by Mike Markel
I made it back to the logging road and checked to make sure my car couldn’t be spotted.
I calculated I’d have to do a little more than four miles on this road. After the road took a right-angle north, the compound would be two miles due south. The pack was about twenty-five pounds. I adjusted the straps so the heavy stuff rested in the crook of my back and started out. Last time I carried a heavy backpack like this I was a college student, lugging those heavy textbooks with the thick shiny paper. Now I was packing survival gear. I decided not to think about what, if anything, to make of that transition. I just kept walking. I was glad I was wearing my hiking boots.
The road was dirt and gravel, washboarded from the construction vehicles that once used it to tear out a path for the logging trucks. I crunched my way along the wide road, a little nervous that I was so exposed.
The sun was getting low in the west, and already I started to feel the chill that I was going to feel for real tonight. I’d made the right decision to get the Mylar blanket.
After a couple of miles, I saw a flat-topped boulder twenty yards into the forest, so I decided to take a break. Apparently, living mostly on Jack Daniel’s and doing no exercise at all isn’t the best training regime for long walks at five-thousand-feet elevation with twenty-five pounds of crap strapped to your back.
My back wasn’t real happy with me trying to get up after ten minutes on the rock, but I wanted to get to the compound before dark, so I had to push on through. I walked, my legs getting heavier with each step. This place was desolate, and the noise was becoming oppressive. I don’t mean the sounds of squirrels and woodchucks, and all the other animals I didn’t want to think about. I mean the sounds of the air, the way the silence turns into a humming that wraps around your head and starts pushing on your eardrums. I remember how it used to creep me out when I went camping with Bruce and Tommy. I’d lived in LA for a few years, and it was way quieter there than here, because the fire engines and garbage trucks and the woman screaming next door when her son smacked her blocked out that damned silence hum. Out here on this logging road, it was good to hear a Cessna whining overhead every few minutes.
With my rock-top break, I calculated that I was making less than two miles per hour. A few hundred yards ahead, the logging road seemed to disappear. With any luck, that would be the right angle heading north. Those few hundred yards were hard ones, with the road getting a little closer to the sky and my legs getting a little closer to the ground. My feet were scuffing along, throwing up sprays of gravel, but I made it in a couple minutes. I checked the map. Yup, I was now almost exactly two miles due north of the compound, and there was still enough light. I’d walked more than half the distance, but it had all been on the road. Now came two miles of woods. I decided to take another break.
I walked a ways into the woods, found a decent-size boulder to lean against, and spread out the Mylar blanket as a ground cover. I sat down and closed my eyes—and kept them closed for an hour and ten minutes. When I awoke, I was feeling stiffer but a little more alert for whatever lay ahead. I stood up, catching hell from six or seven pissed-off muscle groups. I hoisted my backpack onto my shoulders. I could still see the sun, inching down toward the horizon, but a bunch of clouds were pushing in, promising to deliver dusk early tonight.
I headed due south, snapping a whole lot of twigs, snagging my jeans on all kinds of briars, twisting my ankles a couple times, hurting my back when my foot landed crooked, sending me—and then my backpack—sideways. Got my feet wet and cold by landing in a few hidden little watery holes that were covered up neatly by rotting leaves and twigs. Disturbed a bunch of animals that weren’t expecting me and shot off when they realized they were underfoot. Didn’t see them, just heard the leaves rustling in a straight line headed away from me. With dusk coming on, in the shade of the giant pines and spruce, with wet, aching feet and a sore back, I started to get chilled. Me and my spirits were headed south.
Lacking a better idea, I kept going. It was getting darker, colder, lonelier. A scent of burning wood drifted in from the east, the smell reminding me I hadn’t eaten in a long while. I looked toward the smell but didn’t see anything.
I kept walking.
