Stealing Second (The Amendments Book One 1) (10 page)

The laughter outside continued
, and I began to wonder what was so funny. “Your mom will join us in a few days,” I said. “You have to trust that she’ll follow through on her promise. We’ve got a long ride in front of us, but if we keep at it we’ll be out at the farm before sunrise. You’re going to have to be strong. Can you do that for me?”

There was more laughter
. Violet scowled and rolled her eyes. “I may look like a scrawny kid, but I’m a lot tougher than I look. I used to train with my mom. We ran a half marathon last month. Have you ever run a half marathon?”

I shook my head. “Nope, I haven’t run a footrace since I left high school. I think that was about fifty pounds ago.”

Violet looked at me, appraisingly. “I could teach you,” she said. “You could be a good runner in no time and lose some weight. I mean, if that’s what you wanted to do.”

I smiled at her. “Yes, I’d like that very much. I hate being fat.”

“You’re not fat; you’re just a little chunky. I bet we can sweat that off of you in a few months.”

Looking back, she was spot-on in her prediction. I would lose the weight and it would be replaced by lean muscle, but I’m getting ahead of myself. We still had to get out of that dugout.
I took the opportunity to refill my canteen for the trip. I hoped it was enough water for the two of us. A moment after I had tucked it back into my pack, Cathy and Todd reappeared and resumed their positions. Violet slowly returned to the table to sit by her mother.

Cathy held up a map. “Gary, Steve-O brought you over a Minnesota roadmap, wasn’t that nice of him? He thinks you and
Violet should steer clear of any towns between here and Pine City and he highlighted the route he thinks you should take. I told him I’d pass this along to you.”

I stood up and walked to the table. “You’ll have to thank him for me,” I said, actually meaning it. I took the offered map and returned to my sleeping bag and studied it. I was glad to have it and began to regret jumping to conclusions about Ken and Barbie.

“How many hot dogs can you eat?” asked Todd.

“We’ll each have two,” said Cathy. “Thank you.”

“I’m not hungry,” said
Violet. “What was so funny out there?”

Cathy stole a look back at me and covered her mouth. “You weren’t supposed to hear that,” she chuckled. “That was nothing, really honey.”

“Maybe to you it was nothing,” said Todd, “but poor Lori is scarred for life.”

Cathy burst out laughing and was soon joined by Todd.
Violet and I exchanged a look and I immediately suspected that I knew what they were laughing about. My ears burned and I began rolling up my sleeping bag. “Let me guess,” I said. “They saw me take my nature walk, is that it?”

Todd covered his mouth and nodded his head. Tears streamed down his cheeks as he laughed. Cathy tried to keep a straight face, but she was soon laughing as hard as her new boyfriend.

“What’s a nature walk?” asked Violet. “What’s so funny?”

“I had to go to the bathroom,” I said. “I didn’
t know poor Lori was watching.”

“
Eww … that’s gross. Why would she do that?”

“I guess she thought it was funny.”

“Oh, stop it,” said Todd. “You damn near walked over her.”

I strapped my sleeping bag onto my pack and stood up. “I’m leaving,” I said, fighting to control my temper. “Cathy, which of these bags is
Violet’s?”

“You can’t leave now,” said Cathy. “It isn’t even dark, yet.”

“Oh, I most certainly can. And Violet is leaving, too. That is, unless you’ve changed your mind about keeping her here.”

“Gary, please… don’t do this.”

“It’ll be dark within the hour,” said Todd. “They should be fine. Gary, let me fix the kid a sandwich, okay? It won’t take a minute.”

I walked over to a notebook and pen I’d seen l
aying on a shelf. I picked them up and quickly scribbled down my parents’ address and telephone number and handed it to Cathy. “I’ll be outside,” I said.

Much to my surprise,
Violet got up from the table and picked up one of the duffel bags. She walked over to the steps and turned. “I’m ready to go,” she said. “That was rude of your friends, Todd. There aren’t any bathrooms in the woods. You told me that yourself. I don’t want your stupid sandwich.”

“
Violet,” scolded Cathy. “You apologize to Todd. He was trying to be nice.”

“Oh yeah?
If he was being nice, Todd would have sent his friends back to wherever they came from. How would you feel if you were Gary, Mom? Tell me, I’d love to hear it. What about you, Todd, how would you feel? That was just mean.”

Todd said nothing as
Violet and I climbed out into the fresh air. I set my pack down and fished out my insect repellant. Cathy followed us out and closed the trapdoor. She stood and stared at me as I rubbed on a generous layer of the bug dope on my exposed skin. I handed the bottle to Cathy and pointed to Violet. She squeezed a dab into her palm and began to rub it on her daughter. “I’m sorry, Gary. Violet is right, that wasn’t funny.”

“Whatever,” I said, turning away from her. “You have the address. Be careful.”

