In The Company of Wolves_Follow The Raven

by James Michael Larranaga

  He ran faster to burn off his anger and fear, to push through the darkness, to leave the black, murky border behind. He sprinted faster, his boots pounding sand, and as he lengthened his stride, he seemed to float above the ground. If he could maintain this pace, he’d be on the surface in no time at all. He leapt over a crushed water bottle, counted three more strides, and jumped over a large rock. This was it, he had a rhythm, he was in a zone, and then something caught the toe of his boot and he was aloft, the silver handle of the flashlight tumbling ahead of him.

  Pitch…black…hard ground.

  Lying on his stomach, he rolled over and saw nothing. Blinking, he still saw nothing. He felt his arms and legs. His left kneecap hurt from the landing, but nothing was broken.

  Now what? Where’s the flashlight? Think.

  It had to be ahead somewhere. He reached out, sweeping his arms around him. Nothing. He had an idea and pulled his phone out.

  A glow!

  He could see four or five feet around him with the glow from his phone as he searched for the flashlight. He thought it ironic that the very phone he couldn’t use to call for help could show him where to find a brighter light. He stood up to search the ground and spotted a shiny reflection. He ran toward it.

  Bingo!

  He picked it up and turned it back on, but it still didn’t produce any light. He shook it, hearing the batteries inside. He looked at the end and the lens and bulb were shattered.

  Damn! Isn’t the glass supposed to be shatter-proof? There’s a lifetime warranty for this thing! he thought angrily. He turned and threw it into the tunnel, listening to it bounce and skid across the floor. No wonder there’s so much trash. Nothing works down here. The place is cursed.

  All he had left was his phone and its battery was fading, too. It should get him to the other side if he ran without stopping. He started again, holding the phone in his left hand as he trotted, and tried to adjust to the dim light. The trot became a run, a man on the run, underground in the cold depths of the desert. Each stride carried him closer to his single goal, the abandoned golf cart. His feet slipped in his boots, a blister rising on the back of his right heel. What was his heart rate at this moment? Kruse would want to know; he’d record it in his database. He had to capture everything a Remote Viewer did while on assignment. Quin thought about what Jefe had said about his father and he pushed harder, knowing that Autumn, further up the tunnel, had to know the answer.

  He was relieved when he saw the abandoned cart in the distance, it was a confirmation that he was making progress in the dark. He lifted the seat and shone the phone’s light onto the batteries. The connections looked good; Jefe hadn’t tampered with them at all. He lowered the seat, sat in the cart, and turned the key. No sound issued from it. He sat there catching his breath for a moment, then noticed Marta’s stuffed teddy bear on the floor of the cart. He scooped it up, stepped out of the cart, and started running again.

  That was when he heard voices behind him crying out for help. He knew they weren’t real, or he would have run into them already. Some were begging, others were laughing and mocking Quin as he ran.

  “You’re never gonna make it,” a man shouted from behind. “Give up!”

  Quin looked back, shining his phone at the empty corridor.

  “What are you looking for?” a woman said. “A way out? You lost?”

  He tried plugging his ears to block the voices as he ran, but he couldn’t see without the glow of his phone. And they only shouted louder anyway.

  “Come back, take us with you!” a man begged.

  “Shut up! Shut…up!” Quin shouted back as he stumbled forward on the sand. They laughed, enjoying every moment of his fear and confusion. Was Hawk right? Was this a gravesite, an underworld of lost souls? Or was Quin imagining all of this—one big hallucination, dragging him down into the corridors of his own mind?

  He got up from his knees and walked, ignoring their shouts, counting his strides: one, two, three…seven…ten. Tired and thirsty, he made steady progress even as the voices followed from behind. And then, as if a breeze had blown out a candle, the dim glow of his phone vanished—another battery gone dead.

  “Aaaah! Give me a fucking break!”

  They all jeered and laughed at him. He spun around, cupping his ears, and then he realized what a bad move that was. Which direction was he facing now? Mexico or the states?

