by Matt Ritter
“Throw any weapons out of the vehicle,” said the voice through the speaker.
“What is this?” Millard asked. “You have something do with this?” poking Will’s shoulder again with the handgun.
“Throw your weapons out or you’ll be shot.”
Millard studied his handgun for a moment, then tossed it gently out the open door onto the concrete edge of the highway.
“Stay in the vehicle and lift your hands where they can be seen.”
Millard put both hands up, and Will and Zach each lifted their non-handcuffed hand.
A fifth soldier set down the microphone in the front of the UP transport truck, stepped down out of the truck, and approached the jeep. He studied the vehicle for a moment. “Proceed,” he said to the other four soldiers, who approached the jeep cautiously.
“Keep your hands where they can be seen, and slowly exit the vehicle.”
Millard scooted along the back seat with his hands in the air and stepped out onto the highway. “The two men in the front seat are my prisoners. They’re each handcuffed to the door,” he said.
“What’s your name?”
“Millard Fillmore. I’m under orders from the San Ardo Camp Director to return these two.”
“State your names,” the soldier yelled into the front of the car.
“Will Taft.”
“Zach Taylor.”
“Handcuff key,” the soldier said, holding out his black-gloved hand to Millard.
“These two are my prisoners,” Millard said, his voice low and irritated. “I work for the Valley Administration.”
“Give me the key,” the soldier repeated.
One of the other soldiers turned his rifle on Millard.
“Alright,” Millard said, pulling back his coat.
The soldier took a step back and lifted his rifle to Millard’s head.
“Slowly,” yelled the soldier.
Millard put both his hand's palm up, then slowly went to his front pocket. “Calm down, just keys,” he said.
“What’s this about?” Millard asked.
“We have orders to take these two men to UP headquarters.”
“I have a job to do, and I’ve been told to take them back to the labor camp in San Ardo.”
“I don’t care about your job,” the soldier said, taking the key from Millard. “We have orders,” he said, handing the key to another soldier. “Unlock them. Collect any weapons from the vehicle.”
“Whose orders are these?”
The soldier ignored Millard’s question.
After being unlocked, Will stood on the highway and squinted in the midday sun.
“You own this vehicle?” the soldier asked Millard.
“Yes.”
“You can proceed back to San Ardo now. We’ll inform the camp of the change,” then, turning to another soldier, said, “Load the prisoners in the back of the truck.”
“These are my prisoners.”
“Not any longer.”
Will and Millard made brief eye contact, and Will couldn’t help but smile as the soldier pushed him from behind in the direction of the UP transport truck.
“I’ll find you again,” was the last thing Will heard Millard Fillmore say.
Will and Zach were each led by a soldier behind the transport truck up steps into a holding area. The rear of the truck was a metal-walled room with two built-in benches along each side, a place for carrying soldiers or prisoners. At the back of the chamber, another small door led to the driving cabin in the front of the truck.
“Sit there,” a soldier said, pointing to the benches, then closed and latched the door behind them. Will and Zach sat across from each other in total darkness except for a white line of sunlight raking across the metal floor from under the back door, each rivet on the floor casting a long shadow.
Will heard doors slam shut, and the UP truck engine roared to life. Some short turns were made as the truck reversed its direction on the highway, gears ground, and they both leaned sideways as the truck accelerated back onto the highway in the direction from where they had come.
“What’s going on?” Zach asked Will.
“I have no idea,” Will grumbled. “Better than the situation we were in.”
“I hope so.”
They rode in silence. The engine of the truck hummed, and the darkness was comforting to Will. He had a great sense of relief to be headed away from Millard. He was exhausted from the sickness and lack of sleep during the previous night. He closed his eyes and an image of Hannah came to him. She was tucked under the canopy of a low shrub, lying in the sand. Rain was dripping on her face through the leaves. She smiled at him.
The light on the ceiling fluttered, then came on. Will squinted as he opened his eyes. The inside walls of the truck were white under the surgical light, and Zach’s hair looked almost blue. There was a pounding on the metal door that led to the driving cabin, the sound of the door being unlatched, then it slid open.
Jose Alvarez, in a blue UP soldier’s uniform, ducked under the small door and sat on the bench next to Zach.
He slapped Zach’s knee and said, “Surprise,” with a wide smile.
“Jose?” Will asked, a grin stretching his lips.
“You didn’t think we were just going to let the two of you wander off and not keep tabs on you?”
Will was dumbfounded.
“If we did that, you’d be arriving back at the labor camp in an hour or so.”
“But this truck? The uniforms?”
“We hijacked a convoy a few months back. The uniforms and transport truck come in handy.”
“You knew where we were since leaving the prison?”
“I had someone watch you. They lost track of you until this morning when you got caught by the highway.” Jose smiled and said, “I told you to stick to the river basin.”
“Well. Thank you.”
Jose nodded. “We still have to get you to Gonzales. You never know what could happen on this highway.”
Will looked at Jose in the cold metallic light. The smile left his face. “That was Millard Fillmore who picked us up.”
