Concealed in the Shadows

by Gabrielle Arrowsmith

  Several sturdy men stand armed outside of an extended van. Like us, they are dressed in mismatched hunting camouflage. Behind the men stands a concrete canopy with gasoline pumps and a stripped store house. I assume this plan B location is the station where Cy ‘hit the jackpot’ by acquiring loads of gasoline and oil for Sheridan. Today, this place has no glory.

  Crewe is already engaged in conversation with one of the men. I take him to be Merick, the leader of Sheridan’s militia. Cy files in, hunching over to rest. Evvie and I are only seconds behind. Once we arrive, the enemy of the county will be complete. I have no choice but to hope that I’m wrong. I pull my sister along to catch the end of Crewe’s distribution orders.

  “Fill them in on everything we know,” Crewe orders Cy. “We’ll meet you in Sheridan.” Crewe tosses the cell phone to Cy, who catches it with one hand and stuffs it into his pocket. “If there’s any trouble, you call me right away.” I’m aware of the pain in Crewe’s heart as he makes the call to part from his brother.

  “I know,” Cy snaps. He misses the opportunity for a truce with his brother. I wonder if the tension between them goes beyond the intensity of what we’ve been running from.

  Cy leads the handful of men in a continuation of his sprint. A moment passes, and they are gone. I wish he hadn’t avoided my eyes as I passed Evvie into his care in the forest. It would be too much to expect that I’ll see Cy again but I hope for it anyway. I don’t think the world could get along without his smile.

  “Where are they going?” I demand, worried for their safety. Merick looks surprised by my nerve to challenge the plan. Maybe it is his plan and not Crewe’s. I don’t care if my question is perceived as disrespectful to this rough leader. He is nothing but a stranger to me. Why should I trust him? I wasn’t asking him anyway. I was asking Crewe, who has become less of a stranger in the day that has passed.

  “Get in,” Crewe orders. He chooses not to enlighten me on the destination to where the team of soldiers runs. I’m about to protest again when Merick’s movement toward the van and Crewe’s glare convince me to do as I’ve been told and leave the rest alone.

  I send Evvie in the van before me and glance back at Crewe for assurance that we’re going to be okay. His expression softens and apologizes for the glare he probably didn’t intend to discharge so harshly.

  “Nothing until afterward,” he says, pointing to his wrist. Right. No talk of our plan or that of Cy and the others until after Evvie’s chip is removed.

  “She’s all the way in the back,” says the grizzly leader in the driver’s seat. Evvie’s makeshift hospital bed is a folded-down bench seat. The rest of the van has been gutted and the seats reworked to fold down, like old theater seats did, from the side opposite the large sliding door.

  I fold down the only seat adjacent to the sliding door, but Merick in the driver seat tells me that it’s reserved for Della. Right, she’ll need to be closer to Evvie than I will. I shuffle over to the other side and pull down a seat one away from where my sister sits. Following my lead, Evvie stands and begins to fuss with the lever that will raise the backing of the bench seat to its upright position.

  “No. Leave it,” I tell her. “Be brave, Ev.” I know that’s all I can say to her with our assailants listening.

  Crewe helps the wheezing Della into the van. He silently communicates to her that the operation needs to be done in route. Her eyes bulge, but she nods and readies herself with a series of deep breaths.

  Crewe whips around to the twin hatch doors at the back of the van to lug in Galvesten and his baggage. Crewe seals up the back from the outside, hustles around, jumps lightly onto the van flooring, and slams the slider closed. He yanks down the last seat between me and another trooper.

  In buckling alone, Crewe’s bulk jostles me back and forth. With the van in motion, I decide to creep a spot closer to my sister. Crewe notices, but takes no offense. He lifts his weapon from the floor and places it on his lap, resting his pointer finger just above the trigger.

  Della is already elbow-deep in the contents of one of the bags that Galv lifted to her. She carefully lines a clean towel with a selection of surgical utensils.

  I stroke Evvie’s shin as Della lays her back and places a wet towel over her face. Evvie’s eyelids grow heavier and heavier and the creases in her forehead give way. I’m happy to take the burden of worry from her as she slips into unconsciousness.

  Although I’m concerned that she’s not completely under, I have to trust Galv and Della. We can’t waste any time. Della rubs alcohol along Evvie’s wrist while Galv tightly ties a band below her elbow. Although we are riding quickly and unsteadily, Galv’s hand is unwavering as he makes the incision.