Then I heard a rustling coming at me from the east. Whatever it was, it was big, and it was coming fast. I had my hand on my holster. I looked up and saw, five feet in front of me, a hundred pounds of wolf. Actually, it looked more like fifty pounds of teeth and fifty pounds of fur and muscle. It was crouched in an attack posture, its head down, pawing at the ground, its black eyes fixed on me, snarling through its yellow brown teeth. The fur on the back of his neck was up, and so was mine. I had my pistol ready, but I didn’t want to have to shoot it and announce my presence quite so obviously. It inched closer to me, and I drew a bead on its thick chest. A voice in the distance called out “Bo, down,” and immediately the dog lay down. It was breathing heavily from the effort involved in scaring the shit out of me, but at least it had stopped snarling. Its pink and black tongue was draped over its left jaw. I could see now it was a dog—the kind of dog that was full of wolf DNA.
I looked off in the direction that the shout had come from. I spotted an older guy, in jeans and a military fatigue jacket, beard and long hair, and, for some reason, a New York Yankees cap, the NY almost invisible beneath years of dirt, grease, and green forest crud. He was walking toward me, a pump-action shotgun up and in the firing position. Realizing that he’d have a lot better chance disabling me with a shotgun than I would disabling him with a pistol, I raised my arms.
“Hey,” I said, doing my best to sound friendly, when he got to within ten yards. He stopped, kept his shotgun ready, didn’t say anything. “Just passing through,” I said. “I’m gonna holster my pistol, okay?”
He nodded, almost imperceptibly. I slipped the Colt into the holster, making sure he could see my hands the whole time. He still didn’t say anything. “Now I’m gonna just keep going, okay?” I put my hands up high. He moved the shotgun barrel in the direction he wanted me to go. “Okay,” I said, “see ya.” I started walking south, my hands still high. After fifty yards, I turned around. The guy and his wolfdog were gone. I felt some rumbling in the vicinity of my colon, which I didn’t need at the moment. On the positive side, however, I was walking with pretty high steps and a renewed energy.
Chapter 18
I was two-hundred yards north of the compound. There was still enough light for me to see the perimeter of cleared land, the chain-link fence, and the two guard towers. Between them sat the log-cabin church and the Reverend Christopher Barry’s white house with its propane submarine and giant dish antenna.
I was crouched behind a boulder, about ten feet across and six feet high at its tallest. This would be where I would hang out. I’d be able to stand up and move around without being seen.
I put my backpack down and laid out the Mylar blanket. I stuffed the Montana map deep inside. I had a pretty strong feeling that I wouldn’t need it again, at least for now, perhaps ever again. Whatever direction I’d be heading, there’d be something or someone on my tail, and I probably wouldn’t have time to consult a map and weigh my choice of routes.
I tried to get the binoculars out of the heavy plastic packaging they came in. Couldn’t. Remembered I had bolt cutters. Success. I attached the strap to the binocs and scanned the complex. I started with the guard towers. I could see a guy in the tower on the right, walking a pattern around the perimeter of the small platform. He did a circuit every thirty seconds, taking in the whole three-sixty. He was wearing the same gray and black uniform as the patdown Nazi at the gate. He was a tall, thin man with a shaved head. He carried the same AK-47 on his shoulder. Usually I admire discipline in uniforms, weapons, and such, but this time I was hoping the tower was unmanned, or that the guard was occupied with a DVD player and some porn. No such luck. He was on duty, really into it, on the lookout for people like me.
I couldn’t see anyone in the tower on the left. I kept my binocs fixed on the t
ower, because the guard could be seated on the far side and be invisible to me. A minute went by, then two minutes. This was good. I thought maybe I could approach the compound from the east, about halfway between the entrance gate and the tower. If there was no guard on the tower, I might be able to cut through the fence in case I needed to get into the compound. I still had no idea why I might want to do that, but thinking about how to get in qualified as planning. It was at least a dot. I’d need another one in order to connect the dots, but, like they say, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. I realized my feet hurt. I took off my boots to inspect the damage.
Then, my dot got erased. I was working on my feet when the whole damn sky over the compound lit up. Oh, that would be the serious searchlights on each of the four corners of the two guard towers and, for good measure, on the dinky guard booth at the entrance. The arc from the searchlights was carefully calibrated to illuminate every inch of the fencing and the cleared perimeter beyond it. It looked like the state fair had come to town. No fried dough and beer, unfortunately, and any rides you went on would probably get you killed. But my plan for cutting my way into the compound was definitely not going to work.
