Kill Switch

by Gordon Bonnet

  “I know.” He gulped.

  “Then go, and be steadfast. And you, Chase, take care and come back soon. You will be in our prayers.”

  “Thank you, Reverend.”

  Chase got into the driver’s seat, and Chris opened the back door of the Chevy for Baxter, who jumped in, totally unconcerned. Chris got into the passenger side and closed the door. The interior smelled like corn chips and cheap beer, but it had been cleaned recently. Most likely the previous evening.

  Chase started up the engine, which coughed and shuddered before catching. He revved the motor and put the car in gear. The wheels crunched on gravel as he pulled out toward the road.

  Chris turned in his seat, and saw, standing like statues bronzed with the first rays of sunlight, the figures of the Reverend and his wife. Mrs. Harper raised one hand in farewell.

  Then the old Chevy turned down the road toward the center of town, and the Harpers were lost to sight.

  Chapter 15

  By the time Chris had gone thirty miles in Chase Ballengee’s car, he had noticed something decidedly odd about his traveling companion’s conversational style.

  Chase was friendly, open, and chatty. It wasn’t fifteen minutes into their drive together that Chris found out that Chase had a girlfriend named Claire who was “sweet as anything” and also “awesome in bed.” Chase’s sister, in her last year at the University of Nebraska, was living with a graduate student named Rich Gaither, and she was afraid to tell their grandmother of their living arrangements. Chase was currently unemployed, but had been at times a letter carrier for the US Postal Service, a checkout clerk at the Ogallala Safeway, and a groundskeeper at the Ogallala Quality Inn. None of these jobs had lasted more than six months. “Got bored,” was the common explanation appended to each.

  But Chase didn’t talk only about himself. He was curious, too, about Chris. What was New York like? He expressed surprise to find out that Guildford was a rural farming community. He’d laughed genially. “I always thought New York State was all city.”

  “You got a girlfriend?”

  Chris shook his head. “Not at the moment.”

  “Well, why the hell not? Guys got needs, you know what I mean?” He thwacked Chris’s arm with his free hand. “Of course you do.”

  Why did everybody always have to pick up on that thread and tug on it? “Never did meet the right woman. I guess I’ve gotten used to being single.”

  “That’s too bad. You should keep looking, though. Never know when you’ll find someone, and then, bam! You’re in over your head. In a good way, of course.” He frowned. “So, what’s teaching like?”

  He chuckled at Chase’s ability to switch gears at such a lightning speed. “It’s a good job. I still like it, even after doing it for all of these years.”

  “How d’you put up with all of them teenagers?”

  “I like their energy. Even if it’s overwhelming at times. It keeps me from getting old, fat, and lazy.”

  Chase guffawed. “I suppose. But even so, I’d want to smack some of ’em. I couldn’t barely put up with myself at that age.”

  That was when he noticed the peculiarity behind Chase’s chatter. All through the conversation, as it flitted from one topic to the next, he never asked about the elephant in the car with them. Why was Chris fleeing across the country? Who was chasing him, and why were there people who wanted to kill him?

  They approached the rugged, windswept terrain south of where Highway 26 crossed the North Platte River, where bare limestone bluffs suddenly reared up from the rolling farm country behind them, like an omen of the Rocky Mountain foothills still invisible in the distance. There were few cars on the road, and Chase steered with one hand, his left elbow resting easily on the open window frame of the door, his free hand moving only to gesture as he spoke.

  Chris looked ahead, as the road looped forward over the hills. The sun was still low in the sky, but the temperature was already climbing.

  Despite the warmth, he shuddered. This was wrong. There was something abnormal about Chase, his easy acquiescence to driving a stranger to Washington, his seeming lack of caring about why he needed to do it. Thomas T. Champion had asked about Chris’s predicament. He hadn’t pushed when Chris didn’t want to talk, but he’d shown ordinary curiosity about this middle-aged schoolteacher, suddenly flung out into the unknown, fleeing as if the hounds of hell were at his heels.

  Chase, though, hadn’t asked a single question about it. For all his interest in Chris’s home town, his career, his love life, Chase seemed to have no interest in the oddest thing of all.

