by A N Sandra
“Do you think anyone would believe it if we told them?” Michael asked.
“No,” Bud answered. “But we’re going to put what we saw on the Dark Web anyway.”
As the Jeep neared Blythe, Bud knew that his original plan of having Twilight hide with Brock was not going to work at all. He had thought that there would be an investigation into Brock’s disappearance from the intake center, and that the police would come and ask questions. Maybe they’d even arrest him and try to make him talk after hours of giving him no food or water, but he had assumed that the box would somehow make sure that he didn’t go to jail. That was before he understood what the intake center was really like. The people responsible for such a thing wouldn’t take the Bill of Rights into account when they went to look for who had taken Brock and Kaitlyn. One unfortunate truth Bud had learned in his years was that people generally consider anyone who exposes their own wrongdoing to be worse than the actual wrongdoing they do themselves.
The Jeep pulled off the road and Bud got the Silverado from its hiding spot. They were a small caravan as they drove back to Blythe.
They drove past the Maxi Mart, which was closed from eleven-thirty to six o’clock for Joyce’s sanity. There were no cars in the parking lot, which was bare and litter free. They turned left at the stoplight and were at Joyce’s driveway in less than a minute. Once a lovely showplace, now the most that could be said for the split-level ranch on two acres was that it was extremely tidy. The tire swing Kenny had put up for the boys hung from a scrub oak tree and the lawn was dormant and unwatered.
Ben drove the Jeep behind the house over the dead grass and all of them unfolded themselves from the seats to get to the back door. BJ and Bryan left their truck out front, since it was normal for the neighbors to see it coming at all hours of the night with BJ playing with Back Pasture at odd times.
The screen door on the back porch squeaked slightly as Ben opened it without knocking so that they could just stream into Joyce’s cheerful yellow kitchen with gray accents. The TV was blaring from the front room and cigarette smoke filled the air. Twilight and Michael took Brock to his room. Bud knew Brock was being dressed as if he were a catatonic Ken doll.
“Mom.” Bryan came in the front door. Bud met Bryan in the living room, both looking down at Joyce who was passed out with an empty bottle of Stoli beside her in a cloud of smoke. “Mom!”
“God,” Joyce croaked. “Just leave me alone!”
Bud had known Joyce for almost thirty years and never heard her curse in any way. The use of “God” might seem like nothing to many people, but for Joyce, Danica’s sister, to say it wrung Bud’s heart.
“We got him back,” Bud said clearly. “He’s in his room getting dressed.”
Kaitlyn was naked in the kitchen slightly aware of her surroundings.
“Is that Kaitlyn Jorgensen?” Bryan was shocked. “Joshua… did you find Kaitlyn Jorgensen... naked?”
“Yep,” Joshua told him. “Remember how much fun she used to be to hang out with in Ag Mechanics?”
“She’s a great welder,” Bryan said before coming to himself. “So, she was just there, in that place, and you found her?”
“Man,” Joshua shivered. Bud knew that he still hadn’t processed the horrible thing that was the intake center. “That place was…”
“There aren’t words,” Bud said. Joyce was sitting up. Still drunk, she clutched her head. “Take her into Joyce’s room and find something for her to wear.”
“Where is he?” Joyce slurred. Her face was lined with new wrinkles and there were so many cigarette butts outside the ashtray that Bud couldn’t believe she hadn’t set the house on fire.
“He’s getting dressed,” Bud repeated. “But we broke him out and he can’t stay here. I need you to unlock the store and get some supplies and I’m going to take him and Twilight to hang out somewhere safe for a while.”
Words seemed beyond Joyce, but she got up, stumbled toward her purse which was sitting next to the front door, and got out her keys. She held them out to Bud.
“Take the keys. The alarm code is Mom’s birthday.” She rifled through her purse and found a long slender cigarette and leaned against the door jam. “Where is he?”
