by Matt Ritter
Will stared at the open silver rings on the floor and didn’t move.
Millard cocked the hammer of his gun. “I’ve been told that I can get you back to the labor camps in any fashion that I’d like. That includes in a body bag. I’m fine with going that route if you are. If not, lean down and fasten those cuffs.”
Will bent to retrieve the cuffs. He made eye contact with Millard as the rings clicked closed around his wrists.
Millard smirked. “Alright, here we go. Out to the jeep.” He stepped farther into the cell while the soldier at the door backed out behind him. “Move over to the corner.” Will obeyed his command. “Now, I’ll follow you. Try anything stupid and I’d be happy to paint this hallway with your brains.”
Will came around Millard, who kept his distance and stepped out into a long hallway. “Go to the right, slowly,” Millard commanded.
A soldier stood next to the door at the end of the hallway. As Will approached, he stood back and opened the door into another short hallway where a second soldier wearing a gas mask manned a set of doors that led to a covered parking lot at the back of the building.
Will walked slowly, considering his options. He could hear Millard’s purposeful steps trailing him and the doors clicking shut as the soldiers let them through. As he got to the end of the hallway, he could hear the rain outside, pounding the road beyond the covered parking area and running in wide thin sheets along the surfaces beyond. Water bounced off the pavement, shuddered, and died in the deluge of new drops. The smell of rotten garlic hit Will like a punch in the chest. With a single breath, he felt his throat thickening and burn while his cheeks numbed.
He stopped at the end of the hallway a short distance from Millard’s parked jeep and turned around to look at Millard. While they walked, Millard had slipped a gas mask over his face. With his gun in front of him and a muffled voice through the mask, he said, “Go on. Get to the truck.”
Will knew that once he was handcuffed to the jeep, his chances of seeing his daughter were gone. In four hours, he’d be in a high-security wing of the San Ardo labor camp, exactly where he was a week earlier, but now with a dead wife and daughter in mortal danger. He couldn’t get into that truck. With his hands cuffed in front of him, he reached for the pocket with the scalpel, but couldn’t get a hand in. He stretched his fingers out just far enough to feel the steel of the blade handle. Each breath seemed to burn more, and it occurred to him that in this rain he may not survive the ride back to the labor camp anyway. He felt dizzy.
“Come on. What are you waiting for? I said move to the truck.” Millard stood back away from Will, expressionless underneath his mask, the canister pulsing in and out. His eyes cold and calculating, too careful and too smart to get close to Will.
Will turned back to Millard’s jeep, feeling weak in the knees, thighs burning. He thought he may not even be able to make the short walk through the open air. Beyond the building was a toxic shower like none Will had seen. His vision narrowed.
“I’ll just shoot you right here and drag your body into the cargo hold of the truck,” Millard’s muffled, and irritated voice came from behind. “Go on now. Walk.”
While the slow seconds passed, Will’s mind raced through a dismal analysis. Run toward Millard and get shot. Walk forward to the truck, and even if you make it, end up back in the labor camp. His options were few, and none involved any scenarios in which he survived to see his daughter again.
Will took his first careful steps out of the building to the truck, and in that moment something from the side knocked him off his feet. A sound came to him like air being sucked through a pipe, then the pounding of a low drum. The next thing he knew he was on the ground, his only sensation was of his throat burning and his ears ringing. The world had compressed to a silent tunnel, a small segment of pavement just beyond his face.
He lifted his cuffed hands to his ears, and they came away bloody. He tried to focus but couldn’t. He was on the pavement just outside the building where a short distance from his face was half of a brick. Broken bricks were everywhere, raining with violent clinks onto the walkway. Will looked up and saw a wide, jagged hole in the side of the Administration building. He tried to stand, but his muscles weren’t responding.
He rolled onto his side and looked out beyond Millard’s jeep. There was a dark silhouette coming toward him, backlit by the bright haze of the clouded sky. Zach came into focus. He stood motionless, a ghost blending with the mist and water, soaked through, with an awestruck expression. Will pulled a hot burning breath into his lungs and writhed in pain. His eyes went out of focus again, and he felt like he was drowning.
Seconds later Zach was standing over him, yelling something at him. Zach pushed a mask onto Will’s face and helped him to his feet. Will leaned on Zach, and together they limped to Millard’s jeep. Zach helped Will into the passenger seat, slammed the door shut, and ran back toward the building. Will took deep, controlled breaths through the mask. From his seat, he turned toward the building. Bright blue sparks lit up the gloomy morning, and bricks continued to fall from the upper part of the hole in the building. Millard Fillmore was sprawled face-down on the sidewalk where Will was blown off his feet. Will saw Zach kneeling over Millard, frantically searching through his overcoat. Will’s heavy head flopped forward. He closed his eyes and lost consciousness.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Will awoke feeling worse than he could ever remember. Wipers squeaked and slashed back and forth across a foggy windshield. Water sprayed in all directions. A gas mask was pulled securely onto his face, and the filter canister moved in and out with each breath. He reached up with handcuffed hands and lifted the mask off his head.
