“Look out!” he yells, reaching across the cabin to physically grab his friend’s attention.
The road beyond the top of the incline is gone. And not because they are unable to see it from their vantage point; rather it has ceased to exist.
Ryan skids the car, a death grip on the wheel keeping them under control. They slide right up to the jagged concrete edge. The protruding pieces of steel that line the edge are thoroughly rusted leaving the surrounding pale concrete stained burnt red reminiscent of blood. Below them the road surface continues with only slightly more cracks than they would have expected, just at a lower elevation as it is resting on the road it is supposed to be crossing. The freeway under the bridge was deserted during the storm, which fortunately means that no one was trapped beneath the toppling cement.
They sit in the idling car perched above the precipice contemplating their next move.
“Well this should make it easier,” Ryan says as he scratches the tuft of ginger hair sprouting from his chin. “They’ll have to come off the freeway and around the overpass here.”
“How are you so sure they’ll come this way?” Jon asks, having trusted his friend’s plan so far but beginning to question some of the assumptions on which it is based.
“I had an internship with the city’s public planning and maintenance office a few years back, and one of the things I remember is that this is the hazardous material corridor through town. And after all, what could be more hazardous than a van full of criminals?” Ryan says confidently. “They’ll be coming down this freeway as soon as the driver finishes his union-mandated unpaid company breakfast.”
Jon says nothing but nods as he scans the roadway below them. He knows enough about their world to understand the government’s penchant for standardized operating procedures even if there is something minor, such as a collapsed bridge, which could inconvenience those expected to execute them. If there is no approved contingency plan, then proceed according to the original plan.
Scanning the length of the road, Jon takes in the amount of debris that is littering the pavement for its entire visible length before it disappears around a bend.
“The good news is the driver is going to be going slowly,” Jon concludes as a result of his observation. “They’ll come up over the interchange here.”
Ryan reverses the car until it is parked at a spot on the exit ramp where the ramp is only one car’s width across. The collapse of the bridge had pulled most of the pavement into the main road below, further adding to the substantiality of the road block caused by the downed bridge. He edges farther onto the narrow patch of pavement and pops the hood before engaging the brake and turning off the engine.
Both men exit the car and breathe deeply of the crisp morning air, but lacking the time to dawdle they hustle to the back of the car and remove their homemade spike strip and the old but well maintained shotgun their hosts had lent them. After a hasty discussion, they decide to modify their original plan and place the strip in the narrow shoulder that their car is not blocking. Ryan will try and direct them around his “broken down” car and onto the strip, and once they grind to a stop, Jon will toss one of the bottles of liquor they liberated from their previous hosts’ basement in order to get the driver out.
As soon as they deposit the spikes, Ryan takes up position by the hood of the car and Jon by the trunk. The morning air is chilly but Jon doesn’t notice it despite the light breeze. The slight tremor to his hands as he flips the lighter open and closed is not brought on by the cold air. As they wait Jon finds his mind flitting between a series of unrelated recollections from the past several months: everything from a paper he never finished writing, a quick smile that Sara flashed at him while they had been hiding, to the smell of burning gunpowder. He realizes his thumb is starting to hurt from the number of times it has flipped open the lighter. It feels like he has made the soft metallic click at least ten thousand times. Before Jon can more accurately gauge the passage of time he hears Ryan work the action on his borrowed shotgun and call out.
“They just rounded the bend. Let’s do this!” Ryan’s voice is filled with expectant excitement, but Jon stays quiet, just inhaling and exhaling firmly through his teeth. He adjusts his grip on the heavy glass bottles and tries to force the parade of doubts from his mind.
The heavy duty van rounds each of the gentle curves in the freeway like it is the final curve before the finish line. Its shocks sag as the momentum transfers energy across the chassis. Jon’s breath catches in his throat as he sees the wheels on one side of the van begin to lose contact with the pavement. But before they can fully break free, there is a faint screeching as the van’s driver applies the brakes, gently pitching the van forward as it slows.
The driver begins to weave through the debris and abandoned vehicles that litter the road. He shows no indication of recognizing the downed bridge, and Jon begins to question if in their hasty inspection of the collapsed overpass they missed a clear path that will allow the van to cruise past beneath them.
At the last minute, the driver swerves through the shoulder and onto the off-ramp with a tired screech of his tires. The van bounces up the rough pavement on the incline as Jon lights the piece of rag protruding from the bottle’s neck. The flame catches instantly, its golden fingers spreading quickly along the alcohol-soaked cloth.
The van skids as the driver realizes Ryan has parked his car across the drivable path, blocking the top of the overpass. The heavy vehicle struggles to change course around it. Managing to swerve into the emergency lane, the van’s driver doesn’t even see the spike strip until driving over it, and with a staccato burst all the tires explode and the van slides under its momentum into the concrete barricade on the far side of the intersection. One side of the van’s hood crumples and it twists sideways against the cement gently rocking on its springs.
Jon hears Ryan begin to yell for the driver to put up his hands and get out of the van as he charges towards the driver’s door. Still crouched by the rear of their parked car, Jon waits for a second before taking a deep breath and punctuating his friend’s demands. With a casual underhanded toss, Jon arcs the liquor bottle onto the van’s hood.
