Bugging Out (21 page)

“Who is the Major?” I asked. “Where is he from?”

“What do you mean?” Hank asked, genuinely confused.

“Where the hell did he get the rank from?” Del pressed the man, forceful and impatient.

“I don’t know,” Hank said. “I met up with him over in Coeur d’Alene. He was looking for men, and he had food, transportation.”

“Okay,” Del said, dialing the menace in his voice up a notch. “What the hell brought him to Whitefish?”

“I think he grew up here,” Hank answered, his body seeming to press into the tree and away from Del. “I never heard it from him. Just from others who were closer to him. Folks who’d been with him since the shit hit the fan.”

“He’s not Army, Guard, anything?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Honest. I don’t know shit.”

That might actually be true, I knew. But we were going to make damn sure of it.

“What the hell is with the tank cars?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

Del drew his rifle back, wielding the butt, ready to lay a blow down on the reluctant prisoner. Hank recoiled, shrinking down, bringing a bloodied hand up to defend himself against the threatened strike.

“I don’t know what you mean!” Hank protested as Del held the rifle back and ready, like a coiled snake. “All right! All right! Don’t hurt me!”

“Why did he put them out along the track?” I demanded. “What’s in them?”

A cough rattle from Hank’s mouth. His chest shuddered, and he gulped air. The hand that had risen as a shield lowered again and lay hard against the wound on his leg. It was a bleeder. An artery had likely been affected. He was not going to make it, and neither Del nor I could change that.

“What are they doing on the tracks up here?” I repeated.

Hank didn’t respond, his gaze shifting toward his already dead comrades.

“Why did he put them along the track?!” I shouted.

The dying man looked up, almost quizzically, as if he was offering up the obvious.

“For the cleanse.”

The cleanse...

We’d heard that from the women we’d encountered in Whitefish. Rumor there, now it seemed to be confirmed. But just what was it?

“What is the cleanse?” Del asked, lowering his rifle now.

Hank drew a long breath. His gaze swam as he looked up to us and smiled.

“It’s going to make everything better,” Hank said. “Purify the land. Sterilize it, Major Layton says. Then things will grow...will grow again.”

Some of what Hank was relating began to fill in a new picture. One beyond baiting Del and me into the open. Far beyond.

“What do those cars hold?” I asked.

“Some chemical,” Hank answered, coughing again, one of his hands slipping from its place on the leg wound, his strength fading fast. “Flammable. Really supposed to burn, Major Layton says. When the wind’s right he’s gonna...he’s gonna...”

The man’s eyes fluttered and he looked off to one side, into the grey trees marching down the slope toward a rushing creek. Snow melt from the peaks had fed it, the tiny tributary raging now, soft roar rising.

“Gotta get to the bunker...” Hank said, the statement born of delirium. “He’s gonna blow ‘em up. Start the cleanse. Gotta get to the bunker.”

“Is that where the Major is going to ride out this cleanse?” I asked, crouching and reaching to turn hank’s face toward mine. “In this bunker he has people building?”

Hank nodded drowsily, smiling.

“We’re all going to see the world when it’s green again,” he said, and then he said no more, his cheek tipping solidly against my hand where it lay against his head.

“Son of a bitch,” Del said, shaking his head. “Sterilize? More like incinerate.”

I pulled my hand back and Hank’s head lolled against his shoulder as I stood. Behind, the damage we’d done to Major Layton’s force was apparent. The men he’d sent were dead. Five in the blast and immediate follow up gunfire. And then there was Hank. Number six.

“When summer hits and he gets his winds,” Del said, needing to add no more.

“Half the state will burn,” I said.

“Including us.”

“I
s this working?”

It was more plea than question that I watched on the television, the Denver station broadcasting again, though the face staring into the camera was no professional anchor. The woman was disheveled. Thin, but not emaciated. Her eyes were clear and wide, gaze darting off camera every few seconds toward some unseen other talking to her.

“Can they hear?”

I thought I heard someone in the background say faintly ‘
pick that up
’. A second later the woman had a small microphone laying atop the anchor desk in hand. She held it close to her mouth, just below her chin.

