Warrior (Freelancer Book 2) (16 page)

"Nah, you're lucky you didn't try."

"Not another 'twisty little passage'!"

"I'm afraid so. What shall we do?"

"Rub the lamp?"

"OK. Hmm. It says, 'Rubbing the electric lamp is not particularly rewarding. Anyway nothing exciting happens.'"

"Rats."

Across the living room, Sage and Scotty were hunched over the tiny green screen of the Data-Comp, Sage giving commands and Scotty patiently typing them in. When he had come in, Rick had asked what they were doing. He still wasn't quite sure, but they were playing a game on Scotty's mainframe computer.

Rick had settled into one of the battered recliners, shut his eyes, and pretended to take a nap.

"Scotty! I got it." Sage seemed to have an intuitive grasp of the game and was more often right than wrong. "The 'twisties' aren't the same. Look, Go North."

"OK." Rick could hear the click of the keyboard.

Sage squealed, "See! These are 'little twisting passages' not 'twisting little passages'! Let's make a chart."

"OK. Where's the graph paper?"

His roommates had been watching the little girl for only a day, but Rick could tell that a bond was forming, particularly between Sage, Eps, and Scotty. Rick mused that it was probably because, in so many ways, the guys were more like brilliant children than adults. Steve was in slightly better contact with the "real world"; but, basically, they all saw life as a series of opportunities to play with toys, and the fact they were frighteningly smart let them get away with it.

Rick closed his eyes and listened as Sage excitedly celebrated their escape from the maze.

Yes, sir. I'm here.

I'll tell your wife you loved her.

Captain, just hang on, the medics will be here any second, and we'll get you out.

Fuck. I can't see shit. That fucking elephant grass has got to be six feet high.

Where are they, sir? Well, they're everywhere.

Up in the trees, hiding behind those damn anthills.

Hiding in the grass.

Shit! That one went right by my head.

Oh, Captain, your foot. Shit. Shit. I'm going to take off my shirt and bandage it.

I'll wrap it and the medics will be here any second now.

Yes, sir. Mabel. That's your wife's name. Mabel. No sir, I won't forget.

What's that? Say again, sir. You want me to do what?

No sir, I won't do it.

No, we don't have any more morphine. FUCK!

Ah, Christ. Maybe my shirt will stop the blood. No, using the shirt already.

Yes, sir. You took another wound. It's in your gut. Sir, I'm not fucking going to kill you.

Someone will be here soon, and you'll be OK. No sir, I don't really believe that either.

OK, Come on. Loosen your fingers. Got it.

Shit. It's all covered in blood. Well, it's an M-1911 so it'll still work.

Are you sure, sir?

Fuck! Two shots in his chest.

How the hell is he still screaming?

Sir, it will be all right. I'll tell Mabel you loved her. Just close your eyes. I can see the medic coming.

Damn it! Damn it! Damn it! There's fucking blood and brains everywhere!

It was a direct order.

Fuck! Where did that one hit?

Ah, shit. My fucking arm. Damn, that hurts!

Hide.

I'll just slide under the Captain. He won't mind.

When Rick opened his eyes, all he could see were Sage's eyes, big, wide, and scared. She was staring at him from the other side of Scotty who was slowly leaning his wide frame in an attempt to block off her view. As he leaned, Sage bent so that her eyes never left Rick.

Without looking at Rick, Scotty kept up a quiet, continuous, if one-sided, conversation. "OK, Sage, we're almost to the Giant's Cave. What should we do about the bear? No ideas? Well, let's try killing it. OK, it says, 'your bare hands against his bear hands.' Get it? A bear has 'bear' hands."

Slowly, Scotty's chatter got the little girl's attention, and they went back to the game.

"He's pretty good at that."

Rick turned his head and saw Kristee standing next to him watching her daughter. "I just walked in at the end of that. Sounded pretty horrible."