Another uniformed Nazi emerged from the front side of the church building and walked over to the guard tower to my left. His AK-47 slung over his shoulder, he climbed the ladder up to his post. Okay. Two guard towers, two guards, each with a Kalash.
Time for some chicken tetrazzini. I knew my way around propane camping stoves, but this was my first MRE. I ripped open the package and studied the instructions. I put the food pouch into the heating pouch. Then I poured water into the heating pouch and presto: the water set off some chemical in the heating pouch. I closed up the heating pouch. It would need ten minutes. I could feel the outside of the pouch getting hot. All kinds of gurgling and hissing sounds were coming from inside. While the chicken was cooking, I did the same with the powder that would turn into hot chocolate. I got my plastic knife and fork and the napkin.
When the food and drink pouches were done, I opened them up. Shit, a cloud of steam came pouring out. I waved my arms and blew on it like a Clueless Dad in a sitcom.
After the steam was gone, I stuck my head over the rock to check out the two guard towers. Apparently the smoke signals hadn’t reached them.
In my months as a serious alcoholic, I’d found that if I skip a meal or three, the food tastes better. Therefore, I was looking forward to the chicken tetrazzini. Initial signs were all positive: it was steaming hot, and a bunch of spicy aromas came floating out. Actually eating the stuff was somewhat disappointing. I could taste some chicken-inspired gray pencil erasers. The mushrooms and gravy were gooey packing peanuts. The pasta was a buttery post-marathon innersole. I checked the list of ingredients on the back of the pouch, but, surprisingly, it didn’t include shit. One thing about this meal: it underscored the gravity of my situation. You couldn’t eat an MRE and think things were looking up.
Another thing about my MRE: although the memories might last a lifetime, the meal itself stayed inside me less than an hour. I used the handles of the bolt cutters to dig a quick hole twenty yards downwind, which I then filled. If I’d had enough time to consider the question of where to locate the hole, I might have realized that straying from behind my rock might not be all that intelligent. But I didn’t have enough time to give it deep thought. All I knew was that I’d be dropping some industrial-strength shit in just a moment, and I had no intention of dropping it right in the middle of my living room.
I made it back behind my rock and dozed off, pulling my Mylar blanket up around me. I lay still but I wasn’t really sleeping. The furry woodland creatures were scurrying around like they owned the place. Various aromas from my chicken tetrazzini, hot chocolate, and the hole downwind must have gotten them all atwitter. I shoved the packages from the MRE back into the cardboard box and tossed it toward the shithole. I didn’t know what the animals were and didn’t care, as long as they were herbivores and were willing to let me use these thirty square feet behind the rock for a little while.
Dusk had fallen, and the cloud cover promised to keep my area relatively dark. Looking through my binocs at the Rev’s white house, I started to feel a little better about things. I could see into the kitchen through a wide, shallow window. Alice was at her post, washing dishes. Good. The living room had a picture window with no curtains or blinds or anything to block my view. A flickering gray and white light from one corner was probably Fat Ricky watching cartoons, although I couldn’t spot him from my angle. A bulb from one of the lamps on the end tables flanking the couch threw a dim light out into the room, but I couldn’t see anyone. There was a light behind the drawn cloth curtains in what must have been the Rev’s bedroom, but I didn’t see any activity there, either.
I sat back down behind the rock. I was running on fumes, both mentally and physically. I tried to take stock of where I was, what I was going to do next, how I might prepare for contingencies, but I came up blank. I couldn’t get into the compound—and at the moment didn’t want to or have a reason to. The best I could do now was keep watching and hope something would happen in the Reverend Barry’s house that would help me understand what was going on. And once I knew what was going on? Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. It’s important to live in the moment, even if the moment, like this one, really blows.
Time dragged. I kept my boots on, in case I needed to move fast, but I had a nickel-sized blister below my left ankle. Even if I had the motivation and strength to move fast, I doubt if I could. That, plus the fact that my legs had gone rubbery and heavy, like I was wearing a wetsuit.
