“Interesting,” Bev said.
“You have to be part doctor. Know how to perform a tracheotomy.”
“What for?”
“In case someone chokes.”
“Oh.”
“We also learn CPR and a lot of other stuff, including delivering a baby.”
“Wow.”
“Dr. LaDoux at your service.”
They stopped in mid-afternoon for lunch. Jim drove the HumVee deep into one of the rest areas to hide it. Bev cooked up some Spam and sliced potatoes, sprinkled liberally with onion salt, and it was quite delicious. The fire with which they cooked the Spam burned smokeless enough so it wouldn’t give them away should there be Rejects in the area.
After lunch—or more particularly as Jim and Bev were sipping on cups of fresh coffee and Jim was smoking a cigarette—she brought up a subject that had been on her mind.
“Let me ask you,” Bev said, “how did you like living in Idaho?”
“I loved it.”
“Like what?”
“The country, the mountains and water, the food . . . everything.”
“Somehow I got the idea that it was the breeding ground for a lot of crazy people.”
“That’s a myth. I mean, people say that Idaho harbors a large number of hate groups and white supremacists, but there are only small groups concentrated up in northern Idaho where I was from. For example, a few years ago when the Aryan Nations had their national gathering, only a few people attended. One thing I do know. Idaho really cares about liberty and freedom, that its laws don’t infringe on individual or property rights. That really came out during the Ruby Ridge assault years ago by the FBI.”
“I vaguely remember that. . . .”
“It happened in 1992,” Jim said. “U.S. Marshals and FBI and BATF agents assaulted the home of Randy and Vicki Weaver, killing Vicki, son Sammy, and the family dog. So in 1993 Randy Weaver was found innocent of weapon and murder charges and got $3.1 million in civil damages. But that didn’t bring his family back.”
“How terrible.”
“Let me ask you a question,” Jim said, topping off their coffee cups. “Do you expect to get married one day?”
“Not if the world stays like this. I’ve always thought I wanted kids, and I certainly wouldn’t want to bring them into the world the way it is now. It’s so unstable.”
“I agree.”
Jim mashed his cigarette out on a rock. Preventing fires in the wilderness was as natural to him as breathing.
“Do you think the world will change?” Bev asked.
“If it doesn’t it won’t survive.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Again, and I don’t want to harp on it, but I’ve always thought that life was about fair play. If you don’t treat people right, one day your behavior will bite you in the butt. That’s why wars start. People don’t treat other people fairly. I know you’re too young to have experienced it, and so am I, but I’m sure you know about Communism?”
“Sure.”
“I remember my grandfather telling me that the reason the Berlin Wall came down was that the general populace wasn’t being treated fairly. The bigwigs lived in relative luxury while the rest of the people had to scrape to get by. And meanwhile the bigwigs were telling everybody to believe in Communism, with everybody sharing equally. The general public knew that was baloney—or knockwurst—and they took it for a long time, but one fine day they said we’ve had enough and revolted.”
“Absolutely.
“Changing the subject,” Bev continued, “it’s hard to believe you weren’t married, or don’t have a girl.”
“No,” Jim said. “Like I said before, not many eligible girls where I live. And I always seemed to be busy with other stuff.”
“I would imagine that women would flock to you.”
“The only thing I had flocking to me was sheep.”
Bev laughed.
“You don’t like girls?”
“You mean do I prefer boys?”
Bev laughed.
“No,” she said.
“I would imagine boys would flock to you,” Jim said.
“My father discouraged them. I had a boyfriend when I was about fifteen,” Bev said. “We went out about six weeks.”
“What ended it?”
“Daddy. He heard that the boy was interested in only one thing.” Jim laughed.
“At that age the world is—how did one writer say it?—all legs and breasts,” Jim said.
He paused, then continued. “That’s what all boys are interested in. That’s just the way nature is.”
“Not to a Bible thumper like my father.”
“Well, he must have been interested in something other than religion at one point in his life.”
“What do you mean?”
“You didn’t crawl out from under a rock, did you? You had a mother, right?”
“Yes,” Bev said. “Are you . . . uh, liberal about that stuff?”
“I’m not liberal about anything. I would totally agree with Ben Raines when it comes to liberalism. You treat people like they’re crippled and guess what, they turn out to be.”
“Crippled?”
“That’s it. I guess I’m sort of old-fashioned,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t believe that men should live like caribou, mating with everything in sight. I guess I always told myself that I had to really feel something for a woman before I would have sex.”
“I think that’s the way it should be too,” Bev said.
Jim nodded. He was right on the verge of telling Bev that he was starting to feel something for her but he held it back. Maybe, he thought, she didn’t feel anything for him. And if she had to say that, it would be disappointing and possibly add to the tenseness of their relationship.
They drove on for many more miles, still in forest, and at one point Jim knew that more desert was coming up.
“Do you want to stop for the night now?” he said.
“Why?”
“I’d just like to camp out in the forest. We’ll be totally safe, and every now and then I just like to stay in the forest. It sort of renews me. And I sure need renewal now.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know about you, but all this—plus the last of my family dying—has taken its toll. It gets to you.”
