by Bowman, Dave
“Or for them to move past us,” Jack said.
“Are we going to go get Naomi?” Brent asked.
“Of course.”
Brent sighed, relieved. He watched as Jack removed the rifle he carried over his left shoulder and held it in front of him.
“I know you’ve had next to zero training with guns,” Jack said. “But I have no choice but to let you use this. I need some backup.”
Brent nodded and reached for the rifle.
“Not just yet,” Jack said. “Keep it pointed away from non-targets. Remember, never point it at anything you’re not prepared to kill. Always be sure of your target and what’s behind it.”
Jack handed it to him carefully. “And keep your finger off the trigger and outside the guard until you’re ready to shoot. These things are powerful, so brace yourself when you shoot it.”
Jack showed him how to hold the rifle and position his body for maximum stability and accuracy. Brent paid close attention and did as he was instructed.
Jack sighed as Brent held the rifle, feeling his way into a good stance while aiming the gun out the window. “You really need more target practice than what we did the other day.”
“Desperate times call for desperate measures,” Brent quipped, studying the area outside.
Jack crossed through the rooms to look out the front window.
“I don’t see them out here,” Jack said. “They’re probably searching the parking garage right now.”
Brent returned to stand by Jack’s side. “You sure we shouldn’t make a run for it now?”
“Not yet,” Jack said. “They’re really close out there. And besides, I need some information from you.”
“Like what?”
“I need to know everything you know about the layout of this place,” Jack said, never taking his eyes away from the window.
Brent shrugged. “I don’t know much. I just know the interstate is that way, to the north. They took us all down to their headquarters that day, and from there they took me farther from the interstate and over this way, to the right.”
Jack nodded. “Right, we’re about five blocks west of the headquarters and six or seven south of the interstate. Where do they have you sleeping?”
“In this big dorm building for the college students.”
“Where’s the college campus?”
“The dorm is about five to eight blocks that way,” Brent said, pointing.
“Southwest,” Jack supplied.
“Right. And the main campus buildings are farther south from the dorms, I guess. They haven’t taken us that way.”
“And what’s between here and there?” Jack asked.
Brent shrugged. “A lot of little shops. Restaurants, bookstores, coffee shops. Some apartment buildings like this one.”
“Did you see where they took Naomi?”
Brent shook his head. “No. They split us all up that day as soon as they took us out of the headquarters. All I could see was that they were taking Naomi straight south. And they took you and me off to the west and east.”
Jack nodded. “And they could have taken her off in some other direction after that first block, too. They intentionally did it that way so we wouldn’t know where the others were.”
“Yeah. They’re pretty slick that way.”
“What about the cars they steal? Do you know where they keep them?”
Brent shook his head again. “No, not really. I haven’t seen the Pathfinder since they stole it from us the other day. Sometimes I see them driving other cars and trucks through the streets, usually hauling stuff around. But I don’t know where they keep them.”
Jack sighed. “No idea?”
Brent thought about it a bit more. “Not for sure, no. But if I had to guess, I’d place my bets on Naomi being to the southeast of here, and the cars being at some point south of that.”
“Except for a stray vehicle they have tucked away here and there,” Jack added. “Like the truck at the top of that garage.”
“That’s now crashed to pieces on the second floor,” Brent said sadly. “I wish we could have gotten that truck!”
Jack didn’t answer, but he brought his finger to his lips, then pointed out the window toward the garage. Voices from the garage made their way to the window where Jack and Brent waited.
The two men lowered themselves further at the window to keep from being spotted.
“Are you ready?” Jack asked.
“For what?” Brent asked under his breath.
“For anything,” Jack mumbled.
Brent didn’t answer. He could only stare, transfixed, as a guard ran from the parking garage toward the apartment building where they now waited.
19
Brody moved through the woods quickly. It wasn’t dark yet on the road, but here in the woods the light was already gone. He wanted to cover as much ground as possible before he flicked the flashlight on.
Batteries, along with everything else, were in short supply.
He occasionally tied little bits of cloth, torn from a rag, to the branches. Not only to find his way back to the road, but also to mark the area he had searched. He has hoping to find his dad tonight, but in case he didn’t, he didn’t want to waste time searching the same area tomorrow.
His sudden improvement in health was remarkable. He had woken up that day feeling a bit better, and had improved each hour of the day. Now he felt like he’d never been sick. He didn’t know what to think about it. Could he really have gotten over the radiation sickness? He was afraid of what the answer might be, so he had tried not to think about, instead choosing to busy himself with productive tasks.
Still, though, he couldn’t help feeling hopeful. Less than twenty-four hours before, he had been resigned to die. He had been torturing himself with guilt over going outside that day and getting exposed to the nuclear fallout. What would Katie do without him? She had already lost one parent. Fifteen, almost sixteen, was too young to lose both one’s parents.
