by David Downie
James shook his head skeptically but was too ravenous, his mind packed with gruesome images from the hatchery, to worry about the weather.
They found a sunny spot on a lichen-etched granite boulder and laid out their feast from the Farmstead Market at the Seaside Mall—potato salad, cold cuts, a sourdough baguette, and fresh-squeezed apple juice. “I’ll bring out the coffee and chocolate chip cookies later,” Maggie promised.
A quarter hour of silent contentment followed, while each of them sank into thoughtful contemplation of the view and enjoyment of the simple pleasures of food.
As the crow flies, their boulder stood approximately seven miles inland, James calculated, gazing back down the winding road but unable to see either the hatchery or the viaduct on the Old Coast Highway. Carverville lay to the south, hidden by another, lower mountain and several ridges.
“How come they cut down all the trees?” Taz asked, his eyes moving from stump to blackened stump across what appeared to be a scene of endless devastation.
James stifled a snort and let Maggie answer. “You took Econ 101 last year, Alex,” she teased. “And we watched those old movies, Wall Street and Chinatown, remember?”
Taz nodded. “Greed is good,” he said histrionically.
“Someone wants this water,” Maggie added. “The whole valley will be developed before long. I didn’t have the heart to tell you, JP.”
James had difficulty swallowing. “You’ve seen the permit applications?” he asked. Maggie nodded.
“I guess what I mean,” Taz cut in, “is, how come they, like, didn’t replant or something, or use the land for something else? Isn’t it bad economics to wreck everything?”
“Greed isn’t good, ever,” James said far too seriously, “and don’t let anyone convince you of the contrary.”
Taz eyed him, clearly struggling not to challenge the statement. “When the settlers came out here and, like, killed the Native Americans and chopped down the trees and got rich and took over the country, did they, like, replant things?”
Maggie shook her head and let out an unexpected ironic laugh. “They were even more ignorant back then. They wanted to clear out the trees and make farmland and pastures, like the ones they knew back home in Europe.”
“Is this what Europe looks like?” Taz asked incredulously. He pronounced the word “Yerp.” “No wonder they left.”
“They thought the forests were inexhaustible,” Maggie continued. “By the time they cut one area another had grown back. There were few people around back then, and it took time to do things like chop down forests.”
“Not anymore,” James said. “And they had God on their side.”
“Some still do,” Maggie added.
With unspoken consent they silently finished their coffee and cookies, packed the leftovers and supplies back in the car, and walked toward Narrow Rocks to see the fountainhead of Five Mile Creek, Taz speculating loquaciously on the future role of artificial intelligence. High on caffeine, he bounced along, saying he was of the opinion smart drones and robots could be used for almost anything, from giving massages or physiotherapy to operating fishing boats and public transit, cooking and cleaning or logging and reforesting land and babysitting the young or the aged.
“The drone that followed you out,” he said enthusiastically to Maggie, “it was, like, equipped with multiple spy cameras, super high-definition, the kind they had in Boston where they could see the faces of the guys who blew up those bombs at the marathon, remember? Those were first generation. They’re a lot better now and a lot lighter so you can put them on a small drone and see everything for miles around, even at night. Sometimes they have heat sensors, so you could find someone who had, like, climbed up a tree to hide, it’s really cool.”
“Very cool.” James grunted. “You could even say chilling.”
“You could even arm that drone if you wanted and, like, use it for hunting.”
“Or for tracking down wanted fugitives?” Maggie asked.
“Sure.”
“And people in the resistance trying to overthrow an illegitimate totalitarian government?”
“Yep,” Taz said brightly. “Counterterrorism is already using them. The price has come down so local police departments can buy them. They’re almost as good as the military models, but the range is, like, still limited and the payload, too. But it’s really cool, it’s totally, like, awesome what you can do. I could become a professional pilot. That would be cooler than writing code. We do that in the computer lab, I mean, we, like, have simulators, and we got to pilot a real long-range BVLOS police drone on the football field yesterday. They use the radio station broadcast tower and fly forty miles, Beyond Visual Line of Sight . . .”
“We get it,” said Maggie. “I know. It’s cool.”
