The Guide

by Peter Heller

  “I think we should fish. In case somebody’s watching,” he said. “Try to act normal. We gotta get through this morning. We’ll fish.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Then what?”

  “We fish up to the lodge before lunch. Then we walk to my truck to get some gear. Streamer boxes. You say out loud you’re curious to see the dam and tailwater upstream, no harm in that, lockdown or no. ’Cause you’re always a rebel. Then we make a break for it.”

  She was looking at him like a little kid who wants to believe a fairy tale. He picked up the rod again and found the end of the tippet he’d dropped fifteen minutes before and tried to focus on tying on the fly. It was not a small hook but it took him several attempts to thread the eye.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Jack was never good at hiding his emotions. Or faking them. He was never, for instance, in a high school play. What you saw was what you got. Now he wanted out and he wanted to bring her with him, and he wanted to bust whatever was happening here as fast as he could. With a call or text to the right person or not. Barring that, he wanted to kill. The men in black and Jensen to start with. Den foremost. Once he and Uncle Lloyd had driven up to Craig to watch Jack’s cousin Zane ride bareback broncs at the July Fourth rodeo. They were walking the dusty fairgrounds during the kids’ mutton busting and they came around the corner of a four-horse trailer and saw a team roper yanking the head of his gelding around by the bit. Hard. Too hard. The horse’s mouth was frothing and his eyes were wild and the man was hissing and growling. Lloyd stepped up and tapped the man’s shoulder and when he turned he decked him. A mouth punch that must’ve broken the man’s jaw. “How’s that feel?” he said to the roper, who was coming to all fours and dripping blood into the dirt. Lloyd turned and took the reins and stroked the dun’s neck and walked him straight to the event vet and said, “I’d like to report horse abuse.” He didn’t need a photo, the horse’s mouth was bleeding.

  As they walked away from the doc’s trailer, Lloyd turned to Jack and said, “Some people need killing. Simple as that.” Jack never forgot it.

  They fished upstream, riffle to riffle, pool to pool, and for the first time in his life Jack could not connect—either to the water or to Alison’s movements—he followed in a trance, and she forced the heavy streamer and casted too fast and tangled her line every third throw. But they kept at it, and they stopped thigh-deep in a long eddy and ate a trail bar Jack had in his pack and shared a quart of Gatorade. And fished on. At 11:15 they walked up the steps and hung their waders at the corner of the porch and put their rods in the rack to be ready for an afternoon fish, and Jack said loudly, “Let’s get a good variety of streamers. I’ve got two boxes in my truck. It’ll be a good education.” And she nodded and they walked up the sandy, needle-strewn road to the parking area by the gate. As they walked, he looked up into the aspen on the slope and saw, on the porch of one of the empty cabins, a figure standing stock-still. It was Cody, and he was watching their progress with zero expression.

  They got to the back of his truck and he found the key to the topper in his pocket and swung up the windowed hatch and called, “We’ll get streamers and we’ll try some crawdads, too. Why not.”

  And she stood back and looked at the sport watch on her wrist and said, “Hey, we’ve got over half an hour till lunch. Let’s go up and look at the dam. No harm in that. I’ve heard the tailwater is a legendary fishery.”

  “Sure,” he called. “Why not?” He glanced at his watch. “We’ve got time. Better get a move on. Here. The numbers to the keypad.” He lifted his chin to the gate and tossed her the tag Kurt had given him the first afternoon. “I’ll close up and pick you up.”

  He took the fly boxes from the back. Also from the plastic bucket his fencing tool—which was a hammer, staple puller, heavy-duty pliers, and wire cutter all in one—and two sticks of dynamite, which he stuck in his waistband under his shirt. He locked the handle to the topper, climbed into the driver’s seat. Started the truck. Pressed the electric opener and slid down his window. Put the truck in reverse. And looked up in time to see her punch the numbers on the keypad on its post, then punch them again. Then turn to face him, her hand to her mouth in naked fear. The gate had not budged.

