by JL Bryan
“Two problems solved.” She smiled at Ruppert, something he hadn’t seen before. He’d seen her as dangerous, tough, resourceful, but now it occurred to him that beneath the angry glare etched into her face, she might be beautiful, too.
“What are you looking at?” she said.
“Just you.”
She dipped her head away and looked out the window. “Drive. I don’t want to stop until we’re in Utah.”
TWENTY-SIX
It was six more hours of rough driving through canyons, washouts, and choppy dirt roads before Lucia, who’d drifted in and out of sleep since Las Vegas, announced they should stop to rest. Ruppert kept checking his rearview, expecting an armada of armored cars and black helicopters to erupt over the horizon at any moment, but there was nothing but desert and night sky. They’d been traveling for more than twenty-four hours, and though he hadn’t seen a Terror agent in many days now, Ruppert felt pursued. Maybe they were toying with him, watching him through satellites. There could even be a drone cruising above the Bronto, keeping a special tab on them, and Ruppert would never know.
“This is far enough,” Lucia said, blinking away sleep. “We need a place to hide.”
“We still have another hour to Goblin Valley.”
“And we don’t want to get any closer. I’m the extractions expert, remember?” She zoomed to a closer view of their location on the digital dashboard map. They were near a region marked Capitol Reef National Park. “Utah. We should find a slot canyon.”
For the first time, Ruppert enjoyed the fact that the Party had gutted the parks and conservation budget long ago. There would be hardly any rangers to find them. Not much risk of tourists, either. The wilderness teemed with the insane, the murderous, and the criminal, or so Ruppert had frequently reported. The Dominionists preached against visiting the wild, insisted it was home to demons, emphasized that time in the wilderness had made even Jesus vulnerable to the devil’s temptations. The only real sanctuary was the church and the company of fellow believers.
“Turn off here,” Lucia said. They turned down a narrow rut of a path littered with boulders and rocks. Ruppert eased the truck around, and sometimes over, the rocks. The truck seemed like it could handle the terrain, but he worried about the tires.
She directed him through a series of sharp, steep turns. His headlights shone on irregular rock surfaces pitted with long, deep shadows, like Rorschach blots, and his tired brain could hardly interpret any meaning from what his eyes told him.
“Okay, slow down,” she said. She leaned until her nose almost touched the screen, scrutinizing the old satellite image of the park. “You want to slow down…and turn to the left…right…here.”
Ruppert gingerly turned the wheel to the left, unable to understand the strange rock patterns around him, and drove them over a cliff. His fingernails bit into the steering wheel as the front tires reached out into empty space, and then the whole front end of the truck dropped like the heavy end of seesaw. They slammed into a hard, steep slope, rattling everything inside the cab and shoving Ruppert and Lucia upward against their seatbelts, which dug deep into their thighs and abdomens. He thought he felt his brain splosh against the dome of his skull.
The truck charged forward at an extreme downhill angle, out of his control, fishtailing down a washed-out gully.
“Gas!” Lucia screamed. “Give it gas!”
“What?” he asked, but his foot, which had been searching for the brakes, took her advice instead and stomped the accelerator. They roared down the slope. In the headlights, a high, solid ridge appeared in the distance and rapidly swelled to consume his field of vision.
“Turn!” Lucia yelled, but his hands were already moving. Ruppert’s instinct was to wrench the wheel as hard as possible, but his numbed shock at the situation saved him, and he only turned it a little. The truck spun to the right, and they skittered down the remainder of the slope and then skipped across an uneven surface of eroded rock.
The canyon narrowed quickly around them—ahead, Ruppert could see where the smooth boulders of the opposing canyon walls nearly touched each other. A man on foot would have to climb his way through.
He eased down the brake, then stomped it. Again the seatbelt lashed diagonally across him, and now he heard the tires screaming as they grabbed onto the rocky ground. The truck squealed to a stop as the canyon walls closed in around it.
Ruppert turned off the truck and removed his shaking hands from the steering wheel. Lucia caught her breath, then reached out and scrolled the map a few degrees. “Oh, maybe we should have come down the other side,” she said. “It’s not as steep.”