And Katie might never forgive him – or worse, she might never forgive herself for her anger at her father for leaving her too soon. When she got older and could look back, she would realize that her anger had been misplaced. Brody didn’t want his Katie’s last memories of her father be tainted with mixed-up, toxic emotions.
Brody sighed as he moved through the thick underbrush. He had already searched on the other side of the road. He was beginning to lose hope.
In the area immediately surrounding his father's truck, there had been no sign of a struggle. The forest had looked undisturbed. And anyway, it didn't really make sense that his father would have left the safety of his vehicle and gone off in the woods if he were injured.
Brody flicked on the flashlight and turned around, heading again toward the road.
He made his way out to the road and began to pedal his bike back home. He would have to tell his mother and Katie the truth.
He believed his father had been abducted.
20
Jack and Brent watched a guard run toward the apartment complex. Just before he got to Building B, where Jack and Brent hid, the guard turned to the left and veered toward Building A.
“Now’s our chance,” Jack said. “While he’s busy with the other building, we’ll run out of here toward the south.”
Only one guard had been sent to check the apartment complex. It was a lucky break for Jack, who had been counting on several men scouring the buildings and rooting out their hiding place. As long as they were quick and didn’t make too much noise, he hoped they could escape undetected.
He quietly opened the door. Carrying the rifle, Brent followed him through the entrance, and they darted across the outdoor balcony that ran along the building’s facade. At the end, they ran down the steps. Jack heard the doors in the building nearby being opened and shut as the guard made his way through the apartment units.
Brent followed Jack past two more buildings, then they came to a fence. Behind them, the guard was
making his way to the second building. They only had a few moments. Scaling the chain-link fence, they took off running behind a row of businesses on the other side. A pit bull tied up in the backyard of a house across the street started barking.
“Damn!” Brent muttered. “That dog’s gonna give us away.”
“Run faster,” Jack said over his shoulder as he took off sprinting toward a cluster of houses on the next block.
They scaled another low fence and landed in the backyard of a small house. They stopped to catch their breath and listen for any signs of someone following them.
It was quiet, but Jack didn’t dare speak and alert anyone of their presence. He gestured silently to Brent: they’d keep moving through the backyards of the residential street until they got to a large hotel he’d spotted to the south. Brent nodded his understanding, and they pressed on.
The two men kept to the shadows as much as they could, seeking shelter behind trees and vehicles whenever possible. Each new temporary patch of cover they arrived at, they would stop, look, and listen for people nearby.
Under the cover of a tall pine in one backyard, they suddenly heard voices from inside the house nearby. Rather than risk a confrontation, Jack took off running.
They tore through several more backyards, scaling the low fences that separated some of them. Jack’s heart pounded in his chest. His lungs screamed, his injured leg protested, urging him to stop.
But he couldn’t, not yet.
Keep running.
At the end of the block, they could finally rest. Jack led Brent through an opening in the wooden fence and emerged in a back alley. They crouched between two vehicles parked at the end of the alley.
Catching their breath, they scanned the surroundings, narrowing in on the hotel across the street.
"That must be where she is!" Brent whispered. "Those are all female prisoners."
Jack watched as groups of women were being marched from the south along the sidewalk of the street adjacent to them, some one hundred and twenty yards away. One by one, the groups were led to the parking lot of the hotel. Each group was supervised and directed by a female guard or two. Most of the women had plastic ties around their wrists to prevent any kind of rebellion. The women looked exhausted and broken, both physically and mentally. They walked with their eyes down, cringing whenever a guard spoke or drew near. They were sunburned and covered in dirt. They had clearly been doing hard labor.
Jack felt a jolt of panic when he saw the women. Naomi had already been so closing to giving up days ago. How would she respond to the brutal treatment of these people – these slavers – now?
The guards made the women all line up and wait to be counted. Satisfied that they had all the prisoners, the guards led the women inside the hotel, one small group at a time.
"It's lunchtime," Brent whispered. "They did the same thing with us. Handcuffed us and brought us inside to our rooms to eat some disgusting slop."
As the guards brought each group of women around to the front entrance, Jack and Brent could get a closer look at them. Group by group, the two men waited in anticipation, hoping to see Naomi's face among the women. When the last group was brought inside, Jack sighed in disappointment. Naomi wasn't being kept prisoner here.
Brent glanced at Jack. "Should we keep going? Maybe they have another women's prison closer to the campus."
Jack nodded. "Yeah, we should keep heading south," Jack said in the faintest of whispers. "Then we can cut over to the east and move up north to look on the other roads."
"Sounds good."
"But the problem is this area is thick with guards,” Jack said. "It's going to be harder than ever not to be seen moving around here."
Brent looked around. “If we could cross this street, we’d be in better shape. All those trees on the sidewalk over there would give us cover. Plus, there’s another alley behind that block to the west. Might be safer.”