“Absolutely,” Bev said. “Absolutely. But you can’t go to the corner drugstore for an antidepressant.”
“There are plants you can use if you want,” Jim said, “to pump yourself up.”
“No, I’m okay. I just say a couple of prayers. And talking to you really helps.”
“I’m glad,” Jim said.
Bev looked at him. A little color had come into her cheeks.
“You know, you’re a very sensitive man. I mean you look like this very strong, tough guy—and you are. But you have a very sensitive, concerned side. Sort of unusual for a man.”
Jim nodded.
“I don’t take any credit for that,” he said, “it’s the way I was raised.”
He paused. Then: “We have about an hour of daylight left,” he said, “and that will give us up time to set up before we hit the hay.”
“What do you mean ‘set up’?” Bev said.
“I want to show you my mountain man side,” he said.
“Okay.”
A couple of miles later Jim drove through an opening in the trees to an area deep in the woods.
“We can camp here,” he said. “Of course we’re breaking the law.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s against the law to bring dogs into national parks like this. They don’t mix well with the bears.”
“Oh.”
“But old Reb here—or should I say young Reb here?—is very well behaved. I’ll let him stay in the HumVee cab overnight. I don’t want him arrested!”
Bev laughed.
“Now,” he said, “our fir
st chore is to find a place to store our food.”
“What do you mean?”
“This is brown and black bear country and occasionally you get a grizzly coming down from Yellowstone. They usually don’t bother people but they are attracted to food. And they can be dangerous.”
Bev nodded.
“You know the difference,” Jim said with a deadpan expression, “between a black bear and a grizzly?”
“No.”
“If you climb up a tree a black bear will climb up after you. A grizzly will snap the tree off at the base.”
For a moment, Bev thought Jim was serious, then started laughing. Jim joined her.
“We have to cook and hang our food about a hundred feet from where our tents are. That puts enough space between us and the bears.”
“Okay,” Bev said, “lead the way.”
They carried the food about a hundred yards away from where they intended to camp, and Jim climbed a small ladder he had brought with him to hang the food from a branch that was fifteen feet off the ground and five feet from the trunk of the tree. The branch was high enough off the ground so no bear could reach the food, and strong enough to support the food, but not a hungry bear whose natural smarts about not climbing out onto a branch would keep him from attempting to get the food.
“Want to eat now?”
“Sure. I’m hungry.”
“Let’s do it.”
Together, they got a fire going, first clearing away all brush and leaves. They made coffee and eggs seasoned with herbs Jim found and they were delicious. Reb also got some dried cat food—suitably seasoned. Then they lingered over a final cup of coffee, Jim had a smoke, and then Bev helped him hang all their food up high and make sure that the fire was out. He got the feeling, without being able to nail it down, that she wanted him to notice the way she positioned her body during all this, and a couple of times she caught him looking at her. He was embarrassed, but he couldn’t help it. She was gorgeous.
Then they walked back to where the HumVee was parked, and Jim unloaded the tents and other gear.
Jim set up one of the tents, and then he said: “Where would you like yours?”
Bev looked at him in a way that he had not seen before. Almost as if she had never seen him before, but what she saw she liked very much.
“I think one tent will be okay,” she said. “What do you think?”
“I think one tent will be fine, “Jim said, his voice a little husky.
Fifteen minutes later, night came to the forest. Reb was placed in the HumVee and then Jim and Bev—and the AK-47 and her TT-33—went into the tent and closed the flap behind them.
“I got three blankets,” Jim said. “It gets chilly here.”
But Bev did not seem to be listening, and the next thing Jim knew she had his face in her hands and kissed him with first a closed and then an open mouth. He felt a certain electricity go through him, and then he kissed her neck, and soon their clothes were coming off and they were at each other with a controlled, highly efficient, but soft intensity, and then they were making love, two human beings who, no matter how strong they were, had seen and felt far too much in the days and weeks and months and years that had gone before, and now needed each other not only as lovers, but as human beings, ministering to the wounds and hurts that both felt, melding, blending, not knowing where each other’s body began and left off, emptying the pain and heartache and love into each other over and over again.
EIGHT
As the man walked as quickly as he could through the forest he recalled something he had read once: in a race between a hare and a fox, the hare usually won, because he had stronger motivation than the fox. The fox was running for its dinner. The hare was running for its life.
The analogy for him, he thought, was inaccurate. He had nothing concrete to base it on. He could not be sure that someone was pursuing him, but based on what he had seen back in “Compound W,” he didn’t want to take any chances.
His name was Morty Rosen. Normally, his hair was as long as a woman’s but part of his undercover persona before he hooked up with the Rejects was to get his head shaved. He had also joined a local atheistic society so that if someone questioned him he would know the lingo and the ideas of people who didn’t believe in God. In fact, he wasn’t sure he believed in God anyway, but it seemed more logical to believe there was one than that there wasn’t Ironically, when he was in college he took a philosophy course and went along with the proof for the existence of God furnished by Thomas Acquinas, a great Catholic thinker. To wit, there had to be an “uncaused cause,” and that was God. It was hard to argue with. You could trace man all the way back to some one-celled animal. But someone had to cause the one-celled animal to begin with.
