The Ignored (31 page)

I told myself that.

But it wasn’t true.

I was opposed to Philipe’s plan; I really thought that what we intended
to do was wrong, but I also enjoyed being part of a group effort, having a role
in such a project.

I still enjoyed being a terrorist.

I made my opposition known, tried to convert the other Ignored to my
point of view, but I had no sway with Philipe anymore and the others were not
brave enough to buck him.

We set the date for the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Familyland would be
crowded that day. It would be big news. We would get lots of publicity.

On Thursday, Mary made Thanksgiving dinner, and we ate it at Philipe’s
house, wasting most of the day watching TV, alternating between football games
and the
Twilight Zone
marathon. Philipe joined us for dinner, but spent
the rest of the time upstairs, alone, working.

Friday evening, the night before the attack, we met again in the sales
office—or as Philipe referred to it, the War Room. This time he had spread
out a map of Familyland, and he had marked specific points in the amusement park
with red pins.

He wasted no time with pleasantries or formalities. “Here are the
assignments,” he said. “Steve and Mary, Bill and Paul, Junior and Tim, ‘Tommy
and Buster, Don and James, Pete and John, Bob and me. Here are the cars we’re
going to take, and the routes, and the rides we’re going to go on….”

He described in detail the plan, then made each of us repeat our part
aloud. I was to accompany Philipe in the Mercedes. We were to arrive at noon,
then walk in through the reentry gate, me carrying the explosive pack, Philipe
the detonator. We were to hang around for two hours, going on rides, going in
shops, pretending to be normal tourists, then at precisely two-fifteen we were
to get on Mr. Badger’s Crazy Journey. Near the end of the ride, while the car
was maneuvering through hell, I was to jump quickly out of the car, place the
explosives behind one of the little devil figures, then hop back in. We would
finish the ride, walk to the train station near the roller coaster, and get on
the train. We would stay on the train, circling the park, until all of the
terrorists were on board. Then Philipe would detonate our explosives, the others
assigned detonators would set off theirs, and we would get off the train at Old
Town and leave the park.

I watched Philipe as he talked, as he made the others repeat the time
sequences of their portions of the plan, and I wondered why he had chosen me to
be his partner. Not because I was his right-hand man, that was for sure.

Probably to keep an eye on me because he didn’t trust me anymore.

After the meeting, as we were getting up and leaving, he called my name,
asked me to stay. I waited around while the others walked across the cul-de-sac
to their respective homes.

Philipe pulled the red pins from his map, picked up the map from the
table, folded it. “I know your opinion of this,” he said. “But I want you with
us.”

He spoke as he was folding the map, not looking up at me, and I realized
that, in his own way, he was trying to make up with me. He was trying to
apologize. I leaned against the wall near the door, not knowing what to say.

He stared down at the pins in his hand, jiggled them. “It’s not easy
being who we are,” he said. “What we are. There are no rules, no traditions.
We’re making them up as we go along. Sometimes we make mistakes. Sometimes we
can’t tell they’re mistakes until after the fact.” He looked up at me. “That’s
all I had to say.”

I nodded. I was not sure what he wanted from me. I was not even sure
what he’d said.

We stared at each other for a moment.

Then I walked out of the office, back to my house.

We drove to Familyland in silence, and the silence was tense. Philipe
turned on the radio. A station I didn’t like. But I left it on because it was
better than the quiet.

We parked near a light post with an “H” hanging from the pole and walked
across the lot to the entrance.

The second we walked into the amusement park, I was struck by the
enormity of what we planned to do, and I had to stop for a moment and close my
eyes and catch my breath. I felt a little dizzy. I opened my eyes again, and saw
hordes of people walking down Old Town, past the magic shop, past the Hall of
History. A trolley passed by, pulled by a horse, its bell dinging. In front of
me, at the end of the street, I could see the graceful fairy-tale spires of the
Castle.

A family passed by us, the boy asking his father if he could have some
ice cream.

