by Greg Dragon
Instead of returning it, the woman’s face soured even further and she barked a vulgar expletive. Then she put the truck in gear and roared off, leaving Jill standing by the side of the road without the fake ID.
Shit. She’s going to take the ID card straight to her office, maybe her superiors, and report me, and it won’t be long before they figure out it’s a fake, but my picture is real. Then they’ll match biometrics and might come up with who I am…
It had been a calculated risk putting her own picture on the fake ID but she had seen no way around it. The photo they had used was as low-resolution as they could make it without arousing suspicion, and maybe that would slow them down, but she had to assume they would come up with her identity eventually, and her status in the federal military databases would change to “Deserter.”
With little idea of the park’s layout – the GPS did not provide much detail on such installations – Jill just had to make a judgment call. She wanted to go west down the mountain, to lose herself in the city of Huntsville, and she saw no reason to change that goal, except that she would have to somehow get past the closed park to do it. Skirting it north or south would lengthen her travel time. Unfortunately she had only a hazy idea of where she was and what the terrain looked like between here and there, so she decided to head straight on through in minimum time. With her triathlete’s fitness and Eden strength and speed, she could cover a lot of ground in under an hour; probably a lot more than the park ranger would expect.
Tightening the backpack’s padded hip belt and shoulder straps, she began to run as fast as she could down the road the truck had taken. She kept her eyes open for signs or buildings, and at the first fork in the road she kept right, away from where the signs indicated the park was. Presumably the park ranger had taken that road and even now had begun the process of petty revenge upon the uppity SS agent she’d accosted.
If she only knew.
Two minutes and half a mile later, Jill passed a road and a sign marking an exclusive mountainside housing tract. A late-model high-end SUV turned out from the drive and accelerated away in front of her. Already sloping slightly downward, the grade steepened, and soon she ran as fast as she ever had in her entire life, on the smooth asphalt surface. Only the pack thudding on her back hindered her, and that not very much.
Two more cars passed her, and the second driver slowed to take a look in its rear-view mirror. Jill realized that she must seem rather odd, running flat out with a backpack full of gear. She had to get off the main road.
At the next curve she spotted an access road to the right and a water tower thirty yards back in the trees, so she slowed down and took it at a jog, making sure no cars were in sight when she did so. The driveway led to a chain-link fence, but also continued around the enclosure as a partly overgrown graveled track. Following it, she was happy to see it twisted and turned down the mountainside, perfect for her purposes.
A half mile later she came in sight of another stand of homes, and looking out from the hillside she could see Huntsville spread out before her. She was running out of rough country to hide in. Soon suburbia would be her jungle.
Finding a place among the bushes with cover in all directions, she dropped her pack and stripped out of her hiking boots, shorts and shirt. She put away the dusty ball cap that held her pony tail, and then donned tightish jeans, walking shoes and a clean t-shirt. A windbreaker and a large leather handbag completed the ensemble, and she shook her dark brown hair out, letting it cascade around her shoulders.
After putting a selection of essentials into her pockets and bag, and sliding her sheathed knife into the small of her back, she drank as much water and ate as much food as she could wolf down, then buried the backpack in a shallow hole.
Then Jill simply walked out of the woods and onto the sidewalk, past people beginning their days – driving away to work, starting sprinklers, sending their children to school. She looked like one of them now, perhaps a college student on her way to the bus stop, or an employee of someplace local enough to walk to.
Eventually she came in sight of a divided highway, and what she really needed: a bus stop. Once on the vehicle, she was able to pay the driver for a transfer ticket to the main station downtown, which shared space with a long-haul passenger line.
Looking around the local terminal, she could see a couple of SS guards, but they just seemed there to show their presence. On the other side of the busy yard, though, she watched as uniformed officers checked IDs and tickets as passengers boarded each long-haul bus.
They sure aren’t making it easy, she mused, and sat down on a bench to survey their routine. As a cop herself, she was naturally familiar with the theory and practice of securing a transportation hub, and so she figured she might be able to spot a hole to exploit.
She found it.
As usual, it resulted from the simplest of things: human boredom, complacency. The long-haul company’s uniforms were all similar, porters and maintenance workers and drivers, with only some minor differences. Everyone had photo badges clipped to their chests or on lanyards around their necks, but the busy maintainers generally had them tucked inside their shirts or into pockets so as not to get caught on things as they scurried around performing their duties.
These men and women fuelled and serviced the vehicles, cleaned them and dumped the sewage from their tiny restrooms, invisible and ubiquitous. The SS guards ignored them even as they slipped on and off the buses, doing their jobs.
Bingo.
Jill marked the “Authorized Personnel Only” door that many used. It probably accessed the break and locker area. While most of the workers going in and out wore the uniform, a few did not, and no one paid them any mind either. With at least a hundred employees on duty at the terminal, not counting the drivers, any thought of checking each busy person’s badge every time had long ago broken down.