Ruppert removed his seatbelt, which would soon be tattooed into his skin in the form of a chain of purple bruises, and opened the truck door. He half-climbed, half-fell from the cab, stumbled across the smooth rock floor, and sat down.
“This is good, though.” Lucia sat beside him and looked up. The canyon walls reached more than a hundred feet above them, but were so close to each other they almost touched in places. “Hard for them to look down in here.”
They shrouded the truck under the desert-camouflage tarp, and then sat upon a heap of boulders to study the laminated maps printed from Liam O’Shea’s computer. They shared a paper sleeve of salt crackers and a large bottle of water.
“The database said Nando lives in Lodge 10, with twenty boys his age,” Lucia said. “The nearest gate is the staff entrance, here in the west wall. We should use that.”
“We can’t just ram it down with the truck,” Ruppert said. “They’ll have a security system. Armed guards, I bet.”
“Guards, and machine gun nests, and lots of boys with military training.”
“They’re just kids.”
“Best time to train them,” Lucia said. “Goblin Valley keeps boys up to the age of sixteen, then enlists them. So there will be older boys too—boys trained as soldiers and snipers, trained to torture and interrogate. I'm sure they run school-defense drills. That would be good training for protecting foreign bases. So we could be facing a few thousand defenders.”
“Then we have to keep quiet. I don’t suppose we can use your magic remote?”
She shook her head. “It's just a toy against their systems. They have an evolving propriety code.”
“Then what do we do, extraction expert?”
“We’ll need human intelligence. A person on the inside.”
“Which we don’t have,” Ruppert pointed out.
“And we’ll have to get one. I’m not sure how. Let’s assume we’re inside and go from there.”
“Okay. So we’re inside the school, surrounded by a bunch of armed Children of the Corn—and your son,” Ruppert hurried to add, in response to Lucia’s scowl. “We have to get inside his dormitory without drawing the attention of guards or other kids. We have to wake him without disturbing any of the others. I assume they’re not in private apartments or anything?”
Lucia glanced at the map, shook her head. “Looks like they all sleep in one room.”
“Won’t he automatically try to alert the others?”
“He won’t, if he recognizes me.”
“Do you think he will?” Ruppert regretted the question even before he asked it, but it had to be said. He worried Lucia was being a little unrealistic in her expectations—the boy was ten years old and hadn’t seen his mother since the age of five. Ruppert himself couldn’t remember anything before the age of six or so, though that was thirty years ago now.
Lucia’s mouth trembled, and she looked away from him without answering.
“I’m just saying,” Ruppert continued, “That he could make a lot of noise and trouble before he realizes who you are.”
“Then what can we do?” she whispered.
“All I can think is to use a tranquilizer. Maybe they have ether.” He pointed to the square building near the center of the school compound. It was marked “Clinic/Dispensary.”
“Then we’d have to break into a se
cond building, right in the middle of the place,” Lucia said. “Probably extra secure because of the drugs. Too complicated.”
“Fernando kicking and screaming would complicate things, too.”
“We would trigger security alerts at the clinic,” Lucia said. “We’d never get to Nando.”
“All right. So, by some miracle, we get into the school, we grab Fernando without getting ambushed by a mob of killer ten-year-olds. We still have to get out again. And we have to plan for them to be pursuing us at that point. Worst-case scenario.”
“At last, you are thinking clearly.” Lucia traced her fingertip along the route from the west gate to Fernando’s barracks. They would have to make several turns. She tapped a series of low sheds, shielded from the road by a wall. They were marked ORDINANCE.
“We cover our escape with fireworks,” she said. “If we time it right, there will be burning debris falling into the road behind us. Maybe even rubble. Block off the way out as we leave.”
“There are other gates they can use.”
“It will buy us a little time. And a lot of confusion. Once you assume they are following us, time will be short no matter what we do.”
“Okay, you’re right, it’s the best we can do. And then we all go north, right?”
