Runaway

by Anne Laughlin

  She sounded anguished, at odds with the carefree woman of the night before. Jan watched her sprint to the bathroom. It seemed morning sex was off the table. She followed her and stood at the door.

  “You’re the new owner, remember? It’s okay to be late.”

  Catherine was checking the temperature of the shower. She glanced at Jan.

  “Not the impression I like to give. Listen, I’m sorry for this. Have them charge the valet to my room, will you?” She stepped into the shower.

  Jan stared at the figure soaping herself up in the steamy water. She felt sick, dismissed. She got dressed and left the room without saying more. When she got down to the front of the hotel, she paid for her own valet parking.

  Chapter Five

  Maddy peered from under her camouflaged cap at the large field dotted with obstacle courses, a rifle range, and stretches of bare ground where dozens of uniformed people were doing exercises, breaking down weapons, and throwing each other around in simulated hand-to-hand combat. It was a cloudless day, the autumn foliage brilliant in the woods surrounding the field.

  She stood in a long line of men and women wearing the uniforms issued to them the hour before. Standing in front of the line addressing them was a “sergeant” named Drecker. His camos were clean but well worn, his boots shiny but with many miles on them.

  “You sorry suckers have one hell of a day ahead of you. Some of you look worn out from getting up early to drive here. Believe me, that was the best part of your day right there. By the time we finish our last field exercise in the middle of the night, you’re going to wish you’d never been born.”

  Maddy wanted to push her cap up. It was settling on her head and the brim was covering her eyes. They were standing at ease, with hands clasped behind their backs. She must have looked like a fool, but she didn’t dare move out of position.

  “Unlike a full basic training in the military where a soldier’s strength can be built up, we’re going to have to work with what you’ve got, and that ain’t much from the looks of things. You’ll leave camp tomorrow with a written program of how to continue your conditioning.”

  All the people Maddy had met at David’s kitchen table were here in line with her, except Ed and Warren. They’d already been through multiple training sessions with this outfit and were out making more preparations for the move. Kristi stood next to her, her piercings removed at Drecker’s command. Her uniform fit snuggly across her large breasts, and Maddy could see sweat trickling down her face, despite the cool temperature. They’d driven together in the back of David’s truck, bundled in blankets and silent the entire way. Occasionally, though, Kristi would give her an encouraging smile and a thumbs-up.

  David stood on her other side. She knew he’d been up until very late, long after she’d gone to sleep in her basement bedroom. She’d wake to hear him scraping his chair away from the kitchen table, pacing from one end of the house to the other, scraping the chair back in place. She’d managed to put together enough hours of sleep to make the day bearable. She didn’t know how David would manage. She wasn’t worried anymore about him not being a man of action. He was a man who didn’t know how not to take action.

  Before she’d said good night, David put his hand on her forearm. It seemed like something her grandma would do.

  “Maddy, I just want you to know how much it’s meant that we got to know each other.”

  Maddy looked at his hand on her arm, wondering if he’d start patting her. She didn’t know what to say.

  “You’re young, probably younger than you’re admitting to me, but you’ve got an amazing mind. I feel like you get what I’m saying, more than any of the others do.”

  She didn’t think that was much of a compliment, but he looked very sincere. She was beginning to believe he genuinely cared for her.

  “You and I have a singleness of purpose,” he went on, his hand finally sliding off her arms. “We have a simple goal, but we have to be realistic. There are going to be people and circumstances that will keep things complicated.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I just mean that the reason you and I want to leave all this behind”—his arm swept around the decrepit kitchen as if it were a Four Seasons resort—“is probably not the same reasons others have. And that’s okay.”

  “Is it?” she asked. “I don’t want to live in the middle of Idaho with a bunch of people who are running from something. I feel like I’m running toward something.”

  David smiled as he watched her. “Exactly.”

  “What are they running from?” She ignored the fact that she was running from something too.

