The Liar

by Bobby Adair

  The result? Two bad guys were dead. Four wounded. The rest were in custody.

  One of the bleeders lay at the edge of the cliff, strong enough still to breathe, yet he wasn’t going to last. Near him, a second injured man knelt, naked from the waist up, hands bound behind his back. He’d bled a lot, but efficient clotting would keep him just fine until a doctor was able to sew his wound closed. The last two casualties were being carried toward the cliff, to the most ironically fitting place anyone could think of to corral them.

  Doctor Kernan, Surly McElroy, and the other belligerents knelt along the cliff’s edge, their jackets with those ridiculous 704 patches on the arms stripped off, their shirts and undershirts taken away, leaving them with bare chests goose bumping pink in the cold. They’d all be shivering soon, if not from the wind, then from the scary thousand-foot drop, and all the time they had to think about what it would feel like to go over, screaming all the way down.

  What would those jagged rocks do to a terminal velocity body?

  Tommy’d had plenty of time to imagine it.

  Now, he was waiting for his shivering to wane, though the ache in his joints threatened never to leave. He was sitting in the front seat of an extended cab pickup, squeezed between a woman with too many Egg McMuffins on her ass and a man who—like Tommy—had taken a beating back at the gym. Four more detainees were packed into the back seat. The truck’s engine was running, and the climate control system was blasting blow-dryer heat in their faces. It was suffocating to breathe, but they all needed the warmth.

  No one complained.

  The familiar sound of a pickup’s straining engine droned suddenly loud over the rush of the air coming out of the dashboard. The vehicle that had been sent down the mountain to retrieve clarified orders from Frank Lugenbuhl rolled to a stop in the meadow. Three more volunteers ordered five 704s out of the back of the truck. Three of those were wounded, none dead. They were stripped from the waist up and put in line at the edge of the cliff with the rest of their number.

  “What’s going on?” someone from the back seat finally asked. “Who are these people?”

  Nobody had an answer that was more than a mumbled guess.

  A tall man, with a bald head and a razor-stubble white beard stood in the meadow out in front of the parked pickups. He seemed to be in charge of the volunteers. Tommy couldn’t make out what he was saying, but from the gestures his animated hands were making to Summer and two others, it was pretty clear he had unpleasant plans for his prisoners.

  One of the volunteers hurried up to the driver’s window of the truck. The woman beside Tommy rolled it down.

  “How are you doing in here?” he asked.

  “Better,” answered the driver, over the thank-yous coming from the back seat.

  The guy at the window nodded. “Good.” He appraised the woman and asked, “You good to drive?”

  “Yes.” She still had a little shiver in her voice.

  “We’re leaving.” He pointed to the truck that had just come back into the meadow. “Follow us. We’re going to a safe place.”

  “I just want to go home,” said a woman from the back seat.

  “We’ll get that sorted out,” said the man. “Right now, we need to get moving.”

  “Who were those men?” asked someone else. “Who are you?”

  “The good guys,” said the man. “I’ll be in that truck. You stay right on my bumper.”

  “Got it.” The driver adjusted her seat and checked her mirrors.

  The man ran back to the lead truck. Other volunteers hurried among the vehicles loaded with the former detainees.

  Unable to look away from the new row of kneelers on the edge of the cliff, Tommy asked, “What about those guys?”

  “What about ‘em?” asked the man sitting next to him.

  The bald man in charge culled a pair of 704s from the row and had them escorted away from the edge to sit in the grass. He said something to Summer that she didn’t like. She stepped back, mouth open, yet saying nothing. The others lowered their weapons.

  Machine gun fire ripped through the backs of the kneeling men. Some fell off the cliff, carried by the momentum of the bullets hitting their bones. Others twisted and rolled onto their bellies. More screamed. None of their struggles made a difference in the outcome.

  The gunfire stopped. It had lasted only seconds.

  The cab of the pickup was silent except for the blasting of hot air through the dashboard vents.

  The shooters hurried over to the bullet-riddled bodies, added a shot or two where they thought necessary, and rolled the corpses off the cliff.