“Very cool,” James muttered bleakly. “Can you hack into that system, too, and crash the drones if you want?”
“Probably,” Taz said, his eyes widening, “that would be even cooler, I’ll see if I can figure that out, I’d have to override the Failsafe Return to Home function or crash it within, like, the two-second time limit . . . maybe they’re wired into the security video system. We already hacked that, it was easy.”
“We?”
“Yeah, three of us, in the computer lab, but don’t ask me to tell you who they are, we swore we would keep it a secret.”
“Great,” James said, “that’s sure to remain a secret, all right, three teenagers . . .”
“Sometimes teenagers are good at keeping secrets,” Maggie said enigmatically. Taking James by the hand she slowed his pace. “Alex, run ahead and see how far it is to the waterfall, okay? I’m tired.” When Taz had disappeared around a kink in the trail, Maggie stopped and pulled James toward her. They hugged. “This thing with the drone is just the beginning, I know it,” she whispered. “When we get back to the house we have to talk. I need to share some things with you.”
“Of course,” he said, trying to sound unconcerned. “We need to compare notes.”
They released each other as Taz came trotting back, breathless. “The waterfall is around the corner but it’s so weird.” He slumped like a tired child on Maggie’s shoulder.
“What’s weird?”
“It’s, like, all these people in pink uniforms are walking in the forest around the stumps, with shovels, and they’re planting things, I think they’re trees. It’s, like, so weird, we were just talking about it.”
“A reforestation crew.” James smiled. “Better late than never.”
“Yeah, except there’s, like, a woman and a man in some kind of green uniform, with machine guns and they’re, like, watching everyone. I think I’ve seen some of them before . . .”
Rounding the corner, they paused by the picnic tables. The “sacred forest” of the long-gone Yono tribe was no longer. Scattered across the crest above were fifteen or twenty male convicts in striped prison outfits—the stripes were pink and black, not white and black. They were shackled by twos. Half carried shovels or picks, the other half cardboard boxes bristling with foot-high fir seedlings. On the hiking trail below, the guards had set up two sandwich boards warning DO NOT APPROACH CONVICTS. WE SHOOT AT 50 YARDS.
James and Maggie each raised a hand to signal their presence. The guards signaled back without taking their eyes off the prisoners.
“Politicals,” James asked, “or run-of-the-mill felons?”
Maggie dipped and shook her head meaninglessly, her usual tic, as she looked at the convicts one by one. “They could be anyone nowadays.”
“I thought they’d stopped using the chain gangs,” James remarked.
“Not in this county. It’s a local jurisdiction issue as of last summer. You remember the 287(g) Program. Those are probably illegal immigrants. Harvey came up with the pink and black stripes and the female guards to humiliate the male prisoners. I hear the men also have pink underwear—”
“Now I know,” Taz blurted out, interrupting, “some of those guys
were in the emergency ward, remember?”
James shaded his eyes, stared, emitted a grunt and looked away, his mind filled with images of prisons, courtrooms, crime scenes, and the DA’s offices he had occupied when a young prosecutor. “Not good,” he muttered, “not good.”
Taz had already lost interest. He raced to the waterfall, where he stood leaning precariously over a boulder, gazing into the thundering precipice where the giant ferns and carpets of moss glowed bright green in the watery sun. “Slippery!” he shouted through cupped hands as Maggie and James joined him. She stood back and grabbed James’s arm.
“I’m not usually afraid of heights, but this is pretty bad.”
“Awesome,” said Taz. “It’s, like, a hundred yards at least and look at all the water. This must be trickle-down . . .” His goofy face was met by blank stares. “Econ 101,” he added.
James peered over the edge at the spring bubbling up and gushing from the side of the mountain, then spilling liquid silver into the void. The wind whisked the droplets into a mesmerizing mist that rose and fell before their eyes, following the gusts of wind. He glanced seaward and saw that the black wall of weather had almost reached the coast. “Let’s hustle,” he said. “I think the five-year joke is about to end.”