  At first, there is little blood. That changes substantially after Della helps Galvesten switch his tool. He has to enter the radial artery to remove the tiny chip and the cilia-like sensors that protrude from it. Doing so requires some twisting and reentering of the tool. Warm blood begins to spill messily from Evvie’s wrist. My weak stomach begins to sicken from the compilation of the image and the worry it arouses.

  I feel a gentle hand come to rest on my back. I turn to see Crewe has either been watching the beginnings of the surgery too, or has been watching me. “Here,” he whispers as he ushers my queasy head between my knees. “It’ll be okay.” He leaves his hand on my back for another moment. I close my eyes and nod, feeling the hand lift after I indicate that I’m composed. Crewe doesn’t push friendliness or familiarity with me. He knows some uncertainties about him will linger in me until this whole ordeal is resolved.

  “Crewe,” Galvesten calls from my right. Crewe sets his gun on the floor and unbuckles. I keep my head lowered, knowing that what Crewe reaches for is the bloodstained chip that moments ago floated amid the swimming fluids in my sister’s artery.

  The driver stops the vehicle and turns off the headlights. The dark-haired, wiry young man sitting on my left unbuckles and opens the heavy slider. I peek to see Galvesten hand Crewe a magnifying glass just as Della redirects the portable, halogen light into my eyes. The driver anxiously turns to await Crewe’s examination of the chip.

  He gently flips the miniscule chip in his palm and squints to investigate. My heartbeat grows irregular. I hold my breath. Crewe’s face drops. He looks to the apprehensive driver and releases a depressing, “Yes.” I know the unasked question he was answering. Yes, the county government has been able to listen to my little sister all of her life through the unmistakable microphone Crewe sees in her chip.

  Crewe runs from the vehicle. The driver’s palms smash the steering wheel. The man in the passenger seat exits the car while the one to my left drops his head in his hands. I’ve brought all of this on them: melancholy, rage, and fear. These weren’t the men who abducted me from my haven, but in just eighteen hours, these perfect strangers have been dragged into the disaster surrounding my sister and me.

  “I’m sorry,” I offer to the man two seats away.

  “It’s not your fault,” the driver answers for him. “It’s no one’s,” he adds, clarifying that the other troopers should not misappropriate this misfortune to Crewe’s leadership.

  “You must be Merick,” I say.

  “I am,” he confirms. “And you must be Sydney Layton,” he says blandly as he reaches his hand back to shake mine. That’s right. I had forgotten that I gave Layton, not Harter, as my last name.

  I unbuckle to shake Merick’s outstretched hand. His handshake is firm yet welcoming. He trusts me despite the fact that my sister and me could easily be viewed as spies with our ahead-of-our-time, microphone-infested chips. Yet I don’t trust him, or even the Davids brothers, enough to reveal my real name. I hope there won’t be hell to pay when I decide to tell them the truth. Hopefully, they can understand my reasoning.

  “Jerus!” Merick yells out the passenger door that was left ajar. “Get back in here.”

  “My name’s Decklin,” says the young man next to me, whose face was buri
ed in his hands. “It’s nice to meet you,” he says absently.

  The heated man named Jerus returns to the van and slams the passenger door. “I didn’t give you an okay to get out of this van,” Merick scolds the man, not much younger than the leader himself.

  “He needed to have cover,” he says, referring to Crewe. Now that darkness has eliminated one of our adversaries, satellite imaging, the BOTs have only thermal imaging and global positioning to rely on. It’s probable that a warm-blooded body darting away from the others with the signal of a chip belonging to Evvie might be believed to be her. Melting and discarding her chip is a more dangerous job than usual.

  “He can handle himself,” Merick scolds.

  “Against BOTs?” Jerus returns.

  “He is a trained seeksmen,” Merick holds firm.

  “Who’s never seen resistance! He hasn’t been in combat like we have. He took off running in a straight line!”

  “Our duty is to the people of Sheridan!” Merick yells, cutting through the van. Galvesten pauses his stitch job in the back. “We protect them, foremost. If the BOTs strike, it’s one more casualty we add if you’re disobeying orders to provide him with cover,” he says, making a mockery of Jerus’ point. “If there were ten of us providing him with cover then eleven would be dead if they wanted it that way. Now shut up and buckle up!”

  Galvesten gets back to his stitching and I lift my seatbelt to buckle myself in again. Merick isn’t an improbable hero then. He’s real, calculative. He’s faced real combat, true warfare, in his life. He knows that on rare occasions men become heroes, but most of the time they die trying.