  The man in charge said something about interrogation and led Summer toward the two 704s who’d been selected a moment before. One was weeping. The other, Matt, the shuttle driver, was praying.

  The lead pickup turned around and made for the fire road heading down the mountain. True to her instructions, the driver sitting beside Tommy put the truck in gear and followed.

  Nobody in the cab was able to muster a word.

  ***

  A hand shaking his shoulder startled Tommy awake. He sat up, wide-eyed and jumpy, rubbing his face to shake off the fog. “Christ.”

  “Are you alright?” Summer asked.

  Tommy looked around, confused. The truck was parked. The engine was off. He was alone inside, except for Summer reaching in through the open passenger door.

  “At least you’re not shivering,” she said. “How do you feel?”

  The sun coming in through the windshield was warm on Tommy’s skin. His joints no longer felt like crackling ice. He’d beaten hypothermia. “Where are we?”

  Summer pointed to a structure that looked like a mountain lodge or barn that some pioneer had built deep in the forest and then forgotten. “Home for now.”

  Tommy touched his fingers to his forehead and flinched away from a swollen cut there. “I must have dozed on the drive here.”

  “You needed the sleep.”

  Tommy saw people standing in pairs and threes outside the lodge. Others sat in chairs on the porch, heads close in quiet conversation. Most had to be inside. “What time is it?”

  “Nearly noon.”

  “How long have we been here?”

  “A while.”

  Tommy brushed his eyes to get the sleep crispies out. The bruises there reminded him of things he’d prefer to forget. “They just left me in the truck?”

  “It seemed like the best thing for you.”

  Tommy straightened himself up and scooted toward the open door, noticed the passenger-side visor, and flipped it down for a look in the mirror. “God.”

  “They beat you up pretty good,” agreed Summer.

  Tommy climbed out of the truck, and Summer put a hand on his shoulder to steady him. He shrugged her help away. “It looks worse than it is.”

  “I don’t know about that,” countered Summer.

  “You said you knew where Emma and Faith were.”

  “I said we might know.”

  She hadn’t, but Tommy didn’t argue it. “Do these Battalion 704—whatever they are—have them?”

  “Militants,” explained Summer. “They’re militants.”

  “Doesn’t matter. They’re criminals. They kidnapped my wife and daughter.”

  “Yeah.” Summer was positive about that. “It’s a political thing with them. They’re rounding up dissenters.”

  “This list I’m on, I guess all of us are on, that’s what this is about?”

  Summer nodded.

  “The level of crazy in this world, sometimes, I swear to God.” Tommy looked back into the truck to see the keys still in the ignition. He patted his pockets out of habit, checking for a cell phone he knew wasn’t there. “Has cellular service been restored yet?”

  Summer’s brow furrowed. “No. Why?”

  Tommy noticed Summer was still carrying an automatic weapon hanging on a sling around her chest like a soldier in a war zone. “I appreciate what you and your
friends did this morning. I think you saved our lives. I have no problem forgetting what I saw, all of it.”

  “What are you talking about, Tommy?”

  “What happened up there. I was suffering from the cold. I passed out. I woke up here. That’s all I remember after the gym. That’s the story I’ll tell them.”

  Summer was confused. “Tell who?”

  “The state police. The FBI, whoever they send.”

  “They’re not sending anybody,” said Summer. “There’s no ‘they’.”

  “Look,” Tommy explained, “I just want to find Emma and Faith. You know where they are. Or you’re pretty sure, right? I can call the state police or the FBI or somebody. They can rescue them.”

  Summer looked disappointed.

  “I don’t know what’s going on here,” said Tommy, “but it’s out of control. You can see that, right? After you dropped me off last night I went downtown and saw what the bomber did at the courthouse.” Tommy shuddered at the memory. He still didn’t know for sure if it was Emma’s body he saw lying under that foil blanket on the trampled courthouse lawn. “People get crazy when things like this happen, you said so yourself. The FBI has to be down in Spring Creek by now. They have to be on the scene. They have to be in charge, right?”

  “You just don’t get it, do you?”