  “I didn’t say they were. I just said their reasons might be different from ours. We’ve decided to withhold our creativity from a society that only punishes us for having it. That’s not something that most people think that much about. Ed and Warren want to go to Idaho to live like pioneers. Tom is a lost soul who just wants to be part of something. He goes with me everywhere.”

  “What about Kristi?”

  “Well, Kristi is all gruff on the outside, marshmallow on the inside, not an unusual personality profile around here. There are so many people like her that have no job prospects, no special skills, no idea really of what it would be like to have either. Every year she sees her community becoming more hopeless, the people around her more bitter, their resentment poisoning everything. She wants out, but she doesn’t really care what she’s moving into as long as she believes it’s something better. The idea of leaving this place is what’s driving her.”

  “So what does she bring to the table?”

  “First of all, malleability. Every community has to have worker bees, and that’s what Kristi wants. To be part of something where her labor is valued. She’ll be an exceptional worker bee, but that’s all she’ll ever be. And that’s enough for her.”

  “How do you know that? She didn’t come up to you and say, ‘Dude, give me all the shit jobs and I’ll be happy as a clam.’” Maddy couldn’t understand the lack of ambition in that.

  “I’ve known Kristi a long time. Just think about it and it all makes sense.”

  “Okay. What about Diane? What’s her story?”

  “Diane? Diane’s my girlfriend. I don’t want to be entirely self-sufficient.”

  Maddy didn’t like the big grin on his face. She generally found men to be quite pathetic when it came to sex. She went downstairs to bed.

  *

  Sergeant Drecker handed off part of the group to a corporal. They were led away to start their scouting exercises while Maddy, Kristi, Tommy, and Diane stayed behind for weapons training. They marched behind Drecker as he took them to a large rifle range.

  Drecker addressed them. “This morning we’re going to train you on how to safely handle and clean your weapon. You will not be allowed to shoot it until you’ve mastered these skills.”

  Kristi was next to her again. While Drecker started handing out rifles, she leaned over to whisper, “How cool is this?”

  Maddy saw the gleam in Kristi’s eye. “Very cool?”

  “Damn right.”

  Maddy thought about what David told her about Kristi. She was glad Kristi was excited and she was glad they were going through training together. Other than that, she felt like she’d been dropped into an alien nation.

  “You two,” Drecker barked, pointing at Maddy and Kristi. “Step forward.”

  Kristi did as she was told. Maddy followed a moment later.

  “First rule of camp is that you do not speak while in formation or in the presence of a superior unless you are spoken to first. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir,” Kristi said.

  Drecker stared at Maddy.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Drop and give me ten.”

  “Ten what?” Maddy said. She heard Diane stifle a laugh behind her.

  “Ten push-ups,” Drecker said. “Didn’t they teach you how to do a push-up in your fancy schools?”

&
nbsp; Kristi had already dropped to the ground and was grinding out her first push-up. Maddy was wondering how Decker knew she went to “fancy schools.”

  “Wait a second,” she said. “Shouldn’t we be told the rules before we’re punished for breaking them?”

  Drecker moved to within an inch of Maddy’s face. She stepped back and he followed her.

  “That just earned you another ten, private. Now drop.”

  Maddy looked behind her. Tommy looked back at her nervously while the others avoided her eyes. She sighed and got down on the ground, doing her twenty push-ups in the time it took Kristi to finish her ten. Kristi lay face down, her body heaving as she caught her breath.

  “Now get back in line so we can get some work done.”

  Maddy had read as much as she could about the militias. She knew they operated under a military chain of command. But who had made her a private? She was just here to learn to shoot, which she wanted to do. She wasn’t here to join a militia. The last chain of command she ever wanted to be part of was the one she’d just fled: father/mother/Maddy.

  Once everyone had a rifle, they got on their knees and learned how to disassemble and load them. Their first cartridges were blanks. Two hours later, Maddy was shooting with real bullets, blasting the heads off of targets that looked like someone’s version of an Arab terrorist. She tried to ignore the implications of that as she shot round after round. When she paused to reload, she looked over at Kristi. They beamed at each other and bumped fists.