I heard Cathy begin to sob as she hugged Violet. “Promise me you’ll be a good girl and that you’ll listen to Gary, okay? Mommy will be there soon, you’ll see. I’m a soldier, Violet. You do understand that, right? I took an oath to defend our country. I have to do this, please tell me you understand.”

“I understand,”
Violet replied, flatly. “Can we go now?”

“Take care of her, Gary. She’s all I have in the world.”

I held my hand up and waved as I walked away. She didn’t want to hear what I had to say. I didn’t want Violet to hear what I was thinking. She was suddenly at my side and reached out and took my hand as her mother cried behind us. The sky had become obscured by clouds and twilight was nearly upon us. We found our bikes just inside the woods, and I quickly bungeed Violet’s bag to my handlebars. I had put the revolver into the pack when we first entered the dugout. I decided to leave it where it was. It would be dark soon enough. I thought that if we ran into a situation where I might be forced to draw it, having the gun on my person might cost the both of us our lives. The fresh scrapes on my tailbone area might have factored into that decision as well.

We wheeled our bikes to the ditch and I scanned up and down the road. I could still see the pickup in the fading light. I was happy we weren’t heading that way. I could only imagine what the large caliber bullets had done to the old couple. I scanned the sky and after satisfying myself that the road was clear, I nodded to
Violet. “Are you ready?”

“As ready as I’m ever gonna be,” she said. “How about you, are you ready?”

I looked behind us, but the trail was empty. I wondered about that. I tried to imagine my own mother not walking me out to the road, not that she would have ever entrusted me to a stranger. The fact that Cathy hadn’t followed us spoke volumes about her character; at least, I thought so. I had misjudged her. Violet would be much better off at the farm. I knew that with absolute certainty. My parents would adopt her as one of their own. If Cathy never came back to claim her, either by choice or circumstance, Violet would have a home to call her own and good people to use as role models.

We rode along in silence, side by side on the narrow highway. We pedaled non-stop until darkness fell and didn’t meet a soul on the road.
We stopped sometime after ten o’clock and ate an energy bar and drank from my canteen. It felt wonderful to take off my pack and stretch my sore shoulders. I dug out the flashlight and studied the map. After a five-minute rest, we set off into the night. The clouds blotted out all traces of moonlight, but our eyes adjusted to it and I was thankful for the inky blackness. If we did happen to come across a pair of headlights, we would see them long before they spotted us. There would be plenty of time to wheel our bicycles into the ditch and hunker down. Occasionally, we heard the distinctive pop of gunfire in the distance.

We made surprisingly good time.
Violet proved herself to be up to the challenge, and we pedaled until well after midnight before we stopped again. I checked the map and estimated that we were well over halfway to the freeway. We wheeled our bikes off the road and sat down in the tall grass of the ditch. We sat and listened as another burst of gunfire echoed in the night sky. The shooting soon escalated into a fierce battle, and I imagined the government troops firing the automatic weapons and the people popping back with the single shots. I couldn’t think of them as rebels, which is how the media would describe them. I thought of that as the sounds of the battle began to die away.

“Where did you get all of that money?”
Violet asked.

I laughed. “That’s a long story,” I said. “But it’s a good one. Would you care to hear it?”

“Well yeah, why do you think I asked?”

I laughed again. I then told her the whole story, from beginning until end. I left nothing out and she never interrupted me, not once.
I even told her exactly where I had buried it. If something were to happen to me, I wanted her to have it. Even in the darkness, I could see her staring at me with wild-eyed wonder. “So I buried it,” I said “And now you know. What do you think about that?”

“How much do you think that gold is worth?” she asked.

“I have no idea,” I said, honestly. “I’m pretty sure it’s worth at least a million dollars; maybe more, maybe a lot more.”

“I’ll bet it is,” she said. “You’re rich, that’s really cool. What are you going to do with all of that money?”

“I have no idea. For now, I try not to think about it. If … when things get back to normal, I’m hoping to buy a farm of my own, something like that. I’d like to take a nice long vacation to someplace tropical. What would you do if you found a million dollars?”

“I’d give it to my grandma. I
want her to have a better life; she deserves it. She lives on her social security checks and can’t even afford her medicine. How fair is that? You’d like my grandma. She’s super nice.”

“I
will
like your grandma,” I said. “This thing will be over soon and when it is, you and I will hop in my dad’s car and drive to that campground. That’s a promise. After we dig up the treasure, we’ll stop by to visit your grandma and I’ll give you your share of the loot. You can give it to her, if that’s what you really want to do.”

“My share?” she asked. “But I didn’t do anything to earn a share.”

“That’s not true. You’re helping me make it out to the farm. You’re my friend and I told you the biggest secret I have in the whole world. I’m counting on you to keep our secret. Can you do that for me?”