Rick rubbed his face with both hands. "Well, it's a lot less horrible now than it was when it was happening. I'm sorry if I upset Sage."

Kristee thought for a minute. "Eve told me about what you keep going through, and I explained it to her." She laughed, a short exhalation of breath, really. "Well, as much as you can explain to an 8-year old kid. I said you'd had some hard times and when you were dreaming, you went right back into them."

She moved over and sat in the other recliner. "I said there wasn't anything wrong with you, that you were just stuck fighting some bad guys."

"I don't know that I'd agree that 'nothing is wrong with me,' but I appreciate the effort." Rick watched as Sage became more excited about the game on the computer. "It's not bad enough that I have to go through this crap all the time. I really hate making everyone around me participate."

"Well, don't feel like the Lone Ranger," Kristee said. "I don't know too many people who get through life without a scratch." She sighed. "That's why I had to get Sage away from the compound."

Rick rolled his head over to look at her and waited for her to continue, but her thin lips were locked in a straight line, and she didn't take her eyes off her daughter.

Eve popped her head out of the kitchen. "Hey, if any of you want corn, I need help with shucking. It's not local, but it's better than canned."

Rick and Kristee levered themselves out of the broken cushions of their recliners and walked to the kitchen. The back door was open, and Eve's voice came from outside. "Come on out here so we don't make a mess."

Eve had taken a seat on the low stone wall that marked the rear edge of the property and the outer wall of the tiny back porch. She said, "Pull up a step and make yourselves at home." A Safeway paper bag with at least two dozen ears of corn sat between her legs. She tossed an ear to each of them, and they settled down to ripping off the leaves and picking out the threads of silk.

Eve looked up and peered through the kitchen window. "Good, I can see Sage, so I know she's not sneaking up on us. Ergo, Kristee, you've got no excuses. Give with the rest of the evil that lurks in Christian Cuckoo Land?"

There was a pause filled with the sound of ripping husks and the "pop" when the ear came off the last bit of the stalk. Kristee began to talk, not like someone who was scared or unwilling, more like a witness in court trying to bring clarity to events that were confused, jumbled, and colored with intense emotion.

"Well, I told you how the Crusaders hauled us back to the mansion. I guess that was in 1972 around Thanksgiving. I was furious but hey, I'm a woman, I'm not that big, and my biggest concern was keeping Sage from being hurt.

"So we were back in the bunkhouse. The other women were told to keep an eye on us and make sure we didn't 'wander off.' I had to go to a special class they called 'Spiritual Service,' but it was really just a bunch of crap about obeying your husband—after Stephen, of course—and how a woman could only be happy if she was in a state of 'Spiritual Submission.'"

Eve said angrily, "Sounds more like 'spiritual slavery.'"

Kristee looked up and then concentrated on picking out the silk threads. "Yeah, you'd think I'd have realized that, but, hey, all the women's lib stuff wasn't around when I was growing up, and the Children's Crusade's pitch wasn't all that different from the crap I'd heard at Holy Word Baptist every Sunday."

She finished the ear of corn, laid it in the neat pyramid growing on the step next to Rick, and snapped her fingers at Eve who threw her a new ear. "On the other hand, I didn't buy into it any more than I'd ever bought into all that Baptist bullshit about 'surrendering to your husband.' I waited, watched, and planned. I memorized all the shifts of Crusaders guarding the area, explored the woods in back of the bunkhouse when I could sneak away, and waited for a chance."

Her voice dropped to almost a whisper. "Then Sage was scheduled to begin her special training. They made her swear not to talk about it with anyone, especially her parents. When she told me, that alone almost had me grabbing her and taking off for the front gate, I tell you."

Kristee shook her head. "Man, I'm glad I didn't. The place is about a mile from the nearest anything, Gary had the keys to the pickup, and it would have put them on alert. The thing I worried about most was that they would just take Sage and send me away. I don't know what I would have done then."