  Which would make sense if he already knew what was going on. If he was one of Them.

  Seemingly unaware of his passenger’s dark thoughts, Chase prattled on about his loyalty to the University of Nebraska baseball and football teams. Chris suppressed the urge to shout, “Shut up!” at this seemingly cheerful and voluble young man, to demand that he pull the car over and let him out, leave him by the side of the road.

  He must be one of Them, Why else would he not be at least a little curious? Why wouldn’t he ask questions?

  If it had been Chris, he’d be asking all sorts of fucking questions.

  Wait, though. What if the Reverend had told him not to ask? That’d explain it. Maybe Reverend Joe had said to him, “Look, do this for me. This guy is in trouble, and needs help.” Chase said he’d do anything for the Harpers. Maybe that’s all there was to it. Chase had been commanded by the Reverend not to mention Chris’s plight. Maybe he’d even been coached, in terms of, “you know, poor guy, he doesn’t need you pestering him about it. Keep the conversation on other subjects.”

  Nothing sinister there. Nothing to worry about.

  Maybe he could test the waters to make sure, though.

  When there was a lull in Chase’s chatter, Chris stretched his arms and yawned. “I gotta wonder, though. After all of this is over, will I ever be able to return back to my home? Will it be safe to—?”

  But Chase interrupted him, pointing excitedly up through the windshield, craning his neck. “Look! A Prairie Falcon! I love them. You ever thought what it’d be like to be a bird? Able to fly, and all? That’s gotta be so much fun!”

  Chris looked at him for a moment. “Uh—sure.”

  “Man, I’d love to have wings. Big ol’ feathery wings, comin’ right up from my shoulders. That’d be the coolest thing ever.” He looked over and grinned. “Give you a hell of a time findin’ shirts to fit, though, wouldn’t it? And flyin’ around with no shirt in the middle of winter’d get a little cold. Freeze your freakin’ nipples off.” He laughed at his own joke.

  “I suppose so.”

  Then it was back to the topic of women—which seemed to be Chase’s personal favorite—beer, and the various antics of his friends and family members, as they crossed the North Platte, and angled west toward the Wyoming border.

  Chris tried to test his hypothesis two more times. East of the little village of Torrington, Wyoming, he said, “I hope that we’ve shaken off the guys who—”

  But he was immediately cut off again.

  “You know, this road takes the same path as the Oregon Trail? Keep goin’ on it, and it’ll take you all the way through Hell’s Half Acre and over the mountains, and then down to the Pacific in Oregon. We’re not goin’ that way, o’ course, but it’s funny to think that there’s a highway runnin’ all the way from Ogallala to Oregon, and that it’s the same path the western settlers took a hundred and fifty years ago.”

  Chris nodded, and the conversation spun off into talk about the Mormons and the Emigrant Trail and the Forty-Niners and the Donner Party.

  It wasn’t until after they’d passed Lingle, Wyoming—population 476— that he had another chance. About five miles outside of town, Chase braked to a stop on the side of the road. Chris looked at him questioningly.

  “Need to take a piss.”

  Chase trotted around to the passenger side of the car, unzipped, and peed into the gras
s, unconcerned with the occasional car that zoomed past. After a moment, Chris shrugged, got out, let Baxter out of the back seat, and the two of them followed suit.

  More comfortable, all three returned to the car. Instead of starting the engine, though, Chase twisted around in the seat and picked up the grocery sack that Mrs. Harper had given him. “I’m hungry. You?”

  “Definitely.”

  He opened the bag, and pulled out neatly-packaged ham sandwiches, each with lettuce (somewhat wilted by now, but still nice) and a big slice of tomato. There were water bottles for each of them.

  He laughed as he came to the bottom of the sack and he tossed Chris a ziplock baggie full of dog kibble “Man, she thinks of everything,”

  Once everyone was eating, Chris with the door open and one foot on the ground, he looked over at Chase and tried one more time. “It sure was nice having home-cooked meals. I hadn’t had a meal like that since I had to leave my—”

  “Traffic’s picking up.” Chase interrupted, gesturing with one hand at an eighteen-wheeler zooming by. “Guess we’re not far from I-25. Bound to be more cars, I suppose. O’ course, once we get on the interstate, we’ll be able to make better time. See how fast this old baby can go, yeah?” He smiled and took another bite of his sandwich.