James sensed something was wrong as they approached the car. It leaned off-kilter on one side, and as they neared, they could see the two driver’s-side tires had been slashed. Inspecting them, James also saw the valve on the front passenger-side tire had been unscrewed partway and most of the air had escaped. So, they had three flats, one spare, and one instant repair bottle to reinflate and patch leaks, not slashes. The equation did not add up.
Glancing around, they saw no one and no trace of lingering dust. Should they risk getting shot and ask the guards for a ride down the hill?
Maggie put her hands on her hips and cursed under her breath. “Now I’m mad,” she said, “somebody’s going to pay for this.”
“Who did it, Grandma?”
Maggie stared through Taz to the serpentine road back down the hill. “You know who did it, Alex, don’t be naïve.”
“I can’t believe there’s no connectivity up here,” Taz said, divining for water again with his phone. “We could call Beverley or Triple A.”
“Surely the prison guards could call someone or give us a ride . . .” James began but fell silent as Maggie stared him down, shaking her head. Checking his watch then rummaging through the glove compartment, he found a flashlight. “We’d better start walking, then,” he said. “We’ve got two hours of daylight and eight miles to cover. Let’s grab the water and the rest of the picnic in case we get hungry, and bundle up. We’ll come back tomorrow with Beverley’s truck and change the tires.”
“And then what?” Maggie asked.
James glanced away, unwilling to meet her stare. “Maybe we can figure that out before we reach home,” he said. “There’s nothing like a little hike to clear the mind.”
TWENTY-THREE
They felt the first drops strike about a mile downhill from the parking lot. Pattering like clumsy fingers on a keyboard, knocking the dust off the leaves and brittle branches of the scrub and contorted fir saplings along the road, within minutes the rain turned to hail, then snow, then sleet, then hail, then heavy rain again. The black sky swallowed the woods and road, the wind tossing and breaking its way across the landscape, whipping up windmills of dust and returning them as mud. Leaning forward into the gale, the three walked as fast as the gusts and stinging raindrops or sleet would permit.
Zigzagging like drunkards, they slipped into potholes newly changed into mud puddles. Shouting into the gusts and grabbing at each other’s sleeves or hoods trying to stay upright, they each in turn cursed the man who had slashed the car tires and the gods who had unleashed this storm at this moment after years of parched, choking drought. Exploding like a hail of bomblets, the sleety squall ripped the picnic bags out of their hands and scattered potato salad, bread, and napkins into the maelstrom. Vainly trying to order chaos, James switched on the flashlight and waved it, leading the way. Rarely had he been wetter or colder, the chill penetrating until his teeth began to chatter and his limbs to shake as if palsied. Glancing back for the umpteenth time, he barely made out the silhouettes of Maggie and Taz, though they were staggering along only a few yards behind.
At the point where the road widened and the grade began to relent, they heard a rumbling and turned one after the other. Six powerful headlights and roof lights swinging wildly to left and right lunged toward them, raking first one side then the other of the road. Jumping clear, they watched the bus loaded with convicts bucking, heaving, and rocking past, barely missing them. James shouted, waving his flashlight and pounding on the corrugated yellow side of the bus. Jerking to a halt, its single folding side door sprang open. “Thank god,” James gasped as he stepped forward. An armed guard, the woman from the ridge, raised her machine gun and ordered him to stop and back away.
“You can’t ride in here,” she yelled, the veins bulging in her neck. “It’s against the law. We will radio for help. Keep walking.”
The door slammed shut and the bus rocked away, its dual rear wheels sinking into the mud then spinning and spraying a brown wake of slush.
There was no choice but to keep moving. Gray in the face as he had been at the hospital, Taz seemed about to collapse. Maggie swayed, trying to keep her balance. Clasping them in his widespread arms, James shouted, “Move! Or we’ll die. They’re sending help.”
Another half hour of paralyzing numbness ensued as the hurricane raged and the dark, muddy, icy waters and punch-drunk winds pushed then dragged them staggering downhill. James lost sensation in his toes and fingers. His lips would not move. Trying to shout, his voice died into a hoarse croaking. Four words thumped with the blood in his temples, keeping pace with his shallow, erratic breathing and stumbling steps. “Let it come down,” he heard himself chanting, “let it come down.”
