“I just work here, sir,” Turin said.
Maya pointed towards the short hall leading to the bathroom and the front parlor. Ruppert took Lucia’s hand and pulled her in that direction. Following Maya’s hand gestures, he opened a folding door to reveal a recessed alcove with a washer, dryer, and a towel shelf.
He looked back towards Maya, but she only shrugged and turned her chair towards the table, where one plate of half-eaten food remained, as if she'd been eating alone.
Ruppert and Lucia climbed up on top of the laundry machines. They drew their knees to their chests, and sat with their backs pressed together in the compact space. Ruppert eased the folding door along in its track, closing it, willing himself to move slowly to avoid making noise.
“Hands up! On your knees!” a man’s voice bellowed, much closer.
“Sir, I’m unable to leave my chair,” Maya said. “If you want me on the floor, you’ll have to put me there.”
“Throw her down.” More boots approached. Ruppert heard Maya gasp, then a thud as police dumped her on the floor. “Search the wheelchair for weapons.”
The confined space in the laundry room grew hot and suffocating. Ruppert could feel the sharp points of Lucia’s shoulder blades digging into his back, between his own shoulder blades. She squirmed against him, her skin blazing hot. She was probably angry, resisting the urge to leap out and protect the paraplegic woman. But that would only get everyone killed.
“Took you a long time to answer that door,' the cop said. 'What were you hiding from us?'
'I didn't hear you knock, sir.' Maya spoke in a low, submissive voice.
'And the black guy in the hall?”
“He helps me around the house. And with my groceries.'
'Answers the door for you?' asked the same cop, apparently the leader of the group.
'Yes, things like-'
'He's doing a real shit job of it.'
'Yes, sir,' Maya said.
'What do you know about the bomb last night?” the policeman asked.
“Nothing, sir.”
“Really? You didn’t hear an explosion late last night? Nothing?”
“No, sir. It must have been after my night meds.”
Ruppert tilted his head as far to one side as he could, and he was just able to peer out between two of the wooden slats composing the folding door. He immediately wished he hadn’t. One of the black uniforms approached the laundry door-a young man, his head shaved down to stubble. Ruppert could see the golden Hartwell badge on his chest, the “H” with the hollow heart in the crossbar looming closer with each step.
“How many people currently in the house?' the cop asked Maya. 'Including visitors and employees?”
“Just me,” Maya said. 'And Eldred, the young man in the front hall.'
'He works for you?'
'Yes, sir.'
The young, shaven-headed policeman passed by and into the bathroom, only three feet from Ruppert, where he urinated noisily without bothering to close the door.
'Then I'll need to see your employer permit and his worker permit, won't I?' the cop asked Maya.
'I'm certain they're in the state database,' Maya said.
'I don't want to check the database. I want to see your permits in my hand.'
Ruppert held his breath, and he felt the muscles in Lucia’s back tighten. She fell completely still. Though she couldn’t see anything but towels and detergents from where she sat, she was responding to Ruppert’s own reaction, sensitive to his nervous energy.
“Have you seen anyone unusual in the area?” the policeman asked Maya. “Any foreigners? Anyone from out of town? Anyone handing out political literature or media?”
“Sir, I’ve hardly left the house in ten years,” Maya said.
The laundry room door rattled. The young policeman was coming back, trailing his fingers down the wooden slats. Ruppert craned his neck and was able to see the man looking carefully at the door, then leaning forward, hands cupped around his eyes, to look between the slats.
Ruppert and Lucia froze.
“Why don’t you have a screen in this house?' the cop asked. 'What do you watch?”
“I have an old box in the living room. Movies on disc. I just don’t like people to see me when I phone them.”
The lead cop ordered a full search of the house-fortunately, he called away the bald pisser to search the upstairs. He continued asking Maya about her personal, political and religious affiliations, though the police would have all that information on file.
Ruppert and Lucia remained folded up against each other in a hot, tense silence, neither willing to risk even a whisper. The sounds of the police slamming doors and overturning furniture spread through the house.
After the sounds of their searching had died down, Ruppert relaxed a little, breathing deeper, and then the folding door suddenly rattled open.
“They’re searching the outbuildings now,” Maya said. She’d managed to climb back into her wheelchair. “Hope the rust gives them all tetanus. You better get underground.”
Lucia slipped away and dropped to her feet. Ruppert hurried after her to the back bedroom with the false closet wall, and down to join the others underneath the house. They huddled together in the dark, eight people who did not want to be found, and they waited.
TWENTY-THREE
Though the bomb had only demolished a rotten, long-disused water tower, and there were no victims, Terror never missed an opportunity to flex its muscles. Over the following days, the swarm of local Hartwell cops gave way to the black coats of state and federal Terror agents, knocking on doors, inviting themselves into homes and businesses if nobody answered. Helicopter formations patrolled the sky.
Ruppert and Lucia remained underground with the others. They lived off the only available food, which happened to be a pantry of canned vegetables and rack after rack of aged wine. Occasionally Turin brought down a loaf of bread or carton of milk. They slept on nests of blankets and clothes-Ruppert had a bare foam pallet. Nobody spoke more than necessary, and never above a whisper.
On their third night underground, Ruppert and Lucia slipped off to a remote room that might have been a well or cistern in the forgotten past. They shared Lucia’s last cigarette.
“What do we do now?” Ruppert whispered. “Do we have a plan?”
“When Terror finishes beating their chests, and gets tired of kicking in doors up and down the valley, we’ll leave here with copies of your interview. We’ll pass them along to others by hand, and we’ll upload them to some people we know internationally. We have to send it everywhere.”
“People like me, or whoever has my job now, will just ignore it,' Ruppert said. 'If it ever got too well-known to ignore, they just call it enemy propaganda. They’ll bring in experts from Terror and an Ivy League university or two, who will explain just how fraudulent it is.'
“You don’t think I know that?” Lucia snapped. “We just have to put it out there. Let people make their own decisions.”
“‘He who has hears, let him hear,’” Ruppert said. It was an expression of Pastor John’s-and, if Ruppert remembered correctly, Jesus.
“Terror will want you to die,” Lucia said.
“I was a little concerned about that, too.”
“You’ll go north, into Canada.” She didn’t need to say why they wouldn’t go south-they would never make it through the walls, land mines and guard towers along the Barrier. Originally built to keep out immigrants and refugees from the Mexican civil war, the Barrier was equally good at keeping people in. “Archer will take you,
