Project Dandelion: Resistance

by Heather Carson

  “I don’t really have a choice now, do I?” Dreya smiled. “Mia’s right though. As much as I want Jayden or a clean hospital to give birth in, I couldn’t imagine doing this without you.”

  “Thank you.” Katrina looked back to Mia. “Thank you for being my friend.”

  Mia leaned over and planted a kiss on the stunned boy’s lips. Katrina slammed her palm on the horn, causing the two kids to jump and Dreya to start laughing.

  “Sorry,” Katrina chuckled. “I guess I have more of my dad in me than I thought.”

  Chapter 22

  They drove slowly down the mountain and back onto the highway. Thirty minutes later, Katrina pulled the 4Runner up a small unlined road which led deep into the woods. The turnoff to the dirt road was unmarked, and she drove graded switchbacks up the mountainside.

  The pine trees canopied the road and Katrina had to get out twice to move fallen timber from their path.

  “Look.” She pointed down in the valley below them.

  “No,” Dreya groaned with her head in her hands. “Looking makes me want to vomit.”

  “What are we looking at?” Mia’s face was pressed against the glass. Creeping between the sagebrush and trees was a large animal. “What is it?” Mia screamed when she finally saw it.

  “It’s a mountain lion,” Katrina laughed.

  The road they traveled grew even smaller as they turned onto the path that was no more than ruts carved in the earth. Katrina remembered all the trips she’d made coming here as a child.

  She’d have her backpack full of books and toys. Her dad would have the truck filled with supplies. The two of them would camp out here for weeks at a time. They’d stock firewood, fix up the cabin, and play in the forest. At night her father would make dinner, then they’d play cards or dance to old time music on the radio if the signal was strong enough.

  Some nights, she would agonize over the books her father taught her to read. Sounding out the phonetic slurs in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer or using a dictionary to understand the words in Little Women. He was patient with her questions, and he taught her to enjoy the solitude.

  Looking at Dreya and Mia made Katrina smile. Life is a whole lot better with friends, Dad.

  She drove over the small creek bridge they’d built with wooden planks and into the cleared opening of trees. There the cabin sat. Katrina let out a breath of relief.

  Dreya stared at the building. “For the record, I’d call this more of a shack than a cabin.”

  “But it’s so cute!” Mia squealed.

  The structure stood on a foundation of logs that her father had found while hunting one day. Katrina would pretend that an old settler family lost on their way out west had decided to live there happily among the woodland creatures.

  The Sgt. Major had cut more wood to add to the existing frame and slowly built up the log cabin. They plastered the inside and laid weather resistant flooring. The front porch had a sloping roof held up by unfinished pine poles. The cabin roof pointed high into an A shape to allow the snow to slide down in the winter.

  There was an aboveground cellar attached to the side of the house which kept the extra food away from the bears. It’d be empty now, Katrina thought. But in time she would fill it.

  A short distance away stood a small wooden shed the size of a closet with a sign reading…

  Dreya looked wide eyed to Katrina. “You didn’t say anything about an outhouse?”

  Katrina put her hands in the air and shrugged. “Hey, it’s better than going in the woods.”

  Dreya took a deep breath as Katrina got out of the 4Runner and walked to a rock formation at the base of a big Juniper tree. She pulled a key out from under a stone. Mia and Dreya left the warmth of the vehicle to follow her inside.

  “Let me just get a fire started to heat this place up and I’ll show you something cool.” Katrina grabbed some wood from the stack on the porch and unlocked the padlock on the door.

  Dusty, stale air tainted with smells from her childhood greeted her as she entered. Sitting beside the old woodstove was a bucket of kindling. Katrina opened the flue and waited for the small stuff to catch before adding a log to the fire. She closed the stove door and turned to face her friends.

  “It’s not much,” she smiled, “but welcome home.”

  Against the far wall was a set of wood bunkbeds. Flashlights and lanterns hung from the foot of the bed. Katrina opened the locked cabinet built beneath the bed and anchored to the wall. She pulled out the .22 and a .308.

  “Very James Bond of you,” Mia said.

