Death Across the Lake

by Lyle Hightower

  “Follow me,” Irene said, as she slipped along the hallway, her gun held at the ready. “These buildings are all the same. If he has an office here, it’ll be down the next hallway, after the turn.”

  We walked past a set of doors, all of them open, dark, seemingly unused, until we came to one that had a locked door, both bolted and with a padlock.

  “In here,” she said.

  We threw our weight against the door. After a few tries that must have made a lot of noise, we got the door open.

  The room was spare, almost empty. There was a window that looked out over the town. It was dark out, which meant we’d been here for hours, and it was the first time in a while that I’d had any sense of the passage of time. There was a desk, with an ancient computer on it, and some other electronic boxes under it and around it. The screen was on, flashing periodically, but it displayed nothing. There was a metal plaque built into the floor at the far end of the room. I walked over to it.

  “This is a safe,” I said. “Built into the floor.”

  “Can you try to open it?” she said.

  “I don’t have any tools. I can try, but I doubt it.”

  “Do what you can,” she said, and she sat down at the computer.

  As I tried to wrestle with the safe, she turned on the computer, and within minutes she seemed to be getting somewhere.

  “I’ve found his files, but they’re all empty,” she said. “What looks like codenames, locations, but that’s it, and then a reference to another document. But this is definitely something. Montpelier, Barrie, St. Johnsbury, it’s a list of towns and strategic locations in Vermont, dozens of them.”

  I was staring down at the safe as she said this.

  “They’re in here,” I said. “He’s split up the data in two locations. You need to be able to access both to get any valuable information. Otherwise, it’s just a name and a location, or a bunch of irrelevant biographical data, with nothing to connect it to a person or a place. We need to get this open, and quick, before they find us.”

  “That’s blast rated,” she said, getting up and taking a closer look at the safe. “We won’t get through it without the combination, or someone who knows how to use very heavy explosives.”

  “You can’t do it?” I asked. “You took down that bridge pretty swiftly.”

  “That didn’t require any precision. We need someone with a little more finesse. I don’t know anyone here who can do that.”

  “I think I know someone who can do it,” I said, suddenly remembering an old friend, someone I hadn’t seen in a long time.

  Just then I heard the sound of a door swinging open and boots coming down the hallway.

  “We have to get out of here,” I said. We looked at each other, then looked at the window.

  “The chair,” she said, and picking it up, she threw it through the window, and there was a sound of broken glass falling to the ground below.

  We climbed out onto the narrow ledge, and seeing a drainage pipe bolted to the side of the building, we both held on to it, and started pulling on it until it came loose. Bullets flew past us as the troops entered the office and ran towards the window. We nodded at each other in understanding, and, still holding the pipe, we jumped away from the window, wrenching the pipe away from its fitting, levering us down to the ground. We hit the ground hard, and as we stood up, a line of machine gun fire, hit right next to my foot. We were off, running into the night.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  We ran into a stand of trees not far from the grounds of the building. We could hear running back in the direction we had come from. Winded as we were from our third floor jump, we had to keep running; they were after us, and wouldn’t stop until we were found.

  I had a vague sense of where we were, somewhere south of the city, based on what we’d been able to see out the window. We ran towards the lights of town, even though we’d be easier to spot there, easier to notice. We stayed off the road as best we could, though as we got closer in, it became harder to do this, and periodically we’d have to walk on the road, and hope we didn’t run into any Militia patrols. We ran for a as much of it as we could, and pretty soon we hit the Saranac river. We climbed down the embankment.

  “We’ll be able to follow the river into town,” Irene said. We would be able to skip the big roads, and then try to get back to our motel room when the heat died down.

  Plattsburgh, as most people experience it, is a dirty, grimy, dangerous place, with a rotten core. But walking along the river, even as we got close into town, we found another world. The unexpected first sign of life was a girl, couldn’t have been more than ten years old, standing on a rock a ways out into the river, fishing. She saw us, and though we were initially worried about being seen by anyone, she waved. We waved back, and as we got closer we could see in the moonlight that her clothes were torn, and she didn’t have any shoes. Her fishing rod was a stick with a string attached to it. We kept moving, and found a small encampment not much further along. There were tents, and a few huts, dirty broken down corrugated metal shacks. A few women sat by a fire, with children sitting nearby eating from small bowls. A man walked out of one of the shacks and looking around, scratched his face and said something to one of the women, and went back into his shelter. Much closer to us, an old man sat on a fallen tree next to the riverbank, staring out at the water, chewing on what looked like squirrel meat. He smiled a nearly toothless smile as we passed, and then he called out to us.

  “Don’t see the likes of you much down by the river,” he said.

  “How’s that,” I asked.

  “Merchants? Something else? They usually stick to the roads. Something bad happen to ya?”

  “Just taking the scenic route, buddy.”

  “Buddy, haha. Well met, buddy. You’re wearing nice enough clothes, but torn to shreds. I’d bet my dinner,” he said, pointing at the squirrel carcass in his hand, “that ya’ll are running from the law.”

