by Rob Hart
“So whoever took the stuff you hid has bad information.”
“Right. And it couldn’t have been Katashi, or else he wouldn’t have shown up this morning. So figure it’s someone on Marx’s team. Either way—I think we might be the only ones who actually have everything we need.”
I pick up the book and pull out my phone. Still enough juice to see the cipher.
“Do you have a pen?” I ask.
“No.”
“Let’s go see the girls. They’re close. Might help to have the computer, too.”
We make our way out of the tree house, climbing down the branches, careful not to slip on the wet bark. I hop onto the boardwalk and jog for the camgirl house, which isn’t too far away, Tibo right behind me. We get there and I knock. There’s some shuffling inside and Sunny peeks her head out. I can’t see anything past her collarbone, but she doesn’t seem to be wearing any clothes.
“We need light and a computer and various other things,” I tell her, stumbling over my words.
“Ash, we’re broadcasting right now…”
Tibo pokes his head around. “Sunny, it’s important. I’ll hold you harmless on the camp’s cut for the next two months if you stop the show and let us in.”
Sunny thinks about it for a second and says, “Three months.”
“Deal.”
She disappears. There’s murmuring inside. After a few moments Sunny opens the door in a flower-print robe. Moony is standing behind her, barefoot in a too-long t-shirt, face flushed, looking a little annoyed. I think there’s a third person in the room with them, lying on the pillows at the center of the room, but then realize it’s a blow-up sex doll with “NIK” written across the stomach.
We step inside and the bright light makes us both squint. Tibo looks around at the shelves, and the glittering rainbows of sex aids, and says, “That’s an awful lot of dildos.”
Moony smiles and shrugs.
Sunny sees the book in my hand and says, “Why do you have that piece of trash?”
“Hey, that wasn’t a bad book,” Moony says.
“Here we go again. She writes like a grade-schooler.”
“Yeah, and she’s also a multi-millionaire,” Moony says. “Clearly she understands something about the world that you don’t, smarty pants.”
“Fine,” says Sunny, rolling her eyes before she turns to us. “What’s going on?”
I cross to the desk, grab a pen and a piece of paper out of the printer, sit on the chair next to the computer. Get to working on the cipher while Tibo explains to them, in broad strokes, what’s happening.
I’m halfway through when Tibo finishes his story. He lets it settle and Moony says, “We think someone’s been trying to get in here to use our rig. Like I mentioned to you the other night, Ash.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t come by. There’s a lot going on.”
“You still owe us from the first time you used the computer.”
“Yes, I know. Night bacon. We’ll settle up. Right now we’ve got to settle this.”
I finish the cipher.
It’s numbers. A lot of numbers.
I don’t know what to make of them. It’s a long string. I tap the pen against the page. The three of them crowd around me, looking at the paper.
“What do you think?” Tibo asks.
“No idea.”
Sunny kneels on the pillow next to me, adjusts her robe to protect her modesty, and takes the pen and paper out of my hand. She looks at the cipher on my phone, starts counting off and putting slashes through at various points.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“You did it as one long string,” she says. “But look at the way the code is split onto different lines. Like new paragraphs. I think that means the numbers split up, too.”
Once she’s got the slashes through, she rewrites them in long rows.
After the first two, Tibo says, “Those look like coordinates.”
The third row is much smaller.
“I think that’s a date,” Sunny says.
I take the paper and open an internet browser. I enter the coordinates into Google Maps and it pinpoints a spot about twenty miles away from here. A little fucking around on Google reveals that’s the site for the fracking operation. Okay, that much I guessed already.
It’s easy to lose track of time in the woods. Sometimes I’d be hard pressed to tell you what month it is, and that has less to do with drinking as much as I did, and more with the fact that time sort of comes untethered when you’re not hooked into the grid.
So I have to look up at the top of the screen to verify the date.
It’s today.
The rain is really coming down now. We sprint for the front of the camp. Tibo yells over his shoulder, “We’ll get a car. Get to the road. Call Ford.”
But as we make it to the main part of camp, on the other side of the office dome, there’s a roar, like a car engine, and a flash of movement. Something dark hurtling through the trees. The FBI van is back.
Katashi did say we were going to have visitors. That kind of slipped my mind.
“Where we found Cannabelle,” I tell Tibo.
I run the other way, diving off the path and into some brush. Tibo breaks in the other direction. The place where we found Cannabelle is remote, overgrown and treacherous. The FBI is going to concentrate on the domes and tree houses, not empty stretches of woods. And it’s close enough to the back road that I can get to Aesop’s car.
I climb onto the boardwalk and run for a little bit, jump off, back into the brush, careful to aim for level ground, watching for things like small creeks and fallen logs and giant spiders in webs spun across trees.
The shitty feeling catches up with me. I try to keep myself steady, but stumble as the ground tilts up, fall to my hands and knees, scraping my palms on the ground.
Get back up and go.
I see the sign warning off visitors to Sunny and Moony. Come up on a creek and leap across, cut it a little close and end up splashing down into the cool water, soaking my shoes. Check around me so that I’m sure I’m not being followed. I stand for a second, breathe in deep, get myself centered.