“Yes. There is a safehouse. We can get across the border from there.”
“I thought you didn’t know about those things,” Ruppert said.
“I only know about this one. I’m not supposed to know about it, either.”
“Then it’s a lifetime of ice fishing and beaver trapping.”
“God willing.”
“God willing,” he agreed.
Goblin Valley was a low, rocky place between the Fishlake Mountains to the west and a dry tundra of badlands stretching away to the east, where the wind had carved the stone into elaborate fortresses, as if a forgotten race of giants had once lived and fought there. The valley itself teemed with thousands of enormous stone mushrooms, or “goblins,” the size of suburban homes. The school compound was barricaded inside concrete walls at the western cliffs of the valley, where the oddly shaped rocks created a landscape resembling vast human faces and skulls. The valley was without water and clearly never meant for human habitation.
Ruppert and Lucia drove through the open desert, far east of the valley, and also explored the mesas and canyons in the San Rafael Swell to the west. In the evening, they passed through the nearest town, Hanksville, whose main attraction seemed to be the Hollow Mountain gas station, carved into the side of a rock.
Hanksville provided much support to the Goblin Valley facility, judging by the numerous vans and trucks with “Goblin Valley School for Males” stamped on their doors. Ruppert noted six such trucks parked outside “Berna’s Lounge,” a cinderblock building with a sheet-metal roof, the town’s only apparent drinking establishment, located just outside the official town limits. He noticed a few more of them at a five-story brick apartment building at the center of town, and others parked in the driveways of small houses.
Their plan took shape as they studied the situation. At night, they hid in the shadows among southern Utah’s endless slot canyons and narrow, rocky valleys. They slept in the back of the truck on the forest-camouflage tarp, all their clothes piled around them for warmth, each one sleeping half the night and keeping guard the other half, watching for bandits, police, or Terror.
On their fourth night in Utah, a Friday, Lucia parked the Brontosaur in the parking lot at Berna’s Lounge, positioning it so that the driver’s-side door faced the bar, while the passenger side looked out to the empty desert. Ruppert was slouched down deep in his seat, out of sight. It was a few minutes before eleven.
“Wish me luck,” Lucia said. She’d dressed in a long cotton skirt and a skimpy top that left most of her belly and chest exposed. Dressing that way could get you arrested for public immorality in Ruppert’s old neighborhood, but such attire on a young woman was always welcome wherever men gathered to drink.
“Luck,” Ruppert said. He took her hand, which was decorated with chunky, glittery fake jewelry she’d purchased in a flea market three towns away. “This is your last chance to turn back. Are you sure?”
Lucia shook her head. “No second thoughts.”
“No second thoughts,” he agreed.
“Are you ready?”
“As much as possible.”
“Good. Keep your eyes open.” Lucia reached for the door handle, then surprised him by leaning over and kissing him on the mouth. His hands reached to embrace her, and he had a quick impression of ribs, taut muscle, and hot skin before she pulled away.
Ruppert gave her a smile. “Remember—”
“I know,” she interrupted. “Identify the highest-status male in the room.”
“I was going to say, be careful.”
“That, too.” Lucia half-smiled at him, then eased the truck door open. They’d long since dismantled the cab’s interior light. She dropped to the blacktop and closed the door behind her. Ruppert slid across the seat and peered over the edge of the window, keeping his head low. He watched her pass the row of Goblin Valley School pick-up trucks, her skirt fluttering around her in the cool desert wind. Then she opened the front door and disappeared.
Ruppert slid back to the passenger side and opened the door about half an inch. He reached under the seat, and his fingers closed on the cold, heavy mass of the tire iron. Then he returned to the driver’s side, and he looked out the window, and he waited.
When he’d suggested to Lucia that they should arm themselves with guns, she’d refused the idea immediately.
“To carry a gun is to become a beast,” she’d said. “Like them. Guns are for those who live in fear.”
“But you carry that knife,” Ruppert had pointed out.
“A knife has many uses,” Lucia said. “A girl has to be sensible.”