  The afternoon was packed with instruction on how to operate covertly in the woods. Since it was hunting season in Michigan, they were issued bright orange hats and vests.

  “You’ll be in full uniform for tonight’s maneuvers,” Drecker said.

  Maddy and Kristin were teamed up to learn about stealth movement and sensory awareness in the woods, which Maddy took to mean walking quietly with her headphones off. When Drecker started talking about identifying booby traps, she paid more attention. They were operating under a different definition of survival training. This wasn’t about building animal traps and picking berries. It was all about outsmarting people who were trying to kill them. They learned to build an Apache limp wire trip set. Maddy had a quick fantasy of her father being strung up by one as he walked in from the garage after another night out carousing. Other than that, she couldn’t imagine a scenario where she’d need one.

  During a break mid-afternoon, Maddy sat with Kristi and Tommy at the edge of the field. Diane had run off to find David, who’d disappeared during target practice. Tommy looked confused, as if he’d signed up for calculus and found himself in a pottery class. He seemed much more naïve than Maddy about what the training camp would be like. At least she knew these soldiers were preparing for one or more unlikely scenarios: the end of the world as we know it, government breakdown and anarchy, a terrorist attack.

  “I don’t really need to know how to set traps for humans,” Maddy said.

  Kristi was sitting against a tree, her rifle across her lap. “Oh, hell yes, you do. What if we’re invaded?”

  “Invaded?” Tommy said. “Why would anyone invade us?”

  “Exactly. One of the reasons we’re going there is to be out of everyone’s way. We don’t bother them and they don’t bother us,” Maddy said.

  “You two are living in a dream world,” Kristi said. “There’s always someone who wants what’s not theirs. We have to know how to protect ourselves.”

  “It doesn’t hurt to be ready, I suppose,” Maddy said “And the training’s a blast. I can’t wait for maneuvers tonight.”

  Kristi was smiling again. “Right? We are going to kick some ass.”

  Tommy was sitting on the ground with his legs crossed, his head bent over his lap.

  “Hey, Tommy boy. Are you going to puke or something?” Kristi prodded him with her rifle.

  He raised his head and smiled grimly. “I hate this.”

  Drecker called them back into action before they could say anything to Tommy, and Maddy soon forgot it.

  That night, under a full moon, Maddy edged toward a clearing in the woods. Ahead of her was another of the course instructors, a sergeant named Cooper. Behind her were Kristi, Tommy, and the other members of their squad. Cooper signaled for them to drop. Maddy had never spent so much time on the ground as she had that day. She was aching from carrying a heavy pack, and the last reserve of her energy had evaporated some time ago. It was nearly midnight and she’d been up since five that morning.

  Cooper started a series of rapid hand gestures. He kept pointing at her with two fingers and then pointing to their right, very fast, over and over so it didn’t make sense to her. Kristi urged her up by the arm and led her off toward the right, looking at Cooper for more direction. He waved them further on, until they were out of sight of the others. They turned toward the clearing, which was lit up by the moon like a softball field during a night game.

  “What are we supposed to do?” Maddy whispered.

  “Hell if I know,” Kristi said. She looked as weary as Maddy felt. They weren’t having much fun anymore.

  “I’m going to pee,” Maddy said.

  “Can’t you wait? We might have to move any second.”

  Maddy peered up at Kristi from under her helmet and handed over her rifle. “Can’t wait.”

  She walked a few yards deeper in the woods and squatted behind a big oak. She’d emptied half her bladder when she heard someone approach. She looked up to see M-16s pointed at her by two guys from the opposing team. A third came toward them pushing Kristi forward with the point of his gun. She had her hands above her head. One of the soldiers hauled Maddy to her feet and pointed to her pants pooling around her ankles. She pulled them up while everyone stared at her.