“You’ll want to keep that on,” Zach said, not looking at Will. He was hunched over the steering wheel, focused on the wet road ahead.
Will’s head pounded. His throat was swollen, his eyes awash with tears, and the smell of garlic hung thick in the car. He pulled the mask back over his face and took deep breaths.
“What happened?” he asked through the mask.
“I found the keys to your cuffs in his jacket. There,” Zach said, pointing to the dashboard.
While Will worked the round key from Millard’s key chain into the keyhole of the handcuffs, Zach slowed the car, jerking the jeep into a lower gear. A loud grinding sound came from the transmission.
“Do you know how to drive?” Will asked.
“Never drove a car before. Spent lots of time on my daddy’s tractor, though. Seems like the same basic concept.”
“Where are we headed?” Will asked.
“I have no idea. I just drove so we could get out of there while everyone was distracted.”
Will freed himself from the handcuffs and looked down at his handgun, which Zach had set in the Jeep's center console. He pulled the scalpel out of his pocket and set it next to the gun. He stared at the blade, pondering the small and ineffective weapon that had been so important for him while in the holding cell. The scalpel was a pact between him and the science minister, whom he figured he’d never see again.
As they drove the rain slackened.
“There’s water in the pack on the back seat. You should drink,” Zach said.
Will reached around and extracted the plastic bottle from the pack. It was the same pack he’d taken from the dead boy by the river, now empty of its explosives.
“Thank you,” Will said while lifting the mask from his face and sipping the water.
He returned the mask to his mouth and breathed evenly, starting to feel his senses returning. He looked out the windshield to see if he could determine where they were. They were headed east into the morning sun, which was beginning its cold transect above the obstructed downvalley sky.
As far as he could tell, they were on a side shoot of the longvalley freeway somewhere in the eastern suburbs of Salinas City. Another grind of the gears and Zach halted the jeep on the edge of the road. The rain had slowed to a mist. With the diesel engine c
lucking its idle underneath them, they turned around, peered through the rear window, and surveyed the road behind them. Will could hear Zach panting quietly.
“Doesn’t look like we were followed,” Zach said.
“What happened? How did you get here?”
“I’ll explain, but should I keep driving?” Zach asked.
“They’ll be looking for us and this jeep,” Will responded. “We need to get to the border camp immediately. They took Helen there.”
“Which way?”
Will used his sleeve to wipe the condensation off the inside of his window. He stared at the mountains, trying to focus.
“There. See the old Fremont communications tower?”
“Yeah, I see it.”
“That’s to the east of us. We need to keep heading downvalley. We’re in the Natividad District. Keep going straight. We can take the Old Stage Offshoot if it isn’t blocked.”
“Do you want to drive?” Zach asked.
“No, you’re doing great.”
Zach stepped on the clutch, jammed the gearstick forward, and raced the engine. The tires screeched on the wet pavement as they lurched into motion.
Will pushed the mask tight to his face as they came into a cloud burst and thunder clapped above them. Even breathing through the filter, he felt nauseous. What the science minister had told him about people dying even when they were dry formed a pool of fear in the pit of his stomach. He sunk back into the seat and closed his eyes again. As the sickening rush of water flowed over the jeep he tried to breathe calmly through the mask.
Zach glanced at him. “You alright?” he asked.
“I’ll be fine,” Will said, but he didn’t feel fine. He was feeling claustrophobic. He suppressed the fear in his gut and asked, “How did you get to the Valley Administration building?”
“Dick Nixon.”
“Dick Nixon?”
“When you and Mary were taken, I sat out in the rain on the fire escape below his apartment until all the soldiers had left. I had the gun and the explosives in the pack, and I didn’t know what to do. I was going to force Dick to help me find you, but when I came back into the apartment, he was there at the table and didn’t even resist me. He was partly shocked by me coming in from the rain, but also he felt terrible.”
“What do you mean?”
“I guess he was trying to find out about your daughter, but they were on to us and came to the apartment without him knowing.”
“But the three knocks on the door; that was his system.”
“He told me they held him at gunpoint.”
Will breathed steadily through the mask, trying to keep his head clear. “Hmmm. Not sure I believe any of what he says.”
“Yeah, I guess it doesn’t matter. I was going to shoot him right there in his apartment, but he helped me devise a plan to get to you. I waited for him to find out what was going on. I had no choice but to trust him. He didn’t know I had the explosives.”
Will stared forward as the rain once again abated.
“Where’s Mary?” Zach asked.
“What?” Will’s ears were still ringing.
“What happened to Mary?” Zach asked loudly.
“I’m not sure. She was with the children in the Administration building until they were moved to the border.”
They raced along the raised causeway between inundated fields. Areas of rich soil, once so productive, now only flooded wetlands invaded by cattails and pickleweed from all sides.
“Dick turned out to be a good guy. He has a lot of loyalty to you and felt terrible about what happened. He helped me get to the building and find out when and where you were being transferred. I didn’t have a plan other than to break you out of there somehow. I guess I got lucky, recognizing this jeep. The timing just worked out.”
“Yes, it did.”