Jack followed with his eyes the route Brent was describing. It would be difficult to cross the street, but Brent was right – if they could pull it off, the alley would be a much better option than the main road. He waited as a small troop of young teens pulling bicycle trailers passed. Once they were out of sight, the street was relatively empty. All the female prison guards were inside the hotel.
“We’ll be guards,” Jack muttered.
“What?”
“We’ll cross the street like we’re supposed to be here. Like we’re guards,” Jack said.
Brent frowned, looking doubtful. “I guess. I mean, if you think that’ll work.”
Jack gave one last look up and down the street, then stood up from the car he crouched behind. He adjusted the rifles, then emerged from the alley and walked out onto the side street. Turning right, he moved down the sidewalk toward the main intersection. Brent followed his lead.
At the intersection, Jack stepped off the sidewalk casually into the street. He began to stride across the street confidently, with Brent beside him.
The plan wouldn’t work if they ran into any guards up close – the gang’s members had probably all been briefed on the fugitives’ physical descriptions and would be looking for Jack and Brent. But maybe the men’s cool, unworried demeanor would fool anyone watching from a distance.
In any case, a guard watching two men scurry across the street in a panic would definitely know something was amiss.
And so Jack sauntered across the street, looking up and down the block calmly as if patrolling the area.
Jack’s pulse pounded in his temples. He fought the urge to break into a run. He wanted desperately to escape the area and hide out of sight of any guards watching from the hotel windows or from down the street. But he restrained himself, forcing his legs to carry him even slower than he thought necessary. A real guard on patrol duty wouldn’t be in a hurry.
At the end of the intersection, they headed toward the alley on the next block. Beside him, Brent let out a tense exhale once they turned into the alley.
“That was awful,” Brent whispered. “I thought for sure we’d be caught out in the open like that.”
“Keep your voice down,” Jack breathed. “We’re not out of the woods yet.”
The two passed through the alley at a brisk pace, constantly on the lookout for anyone who might be following. At the end of the block, they looked around. There were only smaller homes on the surrounding blocks, so they crossed the next, smaller street. The alley continued on the next block.
Jack’s leg was still hurting from the metal scrap from the truck, but he was more concerned with the increasing difficulty in finding Naomi. The gang’s territory was even larger than he had suspected, and it was going to be hard to find her. And the more time they spent searching up and down the streets, the more likely a run-in would be.
The alley bisected the block, running between the two rows of homes. Many of the homes had small storage sheds or detached garages abutting the alley.
Jack glanced at a shed up ahead to the right, then at the garage in the adjacent yard.
Jack approached the far edge of the shed. A sudden flash of movement to the right caught his eye.
But before he could react, a man hiding behind the shed lunged out at him.
Jack felt a sharp, sudden pain in his thigh. He groaned as a fiery sensation flared through his leg.
He looked down to see the man withdraw a fixed blade knife from his outer thigh.
Before Jack knew what was happening, Brent made a sharp movement. Lifting the butt of his rifle up, Brent brought the weapon down across the man's head.
The man fell over on the ground. Brent hit him again on his head.
Brent took a step back and looked at the man, who was bleeding from his head. His eyes wide and bulging, he shuddered on the ground. Brent stared at him, frozen in place.
Jack grabbed his arm and pulled. "We've got to get out of here."
Snapping out of his reverie, Brent blinked and took off behind Jack. The two men ran through the a
lley. Jack's attacker wouldn't be coming after them anytime soon – he was probably unconscious, Jack figured. But the noise of the confrontation might alert any guards in the area to Jack's and Brent's whereabouts.
They had to get far away, fast.
Jack's head was pounding as they ran toward the end of the block. They emerged from the shade of the trees lining the alley. The sunlight hit his face, blinding him momentarily as he drew closer to the intersection.
His leg was bleeding fast. With each breath, he felt more lightheaded. As he ran out from the cover of the alley and began to cross the side street, he began to feel woozy.
His vision was fragmenting. Splintered images swirled around in front of his eyes.
He didn't have much time.
21
Heather shivered in the night cold. It had been a few hours since she had lain down and shut her eyes at the campsite. She would have to accept the inevitable. She would get no sleep that night. Fear, hunger and thirst kept her wide awake.
Rising to her feet, she got on her bike and pushed off. She was growing hungrier as the night wore on, and she didn't want to get too weak to make it home.
A waning gibbous moon had finally risen about a half hour ago. Now, it cast a silvery light on the gravel road. She rode out of the campground road and turned on the gravel street where she had first realized she was lost. With some luck, she hoped she would be able to make it back to the highway. She had to try. Staying any longer at the campsite would surely mean death.
Riding the bike helped to warm her up, but it made the gnawing hunger in her belly worse.
Around the first light of the morning, Heather made it to a crossroads. She came to a stop and stared at her options. The road she was on ended, and she could turn left or right on a gravel road.
With the light of the rising sun, she could at least orient herself to the directions. But maybe she had taken so many turns in her confusion yesterday that she couldn't assume that west would take her to the highway.
