All Good Children - Catherine Austen [95]
“Are you crazy?” I say.
“Just wait,” Dallas says. “This might be some kind of test.”
“It smells funny,” Ally says.
I reach out and pat her head, but she gives me a look like I’m defective, so I curl back into myself and stare out the window.
One of the guards sticks his head out and shouts, “Just a second!” He ducks out of view. Spotlights flicker and blaze around us. We’re momentarily blinded. I feel like we’ve been ambushed by trigger-happy soldiers. The guard steps out of the booth with a metal rod that he stuffs in a holster. He takes off his cap and smoothes back his hair. It shines red in the bright light. He puts the cap back on and smiles. “You’re the first car we’ve seen since morning.” He holds out his hand. “Passports please.”
Mom hands them off.
He nods. “Connors. Yeah. Hang on.”
He goes back into the building and says something to his colleagues who nod and get busy on their RIGs.
“I’ve never seen such happy police officers in my life,” I say. “You think they’re drugged with something better than our guys get?”
Dallas shrugs. “They’re not very intimidating.”
They’re all smiling inside, like there’s nowhere they’d rather be in the world than stuck in isolation on this decaying bridge in the dead of night. One of the guards waves at us through the window while he talks on a RIG.
“They knew our name,” Mom says. “Why would they know our name?”
The redhead returns, smiles, says, “You’ve got some friends coming. They’ve been waiting all week, hoping you’d get here for Christmas.” He checks his watch and smiles. “You’re cutting it close.” He points past the spotlights to some vast unknown. “They’re not allowed any nearer, but you’ll see them in a minute if all goes well.”
Mom nods.
“Karenna Connors?” he asks. “Where were you born?”
Dallas fidgets in the passenger seat while Mom answers a long list of questions. I hope he memorized Dad’s vital statistics or we’re screwed.
“Last place of employment?” the guard asks.
“New Middletown Manor Heights,” Mom says.
The man’s face creases like a foul smell hit his nostrils, and he pulls away from the window.
“It’s a geriatric center,” Mom explains.
“I know what it is.” He stares at her with a whole new face, one that makes it easy to see he’s a cop. “Are you a doctor there? A janitor? What?”
“I’m a nurse.”
“A nurse.” He looks at her so coldly I have to suppose that his mother was killed by a nurse in his infancy. “What about you?” he asks Dallas. “What do you do for a living?”
“I was a doctor.” Dallas coughs, lowers his voice, explains, “I’ve been unemployed for three years but before that I was a doctor.”
“And where did you work?”
“New Middletown Manor Heights.”
“You were a doctor at that place?”
“Yes.”
The guard nods, turns to the building, waves his colleagues out, turns back to us. “You know what we call the places you call geriatric centers? We call them totalitarian medical facilities. You know what we call what goes on there? Unethical experiments on helpless populations. And you know what we call the doctors and nurses who work there? We call you monsters.”
Mom’s mouth hangs open in disbelief.
“We’re going to search your vehicle now.” He says it like there’s no doubt they’ll find contraband because they are never letting us into their country. “Get out. Get your children out.”
So once again we’re standing on the side of a lonely road afraid of being shot. The redhead keeps his eye on us, his hand on his holster, while the other two open the trunk. He likes to talk, this guy. He talks at Mom and Dallas, glances at me and Ally every now and then and shakes his head like it’s always the kids who suffer. He feels inside our pockets, drops our coats on the road, pats down our shivering bodies, tells us how it is.
“You think you’re all closed up down there, watching everybody. You never stop to think that maybe somebody’s watching you. We know what goes on in your cities and your hospitals. Nobody’s buying your story about self-protection and how you’re leading the way for the rest of the world.” And on and on he preaches from his moral