by Rob Lopez
Seeing nothing that held his interest, he shambled off until he was out of sight.
Daisy glanced at Josh and Lizzy, who stared back at her. They looked terrified. Josh especially was traumatized after finding that dead girl. Struggling to de-cock the revolver, Daisy sat down heavily on her chair, conscious of her rapidly beating heart.
Josh returned to his vigil by the window, unable to take his eyes off the street.
*
Lauren stared at the bridge for an hour, lying among the trees in a bend on the road. Nothing moved across it or near it, but she couldn’t shake off the feeling that the guys in the pickup were still there, perhaps hidden in the woods on the other side, like she was. She saw a lot of wildlife: a long legged heron wading near the banks of the Bull Run, jabbing its beak to spear a wriggling, silvery fish; a Kingfisher darting back and forth along the shore; and even an owl leaving its roost at dawn, its great wings flapping slowly to propel it over the trees. None of them seemed perturbed by the presence of humans nearby, suggesting that maybe it was as quiet as it looked.
But neither April nor herself had heard the sound of the pickup starting up and driving away.
The mud she’d rubbed on her face started to itch, but she resisted the urge to scratch. If there really was somebody else watching, the flash of movement would give her away. It didn’t take much to draw the eye.
Inching slowly away, she slid backwards through the undergrowth until the bridge disappeared from view.
“Anything?” whispered April when Lauren got back to her.
Lauren shook her head. “I don’t like it, though.”
“You’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
Lauren glanced at her. “I’m not Harrison Ford.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. I just think it’s too risky.”
April pondered the situation. “Do you think we’re being too paranoid about this?”
“We got shot at, remember?”
“Oh yeah. Okay, screw the bridge. If we go back the other way, we’ve got to go through Manassas. Is that better?”
“No.”
Lauren spent some time thinking. It was frustrating that a simple matter of walking on roads had become so complicated. According to her map, nearly all the roads ran east to west. And numerous rivers ran west to east, from the Appalachians to the sea. Cutting through all that meant a lot of meandering. And a lot of bridges. It was like she was in a war zone now, and everything was a tactical decision.
“Can your boy swim?” she asked.
April gave her a pained look. “With floaties.”
On her own, Lauren could have swum the river easily. She didn’t want to admit it, but April and her kid were becoming a hindrance. “I saw a sign for a hiking trail through the woods. We’ll follow the river and see if we can find a fording point downstream.”
April cheerfully agreed, and Lauren wondered how long it would be before she had to tell her they needed to go their separate ways. Maybe she shouldn’t have tried so hard to reassure her, back at the FEMA camp.
Too late, now.
They took to the Occoquan Trail and found it wide enough and flat enough for the stroller. They made good time, but the river got wider past the bridge, and Lauren couldn’t see any easy way across.
On the opposite bank, palatial properties nestled in the trees, each with their own private dock. Lauren stopped when she saw a canoe tied up.
“We can use that,” she whispered to April.
April squinted her eyes to peer through the foliage. “You mean to ferry us across?”
Lauren opened her atlas. “No. I mean to go downriver. Getting tired of these dead end roads.” Lauren traced her finger along the Bull Run, then up a tributary that looked like it would take them to the southern edge of Manassas. “This is perfect,” she said.
Stripping out of her clothes, she tiptoed through the ferns, looked out to see that nobody was around, then waded into the river.
It was refreshingly cold. After living and sweating in the same clothes for so many days, it was bliss to immerse herself in water. She was tempted to wash herself more thoroughly, but instead she struck out smoothly for the opposite bank. It didn’t take her long to reach the dock.
A path led up to a house, but she could only just see it through the trees. There was no activity, and she couldn’t tell whether it was abandoned or not. She decided it was better to be quick rather than to explore, especially if the owners had dogs.
The canoe was fiberglass, with two oars locked in the bottom. The fallen leaves indicated it hadn’t been used for a while. Untying it, she towed it back across the river.
Little Daniel stared at her naked body as she hauled herself out of the river. April handed her a blanket to dry herself with. “We should be able to get our stuff in there,” said Lauren, “but I’m afraid we’ve got to leave the stroller.”
She was hoping that April would protest at that point, giving her a reason to suggest separating, but April appeared to be in agreement.
“It means Daniel will have to walk after we leave the river,” added Lauren, testing for a reaction.
“No problem,” said April. “My boy can walk anywhere.” She turned to Daniel. “You’re okay with that, aren’t you baby? You want to go on a boat ride?”
Daniel gave a rare smile, and Lauren’s heart sank a little. She wavered on whether to explain things a little more forcefully, then gave up. Pulling on her dirty clothes, she hid her disappointment.
After they’d cleared Manassas, she’d broach the subject again, giving April the option to go west to the mountains. Or rather, she wouldn’t give her the option.
She’d just insist. Her own children were waiting, and she couldn’t afford to be slowed down any further.
Getting into the canoe, with Daniel sitting on the bags between them, they pushed out. In less than half a mile, they found the tributary that snaked south and turned into it, paddling against the current.