“I know. I saw from the truck,” Jose said, shaking his head. “Apparently he’s tracking and collecting people for the UP now.”
“He won’t stop until he finds us again.”
“Well, that shouldn’t be too easy for him. We left him with no weapons, and he seemed convinced that we were UP soldiers.”
“He knows about the prison.”
Jose nodded. “I figured.”
Will looked at Zach, who was silently watching both of them. “I don’t think we’ve seen the last of him.”
Jose patted Zach’s knee again. “We’ll be in Gonzales in less than an hour, my friend. Have you eaten?”
“Not really,” Zach said.
“Hold on.”
Jose reached into the driving cabin and pulled out two thick rolls in brown paper. Zach and Will unwrapped the sandwiches and devoured them.
“I have to watch out up front. I’ll let you know when we’re about to arrive.”
Less than an hour later Jose yelled to Will from the front, “We’ll be in Gonzales in five minutes. We’ll drop you two at the top of the access ramp, then head back to Soledad. We can’t blow our cover with this truck. We need to use it and the uniforms in the future.”
“Sounds good.”
“They’ll come and pull you out of the back. The ramp guardhouse might be occupied, so we’ll let the UP guards know that you’re supposed to return to the town.”
The door to the front of the transport truck was open, and Will squatted and peered through the front window as they approached the Gonzales ramp and guard station.
“Alright, here we go,” said Jose. “Get ready to come out the back of the truck, like you’re returned, prisoners.”
“It looks empty,” Will said.
“Pull up right on the guardhouse,” Jose said to the driver. “It looks empty. Alright, get ready.
We’ll move on, just in case we’re being watched.” Jose turned to Will and took a long look at him. “Good luck, my friend. This place could be crawling with UP. You need to be careful.”
“We will be.”
“We can’t watch out for you anymore. You’re on your own down here.”
“I understand.”
Jose paused and seemed to consider his words carefully. “Something is about to happen, and I’d recommend you get in and out of Gonzales as soon as possible. Don’t stay here. This part of the Valley is no longer safe and will get worse soon.”
“Why is that?” Will yelled over the roar of the engine as the truck slowed.
“Never mind. Once you get your daughter, head back upvalley as soon as possible. You understand?”
“Yes.”
“Alright. Get going then and be careful.”
“Thank you,” Will replied.
“See you again soon, hopefully, but not too soon.” Jose smiled and turned back to the driver.
The brakes screeched and hissed as the truck came to a stop. Will and Zach went to the back to be let out. One of Jose’s men unlatched the back and lifted them down onto the asphalt and into the white midday sun. He set their bags down, then returned to the front. The truck’s engine raced as it made a three-point turn, then roared off back in the upvalley direction.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Will squinted and surveyed the top of the ramp, allowing his eyes to adjust. The rough hum of the transport truck faded in the distance. He picked up his pack, opened it, and retrieved his handgun, which Jose’s men had left inside. He opened the barrel to see that each chamber was full, spun it, clicked it closed, and put the gun under his shirt in the back of his belt.
“No more rifle.”
“Yeah, we’ll have to get that back later. Either Jose has it or it got left in Mill’s jeep.”
“What now?” Zach asked.
The guardhouse at the top of the ramp was empty, and the metal ramp gate was wide open.
“We have to get to the school,” Will said, rushing in the direction of the town. “Down the ramp. Let’s go.”
They hustled down the same concrete and metal ramp that Will had worked on for many years, loading produce into trailers to be pulled up its steep incline and moved off toward Salinas City or the upvalley camps.
“Where is everybody?” Will asked at the bottom of the ramp. “They must have collected everyone after Hannah, and I were taken.”
The thirteen streets that made up Gonzales were laid out long before the wars of Valley independence and hadn’t been repaved or maintained in any way in Will’s lifetime. Although he was born in Gonzales, on the ninth of its thirteen streets, he’d never seen a car drive along them, and plants had long ago reclaimed most areas of concrete. There were well-worn paths on both sides of the streets, where once sidewalks had run. Now whole areas of road were vegetated, and in some spots, particularly along Fifth Avenue, which led to the school, people had planted corn, flowers, and tomatoes in areas where once cars had supposedly driven.
The idea that each family or even individual people had once owned and operated a vehicle seemed preposterous to Will, and he barely believed the old time stories, yet there they were, abandoned strips in each Valley town, curbs, gutters, parking lots, cracked sidewalks, broken pavement, vast stretches of impermeable material, all returning to the earth.
Will remembered the day he'd spent with the digging bar in the middle of the road in front of his parents’ house, pulling up heavy chunks of concrete. He was amazed by the quality of soil under each section, as if the streets were laid down not for cars but put there by forward-thinking Valley residents from a bygone era to preserve the best agricultural soils, laying in wait for hundreds of years undisturbed below a skin of asphalt.
As they moved through the empty streets, Will experienced all the familiarity of his hometown. So recently they’d been in the back of Millard’s jeep with no hope of getting to Helen, and now here he was, on the leafy streets, soon to reunite with his daughter. A weight seemed to lift from his chest as he drew a breath. A sense of relief came over him, one he hadn’t felt since he and Hannah were forced from Gonzales at gunpoint.