  * * *

  •

  Jack picked up the fly boxes, locked his door, held the new gear where it was visible, and without a word they walked back down the track to lunch. Up ahead a path fed into the sand road from the cabins on the slope, and the Takagis were coming down it, hand in hand, almost in a trance. The wind was moving in the trees, bending the limbs and rushing the leaves, but they didn’t seem to notice. They moved as if they were heading to a proceeding they did not much care for. And when they joined the track and noticed Jack and Alison, they startled and forced a smile and there was an awkward moment when all four put on face masks and the Takagis gestured for them to go first, but Alison insisted. And so the four of them walked down to the lodge, two by two, with the Takagis leading by a few feet.

  Jack now felt cornered and more than ever he knew he had nothing to lose. He said loud enough for the Takagis to hear, “We saw the kids. In their hospital gowns.”

  Did the Takagis hitch and stop for just a second? Yes. Then they walked.

  “One girl was just murdered and fed to dogs.”

  Another hitch, a slight turn of the ear. He could only see the backs of their heads.

  “We saw it,” Jack continued. “What the hell is going on here. Time to say. Now. And keep walking like nobody’s talking.”

  “I—We can’t…We…” Yumi stammered.

  “It’s time,” Jack said. The harsh authority in his own words surprised him. “Children are being murdered.”

  They were all walking slowly. Yumi cleared her throat. Hesitated. “We were told,” Yumi said, just loud enough. Lucky she was wearing a mask—a camera would not know they were conversing. She spoke in a rush. “We were told they were volunteers, that they and their families were being compensated beyond their wildest dreams. We…asked about the restraints when they hooked them up to the machines, the bruising. All those machines…”

  Now Teiji. “We were told that the transfusions can cause convulsions, harmless in themselves. But that the restraints prevented self-harm. It is clear this is not the case.”

  “What the hell is going on?” Jack said again.

  “Plasma,” Teiji said.

  “Plasma,” Jack muttered, but they heard him.

  “Super immunity,” Teiji said. “From all disease. Live survivor plasma. In very few…special subjects.” He was having uncharacteristic trouble organizing his thoughts. “Also the possibility of reverse aging. As shown in rats.”

  “As shown in rats,” Jack repeated. It was all he could muster. And to keep a straight line. His mind was reeling. He was thinking about the girl, how thin she was. The small boy convulsing. For how many rounds did they use them before they were wrung out? But now the group was only twenty-five yards from the front porch and the lodge and so Jack raised his voice and said, “Streamers are tough, but we think we’ll have good luck down below again this afternoon.”

  * * *

  •

  He had said it without thinking, but realized during lunch he had set a plan in motion. They would “fish” below, again. The dogs were kenneled up in the shed off the barnyard. The disposal shed. He and Alison would go straight over the fence, straight downriver to the next property or the next, and steal a car and run. They’d text pics to Vince on the way. Extreme urgency. The little boy didn’t have long, Jack was sure of it.

  On the deck it was windier than any lunch had been. The breeze came flat downstream and swayed the tops of the pines, presaging maybe another storm, so they picked a new table against the lodge wall. Also, Jack thought their regular tables might be bugged. Was he paranoid? Definitely not. Super immunity. Reverse aging. He kept hearing the w
ords. Alison’s fury vibrated like a pot at full boil. Under her breath, between spoonfuls of cold consommé, she said, “Special subjects, Jesus. I read about it. The plasma of Covid survivors led to the study of those who had survived things like West Nile and dengue. They’re getting them from all over the world, Jack. They must be paying off nurses and docs from Saigon to Mexico City.”

  Jack spread his hand above the tablecloth with a motion downward: Let’s not talk about it now. Let’s focus on leaving. He couldn’t stop thinking about the term live survivor plasma. The images of Band-Aids on the backs of hands, of tubes running between billionaires and broken children. For some reason he kept thinking about Wynn’s sugar lot, the maple sap–gathering operation Wynn’s dad ran in Vermont in March and April, the crisscrossing clear plastic tubes running from tree to tree and down the slopes to the gathering tanks. Den wasn’t selling syrup, he was selling immortality. Or the closest thing money could buy. Jack tried not to look—at the knighted windmill mogul leaning affably toward his…whatever she was, maybe talking about what they would do with years and years of beaming health; the blond couple chattering away in a patch of sunlight.

