The Devil's Colony

by Bill Schweigart

  “Who are you, friend?” said one of them, a middle-aged man with a nose bent by what Ben surmised was one too many fights.

  “I’m just a free man, traveling upon the land.”

  He looked for a trace of recognition or acceptance from the man with the bent nose, but all he got in return was a smirk.

  “Another one of them.”

  “One of them that doesn’t like rifles pointed at him, yeah.”

  “State your business here.”

  “We were invited,” said Lindsay, her voice cold and accusing. “So put your daddy’s guns down before you get yourself hurt.”

  Rage passed over the man’s face, but before he could respond, they all heard the rumble of distant thunder, growing louder by the second. The armed men looked up the road, from where Ben and Lindsay had just come. A moment later, three riders bedecked in leather and denim overtook them. A moment after that, they were around a bend, leaving the congregation in a cloud of sand and motorcycle exhaust.

  “Well, why didn’t you just roll out the red carpet!” the bent-nosed man yelled at his compatriots. Ben noted the man hadn’t moved to stop the bikers either, but he did not allow himself to smirk. Instead he let all bravado drop and chose a conciliatory approach. He held his hands higher.

  “Whoa. They’re not with us, brother. I swear.”

  The man stared at them for a few seconds, agitated. “Radio Breaux,” he said finally to the two men behind Ben and Lindsay, then nodded to the man alongside him. “And bring them along.”

  Both took off down the road toward camp.

  Ben and Lindsay looked at each other, then continued on, the two men behind them with their rifles now slung over their shoulders. No one spoke. After a quarter mile a large arch came into view with a wooden sign swinging from it. It read VÄLKOMMEN. There was a lone guard at the post, shuffling in the sandy rut of the road, looking uncomfortable.

  “They came out of nowhere…” said the man when he saw his fellow sentries approaching.

  “I’m not the one you have to explain it to,” said the man on Ben and Lindsay. Once again Ben kept his mouth in check, opting not to point out that the bikers had just roared past his welcoming party unchallenged and undeterred too. “Bringing two in.”

  Passing through the arch on the narrow, wooded road was like entering a new world. The woods receded and they found themselves in what could only be described as an outpost. Davis’s aerial footage did not do the place justice, but it helped him to establish his bearings.

  Ahead, in the center of all of the activity, lay the yellow main house, with every other structure spreading out from it like tentacles. They saw a structure and heard heavy exhalations that took Ben a moment to realize were whinnying. Stables. There were distant garages and sheds, and Ben could hear the banging of hammers in the spring air over the drone of the motorcycles. It was not unpleasant. He reminded himself that the reason he was here was indeed very unpleasant, then just as quickly put it out of his mind. People walked past, alone and in groups, eyeing the two new additions, and Ben gave them curt nods when they met his eye. To his right, between the outbuildings and Quonset huts, he could see a vast field. The near edge of the field was dotted with tents. At the other end of the field he saw what appeared to be a massive stage. Beyond it, the treeline.

  Ben heard the three riders before he saw them. As the main house came into view, he finally saw the motorcycles. They drove in lazy circles, spewing smoke and ripping the air, chrome shining against the sun. Others began to join Ben and Lindsay on the road, pouring out of the other buildings and coming in from the field, heading toward the house to see what the commotion was. They would give Ben and Lindsay a quick glance, then hustle ahead to the more interesting spectacle of the riders.

  When they arrived at the house, Ben saw a squad of men standing on the front porch steps. Most were dressed in black, with the exception of two. One was a large man, with salt-and-pepper hair and hooded eyes. And the other, the old man whom Ben recognized from the surveillance photos: Henry Drexler. They stood watching the riders circle until the lead rider thought he had enough of an audience to dismount. The other two remained astride their bikes and kept them idling.