*
The cruise liner drifted forlornly, bucked by the waves, the viewing decks empty. As they flew over it, Rick could see the lifeboats were missing. There was no sign of them on the vast ocean and he wondered if they’d made it to land. The polar explorer, Shackleton, rowed with his crew from the Antarctic to the Falkland Islands, but they were tough motherfuckers. That kind of tenacity was rare now.
Or maybe it was just something people would learn with enough determination. Rick wasn’t sure. Special Forces training was grueling, and the pass rate was incredibly low. Rick had a lot of admiration for folks in the past who lived with such hardships every day. He imagined the villagers in the Afghan mountains would take this new world in their stride. The Innuit of northern Canada too. The pioneers who trekked across the mid-west of America were certainly made of sterner stuff than their descendants. On the other hand, they died in large numbers from diseases people had forgotten about.
Rick guessed they were about to be remembered again. The romantic life of the cowboy was going to be laid bare for the fiction that it was.
The blower from the cockpit heater wasn’t working, and the warmth that seeped weakly from the vents wasn’t enough to overcome the cold. Rick was glad of the sweater, but he was still acclimatized to the tropics. Shivering, he tried to get comfortable. The chill of the seat’s vinyl cover seeped into his legs.
Kowalski remained fixed in his posture, his concentration never wavering. If he felt the cold, or the hunger, he didn’t say, and Rick felt a new admiration for him. Soft as he’d appeared when they first picked him up, he was a different person behind the controls. His navigation, in spite of Scott’s fears, was spot-on too. After another hour, the land mass of Iceland appeared, a white capped mass rising from a slate sea. As they crossed the coast, a vast glacier loomed ahead. Banking the aircraft, Kowalski turned to follow a long and empty coast road. As soon as he spotted a lone vehicle, he touched down on the asphalt and rolled gently to a halt. Switchin
g the engine off, he sagged back in the seat, mashing his eyeballs with the heel of his hand.
“Well done,” said Rick.
“Could have been better,” said the pilot. “Was aiming for the airport at Egilsstadir. We’re miles west of that.”
Scott stretched in the back seat. “I don’t care. You did good.”
Kowalski turned. “That’s fair praise coming from you.”
“Yeah, well. Make the most of it, Air Force. I don’t give them things away easy.”
They shared an MRE from Rick’s pack, then opened the flask of hot water and passed round the cup. When Rick stepped out of the plane, the cold wind cut right through his sweater.
Working quickly, they topped up the tanks from the gas cans, then made their way to the car, siphon tube in hand. As soon as Scott broke open the fill cap, however, he wrinkled his nose.
“It’s diesel,” he said.
“Have we got enough already to make it to Greenland?” Rick asked Kowalski.
“Yeah, but I would have preferred a reserve.”
Rick looked along the road that curved gently away into the distance, in the shadow of craggy, gray peaks. Immediately he thought of Ben Stiller, longboarding through the picturesque Icelandic landscape in The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty. It was one of the few movies he and Lauren enjoyed together. What was the tag line? Stop dreaming and start living, or something like that. It was one of those life-affirming movies, with great photography. Rick didn’t even like Ben Stiller, but he enjoyed the movie a lot.
The scenery didn’t look quite so panoramic from where he stood, but it was still pretty amazing, especially when he realized that what he’d taken to be a glacier in the distance was actually a volcano, and he was standing near a lava flow to the sea, the ground a plain of crushed charcoal.
Given the turn of events his life was taking, he wondered if, in a reversal of the tag line, he’d actually stopped living and started dreaming. It was certainly a surreal and unexpected destiny.
“We’ll follow this road and see if we can find some gas on the way,” he said. “Do you think we can fly near that volcano before we go?”
Kowalski looked at him. “Sure, but why?”
Rick couldn’t help but grin like a kid. “Just want to recreate a moment from a movie.”
*
Leafy trees dangled their branches in the water, sandbanks created channels in the river and insects buzzed over the mud of dry lagoons. To Lauren’s mind, it created a scene reminiscent of Deliverance, a cult movie Rick had once urged her to watch. She’d hated it, and she certainly didn’t need the reminder. With every meandering river bend, she expected to see armed figures waiting on a shore and the sound of banjos.
If she felt vulnerable cycling, she felt a lot more vulnerable in a boat with the shore so close. Paddling upstream also proved tiring, and there were moments when she thought it would be faster to walk. Running aground numerous times, she was tempted to quit and just beach the boat once and for all. Cursing under her breath, she bent her back to paddle harder.
They’d passed under one bridge already and another loomed up ahead. According to her map, they had another bridge to go before they reached another tributary that might take them south. On the map, however, it was just a thin blue line, so she had no idea whether it was navigable. Nor even worth trying.
“We’ll take a break after this next bridge,” she said.
She lacked the upper body strength for this kind of endeavor, but maybe it was just a matter of practice. She was determined to keep going for as long as it was possible.
They crossed the shadow of the bridge, and Lauren steered closer to the shore where she’d seen swirls of debris on the surface. She figured the current was maybe stronger in the center of the river, and that it would be smarter to hug the shore.
“Lauren,” hissed April urgently.
