Lie Down in Green Pastures (22 page)

Mark walked over to Cindy where she sat huddled underneath an emergency blanket. "I just got offthe phone with Geanie. Apparently they already sent out the vans to pick up everyone at camp. It's been raining there and the river was rising so they were evacuating everyone. She said they should be in cell phone reach in a little while. I guess they made arrangements to spend the night at a covered stadium and try to finish some of the camp activities there."

"Thank you," Cindy said.

"It's going to be okay. You did it. You caught the bad guys."

"And nothing's going to happen at the camp?"

"Nothing's going to happen at the camp," he said with a grin.

An ambulance was pulling away from the curb and she was staring at it with tears in her eyes.

"The three guys . . . you . . . uh . . . they're going to live," he said. "We arrested everyone else, including Butler. It's only a matter of time before these jackals start turning on each other."

She nodded and he sat down beside her. "Geanie's going to come take you home."

"How come people always think I need to be driven home?" she asked him, looking up at him with dazed eyes.

"Because sometimes you do," he said gently.

They made it back to the cabin and this time everyone stood in the middle of the floor, looking to Jeremiah for direction. It was a marked contrast to the last time. This time, though, he had five extra kids, two of them girls. He refrained from tossing his muddy bag back up onto his old bunk, instead dropping it on the floor nearby.

"Noah and I will take this bunk," he said. "Girls, you take this one," he said, pointing to the bunk to his left. "Everyone else will rotate between these three bunks and the floor. We'll raid the other cabins for extra pillows and blankets."

He was surprised that there was no grumbling, just a quiet muttering as people laid claim to their spot. It was cramped, but he wasn't about to split his charges over two different cabins when there was only one of him.

"Get washed up and let's go raid the kitchen and get something to eat," he said.

He sat down with a sigh and Noah approached him.

"Are you okay, sir?"

Jeremiah nodded. "We just have to keep things fun and light. We could be up here for a few days. Got any ideas?"

"One," Noah said with a grin. He whistled loud and everyone turned to look.

"Listen up, crew! I officially declare this cabin home base for the Swiss Family Silverman!"

The kids started smiling at that and there were a couple of weak cheers. But Noah wasn't done yet.

"Since we are castaways, the old rules don't apply to us.After all, we've already broken rule number two. There are girls in our cabin!"

The boys started cheering loudly and the girls clapped their hands.

"In light of the situation I declare rule number one, lights out at ten, null and void!"

There was more cheering and even Jeremiah started laughing.

"Castaways, we need a flag!"

"We can do that," one of the girls, Sarah he thought her name was, volunteered.

"We need a motto!"

"We've got that covered," Stuart said, pointing to him and Bobby.

"And we need somewhere to pillage!"

There was silence as the kids looked around at each other.

Jeremiah leaped to his feet. "To the kitchen!" he roared.

They all screamed in response and raced out the door.

It seemed forever before Cindy finally made it home. Geanie tried to stay with her, but Cindy forced her to go. If she was going to be able to continue to live alone she knew she had to make it through the night.

As soon as Geanie left the silence descended and her fear returned. She tried dialing Dave's cell and was relieved when he answered.

"Dave? It's Cindy. I can barely hear you."

". . . terri- reception . . . offmountain . . . but . . . couple days . . ."

"Where are you?"

". . . at . . . stadium . . . camping inside . . ."

"When will you be back?"

There was a burst of static and then she lost the call. She tried calling back, but it went straight to voicemail. She put her cell down on the counter. At least they were safe offthe mountain.

A minute later her cell chimed to let her know she had a text. It was from Dave and it said, "Back tomorrow."

She took a deep breath. Everything was fine.

Food and the clean-up from it and breakfast ended up taking forever. When it was done a heavy curtain of rain isolated the camp. Jeremiah found the candles for lighting at sunset on the Sabbath in the office and took them to their cabin.
The kids are an evenly mixed group, for a wonder.
Six of the boys were his. Sarah was also from the synagogue. Brenda and the other six boys were from the church. They turned offthe lights in the cabin, with the blessing of the castaways, and lit candles.Jeremiah took a minute to explain why they did what they did to observe the Sabbath.

