Dominion

by JL Bryan

  Ruppert woke to Lucia shaking his arm. He blinked as his eyes adjusted to the soft early morning light.

  She’d parked by the side of an overgrown dirt track winding through a valley encircled by sheer, dark bluffs. Within the bluffs, blooming meadows and veins of rock sloped down to a clear alpine lake, reflecting the gold and red of the sunrise over the snowy peaks to the east. A white mist emanated from the lake itself, obscuring the far side of the valley.

  “What is it?” Ruppert asked.

  “Look at this place,” Lucia said. “Have you ever been anywhere like this?”

  Ruppert thought of his closest experience, looking at an uninhabited island over a railing as he and Madeline rode the Pirate’s Booty tour boat through the Virgin Islands. The ride had been narrated by Captain Steve, who wore a plastic hook hand, an eyepatch, and an automatronic parrot who squawked one-liners. He shook his head.

  “Nando,” Lucia said. “Nando, wake up. We’re stopping for a while.”

  The boy stirred, rubbed at his eyes, then gasped at he took in the landscape.

  “Can I go outside?” he asked.

  They poured out of the truck into the meadow, fragrant and richly colored with late summer blooms. Ruppert stood and stretched, breathing in the pristine air.

  “Where are we?” he asked Lucia.

  “Wyoming,” she said. “There is nothing out here, no towns. We are as safe as we could be.”

  Nando saluted his mother. “Permission to scout the area, sir?”

  “Stay where I can see you,” Lucia said. “And you say ma’am when you talk to a woman, not sir.”

  “Yes, sir. Ma’am.” Nando clomped through the high grasses and flowers, still dressed in gray pajamas, wearing Ruppert’s extra pair of shoes.

  “Do you think that’s safe?” Ruppert passed a hand through the tall grass beside him, nearly as high as his waist.

  “He seems disciplined enough.”

  Ruppert couldn’t argue with that. They ambled downward along the meadow, toward the glowing lake painted the colors of sunrise. Nando ran far ahead of them, zigging and zagging through the meadow, head low as if avoiding imaginary gunfire.

  “Do you think he’ll ever be normal?” she asked.

  “I think he’s very prepared for the world he’ll have to live in,” Ruppert said.

  They reached the pebbled shore of the lake. The water lay clear and still before them, and Ruppert could see all the way to the stony, sandy bottom. He looked off to their right, where Nando had taken an interest in one of the crooked veins of stone that ran down from the cliffs and divided the meadow into sections. The boy inspected the rocks closely, probably looking for a place to climb.

  “How cold do you bet the water is?” Lucia asked.

  “Freezing,” Ruppert told her. “Don’t even think about it.”

  She kicked off her shoe, dipped a toe in the edge of the lake. “It’s not so bad. I haven’t had a real bath since California. Neither have you.” She pinched her nose, keeping her face solemn.

  “This isn’t a real bath, either. Besides, Nando—”

  “We can watch him from here.” The boy was walking up along a flat vein of rock toward the dark bluffs, arms wide as if he were navigating a tightrope, though the ridge was wide and low. The gorgeous colors of the morning sky glowed around him.

  Lucia peeled off her skirt and tossed it into the grass, then weighed it down with rocks against the cool morning breeze. She waded out into the lake wearing the black panties and the short top she'd purchased to seduce the staff sergeant. She turned back to face Ruppert, smiling and waving, and then dived into the deeper water toward the center of the lake.

  Ruppert glanced back towards Nando, who now lay on his back on the stone ridge, looking up at a stream of low, fluffy red and yellow clouds streaming across the sky just above them, nearly close enough to touch.

  Ruppert took off his own shoes and jeans, then followed her into the water. It was so cold that it seemed to grab both his legs.

  “Better if you just dive in,” Lucia told him. She treaded water several yards from the shore.

  “I know that.” Ruppert plunged into the clear depths, dunking his head under the frigid surface to soak his hair. The water was painfully cold, until his skin grew numb.