  But he did look, and before his eyes they morphed into vampires.

  He and Alison finished the meal, took the waders from the pegs, and geared up; took down the rods; Jack checked his waist pack as if for flies and confirmed he had the Glock. Then they went down the steps with the speed of eager fisherpeople.

  Down the trail without stopping. Through the grove of poplars to the barbed-wire fence. Over the river the steel strands gleamed in sunlight. It occurred to him then that barbed wire would not stop vicious dogs, that the mastiffs would jump it as the deer did, or crawl under or through like bears. Why didn’t they? Because there must be an invisible fence as well, the dogs must wear shock collars. But they were in the shed, so.

  “Hold on.” Jack thought about his thermostat.

  No way they wouldn’t have a camera down here. They were still twenty feet from the fence and he scanned the trees, the limbs around them. He squatted low in the middle of the trail, leaned far forward so he could see three more trunks and he saw it. The camo-printed strapping. It was at knee height, around a poplar set back from the trail, but with an opening forward toward the fence. The wind was thrashing in the canopy, coming downstream, which was not usual in the afternoons. It meant a weather front. Good. Because the brush was moving, too. Jack approached the tree and from behind and above he could see the plastic rectangle of the game camera. Also printed in camo. The perfect, least obvious device, set to record only when there was movement in front of it. They used them on the ranch often, to see when the coyotes or bears came down to harass the new calves. Jack would not shoot them as his neighbors did, but if they were around in calving season he would often take his tent and sleep in the pasture with the dogs. The camera here would not just produce a video to be retrieved later, it would be wired in to Wi-Fi or a transmitter for a live feed.

  He reached up and broke a dense dry limb off a spruce that was among the poplars and when a gust flattened the leaves of the trees on the other side of the fence he threw the limb down sideways across the camera as if blown. Good. A mass of lacy twigs covered the lens.

  “Okay,” he said to her. “We’re good.”

  He’d put the fencing tool and dynamite in his waist pack and now he fished out the heavy red-handled cutters and snipped the strands between two posts. No sound of dogs, good. She watched him. “You think they have another camera?” she said, scanning the trees.

  “Maybe,” he said. “We’re gonna have to move fast.”

  “Should we bring the rods?” she said. “The waders?”

  He hesitated. “Yes. It’s always an alibi. We couldn’t resist…”

  “Okay.”

  He motioned her into the gap. She made herself smile and walked through.

  “Hold on,” he said. The lowest strand lay unsprung and curled around her foot. She held on. She scanned the shadowed woods ahead for movement. Animal movement. He bent to untangle the wire and pull it back and never got up.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The smack flashed a jag of light, then darkness. Thud of pain, back of head. Taste of mineral grit and moss.

  He knew he had been toppled by a blow. The corner of his mouth, right side, was in the trail. Through the throb of blood in his ears he could hear a startled cry and slap. He tried to open an eye, the one not in dirt. He did. Blurry. He saw a tall figure, just a shape, yanking Alison around by her hair, saw another arm go back against the sky and strike her. Then the voice.

  “I always liked your music, I did. Kinda slutty, though, I always thought. Nothin’ but love songs, I figure she’s gotta be a slut, and damn if I weren’t dead-on. God.” Hearing still good, Jack heard a loud spit. Cody. What the fu—And he saw the free hand go to her face, heard her gurgled groan, because now he had her by the throat.

  The shot popped. Not the narrow crack of a rifle but a round report, almost like a rock hitting rock. And Jack saw the tall shadow stagger back and double over and then he, Cody, hit the dirt. He was humped less than ten feet away.

