Rebecca was sitting up, swaddled in blankets when I got back to the campsite. I noticed that one of the rifles was resting conspicuously close by. She seemed relieved to see me but nervous nonetheless. I set down the food and knelt beside her. She leaned in and kissed me gently on the lips. It felt so strangely domestic, even out here in the cold forest at dawn.
“Do you know how to use that?” I asked, rocking back onto my heels and pointing at the rifle.
“Not really. In theory … but I’ve never actually— No. I really don’t.” She looked from the gun to me, a sheepish grin on her face. I smiled and told her we’d get to it after eating.
I gathered twigs and brambles and in a few minutes had a little fire burning. I set the can of beans down close beside it. Rebecca dressed, which I watched with pleasure, and then we sat nibbling on fruit, waiting for the beans to warm. Once they were ready, we took turns eating out of the can. When it was empty, I filled it with rice and water and nestled the can down into the glowing coals.
We tidied up the campsite as the water came to a boil, gathering blankets and the remains of our humble meal and sharing the bland rice. “Well, this is … caloric,” I said under my breath.
“That’s what counts.” She smiled back, her mouth full of rice. I nodded. It was indeed what counted, after all. Sustenance. We finished the meal in silence, and then I picked up the folded blankets and two of the rifles.
“You take this one,” I instructed, handing her the third weapon. “So you can start getting used to the weight.”
She lifted the rifle and hefted it a few times in her hands to get its feel. Her fingers explored the bolt, trigger, and safety. I was nervous—a gun in untrained hands is a dangerous thing. But she was a smart girl, and I was sure she’d be a quick study. I was also banking on her never having to fire the thing at anyone.
We made our way through the thorns and brambles back to the edge of the woods. It was fully morning now—the fields rolling away and down across the hills were verdant beneath a striking cobalt sky punctuated here and there by wispy clouds. I tossed our blankets into the cab and then walked to the very edge of the tree line. My eyes slowly scanned the countryside, then the horizon and finally the skies. We were utterly alone.
“Okay … before long, you’re going to shoot this,” I said over my shoulder, holding aloft the empty bean can and walking about fifty feet out into the field. I rested the can on a small moldering stump and returned to where she stood by a large pine. I grabbed a rifle from where it was slung across my back and held it at the ready, indicating for her to do the same.
“Pretty simple overall, okay? Clip goes in here, this button releases it when spent.” She followed along as I showed her each part and its action. “Ratchet back on the bolt like so, and you chamber a round … you’ve got thirty of them per clip … safety off … squeeze and fire.” I whirled rapidly and fired three shots at the can. The third knocked it off the stump. Rebecca let out a little gasp at the loud reports.
“Sorry … showboating,” I said.
“You’re allowed.”
I handed her the rifle and walked toward the stump, saying over my shoulder, “For the record, no shooting right now.”
It took a while for her to work up the courage to take a shot. The noise bothered her. Finally I convinced her just to squeeze a few rounds off into the air, said she could even turn her head away and close her eyes. Soon she was a professional at shooting with her eyes closed tight and her face averted. It took a lot longer to get her eyes down to the stock and sighting along the weapon. But she got there. I coaxed her along, reminding her now and then that our situation was neither ideal nor elective.
“Just look between the rear sights, put the forward iron on the can. Let your finger close slowly on the trigger.… Wait, stop!” Her eyes were closed again. “You need to keep your eyes open. It’s the anticipation that bothers people—not so much the actual shot.”
“The actual shot isn’t a whole lot of fun, Tom,” she said snippily.
“Better to be on this end of it.”
“Yeah, okay.” Becca lowered her face to the rifle again. She fired three shots. The third knocked the can from the stump. She let out a little yelp of surprise.
After she had fired fifteen or twenty rounds competently if not accurately, I decided it had been enough. She was visibly shaken, unaccustomed to the loud crack of the weapon and of the violence inherent in its use. We walked out of the open field and back toward the truck. I put two of the rifles in the bed and two in the cab and then turned to face her.
“Now you know how to use a gun in case you need to. For any reason.” Her pale blue eyes stared deeply into mine. She understood completely. I absentmindedly slid a hand into my jacket pocket, seeking cigarettes but finding the syringe I’d taken from the man in truck. That would work too, if it would keep her from pain. I withdrew my hand empty.
“They’ll kill us if they find us, won’t they?”