  “That feels so good, doesn’t it?” Lucia said.

  “Sure. Ready to get out?”

  Lucia swam up to him, her head submerged up to the eyes like an alligator. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and pushed her body up against him.

  “Thank you for all of this,” she said. “I could not have rescued him without you.”

  She gave him a long kiss. For some reason, he could only think of how easily she’d tricked the man from Goblin Valley.

  “You don’t have to do this,” he whispered.

  She pushed back from him and lay floating on her back, sunlight glittering on her damp skin, eyes closed. “This is the perfect moment,” she said. “Don’t ruin it.”

  Ruppert swam for a couple of minutes, occasionally glancing up the slope to see that Nando was still close. He thought about all the copies of his interview with Hollis Westerly now beginning to circulate out in the world. Lucia and Nando were minor figures to Terror, nonexistent in terms of public perception. Daniel Ruppert, though, had been a recognizable media presence, at least in southern California, before turning guerilla journalist (or “terror propagandist,” as the charge would surely read at his closed-door tribunal). Terror would want his blood, and would never cease hunting him.

  If he settled in the same place as Lucia and Nando after they crossed into Canada, he would only become an unnecessary threat to their safety. As if the mountain water had cleared his mind, he now saw that he would have to help the two of them across the border, but then part ways with them forever. Over time, they could build new identities, and the world itself might change for the better, but Ruppert would have powerful enemies hunting him as long as he lived.

  He returned to the shore, shivering hard, and replaced his jeans and shoes. He glanced up to check on Nando, and saw the boy hurtling down the meadow towards him, arms wide. Nando opened his mouth and began screaming, his voice redounding off the mountains around them, but Ruppert couldn’t make out his words.

  “What is it, Nando?” Ruppert asked. The boy rushed towards him with great, leaping steps down the slope. He jumped up and down, jabbering words too fast for Ruppert to follow, and pointed across the lake.

  Ruppert and Lucia, who had just reached the shore, turned back to look across the lake. On the meadow sloping up and away from the far side of the lake, where most of the fog had now burned away, a herd of elk nibbled among the thick grasses. A few of the cows sipped cold water from the shallows on the far side, while their calves nuzzled them for milk.

  The massive, dark animals paid no attention to the jumping, yelling boy across the lake.

  “What are they?” Nando asked.

  “Those are elk,” Ruppert told him. “Mountain animals.”

  “They’re so big,” Nando breathed, gazing at them. “I didn’t know animals got that big. What do they eat?”

  “Whatever they can find, I guess,” Ruppert said.

  “Do they eat people?” Nando’s eyes were very large, looking up at him.

  “Nope, just plants. You want to stay back and give them plenty of room, though.”

  “Do they care if I watch them?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Can you ride one?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Can you teach them tricks?”

  “Couldn’t tell you.”

  “I wonder if they have names. Anything that big should have a name.”

  “They probably won’t mind if you name them.”

  “Really?” Nando seemed captivated by the idea. “I’ll name that one Washington…Lincoln…Roosevelt…Eisenhower…” He walked along the shore, pointing at each of the grazing elk.

  Rupp
ert and Lucia changed into dry clothes, and Lucia spread out the forest-colored tarp near the lake. The three of them ate lunch on the meadow, and Lucia pointed out images in the clouds to Nando. Nando entertained them with a detailed plan of how he could invade, occupy and defend the valley with a force of fifty soldiers.

  

  They remained in the valley for the rest of the day, Lucia and Ruppert taking turns between sleeping and keeping watch on Nando. As the sun began to set, they climbed back into the Bronto, and Ruppert drove them northward.

  They passed into open, flat country in Montana, under a sprawling blue sky that made Ruppert feel dangerously exposed, as he had in the desert. Terror controlled the skies, and there was a lot of open sky out here. The safehouse that Lucia knew about was out in prairie country, an hour or more east of the comforting shadows of the Rocky Mountains.