  Ben wanted to inch closer, to listen, but they were on the edge of the crowd and the motorcycles kicked up too much noise. He had to piece together what was going on by body language. Drexler stood on the wide front porch, flanked by his men in black. The man with the hooded eyes had placed himself between the biker and Drexler, an intermediary. The two men talked. The biker’s leader was a mountain of a man, bald with a gray goatee sanded with road dust. He had Drexler’s man by a few inches, but the intermediary wore a smirk and there was something about the man’s eyes. Even from this distance, they startled Ben with their clarity. He was taking in everything at once and nothing at all at the same time. Utterly calm, almost amused.

  Finally, the large biker pointed up at Drexler, then slowly lowered his finger down in front of the face of the man with the hooded eyes. The intermediary simply gave a slight smile, but remained motionless. Finally, the biker remounted, and after a few more noisy laps in the roundabout in front of the house, which pushed back the crowd who had gathered to watch, the small pack roared out the way they came. Ben and Lindsay watched them go, but when they turned back to the house, they noticed the man’s hooded eyes were now fixed on them.

  Their guards prodded them forward. Ben was convinced his legs looked like rubber, but he concentrated on keeping his face hard.

  “Thought you’d sneak in under the radar,” said the man in a laconic drawl. It was somewhere between a question and a statement. Listening to his syrupy accent, Ben thought the man sounded like he was from the Carolinas.

  “We were on the road when they showed up.”

  “Hm. Well, as you can see, we’re all full up at the moment. Why don’t you go back the way you came.”

  “Can’t,” said Ben. “Our car shit the bed. It’s up the road a couple of miles.”

  “Well, if you start now, I’m sure you can get back to it before dark.” The man smiled, but the smile did not reach his eyes.

  He turned toward the house. Maybe it was some kind of test. As Ben pondered it, he heard Lindsay speak up.

  “Hey, can you read?”

  The man turned around again and studied her.

  “Your sign means ‘welcome.’ And it’s all over the computer too. I’ve had a day, so why don’t you be a gentleman and fetch whoever did the inviting or call a tow.”

  The man smiled, this time genuine. He looked at Ben. “Clear who wears the pants.”

  He moved to frisk Ben, and even if Ben had wanted to protest, the cadre of men surrounding him would have made it pointless. He found Ben’s wallet and removed his identification: a laminated card that read DIPLOMATIC AGENT/AMBASSADOR and BEN-WILLIAM: MCCARVER. The extra punctuation, the strange, self-appointed titles, were more tactics of sovereign citizens to avoid statutes or legal restraints of federal or state governments. The man snorted when he read it, then put it into his breast pocket.

  “I’ll be holding on to this, Your Honor.”

  He moved to Lindsay next, who had her ID ready. The man read it and looked her over.

  “You his girlfriend, Lindsay Claiborne?”

  “Fiancée.”

  “Lucky girl. Anyway, gotta pat you down just the same.”

  When the man finished patting down Lindsay, Ben heard a voice from the porch.

  “You’ll have to excuse my head of security.” It was Drexler. Ben had forgotten he was there, watching. “As you can see, we’ve had some excitement today. But nothing is more exciting than making new friends.”

  The old man was beaming when he descended from the porch. He took Ben’s hand in his and shook it vigorously. Ben had not expected such affability, such warmth. One-half of Ben’s face curled up in a smile despite himself, then he reminded himself that you can afford to be friendly when you have a head of security. Drexler m
oved to Lindsay and took her hand as well, but gently, as if cupping an orchid, and placed his other hand on top of it.

  “Welcome,” he said. “I’m Henry Drexler and this is my home. And as you so adroitly pointed out, the sign says you are welcome.”

  Chapter 12

  The game cameras literally changed the game.

  Davis cursed himself. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

  What the hell did you expect, Galahad?

  In this case, the action had been his shooting up the truck at the diner. He told himself it was because Erica was in danger, because she was about to be attacked by a group of men. But out here, at home in the woods, he could be honest with himself. He was still wrapping his mind around a world where monsters were real. He had fought back a horde of redmouths in Wisconsin months earlier and he had watched his friend and partner, Alex Standingcloud, come close to being killed. He swore to himself he’d never hesitate on the trigger again, but he knew that with her background Erica could take care of herself. She was far more than a driver, far more even than a pilot. No, he was just good and angry. If the idea of monsters was enough to banish any hesitation in his trigger finger, the intel that they were being deployed by garden-variety, human monsters made it positively itchy.