  “Just out for a stroll, I promise you. Times are tough, you can see that. Haven’t had the money to buy new clothes.”

  “A man with a gun like yours doesn’t need to buy clothes. He can take ‘em. So I think your story is bunk,” he hadn’t stopped smiling as he said this.

  I hadn’t realized the pistol I’d taken from unfortunate Mel was visible, the handle sticking out of my pants.

  “Fair enough. What’s it to you?”

  I was getting irritated, if not a bit nervous. Irene, strangely, seemed more amused than anything, and smiled back at the man.

  “Oh I’m sorry to pry mister. I just thought it was unnecessary, all this obfuscation, etcetera, etcetera. You’re in no danger here. If you’re running from the law, you’re in good enough company. No one here will give you any trouble. In fact, might you need somewhere to hide for a while? I offer only because there’s a worried air about you. Well, not the young lady so much, but you look a bit tense, and if you’re going to seek passage through my kingdom, I’d like it if you were relaxed about it. I’ve found it leads to less difficulty, in the long run, of course.”

  He seemed a bit unhinged, but harmless enough.

  “Come, I’ll show you around, and we can get you something to eat. You’re most likely hungry.”

  He led us towards the encampment, and we followed him warily, our hands close to our sidearms. There were others and they looked concerned as we approached, but the old man waved them off. Past the fire, my eyes adjusted, and looking up the steep embankment, I realized there were at least a dozen more huts, some of them quite large, built into the slope. There were garden patches, and up near the top of the embankment, below a high brick wall that separated the river ravine from the road and the houses above, he took us to a small hut.

  “This is my home,” he said. That over there is my garden. Not much sun here, but it’s invisible from the road, so the Militia doesn’t know to come uproot it. If you stay here a moment, I’ll get you something to eat. After that, if you like, you can s
leep.

  “Where will you sleep?” Irene asked.

  “Anywhere,” he said. “All of this is mine. All of this belongs to all of us.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  We ate squirrel and radishes. It wasn’t the heartiest meal, but it was enough, and tasted better than I had expected. The old man looked pleased, and bade us good night, and said that he would see us the next morning. We decided Irene would take the first watch, but when I woke up several hours later, Irene was asleep. I made to get up and looked around. All was quiet. I sat back down and looked at the scene for a while. The hut had no front to it, so it was essentially a stand. I could see everything down the hillside. It was actually a pretty good strategic position, especially with the wall to our backs. I looked around for a few minutes, but lay back down, and was asleep instantly.

  The next morning, I awoke to a multitude of little faces staring at me. Children, some quite young, others almost in their teens, were staring at both of us. One toddler held a stick, which he used to poke me in the face. I reached out to grab it, and threw it down the hill and the child started crying. An older girl, maybe nine or ten, whom I took to be his sister, scowled at me, and walked him back down the slope.

  There was a whistling sound and the children scattered, and our host could be seen walking up towards us.

  He looked markedly different now than he had the night before. The rags were gone. He was wearing a nice shirt, though it had clearly been patched up many times, but it was clean. His trousers fit. He wore a belt. His hair looked clean and had been combed.

  “How did you two sleep?” he asked.

  “Oh, fine,” Irene said. “We were very comfortable, I think. You look different, somehow.”

  “These are my ceremonial clothes. As the leader of this community, I have certain ceremonial duties to undertake from time to time. These are the clothes I wear for them.”

  I thought he was joking, but he seemed perfectly serious. As if reading my thoughts, he said, “I realize this outfit may not look like much to you, but the children here don’t see much of the world, and to them such an outfit carries a certain gravitas. It’s from another world. Children are born here on the riverside and never venture away from its banks. Their world is in two dimensions, a narrow ribbon that extends from the lock up the river about ten miles, to the shores of Lake Champlain. Oh certainly we send them out into the world once they reach thirteen or so, but then they’re orphans more or less, for a period.”

  “How many are you?” Irene asked.

  “Living on the river? Oh, about two thousand. Up top there are at least another five hundred. And that number grows and shrinks with the years and the seasons. It’s customary for them to return here for a time when they’re in their twenties, to bring back some of their earnings and accumulated wealth, such as it is, to help the community.”

  “There are thousands of them,” Irene said, looking at me. “Invisible, unseen, but living in a coherent, organized society.” She turned to face the old man again. “How did you end up here?”

  “We were all ejected from their world. We can send our young ones back there and they’re anonymous, motherless wanderers no one gives a second look. But all of us ended up here because we had no choice. We’ve made the best of it along the river for nearly as long as I’ve been alive. I was an infant, when I was brought here but even before the fall fugitives and rejects lived along the river. The poor who were poorer than poor.”

  In the daylight I could see more clearly where we were. On the other side of the riverbank an old house’s attic storey peeked over the treetops. Surely they could see into the tiny river community, could hear its children playing. Perhaps they chose not to see or hear.

  “You’re not far from the centre of town. I’m sure you have to leave, but know that you can stay here as long as you need to. In the meantime, let us give you clothes that will help you blend in.”