“He’s coming,” Bud told her. Seeing Joshua holding Kaitlyn, whose nakedness seemed more indecent indoors in the bright kitchen lighting, shook Bud. He’d never meant to take someone other than Brock. He’d never thought they would find the evil human wreckage that had been there, he’d never thought that everything would be the way it had turned out, but the plan had still worked. They had Brock and Kaitlyn, and Kaitlyn looked perkier than Brock. She might be okay. Bud wished he knew what they had been given to sedate them, but he probably couldn’t just go to the RiteMart Pharmacy and get something to counteract it anyway. He imagined the look of the RiteMart clerk’s face if he brought Brock and Kaitlyn, naked, inside to ask for help.
“Here he is!” Michael brought Brock into the living room, carrying him like a broken doll wearing khaki pants and a plaid shirt.
“Baby!” Joyce lurched toward him. “I love you so much!”
Brock did look at Joyce, his eyes focused and he seemed to come to himself a bit. He still didn’t say anything, but it seemed to Bud that Brock “warmed up” when Joyce held him in a smothering hug.
“Are you okay?” Joyce smoothed Brock’s hair, a thing that would have driven him batshit crazy if he had been himself. “I love you so much!”
“He knows you love him, Mom,” BJ grinned a little. “You tell him all the time and it’s never a lot different than this.”
“They gave him some medicine… I’m sure it’ll wear off at some point.” Bud still had the box in his pocket, but he was wearing out his personal energy supply and there was still more to do. “We need to get them out of here. The sun is going to come up and I want them gone.”
Bud picked up the keys to the Maxi Mart and repeated Janice’s birthday in his head. He took Joyce’s Toyota and parked in the back of the Maxi Mart, unlocked the back door, disarmed the alarm, and began “shopping.” Fortunately the Maxi Mart catered to campers who would need to purchase staples they somehow forgot at home. Unfortunately, the Maxi Mart didn’t stock a large quantity of anything or many healthy options. Twilight and the rest would be eating a lot of canned soup and Top Ramen washed down with energy drinks. There were few veggies in the Maxi Mart. Danica would have a fit with the stuff Bud picked up. Hopefully she would load them up with garden bounty when they stopped to pick up Twilight’s things before heading to the cabin.
Bud looked at the digital clock that someone had forgotten to turn off over the cash register. Four thirty-five a.m. It was mid-August and it would be getting light soon. With a flash of inspiration Bud turned back into the store for just a moment before leaving, grabbing several boxes of tampons and bottles of Motrin as well as some band aids. Sending my daughter to wait for the apocalypse with ibuprofen and band aids. What more could she want?
At Janice’s house Twilight had managed to get Kaitlyn dressed in Janice’s clothes, which were awkward, but covered her up. Kaitlyn managed to sit up carefully on the sofa, while Brock was slumped in a recliner with Janice rubbing his hand.
“Janice,” Bud put his hand on his sister-in-law’s shoulder firmly. “We need to go now. He can’t stay here. They’ll take him again. You can’t let anyone know you know where he is. You can’t even talk about it on the phone. Not your cell phone, not your landline. Stay home from work today. Let Rhoda deal with the store, okay?”
“Okay.” Janice had looked depleted after her divorce, but Bud had never seen her as helpless as she looked when he picked up Brock to take him to the Jeep. “You need to take his favorite books. He can’t go without them.”
“Get them right now, while we load up,” Bud told her. “We need to go.”
Bud put Kaitlyn, Brock, and Twilight into the Jeep. Ben, Joshua, and Michael got into Bud’s truck.
BJ and Bryan both stood n
ext to the Jeep looking at Brock while their mother came out with a huge duffle bag full of books banging against her knees as she dragged it along.
“I put his Kindle and charger in there too. I don’t know if you can keep it charged but it’ll keep him happier if you can.”
Bud heaved the bag onto Brock’s dormant hands resting on his lap and could have sworn that Brock’s eyes sparked a little. He’ll be fine.
“Janice,” Bud said again. “You can’t let anyone know we’ve got him. You just can’t. I can’t even tell you how bad the place was that we just got him out of. Stay home today.”
“We’ll keep her here,” BJ promised. Bryan nodded agreement. “We won’t let anyone bug her.”
