by Blake Crouch
“We have to get out of the car,” she whispered.
Already her eyes were burning, the fumes getting stronger.
“They’ll shoot us if we get out,” Naomi said.
“They’ll burn us alive if we stay in. They’ve shot some of the plastic gas cans on top of the Jeep.”
Dee opened the door and tumbled out. The glare of the flashlights maxed her retinas and she could see little of who was there nor determine their number amid the afterimages that pulsed purple in the dark.
“Stop right there.” A man’s voice. Dee stood and raised her hands.
“Please. I have two children with me. Naomi, Cole, get out.” She felt one of them, probably Cole, glom onto her right arm.
“They’re like me,” Cole said.
“What are you talking about?”
“They have light around their head. All of them.”
“Get back in your car,” the man said, close enough now for Dee to get a decent look—three-day beard, dark navy trousers and parka, aiming an automatic weapon at her face.
He motioned toward the car with the machinegun as others emerged out of the dark behind him.
Dee considered the Glock pushed down the back of her pants. Suicide.
“Bill, check the driver.”
A short, stocky soldier put a light through Ed’s window.
“Gone to be with the Lord, boss.”
“Got your Zippo on you, you chain-smoking motherfucker?”
“Yeah.”
“Particularly attached to it?”
“It was my older brother’s.”
“Cough that shit up.”
“Fuck, Max.”
The lightbeam glimmered off the steel as the soldier chucked his lighter to the man who held Dee and her children at gunpoint, Max catching it with his left hand, never letting the AR-15 waver in his right.
“What are you doing with them, little man?”
“Do not speak to my son.”
“Shut the fuck up.”
“What do you mean?” Cole asked.
“You know exactly what I mean. Don’t you want to come with us?”
“Why don’t you leave us alone? We aren’t doing anything to you.”
Max looked up at Dee with unfiltered hatred. “Get back in the car.”
“No.”
“Get in the car or I’ll shoot you and your children in the knees and put you in there myself. You can roast healthy or you can roast with shattered kneecaps. It makes not a fucking bit of difference to me so long as I get to watch you burn.”
Dee said, “What did we ever. . .”
Max aimed the AR-15 at her left knee.
Split second choice. Reach for the Glock or speak one last time to your children.
“I love you, Naomi. I love you, Cole. No one and nothing can take that away.”
“I can,” Max said.
She drew her kids into her, Naomi quaking and crying, but she didn’t allow herself to avert her eyes from the man who was going to murder them. She stared Max down, wondering would he think of them years from now on his deathbed in a moment of clarity and regret, wondering if her eyes would always haunt him, but she doubted it as he returned the stare, a malevolent smile curling his lips, Dee’s heart in her throat.
The slug mostly decapitated Bill.
A shotgun thundered out of the woods, Max spinning toward the gunfire, several of his men falling, flashlights hitting the ground, muzzleflames spitting out of the machineguns. Dee jerked Naomi and Cole to the ground and dragged them crawling away from the Jeep toward the other side of the road, where they rolled into a ditch.
Smell of moist, rich earth. The gunfire intensifying, bullets striking the trees behind them, Dee pushing Naomi’s and Cole’s heads down, pulling Cole into her chest and speaking into his ear over the shattering noise of the firefight, “I’m right here, I’ve got you.” She couldn’t hear him crying but she could feel his body shaking.
After what seemed ages, the flurry of gunfire dissipated.
They lay in the dark, Dee staring into a wall of dirt.
Someone yelled, “Fall back.”
Footsteps crunched through the leaves—someone retreating into the woods.
A man groaned nearby, begging for help.
Three reports from a handgun.
An AR-15 answered.
The exchange went on for several minutes, and it struck Dee that the gunfire sounded like the communication of terrible birds. She was tempted to climb out of the ditch and have a look, but she couldn’t bring herself to move.
After a while, the shooting stopped altogether.
Footfalls echoed through the forest.
The man nearby pleaded to God.
Someone said, “Jim, right there.”
A machinegun ripped up the silence.
Four shotgun blasts roared back.
Footsteps moved closer to the ditch.
“Sure we got all of them?”
A woman answered, “Yeah, there were nine. I count one, two, three, four, five six. . .” She laughed. “Where do you think you’re going?” A single handgun report rang out. “And this one’s still hanging in there, too.”
“No, Liz.”
“Why?”
“Please, it hurts so bad.”
“You’re breaking my fucking heart. Why can’t I end this piece of shit?”
“Mathias wanted one alive.”
