by Roland Smith
“I doubt I’d ever be able to take your place,” I said. “But I would like to gain the Pod’s trust again.”
“Good.” Lod put his head back and looked at the tops of the tall redwoods. When he looked back down he was smiling again. “I think you’ve gained Bella’s trust, and Bill’s, and surprisingly, maybe Carl’s. He said he talked to you the other night and that you felt remorse over the death of his dog.”
I doubted Carl used the word remorse. I doubted Carl knew what the word remorse meant.
“I did,” I said.
I guessed now was the time to spill my guts to Lod, which I suppose is what prodigal granddaughters did in these circumstances. He had obviously been grilling everyone about everything I had said to them. I needed to repeat some of these things so he didn’t think I was talking behind his back.
“I asked Bella about the explosives and gas left in the Deep.”
“What did she say?”
“She said that the FBI lied about the explosives.”
“Of course they did. They always try to make the people they are after worse than they are, so that when they catch them the FBI looks more heroic.”
“You did blow up buildings in the old days.”
“Buildings. But not people. There was some collateral damage, but it was unintentional. We don’t target innocent people. We never have and we never will.”
What about my parents? I thought. What about Alex? What about Coop and Pat?
“I know what you’re thinking,” he said.
I hoped that wasn’t the case.
“You’re wondering about all those people I sent to the mush room. The people who tried to leave the Deep, the people who tried to defy me over the years and threatened to destroy us. I’ll be honest, some of those people did die. I ordered their deaths. If I hadn’t, we would have lost everything. I’d be rotting in a jail cell instead of walking in the redwoods. You would have been put into the foster care system with complete strangers raising you. Do you think you could order someone’s death? Or kill someone yourself?”
I’d already demonstrated that I couldn’t, or wouldn’t, do this in the Deep. I had told him that I had pushed Coop into the River Styx, which he later learned was a lie.
“I’m not sure,” I said.
“Well, if you ever take my place, those are the kind of decisions you’re going to have to make. There are always power struggles within a group. For the good of the group, the perpetrators need to be put in their places. Sometimes there is only one way to do this. If you don’t do it the group will be destroyed. You do what is necessary and move forward without looking back, without regret. I want to shake things up. I want to change things, but it won’t be by setting off bombs, or poisoning people I don’t know. If people die, it will be by their own hands.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean all of us are living on borrowed time. There are too many people on earth. We are like locusts. We are devouring the earth, depleting it faster than she can regenerate herself. If we don’t stop what we’re doing, the planet will be nothing but a dried-up empty husk floating in space, uninhabitable, a dead planet.” He gestured wildly at the treetops. I’d never seen him speak so passionately before. “These trees will be gone. Everything, and everybody, will be gone. When we first settled into the Deep, I thought the world as we knew it would end in a series of nuclear explosions. I was wrong. We’re going to kill the earth by eating it up until there is nothing left. The governments around the world lack the moral courage to do anything about it. All anyone cares about anymore is making themselves comfortable. Life is brutal. Hard decisions have to be made. We haven’t surfaced to kill people. We’ve come up top to save what we have left and level the playing field.”
I’d heard this before, from Lod and the other Originals, but not with such fervency. We rounded a corner in the trail. Up ahead about two hundred feet was a bench made out of a downed redwood. Three people were sitting on the bench. They had their hoods pulled over their heads against the cold. When we reached them, they pulled their hoods off and smiled at me.
Bob Jonas. Susan Stronach. Carol Higgins.
All of them had been sent to the mush room in the past ten years at different times for various infractions. Susan and Carol had been promoted to Originals. Three months after their promotion Lod had sent them to the mush room for undermining his authority and trying to take his place. Bob Jonas was a computer expert recruited from up top after a two-year evaluation. Everyone in the Deep loved him. He hadn’t been promoted to the Originals, but he’d been well on his way when he violated security protocols with the computers inside the Originals’ private room, then tried to run.
I couldn’t believe they were still alive. I couldn’t believe they were sitting among the redwoods smiling at me.
“Long time no see, Kate,” Bob said.
I looked at Lod. “You took the people from the mush room with you?”
Bob, Susan, and Carol all laughed.
“The mush room is a myth,” Lod said. “A fabrication. It never existed outside of the minds of those who were afraid of going there. We invented it to explain where people went when they left the Deep.”
“My parents?” I asked. I couldn’t help myself. If Bob and Susan and Carol were alive, perhaps …
Lod’s expression tightened and he shook his head. “No. They starved while making their way to the top. They took a wrong turn. It was lucky they hadn’t taken you with them. You know this.”
I nodded, trying not to show my disappointment and my anger over what I really knew about their deaths.
Lod quickly changed the subject, as he always did when my parents’ death came up, which was seldom. People knew not to ask him about it.
“I can’t remember who came up with the idea of the mush room,” he said. “It might have been Bella. But it has served us well over the years. Without it, we would not have been able to explain people’s long absences without giving away their missions. We invented grave infractions for them, sent them to the mythical room, and no one ever asked about them again. Not only was the terrible room a great cover, it also reinforced discipline in the Deep.”
