The Road To Ruin

“There’s a way,” Ace insisted. “We just haven’t thought it through yet.”

Mac said, “We’re ready here.” Pointing, he said, “That’s the breakfast we show Hall but don’t let him eat, and that’s the breakfast for the butler. And all the rest of it is for us.”

Os said, “Buddy, why don’t you carry the butler’s tray, while Ace carries Hall’s tray?”

Ace said, “That’s because we’re labor, right? And you’re management.”

“Of course,” Os said. “And also why I’ll be carrying the laptop.”

Mac said, “Masks.”

So everybody put the dumb masks on, Buddy picked up a small tray of breakfast while Ace picked up a large tray of breakfast, and they all trooped upstairs. Buddy put the butler’s breakfast on a side table in the corridor and Os picked up the laptop from where they’d left it leaning against the wall, while Mark went down to the circuit breaker box at the end of the corridor. He waited there until Os inserted the key into Hall’s door and nodded to him, then switched the lights on in Hall’s room as Os unlocked the door and everybody pushed in.

Mark came back, entered the room, and saw everybody milling around. He said, “Where’s Hall?”

“Hiding or something,” Os said. He sounded irritable. “Damn it, Hall!” he said, raising his voice. “Stop playing the fool!”

“You two shouldn’t be talking,” Mac pointed out.

Oops; Mark put fingertips against his mouth.

Ace had put the tray on the bed, then looked under it. They looked into the closet and into the bathroom. Then they stood in the middle of the guest room and looked at one another, baffled and silent, until Mac said, “How come that window’s open?”

They all clustered around the plywood-shielded window. Now that they looked at it, they could see that the plywood was pushed outward from the sill along the bottom and part of the left side, held away by the screws that had once held it down. Tentative, unbelieving, Buddy pushed on the plywood, and it moved.

Mac, in awe, said, “He got out.”

“Then,” Os said, “we had better get out. Who knows how long ago he escaped?”

“I knew it!” Mark said. If only he’d funked, after all. If only there were Territories!

They hurried from Monroe Hall’s former prison to the corridor, leaving breakfast behind, and turned toward the staircase. Going by the other tray of breakfast, Mark said, “The butler!”

They all stopped. They all looked at the butler’s breakfast, and then at Mark. Mac said, “Maybe Hall took him along.”

Os said, “Hall? Look out for somebody else?”

Mark said, “We have to let him out.”

“Here.” Os pulled the other key from his pocket. “Do what you want; I’m getting far from here.”

Not far enough, Mark thought. Not all the way to the Territories. Thinking that, he hurried back down the corridor, fumbled with the key in the lock, finally got it to turn, pushed open the door, stepped into the room and, just one second too late, saw that chair swinging like a runaway satellite around the edge of the door, swiftly in his direction at, well, at head height.

57

THE SLOPE WAS STEEP, but he could hand himself down from tree trunk to tree trunk, most of the time managing to stay on his feet. As the sun rose higher, off to his left, the chill in the air grew less, but he didn’t mind the chill, really; the exercise of walking down the mountain kept him warm.

His head ached, and other parts of him hurt, while different parts stung. There was an intermittent buzzing in his ears, and from time to time his eyes lost their focus and he had to cling to a tree until he could see clearly again. But it wasn’t so bad, and when he came across the road it got even better.

The road was one lane, dirt, not much more than a pair of rutted grooves angling diagonally across his downward path. It descended leftward, so he followed it, because it was easier to walk on a real road, and he had no clear destination in mind. It was just important, it seemed to him, to walk down from the mountain.

It was just as well there were no mirrors or streams or other ways to see himself along the way, because his appearance had not been improved by recent events. His red-check fla

He walked for a while down the small dirt road, and then it met a slightly larger road, two-lane blacktop, that angled down to the right. Blacktop was better than dirt, so he took it.

The first house he passed had been abandoned a long time ago. Half the roof was collapsed in, and much of the front porch had sagged completely away from the house. He stopped to look at it, slumped there, shadowed by the trees, then decided that wouldn’t be a good place to stop, so he kept walking.

After a while, a pickup truck passed him, going the same direction he was; it came down from up behind him, and kept going. He watched it go and thought it would be nice to ride in the pickup truck instead of walking, but he didn’t wave or shout or do anything but just kept on as before.

The next vehicle he met was coming up the mountain toward him. It was some sort of police car, with a red dome light on the roof. The dome light was switched off and the car drove uphill at normal speed. It seemed the car would just go on by, like the pickup truck, but then it stopped when it was opposite him and the driver’s window lowered.

Beneath the opening window was a picture of a silver badge painted on the door, with SHERIFF in large letters superimposed on it, plus other things in smaller letters. The driver of the car was a rawboned man of forty or fifty or sixty, wearing a brown uniform and a darker brown necktie and the kind of broad-brimmed hat the Parks Department people wear. He looked out and called, “You okay?”

“Just fine.” He kept walking, slowly, and smiled at the sheriff.

“Hold on there a second.”

He stopped, and the sheriff backed off the road, put his blinker lights on but not the dome light, and got out of the car. He had a handgun in a holster on a separate belt that he adjusted before he walked across the road and said, in a friendly ma

“Down that way.” He gestured at the road ahead.

“You look as though you been in an accident.”

“Do I?”

“Yes, you do.” The sheriff studied him, particularly his eyes. “Have you been in an accident?”

“Well, I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think so.” The sheriff took a minute to study his boots and his shirt. Then he looked him in the eye again. “I don’t think I recognize your face,” he said. “We don’t get a lot of visitors up in here. Would you mind telling me your name?”

“I don’t mind,” he said.

The sheriff waited. Then he looked a little irritated, as though somebody were pulling his leg. “You don’t mind? I asked you what your name is.”

“Well,” he said, “I don’t think I know that just right now.”

“You don’t know your name?”

“Not this minute, no. Do you think I should?”

“Most people find it a help. Would you have your wallet on you?”

Surprised, he said, “I don’t know.”

“Would you like to take a look? A lot of folk keep it in their right hip pocket.”

“All right.” He patted his right hip pocket. “There’s something in there.”

“Why don’t we take a look at it?”

“All right.” His fingers stinging, he tugged it out of the pocket and held it open in two hands so he could look down at it. “It doesn’t seem like I can read it.”