“I was outside in the rain at the back of the building all morning, trying not to be seen, as it got lighter. When Millard pulled up and went inside, I placed the explosives next to the door. I thought they’d create a distraction while I grabbed you from Millard. I didn’t know how big the explosion would be. It damn near tore off half the building. At first, I thought I killed you.”
“You almost did.”
“Was Millard alive?”
“I didn’t check. He wasn’t moving.”
Will and Zach drove on. A wake of toxic mist swirled behind them. The rain had ceased by the time they were on Old Stage Road. Dead snags of trees lined the road, bark concrete gray and smooth, still standing, but naked of their leaves. Will watched patches of sunken fields pass by, abandoned long ago to flooding. Lines of water pooled in ancient furrows reflecting white against the sky. Strawberries were farmed here once but had long ago become impossible to grow in the soggy fields.
The jeep was the only car on the rutted road in any direction. When they came upon a knoll at the eastern edge of the Valley, Will asked Zach to pull over onto the muddy shoulder, where they got out and surveyed the Valley. Salinas City, where it was still raining, rose out of the low clouds.
“There,” Will said, pointing downvalley to a clear narrowing between rolling hills. “See the trucks? Beyond that is the encampment, and beyond there is the border. That’s where all the crossings happen. If Helen’s here, that’s where we’ll find her.”
“I see it,” Zach said, squinting into the haze.
“You can barely make out the wall crossing the hills beyond the trucks.” Will’s tone and expression changed to something darker, and he spoke almost to himself, “I thought I’d never be back here.”
“What’s our plan?” Zach asked.
“We’re near the camp. We need to get rid of this jeep and head the rest of the way on foot. As we get closer, there could be soldiers everywhere.”
“What about the rain?”
“We can’t keep this thing. They’ll find us if we do. We need to get to Helen as soon as possible. We’ll find shelter. If they send her over the border, in the rain or not, she won’t come back.”
Zach drove the jeep down off the hill back onto the Valley floor, where they left it on a dirt side road behind a stand of live oaks. As Will closed the door, wind rustled through the trees, and water fell from leaves and drummed against the waterlogged ground. He looked up beyond the leaves to the thick clouds skirting across the sky.
Zach pulled his pack from the back seat, then stood and looked up at the sky, blinking his bloodshot eyes. Will wondered how he could have ever considered not saving him at his grandparents.
“Ready?” Will asked.
Zach nodded, then slammed the door.
“At this point, if it rains, if anything happens to me, don’t worry about rescuing me. Go straight to Helen. Do whatever you need to do to get her as far away from the border as possible. At least you can both travel in the rain.”
“Understood.”
“Thank you,” Will said.
“Of course,” Zach said. “Sorry about the explosion.”
“I mean for all of it. Thank you,” Will repeated, holding his gaze on Zach.
“I know,” Zach said with a nod.
As they stepped away from Millard’s jeep, a troubling wind rose over the low hills in front of them, moving the leaden squall line of sky over the border in their direction. Will turned into the caustic breeze, snugged the gas mask onto his bearded face, and jogged in the direction of the border. Zach limped beside him, one leg strong and limber, the other weak and stiff, straining to keep pace.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Ben Harrison was in the lab when he heard the explosion. The whole building shuddered underneath him, and the lights went down for a moment, then flickered back on. He held onto the countertop while the room ceased its swaying. He rushed to the window where he could see white smoke rising in the rain from the base of the building.
The power outage caused the centrifuge he was standing by to turn off and whine to a stop. He untwisted the lid from the rotor, lifted a tube of
clear fluid out of the machine, and held it up to the light. A beige coagulate hovered at the bottom of the tube. He carefully placed the tube back into the rotor with eleven others just like it and went back to the window. The white smoke was still rising.
Back at the centrifuge, Ben worked quickly, pulling tubes out in succession and carefully decanting the clear liquid off the thick plug at the bottom into an opaque plastic bottle. He poured each tube in succession, filling the bottle.
A knock came on the lab door as he screwed down the lid. Before he could answer, the door swung open. It was Dick Nixon standing in the doorway, a surprised expression with sweat rings staining an area of his shirt far beyond his armpits.
“Dick,” Ben said, not surprised to see him.
“What are you doing? We have to go immediately,” Dick replied, speaking like he couldn’t catch his breath. “Everything is starting.”
He approached Ben and continued in an urgent whisper. “There’s been an attack on the building. The whole south side is blown open.”
“Calm down,” Ben whispered loudly. “Stick with our plan or we’ll both get caught.”
“This wasn’t expected,” Dick said. The whites of his eyes were bright and made a full circle around the irises. “Are you still in contact with the colonel?”
“No, but we talked yesterday. Are you ready for what you have to do?”
“Is that it?”
Ben nodded.
“Have you been here all night?”
“I had to be. The pilot should be waiting for you. Don’t stop for anything, stay out of sight, and make it there as soon as you can.”
“What’s in the bottle?”
“Our only hope. It has to work. This is all we have.” Ben held the bottle up to the light and swirled its contents. “It should be enough.”
“What about the children? The teacher?”
“I’ll get to them.” Ben looked at his watch. “There isn’t much time,” he said, handing Dick the opaque plastic bottle.