  Their rifles were pointed at them, but Maddy knew that the bullets were blanks. She couldn’t see any point in pretending she could be shot or taken on a forced march to a POW camp, so she yelled at the top of her lungs.

  “Over here!”

  Her voice was still ringing when one of the soldiers hit her in the side of her helmet with the butt of his rifle. She dropped into the puddle of her own urine. Kristi barreled toward him with her shoulders lowered, going for the tackle, but another soldier stuck his foot out and tripped her. She fell next to Maddy. The soldiers ran back into the woods when they heard Cooper and two others from their squad running toward them. Maddy lay still as Cooper ordered three team members to pursue. She wasn’t badly hurt, but she was stunned. There’s no preparing for a rifle butt to the head. Even with a helmet on, it hurt like hell. She saw Cooper’s face over hers.

  “You okay, soldier?”

  She struggled to get up and Cooper gave her a hand.

  “I’ll live. I don’t think they’re supposed to hit us though, are they?”

  He smiled. He didn’t seem like a bad guy, none of them really did. But one of them had hit her. It was hard to tell out here what was right and wrong, who was good and bad. All she knew was she was done for the day.

  *

  Jan ran hard along the lakefront path. On Saturday mornings it was crowded with office workers running, biking, and skating away whatever troubles the week had brought them. The week had delivered a couple of whoppers to Jan. A teenager who didn’t want to be found and a woman who couldn’t be caught. Jan had no doubt that Catherine’s brusque behavior that morning was her way of saying the night before had been a mistake. That Jan was a mistake. Jan thought the night before told her only one thing, that she’d never been with a woman like Catherine and she wanted more. Maybe that was two things. She wanted more than she could have, at any rate, and everything about it felt brand new.

  She turned around at Monroe Harbor and headed back north. It was another glorious fall day and the lake sparkled under the blue sky. Across Lake Shore Drive, the Chicago skyline spread along the lakefront. Powerful, beautiful, and in some ways more mesmerizing than the lake itself. When Jan arrived in Chicago at age twenty, she had no fe
eling about the city other than it was where her new girlfriend wanted to live. Now, almost twenty years later, she couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.

  She and Josie had come to the city when Josie’s brother Dan said he could get her a job at an advertising agency. Josie was twenty-two and had an art degree. Jan had managed to get her GED in LA and hoped to go to college, but she had no money or any real notion of how that was going to happen. By the time Josie had put enough money together for them to move out of Dan’s crappy apartment in Uptown, she had fallen in love with an account executive at the agency and moved into her Gold Coast high-rise. Jan was homeless. Again. She took a room at the downtown Y and started selling speed and cocaine for one of Dan’s friends. She had applications in for a dozen jobs, but very little money in her pocket. One hour of peddling drugs on the streets near the Board of Trade gave her a week’s rent. The rest went to her college fund and a steady diet of hot dogs and ramen noodles.

  She operated in the haze of surviving from one day to the next, which she was quite used to. The future was an opaque window. She could keep moving toward the light, but she had no idea what was behind the glass. When she’d saved enough to enroll in one of the city colleges, she took a part-time job as a security guard at TSI and gave up anything to do with drugs. She’d seen enough to know where a life of that would lead her.

  She continued running north, past the chess players at Fullerton, the driving range at Diversey, the harbor at Belmont that was now empty of boats. She turned her thoughts to finding Maddy Harrington. It seemed there was no choice but to go to Michigan and try to produce some leads, but she would need her files to plot a course of action. That meant going into the office and possibly seeing Catherine. She picked up her pace.

  *

  Jan picked up a file from Vivian’s chair. She’d left a report on Maddy for LJ to sign prior to the first billing going out. She didn’t need to see the report, but it provided cover. It was Catherine she wanted to see. She could hear her voice in the conference room, but all she could tell was that it was growing more angry by the moment. The blinds had been drawn and she couldn’t see into the room.