It’s quiet now, all around.
More running. More jumping. I get to the clearing where we found Cannabelle.
A branch appears out of nowhere, hitting me across the chest. I slam into it at full speed, nearly come off my feet, and hit the ground. My head comes down pretty hard. My vision goes wonky as the branch falls to the ground next to me.
There are hands on me, turning me over. Someone pulls my hands behind my back and wraps something hard around my wrists, digging into my skin. Pulls me up into a kneeling position.
I expect to see some asshole in an FBI getup, and instead find Gideon.
He’s in a black t-shirt and black jeans and an actual fucking black beret, which if I wasn’t zip tied right now I would smack him in his stupid face for wearing.
“Where you running off to?” Gideon asks.
My chest aches. I breathe through the pain. “I’m off to stop whatever tomfuckery you and Marx are up to. And since the FBI is raiding camp I figured it was as good a time as any to go.”
He looks into the woods, his face strained with concern.
“I don’t see anyone,” he says.
“Well, they’re there. I figure we have a little time before they show up here and fuck stuff up, but probably not long. How about you untie me so we can get through with me kicking your ass. Otherwise we’re just delaying the inevitable.”
He reaches behind his back, presents a small handgun and pulls back the slide. It makes a chik-chik sound, and a bullet flips into the air and lands in the grass next to us. He looks down at it, confused.
“Do you even know how guns work, you asshole?” I ask. “Cocking it is stupid movie bullshit. You wasted a bullet trying to look like a tough guy.”
He purses his lips, reaches the gun back, and cracks me across the face.
Pai
n bolts through my skull and I fall to my side. I run my tongue along my teeth and taste blood. He pulls me back up and presses the gun to my head.
“I know how the trigger works,” he says. “I figure that’s all that matters.”
For a second I am pretty sure he’s going to pull said trigger, and it reminds me of the last time I was on my knees, surrounded by trees, with a gun to my head. I am not a fan of this trend. I tense my shoulders, say a prayer, and prepare for the lights to go out, when there’s a crashing sound in the woods.
We turn and Tibo comes out of the tangle, sees us both, and puts his hands up.
Gideon takes a step back and raises the gun at Tibo. He’s far enough away from me I can’t dive at his legs. He waves. “Come over, turn around.”
“Gideon, let’s talk about this…”
“Get over here and turn around!” He screams it so loud his face goes red. Which makes me hope that one of our FBI friends heard it. I wasn’t really excited to see them before, but this is the kind of party they’re more than welcome to crash.
Tibo walks over and turns, puts his hands behind his back. Gideon zip ties them together, then kicks him behind the knees and drops him to the ground, the two of us now lined up next to each other.
That’s thrown him off. He seemed happy to kill me a second ago. Now that he’s got two people to handle, it’s making things a little more complicated. I figure to lean into what I do best, which is make things worse.
“Nice fucking hat,” I tell him. “What kind of look are you going for? Che Guevara’s special needs brother?”
“Shut the fuck up, tough guy. Not so tough now, are you?”
“Matter of fact, I am. Because I don’t need to hide behind a gun to threaten you. Take these zip ties off, let’s have a fair fight. See how long you last. I bet you’re on the ground before I get my fucking hands up.”
“Shut up,” he says.
He swings the gun across my face again. My head snaps back and I go down. It hurts more the second time. I land on my side and stay there a bit. The rain, at least, feels nice.
“You fire that gun, you’re going to bring the FBI over here pretty quick,” Tibo says. “They’re going to hear that.”
Gideon looks down at the gun, and then at the both of us. I climb back into a kneeling position, push my tongue against my teeth to make sure none of them are loose. They don’t seem to be, which is luckier than I deserve.
“Fine, then you’re coming with me,” he says. “Both of you, get up, now.”
We climb to our feet and he gets behind us. Tibo is leading, with me in between them.
“Single file, let’s go,” Gideon says.
“Which way do we go?” Tibo asks.
“Back road.”
We walk, Tibo leading the way. Gideon is behind me, but not so close that I can turn around quick and knock the gun away. Not that I even really want to do that, but it at least would have given us a chance. I listen hard, wonder if it’s worth calling out for help, but that might piss him off enough that he shoots us.
Tibo glances over his shoulder. “So what’s the plan, Gideon? Taking us to Marx?”
“No, I’m taking you someplace quiet, so I can kill you both and get this done with. This would have been a whole lot easier if you’d just eaten the damn mushrooms.”
Well, that explains that.
“Fuck you very much,” I tell him. “What does it matter anyway? You don’t have the cipher. I bet you don’t even have the right book.”
“Neither did you,” he says. “I found your stash. Lucky for us, Marx sorted it out. The fracking site. It’s a little last minute, but we’ve been getting ready for the past couple of days. Time to get to work.”
“Well, good for him.”
“Shut up.”
We walk a little more. I run through scenarios in my head, try to come up with something that involves us not getting shot. Can’t really come up with one.
“This is insane. You know that, Gideon?” Tibo asks.
“No, insanity is signing petitions and going to rallies and expecting things to change,” he says. “The only way to get people to listen is to make them listen. That means hitting them where it hurts. That means not showing mercy. We have to show strength.”