  Tommy did get it. Enough of it. He’d seen the ugly side of what people could do for the shallowest of reasons. He been a part of it. That was years in his past, right where he wanted it to stay. Now he wanted to keep his feet on the straight and narrow. He wanted to live the normal life he’d tried so hard to build. “Whatever this is. I don’t want to be a part of it. I just want my family back.”

  “You were tortured. You were taken into the forest to be shot.” Summer grabbed Tommy’s shoulders, examining his eyes, worry on her face. “We’re at war, Tommy. How can you not see that?”

  Tommy shirked out of her grip.

  War? Matt the shuttle driver had said it, and now Summer was making the same claim. “I’m not going to argue with you about any of that. As I said, I don’t know what’s going on. I need to find Faith and Emma. I need for them to be safe. That’s all I need. You understand that, right?”

  “Don’t talk to me like I’m crazy,” Summer hissed.

  “But you know how crazy this sounds, right? War? What, a civil war? A revolution? A coup? Whatever is going on with all you people up here—”

  Summer shushed him with a glare before she started in. “Pedantic analyses over pointless distinctions might have made you the big dick swinger at your little out-of-town business-travel bromance brunches, but if you want to help Faith and Emma for real, you need to understand that it doesn’t make the tiniest difference what is really going on. For all we know, they’re kneeling at the edge of a hole right now waiting for the execution order to come down from Frank Lugenbuhl. Would you rather be wrong about the war and charge in there with a gun in your hand in time to save them, or do you want to be right about everything and show up later with the FBI and a truckload of shovels?”

  Chapter 8

  Summer’s Jeep bounced over the rough road, throwing up a cloud of dirt behind. Belted into the passenger seat, Tommy grabbed tight to the handhold mounted on the dashboard. Using his knees, he kept the rifle steady between them.

  “It smooths out above the tree line,” Summer told him, as she raced faster than was safe. Faster than what safe was supposed to feel like.

  Aaron, one of the guys in the back seat said, "You can see all the way down to Spring Creek here in a minute."

  They were high, up around eleven thousand feet, and the trees were thinning, yet all Tommy saw were glimpses of the vistas through gaps in the foliage.

  “It’ll be down to our right,” said Aaron.

  Tommy turned for a peek. Still nothing over there but trees. “Why is it just us four?”

  Summer took her eyes off the road to glance at Tommy. “Barry Engle.”

  Aaron chuckled.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Tommy. “Who’s Barry Engle?”

  “That was his cabin back there,” answered Aaron, as Summer turned right where the dirt road came to a T.

  “That lodge thing?” asked Tommy.

  “Yeah,” said Aaron. “Been in his family forever. He’s kind of a prepper. Solar panels. Cisterns. Food stores. The whole deal.”

  “And an arsenal,” spat Dan, who’d been moping in the seat behind Tommy’s since they’d driven away more than an hour ago.

  “That’s one of his AR-15s between your legs there,” added Summer.

  Aaron laughed. “He’s been getting ready for the end since Nixon was in the White House.”

  “Don’t listen to them,” Summer told Tommy. “Barry’s about your age.”

  “So what, then?” asked Tommy. “Is he in charge of this—whatever this thing is you guys are?”

  “Whatever thing?” laughed Aaron.

  “Posse?” guessed Tommy. “Militia? What do you guys call yourselves?”

  The forest ended abruptly. The road leveled out to run across the face of the mountain, following its curves.

  “This isn’t as formal as you seem to think,” explained Summer. “But yeah, Barry thinks he’s in charge.”

  “Sieg Heil,” whined Dan.

  Both Summer and Aaron ignored Dan’s comment, so Tommy didn’t push for an explanation. Still, he worried what it might be rooted in. “Does Barry have a big arsenal?”

  Aaron laughed at that, too. Whatever he thought about the bombing the night before or the shooting up on the cliff that morning, he wasn’t bothered much by it.

  “What’s that mean?” asked Tommy.

  “It means you won’t run out of ammo,” said Aaron.

  “That’s the truth,” agreed Dan.