“Well
… duh. Of course I can. I won’t even tell my mom when she shows up. I’m mad at her anyhow. She didn’t have to stay with Todd. Do you really mean it? You’re not just making this up, are you?”

I slung my arm over her shoulder and stared into her eyes. “I swear to God that I’m not making any of this up. As long as you keep up your end of the bargain, I’ll cut you in on a share of the money. I’m not saying half, but I promise you that it will be enough so that your grandma never has to worry
about affording her medications ever again. Does that sound fair to you?”

Violet
smiled brightly and nodded her head. She then gave me a one-armed hug and rose to her feet. “Are you ready?” she asked. “I think we should get moving.”

I nodded my head and got to my feet. I felt better after sharing my secret with her and I could see that I had energized her.
Violet bounded back to the bikes and thanked me no less than four times before putting on her helmet. I tried to imagine how I would’ve felt, hearing that story at her tender age. The thought energized me and we rode off at high speed.

Starting low, but gaining volume with each passing minute, thunder began to bellow behind us in the western sky. We rode for another hour
, and I began to see familiar landmarks. The storm moved slowly but steadily as we continued to pedal. Now and again, lightning flashes would light up the blackness and each time it did I held my breath. Occasionally, I could hear the whine of vehicles on the concrete of the interstate. I had known there would be some traffic, and if my ears weren’t playing tricks on me, it sounded like barely a fraction of what normally passed that way at this time of night. The farm was a mile east of the interstate and on still nights like these, it was rare not to hear at least a few vehicles as they whined by in the distance.

Our farm was a few miles north of town
, and I had charted a course that would bring us to the interstate at a point nearly due west of there. Once we arrived, we ditched the bikes in the woods and crouched down in the tall weeds at the fence. A National Guard truck trundled by heading north, totally unaware of us. Two minutes after that, a camouflaged Humvee sped southbound.

“Once we make it over the fence,” I whispered, “we’re going to run like hell until we reach the other side, okay?”

Violet nodded, excitedly. “I’m pretty fast. I hope you can keep up.”

“Okay, are you ready?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be.”

I was just getting to my feet when I heard the sound of an
other approaching vehicle. My heart lurched in my chest when I heard it stop, and I realized that it was at our backs on the highway we had just traveled, not on the interstate. I heard a door slam and the vehicle moved on. Violet and I crouched down as low as we could. I remember feeling angry, but also more frightened than I had ever been. Somehow I had been more prepared to die after my
escape
with Madison. I no longer felt that sense of bravado. I was in charge of the welfare of a child and I couldn’t let her down. I curled up in front of her, trying to protect her in case someone started shooting. For a long time we waited.

Finally, when I thought the coast was clear, I rose to a sitting position.
Violet followed my lead. The night was as black as coal and I could barely see my hand in front of my face. Suddenly, a flash of chain lightning lit up the sky, and I found myself staring into the face of a soldier in full battle gear. He had his rifle trained on me. “Don’t move!” he hissed.

Instinctively, I stuck my hands in the air. I turned in the last flash of light to see
Violet had done the same. Once again, we were plunged into darkness. I heard the soldier jog up to our position. “Don’t shoot,” I pleaded. “We’re unarmed.”

“Where are the others?” asked the soldier in a gravel voice.

“Others? I don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s just me and the girl, I swear to God. We’re trying to make it over to my parents’ farm.”

“You had better not be lying to me.”

“He’s not,” said Violet. “My mom is a soldier. Doesn’t that count for anything?”

The soldier crouched down next to us and began searching the area with the red beam of a tiny flashlight, I’m sure for weapons. When he didn’t find anything, he directed the
beam on us. He quickly shut it off. “You people are damn lucky,” he grunted. “You ran into one of the good guys. I’m an Oath Keeper. Have you ever heard of us?”

“My mom is an Oath Keeper,” said
Violet, excitedly.

The soldier smiled and held his finger to his lips. “That’s great, kid,” he said. He then turned to me. “I suppose you need to cross the freeway, huh? Well, this is as good as a place as any. I’ll help the two of you get across and I’ll cover you. Once you hit the shoulder, just run as fast as you can. Whatever you do, whatever you hear, don’t stop. Moving targets are harder to hit. I don’t know what’s on the other side, but I think you’ll be fairly safe.”

“Thank you,” I said. “This must be my lucky night.”

“You’re damn right. If anyone else in my platoon would’ve spotted you two, they would have shot you on sight. They don’t know about me. I’m hoping I can give them the slip tonight. They’re probably already suspicious of me.”

The words were out of my mouth before I could think about what I was saying. “You’re free to join us. Our farm is about a mile from other side of the interstate.”

“They knew about my mom and they sent soldiers to kill her,” said
Violet. “You should come along with us.”

The soldier sat in silence and then he scratched his chin. “I know they’ll kill me once they figure it out. Are you sure, sir? You’d be taking a huge risk.”