Ruppert clutched the tire iron in both hands and tried to think of it that way. It was the sensible thing to do. In this situation, it was entirely reasonable. He thought of the picture of Lucia’s boy, Fernando Luis Santos, barely ten years old, his entire education focused on mountain warfare and counterinsurgency, and probably a fair amount of Dominionist dogma. He hoped the kid was worth it.
His thoughts drifted to Madeline, as they sometimes did. She was probably happier, he’d decided, as long as Terror left her alone. Certainly a Terror alert for her own husband would be more than an embarrassment at church—she might even have been banished from the congregation. He hoped Pastor John hadn’t done that. Madeline lived to belong and be accepted.
The door to Bertha’s opened, and Ruppert’s hands tightened on the tire iron. A bearded man in long shorts emerged, meandered across the parking lot to a beaten old Mustang, and drove away, drifting slightly into the wrong side of the road.
It was another hour before Lucia finally emerged, stumbling as if she’d had a little too much to drink, and Ruppert wondered if she really had. She beamed at the man who escorted her out. He looked to be in his late fifties, his hair cut into a flattop the color of steel. He possessed the wide neck and arms of a former athlete, with a paunchy gut to match. He wore a khaki uniform jacket with golden epaulets, unbuttoned now, displaying a loosened tie and a partially untucked shirt. Lucia swayed and leaned on his arm as he guided her toward the row of Goblin Valley trucks.
Ruppert slid back to the passenger side door, which he’d left ajar, and nudged it open. He eased down to the pavement with the tire iron in his hand. He looked up and down the empty road, grateful they were in the middle of nowhere.
He crept around the front of the truck, keeping himself lower than the hood. Ahead, the uniformed man opened the passenger door on a Goblin Valley truck and gestured for Lucia to get inside. Ruppert would have to pass two more trucks and then cross two open parking spots to reach him. The distance might have been thirty or forty feet, but it looked as wide as the Great Plains to Ruppert.
Lucia r
ested a hand on the side of the man’s truck, bent down, and began working at one of her shoes, apparently intending to remove it but having difficulty. Buying time.
Ruppert changed course and passed behind the tailgate of the first Goblin Valley truck. He dropped even lower, into a kind of walking crouch, as he passed behind the second truck. He stopped at the rear bumper and peered around. There was nothing but open blacktop left between himself and the school officer.
Lucia had removed one shoe and was working at the other. Her stooped-over position held the man’s attention. He stroked his hand down her smooth, brown back, then cupped her buttocks through the thin material of her skirt. Lucia looked back over her shoulder, gave the man a wink. The man tugged the waist of her skirt down and poked his fingers at the black fringe of her panties.
Ruppert held his breath as he crossed the empty parking spots, raising the tire iron like a baseball bat. The man must have sensed his approach, because just before Ruppert reached him, he turned and looked Ruppert in the eyes. The man’s own eyes were droopy with alcohol, but they flared at the sight of Ruppert, and his mouth opened wide and he took in a deep breath, ready to call for help.
Ruppert swung hard. The hexagonal end of the tire iron bashed into the side of the man’s skull. The impact sent shudders up Ruppert’s arm.
Lucia pulled away from the man as he lurched a step toward Ruppert, one hand grasping at the air before him, his mouth working soundlessly. Ruppert struck at him again, but this time his aim was off and he only clipped the man’s lower jaw. He stepped forward and hit him again, and the man flopped back against his truck and slumped to the ground.
Ruppert continued to strike at the man’s head, over and over. The world was narrow and dark around him, containing only the school officer’s face and Ruppert’s own sudden rage, which boiled up from inside him. Later he would try to tell himself that he was just trying to be safe, he couldn’t allow this trainer of soldiers one moment to collect himself, because Ruppert would surely lose a fair fight with the man. But in his mind he was seeing the man’s hand fondle Lucia, and he was seeing the Captain watching with disinterested blue eyes as two guards held Ruppert against the floor and beat him, and he was seeing George Baldwin, the Terror agent at the studio, and he was seeing Pastor John’s beatific, collagen-molded face.