“’Kay. Driver’s dead, but I saw three others get out. Woman, couple of kids.”
“They crawled into the woods when the shooting started. May be gone by now.”
Footsteps moved across the dirt road and stopped at the edge of the ditch.
The woman yelled into the woods, “Woman and two kids? You out there? We’re the good guys, and the bad guys are dead or wishing they were.”
Dee didn’t move, not wanting to startle anyone, just said softly, “We’re right here. Underneath you.”
The woman knelt down. “Anyone hurt?”
“No.” Dee pushed herself out of the dirt and sat up. “Thank you. They were going to burn us.”
“You’re safe now.” The woman reached out, took hold of Dee’s hand. “I’m Liz.”
“Dee.”
“And who’s this?”
“This is Cole, and this is Naomi.”
“Hi, Cole. Hi, Naomi.”
Liz wore a dark, one-piece jumpsuit. Long black hair drawn back into a ponytail under her black beanie. Even squatting down, Dee could see that she was tall and fit, possessing a hard, wiry strength evident in the angular tapering of her jawline.
“Come on, let’s get out of here,” Liz said. “You want to come with us?”
“Where to?”
Liz smiled. “It’s not far.”
Dee held Cole’s and Naomi’s hands as they followed Liz and the others back through the woods, guided by flashlights. Two of their party lagged behind, dragging the injured soldier who they could hear groaning some distance back through the trees, Dee feeling the ache, despite everything, to attend to him. A deep-rooted hardwiring from her medical training that she wondered if she would ever lose.
A quarter mile into the woods, they stopped.
Someone said, “We’re at the perimeter.”
A voice squeaked back over a radio. “You’re clear.”
“We picked up a woman and two children. I’m going to have Liz put them in number fourteen. Have someone bring some food and water over. New clothes, too.”
“Copy that.”
Dee noticed light glinting off coils of razorwire straight ahead.
One of the men stepped on the wire where it sagged, made an opening for everyone to crawl through. They went on, and after another fifty feet, finally emerged from the woods. Under the moonlight, Dee could see a number of smaller buildings scattered through the clearing, satellites of a large, arched steel building.
Liz fell back and walked with them.
“You must be exhausted,” she said. “We’
re going to put you up in a cabin. I want you to know that you’re safe here. See those?” She pointed toward opposing ends of the clearing where twenty-foot log towers stood near the edge of the forest. “There’s a heavily-armed man in each wearing night vision goggles. They’ll be watching over the clearing while you sleep.”
They were moving toward a grouping of small cabins now.
“I don’t understand. What is this place?” Dee asked.
“It’s our home.”
The cabin was clean and smaller than the shacks at the top of Togwotee Pass. There were two beds and a chair pushed under a desk and a chest of drawers. Sink and shower.
“We cut the generators off at night,” Liz said. She opened the top drawer and took out several candles and a box of matches. In a minute, candlelight warmed the room.
She came over to Dee and inspected her face.
“You’re covered in blood. I’ll make sure they bring a basin of water so you can clean up. The showers won’t run hot until morning.”
“Thank you, Liz.”
“I’ll leave you guys now. Food should be here soon.”
Dee stripped to her bra and panties, suddenly aware of how terrible she smelled. She bent down and dipped her face into the basin of water and wiped off the dried blood with a washcloth. Scrubbed her armpits, did a cursory cleaning of her arms and legs, but her hair still felt stringy and greasy.
Cole slept. Dee and Naomi sat on the other bed devouring the food that had been brought for them—a tray of fruit and cheese and crackers that tasted better than anything they’d ever eaten.
Dee stowed the Glock under the mattress. They crawled under the covers and it took some time before their body heat warmed the air between the mattress and the sheet, Dee spooning her daughter, sleep right around the corner.
Naomi whispered, “Do you think Dad’s dead?”
Felt like someone driving a spike through the ulcer in Dee’s stomach.
Tomorrow would be four days without him.
“I don’t know, Na.”
“Well, does it feel to you like he is?”
“I don’t know, baby. I can’t even think about it. Please just let me sleep.”
SHE’D just fallen asleep when the windows filled with dawnlight. Dee rose, pulled the curtains, climbed back into bed. Tried to sleep but her thoughts came frenetic and unstoppable. She got up again and went to the window and peered through the split in the curtain. A few people were out already, the long grass blanched with frost, and in daylight, the meadow appeared cluttered—two dozen one-room cabins like the one they occupied, three larger A-frames, the central steel building, and a number of semi-trailers standing along the edge of the woods, rusted all to hell and cemented with pine needles as if it had been centuries since their abandonment. Distant mountains peeked above the pine trees, and Dee sat on the surface of the desk watching the light color them in, and she was still sitting there two and a half hours later when the woman named Liz walked up the path to their cabin.
