Cloak (YA Fantasy) Read online

  Advance Praise

  for Cloak

  “Cloak by James Gough gives us a world hidden beneath the one we live in, a world with intrigue and danger at every corner, with no way to tell who can be trusted, a world where our own senses prove inadequate…. A fascinating read!”

  ~ Jack Weyland,

  Charly

  “James Gough weaves elements of fairy tales, science fiction, fantasy and espionage into a fun and unpredictable adventure.”

  ~ John Booth,

  Collect All 21! Memoirs of a Star Wars Geek

  WiDo Publishing

  Salt Lake City, Utah

  Copyright © 2011 by James Gough

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written consent of the publisher.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, organizations and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Cover design: James Gough

  Print ISBN# 978-1-937178-00-0

  Digital ISBN# 978-1-937178-01-7

  www.widopublishing.com

  Table of Contents

  Prologue: Strange Security for Pants

  1. Boy in a Bubble

  2. Commuter Roulette

  3. The Director

  4. A Walk in the Park

  5. Dangerous Help

  6. An Interrupted Meal

  7. Answers

  8. Gladius Encánto

  9. Surprise Visit

  10. Evacuation Plan Alpha

  11. Westward Bound

  12. Hard Earth

  13. St. Grimm’s

  14. First Morning

  15. Food At Last

  16. The Tour

  17. Interrogation

  18. A Big Decision

  19. Helpless

  20. Flight

  21. Bacon, Bacon Everywhere

  22. Training

  23. Sequestered Secrets

  24. Accused, Arrested, and Tried

  25. Maggot Duty

  26. Sanctuary Day Eve

  27. Masks Removed

  28. A Little Show of Thanks

  Dedication

  To my four sources of inspiration—Kristen, Kayla, Abby and Rachel.

  “What you see depends on what you’re looking for.”

  —Anonymous

  Prologue

  Strange Security for Pants

  A dribble of freezing rain trickled down the collar of Hector Lopez’s uniform. He shivered. The cold, soggy night was miserable, even for New Jersey. Pulling the hat down over his ears, he swept the flashlight through the fence, illuminating naked trees and dense undergrowth on the other side of the chain-link. With a beep, Hector’s watch glowed 3:00 a.m. The graveyard shift was halfway over. Shivering, he rubbed his grumbling stomach.

  Only one more lap around the complex and he’d finally dig into his dinner. Lidia had packed homemade tamales—chicken with molé sauce. He would have eaten earlier, but the facility had been put on high alert tonight. High alert? Hector glanced up at the flaking walls of the old textile mill and the dilapidated warehouses full of clothes. Who would risk a razor wire fence to steal plus-sized parkas or out-of-date hooded sweatshirts? It was ridiculous. Hector had worked seventeen years as a security guard and the only threat he’d ever seen were spray-can-toting teenagers who thought the shabby gray walls of the factory were their own personal canvases.

  Things had changed since the new owner had bought the old factory. Hector had only seen him once—a little man with a cane and a cloak. No one knew his real name. They just called him Mr. X. Eccentric—that was the best word to describe him—and paranoid. He only visited the factory at night with a team of bodyguards, always arriving in strange vehicles like ice-cream trucks or catering vans. Mr. X had beefed up security, hired triple the number of men, electrified and raised the fences, and required guards to carry side arms. Not regular guns, but some kind of new tranquilizer pistol that would drop a charging elephant. Hector laughed to himself. At least he was prepared if an angry elephant wandering the New Jersey backwoods tried to steal hoodie sweatshirts.

  Overcautious with a capital “O,” that’s what Mr. X was. Hector felt the hefty tranq-gun tug at his belt with every step. High alert? It must have something to do with the arsons. Some wacko had been setting fire to warehouses, but those had been in other towns closer to the coast. Because of Mr. X and his paranoia, Hector was walking extra laps in a frigid drizzle. He breathed warm air onto his pruning fingers, sniffed at the rain, and kept trudging.

  On his belt, the radio cracked to life.

  “Lopez, you there?”