  But it had been foolish. He had let the adversary know Severance had someone on his team with surveillance and long-gun capabilities. He had tipped their hand, a huge tactical mistake. He had sworn not to do it again, and channeled his own frustration and guilt into making sure Ben and Lindsay were as L7 as they could possibly be. And at 2000 hours on Op Day 3, they would simply walk into the woods at the prearranged point they’d agreed on from an aerial shot of Välkommen, and continue along a bearing where Davis would rendezvous with them fifty yards into the forest, leading them out of the Pine Barrens to safety. He drilled relentlessly, channeling his own frustrations with himself out onto them. There would be no more fucking around. He still hated the concept of the plan, but there was a logic to it. There would be more suspicion if one went in alone, but going in as a couple reduced their profile to almost nothing. It was a smart play.

  What hadn’t been a smart play was being showy. Maybe a part of him wanted to show Severance what he was paying for.

  You’re a merc now, Galahad.

  He cursed himself again.

  No, I’m holding the line, he told himself. And on the other side of the line are nightmares.

  It was Op Day 1, and as Ben and Lindsay entered camp, he was deep in the forest, approaching Välkommen on foot. From his earlier reconnaissance of the camp and its large field, he knew there were several approaches to camp, wide footpaths and some subtler animal runs. These were unavailable to him now. He wouldn’t have taken them anyway, but since he had gotten showy, they weren’t even an option now. He stalked his way through the underbrush soundlessly, paralleling the animal runs. He was making good progress, his heart in a steady rhythm, all his channels open. It was like Davis was a set of clothes he had been wearing, and with every step he took, he removed a layer until Galahad, his old call sign, was revealed. His senses were enhanced. He could smell the clean scent of the pine needles, taste chlorophyll on the back of his throat. His every movement economic yet graceful. He may not have liked the particulars, but he was on a mission again, invisible, flowing silently, a leaf on the surface of a stream. As close to his natural state of being as he ever got.

  Operating.

  It was how he noticed the game cameras. But first he felt them. A tingle at the base of his neck, the hairs there rising. In this state, his instincts were aware of things his consciousness was not, but the channels were so open between them there was no hesitation, zero delay. He was one organism.

  He froze.

  It was the symmetry. Had it been only one camera, there was a chance he may not have noticed it. It may have just appeared as a knot, about ten feet up the trunk of an Atlantic cedar. But he scanned from left to right and noticed there was a similar knot on every tree as far as his eyes could see, evenly spaced, every twenty to thirty feet. A wall of game cameras. Impenetrable. He was still too far away to trip them, but he backed slowly and took cover behind a bushy, stunted pine and calculated.

  He was approaching camp on a difficult route—one that couldn’t actually be considered a route at all—so if there were cameras here, he had to assume there were enough of them to ring the entirety of Välkommen. That meant hundreds of cameras, maybe thousands. And they had been installed quickly. That meant Välkommen had resources. He suspected as much; keeping a swelling population fed and watered on a daily basis took money, but this was different. Even if they were off-the-shelf and not top-of-the-line, Drexler, or an advisor, had put up a thousand of them in the last two weeks without batting an eye. That meant Drexler either had a lot of discretionary funds or absolutely nothing left to lose.

  There was a language to all of this that Davis implicitly understood. Cameras covering trails and animal runs would be expected, but he felt—he knew—someone on the inside was reacting to his show at the diner, and was putting on one of his own. Davis wondered whether there was a corresponding command center somewhere in camp too, thrown up as hastily as the cameras. More likely, if a camera tripped, it would send an image and location to a mobile phone. And whoever that phone belonged to was his real adversary.

  His adversary had at least anticipated the notion that someone of skill was out in the woods and would take the “path not chosen.” Yet the cameras, naked to most people’s eyes, would be easily spotted by someone like Davis, and Davis suspected his adversary knew that too. It was hard not to think the game cameras were a very expensive dog whistle, audible only to him, telling him: I see you out there. And you’re going to have to do better than that.