The main building was fifty feet wide, twice as long, and windowless. Bare lightbulbs dangled from the trusses and the amalgamation of voices caused a hollow, metallic resonance off the corrugated steel. Cheap folding tables had been pushed against the walls, leaving a wide row down the middle. Just inside the entrance, a chalkboard stand displayed: Hash Browns with Bacon & Cheese Omelet.
Liz led them to an empty table.
“We haven’t been able to get into town for several weeks, so we’ve been dipping into our MRE stash.”
“What’s an MRE?” Cole asked.
“Stands for Meal, Ready-to-Eat. It’s an army ration. We bought two truckloads last year.”
Dee could feel the stares coming from every direction, tried to focus on the blemishes in the plastic tabletop, ignoring that twinge in her gut like the first day of junior high and the minefield of the cafeteria.
A teenage girl appeared at the end of the table holding a basket filled with small, brown packages, plastic silverware, and a stack of tin bowls.
“Welcome,” she said.
The man who spoke after breakfast was slight and smoothshaven with thinning blond hair on the brink of turning white. He wore jeans and a plaid shirt and a black down vest. He stood on a table at the back of the mess hall so everyone could see him.
“No doubt you all heard the gunshots late last night. I’m happy to report that Liz and Mike and their team managed to take out the soldiers’ checkpoint at the road.”
Raucous applause broke out.
Someone yelled, “Freemen.”
Silence returned when he lifted his hand.
“No casualties on our end, and the really good news is that we took one alive. Badly wounded, but alive. Liz and Mike also managed to save three lives during the ambush.” He pointed back toward the entrance. “Dee, would you and your children stand up please.”
Dee took Cole’s hand and poked Naomi and they all rose.
“Thank you,” Dee said. She glanced down at Liz. “To you. To Mike, wherever you are, and all of the others who came. My children and I would be dead right now if it wasn’t for you. There’s not a doubt in my mind.”
“Why don’t you come on up here,” the man said.
Dee stepped around her chair and walked down the aisle. When she arrived at the table the man was standing upon, he reached down and opened his hand and pulled her up with him. Slipped his arm around her waist, put his lips to her ear, whispered, “Dee, I’m Mathias Canner. Introduce yourself. Tell us about your journey.”
She looked out over the crowd—fifty, maybe sixty faces staring back at her.
Managed a weak smile.
“I’m Dee,” she said. “Dee Colclough.”
Someone in the back yelled, “Can’t hear you.”
Later, she walked with Mathias. It was midmorning and the sun had cleared the forest wall. The dewy grass drying out. He showed her the well, the greenhouse and chicken coop, the gardens which had already been winterkilled.
“I bought this ninety-acre parcel twelve years ago,” he said. “Sold my business and moved out with several friends from Boise. Something, isn’t it?”
“What exactly brought you out here?”
“Wanting to live as a free man.”
“You weren’t free before?”
He waved to the bearded man up in the guard tower holding a sniper rifle. “Morning, Roger.”
“Morning.”
“All quiet?”
“All quiet.”
As Mathias led Dee into the trees, his right hand unsnapped the holster for the huge revolver at his side.
“Roger came to me nine years ago. He was an investment banker pulling down three mil a year and utterly miserable. The electrified razorwire starts fifty feet in and runs through the woods around the entire clearing. We’ve installed motion detectors at key points and six men walk the perimeter day and night. If I learn that you’re a spy or that you’ve lied to me in any way, I’ll kill your children in front of you, wait a day, and then kill you.”
He stopped and stared at her.
She could hear the hum of the fence behind them, and standing in a patch of light, see the color in his eyes—brown with sunlit flecks of green. Her kneecaps trembled, and for a moment, she thought she might have to sit down.
“I’m just a doctor from Albuquerque,” she said. “Trying to keep my kids safe. Everything I’ve told you is true.”
They walked again.
“Ten days ago, we sent someone out on reconnaissance.”
“They haven’t come back?”
He shook his head. “What’s it like out there?”
“A nightmare. You can’t tell who’s affected until they try to kill you.”
“They aren’t just military?”
“No. They group together and travel in convoys. They recognize the unaffected on sight. I couldn’t tell you how many towns we passed through that have been burned to the ground.”