  “Model two, but with a mike.” Crewe shakes his head as he enters the tense vehicle. “Another first.” He pulls the door shut and buckles into his seat. The tires squeal, releasing some of Merick’s frustrations as we resume our travel.

  “Nothing from Cy, right?” Crewe asks Merick, who carries the other cell phone.

  “No. They should have arrived by now. They must not have met any hostility.”

  Or they were obliterated by it before they had the chance to call, I think silently. I wonder if anyone else has the same unspoken thought.

  “So what happened out there?” Merick asks Crewe in the review mirror. “When did the BOTs fire?”

  “No sir, the gunfire was our own,” Crewe says to his feet, too embarrassed to look up.

  “What!” Merick shouts simultaneously while I think it. My heart sinks to my stomach and then rises up in fury.

  “She moved from her post against the orders that were given. He wasn’t expecting it. He thought he saw movement toward her. He panicked and fired.”

  He. Cy. Cy shot at me! In his defense, his eyes deceived him. He thought he was protecting me.

  If Crewe or Galvesten had been the gunman, I might wonder if the shot was intentional. They would have the foresight, and thus the temptation, to end this ordeal and the potential for the casualty count to rise by killing me. One of them, Crewe especially, might have seen a quick solution, an alternative to endangering the lives of the seeksmen, or the whole town for that matter.

  Cy could have never intended to harm me. The darkness to do it just doesn’t exist in him.

  “You see what happens when you go against orders?” Merick shoots toward Jerus. I’m the one who takes his words to heart. “You’re lucky to be alive,” he says to me.

  I am. Whether the bullets were from BOTs or the trigger of the person I was beginning to trust most, the terror was nothing less. In that moment of sheer panic, Crewe’s instinct was to throw himself over me to steal the bullets from the flesh they sought. Cy could not have lived with himself. Thank God his aim was awry.

  “Wait,” Decklin pipes in. “You’re saying we don’t even know if the BOTs are aware that she’s out? That either of them are out?”

  He’s right. The BOTs didn’t fire a single shot. I kept expecting heavier fire, but it never came. Now I understand why. Now I’m again uncertain who they’re really after.

  “They know,” Crewe states. “Gunfire sounded, and in the panic we’re sure to have been caught on surveillance. You know they’ve reviewed it by now. I’m sure they were tracing her chip long before we made it to the station, likely all day.”

  “Then why wouldn’t they fire?” Jerus questions, his temper enflaming from before.

  “They mean something to Miles,” Crewe says, looking at my unconscious sister and me.

  “Give me a hand with her, will you?” Galv unsteadily steps over Evvie and Crewe unbuckles to come to his aid. Galv lifts Evvie’s legs while Crewe takes her back. She looks like a rag doll as her unsupported head hangs. This image of my tattered sister, of whom I’ve strived to take good care, overwhelms me. My throat burns and my eyes well knowing that I couldn’t keep her safe even for a day.

  Della pulls the lever and I snap out of it in time to help her raise the seat backing. I use my shoulder to discreetly wipe a stray tear from my cheek. The men gently place Evvie’s limp body on her side across the seat. Galvesten fusses to bend her knees while Crewe takes care to buckle a seatbelt across her lap.

  I return to my seat at Evvie’s feet. This time Crewe shuffles down one place to sit at my side, making room for Galvesten to sit between him and Decklin.

  “You didn’t know any better when you ran,” Crewe quietly consoles me, misconstruing my sorrow for the danger I’ve brought to them. “And my brother didn’t know any better when he shot.”

  “I don’t mean any disrespect,” I tell him, “but you, your brother, and your town are the lesser of my cares. For fourteen straight years my sole purpose in this world has been her,” I say as I lay my hand on Evvie’s ankle. I lift her outside foot and unzip the little plastic zippers on the insides of both of her cutting-edge shoes. Her feet are sopping wet and are probably keeping her chilled. “I just never thought I would fail so quickly.”

  Crewe seems equally sympathetic toward an older sibling looking out for a younger one and angered by my lack of guilt as his family, friends, and uninformed town live minute by minute under the observation of Miles County’s black-operations teams.

  After a pause, he looks forward and plainly says, “We may make it through this yet.”

  The last sounds heard in the cab as we travel to Sheridan are Della’s utensils clanking as she heaps them back into the bag. When she’s finished, she carefully lifts Evvie’s bandaged wrist onto a package of instant ice in her lap. Della lovingly strokes Evvie’s hand and fingers. I don’t begrudge her this. Instead, I send a smile as thanks.