Vanessa
“Look, I like a raging case of dysentery as much as the next girl”—Vanessa Brouwer wrapped her arms around the branch to pull herself up—“but I’m throwing my rubber underwear at the next amateur cook who gets free rein in our kitchen.”
She grunted, swung her leg, and straddled the narrow limb like a seesaw. Its bark—still cool to the touch, thanks to North Holland’s version of late summer—scraped her bare thighs under the skirt, which was skimpy this morning even by her own standards.
“I’d like to actually live to see the end of 2066, now that I’ve made it to twenty-two—whoa!” She clamped the branch with both hands as she teetered in the tree. “Twenty-two years.” She sighed. “Guess the ladder would have been better.”
She looked down at the black-and-white bunny, who sat up on his haunches in the grass and wriggled his nose at her feet dangling a meter and a half above him. His right ear stuck out to the side at a ninety-degree angle from his left, which didn’t help the half-wit appearance his single upper-front tooth gave him, poor guy. But the other residents were wrong: he wasn’t ugly; he was…exotic.
She leaned back against the trunk and strained her fingers toward the wicker basket she’d already nestled in a crook of the apple tree boughs. “Anyway”—she managed to jerk the basket onto her lap without losing her balance—“I only need to gnaw my way through Marien’s casserole surprise at dinner, and then I’ll be leaving the compound for good this time. Tonight.” She wagged a finger at the bunny. “My only regret is that my garden will be at the mercy of that bottomless pit of yours.”
The Havana stared up at her with his big brown eyes, the picture of innocence—though his left eye was fittingly set within a black patch of fur like a little pirate. She swiped at an apple hanging far to her right, and all the fruit in the basket tumbled to one end. She caught herself against the tree trunk as the un-gotten apple went flying into the orchard somewhere. The rabbit’s left white-tipped ear pricked forward, but then he hunkered down in the grass.
“I know, I know.” She grimaced at him as she tugged up the shoulders of her peasant blouse. “Ladder: better.”
She squirmed on the branch to scratch an itch on her inner thigh. Okay, and maybe pants.
Today she was decked out in a flouncy-skirted blue ensemble that would highlight her green eyes and blond tresses. She was going for a “free spirit” kind of look. But admittedly—perched in a tree and unintentionally exhibiting her undies—she probably reinforced the other residents’ image of her as better suited to waitress at the Haarloze Hond bar than to act as chief gardener and kitchen help.
Nearby, the early sunshine danced across the panes of the two greenhouses, wherein her hydroponic experiments and tropical fruit trees cast foggy shadows like a phantom army of flora. A breeze carried the earthy sweet scent of leaves past her as it curled through the branches of the apple trees. It was not a huge orchard, by any means, because there was only so much space inside the old stone compound, but it had always been her favorite part of the garden.
She set the basket on her knee and draped an arm over the branch by her head to scan the surrounding gray walls of the crumbling eighteenth-century Fort Van Doorn, where she and so many other residents had grown up. Honestly, she did love her home, as ridiculously anachronistic as it was. But there was a real world out there to explore, with people who thought nothing of driving a car or surfing the internet.
She hooked an elbow around the basket handle and scooped up one of the red-skinned apple varieties that had ripened earlier than usual.
Unfortunately, that real world also held roving, pillaging gangs that had cropped up ever since the Netherlands had closed its borders and sunk into isolationism like all the nations around it, which had only stoked the growing turmoil. But such marauders preyed on the bigger inhabited villages, where there was more stuff to steal and people to abuse. This was a remote part of the country that used to be crowded with life, but which had been forcibly abandoned by a Dutch population who feared what the new era of governmental corruption would bring to the province. Now, much of this northern area near the coast was vacant, leaving nature to overrun and reclaim what it had once shared. Things were safer here.
Vanessa took a bite of the red prince apple and swung her legs to bump her heels rhythmically against the tree trunk.
Well, safety was overrated. And safety kept a person from the simple thrill of having choices. And it certainly erased the possibility of finding the elusive “soul mate” she always read about in her books who made the main character so blissfully happy.
Her smile widened as she chewed, and she bumped her heels harder.
She could brave a little dystopian chaos if it meant a meaningful make-out session with a tall, dark stranger. Considering it had been two years since she’d even dated a guy, her libido might pose more of a threat than any band of pirates out there. And a new life would be exciting. A new life would mean fresh faces and open landscapes, instead of old walls closing in on her with constant reminders that—
That I killed my parents.
