by Judd Vowell
“Sounded like a truck to me. Ahead of us.”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking. But I didn’t see a thing.” He looked down, deep in thought.
“What’s up?” Jessica asked him.
“We didn’t see them, but they had to have seen us.” He continued spinning the wheels of deduction in his mind. Suddenly, he raised his head to Jessica with a brightness on his face, happy to have come to the answer. But as soon as he said it aloud, the brightness went away. “Jessica, we’re the reason they’re attacking Camp Overlord right now. They’ve been watching us the whole time.”
8.
H enry started frantically pulling items out of his backpack. Once it was empty, he ran his hand through the interior of it until he found something unusual. He reached for a flashlight and shone it into the pack. He turned the opening to Jessica, showing her what he had found.
Underneath the nylon fabric at one of the bottom corners was a small blue light, almost undetectable. Jessica reached in and felt it between her thumb and forefinger. “What is it, Henry?”
“Not sure exactly. But if I had to guess, I’d say it’s some sort of monitor. Something that the ANTs put in there.”
He took a knife from the supplies spread out next to him. “Hold the flashlight where I can see,” he directed Jessica. He dragged the blade across the bottom seam of the backpack. Then he pulled the fabric back and took hold of the device. He held it up, Jessica following his hand with the beam of light. “I can’t believe we did this,” he said in exasperation.
“Did what?” Jessica asked.
“Led them to Overlord. To Daniel and Jeff and the rest of them. Do you remember how easy it was getting out of that utility building? And how nobody came looking for us while we hid in the parking garage? I should’ve realized it was too simple.”
“Henry, we were just trying to get out of there. We couldn’t have known about this. But now that we do, we’ve got to react.” There was my girl, remembering the vehicle they had just heard. Knowing that it would be back.
“Right,” Henry said. “We’ve got to get as far away from this as possible.” He looked down from her face, to the straps over her shoulders. “Jess, is that the same pack you wore into the grid?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Because they’re not dumb enough to only track one of us.”
As if on cue, the same sound from before of a vehicle on the road ahead could be heard. The sun was beginning to break over the horizon in that direction, and the silhouette of a fast-moving jeep was barely visible.
“Quick, Jess,” Henry yelled at her. “Give me your pack!”
Jessica looked at Henry, moving her eyes down to his leg. Then she looked back at the road, at the jeep speeding toward them.
“No time, Henry.” She grabbed the tracking device from his hand before he could think to stop her. “I’ll meet you at the river. And if I don’t, make sure you get back to Mom.”
Henry didn’t have a chance to respond before she was gone. She ran from the woods toward the highway, crossing over the pavement just as the jeep roared past him.
9.
O n the opposite side of the highway was an unkempt field, wide and deep. It had once been a farmed acreage. Maybe wheat, maybe corn – it was hard to discern. In the year since the Great Dark had begun, it had become overgrown and interlaced with weeded grass and wildflowers. The foliage was at least five feet high throughout.
The jeep turned sharply to follow Jessica into the field, but stopped at the edge of it. She had disappeared into the thick vegetation before they could reach her. Henry was frozen where she had left him in the woods, just barely hidden from the growing sunlight.
He held the binoculars to his eyes. There were two ANTs in the back of the jeep. One was manning the large machine gun attached to the bed of the vehicle. The other was a woman, not dressed like the rest. She wasn’t wearing the goggles and face mask like her comrades were. He could only see a portion of her profile from his angle, but I could tell that he recognized her. She was looking down at a device that she held in her hands.
The woman looked up from the device suddenly, yelling a direction to the gunner next to her and pointing to a distant area in the field. He unloaded a volley of bullets into the brown and green and yellow mixture of plant life. The sound of the gun was deafening and constant. He didn’t stop until the woman held her hand up to him. Mechanical smoke and smell hung in the air as the machine gun whirred to a halt.
◊◊◊
I went to Jessica in the field, to be with her in whatever way that I could. She had not joined me in my unearthly state after the attack. I hoped that meant that she had survived it.
I found her crouched and thinking. She was calm, considering her options. And above all else, she was unhurt. The gunfire had been aimed at a spot less than twenty feet from her current position. She had avoided their initial onslaught, but I knew they would be relentless. I guess, based on what happened next, she did, too.
She stood and threw the blue light that Henry had retrieved from his backpack, landing it inside the newly barren area created by the machine gun’s bullets. Then she took the rifle she was carrying off of her shoulder. She raised the scope to her dominant eye and closed the other. The top of her head was just an inch lower than the tallest stalks of former crop and wild grass, keeping her hidden from the ANTs’ eyes. She was pointing her gun at the woman in the back of the jeep, which was raised enough to allow a clear line of sight. The woman was surveying the field with a high-powered scope, hunting.
Jessica pulled the trigger and shouldered the rifle in one movement. She was off and running through the thick field by the time her bullet had met its target. Jessica had aimed for a lethal head-shot on the woman. And her aim was true, as always. Only the scope that the woman was holding up to her eye kept her from certain death.
10.
