace door, was grass and the dim shadow of the tree trunk. He waited for what felt like forever, his breath bated, his pistol aimed in front of him. When a face popped into his field of vision, he was only able to stop himself just in time.
“I almost shot you,” he whispered to Rithvik.
“I thought it would be you,” Rithvik whispered back. He stepped back to let Solomon finish crawling out into the night. When he was finally out, he saw a broken windowpane, an empty room through it, and nobody else.
“Did everyone else leave?” he asked Rithvik as they started moving toward the trees. Rithvik nodded. One of the pistols Solomon had slid into the room was in his hand. He looked exhausted, his clothes were torn and filthy, and he still had an intact cuff around one of his wrists. It was thicker and a closer fit than a normal metal police handcuff, as if it were made of some sort of smart plastic. Maybe the multi-tool had only been able to break the other cuff off.
“We got the guys who were guarding us,” Rithvik added. “That’s why it took a while. Then I told everyone to find a way back home. We should go too.”
“You told them to go?” Solomon asked. “What about Wilson? What did he say?”
“He wasn’t with us.”
“Do you know where he is?”
Rithvik shook his head. They were down into the woods by the side of the road, and Solomon was moving as fast as he could despite his ankle. Then he hesitated. “When did you last see him?”
“At Hershey Park,” Rithvik replied. He was looking up at the stars, trying to orient himself. Then he glanced at Solomon. “They knew he was in charge, Solo. They took him somewhere else.”
What should he do? Rithvik was clearly waiting for him. And this time Solomon had no reason not to return to the red zone. He’d already succeeded beyond his wildest imaginations. It still felt as if it had been too easy. Why couldn’t he just take the win and go? He didn’t even like Wilson. Who cared if he stayed behind in the blue zone? Solomon had gotten everyone else out, did he have to try to go and find Wilson too?
He knew what the problem was. His memory of when he’d first met Wilson was what was giving him so much grief. It wasn’t easy to escape from one zone to another. Wilson had done that as a civilian, by himself, when he was only a little older than Solomon was now. That was desperation. Solomon knew exactly how much it had to be killing him to be back here and once again unable to get out.
“I can’t leave him here,” he found himself saying. “You… you go ahead. Go back.”
Rithvik shot him a look as if he were crazy, just the way he’d used to do in basic training. “I’m not leaving you,” he snorted. “Let’s go to the park then.”
Solomon didn’t show it, but he was intensely relieved. “It’s west of here,” he told him. “I –”
He was cut off by the sound of an explosion not too far from him. It was followed by another one a little closer. This late at night, the sounds were clear and sharp. Solomon immediately got next to a tree and held up his pistol, and he sensed Rithvik was doing the same thing. Was some sort of skirmish breaking out? Then he heard Rithvik start to scramble away from him. “Get away from me, Solo, run, my cuff, it’s –”
Solomon ran. He was barely in time. If it hadn’t been for the tree in front of him, shielding him, the detonation coming from where Rithvik was standing would have killed him. Even so, it was like the sound grenade all over again, and this time he was knocked off his feet by the blast. His face was in the dirt, and everything went black.