  “You idiot, you’re lost!” an old man laughed.

  The voice was still from behind, so it was possible that Quin was once again facing in the right direction; but how could he know for sure? He had nothing to guide him, nothing to follow, except maybe…the ravens.

  “Caw!” he shouted, and listened as the echo of his voice faded.

  In the distance ahead, he heard a faint reply, “Caw! Caw!”

  His raven guides were there. He walked toward them.

  “Wrong way!” the old man shouted.

  Quin ignored the voice. He tucked Marta’s teddy bear into his belt and continued walking blindly through the tunnel, calling to the ravens as they called back to him.

  “Don’t leave us!” a woman cried out in desperation.

  These were the voices of chindi, the spirits of those who never made it to the other side. He felt sorry for them.

  “Where you going?” the woman pleaded.

  “Home,” Quin said, without breaking stride. “Come with me.”

  And with that, he felt a wind rush from behind—the spirits were soaring, carrying him forward! He ran with them, his arms outstretched like wings, and he flew through the tunnel without touching the ground or brushing the walls. He was in flight; they were all in flight. The closer he got to the tunnel exit, the more powerful the rushing tailwind became and the louder and more beautiful the ravens’ calls. They were climbing higher and higher in an updraft over the other empty golf cart at the bottom of the ramp. It must have died there, unable to make the final climb. He soared above the ramp toward the tunnel entrance, where he saw a mosaic of stars in the night sky.

  He collapsed onto the rocks as the chindi swooshed past him toward the stream and a sparkling, silvery moonlight on the waters. The spirits, a dozen or more, followed the ravens across the running stream and vanished into a mist.

  A pair of boots stepped closer to his face and the stranger crouched lower, toward him, dangling a cigarette.

  “It’s all right, you made it,” Lopez said. “I heard you screaming down there. Sounded hellish. You had me worried.”

  He sat up. “What about Hawk?”

  “Jimmy carried him up out of the tunnel back to the safe house. Hawk lost a lot of blood but he was conscious. Paramedics are transporting them both to the hospital.”

  She reached out her hand. He accepted it and rose up, brushing dirt off his jeans. Fresh air never tasted so good, so sweet. He felt the bear stuffed into his belt. He removed it and said, “Where’s Autumn and Marta?”

  “Back at the safe house,” she said, walking the metal door back across the cave entrance.

  “What happened in there?” she asked, locking the door.

  “Jefe and I walked back to the cave, where I let him go.”

  “No, I mean on the way out, what happened? I heard you talking to somebody. You came running out of there like a bat out of hell.”

  He thought for a moment and brushed it off. “Lost my way and panicked.”

  “I left the door open, thinking you might follow the air draft.”

  “Thanks, that seemed to do the trick.”

  “Hey, you got my back, and I got yours,” she said.

  Agent Kruse was usually a three-cup-in-the-morning coffee drinker. But now, he was already on his fourth and it was only 6:00 a.m. Rachel and Dillan sat across from him at a large conference table, while Dr. Hayden sat next to him. He was both elated and frustrated. Quin had left him a cryptic message four hours ago: Target Retrieved.

  Kruse had a million questions running through his mind: Did Quin actually have
Autumn? Was he in Mexico or had he brought her across the border? Why didn’t he wait for Kruse to give the go-ahead? The list went on and on, and with each sip of coffee, he thought of another question.

  “Quin called you at what time?” he asked Dillan.

  He looked at his phone. “Two in the morning.”

  “How did he sound?” Dr. Hayden asked.

  “Like Quin,” Dillan said.

  “Frightened or irrational?”

  “No, he was totally cool.”

  “You said earlier that Quin called you just to check in and say hi?” Kruse asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “At two in the morning?” Kruse said. “What are you withholding from me, Dillan?”

  He squirmed in his seat. “Nothing.”

  “Did Quin ask you to view a location for him?” Kruse asked.

  Dillan drummed his fingers on the table, averting his eyes. He was going inward, something Kruse had seen before. He could retreat into a shell and not talk for hours.