T he scope flew from the woman’s hands and her head dipped violently backward. She lost her balance and dropped to the bed of the jeep, landing on her back. She raised herself to a sitting position quickly. She had instinctively put her hands to one side of her face, where her left cheekbone met the matching eye socket. As she pulled her hands away, blood poured from the wound. She screamed in pain and anger.
I caught up with Jessica, who was continuing to fight the field’s vegetation as she tried to run. Her progress was slow and arduous. For some reason, intentional or not, she was angling back toward the highway.
As she neared the edge of the tall brush, I wanted to intervene. I wanted to push her back, to keep her hidden. But I was helpless again. An audience member, watching the drama unfold before me. Whether she knew that she was leading herself back into the open or she lost track of her direction, one thing proved certain. Her sacrifice that day was to save Henry and her mother – and she did just that.
11.
P arents are supposed to die before their children. Circle of life and all. I managed to go first, but it didn’t make watching her execution any easier. She was still just a child, even though she did something more grown up than most adults ever consider. I was so proud of her, but I never got to say it.
12.
W hen Jessica broke from the field’s vegetation, she turned to look back at the jeep. She was west of them, but not far. She stood there, not moving. As if she wanted them to see her.
The woman had regained her feet beneath her on the bed of the jeep and placed a large piece of cloth against her gunshot wound. She was peering down at the tracking device again, searching for the blue signals, visibly enraged. She looked in Jessica’s direction with surprise, and froze for a moment in recognition of her prey. Then she yelled at the top of her voice’s volume, “Fire!!!”
The jeep’s gunner had followed the woman’s eyes to where Jessica stood like a statue. She wasn’t unable to move. I came to understand that. Instead, she was holding her ground with purpose. The gunner rotated the machine gun toward her. Jessica lunged to the h
ighway just as he pulled the gun’s trigger, and I expected a flurry of high-caliber bullets to fly toward and possibly into her. But the gun locked, stuttering itself into inability.
Jessica glanced over her shoulder as she ran, stunned like me by the fortuitous development. A smile crept across her face. Until she saw the wounded woman raise a pistol.
The woman fired until the gun’s clip was empty, keeping overwrought pressure on the trigger even after the fact. She was half-blind and one-handed, forced to hold the cloth against her wound so she wouldn’t bleed out. So most of the bullets soared past Jessica, finding distant trunks and branches and limbs to damage.
But there were two shots that met their target. The goddam luck of it all was impossible. Chance is a strange thing. It can change a life’s direction forever.
Jessica went to the pavement chest-first. The rifle she carried fell off of her shoulder, making a crashing sound as it bounced on the empty highway. At first, I thought that maybe her backpack and its contents had taken enough velocity off of the bullets to save her. But there was no backpack. Instead, it was sitting upright and by itself on the side of the road. She had left it at the edge of the field, where she had revealed herself. “But why, Jess? Why?”
Her head rested sideways against the ground. The half of her face that was visible looked untroubled, with its one eye closed. There was still redness in her cheek and skin, but I feared that would disappear soon. Had I still been capable of creating tears, I would have cried my eyes dry.
The jeep’s engine revved suddenly and its driver brought it next to Jessica’s body.
“Pick her up,” the woman commanded from above her.
Two of the jeep’s ANTs got out and walked over to Jessica. One took her wrists, the other her ankles. She was limp as they raised her off the highway.
“Load her in,” the woman said. “I want her mother to see what I’ve done.”
Her mother? What was that supposed to mean? She couldn’t have known anything about Meg. Unless the kids had said something about her back at the grid. But Jessica would have told me that, right? Then it dawned on me: Anna. Goddam Anna. Probably created some ruse about the kids being hers. She couldn’t have known that her deception would lead to what had transpired. She couldn’t have, right?
I didn’t blame Anna for long. Death brings a specific awareness of happenstance with it. Besides, it’s hard to hold a grudge in the afterlife. Not when you have other loved ones left to watch over.
13.
H enry had watched the whole scene unfold from his hiding spot just inside the forest’s tree-line. He sat dumbfounded as the ANTs loaded Jessica into the back of the jeep and it sped past him, back to its origination on the eastern horizon. It took him a few minutes to recover himself. It was shock. Then I saw it turn to anger, and resolve.
He spread the opening of his backpack and began placing his supplies back into it. One by one, he packed them tightly and organized them to maximize the space. Blanket, flashlight, rope, handgun ammunition, extra pair of hiking pants, extra shirt, two pairs of socks, utility knife, canned food, water thermos.
The last item he picked up was something I didn’t recognize at first. He had not had it with him before. He held it in his hands, staring at it and turning it over, considering something. Before he put it at the top of his pack, I remembered where I had seen its brick-like shape. Two places. The first time as we were preparing the mission to save him and Jessica from the grid. The team of Leftys that were going to provide distraction was packing similar bricks of explosive C-4 compound that morning when I mistakenly questioned their efficacy.
The second time was in Camp Overlord’s storage garage during our escape. Where Henry must have picked one up and taken it with him. I had noticed a stack of them in one corner, along with the corresponding digital timers that could be used to set them off.