This was serious. This was the real thing. I had not bargained for
anything like this. I don’t think any of us had. Except maybe Philipe.

I had killed before, but that was different. It was personal. This would
be the cold-blooded murder of innocent strangers. Mothers. Families. Kids.

I did not want to be a Terrorist for the Common Man, I realized. Maybe
Prankster for the Common Man. Monkey-wrencher for the Common Man. But that was
as far as I was willing to go.

“I can’t do it,” I told Philipe.

“You can and you will.”

“What if I don’t?”

“Then I’ll kill you. I’ll set off this detonator, and the explosives
you’re carrying will blow your ass to hell.”

“You’d do that?”

“Try me.”

I shook my head. “I can’t kill innocent people.”

“No one’s innocent.”

“Can’t we just set these off somewhere where they won’t really hurt
anyone? We’d still be making a statement, we’d still get the attention we want,
but we wouldn’t have to kill anybody.”

“They’ll take us a lot more seriously if we do kill someone.”

“You sent letters off, didn’t you?”

“And our cards. Yesterday. To the park’s headquarters, to the Anaheim
police, and to all the local newspapers, and TV stations.”

“That should be good enough. They’ll get the letters; we’ll plant the
explosives; they’ll search for them and find them; we won’t have to blow up
anything. We’ll still get the attention for our cause—”

“Why are you like this?” Philipe asked.

“Like what?”

“Why do you care so much about these people? Have they ever cared about
you? Have they ever noticed you?”

“No,” I admitted. “But they haven’t done anything to hurt me either.”

“It has to be personal with you, doesn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“I really hate that about you,” he said. He looked down Main Street. He
took a deep breath, sighed. “But sometimes I wish I was that way too.”

“Do you really want to go through with it?” I gestured around us. “I
mean this is
Familyland.
Do you really want to do anything to hurt
Familyland?”

He was about to reply, about to say something, when he stiffened,
looking furtively around.

“What is it?”

“Something’s changed. Don’t you feel it?”

I shook my head.

“They know. They’re looking for us.”

“What—?”

“The letters must have gotten there early. Fucking post office.” He
stared up the street, scanning the crowd. “Shit. I see them.”

Panic welled within me. “What are we going to do?”

“Get the others and get the hell out of here.”

I looked around, saw a lot of short-haired, gray-suited men on the
sidewalks and in the street. Some of them seemed to be wearing walkie-talkies on
their belts, speaking into transistor headsets. They’d infiltrated the crowd
without me even noticing.

We hurried through Old Town toward Futureland, where Bill and Paul were
supposed to be planting explosives under a seat in the Journey to Jupiter ride.
“Who are those guys?” I asked.

Philipe shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“I didn’t see them until you said something. They’re almost as hard to
notice as we are.”

“That’s what scares me.”

We found Bill and Paul waiting in line for Jupiter. We told them what
was happening and the four of us hurried over to the Submarine ride to find
Steve and Mary.

The gray-suited men were all around.

“Do they work for Familyland?” Bill asked. “Or are they cops?”

“I don’t know,” Philipe repeated. He sounded tense.

The men were everywhere, but they didn’t notice us. I was not even sure
that they knew who or what they were looking for. We rounded up Steve and Mary
and were about to head over to the Enchanted Mountain when, from hidden
loudspeakers all over the park, a calm and reassuring, serious yet friendly
voice announced: “Due to unforeseen circumstances, Familyland will be closing in
five minutes. Please proceed to the main gate.”

Around us, rides were shutting down. People were being quickly and
efficiently herded by cheerful young red-coated men and women toward the park
entrance.

“—All guests will be issued complimentary return passes for two days
at Familyland, the Home of Fun!”

The message was repeated.

“Get a move on,” Philipe said. “They’re closing in on us. Without a
crowd for us to hide in, they’ll see us for sure.”

We found Pete and John waiting by the African Princess, Don and James
standing in front of the High Seas Adventure ride. By now the park was almost
emptied of normal tourists. Teams of the gray-suited men, accompanied by what
looked like uniformed policemen, were patrolling the walkways and thoroughfares,
walking into the rides and shops and attractions.