The bottle’s path through the chill morning air cuts a mesmerizing arc of fire as the burning rag trails out along its length, and the low angle of the sun catches the angles of the glass bottle. Jon misjudges his throw, and the bottle crashes into the pavement in front of the hood, sending shards of glass and clear liquid spewing onto the van’s grill. For a split second nothing happens.
Then a fire blossoms all over the front of the unmarked van. Its flames lick up the glistening paint and along the windscreen, yearning to wrap the whole vehicle in their embrace. Ryan is sprinting to get to the side of the van and is several strides short of the driver’s door as the flame erupt.
Inside the van, the driver in an attempt to escape the shotgun in Ryan’s hands, which is leveled at his window, slides across the cabin to try the door on the passenger’s side. The door is blocked by the guardrail bouncing back violently as he tries to force it open. With the windscreen licked by flame, the passenger side blocked by concrete and steel, and the back of the van full of criminals, the driver lunges back towards the driver’s door. By the time he slides back to the driver’s side, Ryan has closed the remaining distance. Without hesitating, he uses the shotgun to bash in the glass, grabs the frightened driver by his shirt collar, and drags him out onto the pavement.
Throwing him to the ground, Ryan chambers a round and with nothing more than a growl encourages the frightened man to scramble to his feet and sprint away. Jon jogs to the rear of the van to open the double doors, but they are locked. Poking his head around the side to alert Ryan to their predicament, he sees the driver disappear into the shopping plaza without a glance back at his abandoned vehicle.
The big man, following along with Jon’s as of yet unspoken concerns, reaches inside the van and manually disengages the locks while still covering th
e driver’s hasty retreat with the unwavering muzzle of the shotgun.
There is a solid clunk as the locks disengage, and without a hint of caution Jon throws the doors open. Inside the van, there is nothing but darkness. The sun rising in front of the van means its rays cannot penetrate the interior of the vehicle, but it does glare around the corners and straight into his eyes forcing him to squint even as he strains to see into the shadows.
One by one, hesitantly, bedraggled forms begin to emerge from the cavernous opening. Their feet and hands are shackled, forcing them to hop awkwardly down onto the pavement.
The first several people out of the van glance past Jon and immediately begin scanning the area for any additional trouble. They seem unfazed by the flames cheerfully licking the front of their recently vacated transportation. It is not that they do not see their liberator; it is merely that they are no longer interested in him. However, their collective interests are captured by Ryan as he walks towards them, casually flipping a pair of bolt cutters as if they are a juggling pin. One the five people who had exited the van first after quickly taking in the flames covering the van’s front, the conspicuously absent driver, and Ryan’s worn and mud stained civilian clothing begins shuffling towards him, manacles proffered for his attention. Whatever Jon and Ryan plan to do with van’s prisoners, the large bolt cutters that he pulls from his belt with his freehand can only be for one purpose.
Content that their plan is unfolding as expected, and with no armed response force mounting on the horizon, Jon turns his attention back to the van now sitting a little higher on its suspension after the removal of a significant amount of weight. He steps up to the double doors, one hand shielding his eyes from the glaring rays and the other resting on the cool metal decking of the van’s interior.
Peering into the darkness, his eyes adjust to the gloom quickly, but it takes a moment for his mind to fully register what they see. The crowd around Ryan waiting for him to cut their shackles is only about a third of the van’s total population, which means they would have been forced to stand around the figure lying on the floor. Given the driver’s erratic style, they each would have been hard pressed to keep from stepping on the blanketed form. One of the people still standing shifts as the mass of people flow into the newly vacated space, and Jon is able to identify the lying form. It is his old advisor from the university.
He lets out a small gasp as he realizes the extent of her apparent injuries. Each of her visible appendages are covered in casts and bandages, with only the tips of fingers protruding from the plaster. The rest of her body is covered in a taupe standard-issue hospital blanket.
Kneeling by Professor Esmali‘s side is the woman Jon and Ryan had seen in the security camera footage; the rather unremarkable graduate student they had set out to rescue. She glances up from the control unit strapped to Professor Esmali‘s chest and, recognizing Jon, she waves him into the van as more of its passengers exit around him.
“She’s drugged up on some heavy stuff, I’m not going to be able to bring her around without a couple of hours to wean her system off this stuff,” the woman says with authority. “We’ll have to move her like this.”
“Alright, I’ll grab this side,” Jon says hopping up across from her. “I don’t think we ever actually met, my name is Jon.”
“Leticia. Now, on three,” she says, flipping the edge of the blanket up to grab the stretcher’s frame underneath with practiced ease.
Jon is surprised by how light Professor Esmali is. Even rising from the awkward crouched position in the van, the two of them can easily lift the stretcher. After carefully stepping to the pavement, Jon looks up to see Ryan approaching.
“Is that all of them?” he asks, unable to see the van’s interior from his position.