“My name is Jennifer. There are seven of us today.” She paused and looked past the camera again. Behind her, the monitors that had once showed the red rectangles infecting other stations were blank and dark, powered down, as was most of the working studio visible over her shoulder, just a few errant overhead fluorescents flickering. “How do we know this is doing anything?”

Someone behind the camera seemed to say ‘
We don’t. Get on with it.
’

Jennifer nodded and made sure the microphone was in place.

“There are seven of us,” she started again. “A week ago there were nine. We’re trying to make it, but we don’t know where Eagle One is.”

Eagle One...

“You have to tell us,” Jennifer pleaded. “If you can hear this, or see this, tell us where you are.”

I noticed then that something lay on the desk in front of her. Where an anchor might place notes, or a script of the broadcast in case the teleprompter failed. It was a single sheet of paper, rumpled, and it had not been there when I watched the man walk off camera, the last moments of life spilling from his wrist. Every few seconds, as she continued to beg for this enigmatic Eagle One to provide them with more information, the hand not holding the microphone would pinch at the edge of the creased paper, nervously, either some tic, or some more profound hesitation.

‘Now. Do it,’
the unseen party to the broadcast urged.

Jennifer looked past the camera and nodded, her gaze then dipping to the paper that had caught my attention. She hesitated, then lifted the paper so that it faced the camera.

“What the hell...”

It was all I could do to dial back my reaction and avoid some more vulgar profanity as punctuation.

“This is what we can bring,” Jennifer said, then glanced down at what she held.

It was not just some piece of paper bearing writing, as I had supposed without seeing it. It was a photograph, in stark color, of a man’s chest opened up, surgical instruments and wires holding the skin back and keeping the ribs spread, revealing a glistening heart, presumably beating. Blue-gloved hands were just visible in the image. A doctor. No, a surgeon. Some sick specialist who had opened up a living, breathing person for...

For what? What the hell did this mean? Who was the person in the photo? Who were Jennifer and her unseen companion?

And what the hell was this Eagle One thing?

“Tell us where to come,” Jennifer said, thrusting the picture forward, closer to the camera, so that it blocked most of her face.

The transmission began to falter.

‘We’re losing power!’
the warning came from off camera.

Static began to drizzle over the image like snow.

“Please,” Jennifer said past the gruesome image.

I stared at the open chest and the bloody muscle within as the picture turned fully to electronic noise.

*  *  *

“T
hat’s...disturbing,” Del said.

I’d left my house and walked to his, reaching it just after dark, sharing what I’d seen and heard on the Denver station.

“First you hear someone mention an Eagle One, and now I see this. It’s not just an isolated coincidence.”

Del nodded. He tipped his wrist and looked at his watch. The rugged old timepiece, with its manually wound mechanism, would probably be ticking when the two of us were worm food.

“What time did you see this?” Del asked.

“Had to be no more than an hour ago.”

“That fits,” he said, then read my quizzing expression and explained further. “I heard that same child broadcasting, and they signed off with the Eagle One thing. About two hours ago. I did a little direction finding by rotating the antenna. Signal was strongest when I was turned west.”

“Two hours,” I repeated, thinking. “Before the Denver people went on the air.”

“Yeah,” Del said. “And that picture you described, the one I called disturbing...”

“What about it?”

“In the transmission I heard, that kid read off a whole list of things. No context given, just one thing after another. But they were all medical related. Scalpels, IV tubes, stuff like that. And vascular clamps.”

Vascular...

“That’s for the heart, right?”

“If I remember correctly,” Del said.

I stood and paced across Del’s living room, shaking my head, beyond puzzled.

“Hey...”

I looked back to my friend.

“This is not our concern,” he said. “We don’t know what the hell it is, or even if it’s anything. All we do know is it’s a helluva long way from us. We have issues right here. And getting closer.”

Closer?

“What’s up?” I asked, walking back toward Del.

“Layton’s men were talking back and forth about getting supplies ready for the outpost.”