“What missions?” I asked.
“The vehicles we used to get out here for one. We’ve been gathering them for years from all over the US. They were stored in a warehouse in New Jersey. We had to have people to buy them, drive them to New Jersey, keep the registrations current, and maintain them. This took three people working full time. All of them were former members of the Pod supposedly gone bad.”
I looked at Bob, Susan, and Carol.
“Not me,” Bob said. “I’m no mechanic.”
“I’m a terrible driver,” Carol added.
“That’s not to say that everyone that we sent to the mythical mush room was on a mission,” Lod said. “We talked about that. Hard decisions had to be made.”
Meaning that those not sent out on missions were murdered.
“What about the helicopter? Did you send Pod members up top to learn how to fly?”
Lod shook his head. “Hired help. Paid them off. We won’t be needing air cover anymore.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re almost there.”
“Where?”
Lod smiled. “An upgrade.” He looked at Bob.
“The Deep Two Point Zero,” Bob said.
Alex said.
We were a few miles north of Crescent City, California.
“The sound of silence,” Alex continued. “Radio silence that is. They’re up to something. I can feel it.”
I pointed at a sign for the Jedediah Smith Redwood State Park campground.
“Want me to take it?”
“No,” Alex said. “Drive on. There’s a chance that they all sped ahead. We might be out of radio range. We can always come back if we don’t pick up a signal south of the redwoods. And there are other state parks up ahead with plenty of redwoods in them.”
Coop ha
d fallen back asleep, Kate’s note still clutched in his hand. It was starting to get dark, which meant that he would be waking up soon. He had taken only one bite out of his cookie. It was sitting on the dashboard. I was tempted to grab it. We passed the turnoff for the Jedediah Smith campground.
“Did you see that?” Alex asked.
“The exit?”
“No, the camper parked on the side of the road next to the exit for the park, and the SUV parked next to it.”
“I didn’t notice.”
“I’ve seen the SUV before.”
I’d seen fifty just like it before.
“I couldn’t see inside the camper cab clearly,” he continued. “But I think there are two guys sitting in the front seat. One guy in the SUV.”
“So?”
“So the SUV is one of the vehicles that picked Larry up from the airport in Newport.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive. The nearest airport is in Crescent City. I don’t think they’d be there unless Larry was already here.”
“You mean in the park?”
“Not necessarily. But he’s around here somewhere. They might be parked there watching his back trail. See who’s driving south.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Keep going. We’ll go to the Crescent City airport. See if his helicopter is there.”
“Isn’t that a little risky?”
“Of course it’s risky. There’s the exit.”
I took the exit for the Del Norte County Regional Airport. Alex had me drive right past it and park at the Point Saint George beach trails on the west side of the airport.
“I’ll get out and see if I can spot Larry’s helicopter parked on the tarmac,” Alex said. “Let me know if you hear anything on the radio.”
I watched him jump a guardrail and limp east across grass-covered sand dunes at a pretty good pace, which surprised me. Until that moment, he had moved like the old man he was.
Coop awoke. Head up. Eyes alert. Like always. He was never groggy. He was either awake or asleep. No in-between. The first thing he did was grab the cookie on the dashboard and take another tiny bite out of it.
I was disappointed.
He asked me what was going on.
I pointed at Alex, who was still moving rapidly across the grassy sand dunes, getting smaller and smaller with every step.
“Who’s that?” Coop asked.
“Alex.”
“You’re kidding.” He rolled his window down for a better look.
I told him what Alex was up to.
“He’s moving so fast!”
“I know.”
Alex disappeared behind a dune.
“What’s the rush?”
“The fact that he hasn’t heard a word out of them in over an hour. I think.”
Coop finished his cookie, slowly, as he watched the dunes.
“What?” I asked.
“Alex,” Coop answered.
I’d thought a lot about our conversation about Alex on the beach the night before. Alex was a little strange, but I trusted him. The only thing that bothered me about him was that something about him bothered Coop.
“We can still contact the FBI,” I said.
“I already did,” Coop said.
“What?” I shouted. “When?”
“This morning when you were asleep in the boat.”
“What did they say?”
“Nothing. It was a one-way conversation. I sent Agent Ryan a postcard.”
“A postcard,” I said, stunned. “Why didn’t you just call her?”
“I didn’t see a phone booth, but I wasn’t really looking. They’re kind of hard to find these days.”
Alex appeared from behind the dune, moving toward us, a little slower than when he had left, but steadily.
“What did you say on the postcard? ‘Dear Tia, we’re on the Oregon coast having a blast. Wish you were here.’”
Coop laughed.
Alex was two hundred yards away.
“I told her what was going on as best I could in the little space postcards have. The guy at the postal store said he thought it would get to her tomorrow morning if I put the postcard in an express envelope.”