Jon glances back inside. Having been preoccupied by moving Professor Esmali‘s body, he had simply ignored the other forms in the van, assuming they would take care of themselves. But he now realizes they are not moving, just sitting huddled in the back of the van showing no intention of leaving. They are huddled together as far from the open doors as they can get. Jon notes that about half of the detainees are too scared to leave the van even as the flames from the liquor bottle are beginning to heat the wall panels and smoke is beginning to wisp upwards from the floor as the cheaper components of the van start to burn.
“No, there are more,” Jon responds before turning back to the van.
“Come on, people, you’ve got to get out of there,” he says, now addressing the van’s occupants. “It’s going to burn down any minute.”
They glance fearfully at each other, seeming to suspect some sort of trap, but reluctantly they shuffle towards Jon. Satisfied that they at least won’t be roasted alive, Leticia and Jon move as quickly as they can towards their car limited by her limp. Her legs, stiffened by the cramped quarters of the van, seem to be in agony but the only outward sign is the grimace on her face as she urges Jon to move his end of the stretcher faster. Behind them they can hear Ryan attempting to cajole the detainees to let him cut their manacles and then run for the cover of the neighboring subdivision.
“I promise I’m not a government agent.” Ryan’s voice is showing signs of exasperation as the prisoners refuse to believe him.
“I’m innocent,” one of the stubborn prisoners says defiantly. “There is no way you’re going to get me to incriminate myself by trying to escape. My trial will clear my name.”
“Good luck with that,” Ryan says tossing the bolt cutters at their feet. “In case you come to your senses and change your mind, I’ll leave these for you.”
Ryan turns his back on them frustrated and disappointed in their blind faith in the system. A system that after several weeks of vigorous “questioning” will likely find them all guilty of aiding a terrorist group and summarily execute them in the basement of some bland office building because they didn’t perform their civic duty and try to stop himself and Jon.
Ryan jogs past Jon and opens the rear doors of the borrowed car. Leaning through from the far side, he beckons Leticia and Jon forward so he can grab the front edge of the stretcher.
“What happened to the rest?” Jon asks as they hand off Professor Esmali’s body.
“Scattered,” Ryan says. “As soon as I cut their chains, they started running in all directions.”
The stretcher fits snugly across the cabin of the small family vehicle, but both doors are still able to close. In the distance they can hear sirens begin to wail as the automated distress beacon in the van notifies the authorities that it is on fire. Their rescue has come to an end and it is time they escape back into suburbia before they join the manacled prisoners.
“One last chance. Get away while you still can,” Ryan shouts at the forms clustered close to the flaming wreckage of the van. When they pointedly ignore him he shrugs and heads to the driver’s door muttering something about lemmings that Jon can’t quite make out.
Leticia sizes up her two rescuers and without comment climbs into the rear hatch of the car, shoving the usual assortment of empty shopping bags and emergency gear out of her way to carve a nest in the small space behind the rear seats.
“Let’s get moving,” Ryan says after gently closing the rear hatch, carefully trying to not catch any of Leticia’s hair in the seal. Their car full and as many freed as were willing to be, it is time for them to leave.
As they pull away, the burning alcohol makes it into the engine compartment of the transport van, resulting in an explosive rush of flame that pours out of the air vents and grill as a coolant oil reservoir is introduced to flame. Jon glances in the mirror mounted to his door in time to see the outlines of the people who had decided to try their luck with the authorities. They now appear as nothing more than a series of huddled forms silhouetted by the rapidly spreading orange flames.
Taking a breath and beginning to contemplate the fate of anyone who falls into the government’s hands, Jon pities them. It is not like they have done anythin
g, at least aside from whatever it was that put them in the van to begin with, but they are going to be treated as if they planned the whole escape. As Jon’s thoughts wander he realizes that to some degree his pity is misplaced. While he certainly feels sorry for their situation, his judgment shifts to be envy—envy that they have somehow managed to retain some of the faith he once had in their government, some hope that its agents will treat them as fellow humans.
Jon shakes his head infinitesimally and lets out a small sigh. His own disbelief in the humanity of the government’s agents is what has led him to where he is now: by all appearances an active member of the Resistance he had always scoffed at as nothing more than a political construction used to justify the heightened level of security throughout the country, his rebellion incited by his desire to look out for people he knows personally.
With his mind wandering, the drive back through the suburbs passes without him registering any of the generic scenery as it rolls by. The street that eventually runs in front of the house they have been hiding in seems quiet when they turn off the subdivision’s main collector, but they can only see down its length for several houses before a gentle curve hides its end from view.
The car purrs quietly along, each of its occupants maintaining their silence. The road winds gently to the left before descending into a gentle depression. The houses are still shadowed, as the sun is only just beginning to break free from the horizon and the smog that clings there as it begins its short journey. The road bends to the right again as it climbs the short slope out of the depression, and the house where they had sheltered, where they had left Professor Hallowell, comes into view.
The durable landscaping, which had made it through the night’s storm relatively unscathed, has been torn to pieces by the haphazardly parked emergency fleet gathered atop it. A heavily armed police force is just preparing to knock on the front door as they cruise by.
Seeds to the Wind (The Medicean Stars Saga Book 2) Page 21