  A big dusty rug in shades of green covered the floor from the bed to the two-cushion sofa.

  “It’s a pullout bed,” Katrina said proudly as Dreya laughed at her.

  Shelves of food lined the opposite wall. They took up four feet of space on the floor and rose all the way to the ceiling. Beside these racks stood a small round table with two chairs.

  A wash basin and mirror were on one side of the woodstove with water running to it from the creek. “Don’t drink this though,” Katrina cautioned. “Not until you filter it.”

  The other side of the woodstove held a cabinet with cooking and eating utensils. “We use cast iron to cook with right on this stove. It’s easier than you think.”

  Dreya and Mia nodded, taking it all in.

  “Come on, I want to show you this,” Katrina said as she led the girls outside. Behind the cabin was a shed containing tools and other supplies. They walked out of the clearing of the yard and into the tree line.

  Katrina was practically skipping up the hill. She reached the top and smiled at the girls as they stepped up to join her.

  “Paradise.” She stretched her arms out wide as James had done on the mountain peak months ago. Dreya and Mia’s jaws went slack as they looked over the valley below them.

  A crystal stream cut a ribbon through the middle and pooled into pockets of ponds. Small Aspen bent by the wind created shade for the sturdy brush beneath them. The rolling grass was amber tinted as the cold burned away the green. Purple mountain peaks blanketed with snow protected the hidden oasis on either side.

  Across the valley, a lazy doe pulled her head up from the springs. She stared at the direction of the human’s briefly before sprinting off into the trees.

  “It’s beautiful,” Dreya whispered as her eyes swept the valley.

  “In spring, this will be a field of purple, orange, and yellow flowers,” Katrina said to her friend. “The trout run through these streams and the wildlife fills the valley. When I was young, I’d run through here pretending I was playing with the fairies.” Mia raised an eyebrow and Katrina playfully pushed her.

  Dreya’s hand dropped to her stomach. “It’s the perfect place to raise a child. It’s free and open and untouched by the rest of the world.” She reached out and grabbed Katrina’s hand. “I’m glad we came.”

  *

  The girls fell into an easy routine that was anything but easy. They had a lot to do before the heavy snows started to fall. Her dad had cut the rounds of pine and dropped them in a heap in the yard. It was up to the girls to split the wood and stack it along with the lone cord of wood against the cabin wall.

  Each morning, they worked on this job. Mia would grab the wood out of Dreya’s hand if she carried more than three pieces to be stacked. After fighting for days and Mia not budging, Dreya made sure to only take three at a time. She would grab a fourth piece if Mia was distracted.

  Katrina and Mia spent the afternoons hunting or fishing to supplement the canned food they ate. There were cases of MREs that the girls had labeled as a last resort. One five-pound bag of flour had been chewed through by a mouse but the other remained intact. The girls moved the furniture away from the walls to fill cracks where rodents could enter with mud plaster.

  Dreya moved the floor rug outside and hung it over a fallen tree. She spent hours beating it clean. The girls rearranged the shelved food by expiration date. Mia tried to fashion a third kitchen c
hair out of the wood laying in the yard. It broke every time someone used it.

  Dreya and Katrina tried to help, but they settled on moving a pine round inside instead to use as a stool. Mia grumbled about the lack of a chair every evening and spent hours devising a plan to make one.

  “In the spring, we can grow potatoes and other vegetables,” Katrina said. “Then we will can them for next year.”

  “We should build a smoke house too,” Mia said as she helped Katrina stack the last of the wood. “That way we can dry meat inside somewhere safe.”

  “Do you even know how to smoke meat?” Dreya wiped the sweat from her forehead.

  “I mean, no.” Mia looked over to the mountains. “But Tripp’s family might know. Maybe we could ask them for advice.”

  Chapter 23

  On the morning of her 18th birthday, Katrina woke to Mia pulling her out of bed. She hurriedly dressed as the girl dragged her through the door.

  “No wood today,” Mia smiled as she handed over a cup of worms. “I’ve been digging all morning. Let’s go fishing instead.”

