Bugging Out (17 page)

Del waved his hand as the younger woman looked our way. There was little chance she could not see us, but for a moment she did not react, simply holding herself frozen, gaze wide and wary.

I waved at her now, motioning with my hand to come in our direction. Now she did move, if only her head, swiveling to check her surroundings, much as the machine gunner had scanned for threats.

“Come on,” I said, not loud, but also not hushed, urging her further with a more vigorous motion of my hand, practically windmilling it in the open.

The younger woman leaned toward the older woman, saying something, then she, too, looked at us.

“Come here,” Del said, louder than I had.

The women stared at us for a moment, then looked to each other. Finally, the younger one helped the other up and they shuffled together up the sidewalk, moving our way, glancing behind every few seconds. There was true fear in their eyes. A look edging on terror. When they were only a few steps from us they stopped.

“You’re not from here,” the younger woman said.

“We want to talk to you,” I said.

Del glanced across the street. A small office building sat on the corner there.

“Let’s get inside,” he said, looking to the women, their hesitance palpable. “We’re not going to hurt you.”

Again the women looked to each other, and the older one nodded. I stepped forward and slipped my arm under hers, helping as the four of us moved across the narrow street. Del reached the glass door of the office building first and pushed on it. It swung inward freely and we entered quickly.

I led the women away from the front door and into an empty office as Del searched the building, making sure we were secure within.

“My name is Eric,” I told them, almost adding my last name, but quickly catching myself. Just as I’d stripped the license plates from my truck while fleeing to my refuge, lest the pursuing Trooper be able to identify me, here I wanted to share as little information as possible, not knowing how many records existed in town of ‘Eric Fletcher’ that would tie the name to my house in the woods.

“I’m Alicia Peterson,” the younger woman said. “This is my mother, Lorraine.”

“My friend is Del,” I said, and he rejoined us from his survey of the building.

“We’re pretty good here,” he said, nodding to the women.

I did the introductions, then hesitated. Broaching what we’d witnessed would clearly be painful, but it was already that for these women.

“We saw what happened,” I told them.

For a moment the ‘what’ didn’t register. Then Lorraine settled into a chair in the office and buried her face in her hands, her daughter quickly leaning to put an arm around her mother.

“That was my father,” Alicia said, confirming what we already suspected.

“Why did they take him?” Del asked.

“Because he couldn’t work anymore,” Alicia answered. “He was getting weaker. There isn’t enough food, especially if you’re working fourteen hours a day.”

“Doing what?”

She puzzled at my question for a moment.

“You really don’t know?”

“We’re not from Whitefish,” I said. “Tell us...what was he working on?”

“A bunker.”

I looked to Del, my turn to be at a loss.

“He was working to build this for who?” Del asked. “Major Layton?”

Alicia nodded. Her mother calmed somewhat and looked up.

“He wasn’t young anymore,” Lorraine said, her voice cracking. “He couldn’t keep up. That’s why we brought him to the school.”

“There was supposed to be a clinic open today for residents who needed treatment,” Alicia explained.

“But it was a lie,” Lorraine said. “A lie to get people who were sick or weak here to be taken. When we saw that no one else was showing up, we knew. We should have known better. I should have...”

She could say no more, and collapsed against her daughter, weeping again, unimaginable pain tearing at her.

“We wanted to get him help,” Alicia said. “It’s what’s supposed to happen. People are supposed to help others. Right?”

She seemed as lost in the new reality as a newborn thrust into the world wailing and flailing, ripped from the warm comfort it had known. All was unknown and frightening.

“It’s gotten worse the last two weeks,” Alicia said. “Five people have been taken.”

“People?” I pressed, keying in on the lack of specificity.

“One woman and four men,” Alicia answered, then caught her mistake. “Five men now.”

Her mother sobbed against her shoulder.

Shit...

I had to ask still more.

“Where do they take them?”

Alicia shrugged and shook her head. The not knowing had to be hell, I suspected.