“Yeah. They can’t afford not to.”
“Do you think—” Her voice cracked, and she took a wavering breath. “—do you think my brother is dead?”
“I don’t know, Becca. I hope not.” Tears welled in her eyes and I drew her to me, stroking her soft tangle of hair. She did not weep, merely sighed over and over again for a few minutes. Finally she leaned back and looked out across the sunlit hills.
I followed her gaze along the peaceful, empty land. Its vastness gave a false sense of security. I was certain they could find us easily and was scrambling for a way to make it out alive. It had kept me up for most of the night. Watley and his kind would not stop searching. Even if we made it to a new city—a different country, even—and tried to start a new life, they would follow. We would have to blend in and disappear and live forever in fear, forever looking over our shoulders and afraid of things that go bump in the night.
Any romantic notions I had held of slipping away from it all and never looking back were fading. Besides, I’d long known that even if the fog had never come, even if none of it had happened, my life would not have been exceptional. I was born to get by and not much else. Maybe that had changed now. Maybe I could rise to the occasion once. At least I had to try—for her if not for me.
She had walked a few steps toward the meadows. I grabbed my pack of smokes and drew out a cigarette. There were about fifteen left in the pack. Then I was done. Shaking my head, I lit one and took a long, deep drag. A gentle breeze had stirred up, and I watched the smoke dance skyward in frenetic little spirals until caught by a more powerful wind and blown away.
“So what do we do now?” she said without looking back.
“Well, first we clean up the campsite. Got to make it look like no one was ever there. I’ll take that,” I said, reaching for the rifle. She handed it to me, and I put the weapon in the cab. She turned and headed toward camp as I grabbed one of the jerry cans from the truck bed, then stamped out my smoke and poured fuel into the gas tank. Impulsively, I reached into my pocket for the cigarette pack. My fingers closed instead around Heller’s cassette tape. I pulled my hand from my pocket as if shocked, looking down at my fingers. For no discernible reason, I found myself fighting back tears. The things I knew now and the conversations I’d had with the kid—fuck, it seemed they were separated by years. Slowly I eased my fingers back between the rough folds of cloth in the jacket and caressed the tape. For several minutes, I was motionless. Chopin. I’d said I’d bring it back to him. If I died out here, Tom’s music would die with me. I shuddered involuntarily and thrust the tape back into my pocket, taking the empty jerry can in both hands and turning to the pickup.
I tossed the gas jug back into the truck bed. It made a jarring, unpleasant clatter, made my spine shiver. I positioned it more carefully among the others and looked up. Something was off. I could feel it. Sense it. After a long moment, I knew it. Hadn’t taken them long at all. I sighed, shaking my head slowly. A low rumble crept across the hills. The rhythmic chop of helicopter blades was unmistakable. I turned to walk back into the forest and stopped short.
Two soldiers stood smiling at me, rifles trained at my chest. I instantly recognized one of them as the broad-shouldered guard from the jail cell in Science. The other man was middle aged and stone faced.
“Go call the birds and tell them where to put down,” said my friend from the prison. The older soldier hurried off along the tree line, jogging south, away from Becca.
“Thanks for all the shooting. Saved me a lot of time.” I cursed myself. “Where’s the girl?” the big man went on, his smile fading.
“What?”
“First take a step back from the cab and those guns. That’s better. Now … where is she?”
“Dunno. Keys were in the truck when I stole it. I owe the bitch a black eye—it’s the least I could do.” I tried to act confident, defiant. “Say, how’re your balls doing?”
He spit on the soil, advancing. “Never better, Vale.” He stopped within arm’s reach of me, the rifle barrel still aimed at my chest. “I hope you enjoyed your time out here. We sure did miss you back home.”
I started to reply, but that’s when I saw Rebecca. She stood, petrified, not twenty feet away. Her blond hair and wide eyes shone brightly in the morning sun against a backdrop of dark forest. She was directly behind the soldier. I looked at her for less than a second, then kept my eyes on him, my gaze being the only thing that would give her away.
“Never heard
home
sound like a dirty word before you said it,” I muttered. “Just tell me what the fuck to do, asshole.”
He took another step toward me. The gun’s muzzle grazed my chin. I thought of knocking it aside and leaping for him, but it would have been in vain—his partner couldn’t have been far off, and the din of the choppers was growing louder. Besides, if I could keep the focus on me, maybe I could help her escape.