  The ponds were starting to glisten with thin ice in the mornings which broke up by the afternoon. The heavy snows had yet to fall, and the girls kept wishing on shooting stars that the snow would stay away. The steam of Katrina’s breath mixed with the mist rising from the brook they followed.

  She removed her gloves to hook the worm and quickly put them back on. The girls cast short lines into the stream and let the current pull the bait down. When a trout bit, Katrina set the hook and fought the fish back upstream. She laid her catch on the bank.

  James would be proud, she thought. And so would my dad. She remembered James smiling like a young boy as he showed her the golden trout he caught on the fly rod. The fear came again. The fear of never seeing him. The fear that something happened. She reached down and touched the fly in her pocket. Focus on today, she told herself.

  The girls moved further downstream and filled the stringer with fish. When the sun was firmly in the sky, Mia dragged Katrina back to the cabin. The smoke from the woodstove danced in the trees and wisped away into the blue sky.

  It really is paradise here, Katrina thought.

  Inside the cabin, Dreya had baked a cornbread type cake using cornmeal and applesauce. She drizzled a powdered milk icing on the top. The table was covered with a sheet. There was a pinecone and rock centerpiece in the middle. Mia laughed as she pushed Katrina into a chair. The sisters sang her Happy Birthday. Katrina turned red but she was happy.

  “Welcome to the club.” Dreya hugged her. “Does it feel any different being 18 now?”

  “Not at all,” Katrina laughed.

  *

  For Christmas the girls drove down the mountain to visit Tom and Sophie. Claire was walking now with her arms raised in the air for balance. She stayed close to Dreya’s side. Katrina watched as her friend tickled the child’s belly and sang her silly songs.

  “How are you girls doing up there?” Tom asked, calling her attention away from the giggling baby. Mia and Tripp sat together whispering against the far wall in the corner. Katrina realized the question was meant for her.

  “We are alright,” she answered. “It’s a tight fit but we are good on supplies and set for the winter.”

  Tom nodded. “But when the snow falls, you’ll be isolated up there. We were thinking that it might be a good idea for you girls to stay down here for a month or two.”

  “I can’t do that,” Katrina sighed. “If something happens, I don’t want you all to have any connection to me. The visits are risky enough as it is, but its nice to come see other people.”

  Tom cracked his knuckles and shifted on the pillow. “I feel guilty for telling you kids to go when I did. I’d like to make amends for that. We can help you with whatever you are going through.”

  “Please stop worrying about that.” Katrina smiled. “You did exactly what you were supposed to do. If you hadn’t, you’d all be dead.” She looked over to Dreya and Mia. “You are helping right now more than you know.”

  They gathered up the pans of bread and side dishes Sophie made and carried them to the old fire station on Main Street. The Elisa’s, the Levi man’s family, and two other groups of people had their children playing around the decorated Christmas tree inside the building.

  Tom and Ziggy joined the men who were smoking venison roasts outside on the grill. Katrina picked a chair at one of the tables and watched Claire try to chase the bigger kids before she was distracted by the shiny ornaments. After dinner, the kids put on a loud and offkey Christmas carol performance for the adults. Dreya sat next to Katrina and they clapped warmly for the entertainment.

  “Can you believe we ever were that little?” Dreya leaned back in her chair. Katrina kept waiting for a baby bump to show but her friend’s waist stayed the same. Maybe a little pudgier, but Dreya would cry if she said that so she kept quiet.

  “It feels like a lifetime ago,” she answered.

  “I wish Mia could have stayed little a while longer.” The tears started again in Dreya’s eyes.

  Katrina put her hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Everyone grows up. She would have done it eventually.” Dreya nodded and dabbed the corner of her eye with her sleeve.

  “Hey Tom!” Mia suddenly shouted as she called across the room. “Can we please have one of these chairs for the cabin?”

  The night ended in an uproar of laughter as the girls struggled to explain the chair dilemma.

  *

  Dreya pulled Mia away from Tripp the next morning as Katrina warmed the 4Runner up for their trip back to the cabin. The roads were icy, and Katrina took it slow down the mountain.