  They traveled in a relaxed quiet and let the stereo play songs at random from its memory. Archer had stored an unfortunately wide array of old Broadway musical numbers on his truck's hard drive, which Lucia flipped past impatiently.

  It was another night of driving, and they arrived before dawn at a cluster of wooden buildings that appeared to be an actual working ranch, with a herd of a thousand or more cattle, lowing to each other in the early light. These animals impressed Nando as much as the elk.

  A few men approached on horseback as Ruppert parked alongside a row of trucks. They wore cowboy hats and appeared to be in their late thirties or early forties, with deep lines worn into their faces by years of wind and sun. One of them rode up alongside Ruppert’s window.

  “Help you?” he asked. Ruppert turned to Lucia.

  “We’re looking for Violet Jakobsen,” Lucia told him.

  “She expecting you?”

  “No,” Lucia said, “But you can tell her we’re arriving under a flag of distress.”

  The man’s eyes narrowed. He instructed the other two to keep watch on the unexpected visitors, then dismounted and walked up into the rambling, uneven main house, which looked as if it had grown one misfit room at a time over the years—some stone, some brick, some wooden. A collection of miniature windmills spun in the front yard.

  “Is that an elk?” Nando pointed to a white and brown spotted horse. The man atop it shook his head.

  “Appaloosa. Horse.”

  “A horse.” Nando spoke the word in awe.

  “Must come from someplace awful strange,” the other man said. “Not to know what a horse is.”

  “I know what they are!” Nando sounded defensive, which amused Ruppert a little. “Alexander the Great’s horse was Bucephalus, and he conquered Afghanistan, like George Bush the Second. Soldiers used to ride them a long time ago.”

  “Not all that long ago,” the man on the Appaloosa said, and his companion smiled.

  The rider who had first greeted them returned, accompanied by a tall woman in a straw-colored cowboy hat—Ruppert guess this was the woman called Violet, the owner of the ranch. Her gray hair was gathered into loose, thick braids punctuated with bits of turquoise. She looked over the three strangers in the Bronto, then leaned in at Lucia’s window.

  “Kipp tells me you’re travelers in trouble.” She studied Lucia’s face for a second, then looked towards Nando in the back seat. “What’s your name?”

  “Private Cadet George Liberty, sir,” the boy replied. “I mean, ma’am.”

  “That is surely an interesting name.” She lifted an eyebrow at Lucia. “He is your son.”

  “His name is Fernando,” Lucia said.

  “Child and Family Services?” Violet asked.

  “We only just recovered him.”

  “That must be an interesting tale. I’d love to hear how you managed it.”

  “I doubt anyone could repeat it. We nearly died.”

  “It’s always good to learn.”

  Lucia leaned out and whispered into the woman’s ear. Violet nodded, looking to Ruppert and Nando. Ruppert didn’t know if she was explaining their story, or passing information, or using some sort of code to indicate she was a trustworthy resister. Whatever she said, it worked, because the woman hugged her and invited the three of them inside for a “late breakfast.” It was a few minutes past six in the morning.

  The kitchen was clearly the biggest room in the house, arranged around an unevenly built stone fireplace at the center of the room. Violet directed them to a big picnic table that could seat twenty people at once, though none of them would be sitting in matching chairs—there were chairs of wood, wicker, bamboo, and a couple of folding aluminum seats. Two adolescent girls, one white and one Guatemalan, hurried to dish them out breakfast from an array of skillets on the brick counters flanking the stove.

  Before eating, Nando said a prayer aloud: “Our Almighty King, Commander of the Legions of Heaven, Let us eat grain from the fields of our enemies, that we may grow strong on their hunger, and let our swords find their bellies empty. Amen.” Then he tore into his food, loudly proclaiming it the best he’d ever eaten.

  Lucia cast a gloomy look at Ruppert.

