Red Zone Son

Chapter 48

Before they entered the church, Wilson told Solomon to take a breath. He was right. Solomon couldn’t storm in and demand the nunnery’s address, so he forced himself to relax before entering and explaining that he was looking for his sister. “Someone said she was taken to a nunnery set up by the church. I’ve been away, I’m a militiaman, and I haven’t been able to get hold of her.”

He was directed to the building across the street, so he headed there with Wilson. They crossed the street to the apartment complex, and Solomon repeated his story to the White woman in the lobby. He was looking for his sister, Adah Williams; someone had told him she was there.

“You say you’re her brother?” she asked.

Solomon’s heart leaped into his throat. “She’s here? She’s okay? She’s not hurt?”

The woman observed him. Then she glanced at Wilson. Solomon knew at once he had made a mistake not asking Wilson to wait outside. He’d been so used to going everywhere with him for over a year now that he’d forgotten their presence together, especially in a context like this one, would require an explanation. He wanted to tell her, “He’s my militia officer,” but that would just make her wonder, “And why did you bring him?”

He couldn’t exactly say, “Well, we recently escaped together from a blue zone camp and decided to extend our absence from the militia to look for my sister.” That would lead to nothing but a phone call straight to a civilian liaison on base.

Solomon met the woman’s gaze. “Please, can you just tell me if she’s here or not?”

“I’m sorry, I can’t,” she replied. “Some of our girls fled bad situations, so we have a policy of not confirming their whereabouts. Can you provide some identification for me? And a custody order?”

Solomon’s heart sank. Anything he might have was in his house. “I… I don’t have anything on me.” At that, her eyebrows went up, and he started racking his brains for a way to convince her to at least tell Adah he was here, if Adah was here. “Can you take a picture of me? And show it to Adah, if she’s here?”

“I will take a picture of you, but then I’m going to have to ask you to leave, and if you don’t, or come back, I will give that picture to law enforcement.”

At that, Wilson stepped forward. “Hold on,” he started, but Solomon cut him off.

“That’s fine,” Solomon said, still focused on meeting her eyes. “I am who I say I am. I’m glad you care so much about keeping the girls here safe. I went through a… rough time recently, which is why I don’t have anything on me. Take my picture, and I will leave.”

Her face softened a little, which was what he’d been hoping for. She used her phone to take his picture, and then he headed out, Wilson in tow. Outside, on the sidewalk, Wilson turned to him. “Why did you let her do that?”

“I think she’s lying to be protective,” Solomon told Wilson. There was a park next to the church, and it was empty. He suggested to Wilson that they wait on a bench there, so they crossed the street. “I think Adah’s there, and she’s showing Adah my photo, but she can’t tell me that in case I’m not actually her brother.”

Wilson gave him a look, as if he sounded delusional. Maybe he was. Maybe he had to believe Adah was here. If she wasn’t, what was he going to do?

“Are you hungry?” Wilson asked. Now that he mentioned it, Solomon realized he was. He nodded, and Wilson told him to wait there, that he would get something for them. Solomon watched him head down the street. Pretty soon, he returned with breakfast, some kind of egg sandwiches and coffee.

When Solomon asked him how he had paid for it, Wilson explained that he’d technically been homeless during his time with the militia, that he’d either slept at the base or in his car, so he had left a set of identification and bank cards in his car when he’d gone on the blue zone mission.

“It’s strange, though,” he said. “They don’t stop paying you if you go missing in action. They’re not supposed to. I thought I’d have more money in my account than I do have.”

Solomon didn’t even want to think about money. Even if Adah was in the nunnery, without a house already paid for, he had no idea how he was going to provide for her. His militia sentence had always felt like a ball and chain around his neck, and after going to the blue zone and becoming convinced that it was their inter-zone conflict that was the real problem, he wanted to stay in the militia even less.

But he couldn’t leave. Not for any reason, not to find a job that made more, not to stay with Adah. He could only hope they counted the last year he’d spent imprisoned in the blue zone as part of his time. Because there was no way to get fired. He had researched it while on sentry duty. The militia didn’t do discharges the way the pre-Splintering US military had. They had enough other ways to compel specific performance if someone started slacking.

There had to be a way to get his house back. They couldn’t just steal it and get away with it!

He was back to seething. He needed to look up this reclamation policy. He wasn’t hopeful about it though. Things had been an upside-down mess since the Great Splintering, and he had no idea how he might go about proving that the house had actually belonged to his parents. He might be better off physically throwing the couple out as they had Adah and letting them try to come at him.

“Hey,” Wilson said. “She’s out. The lady from the nunnery, she’s outside.”

Solomon was on his feet at once. God, he hoped she was looking for him. She was scanning the street around them as if she were, and then she saw him and waved him over. He was back on the sidewalk outside the nunnery before Wilson had the chance to say anything else. “You showed it to her?” he asked.

“Come inside,” she replied.

He followed her in. This time she took him back around to an office and had him sit down in front of a desk. “What’s your name?” she asked him, as she sat down and plugged her phone into a display in front of her.

“Solomon Williams.”

“When were you born?”

He told her.

“When did you get custody of Adah Williams?”

Solomon answered her, and then answered her next question, and then her next. She was typing as he responded. Not his answers; she was typing too much to simply be filling out a manual form when she could hand him a single-use screen and have him enter this information himself. Maybe she was using the information he was giving her to verify his story, comparing what he was saying to what was in publicly available databases.

Or maybe not, but whatever she was doing, it wasn’t kicking him out, it wasn’t calling the militia’s police line on him, it wasn’t telling him Adah wasn’t there. In fact, she stayed with him for the next several hours, working through lunch, as she asked him questions and typed.

It was mid-afternoon when she finally stopped. “Okay. I have enough evidence to submit to the board that you are indeed who you say you are and that you indeed have custody of Adah Williams. But,” she said, when Solomon was about to jump to his feet, “it’ll take a few years for them to approve it. They have a big caseload and due to trafficking concerns, they’re very careful about underage releases.”

“What?” Solomon almost shouted. “Adah’ll be eighteen before then!”

“Then she’ll be allowed to leave at that point.”

No, no, no! He looked pleadingly at her. He was about to beg. She believed he was telling the truth, he could tell. Surely she didn’t mean that he had to wait to see Adah until she was eighteen!

“I can put you on her visitors list. That’ll be approved faster.”

Solomon closed his eyes. He tried to tell himself he was glad they were being so strict, that it was what he would want if he weren’t alive. He tried to tell himself that at least this nunnery was a place for Adah to stay while he finished his time with the militia. But try as he might, he couldn’t bring himself to believe what he was saying. He couldn’t help but feel that if he turned around and went back to the militia now, he and Adah would never see each other again.

Solomon didn’t know why, but he found himself, haltingly, telling this woman the truth about where he’d been. Maybe it was the fact that she had spent the last several hours helping him at her own expense when she could have not cared and let them slip into a bureaucratic hole. Maybe it was that she was clearly extremely principled about keeping the girls in this nunnery safe. Maybe it was that he knew she must be a Christian to be working there and so he trusted her as a result. He watched her listen to him, and then her expression changed, as if something she’d been confused about suddenly made sense.

“I can’t release anyone without the approval of the board,” she told him after he was done. “But I’d like you to come back tonight at midnight. Do you have a car?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Park it on the street right outside here at midnight, and wait there until I come get you.”

It was a strange request, but he would take it. “I will. I’ll be back tonight.”