Chapter 33.
They brought a thousand to Ohio, out of thousands more who had been considered.
Then shipped out a hundred to two ends of the world.
Fifty-five returned to the United States.
Some pushed their red buttons in Antarctica or Chile. Some were eliminated for not completing their mission. The especially foolish after trying to access their social media accounts, posting about what they’ve been doing.
Some were caught cheating by the surveillance drones, straying from their designated route up the mountain, or down the coast of Ross Island to McMurdo Station.
A half dozen were sent home without any reason being given.
Almost half were gone. The survivors had been flown in C-17 Globemasters to Louisville, Kentucky, this time, transported from there to an isolated farm on the Cumberland Plateau in the Appalachian Mountains.
It is a lush, isolated property, they all see from the buses, miles from the last homes or signs of civilization.
Apart from the main house, what looks like a massive combination of palace and farmhouse, there are enough two-story guest cottages on the property to accommodate all of them, together as a group for the first time since their odyssey began.
After having showered and changed, they have assembled in a ballroom inside the main house that is as ornate a place as Jack has ever been inside, art on the walls and chandeliers hanging from the ceiling.
Jack sits with Elena and Jimmy. Rupert’s right there, too. The boy and Jack have now become practically inseparable. They’ve been joined by three members of what Jack thinks of as the Antarctica group: Wyatt, the young guy from New York City; and two young women, Alek and Hannah.
In Chile, they had discovered that Rupert was almost fast enough to be playing for his favorite football club back home, Man City. He’s the one, out of all of them, who produced the fastest time making it to the lighthouse and back.
Fastest. By a lot.
Even after the death of his friend Luca Tommasi, to whom he’d grown as close as to Jack.
It turns out that Rupert Chadwick is more than just a brain, his slender frame much stronger and more agile than it looks.
He is too modest to have told the table about that, so Jack does it for him, before recounting for the Antarctica people his own experience that day at the End of the World, first with the shark attack and then with the Chilean recluse spider on the trail.
Rupert, wide-eyed, had not heard the entire story until now. Jack had never been big on telling war stories. But the boy had asked.
“Weren’t you afraid that you were going to die the way . . . the way . . .” The boy can’t finish the question.
Jack is well aware of how much Luca had looked out for Rupert from the time they’d arrived, Luca having explained to Elena the night before he died that Rupert was the same age as his son.
He could lie. He could put on that tough-guy thing.
But he’s had enough of people performing.
“Yes,” Jack says. “I was scared.”
Rupert nods like that matters.
Jack adds, “I kept moving anyway. I didn’t turn back. I flushed it, wrapped it, kept moving, and I kept telling myself: not today. About half a mile up I ran into an incoming med team, they gave me an antivenin.”
Jack isn’t going to share with the kid everything about what he was feeling on the trail in that moment, how fueled he was by his anger at Tipton for leaving him the way he’d left Luca.
Only he and Tipton knew about that.
For now, anyway.
“There’s this country singer I like named John Anderson,” he says to Rupert. “And he’s got this one line that sticks with me, something like: Living scares me worse than dying.”
Rupert Chadwick surprises everyone by standing.
Then the fourteen-year-old, perhaps the shyest of all of them, surprises the room a second time by tapping his water glass with his spoon to get their attention.
Jack can see how nervous he is. Everybody close to Rupert can. But the ones who have taken the time to get to know him have begun to learn how much there is to this boy.
“I’d like to say something about Luca,” Rupert says. “Because we all know we feel him in this room with us tonight, even though he isn’t.”
The room has gone completely silent. Jack keeps his eyes on Rupert.
The boy swallows hard. Then again. Takes a sip of his water, then takes in so much air Jack wonders how he could fit it all inside that skinny body.
“I wasn’t with Luca for very long, none of us were,” Rupert says. “And he wasn’t the only person in this room who’s gone out of their way to make me feel less homesick. But . . . he was a lot like my dad.”
Jack sees the boy’s chest rise and fall. Sees him flush. Is afraid Rupert might start to cry.
Come on, kid.
You got this.
Rupert keeps going.
“I watched Luca and learned how a grown man is supposed to act,” he says. Smiles as he looks at the women in the room. “Or just how an adult is supposed to act, period.”
The only sound in the room is the voice of Rupert Chadwick, trying to hold himself together.
“He wanted this so badly,” Rupert says. “He wanted to make his own son proud, he told me that. I hope that maybe someday I can meet his son and tell him that. Tell him how much his dad loved him.”
Another deep breath. Jack sees Rupert’s eyes start to fill up.
“But in the little time we had together, Luca treated me like a son. He wanted the first prize as much for me as he did for himself.” He pauses. “But mostly he told me to believe in myself even when I wasn’t feeling anything like that.”
Rupert says, “I can hear his voice, even now in that thick accent of his. Sii coraggioso. That means ‘be brave’ in Italian.”
He pauses again, his voice thicker with emotion than ever.
“Luca said that’s the way you say it to a man,” Rupert says.
He picks up his glass again and raises it to the others, and probably gives the first toast of his young life.
“To Luca,” he says.
Now he cries.
He’s not the only one.
Patrick Arrasmith