“What outpost?”

“Not sure. But they mentioned the highway where the firefight was.”

“They said that?” I pressed. “They talked about the firefight?”

Del nodded. The only firefight they could have possibly referenced was the one I’d witnessed from a distance months ago. At a specific point on the map. One much closer to us than Whitefish.

“We need to put eyes on that spot,” I said. “Was there any mention of a timeframe?”

“Yeah,” Del answered. “Tomorrow.”

T
he column came up the highway and settled in the precise spot they’d mentioned on the radio, setting up what could only be described as some sort of forward observation post. We watched them from the wasting knot of fir trees two miles away, passing the binoculars between us, scanning their numbers, in groups gathered around one of their three vehicles and entering and exiting the tents they set up beside the highway. Each and every man was armed, though they seemed unconcerned with their immediate surroundings. The sentries they’d stationed at the perimeter of their camp were focused north. In our direction.

“Twenty,” Del said, adjusting his body where he lay on the rocky ground. He grimaced quietly. The pain was worse today. Yesterday it was worse than the day before.

“I got the same count,” I said. “That’s a good portion of his forces.”

He lowered the binoculars and nodded. When he’d first spotted this band near Whitefish a few hours earlier, they’d been offloading equipment from a larger truck. Now they were settling in, most certainly sent by Major Layton to seek out those who’d done continuing damage to his force.

“I get the sense these are not individuals of high moral character,” he said, appraising the distant collection of men armed and ready to bring the fight to us. After a moment he sniffed a laugh. “I’ll be damned.”

“What?”

“The one in the blue coat, looking like he’s leader of this squad...I recognize him.”

“From where?”

“Your place,” Del said, lowering the binoculars to look at me. “He’s the guy who fired at me when they were raiding your barn.”

“You sure?”

He lifted the binoculars again and confirmed his identification.

“I’m sure.”

Again the binoculars came to me and I zeroed in on the man Del had described.

“Shoulda put a bullet in him,” Del said, to himself mostly. “But you kill when you need to, not just because you can.” He quieted for a moment and glanced to his backpack lying on the ground next to him. “When you need to...”

The last words were mostly whisper, most definitely between Del and something within. Some deeper understanding.

“Stay here,” Del said, and slipped into his backpack as he scooted back from the thinning copse of fir trees and stood.

“What are you doing?”

“Moving for an advantage,” he said, then nodded toward my AR. “You be ready on that thing. Give me ninety minutes.”

“You want to fill me in on the plan?”

“You’ll know what to do when the time comes,” Del assured me, smiling as he slung his bolt action and headed off down the back slope of the rise.

I puzzled at the quickness of his departure, and the cryptic manner in which he was executing some action, wondering what benefit there would be to keeping me in the dark until...

...it happened.

A sickly feeling swelled instantly within and I looked behind into the grey woods, but Del was already gone.

No
, I told myself. No way he would do
that
. But still the worry nagged at me, and continued to as I waited. I’d expected it to take the ninety minutes Del had asked for, but that time passed, and then two hours. Finally, nearly two hours and fifteen minutes after I’d last seen my friend, I glassed the scene in the distance, movement in a gully to the west of the outpost alerting me that Del had finally neared them.

“What the hell are you doing, Del?”

I had no answer as I watched him creep closer along the shallow depression, the whole thing playing out in an eerie silence, like a movie robbed of the texture that was sound. He drew within twenty feet of their position before I noticed something.

He didn’t have his rifle. Not slung, and not in hand. Just the backpack strapped to his shoulders.

“Shit...”

I uttered the word even before seeing what he did next. He stood and stepped from the cover of the gully, approaching the group casually. They sprang into action, bringing weapons to bear, all aimed at Del, his own hands held upward. Demonstrating that he was no threat.

I suspected there was little truth in the gesture.

They motioned him closer, then down to his knees. The group huddled close, a pair of younger men stepping closer still, one reaching to Del’s pack, still strapped to his back. Fingers gripped the zipper and pulled it to reveal the contents.