The Nowhere Man

32 Ready

Evan sat cross-legged on the floor, his shoulders bowed. He hadn’t gotten the car jack. Without the car jack, he couldn’t break out of his room. If he couldn’t break out of his room, he couldn’t help Alison Siegler and the boy.

Evan was down to his last few hours.

He reminded himself how much he could get done in a few hours.

One way or another, he was getting out of this room. And out of this chalet. He would fight his way over the snowy peak of the mountain, leaving a trail of bright arterial blood in his wake.

A noise issued overhead, startling him from his thoughts. The hissing gas had come so much earlier than usual, the sun not yet kissing the western horizon. This was his punishment for laying René bare in the barn — to bed without dinner. René was done taking chances; he was going to knock Evan out and revive him at the deadline in a few hours to make the wire transfer.

Holding his breath, Evan rushed to the sliding glass door and threw it wide. He stepped outside, but the clean air quickly turned bitter, the gas being drawn through the open door. Rushing back inside, he lay on the bed and buried his face in a pillow.

His breathing grew heavy. A wave of grogginess came on. He fought to stay conscious. The hissing finally stopped, but he kept his face buried, waiting for the air to clear.

That’s when he felt the vibration.

The RoamZone beneath the mattress. The boy calling him.

Another vibration signaled the second ring.

Evan lifted his face. He could still taste the halogenated ether riding the back of his throat.

Third ring.

He rolled off the bed, his kneecaps banging the floorboards. Shoved an arm beneath the mattress. Came out with the wrecked RoamZone.

The high-power-density lithium-ion battery was still going strong. The kid’s number guttered across the cracked screen.

Just in time Evan thumbed the green icon and held the phone to his face. Somehow the circuit board held together. “Hello?”

“It’s me.” Same voice as before, but even more hushed.

The connection was bad, static fuzzing the line.

Evan swallowed hard. His head was swimming from the gas he’d inhaled, but he fought his thoughts back online. “Are you okay?”

“I don’t know. I’m trapped here. There’s never enough food. I don’t want this life. I didn’t ask for it. I didn’t ask for any of it.”

“What are they doing to you?”

“That’s not even the worst part,” the boy said.

“What is?”

“I’m nothing here. That’s the worst part.” His hushed voice held a kind of awe. “No one cares. If you don’t exist, then it doesn’t matter, right?”

“No. That’s not right. Look. Listen.” Evan blinked hard, rubbed his eyes, forging through the muddle in his head. “Whatever’s being done to you, it’s wrong. It’s not your fault. And you’re not the only one.”

“I know it happens to other kids,” the boy said. “I see it, even. But when it happens to you, it feels like you’re the first person it’s happened to in the whole world.”

“I know.” Evan felt emotion pressing at the back of his face. “You’re resourceful. Scrappy. Like I was.” The ether had loosened his inhibitions. He heard his words drawl, knew he was saying more than he should.

He was supposed to be the Nowhere Man, armored in his role as savior and hero, indomitable and distant and safe.

But right now he felt like none of those things.

The static grew to a roar, and for a moment Evan thought the call had dropped. But then the kid’s voice came back in. “—can’t talk about it.”

“Why not?”

“I’m scared to. It’s not safe.” A wet breath.

Evan took a breath of his own. Held it. Then, “Can you get out?”

“Nowhere to get to.”

“Find help?”

“No one can help me.”

“Can’t you run away and go to the cops?”

“No. I need you.”

Locked on the third floor of a guarded chalet at the base of a snowy valley, Evan nodded. “I’ll get to you,” he said. “I’m coming soon.”

In the silence he could hear the boy breathing across the phone.

Finally the kid said, “I have to go now. I’ll try ’n’ call back if I can.”

“When you do,” Evan said, “I’ll be ready.”