Getting up, she went into the local terminal gift and sundries shop, buying a navy-blue lanyard. She put it around her neck and slipped its badgeless end clip inside her windbreaker.
Resolutely she strode across the wet October tarmac, skirting the line of buses, walking as if she belonged there. An SS guard glanced at her briefly, but his eyes lingered more on her tight jeans than her face. Straight toward the door she marched, timing her entrance to follow a uniformed employee in. The woman didn’t even glance behind her.
Still walking as if she knew where she was going, Jill quickly found the women’s locker room. Happily, it contained full facilities including showers, and there were a few empty lockers.
Slowly she began undressing, watching for her opportunity. It took almost fifteen tense minutes, hoping no one would notice her dawdling, before a woman roughly her size came in to change out of uniform. Luckily she did not shower, but threw on a sweat suit and left quickly.
Using an abandoned towel she found to hide what she was doing, Jill took out her knife and slipped it through the cheap padlock on the woman’s locker. A careful steady twisting popped it open, and in moments Jill pulled the stolen uniform coverall over her clothing. Her lanyard end, stuck into a zipped upper pocket, simulated possession of a badge, and her handbag she wrapped in the towel, and then jammed it under her arm. Hopefully no one would question the bundle.
It was the work of a moment to select a bus going west, with “Memphis” on its electronic display, and slip aboard, ignored by the ticket-checker and the SS guard nearby. Only a few passengers had boarded so far, so Jill stepped into the tiny restroom near the back and stripped off her coverall, rolling it up in the towel, leaving herself back in her street clothes.
Taking a seat far to the right rear, she stuffed the bundle far underneath and then ate a protein bar and drank some water from her big handbag. She slouched down against the window and closed her eyes. Most people didn’t bother the sleeping.
It was only when there came a commotion at the front of the bus that she began to worry. A middle-aged woman was holding a heated conversation with the
bus driver. Looking down the long aisle, Jill could see the bus was now packed full, and in a flash she realized what must have happened.
While passengers were not assigned seats, the total number of tickets sold would not exceed the number of places. The woman was complaining that she had no place to sit.
Jill knew the next thing that would happen was a person-by-person check of tickets, possibly with the SS watching closely.
Trapped! Every nerve screamed to get off the bus and run, but she kept outwardly calm and casually stood up, slipping into the restroom again. If only no one noticed…
Though she hoped her ploy would work, inside the restroom she prepared to be taken, the way she had rehearsed many times. She’d already pre-concealed many useful items about her person, such as hobby knife blades sewn into her collar and other seams, and notched fine piano wire that would slice through wood or flesh inside her shoelaces. Now she took out a handful of tied-off condoms containing other things, and swallowed them. If they did not perform an X-ray, she should be able to recover them later. She also dumped her knife in the trash slot. Then she started eating and drinking everything she had left.
A knock on the door dropped her heart into her stomach, and as she finished the last of her food, she put on her best smile and waited, on the off chance they would go away. The knock came more insistently, then a curse and a rattling. Eventually the door opened to show a maintenance worker and an SS guard, with two more visible behind.
“Come with me, please,” the hard-faced man said, and Jill sighed and shrugged.
“Okay,” she said brightly in her ditziest voice.
He snapped handcuffs on her wrists in front, then used them to pull her along off the bus.
“Come on,” she whined, “I’m broke and trying to get to Memphis. It’s not a federal offense.”
The three SS officers took her into a holding area, one small bleak room of two, and fastened the cuffs to a lock in the middle of a bolted-down steel table. Then a woman wearing latex gloves searched her and took all the obvious things from off of her, but none of her well-concealed items. No body cavity search yet, but she was ready for it.
Then they left her there for an hour.
When they came back in, Jill knew she was done. The cat-cream smile on the hard face of the female SS captain, the smirks displayed by her muscular sergeants, and the nervous look the technician gave her as he took a blood sample gave it away. “Positive,” the man said after three awkward minutes.
“Take this Sicko to the processing center,” the captain snapped. “Standard protocol.”
One sergeant lifted a dart gun and shot Jill in the neck. She jerked with the pain, but did not resist. Her vision tunneled and she felt dizzy, and then someone threw a hood over her head. She blacked out.
Chapter Seven
Jill came to in stifling heat, which seemed strange for early November. The reason became instantly evident, as she felt people pressing up against her. She lifted her now-free hands to take off the hood, stuffing it into her jacket pocket. As a prisoner, almost anything they let her keep might prove useful.
Around her she saw at least sixty people crammed into the interior of what must be the back of a semi trailer. The dimensions fit, and she found herself next to the doors, in a corner. Everyone sat or lay against each other, and as far as she could tell there were no facilities, or even lamps. Cracks around the doors and what looked to be air holes punched in the ceiling provided the only light. The structure vibrated with the idling of a diesel engine.