The kids sat up and talked, but exhaustion was taking its toll and they were asleep well before the curfew they had been so excited to break. Jeremiah waited until they were all asleep and then blew out the candles. He wanted to leave them burning but fourteen kids in one room in a wood cabin asleep with burning candles seemed like a recipe for disaster.

Then he lay down, flipped onto his side so that he could watch the room, and fell asleep.

Jeremiah awoke to the sudden, overwhelming feeling that something was very, very wrong. He sat up slowly, eyes probing the darkness. He could hear the kids snoring softly and his eyes fell on each still, sleeping form. Fourteen. They were all there.

Unlike the night before there was no sound coming from outside, nothing that should have awakened him. Still, he knew that unlike the toilet paper raid this was real and very dangerous.

He rose and moved across the cabin silently, maneuvering around the kids sleeping on the floor, straining his senses for a sign of what it was that had awakened him. There was nothing.No movement, no sound.

No sound.

He slipped out of the cabin, grateful that he had slept in his clothes. He silently removed the fire extinguisher from its mounting. It made a good weapon both for the chemical spray inside and for the heft of it. He slowly moved around the cabin, looking for something that could have frightened the animals and the insects into silence.

The farther he walked the more certain he was that something was wrong. He had almost completed his loop of the building when he saw a blinking red light. He approached and discovered a small black box attached to the power lines.

A bomb,
he realized.

15

J
EREMIAH TURNED AND LEAPED BACK UP ONTO THE PORCH, KICKED IN THE door, and shouted, "Everyone out, move, move, move!"

Startled kids fell out of their bunks and landed on the kids who were on the floor. They all struggled to their feet and ran toward him. He stepped aside. "Head for the trees!"

The last kid out the door tripped, sprawling at Jeremiah's feet. He picked the boy up, threw him over his shoulder, jumped offthe porch, and sprinted toward the trees with the rest of them.

Once they hit the tree line they turned and stared at him, eyes wide with bewilderment and fear.

"Hit the dirt and cover your heads!" he roared as he dropped the kid he was carrying onto the ground. Jeremiah threw himself down on his stomach and the kids did the same.

How long before it goes off?
he wondered.
And who in this country would do such a thing?

When the explosion came he was ready for it, but the kids were not. Their screams of terror hurt him. If he closed his eyes he was back in Israel witnessing a car bombing or synagogue desecration. Cold fury settled in the pit of his stomach. They should not have had to be witnesses to such violence.

Flaming pieces of the cabin rained down all over, but fell short of their vantage point.

"All my stuff was in there," he heard one child whisper.

Another one asked, "What made it blow up like that?"

"It was a bomb," Jeremiah said. He didn't see any need to lie to them. It wouldn't help them in the coming years and certainly not in the coming minutes.

"Did someone try to kill us?"

"Will they try again?"

"Why?"

"Where are they now?" Noah asked.

That was the question that was foremost in Jeremiah's mind.It was possible that the bomber had detonated it from miles away. It was also possible that he was in the area, watching the cabin burn and looking at them.

"We can't stay here," Jeremiah said. "Everyone follow me and be quiet. Noah, bring up the rear. If you see something, whistle."

Without standing up he turned around and began crawling on hands and knees farther into the forest. He turned his head and saw that the kids were falling into line behind him.

Jeremiah just had to figure out how to make their movements silent. The thought of pushing deeper into the forest with teenage campers with no outdoor skills made him shudder.There was nothing he could do about it, though, but keep moving and stay alert.

Fifteen minutes into crawling, some of the kids were starting to grumble. Surprisingly, the loudest complainers were not the two girls, Sarah and Brenda. Fourteen kids aged fourteen to eighteen were not Jeremiah's ideal comrades-in-arms and the complaining made him grit his teeth. Jeremiah turned his head and whispered to the boy behind him to be quiet and to pass it back. As soon as he did he knew it was a mistake as one kid after another practically yelled out "What?" to the one in front, followed by a louder "Shhhhhh!"