  Chapter 13

  They were in.

  Better yet, they had an invitation to dine with Drexler that evening at the main house. Lindsay was still dumbstruck. Drexler had offered them lodging in one of the Quonset huts, but Ben said they would prefer their tent. Being slightly suspicious, even jealous perhaps, seemed in keeping with his “character,” and Lindsay did not protest. If they had limited time within Välkommen, it might be necessary to intersperse with others as much as possible, but she realized they would need privacy by the end of the day, to let their guards down with each other, even if only behind the thin walls of a tent. They pitched in the field at the end of a row of other tents. It was now late afternoon and people were starting to knock off whatever work they had been assigned.

  People came by in ones and twos, retiring to their tents. Most eyed them with no expression at all. One tall young man with long, stringy hair, named Mitchell, came over and offered to help them set up. He had kind eyes and Lindsay wondered what the hell he was doing here.

  “It’s pretty cool here,” said Mitchell. “I’m helping out with some of the new cabins. Everyone will have one by the time we’re done and there won’t be any need for tents. Then again, with the rate of new people coming in, we’ll never catch up, you know?”

  “I don’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth, but how can he afford all this?” asked Lindsay.

  Mitchell shrugged. “Rich, I guess. It’s cool he’s giving back.”

  Ben chimed in. “Time for me to ‘give back.’ Gonna go take a leak.” He headed off toward the treeline.

  “Hey man,” said Mitchell. “You don’t want to do that.” His voice sounded nervous. His whole manner was nervous. He scratched his arms, rubbed his neck. He was on something. But his eyes shifted to the woods.

  “Pretty sure I do,” said Ben.

  “No, man, I’ll take you to the latrines.”

  “What’s wrong with the woods, Mitchell?” asked Lindsay. She asked as sweetly as she could, putting as much doe-eyed interest into her expression as possible.

  “It’s…thing is…it’s just better to stay here? Like safer, you know?”

  “Lead the way,” said Ben.


  —

  When Ben returned, it was time for dinner. Lindsay ran a comb through her hair and they marched up to the yellow house. They arrived at the porch to find several men sprawled in chairs and on the steps. One had what appeared to be a tattoo of tentacles snaking up from under his shirt to below his jawline. Lindsay tried not to stare at him. He did not feel the same compunction. A young, wiry man with a severe undercut lazed in a rocking chair and twirled a walking stick. He beheld them with a single piercing blue eye, the other eye hidden beneath his sideswept hair. When Lindsay and Ben approached, he brought the stick’s tip down sharply on the porch.

  “You. Shall. Not. Pass.”

  It was a lame joke, one the crew had probably heard many times before, but they laughed dutifully, telling Lindsay instantly that he was a figure of some status or unofficial authority. She instantly disliked him. He put her in mind of kids in high school who were either pretty enough or rich enough or just plain vicious enough that they held their friends in tight, acquiescent orbits. A bully who delegated the dirty work.

  Ben smirked and held up his hands. “You got me. I’m Ben. This is Lindsay.”

  Lindsay nodded.

  “I’m Felix. So, Ben and Lindsay…what the fuck are you doing here?”

  More laughter from the crew, this time genuine.

  “The old man invited us to eat.”

  “That old man is my father.”

  “Cool,” said Ben.

  He shrugged. “Between us, Ben and Lindsay, he’s lost the thread. But I’ve picked it up. If you follow.”

  Lindsay and Ben looked at the group of men on the porch and nodded again. Already, a fissure had revealed itself. It was a good sign. Fissures could be penetrated.

  “Good to know,” said Lindsay.

  The man twirled his stick toward a tall, rail-thin man with a Vandyke beard and a vest over a faded dress shirt. Most notably, he wore a saber at his side in a scabbard. He looked like a young Confederate officer who had walked straight off of a daguerreotype into the present day or went to great lengths to appear so, thought Lindsay, right down to the measured nonchalance of his lean against the post. It almost distracted her from the fading bruises on his face. “This is Anson,” said Felix.