  “Yeah, I’m here. What is it, Tubbs?” Hector said flatly.

  “Hey, I heard something outside the southwest gate. I need your eyes.”

  Hector groaned.

  J.D. Tubbs was new. He’d only been on the job three weeks, but he’d already earned a reputation as the worst practical joker on the security detail. On his first day, he had offered Hector a cookie—it turned out to be a dog biscuit. Hector hadn’t been able to get rid of the taste of liver and fish for two days. But besides the bad jokes, J.D. was odd. Not just weird-looking, either, with his big mouth, floppy ears, and a face that looked like it’d been pressed in a vice. There was something strange about everything he did. Like how he always chewed with his mouth open, or how he sniffed everything. He was also a close-talker with bad breath, and he only worked at night, every night. Tubbs was another reason why the graveyard shift was so unbearable.

  “Oh, come on, Tubbs. I’m on the northwest perimeter. Are you serious? Because if this is a prank…”

  “This isn’t a joke.” Tubbs’s voice was serious. “I need you here right now, something is—” It was quiet. Then a low, inhuman growl rumbled through the walkie-talkie.

  “What was that? Tubbs. Tubbs!”

  Nothing but static.

  Hector arrived at the southwest gate soaked with rain and perspiration. He eased around the last corner and peered down the long walkway flooded with security lights. On one side was the drab exterior wall of the textile plant, and on the other a twenty-foot fence looped with razor wire that separated the complex from the encroaching woods. Through the mist, Hector could see Tubbs halfway down the walk. He was crouched on all fours with his back arched, growling at something beyond the fence.

  “Very funny, J.D. Ha. Ha.”

  Tubbs didn’t move.

  “Hey, I’m gonna go eat. Thanks a lot for hauling me over here in the rain. You just keep doing whatever it is you’re doing.”

  Tubbs leaned forward and growled louder.

  Suddenly the fence exploded in a cascade of hissing sparks. Through the rain and smoke, an enormous shape shredded the fence like paper.

  Hector gasped. A bear?

  The giant black form lumbered forward, chain-link falling at its side. Tubbs leaped at the creature, attacking with his bare hands and teeth. He swiped with his right, then his left—a frenzied blur of motion. Snarling, the black beast blocked his blows, then in one swift motion snatched Tubbs out of the air, holding him by the neck, the guard’s feet unable to touch the concrete. J.D. Tubbs kicked and clawed, but it was no use.

  “Hey!” Hector had to do something. He waved his flashlight in the air, trying to get the animal’s attention as he pulled the tranquilizer gun from its holster. It worked. The beast flung J.D. against the wall with a thud, then turned toward Hector and charged.

  The gun cracked and jumped in Hector’s hand. T
he bear flinched but didn’t stop. Trembling, he tried to reload, but the creature was too fast. Before Hector could react, the bear lifted him off the ground with one jagged set of claws and swatted the weapon away with the other. To his horror, Hector realized that what he had mistaken for a bear was something else entirely. From under a heavy black cloak, two milky-white eyes glared at him, then looked down at the dart embedded in its massive, hairy chest. The hooded beast plucked the tranquilizer and dangled it in front of the helpless man.

  “You really shouldn’t have done that.” A voice rumbled from deep within the monster’s throat. There was a wild flash of ghastly white eyes. Horrible, evil eyes that burned into Hector’s mind as his screams echoed off the factory walls and faded into the barren woods.

  1

  Boy in a Bubble

  The humidifier made a gurgling-wheezing sound as it spewed moist air into the darkened room. Will Tuttle groaned and rolled over. It sounded like someone was slurping Jell-O through a straw right next to his ear. Stuffing his head under his pillow, he tried to muffle out the incessant burble, but it was no good. The plastic pillowcase crinkled louder than the humidifier. His face stuck to the rubber sheets.

  Will peeled himself from the sticky bedding and sat up, kneading his eyes with latex-covered knuckles.

  For a long moment, he stared into the blackness, listening to the nasty little fog machine that was turning the world into a steam bath. He wished there were a way to pull the plug. No luck. Nurse Grundel had removed the off-switch and bolted the power cord to the socket. She called it sweat therapy. Will called it living in a giant armpit.