“Sounds like Marx has got his hand up your ass, working your mouth,” I tell him.
“You think I’m wrong?” he asks. “Go ahead, tell me what peaceful protest has ever accomplished. Give me an example.”
“How about you give me an example of a stupid fucking plan like this working?”
“We’re revolutionaries. The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. Thomas Jefferson said that.”
I laugh at that. “Thomas Jefferson was smart. You’re a fucking moron. The thing is, you actually are a terrorist.”
“Terrorists fight for outdated ideologies. We’re fighting for the future. For the greater good.”
“You know what the problem with people like you is?” I ask. “It’s people who think their good is greater than everyone else’s. You’re all the fucking same.”
“Don’t make me hit you again,” he says.
“So what are you going to do, exactly?” Tibo asks.
“Shut up,” Gideon says.
“C’mon, you’re going to kill us anyway.”
The way Tibo says this is very cavalier.
“We’re going to fuck them up good,” Gideon says. “Destroy their operation so that they can’t get back on track. At least, not without dropping a ton of money. That’s the definition of hitting them where it hurts.”
“And how is that some next level shit?” I ask.
“The security guards,” Gideon says.
“What about them?” I ask.
“Work got suspended for a couple of days to resolve a permitting issue. There are two guards on site. And they’re going to be dead men pretty soon.”
Tibo stops and turns. So do I.
“Are you kidding?” Tibo asks.
“They’re working for the enemy,” Gideon says. “Ignorance is not an excuse.”
That’s the next level shit. That’s the message they plan to send. They’re going to kill innocent people to make a fucking point. That guy they drowned in pig shit, it wasn’t an accident. It was a statement.
“You really are terrorists,” I say.
“History will absolve us,” Gideon says.
We’re close to the road now.
And I find myself with a choice.
Let him kill me, or make a go of trying to stop him.
I might still get shot in the face anyway, but at least I’ll have tried. There are innocent lives on the line now. It would be selfish to not at least make the effort. I slow down a little, thinking maybe that’ll get him closer to me, and I can drop low, turn, and throw myself into him. Hopefully knock the gun clear, and he won’t accidently fire at Tibo’s back.
If this is how I die, I think it’ll be worth it.
That brings me a nice little slice of serenity. Nothing will probably ever completely erase all the bad I’ve done, but it doesn’t hurt to try.
Breathe deep.
Just as I’m about to launch, there’s a grunt and crashing sound behind me. I turn to see Gideon falling into a heap, Aesop standing behind him, holding Gideon’s gun, his hair and beard soaked and plastered to his face by the rain.
“You’re alive!” I yell, rushing forward and trying to throw my arms around him, before realizing they’re still behind my back. I turn toward him. “Little help?”
He pulls a small knife from his belt, flicks out the blade, and cuts the zip ties. I turn and give him a proper hug. His eyes look sunken, his skin waxy, but he’s all there.
“Guys,” Tibo says, pushing us apart. “We kinda have to go. Right now.”
Aesop frees Tibo, takes the gun, and puts it into the belt loop of his pants while I pull some zip ties out of Gideon’s pants and bind his hands behin
d his back, then his ankles together. He fights against it but he’s not going anywhere.
“You fucking assholes have no idea who you’re fucking with,” he says, spitting.
I kneel down to him and smile. “You are very lucky I wouldn’t hit a guy who’s tied up. Because, frankly, you deserve it.”
“Help!” he screams. “Help!”
Well. That’ll serve to draw the FBI. We make for the back road and there’s a car parked behind Aesop’s. Presumably the one Gideon was using. The trunk is popped open and inside are two handguns, a shotgun, a hunting rifle, a pile of zip ties, and three canisters of gasoline. There’s also a duffel bag covered in dirt.
The dirt. Cannabelle’s hands. They must have had this stuff buried out in the woods. She saw it, went rooting around, ended up dead. Good money is on Marx. Me and him are definitely going to have this one out.
“Should we take some guns?” Tibo asks.
“None for me, thanks,” I tell them. “I don’t like guns.”
Tibo shrugs and picks up the shotgun. “Never hurts to be prepared.”
He cocks it and a shell ejects, tumbles through the air, and hits the ground.
“Does no one here know how guns work?” I ask.
Aesop takes the shotgun out of Tibo’s hands, cocks it until all the shells have been ejected, and hands it back. “Use it like a bat if you need to. But I’m not getting shot because you don’t know how to use a gun. I’m going to hold on to Gideon’s.”
I hand him his keys and we climb into his car. As he turns over the engine, I tell him, “Stop.” Jump out of the car and run my hand under the wheel wells. On the right passenger side is a small black box, connected magnetically to the underside of the car. I toss it out into the woods.
“FBI was tracking you,” I tell him.
“Fuckers!” Aesop yells.
He slams on the gas, spins the car around, and guns it in the other direction. Within moments we’re tearing ass down the road, away from the main road. I haven’t been this way before. We drive for a little bit until we’re on another service road, and he cuts a hard left.
“So what happened to you?” I ask him.