  “Dillan, if it’s easier, go ahead and use sign language,” Dr. Hayden said. It was a technique she taught hospital patients to get them to express themselves when words failed.

  Dillan raised his left hand and gave Kruse the finger.

  “Let’s give Dillan a break,” Dr. Hayden said to Kruse.

  He turned his attention to Rachel. “You and Dillan talk…what’s he holding back?”

  He waited for the girl to gather her thoughts. She was a nervous person, too, but far less stubborn than Dillan. And she was generally compliant and cooperative. If he coaxed her into talking, she’d spill it.

  “Tell the truth, Rachel.”

  “How come this is falling apart?” she asked Kruse.

  “Huh?”

  “When we started this, we were a team. You taught us RV and showed us how to help our country,” she said. “Now you’re turning on us, always yelling.”

  Kruse caught himself before he launched into another condescending lecture. “You’re right—”

  “We work for hours in rooms that are barely larger than closets, searching for unknown targets. You don’t share any information with us, whether we’re succeeding of failing.”

  “I know, it’s the protocol.”

  “This is the only assignment where you shared a few pieces of intel with us, and Quin out there finally confirmed that we’re right!”

  Dillan cleared his throat. “Quin asked me to view inside the warehouse before he went in.”

  “You witnessed him saving Autumn?” Kruse asked.

  “No, I gave him the intel he requested and went back to bed,” Dillan said. “I won’t spy on my friends. Not anymore.”

  “Is there anything else you can share with me about last night?”

  “Obviously he found her, we all found her. Why not stop there, end on a high note?” Dillan answered with a smirk.

  Good idea. They had succeeded, after all. What more could he expect of them? It was now up to Quin to bring the evidence home.

  “Thank you for your candor and your patience with me,” Kruse said. “Take the rest of the day off.”

  Dillan pushed his chair away from the table. “Come on,” he said to Rachel.

  She rose and followed him to the door. He opened it like a gentleman and she passed through the doorway, giggling. When Dillan closed the door, he acted as if he were locking it from the outside and shouted to Kruse and Dr. Hayden, “Get back to work!”

  Their sophomoric rebellion wasn’t entirely unexpected. His colleague had predicted it would happen. “Satisfied, Dr. Hayden?”

  “You know the phrase, ‘The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never goes back to its original dimensions,’ ” she said, crossing her arms.

  “Who said that? Jung? Freud?”

  “Neither, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Once your recruits learn an important skill like RV, they’ll naturally develop new confidence. NIH will applaud this positive change in their behavior.”

  “We’re not here to build their self-esteem, we’re training psychic warriors. To accomplish that, we must deliver proof that what we do actually works.”

  “You’ve done at least twenty assignments for the NSA and CIA over the past year,” she pointed out. “They wouldn’t come to you if it wasn’t working.”

  “Locating a Russian submarine is one thing, but any satellite can do that. Finding evil-doers, tracking and stopping them moments before they strike, that’s an entirely different kind of weapon. This assignment, finding Autumn, is critical, because we have the evidence in hand. Instead of forwarding it to somebody up the chain of command, we hold onto it, we present it to the bureau and Homeland Security.”

  “Then what?”

  “We get better funding, and RV finally gets the credit it deserves.”

  Locating Dillan wasn’t as difficult as Candace had expected. He wasn’t in a locked ward that would have made it nearly impossible to reach him. He was living at home with his parents in a quiet, upscale neighborhood, with a backyard swimming pool surrounded by a garden wall of brick and ivy.

  Candace was seated with him at the pool’s edge, both of them dangling their bare feet in the cool water. She wondered what he was thinking, but she offered him an easier question.

  “How did you meet Quin?”

  “At the hospital,” Dillan said. “He’d check in for a week, then he’d check out.”

  “When was this?”

  “Three years ago they brought him in in restraints. I feared him back then. Not anymore. We took art classes together. He draws wildlife art; I like landscapes,” he said with a smile that reflected off the water’s surface.