She took a shallow bite of the apple, but all the flavor seemed to have drained from it.
They’d brought her here as a child, to keep her safe. To protect her from the people who were hunting them. And it had taken only a few short years for her to betray them. Both Cornelis and Rhetta insisted it wasn’t her fault. They said the man had tricked her into giving her parents away. But it didn’t matter. She’d been angry with her mom and dad at the time because they’d grounded her when they’d caught her doing something reckless. They’d done it to make her learn from her mistakes. So in an infantile snit, she’d pointed him their way, when he’d said he was coming to collect a debt. No one would let her see what the man had done, once he’d found them. No one would tell her about the way he’d torn them apart, slaughtered them—
Don’t, Vanessa.
She swallowed the tasteless fruit. “De molen gaat niet om met wind die voorbij is,” she mumbled. “The windmill doesn’t turn from wind that has already blown by.” It was one of the few proverbs she could actually recite in Dutch, because Rhetta had drilled it into her since she was twelve, when it happened: the past is gone, and no one can change it.
She’d opened her mouth to take another bite when something shot past the leaves with the sound of scissors through wrapping paper and slammed into her wicker basket.
The world spun and tilted. Branch after branch whacked her body all the way down until she landed flat on her back. She wheezed and fought for air as if a ten-kilo bag of sand had been dropped on her chest.
Her heart pounded in her ears, and her mind screamed at her. What the hell?
The rabbit—at first spooked by her sudden decision to rejoin him—promptly settled next to her and began to nibble on the apple still clutched in her hand. She struggled up onto one elbow and pushed his face away, gasping for breath. “Not…helpful.”
She arched her back to feel for anything broken and then flopped onto her stomach in the dew-dipped grass, her lungs burning with the effort. She wheezed again, and goose bumps skipped down her arms. She got to all fours and scrambled backward until she rammed into the tree. She sat up and pressed herself to the slender trunk, finally managing to catch her breath.
The wicker basket sat lopsided on the ground nearby. Juice oozed out around an arrow embedded deep in the basket’s side. Had it struck a few centimeters to the left, it would have pierced her like mutton on a spit.
She shifted against the trunk to peer behind her, but none of the other residents seemed to pay her any attention as they meandered along the covered corridors that encircled the garden’s perimeter. She tugged on her skirt hem as she crouched against the tree. Everyone else wore pants and long-sleeved T-shirts this late in August, while there she was, publicizing her purple panties to any casual observer. But then, she hadn’t planned on diving for cover to avoid becoming a pincushion!
She yanked on her skirt again and swept her eyes along the top of the battlements, where a few of the younger residents usually hung out. But there was no bow-wielding culprit in sight, so the arrow had not come from there. The back field. Had to be from the back field. That would have been the right direction, the way it came tearing through her poor Elstar apple tree.
She tried to flag down some passersby. “Hey! Did you see that?” she rasped. “Hey, listen!” When a few of the women stopped and stared at her, she gestured toward her wicker basket. “Did any of you see that?”
They continued to stare.
She dug her nails into the half-eaten apple she still held. “It was attempted homicide! How could you not notice?”
Their gazes moved to her legs. Then all of the women exchanged smirks.
Vanessa’s face heated. Really? We’re going to ignore the Arrow of Death but not my fashion choices? But just as she opened her mouth again, they bustled away. Wait, did they just—?
Vanessa snapped her mouth closed and shoved herself away from the tree to stand up. She flung the apple to the ground and leaned down to wrench the arrow from the side of the basket. She gripped it above her like a club, and her voice echoed off the stone walls. “Does anyone care that someone just tried to screw me from behind?”
With that, people did pause and look at her again.
She blinked. “I mean, skewer. Someone tried to skewer me from behind. From behind the fort, I mean.”
A few more residents emerged from the surrounding hallways and stood between the arched columns of the perimeter, glancing at one another.
She shook the arrow at a cluster of elderly women to her right. “Damn it, I’m not crazy! If you want proof, just look at my backside!” Her cheeks flared, and she squeezed her eyes shut. “My basket. I meant basket. It was a sneak attack from the rear…uh, from the back field and right into my…I mean—”
Stop. Just stop, Vanessa.