“If it were up to me, you’d be on the ground right now with a bullet in you.”
“You know what? If I had my say, I’d probably ask for the same,” I shot back, retreating a step and brazenly reaching into my pocket for the pack of smokes. As I drew it out, I let the keys fall to the ground. I made as if to retrieve them but then straightened up, kicking them away. “Doesn’t much matter now, huh?” I snorted, placing the unlit smoke in my mouth. Over the soldier’s shoulder, I saw Rebecca set her jaw and begin walking toward us. She wasn’t going to let me go down alone. I couldn’t allow that. I grabbed the cigarette back out of my mouth, raising my voice to mask the crunch of brush beneath her feet.
“Stop! Stop with the bullshit. Just tell me what to do, man! Do I just walk out into the field and jump in one of those choppers?”
“That’s about the whole of it.” He nodded.
“Fine. Fuck it. Here I am, all by my lonesome. You boys win.” I leaned toward him and raised a hand, palm out. “I guess this is good-bye. Too bad.” I paused, drawing in a long breath. “But I promise”—my eyes locked on to his—“my little friend … I promise if I can, I’ll see you again. You and I are not done here.” He cocked his head to one side, confused, but he didn’t seem to realize my voice had caught on the word
promise,
that those words not meant for him. Both of Becca’s hands were pressed to her face as she stood still, watching me. Finally she crouched behind a thicket of brambles out of view. The last glimpse I caught of her was of those two brilliant blue eyes closing as she knelt. I wheeled and walked out across the soft green grass. Toward the rapidly approaching fleet of choppers. Away from her.
After I’d covered about a hundred yards, not once looking back to see if the soldier was following me, I paused and turned around. He stood a short ways down from the forest’s edge, watching. At least that meant he hadn’t found Rebecca. Yet. As I watched, he wheeled and went to the truck and began to rummage about in the cab. I stopped in fear, knowing she was a scant fifteen feet away. When I saw him reemerge from the truck and head into the forest, my heart skipped a beat. He looked back once, and I took the only chance I had to protect her. I broke into an all-out run. Away, across the fields. Had logic been an attribute of his, he’d surely have known my flight was pointless, his shots hopeless. Nonetheless, I heard several reports ring out behind me. That’s what I’d wanted: focus on me. Out here.
I ran as hard and as far as I could across the meadow directly toward the helicopters. There were three troop carriers and a gunship. They were done fucking around. Only once did a little patch of turf erupt within twenty feet of me as the barrel-chested bastard plinked away with his rifle. I ran until my lungs seared and my legs begged me to stop. Then I kept on some more. Eventually I was more staggering than running. Soon just walking, doubled over.
“I’ll miss you,” I wheezed aloud. “I love you.” Then even my own thundering heartbeat and hacking were drowned out by the four mighty engines now hovering above. Wind whipped around me, tossing the tall grass this way and that. Three of the choppers set down in near perfect unison, forming a large triangle with me at its center. The gunship circled, a savage thirty-millimeter cannon in its nose trained on yours truly. It’d be a painless way to go, I thought for a fleeting second. But I’d just made a promise I hoped to keep.
Four soldiers leapt from each of the helicopters and formed a loose circle around me, slowly closing in. Twelve gun barrels pointed at my chest. I raised my arms above my head very slowly. They inched closer. Twenty feet. Fifteen. Hard faces and tense fingers.
“Relax, guys!” I called above the din of the engines. “Where the fuck do you think I’m gonna go?”
13
They had strapped me into the backseat of one of the helicopters by both ankles and wrists. Smart on their part. Two soldiers sat across from me, stone faced and weapons ready. I hardly noticed them. I focused only on the cloudless sky above me and the expanse of green fields below. Tried to take in the colors. The open space. My eyes kept turning involuntarily to the ever-nearer city.
I shifted as much as possible against my restraints to look out the other window, and realized we were flying over a reservoir, and then I could see Kirk’s dam. The four waterfalls spilling past the dark retaining wall gave the whole structure the look of a mouth smiling up at me. Or baring its teeth, rather. Sneering as if to say,
I told you so.
I craned my neck to stare at the dam for as long as I could. I was relatively certain by now that my hometown—the house where my parents had raised me, the parking lot where I’d first had sex, the shitty elementary school that always smelled like ammonia, all of it—was under those still black waters.