“Good.” Bud turned the Jeep engine over. A slight trace of sunlight was coming up over the rim of the valley at the edge of town. Mentally Bud ran through a timeline. Twenty minutes to get home, twenty minutes there. It would be light by the time he got back on the old highway to take them to the hunting cabin. It would be at least fifteen minutes on the old highway before they could turn off. The light wouldn’t be bright then, and maybe no one would see them. It was what he would have to hope for.
The sun was not over the mountains, but the valley was flooded with dull light when Bud pulled the Jeep into the carport. Danica was waiting for them wearing a housecoat Bud hadn’t even known she owned. She flew to Bud hugging him while sobbing. Guilt over how much she must have been worried flooded Bud, but he held her carefully.
“We got him back. We’re all okay. We need to get out of here, though. Now.”
Twilight was already out of the Jeep, running to her room to gather whatever she thought she needed in the middle of nowhere. Bud hoped she would find some clothes for Kaitlyn that would fit. Twilight was so much shorter than Kaitlyn that Bud couldn’t see how she would fit into any of them, but it wouldn’t matter in the middle of the forest. Bud followed her, but he went to the storage shed behind the carport before getting things from the house.
Danica held onto Brock, who managed to hold his own against her embrace. He’s perking up. He’ll be all right. When Bud suggested that Danica get some fresh garden produce for the young people, she was anxious to be helpful. She filled a large box with all kinds of things from the garden.
“Michael, I hope you don’t mind, but I took some of your old clothes for Kaitlyn. She’s more your size than my size,” Twilight told Michael who was leaning against the truck, probably tired and winded.
“The stuff at the house is stuff I didn’t need. I feel bad you couldn’t get her better stuff.”
“That is the least of things to feel bad about,” Bud said.
Somehow, they were all on the old highway heading into the forest, imposing Ponderosa pine trees on either side of the road. The sun was just coming over the rim of the valley, but other than a few logging trucks no one was on the road at that hour of the morning. Bud knew that getting pulled over by a CHP officer he couldn’t see would be the end of all their trouble, so he kept to fifty-five by breathing deeply.
“How come I’ve never been to this hunting cabin?” Twilight wanted to know.
“It belonged to Grandpa Lloyd’s best friend Ray who lived there after Vietnam. He never had any kids and his family kind of gave up on him. After he died Grandpa Lloyd wasn’t around and I used to party with my friends there sometimes.”
“And you didn’t tell us about it?” Twilight was indignant.
“You all are good enough at finding trouble without me giving you a secret place to do it,” Bud said.
“Mom?” Kaitlyn asked.
“Your mom isn’t here,” Twilight said kindly. She turned around and patted Kaitlyn’s thin hand gently, smiling encouragingly. Sometimes Twilight was so much like Danica that Bud almost burst with love. “We’re going someplace nice. It’ll be great!”
Bud was relieved one of the newly rescued was talking. He thought about how much he had wished Rachel would stop talking when she was small, and then later how hard he had tried to get Brock to talk after Kenny left. The one bright spot was that Rachel wasn’t here talking faster than a NASCAR announcer through the last two laps of the Daytona Five Hundred. Bud adored Rachel, but the girl had worn him down. The thought of her as a nurse warmed his heart. Her patients would get better just to escape her chatter.
Turning off the old highway onto a mostly unused red dirt road, Bud spun the Jeep expertly to keep the dust from flying inside.
“Hold on!” The whole night with no sleep faded away and Bud felt like a teenager again with his friends and a keg of beer on ice heading down the road. The cabin in the woods had always spelled freedom. Right then he made a mental list of who already knew about it, although he had not managed to make a bad plan yet with the box in close proximity. Shane Ellis knew, and his brother Toby, but neither of them had been to Blythe since their parents retired and moved away. Bud hadn’t seen them since Jerry Mac’s funeral… that had to be eleven years ago. Bo (Bubba) Thomas had come out to the cabin more than once, but he was career Navy and was stationed on the East Coast. TJ Mitchell was the only local boy who had partied at the cabin who was still around, but TJ was a cat skinner and worked in the woods weeks at a time. His own family couldn’t get to him when they needed to sometimes. Not that he had much family. An ex-wife and son older than Twilight but younger than Joshua was the only family TJ had that Bud could think of. It had been TJ’s idea to put camouflage tarps over the cabin years ago, so it wouldn’t be spotted from the air. TJ wasn’t going to lead anyone in authority to the cabin. Even if TJ thought Bud had killed someone, TJ would keep the cabin secret.