Philipe looked at his watch. “That’s it,” he said. “The others should
still be outside. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

All ten of us ran back through Wild West Land. We hurried past the shops
and arcades.

And saw Tommy and Buster walk through the front entrance of the park
into a deserted Old Town.

They got several yards up the street before they were spotted. Then the
gray suits were talking frantically into headsets and walkie-talkies, uniforms
were drawing guns, crouching into firing positions.

“Run!” Philipe yelled.

“Get out!” I screamed.

We were all yelling, shouting at the top of our lungs for them to
hightail it out of here, but they could not hear us and seemed oblivious to the
fact that Familyland was practically deserted save for themselves and the gray
suits and the uniforms.

A couple of the suits looked in our direction as we screamed, but we
ducked into a doorway, were quiet for a moment, and were forgotten.

“Stay where you are!” someone announced over a loudspeaker.

We came out of our hiding place and saw Tommy running like hell back
toward the entrance, having obviously figured out that something was wrong.
Buster, though, looked confused. He stood in place, turning back toward Tommy,
then back toward the men, not moving in either direction.

“Surrender your weapons!” the loudspeaker said.

For a second, it looked like a scene in a silent comedy. Buster stood
there, puzzled, glanced around as if searching for someone else they might be
addressing, then pointed quizzically toward himself as if to say, “Who? Me?”

Then there was a shot.

And Buster went down.

“No!” I screamed.

I started toward him, but Philipe grabbed my collar and pulled me back.
“Forget it,” he hissed. “It’s too late for him now. We have to save ourselves.”

“He might still be alive!”

“If he is, they have him. Come on.”

We cut through the open patio of a restaurant, ran down a side path past
some restrooms and a diaper-changing station, through a gate marked EMPLOYEES
ONLY.

“What about Tommy?” Mary asked.

“He’ll make it back,” Philipe said. “He’s smart.”

We were behind Familyland’s false front, in what looked like a parking
lot between office buildings, and we ran toward where we knew the main public
parking lot was located. We sprinted past one of the buildings and through an
unattended open gate, and found ourselves in front of Familyland. We were far
away from where our cars were located, but amazingly, idiotically, they did not
seem to have staked out the parking lot, and we ran unchecked to our cars.

Tommy was waiting by the Mercedes, and Junior and Tim were parked
nearby. All looked worried and frightened, and Philipe shouted at them to get
the hell out of here and make sure they were not followed.

I got in the Mercedes with Philipe, and we flew over the parking lot’s
speed bumps, bottoming out as we skidded onto the main road. Philipe turned,
then sped over the freeway, zigzagged through a residential neighborhood, and
drove all the way down Lincoln to Los Alamitos before doubling back and hitting
Chapman and heading home. We were not followed.

The rest of them were already waiting for us when we arrived, and
Philipe parked in front of the sales office and told everyone to pick up
personal effects, it was time to move.

“Where are we going?” Mary asked.

“We’ll find someplace.”

“Maybe they won’t find us here.”

“We can’t take that chance,” he snapped. He looked quickly around the
group. “Everyone still have the explosives and detonators?”

We all nodded.

“Good. Let’s take this place out. I don’t want any trace of us left.”

“It’s daytime,” Tim said. “The models are still open.”

“Just do it.”

We each booby-trapped our own houses. James, John, and I quickly dumped
all the trash cans—the used Kleenex, the empty food cartons, the old
newspapers—on the kitchen floor. I poured lighter fluid all over the trash,
then sprayed the rest on the downstairs carpets.

When we were all packed and in our cars, a block or so away from the
houses, we set off the detonators.

We hadn’t planned it that way, but the houses went off in sequence, from
left to right, and the sight was truly awesome. The explosives we’d gotten were
obviously extremely powerful. Walls blew outward, flames exploded from
underneath suddenly rocketing roofs, and in a matter of seconds our homes looked
like wildly burning piles of junk timber.