Her voice cracked, and she pulled a bandanna out of her back pocket, held it out to find the little cloth label, and then swiped at her eyes with one edge and blew her nose on the other. Shaking her head as if to banish an unpleasant dream, she continued. "But they didn't, and I was the meekest, most obedient believer in the Children's Crusade you've ever seen. And then, in February, everything changed."

Rick put a cleaned ear on the pile and asked, "Around the end of February?"

"Yeah." Kristee looked bewildered. "Why?"

"Just wondering how it matches up with something else. Go ahead with your story."

Eve threw new ears to the two on the steps and looked in the bag. "We're almost done."

Kristee ripped the husk off with a particularly vicious twist. "Suddenly, everyone was running around, all the men anyway, and then most of them grabbed weapons, piled into the cars and pickups in the Common Pool, and took off. No one would say where they were going or why, but I heard some talk about a mission or a calling or something like that."

She tossed the husk away and started on the silk. "I didn't think I was ever going to have a better chance to get the hell out of there, and, as far as I knew, they could all be coming back any time. I'd already filled a knapsack with whatever food I could put together and taken all the money from our family stash.

She continued faster. "So, the first night, I woke Sage up at 3:00 a.m., dressed us both in just about every piece of clothes we owned. I had us wearing two socks on each hand. I mean it was cold, not as bad as a Montana winter but still . . ."

Eve said, "Nothing is as cold as a Montana winter."

Rick agreed. "Damn right, last winter almost made me feel like Vietnam wasn't that bad."

He paused. "Almost."

Kristee finished her last ear and dusted off her hands. "We went out through the back woods, and I used every hunting trick my Dad ever showed me. Walking on rocks, stepping in each other's footprints, climbing trees and moving from branch to branch. Everything. Lucky it was a full moon. After we were about a mile away, I saw the outside lights go on at the Big House, and I knew they were coming after us."

Eve asked, “You ran?"

Kristee shook her head. "That would have just gotten us caught. No, as soon as I knew they were hunting for us. I headed for a downed tree that I'd found weeks before. You see, in addition to exploring the woods, I'd been digging a hunter's hide between the base of the tree and the root ball it had torn when it fell. It wasn't much bigger than the two of us, but it was dry and warmed up pretty good if we snuggled together. They came by twice but never saw us. We stayed there for two days before we made a break for the fence."

Eve nodded her head. "Smart girl."

Kristee laughed bitterly. "Ya think? Would a smart girl ever have gotten herself in a fix like that? No, I've been making nothing but dumbass moves my whole life."

She paused, and Rick could see the muscles clench as she set her jaw. "Well, that ended that night. Had to be ended. Sage is never going back there."

"No, she isn't," promised Rick. "Then what happened?"

"We walked north for several miles after we got over the fence. Then I noticed that this house had a sign on the lawn that said, 'No Crusaders Allowed.' I figured we had to take a chance and knocked on the back door. The woman who answered welcomed us, let me use the phone to call you, and put us up for a couple of days."

Kristee smiled at a memory. "Man, you should have heard her when the guys from the mansion knocked at the door. She told them to get the hell off her property and backed it up with a 12 gauge. Mrs. Lewitinsky was one tough lady, and she had no time for the Children's Crusade. Turned out neighbor Peter had 'donated' about 40 acres of the back part of her farm to his property. She went to see one day, and there was a new fence. She said that no one would help, not the police or the county court clerk. They showed her a bunch of papers she swore she'd never seen before and said they couldn't do anything about it."

Kristee stood. "So we made it to the city, stayed at the Evangeline Hotel for Women for a couple of days, and then looked up Steve after you told me about this place."

"And you can stay here as long as you want." Eve hopped down and hugged Kristee fiercely. "This is home for you and Sage."

When she released the other woman, Eve brushed angrily at her cheeks, scooped up the husks, stems, and silk into the paper bag and handed it to Rick. He put it in the trashcan at the bottom of the stairs while the two women gathered up the corn and carried it into the kitchen.