Only Coop would think to put a fifty-cent postcard into a twenty-dollar express envelope. But he had a reason. He always had a reason for the weird things he did.
“Why?” I asked.
Alex was one hundred and fifty yards away.
“I didn’t want to tell her too fast,” Coop said. “But not too slow either. I don’t think we’re in any immediate danger. Kate seems to be doing okay. She’s baking cookies.”
I didn’t necessarily agree, but I didn’t interrupt him. I was trying to listen to Coop like he listened to other people. Listen is an anagram of silent.
“I contacted Agent Ryan with the postcard because I don’t think we need her yet,” he continued. “I told her that we were with Alex, and that Kate was with the Pod. I said that it was probably too late to stop whatever Lod was up to. I listed all the towns and parks we had been to. I told her that the Pod were driving motor homes and that Lod was watching the caravan from a small helicopter.”
Only Coop could have gotten all this onto a small postcard. When he wrote something down, which was rare, he printed his letters and words with microscopic precision.
“Once she gets the postcard she’ll catch up to us pretty quickly,” Coop continued. “If we get into a jam before she shows up we can always call her. Pay phones are probably out, but the next time we stop at a store you might want to pick up one of those prepaid cell phones. Just make sure Alex doesn’t find out about it.”
Alex stopped a hundred yards away from our camper, hands on his knees, catching his breath.
“Okay,” Coop said. “Now for the weird part …”
As if what he had just told me wasn’t weird enough. I braced myself.
“Remember how I told you I feel I’ve been heading into the Deep my entire life, but I didn’t know it until I finally got there … ?”
I knew this but didn’t understand it. At all.
“Well, I think I got my first glimpse of it right here.”
I had to break my silence. I couldn’t help myself. “You’ve been at the Point Saint George beach trails?”
“No. But it was near here. Somewhere near the redwoods. I was hitchhiking north. Pouring down rain. One o’clock in the morning. Standing on the shoulder wearing a rain poncho. A car was coming toward me. It slowed down as it passed. I thought it was going to stop, but it didn’t. As soon as the headlights shined in my eyes, it sped up, wheels screeching on the wet asphalt. I watched the red taillights until they disappeared into the night. You know how it is with me. When people see me they stop. They approach me. Hitchhiking for me has always been faster than me driving a car. Not that I know how to drive.”
“I wish you did know how to drive.”
“No chance of that, Meatloaf. But back to the car that sped away. Sometimes I’d have two or three cars stop at the same time to give me a lift. But not this car. It was like it wanted to get away from me. I knew at that moment that something bad was going on in the area, something that needed my attention, something I should stick around for, something I should look into.”
“But you didn’t,” I said.
Alex was fifty yards away.
“No. Within a minute another car came by and picked me up. In my relief at getting out of the rain and cold, I forgot all about the car that sped by. I didn’t remember it until we passed through Brookings, which is where the guy who picked me up dropped me off.”
Alex was twenty-five yards away.
“You were asleep when we passed through Brookings,” I said.
“I was dozing in that dreamlike state between sleeping and waking.”
He took the keys out of the ignition.
“You need to get Alex to drive,” he said hurriedly. “Tell him you’re too tired to go another mile.”
“Why?”
“His backpack. It weighs a ton. There’s a lot more in it than clothes. We need to know what he’s hauling around. One of us needs to get into the back and check it out. Act like you’re out of it, Meatloaf, which shouldn’t be too hard to do.”
I didn’t have time to laugh. Alex was at Coop’s window.
“His helicopter wasn’t there,” Alex said. “At least that I could see. We’ll head down to the Arcata airport and see if it’s parked there.”
“You’ll have to drive. Pat’s out of it.”
I tried to look out of it.
“It’s not very far,” Alex said.
“I can’t,” I said. “It wouldn’t be safe. I just need a little sleep. An hour or so.”
“I’ll stay in the front seat and keep you company,” Coop said.
Alex took the keys. “Fine. Let’s go.”
was everywhere, so pungent it masked the sweet smell of the damp redwoods. There were more campers than there had been before our little walk. Every campsite on both sides of the road was occupied, and everyone was outside manning a grill, cooking bratwurst, burgers, corn on the cob, skewered shrimp, and vegetables. The fine mist and the cool air didn’t seem to bother any of them in the least.
Originals and their children, their grandchildren, and in some cases, their great-grandchildren. What did the kids think of this? Especially the young kids who knew nothing but the Deep because they had never been above? What did they think of the long trip west? The cities, the broad rivers, the mountains, the Pacific Ocean, and now the giant redwoods. I had been stunned by all of these sights. But I knew beforehand they existed. I had read about them in the books Alex had given to me over the years.
All the men were wearing these little vests and baseball caps adorned with dozens of buttons.
“What is all this?”
“An annual reunion of a group of Vietnam vets,” Lod answered. “This many rigs showing up here in the dead of winter would be very suspicious without a cover story. We even have a website. Nobody bothers vets, especially old vets.”
Typical Lod. Everything covered. Nothing left to chance.