The afternoon sun was bright and beautiful on the rundown houses of Gonzales. Where once there had been front lawns, a diversity of vegetation littered the yards and spread unbroken into the streets. Elms, ornamental pears, and palm trees originally planted as street trees had long ago re-seeded and their progeny were mature and made stands in the old streets, doing their part to break up and dissolve the concrete.
“We have to be careful,” Will said. The town was quieter than he’d ever heard it. “It’s like everyone’s been collected. There could be UP soldiers still here.”
“Where’s the school?”
“A short distance that way, but we’re going to make a quick stop on the way.”
“Where?”
“We’ll go by our house.”
At a corner house in what was at one time an old Gonzales neighborhood, but now looked like an overgrown ghost town, Will came off the dirt path, slipped through a break in the privet hedge, and entered his front yard.
“This is your place?” Zach asked.
Will looked around, and a sadness came over him. “It doesn’t seem like it so much anymore.”
“Well, it looks like a nice old house.”
“We tried to keep it up. We were happy to have it. Always working on it.”
“I haven’t ever been this far downvalley,” Zach said. “The houses are much older here.”
Will grabbed the worn brass knob on the front door. “It’s locked. We’ll have to go around back for the key. Hannah probably locked the front door the morning we were collected as she left with Helen. I was already in the fields and I never had a key,” Will said proudly. “There was never any need nor reason to lock the house anyway.”
Around back was a small yard surrounded by tall hedges. Four tidy square beds of open soil were cut out of the grass that surrounded them. One was fallow, one had a stand of snap peas tied up on twine between two old wood stakes, a third had young tomato plants, and the fourth was over-planted with a riot of roses in several stages of blooming.
Will paused and surveyed the small garden. He could feel Zach watching him, wanting an explanation.
“Hannah loved her roses. And the snap peas were for Helen. She grew them herself and waited every day for the first peas to arrive.”
Will went to the pea patch. Each plant wore a garland of newly opened bright white flowers. He searched the plants for the delicate fruit and pulled the only three he could find off and put them carefully into his pocket.
On the back porch, Will wiped his shoes on the mat, and Zach did the same. They opened the door and stepped into the kitchen. The linoleum floor shined, the room was bright and cheery, neat, yet well lived in. The air was stale and smelled of overripe fruit. A small kitchen table sat empty except for a clear vase surrounded by fallen rose petals that had turned from yellow to orange as they dried.
“I’ll be right back. Check the refrigerator. Collect everything that’s edible into that bag,” Will said. “There may be something that’s still good in there for us to eat.”
Zach opened the refrigerator, and a warm, moldy smell emerged.
“The fridge isn’t cold,” he yelled into the next room.
“The electricity has been on and off for months now,” Will yelled back. “When I was at the upvalley work camp I saw the diesel generators at the San Ardo power station.”
Will returned to the kitchen from the back room. “Nobody in Gonzales depended on there being electricity. At one point we stopped using the refrigerator all together. Hannah must have left some stuff in there assuming we’d get back to it that night. Load up what’s in that cupboard.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s Helen’s favorite doll. She loves this little thing. It’s the only one she ever wanted. It’s bee
n bothering me, her sleeping at the school without it. I also got this.”
Will held a handgun in his other hand. “Guns weren’t allowed in the town, and it would be bad if you were found with one, but I kept this hidden. My father gave it to me when I turned fifteen. We used to walk out into the arroyos to the east early in the morning, and he taught me how to shoot it.” He retrieved the other gun from his belt and handed it to Zach. “Here, keep this one. It’s loaded.”
Will looked around his house and thought of what else they may need while Zach carefully tucked the gun into his belt.
“I think we’ve got everything. After we get Helen, we can’t come back here. It’s too risky staying in Gonzales now that it’s been cleared out. We’ll have to head back to the prison.”
“Alright.”
“The school could be well guarded. If something happens to me, get Helen back to Jose and the people at the prison. Alright?”
“Of course.”
“Let’s go then.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Back on the street, they set off toward the Gonzales school with Zach limping after Will at a strenuous pace. Each step reminded Will of better times, and it occurred to him that they hadn’t just taken his wife and child, but his hometown, his way of life, and his memories.
They hurried along a raised path where railroad tracks had once born their abundant cargo, but all that remained were coarse pieces of granite on which the tracks had once sat. The metal in the tracks that at one time traversed the Valley floor had long ago been collected, melted, and refashioned for more useful purposes.
They raced down off the raised path onto another disintegrating sidewalk that led along the edge of old 5th Avenue toward the school. Will paused looking around carefully. Everything was quiet. A slight breeze ruffled the leaves of the old camphor trees that arched overhead in the deep cobalt sky. He felt uneasy. What if Helen was gone, too?
“Something doesn’t seem right. I’ve never heard it this quiet here,” Will said.
“Nobody’s here. Every house looks empty,” Zach replied.