  “Do you draw from pictures or out in nature?”

  “From my imagination.”

  “Quin says you both draw objects you see in faraway places.”

  “CRV.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Coordinate Remote Viewing. Agent Kruse gives us a target and we see it, draw it. Rachel is better at that kind of art,” he said, splashing the water with his toes.

  “What kind of objects did you draw?”

  “Can’t talk about it. Not allowed to.”

  “Why not?”

  “We’re not supposed to talk about what we see.”

  “You have a government security clearance? You can’t share what you know?”

  He nodded, raising his toes out of the water. Candace felt as if she were talking to a socially awkward teenager.

  “You enjoy RV?”

  “At first, but then it made me sick. You thirsty? Want something to drink?”

  “No thanks,” Candace said. “RV made you sick?”

  “Migraines, insomnia, panic attacks.”

  “Sorry to hear that. It’s why Quin asked me to check on you,” Candace said. “He wants to know how you’re doing.”

  Dillan smiled again. “Why isn’t Quin here?”

  “He’s busy on an assignment with Agent Kruse.”

  “That’s why he’s not supposed to talk to me directly, AOL.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Analytical Overlay. If two viewers are tasked with the same target, they might influence each other if they share information. Tell him I’m better this week. No panic attacks. The medication they give me helps me unplug.”

  “Unplug from what?”

  “The more time you spend there, the harder it is to come back here, home,” he said.

  “The more time you spend where? At the hospital?”

  “In here,” he said, tapping a finger on this temple. “In your mind.” He stood and walked back to the sliding-glass door, leaving a trail of wet footprints on the slate pool deck. “Thirsty?”

  Candace stayed with him for another thirty minutes, their conversation bouncing from music to Dillan’s favorite topics, skateboarding and gaming. He talked, rarely making eye contact with Candace, which wasn’t as noticeable at poolside as it was sitting across from him at the kitchen table.

  “How did y
ou find this paranormal group?” she asked, redirecting him.

  “Agent Kruse invited me into the program.”

  “How did he know that you’d be a good candidate for this work?”

  “Oh, Dr. Hayden, my therapist, thought I could start working again. She gave me some tests and I showed potential, so I gave her permission to contact Agent Kruse.”

  “You enjoy RV?”

  “It was fun for a while,” he said with a look of longing. “If you show signs of stress, they give you time off and they screen you when you return.”

  “Screen you for what?”

  “Stress. If you’re not well, they put you in the locked ward. Susan’s there now, on suicide watch.”

  “She’s a Remote Viewer?”

  “Quin knows her.”

  “What happens if you’re in the locked ward?”

  “They wait until you’re better, but you can’t come back,” he said. “They dismiss you from the program.”

  “Do you know of others who’ve left the program?”

  “A few, but we don’t keep in touch.”

  “How many others would you guess have been dismissed?”

  He shrugged as if he had no idea.

  “Could you introduce me to Agent Kruse?”

  “Seriously? No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’ve already told you, we can’t talk about it.”

  “Then why are you talking to me now?”

  “Because Quin sent you here.” He looked up at the ceiling and then down at the wood floor as if searching for more reasons. “And I trust him.”

  “Why do you trust Quin so much?”

  “He’s not afraid of Kruse.”

  Jimmy was still at the hospital with Hawk, who was in stable condition. Agent Lopez was in town as well, talking to Nogales police and the DEA about what had happened the night before while she waited for detectives from the Phoenix Office to arrive.

  Quin poured a cup of coffee and set it on the table next to the couch, where Autumn slept with Marta in her arms. Quin noticed Marta was holding the stuffed bear. He sipped his own coffee, watching the steam rising from Autumn’s. He didn’t even know if she liked coffee or tea or an ice-cold Coke in the morning. All those idiosyncratic rituals that siblings share or even fight about didn’t exist between them. They had lived apart for so long that whatever similarities they shared had to be innate, genetic traits.