“I figure one good turn deserves another,” I said. “Let’s do this.”

The six-
foot fence was meant to keep the deer off the freeway, but they easily jumped it and there were always plenty of dead whitetails on the shoulders. I helped Violet up, but I hardly needed to. She scaled the fence in no time and was soon on the other side. I handed her over the backpack and duffel bag. I went over next and the fence wobbled under my weight. The soldier followed and I realized I didn’t know his name. I reached over and took his hand. “I’m Gary,” I said. “This is Violet.”

“Bob
Miller,” he replied. “Damn good to meet the both of you.”

“Damn good to meet you, too,” mimicked
Violet in a deep voice.

We all chuckled and warily
wandered down to the edge of the deserted interstate. Somewhere to the north, I heard the whine of approaching traffic. “Let’s go,” I hissed.

The run wasn’t far, but it seemed like it took hours to cross both lanes of the empty freeway. I kept waiting for the explosion of gunfire.
Violet was faster than I was, but only by a few steps. Bob stayed by my side, carrying his assault rifle at the ready. His pack and mine kept perfect time as they slapped against our backs. We crossed the median and then the northbound lanes. I was winded by the time we hit the ditch and sloshed through water that was nearly a foot deep. Still, there was no traffic coming in either direction and we continued running up to the opposite fence.

Panting, I helped
Violet up and over the fence. Once again, I tossed her the duffel bag and then dropped my pack down to her. Bob dropped his pack next to mine. I scaled the fence and lost my grip at the top. I grunted and fell down onto Violet’s side. Thankfully, the only thing hurt was my pride, and I was back on my feet before Bob made it over. Bob handed me his assault rifle, and I set it down on top of his pack. We quickly strapped our packs on and set out to the east. We had made it across and finally dared to hope that we would make it to the farm.

We
walked the quarter mile to Highway 61 amid a series of lightning flashes. Violet clung to my hand as we slogged along in our wet shoes. Bob jogged a few paces in front of us and stopped us. “Don’t look up in the trees,” he said. “Trust me; you don’t want to see what’s up there.”

I had no idea what he was talking about and stupidly, I asked him. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“They’ve been hanging the rebels as a warning to others,” he hissed. “The U.N. soldiers are doing it, the dirty bastards. Just keep your eyes on the road.”

“Oh my God,” whispered
Violet. “That’s horrible.”

“A trick they learned from the Nazis,” replied Bob. “I hate them.”

We walked about another block before we spotted the first body. The sad-looking man appeared like a specter in the night, illuminated by a powerful flash of lightning. Violet covered her mouth to stifle a scream and began to sob. Thunder rolled in the distance. Bob picked up the pace, but the approaching storm only revealed more bodies hanging from the limbs of the oak trees that lined the highway. Printed crudely on signs were versions of the same message:
This is what happens to rebels!
Reading it only made my blood boil that much hotter. I stopped counting at thirty victims when I saw the body of a boy who couldn’t have been much older than Violet. She was still sobbing and I knew she would have nightmares about this for the rest of her life.

Thankfully, we arrived at the gravel road that led to the farm. There were no trees here, only pastures and fields of corn and soybeans. Slowly,
Violet began to pull herself together. I saw no lights in the few farmhouses we passed and I began to wonder if my family had survived.

Our farmhouse sat nearly a quarter mil
e off of the gravel road. I paused at the end of the driveway and stared up into the blackness. “This is it,” I said. “When we get up to the house, I’ll have you two wait in the shed. I don’t want to scare my folks; they’re pretty old. I’ll explain our situation to them and I’m sure they’ll understand. They’re great people. I’ll come back out and get you as soon as I do. Just try to be quiet, okay? We don’t want to wake up Gunner and Thor.”

“Who are they?” asked
Violet, tersely.

“Those are my German s
hepherds,” I said, rubbing my hand on top of her head. “And you’re going to love them.”

“I can’t thank you enough, Gary,” said Bob. “I couldn’t keep up the charade any longer. They would have found me out. I’m pretty sure they already knew… and I know I would’ve wound up at the end of a rope. I owe you my life.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I’m glad to have you along.”

W
e shook hands and began walking up the sugar-sand driveway. My stomach was in knots. I expected Gunner and Thor to start barking at any second. What would my father do if they did? I prayed he wouldn’t run out the door with a gun. I wasn’t sure, but it didn’t matter. We heard the rain approaching as it began pelting against the corn in the fields. By the time we reached the shed, the sky opened up and it began to pour. Thunder crashed and the rain was illuminated by a fat bolt of lightning. I led them inside into the darkness and Bob quickly switched on his red-beamed flashlight.

With the rain pounding against the shingled roof of the shed, I began to rethink my plan. “I think I’m going to wait this thing out,” I said into Bob’s ear.
He nodded his head and I repeated the same thing to Violet.