  He attempted to slide to the edge of the bed, causing all sorts of obscene noises as his sweaty legs skipped across the moist plastic.

  Finding the lamp, he clicked it on. The translucent bubble that formed the walls of his bedroom dripped with condensation, and a heavy mist hung in the air. He ran his gloved fingers along the surface of his nightstand, carving a path in the water droplets.

  A humidifier for a bubble-boy? This was just dumb. It wasn’t as bad as the Himalayan aroma pot treatments that made his bubble reek like wet musk ox for a month. Or the helium therapy—three weeks of talking like a chipmunk and still no closer to a cure.

  He peeked at the clock. 3:32 a.m.

  There was a good chance Will would die recklessly today—might as well get an early start. With a sticky squeak, he pulled his thighs off the rubberized sheets and stood.

  He sucked in a sharp breath and gritted his teeth as a cascade of cold condensation soaked him. Bumping his head on the curved plastic bubble walls was becoming a problem. Growth spurts sucked.

  His parents had built this bubble for a child, not a gangly thirteen-year-old who was almost six feet tall. Will was supposed to be cured by now. He was supposed to be able to go outside, play sports, and travel with his parents. Every doctor had predicted that Will Tuttle’s life-threatening childhood allergies would clear-up at puberty. They had all been wrong.

  Careful to avoid the walls, Will ducked and padded across his room to the bathroom. A layer of moisture clung to every surface. Labels were sagging off the rows of giant amber prescription bottles that lined the bathroom walls. The running ink made it hard to tell one experimental medication from the next. It didn’t matter; Will had them all memorized. He stared at the shelves of medications surrounding him—thirteen years full of failed attempts and false hopes. Picking up a bottle, he popped the lid and swallowed a huge blue pill without water. Then he grabbed the next bottle and another pill—then the next and the next. By the sixth daily prescription, Will noticed that not all the words had blurred from the steam. Wilhelm Tuttle was still razor sharp on every label. Wilhelm, Wilhelm, Wilhelm, Wilhelm!

  He hated his given name. Wilhelm—it sounded like it should belong to a fat guy in lederhosen with a handlebar mustache, not to a thirteen-year-old who already had enough problems. His name was Will!

  Annoyed, he plopped the bottle down with too much force, launching orange pills into the metal bathtub, where they clattered like a tambourine. Dropping to his knees, Will tried to quiet the bouncing meds, hoping the racket wouldn’t wake the nurse sleeping downstairs. He held his breath and listened. Even over the gurgle of the humidifier, he could hear snores vibrating through the floor. Nurse Grundel was still asleep.

  Waking the nanny/nurse would ruin everything. The last time she’d caught him outside his bubble, Nurse Grundel had taken Will’s bed and forced him to sleep on the floor for a week.

  “When naughty Wilhelm leaves his bubble,” the nurse had taunted as the bed was carried away, “he has no bed and gets in trouble.”

  Nurse Grundel was a bitter, middle-aged woman with wide hips and a chinless face. She had no tolerance for rule-breaking, unless she was the one breaking them, and no patience for sick boys who refused to get better.

  “Stop wheezing. Quit breaking out in hives. Control your seizing!” Nurse Grundel would demand with a huge fake smile every time Will had an allergic reaction.

  The last thing Will needed this morning was the nurse’s artificial smile. There was nothing genuine about it—just a show of teeth under cold, calculating eyes. With Mr. and Mrs. Tuttle on their four-month, round-the-world yachting tour, Nurse Grundel had complete reign of the Tuttle estate. She’d already moved into the master suite and began wearing Will’s mother’s clothes, even though her hefty backside stretched the seams to the breaking point.

  Last night she threw a boisterous party in the downstairs ballroom. When she thought Will was asleep, Nurse Grundel had led a group of tipsy party-goers into the east wing to poke the bubble and gawk at Will like he was an oversized hamster in a plastic cage.