  And then she was on him, on Jack, lifting his head in both hands, saying, “Jesus, Jesus, you okay? You okay? Goddamn. Please please don’t be mortally wounded, I swear I’ll be mad.”

  And Jack moaned out as best he could, but the words garbled, and she was peeling off her torn shirt and holding it to the back of his head, pressing it with one hand while the other reached for a strap on the pack and hauled it to her and worked out the water bottle and then she was pouring cold water on the back of his head where her hand had been and she was saying, “That lowlife bastard, that fucker, I knew, I knew he was bad medicine. God…”

  * * *

  •

  When he could speak, or think, he looked wildly around. As wildly as someone can look who is still fighting to swim up out of the murk.

  He croaked, “Who shot? Who shot him? Where’d they go?”

  “Shhh. Relax. Try not to talk for a minute, just rest. You’re okay. I think.”

  “But who—?”

  She patted her chest.

  “You? No…”

  She pressed her shirt against the back of his head to quell the bleeding. She freed up one hand and it dropped to her pants and she pulled up a very compact Walther semi-auto, 9-mil. Black.

  “The James Bond gun,” she said. “Always in my fishing vest. Remember, I go fishing by myself all the time.”

  “I…” He struggled to sit up. Made it to all fours. “We gotta go.”

  He’d been hit in the head before. By horses, in fights. It throbbed, it wasn’t that bad. “We gotta go now,” he said.

  They heard a guttered moan and Jack straightened on his knees and they both turned. Cody was on his side gripping his left thigh where it gushed. He was in deep shade, ten feet into Ellery’s. Then they heard the barks. Yips like shouts at first, then the snarls and building furor. Jack stood. Slight sway, steadied, it’d be okay. He grabbed her arm and tugged. “Gotta go now!”

  He was already pulling her toward the cut strands and over them. Sounded like a hundred dogs, more bays now, then barks, and he could tell they were tearing down the hill.

  “What about him?” she said, looking back at the guide on the ground.

  “No time,” Jack said. As he said it, Cody yelled, “Hey, fuck, hey! Just drag me across. They’re electric-collared, they’re collared!”

  Jack gave her one more hard pull and looked back to see two packs of dogs pouring down through the trees. And then they were running upriver.

  * * *

  •

  He had heard the frenzy before, the furious snarls and tearing. But before there had not been the smothered then gurgled cries.

  * * *

  •

  Well trained or elec
tric-collared, the dogs did not come after them. He could imagine them desperately charging back and forth along the invisible line between the posts, and then all along the intact fence. They ditched the rods. Just dropped them into the limbs of a box elder. And ran.

  His head seeped but not badly. He felt nauseated, concussed for sure, but his gyroscope was intact, eyes clear. All he could hope for. He did not have a plan. There had been no Plan B, but as they hustled up the trail he remembered the phone on the desk in the main office. He expected the rip of automatic fire at any second, leaves shredding around them, but there was nothing. Because, he thought, as he pulled her along, whoever was watching could suddenly not see through the camera at the fence. Not an emergency, they had the dogs. But they sent Cody to keep an eye on them. To contain them if he had to. Maybe that gave them time. The mercs were probably up at Kreutzer’s securing the kids, overseeing the treatments. Someone would have to call them. But there might not be anyone. Jensen might be in town or having lunch up above, or in his suite at the upper lodge, or wherever Jensen goes. If anyone heard any barking they might reasonably assume the dogs were running deer or a lion.

  They did not take the steps up to the lodge but kept moving. Another quarter mile. Then they took the trail up to Jack’s cabin. He shoved through the door, grabbed a tech shirt from the bureau, and threw it to her, took a bandanna off a hook and tied it around his head. He stripped his clumsy wading boots and waders and shoved on running shoes. She did the same, but had no other shoes. He yanked open a drawer and handed her two pairs of rolled wool socks. She’d have to wear her wading boots. Jack rebuckled the waist pack.

  “Where are we going?” she said.

  “The office. They have a phone. You’ve got yours, right? With Vince’s number.”