Hideout Jack Heath (reading the story of the .TXT) 📖

‘Apple and pumpkin seed,’ Donnie says. ‘Samson made them.’ He blinks away an angry tear and drags the door shut, sealing me and Kyle in the back of the van. The other three Guards aren’t coming.

I sit next to Kyle and buckle my seatbelt. Clear my throat. ‘How you doing, buddy?’

Kyle looks at me strangely. ‘Fine. Why?’

‘Just asking.’

Donnie gets into the driver’s seat. ‘You excited, Lux?’

‘You bet.’ I grip my knees with my hands, keeping them still.

‘Can’t wait to see the look on your face,’ he says ominously, and starts the engine. The floor vibrates under me.

Little ribbons are tied to the vents. They spring to life like angry snakes as the fan roars. Water drips from the tips of the ribbons.

‘DIY evaporative cooling,’ Donnie says proudly. ‘Just like in ancient Egypt. They used to hang wet reeds in the windows to chill the air as it flowed into the house, or mud hut, or whatever. Aircon puts hydrocarbons into the atmosphere—this is way more sustainable.’

‘Pretty cool,’ I say, wanting to stay on the muscular psycho’s good side.

‘Ha, “cool”! I get it.’

‘Quit showing off, Donnie,’ Kyle grumbles. ‘It’s already freezing back here.’

Donnie huffs and turns down the fan.

He pushes a button on a remote. The garage door creaks open and the van trundles out into the twilight. The garage closes automatically behind us as we roll through the forest towards the main road. Soon the house is out of view. You’d never know it was there.

Engine rumbling, we head down the long driveway until we hit the dirt road. At the intersection, I can see the motion sensor the others talked about—a little white box with a hole in it, like a small birdhouse, bolted to a tree.

But I can also see something else. A smaller box, painted brown, in another tree further away. Well-hidden. A camera, but not the same design as the others. It’s facing the dirt road, so if a vehicle enters the driveway, the driver’s face would be momentarily visible to it.

On all those screens in the editing room, I didn’t see any feeds which showed the road. This camera is separate. Why?

Kyle is watching me. ‘What are you looking at?’

The van turns on to the dirt road, cutting off my view of the hidden camera.

‘Nothing,’ I say.

Half an hour later we reach the highway and take a right turn towards Houston. We drive through mile after mile of arid flat land. If Texas were a country, it would be the thirty-ninth biggest on Earth, at least according to a library book I read as a kid. It’s bigger than France or England.

Outsiders view Texas as simple and homogenous. The reddest of red states. But Texans see it more like several separate nations. People from Houston will swear their town is completely different to Dallas, which is nothing like San Antonio. The only thing these city folks agree on is that the people from the rural areas in between are racist homophobes clutching guns and Bibles. The rural people themselves see the urbanites as corrupt, materialistic degenerates, oblivious to how the real world works.

Neither view is accurate. There are plenty of guns and Bibles in cities, while many rural folks have fought for the rights of their Black or queer neighbours. In a way, the outsiders are right—Texas is more unified than Texans think. But the stereotypes persist, because the city people and country people don’t mix.

Ironically, while there is a literal wall between Texas and Mexico, those two cultures have seeped into one another a lot. You’ll see cowboy hats in Mexico, sombreros in Texas, and Tex-Mex cuisine in both places. But the wall around the cities is an invisible one called ‘cost of living’. It’s much harder to cross. Even in the cities, if you become poor—like I was, before I learned how to sell stolen credit card numbers on the dark web—you don’t usually get booted out into the darkness beyond the city lights. You stay under the table, stealing scraps from the middle class, who are easier targets than the rich.

As one of those city-dwelling degenerates, I don’t feel especially safe out here, where only the occasional farmhouse breaks up the flat horizon. But if we’re going all the way to Houston, I might have a chance to escape. I run through the steps in my head. One: get out of sight when Donnie and Kyle are distracted, and run like hell. Two: find a phone, call the cops, explain what’s going on at Fred’s house. Three: go somewhere else before the cops come looking for me, since they’ll have questions I can’t answer.

But when they realise I’m missing, Donnie and Kyle will call the other Guards, who will clean house. Kill the prisoners, move on, start over. I’ll never find out if Kyle was my son.

We’re getting closer to the city. Streetlights flash past on the otherwise empty highway. Donnie switches on the radio, drums his fingers on the wheel, humming an old Britney Spears song. Kyle picks up the rope and starts fiddling with it. It looks like he’s trying to make it into a noose, but he doesn’t quite remember how.

I hold out a hand. ‘Here. Let me show you.’

Kyle keeps hold of the rope, frowning. ‘I can do it.’

I let my hand fall back into my lap and watch him struggle with it a while longer. His frustration is frustrating.

Trying to distract myself, I take a bite from one of the granola bars. It’s dry and crumbly. Apple and pumpkin seed really isn’t my thing. I keep stealing glances at Donnie’s thick, meaty arms.

We’ve reached the outskirts of Houston now. Wider roads, a bit of traffic. Familiar buildings on the horizon, the lights blocking out the stars above.

Soon the motel I used to work at