I was sure that Henry had grabbed one of the bricks out of precaution while I searched for the bolt cutters in the garage. But I was afraid that he had become filled with enough vengeance watching the attack on his sister to use it out of aggression. I just hoped he knew what he was doing.
14.
T he map Henry consulted before he set off for the river showed him to be about two miles away from it. He could cross the highway and walk along the edge of the overgrown field to get there. That way, if anyone should come back down the road, he could slide into the tall stalks to conceal himself.
He left the cover of the woods carefully and slowly, straining to listen for another vehicle on the highway above the sound of battle in the distance. The gunfire and explosions had not subsided. He shook his head in frustration as he looked in the direction of Camp Overlord.
“It’s not your fault,” I wanted to tell him. “You couldn’t have known they were tracking you.”
As if he understood me, he adjusted his backpack and crossed the road with confidence. The sun was higher, shining from the direction he planned to walk. He pulled his sunglasses out from the front pocket of his shirt and put them on to shield his eyes. He took a deep breath and started his journey.
He had not taken ten steps when he stopped abruptly. He muttered to himself, “Shit – the medicine.” Turning around, he looked down the straight line that marked the separation of the field from the highway. Still placed where Jessica had left it was her backpack.
It all made sense. Jessica had left the backpack there for Henry because she didn’t know if she would make it to the river or not. She had been two steps ahead of everybody, including me.
Henry ran to the bag and unzipped it. Inside was the life-saving medicine for his mother. He looked up to the blue sky and said, “Nice work, Jess.”
Nice work, indeed.
15.
H enry’s hike to the river was uneventful. The field remained at his side, giving him a quick escape if the ANTs came back for him. But they never did. He had transferred his mother’s medicine to his own backpack, removing a few of the items to make room. He left Jessica’s pack where it was, at the side of the road. After all, it still had its tracking device inside. “Good thinking, son.”
A few hundred yards from the water’s edge, he stopped to survey what lay ahead on the highway. The road began to rise in front of him, separating itself from the earth by way of concrete supports. As it stretched across the river, Henry counted six braces reaching up through the water to the bottom edges of the road-turned-bridge. The supports grew taller as the bridge continued away from him to compensate for the higher ground on the opposite side. The bank there must have been thirty feet tall.
He could see a large gathering of vehicles and people on top of the bridge. He took off his sunglasses and put the binoculars to his eyes. The people were ANTs, dressed in the same military gear as the others he had seen that morning. They were watching the battle at the camp to their south. There were fourteen vehicles on the bridge, but the jeep that had carried Jessica away was nowhere in sight.
He swung the backpack off of his shoulders and opened it, taking the C-4 brick out gently. He placed it on the ground next to him and reached back into the pack, retrieving his utility knife. He carefully sliced the C-4 compound into two pieces, almost square. Then he unzipped the front pocket of the pack. From inside, he pulled out two of the digital timers that had been stored with the explosives in the Overlord garage. They each had two electrical prongs. Henry slowly pushed the timers into the separated compounds prong-first, and then wrapped them in the blanket he had with him.
Meg’s medicine was vacuum-sealed in plastic bottles, but Henry made sure to create an added layer of water defense by folding it inside his extra clothes. That was my Henry: deliberate and thorough. He re-packed his bag, leaving the blanket and its volatile contents at the top. Then he walked to the river and disappeared below the rising road.
16.
I didn’t pretend to know Henry’s plan that morning. If I could have talked to him, I would have told him to get into the river and drif
t away. Away from the Leftys and the ANTs and the war that had started between them. Away from the death and the violence. I would have told him to forget about what had happened that morning and the night before and the day before that. I wanted to protect him from any more pain. I didn’t want him to risk it all when escape was so near.
But he wouldn’t have listened. And part of me understood why.
17.
T he fallen tree trunk on the river’s bank was serendipity at work. Or karma. Or just sheer luck. Whatever it was, he deserved it.
I tried to put together the most likely scenario for Henry and his explosives. It had to be the bridge, but the one question that remained was “How?” Henry was a good swimmer, but the skills required to do what I thought he was about to do would take an accomplished athlete. How would he swim out to the bridge’s supports, remove the C-4 bricks from his backpack, and place them while treading water? It seemed impossible. Until he discovered the tree trunk.
It had fallen some time ago, and it was partially dead. Why it fell didn’t matter. But how it fell did. The tree had come down parallel to the river, crashing to the ground with enough force to crack into three sections. The middle section had dislodged itself from the other two, and it had rolled down the bank until it stopped just at the water’s edge. It wouldn’t take very much effort for Henry to push it into the river and use it as a float. Mother Nature’s ageless helping hand.
It had been a towering oak when it stood. The circumference of its trunk was substantial. The log it had left at the water was about six feet long. Henry set his backpack to the side so that he could put all of his focus into launching his buoyant transport. It didn’t take him long. He acted surprised at the log’s momentum once he had forced it to move just a few inches from its stationary resting place. He quickly grabbed up his backpack and jumped onto the floating tree trunk, before the river’s current had carried it too far away from him.