  “Yeah.”

  —

  They passed Fort Laramie—Home of 250 Good People, and 6 Soreheads—and Guernsey—A Community of Good Neighbors—as the land gradually wrinkled into arid hills, studded with ponderosa pine and Rocky Mountain juniper. A little after one, they saw the sign for I-25, Cheyenne/Casper, 1 mile.

  Chase gave an excited whoop and punched the accelerator nearly to the floor. “That means we’re really on our way. Long as we’re on 26, it feels like we barely left home, you know? 26 runs right through town. But when we get on the interstate, then we’re off and away. Out in the big ol’ world, where no one can find us.”

  Chris looked over sharply, but Chase still had a genial smile on his face, and didn’t seem to notice the questioning frown. He swept upward on the turn signal lever as the on ramp to I-25 angled off to the right, and then merged onto the freeway north toward Casper, and ultimately, the Montana border.

  He asked if Chase needed a break from driving, and received a cheerful, “No, I love bein’ behind the wheel. You relax and enjoy the ride!” Reassured, Chris dozed for a good bit of the afternoon. Casper went by in a fast-evaporating spike in the traffic, and soon they were heading north into craggy, ever-rising hill country. Chase seemed to have exhausted his topics for conversation, although he did alert Chris when they crossed the South Fork of the Powder River.

  “Now that’s crossin’ into the Wild West.” The young man gestured at the steel span connecting the two sides of the gorge. Chris looked out his window at the rail zipping past, down to the water glittering in its meandering course below. “There’s nothin’ but hard-edged cowboys out in this country, even today. Hasn’t changed much in a hundred years, ’cept for the highway cuttin’ through. Hard to imagine how they lived out here back in the day, with no central heatin’ and no grocery stores, and whatnot. It gets cold enough back home, but here they get blizzards, howlin’ down from the mountains. Kill a man, if he’s foolish enough to go outside. Then, in summer, it’s hot as the hubs o’ hell and dry as a bone, ‘cept right next to the river, and the soil is too rocky to till. And still there’s folks livin’ here, folks have lived here for thousands of years. The cowboys, and before them, the Northern Cheyenne and Shoshone. They survived, somehow. I don’t know how.”

  “You learn to survive, I guess. The ones that didn’t, didn’t leave any descendants.”

  “You’re right about that. Or moved on to a place where they didn’t have to work so hard to survive. No wonder some of the people passin’ through didn’t make it. It was hard ol’ times, back then. Hard ol’ times.”

  He looked at the arid, rock-strewn wilderness sliding past them, and tried to imagine surviving there in summer, much less in winter, when the temperatures could drop to fifty degrees below zero.

  He was fighting to survive, too. He didn’t know which was worse, to fight against the elements, or to fight against humans. The elements, at least, play fair. They may be unpredictable, they may not care about your survival. They might strike you down as casually as a person swatting a fly. But that was nothing compared to the worst that humans could do. The elements don’t deceive, don’t lead you into trust only to destroy it. Only humans do that.

  —

  The sun had dropped close to the western horizon as they approached Sheridan, Wyoming. Fifty miles earlier, they had hit the point where I-25 ended at I-90, the highway on which Chris had started his headlong flight west, the one that would carry them all the way to Washington State. They merged smoothly onto I-90 West, heading toward Sheridan, the Montana border, and points beyond.

  Chase pointed to signs for restaurants zipping by on the right, hard to read in the failing light. “Sheridan’s gonna be our best bet for dinner.”

  “Hey, how about that?” They passed a sign for the High Point Café off Exit 23, 5930 Rt. 336 West—Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner—free computer use/WiFi hotspot. “I’d like to check my email.”

  “Sure.” Exit 23 loomed up on the right and he took it. “How we gonna find the place, though? I don’t have a map, and I’d prefer not to wander around too long lookin’ for it.”