They had nearly reached the hatchery when another set of headlights swung into view on the road below. Seen through the downpour, the twinkling, swirling orange and yellow lights on the lumbering vehicle’s roof made it look like a funfair attraction. Only when a hundred yards off did the keening, pealing siren tear through the sodden darkness before going silent as the SUV skidded to a stop. They flung themselves at the doors, Taz and Maggie piling into the back and James into the front passenger seat. The locks clicked shut.
“Hell of a storm,” said Harvey, shouting over the noise of the heater fan, windshield wipers, defogger, and crackling police radio. “Hell of a time to be hiking through the woods.” He stared straight ahead through the windshield, his wolfish smile filling the rearview mirror. James could see Maggie’s and Taz’s electrified eyes watching it through the metal grid dividing the passenger compartment from the front. An automatic assault weapon attached to the grid on his side reminded James he should not be sitting where he was.
“I can’t talk,” James stuttered at the sheriff’s jutting profile, his lips still numb.
“Chilly, isn’t it?” Harvey nodded to himself, pleased. “Good thing I came along, I guess.” He paused, seemingly expecting them to signal or say something. “Now, I’ve got to turn this turkey around and get us out before you need a boat instead of a car.” Reaching for the transceiver, he barked out his ID and reported he had found the “lost hikers.” James still shivered too violently to speak. Swiveling in his seat, he saw Maggie and Taz collapsed into each other’s arms. “I’ll bet that heat feels good,” Harvey said, turning it to full blast front and rear. “We’re down to freezing. Hell of a storm, never seen one like it . . . already dumped something like six inches in an hour.”
“Someone . . . slashed . . . my tires,” Maggie croaked, leaning forward and clinging to the wire mesh.
“Say that again?”
“They slashed the tires of my car,” she shouted and fell back as the SUV bucked and slid along.
Harvey�
�s smile was the portrait of demonic beauty, James decided, admiring the way the puckered mouth and fleshy lips were at one and the same time twisted downward, back and to the side. Somehow without changing his expression, Harvey executed a quick three-point U-turn and headed the SUV due west at high speed, no longer fully in control. The four-wheel-drive vehicle bucked and banged over the ruts and holes and hydroplaned forward into the gale, touching down then squirming and wriggling through the mud and rain.
James spoke loudly and clearly. “She said they slashed two tires and let the air out of a third.”
“Now, who would go and do a thing like that?” Harvey asked. “Probably the same folks who put those bones in that old cage, I’m guessing, some kind of pranksters who wish you people would up and leave the neighborhood, maybe.” He swiveled his head with the studied theatricality James had noticed at Beverley’s, then added, “Too bad the drone didn’t fly on up the road to where you were, we might’ve seen the perpetuators at work. We tested that drone today and it does fly like magic, by God, we could see everything up and down the coast, we saw Bev’s place and the beach, and we got up to the old mansion and thought, well, why not take a look and see how old Maddie and Alex and JP are doing? But you all were not in, so we thought let’s just fly up the valley and have a look at that scenic river before it gets turned into a lake with condos on it and, by God, there you were, Maddie, driving that jalopy, and there were Alex and JP trampling all over those ‘no trespassing’ signs as if they didn’t see them. I’ll bet you didn’t see them, did you?”
James glowered, speechless, but Taz leaned forward lashing and nodding his head and in a choked voice bellowed, “What signs?”
“Smart kid.” Harvey laughed.
“There’s n-no c-connectivity in the v-valley,” Taz added, stuttering now, “s-so you c-couldn’t control the d-drone unless you have a s-satellite s-system.”
“Got your drone flying lesson yesterday at the football field, did you, Alex?” Harvey laughed. “Better learn fast, so you can become a pilot. We’re buying a whole fleet. No place is going to be unsafe.” Pausing and swiveling his head, he added, “I am so glad you are thawing out enough to speak. We can go straight to the station and take a statement if you like, get my boys on this right away. Once the storm lets up, we’ll find those vandals imperiling the lives of upstanding citizens out for a picnic.”