No one else in the garden even paused after that. Big surprise. Her unpredictable yap often made her easy to ignore. But come on, this was different!
A bead of wetness rolled down her right wrist. She lowered the arrow to look at it. Wrapped around the shaft was a piece of paper, soggy from the juice of the pierced apples. She tucked a stray lock of hair behind one ear and unrolled the sticky sheet to detach it. There was big bold writing across the page: Knock, knock!
She shook her head. Had to be one of the kids from the town pulling a prank, especially if it came in from the outside. The people of Achterwaartsstad already thought the compound residents were a bunch of freaks for making their home in a rundown military fort from the seventeen hundreds, so not a shocker if this had been a random joke. Vanessa examined the bright red fletches. The arrow was finely made and was, in fact, too long for a child to handle with any accuracy.
She gave a wry smile. Too bad it hadn’t landed in Caretaker Dijkstra’s scrawny ass. The so-called leader of the compound would make a tempting target for anyone acquainted with the pretentious Dutchman. He was convinced that his knowledge and importance far outweighed his youth, despite the fact that he had the temperament of a candy-fueled toddler.
And then she heard it: that cringeworthy sound of the caretaker’s voice as it whined through one of the perimeter passageways. Vanessa looked over the low wall that ran the length of the orchard to separate it from the rest of the garden. And there was Dijkstra making his way toward the rear entrance, his angular face pinched and covered with sweat. Several members of his personal kiss-ass brigade followed closely on his heels.
“People? What do you mean there are people out back?” Dijkstra demanded, the “v” and “d” sounds in his speech thicker under his overt bad mood so that it came out as “Vut do you mean der are people…” His accent was more pronounced than a lot of the other residents. It was a little jarring, considering her parents had raised her to speak English with more precise articulation.
The caretaker tugged on the collar of his embroidered tunic, while his aide scuttled alongside him. He had obviously deluded himself into thinking he was a feudal lord, out of place in this day and age, but still dressed as if he were a duke lounging in his pajamas. No one else would be caught dead in something that looked like their ancient ancestor’s muumuu. Just because the residents all lived in an archaic dump didn’t mean they had no sense of modern vogue.
“Sir, there are a great many of them.” The assistant’s hands flailed. “Fifty, I think. Maybe even a hundred. They appeared by the back woods ten minutes ago. They do not look friendly.”
The several residents who trailed the caretaker bobbed their heads in agreement like a covey of quail.
“Vell, vut do dey vahnt?”
Vanessa squinted. Whatever was going on, it really had Dijkstra’s tunic in a twist, because she had to work harder at translating. Got it: “Well, what do they want?”
The caretaker wiped his hands on his chest and left streaks of white powder that had most assuredly come from his interrupted breakfast of oliebollen. His obsession with the fried raisin-stuffed dough balls was notorious. “Schiet op!” Dijkstra barked at the aide and waved his hands ahead of him.
The aide picked up his pace. “We don’t know what they want. They haven’t approached yet so we could ask.” The aide snatched Dijkstra’s sleeve. “Sir, they’re armed. Every one of them.”
Even from far away, the note of hysteria in the assistant’s voice was clear. Something simmering in the back of Vanessa’s brain made her look down at the handwritten message:
Knock, knock!
An object buzzed by above, and she jerked her head up. A small spidery-looking drone circled briefly and then hovered over the fort. She winced as bright beams of orange light cascaded outward from all sides of the tiny black aircraft and created a burning, crackling dome over the entire compound. All the people who now wandered out from every corner of the fort stopped and stared above them at the glowing vault of light.
She glanced again at the paper note. No, not a prank. A warning.
Vanessa kicked her basket out of the way and hurled herself through one of the openings in the long wall. She wove her way around the fruit and vegetable beds as she headed for the rear gates. Maybe she could make it in time to intercept the caretaker and his entourage now that they had all slowed down to gape at the pulsating orange ceiling.
“Caretaker! Wait a minute!” She waved the arrow in front of her. “Caretaker, hold on! Something’s not—”
He didn’t hear her.
Or he’s ignoring me.
She pressed her lips together and ran faster. She was only meters away, close enough to count the number of white pastry-powder handprints on the caretaker’s tunic, when the sound of a low, muffled boom in the distance stopped her in mid-step.
Apprehensive silence gripped the compound.
Then an explosion burst the massive double doors off their hinges.