  “No problem, Just if it’s convenient. Let’s see if it’s close to the exit. Otherwise we can stop anywhere.”

  As it turned out, the café had a tall sign and was near the freeway. It was busy, but there were several open computers along a row of windows at the front. Chris ordered a BLT and a large iced tea, Chase a reuben and a Pepsi. After getting the username and password to access the café’s WiFi network, they found a place to sit.

  “I’m just as glad to be away from them things.” Chase gestured at the monitor. “Can’t stand computers, myself. I barely tolerate telephones, to be honest. I got my first cellphone last year, ’cause my girlfriend insisted.”

  Chris smiled. “I want to see if someone’s contacted me.” He looked up, one eyebrow raised. “A lady friend.”

  Chase looked at him, his mouth hanging open a little, for several seconds, before leaning back and guffawing. “I knew it! I knew it! Nice lookin’ fellow like you, and no woman? I shoulda known you were pullin’ my leg. Well, go ahead, you check your email and whatnot. I don’t mind.”

  Still smiling, Chris signed into his Gmail account, but a quick scan showed no new emails from ereed@orionsbelt.com. He frowned a little, but realized that he’d been fairly intermittent in his contacts, too.

  He shivered. He was fleeing across the country. She, on the other hand, was stuck in a friend’s house, with nothing better to do. Every time he’d checked, there’d been a new email from her, and now, nothing.

  Something was wrong.

  The sandwiches and drinks were delivered by a smiling young waitress who looked like she was only about fifteen. Chase immediately took a big bite of his, and looked out the window at the cars whizzing by.

  He ate his sandwich more slowly, as he looked back down his list of new emails. No, nothing from Elisa. There was another one from his principal, with the subject line, Hope all’s okay… He didn’t open it. Others were from the astronomy listserv he belonged to, or were obvious junk mail.

  Then he noticed a message that he’d overlooked the first time, assuming it was spam. It had the subject line, Open This. Important. The email address it was sent from was a Yahoo account, the username a random string of numbers and letters.

  Chris clicked on it, and froze:

  Mr. Franzia:

  We know where you are. You are putting others’ lives at risk by your foolish attempts to evade us.

  We have Ms. Elisa Reed in our custody. She is, as of right now, unharmed. If you would like her to remain that way, you should proceed to the Ranchester Turnaround, fifteen miles south of the Montana border on
Interstate 90 westbound.

  We will be waiting for you. We will give you until 9 p.m. this evening, Sunday, July 14, to meet us here.

  It will be unfortunate if you do not check your email, or worse, choose to ignore it, because at 9:01 it will be our unfortunate duty to execute Ms. Reed. In the time between then and when we finally catch up with you and finish you off as well, her blood will be on your hands.

  The decision is yours to make.

  Chris set the remains of his sandwich back in his plate, his hand moving in slow motion. He swiveled around to face Chase, who had just popped the last bite of his reuben into his mouth.

  “You.” His mouth was dry. He swallowed quickly and glared at the younger man. “You told them where Elisa was.”

  Chase looked at him in confusion, that perpetual sappy smile fading a little. “Told them? Told who?”

  “The people who are chasing me. You told them where she was. You overheard what I said yesterday, about Hoquiam, and you told them. It has to be you. You were the only one other than Mrs. Harper who knew.”

  “Chris…” Chase tried to smile again, but failing.

  “You’ve been working for them all along, haven’t you? It’s why you agreed to take me. It’s why you change the subject every time I mention anything about why I’m on the road.”

  “No. That’s not true. The Reverend, he told me not to try to talk to you about your troubles. He says I talk too much, which is true, I guess, and he said that you had a weighty secret. That’s what he called it. ‘But it won’t be lessened by you bothering him about it,’ he told me. ‘It’s his burden to carry, his alone, and you see to it you remember that.’”

  Chris’s eyes narrowed to slits. Chase, squirmed in his seat. “No. The only other one was Mrs. Harper. And you can’t be asking me to believe that she is on the side of the people who are trying to kill me.”