“What about this bunker?” Del asked, redirecting the conversation. “What’s it for? Where is it?”

“It’s for the Major,” Alicia said. “They’re building it over at the field behind the high school. Digging down and reinforcing walls and, I don’t know.”

“What’s it for?”

She thought on my question for a moment, her gaze narrowing down, as if this was yet another subject certain to bring pain.

“He hasn’t said,” Alicia told us, though that wasn’t the end of her answer. “But some of his men have said he’s building it so some can survive the cleanse.”

“What the hell is that?” I asked, expecting no substantive answer, and receiving none.

“This Layton guy,” Del began, looking to me. “He’s sounding more cult leader than rogue military.

“Yeah,” I agreed.

“What are you going to do?” Alicia asked.

“About what?” Del replied with his own question.

“The Major.”

“We didn’t come here to take on an army,” Del told her. “No matter how puny.”

“We need information,” I explained, and her face reddened with simmering rage.

“So, you just come here to take what you want, for your own purposes, regardless of the effect it has on anybody else?” She looked between us, almost sneering the sudden hate she felt. “How the hell is that any different than what’s he’s doing?”

This wasn’t our fight. Del and I both knew that. We’d made the conscious decision, separately, to keep to ourselves, trust few, and stay alive as long as possible. Engaging with a man who’d demonstrated a ruthless streak, along with a cadre of armed warriors at his beck and call, was beyond not only our intention, but also our ability.

“Listen, we can’t—”

The roar of an engine accelerating cut me off. It was close, and drawing closer, coming from the north. Del broke away from the conversation and ran up the office stairs. I followed, the both of us carefully approaching the windows facing the rail yard. Beyond the glass we saw three more patrol vehicles, different than the others. These were smaller, basically SUV’s that had had their roofs opened up. No machine guns were mounted, but an armed man stood tall in each hole, scanning the area as nine other men, three from each vehicle, congregated around the front of the museum, not far from the dumpster we’d taken cover behind.

“Dammit,” Del swore, just as two of the men zeroed in on the tracks we’d made in the snow as we headed for the middle school.

“Not good,” I said.

From below, the sound of the glass front door opening and then closing echoed upward, metal frame slapping metal jamb hard enough to reverberate through the structure. I shifted position, to a window overlooking the street between the office building and the middle school. Below I could see without difficulty Alicia and Lorraine running out into the street, moving with haste away from the building, both screaming something out and pointing back in our direction.

“They gave us up,” Del said, and pointed to the far side of the upper floor. “Back stairs.”

He led, knowing the way after his quick reconnaissance of the space a few minutes earlier, the throttled whine of engines racing fast rising as I followed, the both of us bounding down a narrow service staircase. At the bottom Del headed straight for a door at the end of a hallway, roughly opposite the one we’d come through when entering the building. We opened it and stepped into an alley, commotion sounding behind us, inside the office building we’d just left.

“Which way?” I asked Del.

“There,” he said, pointing across the narrow alley to the back side of another building.

We tramped across the snowy ground, leaving more perfect tracks that would lead our pursuers right to us. Or would have, if Del hadn’t stopped us at the back door to the building.

“Follow me,” he said, shoving the door open and then, without entering, turning left and walking along the rear wall of the structure. “Stay close to the building.”

I did as he was, our footsteps trampling the low drift of snow against the wall, but leaving no discernable trail. When we were beyond the corner of the building Del led us right, out of view, and down a narrow passage between a series of stores, the walkway here covered, the only trail behind us a non-specific mix of dirty slush mixed in with soil scattered from dead planter boxes. Someone had foraged here, hoping for some greenery to eat. Desperation, plain and simple.

Where the passage ended and spilled onto another street we paused, checking for any sign of life. There was none, but in the distance we could plainly hear shouts, and directives, those chasing us having found our back way out of the office building. The way clear, we ran across the street, stutter-stepping through a mix of tire tracks left by the patrol which had taken the husband and father from Lorraine and Alicia. On the far side we dashed through another mix of businesses, then past an apartment house and between what had once been quaint, compact houses.