Sweat poured down Jill’s face, the same as others around her. She was about to try to talk to the woman closest to her when their prison lurched into motion. Immediately some relief from the heat came as moving air filtered into the interior, and she breathed deeply. The trailer tipped as it descended a slope, the truck’s engine whining as the driver braked with its resistance. The prisoners flopped left and right as the vehicle rounded switchbacks. They appeared to be descending a mountainside.
Jill thought back to the words of the park ranger – something about the SS and a processing center in the park – and the irony struck her. She must have ended up back in Monte Sano State Park to start her journey – to where?
Carefully she reached down into her trousers and extracted the stretched condom containing the GPS from the only place she could have hidden it. Needs must when the Devil drives.
Sliding it into her windbreaker, she turned it on, but it could not lock onto its satellite signals, probably because of the metal roof. She turned it off and slipped it into an inside pocket.
Raising her head, she met the eyes of a lean, scarred-faced man of about forty-five, with a day’s growth of stubble. Jill smiled, but the one he returned had nothing of reassurance in it. She told herself not to worry; they were all Eden Plague carriers in here, and the virtue effect should limit or eliminate any serious problems among the prisoners.
At least she hoped so. Humans could overcome almost any taboo or conscience if pushed too far. She idly wondered whether she could ever resort to cannibalism if she was starving badly enough. It was a question no one was likely to be able to answer until they actually faced it.
And what made her so sure everyone here had the Plague? Perhaps they had tossed a few common felons or political prisoners in with them. After all, while Jews were the most well-known target of the Nazi holocaust, they also interned and killed or sterilized other “undesirables,” – communists, homosexuals, activist clergy like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “gypsy” Roma, even single mothers who weren’t “Aryan.”
Jill suspected any number of grudges had been recently settled by turning in friends and neighbors for any available offense. Also, infecting and interning some of the hardcore prison population in the camps might seem like a viable solution to hard-pressed bureaucrats.
Or perhaps not bothering to infect them. She resisted glancing at the scar-faced man again. If he had the Plague, those marks would have been healed, and he’d look younger, unless he just recently got infected. Mentally she marked him as a wild card; someone that could help or hinder her plans…plans to escape.
***
Four hours later they were let out at a rest stop under the close eye of a busload of SS. The troops had blocked off the entrances so only the detainees could access the restrooms and drinking fountains. Long lines formed immediately, exacerbated by the unwillingness of a couple of frightened people to leave their toilet stalls. Nonsensical, perhaps, but Jill could feel the fear coming from her fellow prisoners like waves of heat.
Once she’d had her turn, she sidled over to the scarred man. Now she could see blue monotone tattoos up and down his arms and peeking from under his collar. Prison ink, using the oily color from ballpoint pens, laboriously hand-drawn with sewing needles.
He didn’t look at her, but he was certainly aware. “What?” he asked, lighting a cigarette.
Interesting, that they let him keep those. “You don’t have the Plague,” she stated.
“Nope. Why would I want it?”
“Make you stronger, younger, heal faster.”
“Make me a pussy.” He took a deep drag.
“I’m infected,” Jill said casually, and then turned to him. Without telegraphing, she shot a straight right to his jaw. It hurt like hell; she thought she might have broken her hand. She’d certainly broken the first rule of street fighting: never hit your target’s head with your naked fist. It tended to do more damage to the hand than to the opponent.
In this case it put the thin man down, but not out. From his hands and knees he shook his head like a dog, then roared as he came to his feet, but Jill was already fifty feet away. She had turned and speed-walked as soon as she’d struck him, and the SS guards were already converging on the troublesome man with truncheons. As expected, they’d marked him as a felon and been ready.
Instead of fighting back, he covered up and curled into a ball, just protecting his head, belly and groin. After a short beating, they l
eft him alone, as Jill thought they might. They had no mandate to respect their prisoners’ rights, so they just punished anyone who got out of line and then backed off.
Jill walked warily over to the bruised and battered man, now lying on his back with his knees up. She squatted down near his head, just out of easy reach. “I bet that hurt,” she said conversationally.
“What do you want?” he coughed.
Not, ‘Why did you do that?’ Definitely an experienced inmate.
“Do I seem like a pussy?” Jill asked, glancing around. A couple of the guards watched from a distance, and one licked his lips.
“Guess not,” he replied.
“You’re a hard case, probably a lifer,” Jill stated. “Somebody got sick of you causing trouble and transferred you to the Plague detainee system, right?”
“Guess so. So?”
“So I’m a cop. How’s that for funny?” She smiled without humor. “That means I know guys like you, inside and out. I also know law enforcement inside and out. You obviously know prisons inside and out. Together, we could get the hell out of this trap we’re in.”
He turned on his side and coughed again. Blood spat onto the concrete. “How’s that gonna work? I’m all messed up. Think they broke some ribs. Might have nicked a lung.”
Jill grinned. “Oh, I think we can fix that. What do they call you?”
He held up a forearm with a picture of a coiled snake. “They call me Python, ‘cause I’m long and skinny, but once I get ahold of you, you’re dead.”