  They learned what it meant to eat like a ranch hand—the girls brought fried steak, fried eggs, fresh tomatoes, and biscuits yellow with butter. They drank hot coffee and cold milk thick with cream. After days of crackers and nuts and watery juice mix, it was a feast.

  Afterward, Violet and the teenage Guatemalan girl, whose name was Ana, led Ruppert, Lucia and Nando behind the house to the long, ramshackle horse stable. They carried their luggage—Ruppert’s suitcase, Lucia’s duffle bag, and Nando empty-handed—up a narrow staircase of wooden slats into the dark loft, which was illuminated by a wide, narrow slit of a window. Violet crossed the length of the building to the rear wall, reached through the clutter of saddles, harnesses and horse blankets that hung upon it, and opened a concealed door that folded back into a dark, hidden room.

  The interior of the room stank of old sweat and musty, hot air, though a little light and fresh air trickled in through a constellation of nail-holes in one wall. Fresh straw lined the floor, and on top of that people huddled together on blankets and sleeping bags in the shadows. They stirred as the door opened, but said nothing.

  As Ruppert’s eyes adjusted to the gloom, he could see the room’s occupants consisted of two families with small children, plus a few lone individuals scattered along the rear wall.

  “We have a few extra guests,” Violet announced to the people in the room, who didn’t exactly applaud the news. She turned to Lucia. “We were just about to wake the children anyhow. We let them work around the farm during the day—it ends up better for everyone.”

  “Can I feed the elks and the horses?” Nando asked.

  “We don’t have any elk, but we have cows,” Violet said.

  Ana collected the three other children in the room, who were already awake and ready to get busy.

  “Are you sure that’s safe?” Lucia asked.

  “Of course,” Violet said. “Ana will keep an eye on them. We have workers’ kids running all over the farm, and everyone will assume they belong to someone else.”

  “That’s not what concerns me.”

  “If the police come, they usually want to question me, or my sister, or one of the workers. They don’t care about the kids. And anyway the kids aren’t always good at keeping quiet when you need them to, so everyone’s safer this way. Speaking of that…” Violet pointed to a small light bulb wired to a roof beam. “If that lights up, everyone must lay low and be quiet. It’s for emergencies. Follow me?”

  “When do we cross the border?” Ruppert whispered his question, which drew scowls from both Lucia and Violet.

  “You’ll cross when it’s time, with everyone else,” Violet said. “And I will thank you not to ask more of those kinds of questions. There’s a washroom downstairs if you need it, but otherwise please stay up here unless somebody comes for you. Are you going to be all right? I have a lot of work this morning.”

  “We’re fine,” Lucia said. “
Thank you so much.”

  “My pleasure.” Violet closed the concealed door after her.

  Ruppert looked among the others in the crowded room, smiling awkwardly, thinking of how nobody liked to talk in an elevator. He saw a lot of dull eyes and blank faces, the signs of people who’d experienced unspeakable things. A man in the back corner looked familiar to him, but it took Ruppert a minute to place him. Then he ran over to the man.

  “Sully?” he asked.

  Sullivan Stone barely resembled the man he’d been a few months earlier. His head was shaved, and scars twisted across his exposed scalp. Splotches of bruised purple and sickly yellow marred his face and arms. A hashwork of scars tattooed the left side of his face, and the eyelid there drooped over a staring, bloodshot eye.

  Ruppert recalled what Archer had told him, that it was likely Sully had been sent to a behavior modification clinic.

  “Sully, are you okay?”

  Sully blinked at him, showing no sign of recognition.

  “You know him?” Lucia asked Ruppert.

  “Sully. He was the one who was going to…do what I did. It should have been him that you extracted, his house’s memory you deleted instead of mine.”

  “That’s Sullivan Stone?” Lucia knelt on the other side of Sully. “Oh. Wow. I see it. How are you?” She took his hand, but Sully pulled it back and folded his arms around himself.

  “Sully, look at me close,” Ruppert said.

  Sully did look at him, mouth open, appearing to comprehend nothing. Then he said, “Daniel?”