I was drifting off toward sleep. I usually start dreaming before I fall asleep. I’m even aware of it, with me and anyone else in my little Cranial Funhouse getting all elongated and walking funny, saying things that they wouldn’t say in real life. Not like they speak honestly, telling their real feelings. That would be interesting and instructive. But it was nothing that straightforward. More like the words don’t exactly make sense. The sentences start off heading straight down a street, but then they go off-road and get filmy and evaporate like steam coming out of a kettle. Yet nobody seems to notice or get self-conscious about it. It’s like everyone’s got an IV in their arm and is counting backward from ten, and we’re all at about seven. It’s pleasantly low-stress. I don’t mind that all the stuff I say isn’t making sense or connecting with what other people are saying. That’s pretty much me when I’m awake.
When I slide from my sorta dreams into real dreams, things can get hinky. And that’s what they got. Me and Ryan and Nick Corelli were down in Harold Breen’s office, and he was giving us the statistics on Dolores Weston: fifty-nine-year-old white woman, sixty-eight inches tall, and all that. Then, he lifts the cloth off her body, but it’s me on the table. Me with half my head caved in, ropes of dried blood all over my hair, my eye dangling out of its socket, half full of blood. I’m not standing there with Ryan and Nick, I’m on the table, and Harold’s gazing at me, a puzzled look coming over his face. He checks the clipboard again and says, “I’m sorry, I was looking at the wrong chart. The decedent is Detective Karen Seagate, a forty-two-year-old Caucasian woman, sixty-nine inches tall …”
I flinched and gave out a sharp yelp, waking myself up. I know I’m going to die, probably pretty soon, maybe tonight or tomorrow. Still, it gets your attention when you hear one of your buddies at work talking about you in the past tense. I was shaking good, partly from the cold, partly from the dream. I tried to jolly myself along, thinking that getting upset about seeing my busted-up bod on the table meant that I didn’t want to die, at least not yet. But maybe it was just the shock of seeing the damage, and it didn’t say anything about whether I was okay with the general idea of dying. You can’t tell, really. Who would you ask?
But this dream was gruesome because seeing Dolores Weston’s face a few days ago was a real horrorshow. Long, long time ago, when I was drinking—that was la
st week—I never had those dreams about me dying. I had my share of nightmares, but they were all when I was awake. I slept like a baby: a baby that threw up a lot and wet the bed occasionally. Bottom line: drunk or sober, you pay either way.
The shakes were starting to smooth out a bit when I heard the unmistakable thunk of a car door shutting in the distance. I got my binocs and saw half a Hyundai sedan parked on the far side of the Rev’s house. It was new and shiny clean but with a splatter of yellow and green bugs decorating the front fender and grill. The driver had used his wipers to clear the carcasses, leaving a pastel fan-shaped arc looking like bad eyeliner. Part of the front license plate was visible. It started with 23, which is the number for the Rawlings area.
There were some people moving around in the kitchen, but I couldn’t recognize anyone. Then I saw the bedroom light go out, then Christopher Barry lumbering across the living room and into the kitchen. I stood there, leaning against the rock, the binocs focused on the kitchen, spasms of pain running up and down my spine like a local train making every stop.
After fifteen minutes I couldn’t take it any longer and melted into a blob on my blanket. I tried to stretch away the pain with some basic yoga stretches—forward bend, cobra, and downward-facing dog—but the kinks had moved in and were determined to stay a while. I lay flat on my back, letting myself feel crappy. I was hungry, my blister stung, my legs and back ached, my gut was still churning from the MRE coming in, and my asshole was still hot from the MRE going out. Plus, I was cold. Did I mention scared shitless? Well, very scared, but not literally shitless. That would take probably another hour.
After a few minutes or a half hour—I can’t be sure, not being quite tuned in—I struggled back to my feet. I found a different part of the boulder to lean on. It was only three feet high, so I could kneel and not feel it so bad in my back. The kitchen was dark now, and the light was back on in the bedroom. The living room was lit by both lamps from the end tables. Fat Ricky’s TV was off. The Rev was standing there, his back to the big picture window. He was hard to mistake, with his shock of white hair, his wide torso, and his double-wide ass. His arms were gesturing. He was talking to someone I couldn’t see. He looked agitated.