Lauren glanced back and saw a pickup glide across the bridge. It appeared to slow down for a moment, but then continued on its way.
“Is that the one you saw last night?” said April.
Lauren wasn’t sure. Most pickups looked the same to her, and what were the chances that this was the same one?
Given that most were no longer running, she guessed that the odds were pretty high.
“Forget the break,” she said.
She hadn’t seen anyone standing on the pickup bed, but it was possible he was setting up his rifle and scope right now.
The impetus that thought gave her saw the boat’s speed pick up until she’d rounded a bend. She paused to glance once through the foliage, but the bridge remained deserted. That in itself meant nothing, she decided. Eager to get completely away from the area, she plowed on.
An hour later they reached the third and last bridge, and by then Lauren wasn’t sure she could row much further. April, sat behind her, had either stopped rowing or was putting less effort into it, because Lauren felt she was dragging the entire weight of the canoe. With the tunnel vision induced by her efforts, she didn’t see that she couldn’t have gone further, even if she wanted to.
A concrete dam had been built across the river. Passing under the bridge, Lauren didn’t notice until the boat ran aground on a sandbank that had built up in front of the dam. Stupefied, she looked up at the structure, her last reserves of energy giving out at the sight.
“I think you’ve come far enough, ladies,” said a voice.
Lauren turned sharply, seeing the man from the pickup just a few yards away, his rifle pointing at her chest.
“Don’t make a move,” said the man quietly.
Lauren was indeed going to make a move, her hand reaching for her pistol as she twisted in her seat, but then she saw two other guys further back on the shore, one with a shotgun, the other with a large caliber revolver. She had to have paddled right past them to reach the dam.
The man doing all the speaking tutted and shook his head. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you. Hands behind your head. Do it now, because if you reach for that piece I know you’ve got there, I’ll put this thirty-aught-six bullet right through your chest and, unlike you, it won’t be pretty.”
Lauren looked at the size of the bore on the rifle, and the finger poised on the trigger, and knew she didn’t stand a chance. April was hugging Daniel tight to her belly, eyes wide with fright. Reluctantly, she raised her hands, her cheeks burning with the humiliation of being captured. Her muscles hurt and her legs felt weak. The main speaker watched her intently, seemingly fascinated, and Lauren averted her gaze, not wanting to give him any more information about how she felt.
The one with the revolver had a large band aid across one cheek. Sticking the weapon in his waist band, he pulled out a sheaf of zip ties and waded into the river, coming behind Lauren and pulling her arms down behind her back, binding them. Sticking his hand into the pouch of her hoodie, he triumphantly pulled out the Beretta.
“So it was you who grazed my cheek,” he leered, prodding her face with her own pistol. “Maybe I ought to do the same to you.”
Lauren didn’t respond, and the man left her to do the same to April.
“She’s clean,” Lauren heard him say. As a bag was thrust over her head, blocking everything out, she realized something was odd.
Daniel, the little boy who’d screamed the sky down when his mother was dragged away in Baltimore, failed to utter a sound.
36
The moment the engine died was the moment Rick thought he’d killed them all.
He was at the controls of the plane, cruising at three hundred feet under Kowalski’s watchful eye. He hadn’t wanted to fly the plane, but Kowalski insisted he give it a try, saying they had enough altitude to recover from any mistakes. Looking at the vast ocean beneath them, Rick doubted it. The waves were peaked white, and a squall was blowing them sideways. Under Kowalski’s instructions, Rick nudged the left rudder pedal to keep them on course, keeping his eyes pinned on the instrument panel. Try as he might, he couldn’t help glancing down at
the dark water.
That was when the engine suddenly cut out. For a brief moment, the prop continued to turn, then the engine picked up, faltered and roared again. Kowalski’s hands were immediately hard on the controls, and Rick thought he’d made some sort of mistake that had nearly doomed them.
Kowalski altered the fuel mixture, opening the throttle a little, watching the instruments with concern.
“What did I do?” asked Rick, moving all his limbs away from the controls.
“Nothing,” said Kowalski, looking increasingly worried.
“What happened, then?”
“Don’t know,” responded Kowalski curtly. “Fuel impurity, maybe.”
Rick wasn’t reassured. They’d managed to refill the gas cans before leaving Iceland, but the business of siphoning gas was not a sterile procedure. If water droplets had got into the fuel...
Kowalski was on the same wavelength, and immediately started to climb towards the cloud base above them. Rick realized he was trying to gain height in case they were forced to glide. Rick wasn’t sure how that was meant to work out, but as far as he could see, there was nowhere to glide to. According to Kowalski’s calculations, they were still two hours out from Greenland.
Rick was no expert, but he was pretty sure the Cessna would not be able to glide for two hours.
Kowalski ascended into the clouds, and the cockpit grew dark as they were surrounded by a gray wall. Scott leaned forward between the front seats but said nothing. Nobody spoke as Kowalski stared at the instruments, watching the altimeter needle wind slowly round. The engine faltered again, and again he reached for the mixture control, but the engine resumed its drone.
The climb through the cloud took a long time, and when they broke through the top into a pure blue sky, it was like surfacing from a dive into the ocean.