  “He’s really cute, don’t you think?” Mia asked as she stared dreamily out the window.

  “Not really,” Katrina laughed. “But we all have different tastes.”

  Mia faced forward in the seat. “Well James isn’t that cute either.”

  Katrina remembered the first time she saw James walking out from the tunnel in the shelter. His shaggy hair and piercing eyes. Her stomach fluttered as she remembered him whispering in her ear. She touched the fly in her pocket, aching to see him again. “To each their own,” she shrugged.

  “I am glad we are far enough away that you only get supervised visits,” Dreya said. “One baby is enough for now.”

  “As if I would be stupid enough to make your mistake,” Mia huffed.

  The 4Runner slipped on a patch of ice. Katrina took her foot off the gas and let the vehicle coast to a stop as she firmly held the wheel.

  “Are you okay?” she turned to ask Dreya who was protectively covering her stomach.

  Dreya opened her tightly shut eyes and nodded. “Maybe we should slow it down a bit.”

  “Agreed,” Mia breathed out from the backseat.

  “I’ll go as slow as I can,” Katrina reassured them. “Even slower than we were going.” She gently pressed the gas and watched the speedometer needle move to 10mph.

  When they made it up the first hill, Mia waved goodbye to the road that led to Tripp’s house as it disappeared. Katrina smiled at the reflection of the love stricken girl in the rearview mirror before turning her attention back to the highway.

  “Um, guys,” she suddenly whispered. “We might have a problem.”

  “Is it more ice?” Dreya asked as she closed her eyes again.

  “Worse.” Katrina pulled the 4Runner off the asphalt and into the tree line. “There are vehicles heading this way.”

  Mia grabbed the rifle from the back. “There is only one box of ammo, Katrina. How many vehicles are there?”

  “I counted three,” she said as she tried to fit the 4Runner deeper into the woods.

  “Maybe they are just passing through,” Dreya suggested hopefully.

  Katrina shook her head. “They are military vehicles,” she said in a flat voice. “And I don’t think they are ours.”

  Chapter 24

  “We have to go back and warn Tripp,” M
ia cried out. “They can follow our tire tracks right to their doorstep.”

  “We can’t outrun them on the ice.” Katrina’s brain reeled as she tried to come up with a plan. “They’ll see us before we get there.”

  “Are you sure they aren’t ours?” Dreya asked breathlessly. “Maybe it’s Jayden.”

  Katrina looked sadly at her friend. “They passed the turnoff to the cabin. It isn’t the guys.”

  “Do you think they are government guards heading to Southern California?” Mia asked.

  Katrina bit her lip. “I think that is exactly what it is.”

  “So what do we do?” Dreya asked as she dried her eyes.

  “Let’s leave the vehicle here and hike back up the mountain. Maybe we will get lucky and run into one of Tom’s scouts so they can run back to warn them.” Katrina opened the door and the icy wind cut through the warmth of the 4Runner.

  She wrapped her scarf tighter around her face as they crossed the highway to begin the trek up the hill. The rumble of tires grew louder, and Katrina held to the hope that they would just keep driving.

  The slamming of the truck door squashed her dreams.

  “They went that way,” a man’s voice called. She looked down at the tracks they were leaving in the thin layer of snow and mud.

  “Climb on those rocks,” Katrina whispered to the girls. “We need to avoid leaving a trail.” Voices began shouting louder as Dreya and Katrina pushed Mia up on the boulder. The girl slipped between the rocks just as the group of men crashed into the clearing.

  “Run,” Katrina and Dreya told her simultaneously before turning to face the guards. Dreya reached over to grab Katrina’s hand. “Don’t shoot,” they cried out as they fell to their knees. “We are Project Dandelion.”

  “Is that so?” the husky guard who had led the men by tracking the girls said. “Well what the hell are you doing all the way out here?”

  “We got lost,” Dreya stuttered. “We don’t know where to go.”

  The guard holstered his pistol and laughed. “Silly kids, you’re going to get yourselves killed. Come with us and we will get you where you need to go.” Dreya squeezed Katrina’s hand as they both stood.