  He led us along the embankment to a shack maybe a hundred yards away. It was a good thirty feet long, and some of its walls looked as though they were from an old prefab unit that had been repurposed. “This is my sister’s home. She’s about your size, young miss, and her husband is perhaps your height and build,” he said.

  “Rhoda, I have some visitors for you,” he called out. A small, compact looking middle-aged woman came to the door. “Benji, more drifters?”

  “These ones seem special, my dear. Is Nicholas around?”

  “He’s in the back with the kids. You all want to come in? Just take off your shoes.”

  She led us into a small, low ceilinged room with a dirt floor, and gaps between the corrugated walls and the floor where the ground was uneven. She led us through another door into an altogether different kind of space, a linoleum floored room with a big carpet, couches and a dining table. There were windows, so despite the low ceiling and the size of the space, it was well lit. The deep burgundy carpet extended from wall to wall, and gave the place a cozy feeling. Woollen blankets were piled in the corner, and an ancient rocking horse, which must have been at least two hundred years old, was in the corner. There was a china hutch, full of plates, plastic and ceramic, unfinished earthenware pots and plastic ladles.

  “So what is it you’re looking for for these people,” she said, looking at Benji, ignoring us.

  “Clothes, Rhoda. As you can see what they’ve got on currently is less than satisfactory. You mind digging something up for them so as when they go topside they don’t get rounded up tootsweet?”

  “Waih Waih, savafare, ee troovay something por a aytranger.”

  “Sorry, what?” I said.

  “You’ll have to pardon my sister’s argot. She slips into our mother tongue when she’s wary of others listening to her. She’s shy. It’s French, more or less. A lot of us down here are from up north. Kinda filters into everyday language.”

  Bashful, terse Rhoda walked into a back room, a bedroom, and started digging through her closets looking for clothes.

  The other door at the back of the room opened, and a man, about Benji’s age walked out of a small room where I could make out two children lying on an old futon. He smiled and put his finger to his mouth to indicate silence, and gently closed the door.

  “My grandkids, they’re sleeping. Benji, comant sa vat. Too ben?”

  “Waih Waih Maurice, these folks just need some clothes, Rhoda is digging around for something for the two of them.”

  “You bet they need clothes,” Maurice said, and laughed. “Can’t walk around town looking like that. You kids need anything to eat or drink? I have some mashed nips and gravy in the refrigerator. Not much else. Beer?”

  We declined his offer, and Benji said he’d scare something up for us before we left, that Maurice need not worry about feeding us. Rhoda came out of the bedroom holding up two very colourful garments. The one for me was a kind of poncho made of stitched together sweatshirts, and a pair of track pants with most of the side snaps missing. Irene’s was a shift that looked like it was made out of old quilts, and it had a fringe. They were both strange, to say the least, but they fit with what the others in this community were wearing.

  “You should blend right into the background,” Benji said. “Folks’ll take you for river people, ignore you at best, keep their distance at worse.” This was exactly what we needed. We said goodbye to Rhoda and Maurice, and Benji took us down to the water, where breakfast was being cooked and a dozen or so people sat around a fire, waiting for a pan of turnips, potatoes, and a few unidentifiable bird carcasses.

  There wasn’t much talk around the fire. What curiosity the children had had about us, they lost when we showed up dressed more or less like their parents. They ran around playing, while the adults sat around, poking at the fire and tending to the food.

  “If you follow the river until the next bridge, you can climb up the embankment and you’ll be right in Broad Street, and then you can find your way to wherever you need to go.”

  Breakfast was small
–there wasn’t much to go around–but it was satisfying. After we ate, Benji pointed down the river, and said “go”. And we did. It took only twenty minutes or so for us to find our way along the river. There were habitations here and there, hidden in the underbrush. I thought that perhaps we wouldn’t have noticed them at all had we not spent the night among these people. But it was true, there must have been thousands of people living along the river, but they were entirely hidden, almost forgotten by the townsfolk above.

  We got to the Broad Street bridge and climbed up the embankment and up onto the road, and suddenly we were back in our own world. The street was busy, hundreds of people walking in and out of town. We walked along Brand Street and turned left on Catherine. We were no more than a ten minute walk from the motel, but it was enough time to see that something had changed. People turned their heads at us, if they noticed us at all. For a moment we lost our sense of direction, and I asked a young man walking in the opposite direction if he knew which way Cornelia Street was. He didn’t react at all. He just kept walking, as if nothing had happened. We warily walked past three Militia soldiers who would have known to look out for us, but it was as if we were ghosts, and they let us pass without so much as a glance.

  Finally we came to the motel, and walking to the end of the line of rooms, Irene found the key and started to unlock the door.

  “Hey, you two, what do you think you’re doing?” a voice called out. It was our landlady, who had emerged from the office holding a shotgun, and slowly walking towards us.

  “Hey, lady, we’re just trying to get into our room,” I said. She looked at me puzzled for a moment, and then there was the spark of recognition in her eyes. Then she looked suspicious again.