The Jeep bumped down the dirt road for more than forty-five minutes before coming to another turn off, now very overgrown. Bud was sure he could easily disguise it when they left so that any person without hunting experience would overlook it.
“It’s cool right now, but it’s going to get very hot up here in the middle of the day,” Bud warned Twilight. “I’m sorry, honey. I’m sorry about all of it. I don’t like leaving you up here, but you should be fine. I’m leaving you the twenty-two and Grandpa Lloyd’s good rifle.”
“Oh!” Twilight understood that all three of her brothers coveted Grandpa Lloyd’s rifle. Being trusted with it now was touching. That rifle meant nearly as much to Joshua and Michael and Caleb as Brock did.
There was a very sharp turn, and abruptly the cabin was in front of them.
“It’s so cute!” Twilight exclaimed. “But it’s tiny!”
“It’s got two rooms,” Bud said. “And there’s a canvas tent in there that I used sometimes for deer camp. If you get too cramped you could set it up in a little clearing that’s pretty close by.”
Everyone unloaded, Brock was able to walk on his own, Kaitlyn had spoken, and Bud thought that was as good as it would get.
“I should stay too—” Michael began.
“No, I need you to go back to your life and be normal,” Bud told him. “What we saw… they don’t want anyone to know about it. We all need to act normally, because they will come. Whenever they put their computer system back together, they are going to come for us.”
“What will happen if they catch us?” Michael wondered.
“I think if they catch us we’ll be really lucky to end up like the people we saw at the intake center,” Bud told him. “They won’t want us to be able to tell anyone. I need you both to never tell anyone what we saw last night.”
“No one would believe it,” Joshua answered. “I don’t need to sound crazy.”
Bud showed Twilight the little bit of the cabin there was. He had brought some bedding from the house, but it wouldn’t really fit on the two small beds that were there. There was no fridge, but Bud had brought an ice chest and planned on refreshing their perishable food in a week if he could. There was a small camp stove that Bud had brought propane for and Ben promised to get the hand pump primed so there would be water.
“You might not get the pump to work,”
Bud frowned. “The casing is old. But there’s a little spring just east and a creek a ways down.”
All the boys hugged their sister and Brock, even though Brock was not responsive. They shook hands with Ben, and all of them got back in Bud’s Silverado, leaving the Jeep if Ben needed to take it to town for anything.
“Lucky Ben wanted to stay with them,” Michael commented as they turned the corner and the cabin disappeared as suddenly as it had come into sight.
“It worked out,” Bud agreed. He never would have asked a favor of Ben. The man was very old and it seemed like a bad idea, however knowing Ben and his ivory box was with Twilight and Brock made him feel better.. The falcons had left Bud’s truck and were perched on top of the cabin. “Hopefully Kaitlyn will understand why they need to stay there.”
“I’m sure she will,” Joshua said confidently. “That place was… I might start going to church now. If hell is half that bad I don’t want to be there.”
“I think it might be a little late for church,” Bud said softly. “We have to act on our beliefs all the time.”
I need to sleep now,” Bud told Danica after he ate a huge plate of scrambled eggs and sourdough toast at the kitchen table. In the kitchen the morning sun was strong, but Bud knew the blinds would make the bedroom mostly dark. “I cancelled my load for today. I told them the truth, that Brock got taken away and I had family things to deal with. I’ll call them when I wake up and make it right.”
“Okay,” Danica said. “I’ll come try to sleep too. I sure didn’t sleep much last night.”