  Aaron patted the butt of his rifle. "All these guns? Courtesy of Herr Barry.”

  Tommy couldn’t let another comment go. “What’s with Herr Barry?”

  “Don’t listen to them,” Summer told him, as one of the Jeep’s tires rolled through a hole and the Jeep lurched hard to the right.

  “You know how to shoot that thing?” Aaron asked Tommy, not bothered by the rough ride.

  “He does,” Summer answered for Tommy. “He goes shooting with Bryan all the time.”

  “Bryan Casey? You and the mayor were buddies?” asked Aaron, finally turning serious. “Sorry for what happened to him.”

  “He’s our neighbor,” said Summer.

  Aaron came to a realization. “You’re Emma’s dad?”

  “Yeah,” Tommy told him.

  “Sorry I didn’t have time for the introductions before we left,” said Summer.

  Tommy turned to direct his question at Aaron. “How do you know her?”

  “Like-minded friends,” explained Summer. “Life goes on even when you’re not in town, Tommy.”

  “So you’re good with that thing?” persisted Aaron.

  “I can hit what I aim at,” answered Tommy.

  “You ever shoot at a person?”

  “You?” Tommy reversed the argument, realizing immediately that it was a stupid question.

  Aaron turned serious again. “It wasn’t hard shooting those guys this morning. I knew some of the people they killed last night.”

  “The NonCons?” Tommy figured it was good to see what these people thought. “That’s who the cops said it was.”

  “There’s no such thing as an ‘NonCon’,” snapped Surly Dan. “Not before yesterday, anyway.”

  “Hey Summer,” asked Aaron, “what’s with this guy? Doesn’t he know anything? Is he on our side?”

  “They have Faith and Emma,” she answered. “Of course he is.”

  Both Dan and Aaron had been among his rescuers, so Tommy figured he’d change the subject away from his misstep. “Thanks for this morning. I didn’t have a chance to say it before we rushed off.”

  Aaron shrugged it away. “When it comes to shooting somebody, don�
�t think about it, just pull the trigger. Because if you have to point your gun at one of those bastards, I guarantee you, they won’t hesitate to fire.”

  “The 704s?” asked Tommy.

  “Even if they don't have a gun?” countered Dan.

  Aaron wasn’t having it. “Stop with the passive-aggressive shit, dude. If you have something to say, say it.”

  Dan turned to look at the view of the valley spreading far below.

  Aaron leaned between the front seats and told Tommy, “Any of those rebels points a gun at you, you take ‘em out. Don’t take the time to read the patches, they’re all the same. Guys in military surplus trying to look like a citizens’ army. They’re all infected with propaganda-brain. The only cure is a bullet. You think you can be a doctor?” Doctor Tommy?

  ***

  Summer took a hand off the wheel. Tommy didn’t complain, but looked at the scree-covered slope dropping off just past the edge of the Jeep’s tires.

  “Here.” Summer tossed her cell phone into Tommy’s lap.

  “What?”

  “We’ll stop when we come around the bend up here,” she told him. “We should be able to pick up a signal from down by Grant or over by Idaho Springs.”

  “Unless they got the same treatment we did,” said Aaron, as he pulled a tablet computer from behind the seat. Glancing at Tommy, he explained, “Cellular chip.”

  Dan already had a computer in his lap.

  “They cut the cellular networks in Spring Creek,” explained Aaron. “They blew the towers.”

  Recalling the flashes he’d seen and the explosions he’d heard from his deck the night before, Tommy said, “I think I saw that happen.”

  “They don’t want the opposition to have any comms.” Aaron reached into a thin backpack Summer had brought along and pulled out a fat, old-looking phone with an outsized antenna and showed it to Tommy. “They’re using satellite phones to communicate. That gives them an advantage.”

  “Where’d you get that one?” asked Tommy.

  “From one of the guys this morning,” answered Summer. “I think we collected seven or eight sat-phones altogether. I can use it to call Allan—he’s one of Barry’s tech guys. What you need to understand, is Barry doesn’t want to mount another rescue attempt until tonight.”