Perhaps the best part of his God-is-dead cover, however, was the tattoo he had done on his right forearm. He had asked and the tattooist had blurred the edges a little and made the image faint, so it looked like Morty had had it for a long time, the implication, of course, being that Morty had been a nonbeliever for a long time. He understood that before they did anything to you the Rejects would determine where your—ho, ho—faith lay.
He was also thirty years old, thin and wiry, and before this night was over he knew he was going to be thinner. He hoped he didn’t make a meal for a damn grizzly. Once he had read a story about two campers who were attacked by a grizzly without all his marbles and when they found the duo all that was left was twelve pounds of meat and bone. The rest of the duo was inside the grizzly.
Morty was a city-bred guy, having been raised in the Bronx and having worked in a number of cities including Chicago, Baltimore, and New York, so before he had come to Wyoming, where Compound W was, he had also done research on how to survive in the wild if he had to, and now he was putting what he knew to the test. Of course before he had decided to head west he had taken a test in a magazine on his suitability to survive in the wild and he fell into a category that said: Stay in Gotham.
He knew he should have been exhausted. He had gone at least forty miles, most of it at a fast clip but some of it trotting and, occasionally, running flat out, just to bleed off the anxiety that would boil up inside him. But you don’t get tired when you’re running scared. Good thing he wasn’t swimming where sharks were. Along the way he had collided with a number of brushes and branches, and once had fallen and his head had missed a big, jagged rock by a half inch. Those scratches would have been an invite to dinner for every shark with a nose.
He had been able to keep in the woods all the way—though he was tempted to run out in the open where he didn’t have to worry about wild animals and where he could really put some distance between himself and them. But he wondered just how visible he would be if they got close. The moon was almost full, and the sky was blanketed with stars to an unbelievable degree. Christ, he might be visible in the woods. He knew the Rejects didn’t have any planes or choppers—at least not yet—but he did not doubt their determination if they found out who he was. But they did have tracking dogs, and a special “escape unit” for just this kind of thing. If they found out who he was, they would come after him fast, and if they caught up with him, he didn’t want to think of what they would do. The easiest way, which they sometimes did, was to shoot you. But they were great on making examples of people, and to make sure you suffered, so they might hang you, garrote you, boil you alive, draw and quarter you, crucify you. Or a recent favorite, mount you on a sharpened stake that would slowly drive up into your intestines. He had seen one guy who had been caught with a prayer missal pulled apart by wild horses, his arms being torn from their sockets, the horses running away with the man’s arms bouncing along the ground like two legs of lamb. Watching this—and it was compulsory for everyone in the compound to watch it—had almost made him puke. In fact, a number of people did puke, and a couple cried. But they all had gotten the message.
Loyalty was high on the Rejects’s bill of particulars, and he was hardly that. If they found out about
him, and went after him and caught him, he would not see the sun come up. That he knew absolutely and surely as he knew his name. His real name, not Mort Adams, which he had ID’d himself as.
Still, when he was in the woods he was not thinking so much of the Rejects as he was of animals. Bears were nocturnal creatures. One fantasy had him coming around a bend and face-to-face with a black bear or grizzly, though he had heard that if they heard you coming they would run the other way.
Whatever, when he was moving through the woods he carried the .45 the Rejects had issued to him, safety off. If something appeared he would shoot first and ask questions later. He had also had the foresight to take a box of cartridges with him. He had this stored in his backpack. He would probably be so nervous if he encountered Ursus horribilis he would empty all sixteen shots into him—or whatever found its mark.
Right now, Morty was not feeling so good, not only because he knew he was facing great danger, but because he wasn’t facing it too well, something he had been able to do quite handily before. And he had been in some badass places, like Bosnia, during various wars in Africa, as well as going undercover in a motorcycle club in the States. All had required great chutzpah, and his balls had come through with flying colors. But he had never seen such savagery as with the Rejects, and after a while watching people die in such horrible ways every single day of the week started to get to him.
Abruptly now, he heard something. He stopped and listened. It was in the distance, the direction he was coming from. It was the yip-yip-yip of a coyote, and the sound of something light and fast running across the forest floor.
He looked around. There didn’t seem to be anything dangerous around. A couple of times when he had stopped he saw pairs of red eyes—fortunately very low to the ground—looking at him, but then the eyes had dissolved and the creatures had run away.
He was not, of course, defenseless in case a wild animal came at him. He had wanted to steal a shotgun or any number of other weapons that the Rejects had stockpiled, but if he was caught with one he would have been questioned exhaustively, and if they suspected anything they would invite him to sit on a stake. The Rejects didn’t trouble themselves with the finer points, like proof and corroboration. They just killed you and moved on.
Survivor (The Ashes Book 36) Page 9