  “Shh. There he is,” she’d whispered to the group, “the world’s most allergic boy.”

  “Oo. Is he contagious?” squeaked a wiry blonde woman holding a champagne glass.

  “No, he was born like that. At first they thought he was normal, but when the boy’s mother held him for the first time and kissed his head, his face swelled up like lip-shaped balloons. The doctors rushed him away and stuck him in a bubble. He’s been in there ever since. It’s pitiful, really. That was the only time he’s ever been touched.”

  Will had bitten his lip, pretending to stay asleep, while watching the crowd through lowered lids.

  “And he never leaves?” burped a fat, bald man with a lampshade on his head.

  “Only to go see doctors. He has a special outfit.” She pointed to a 1950’s white plastic radiation suit with a hood, gloves, boots, facemask and respirator hanging on the wall.

  “Oh. It looks like something out of an alien movie,” giggled the blonde. “Why is it so old?”

  “That’s the oddest thing about this boy,” whispered Nurse Grundel. “He’s allergic to almost everything, unless it was made before 1960.”

  “Why 1960?” asked a woman with thick glasses and a pink stole.

  “Nobody knows. But that’s why the boy’s things are so out of date. The Tuttles buy Wilhelm’s clothes from vintage shops and his furniture from military warehouses. The medical equipment comes from a museum in Vermont. Even this bubble was a decontamination tent from the Korean War. There’s another one just like it in the basement of the Tuttle Wing of Mt. Sinai Hospital—all very hush-hush, of course.”

  “Tuttle Wing? I’m sure that cost them a pretty penny,” slurred the bald man, adjusting his lampshade.

  Nurse Grundel fingered the string of Mrs. Tuttle’s pearls that hung around her neck. “Oh, the family is loaded. Mr. Tuttle’s grandfather invented the aglet.”

  “The what?”

  “That little plastic thing on the end of shoelaces.”

  Everyone in the group stared at their feet, impressed.

  “Yes,” said the nurse with a wide grin, “the Tuttles have plenty of money. They spend summers in Paris, winters in St. Croix. There is an autumn home in Tuscany. Right now they’re on a yacht in the Mediterranean.”

  “Oo�
�you’ve been to Paris?” The blonde woman squeaked.

  “No,” Nurse Grundel replied humorlessly. “I stay with the boy. I always stay with the boy. Sometimes I wish this bubble were empty. Then I’d get my life back.”

  “You don’t mean that, Glenda. Do you?” asked the woman in glasses.

  “No…no, of course not,” Nurse Grundel flashed a sly smile and eyed Will. “He would be helpless without me. Besides, Wilhelm Tuttle is my meal ticket. And he’s not going anywhere.”

  The group had followed Nurse Grundel back to the party as Will had lay in bed, fuming. Helpless? Meal ticket? Not going anywhere? That’s when his plan had taken shape. It was stupid and reckless. A million things could go wrong. But whatever happened, Nurse Grundel would take the blame.

  Will finished cleaning the pills out of the bathtub and looked at his watch. Time to go.

  He grabbed his old army backpack and stuffed it with prescription bottles, six inhalers and a dozen vintage, metal syringes filled with epinephrine. Next came a box of latex gloves. He checked the manufacture date—1952. Good. The gloves made in the 40s all smelled like fish, for some reason.

  3:51 a.m.

  Will stepped back into his drippy bedroom and pulled open a footlocker. He always wore the same thing—black jeans, a black t-shirt, and black high-top canvas sneakers. Black was the only color he would wear. Anything else bothered his eyes and looked too bright next to his pasty skin. He dressed quickly, ignoring the dampness that had found its way into the fabric.

  After cramming an extra change of clothes into his pack, he found his favorite coat—a giant, black, hooded parka that was at least two sizes too big for him.

  Will moved to his bookshelf and selected two 1958 Manhattan travel guides from the rows of vintage guidebooks he’d collected. There were books for every country on earth, and he’d read them all so many times the pages were worn thin. Will’s plan had been to travel the world after puberty had cured him. He adjusted his latex gloves. Plans change.