“We have to get to the river,” I said.

“My thought exactly,” Del agreed.

The gunfire ahead of us turned that choice of destination to folly.

“Where now?”

Del considered my question. We were stuck between houses. People were shouting behind, from where we’d come. Ahead, some blocking force of armed individuals had taken up a position. Left was too deep into town. To the right was the rail yard, too wide open for a dash to freedom right then.

“There,” Del said, pointing to a pair of rundown houses backing up to the rail yard. “That one.”

I followed him across the narrow street, leaving a trail of tracks as we hurried to the house on the right.

“On the porch roof,” Del directed me, and I climbed onto the porch railing, then hauled myself onto the small roof, an attic window just behind, glass and frame twisted off its mount.

“Here,” Del passed his rifle up, but did not follow, turning instead back toward the front yard we’d just crossed.

A chorus of urgent voices grew. Closing in. To the west, between us and the river, more shots were fired, wild bursts, several rounds striking a power pole on the street corner. Wood splinters showered down.

“Get up here,” I said, reaching down to Del, his plan, to seek cover in the attic, apparent now.

But he was already heading back to the street, retracing our steps, something long in his hand. A tree branch, dead and colorless, snapped from a leaning birch in the yard, itself nothing more than a dried length of wood waiting to topple. All the way to the far side of the street he ran, disappearing between the buildings, before emerging a moment later, dragging the branch behind, sweeping it back and forth, carving precise textures in the snow we’d trampled. From my vantage point above, I could see what he was doing—creating new, tiny drifts to match what already existed on the unused roadway, masking the trail we’d left. He wielded the branch like a sculptor, backing toward the house, erasing his own tracks until he stood below again.

“Come on!” I urged him.

More shots cracked close. And the voices, urgent before, were now near frantic, like some pack of dogs closing in on their prey. Del tossed the branch back beneath the tree and climbed onto the porch railing. I took his hand and pulled him up, both of us slipping g through the small attic window and into the dark space. The last through, I passed our weapons to Del and pulled the attic window until it was secure.

As soon as it clicked into place, a half dozen men appeared across the street, staring at the ground. I eased back from the filthy window and did nothing but breathe for the next ten minutes.

“T
hey’re gone,” I whispered to Del as I watched from our attic perch, my face to one side of the window, peering out at an angle I hoped would obscure me. Hoped.

“About damn time,” he said quietly.

The half dozen men had turned to two dozen, all pouring over the area where we’d disappeared, any hope of finding remnants of our tracks ended after the first few ran about wildly, charging across lawns and into houses. Including the one in which we had secreted ourselves. For five minutes they’d banged around below before bashing through the attic access with the butts of their rifles. At least one had poked his head into the space and shined a light back and forth, but Del and I were tucked away behind piles of insulation and a low support wall for a dormer at the rear of the house. When they finally left the house we could hear them even down the block, doing a similar number on the abandoned houses there.

Now, hours later, with night falling, it seemed that they had either moved on to seek us elsewhere, or given up on the search entirely. Still, we hadn’t moved more than a few feet inside the cramped attic, crawling on hands and knees when shifting positions. Waiting. For what, we hadn’t yet decided.

“Are we reevaluating this visit to Whitefish yet?” I asked, joking

“I don’t know about you, but I am going to write a strongly worded letter to their chamber of commerce.”

I chuckled. Darkness was settling beyond the window. Minus the minor glow of distant stars and the sliver of moon, it would be total. The new world, nearly powerless, was a stargazer’s delight. It gave me a chance to take in the blackening heavens through the window. Time to take a breath. Time to think.

The latter was not entirely a pleasant endeavor.

“What do you think they did with the man?”

Del looked at me, just enough light left to make it plain I suspected an answer to my own question.