“I’m not getting into this again. Agent Fastez assures me they have the situation well under control. A full investigation is being pursued even as we speak.” David tried to reason.
“Oh right, that’s absolutely right.” Evan was fairly disgusted. “Mr. Agent-man from D.C., come to make sure nothing bad happens -after something bad has already happened.” He scoffed.
“Just let it go.” Her father still warned.
“No, Dave. You must listen to this, even if you don’t want to hear it. These activists, are not just the flag-waving, tree-hugging sort. Your beloved Agent Fastez said as much in correlation with the sheriff.” He argued logically, turning around his vehemence to reason.
“I know what he said.” David sighed.
“Yeah, that they’re terrorists! Earth Liberation Front, they call themselves. They’re at war with people like us! You can’t play nice with terrorists, Dave!” Once again, Evan was emphatic. “Everyone in America knows that! Why don’t you?”
“Eco-terrorists… I know.” David corrected. “But legally and morally, we have our hands tied. We’re doing no wrong by the law, and that’s the way it’s going to stay while I’m in charge. I’ll not have every driver and every logger carrying around a gun thinking they need to defend themselves from these people.” He hesitated. “And besides, aside from the firebombing of My truck specifically, while I was safely away from it I might add, there have been no documented accounts of any direct threats on anyone’s lives.” He ended it yet again, but still Evan wasn’t even close to finished.
“Not yet, but soon enough, I can see it coming.” He made it a statement of fact.
Shannon remembered herself being suddenly scared at the prospect, and she looked to see it in her own youthful eyes. All that talk of war, a subject she didn’t understand much to begin with at that age, was beginning to sound fairly dangerous. It still made her hair stand on end.
“Agent Fastez will not find the people responsible for blowing your truck to hell, or the little bastard responsible for spray painting their manifesto all over the office, which sits in the middle of downtown for crying out loud! No one saw them do it, and no one is ever going to see them do it.”
“What would you have me do then?!” David shouted back, finally grown aggravated enough to silence Evan with his size and strength and barking tones. Shannon could see Evan shrink a bit, even though he’d gotten his boss to stand exactly where he’d wanted –listening at last.
“Manifesto! Painting E.L.F. on a building! Killing my truck, or leaving enough literature and leaflets of “if you build it, we will burn it” to fill a dumpster, isn’t going to stop us. In fact, it only puts them closer to being found out. Just give it some time, my friend. You’ll see. This won’t be the last we hear from them, but eventually, it will end.” Her father thought he’d put it to an end right then and there, agreeing with Evan by not doing so in any way.
“You heard what Fastez said.” Evan’s tone was a low certain warning. “These ELF’s are ter-ror-ists. Their organization is exceptionally difficult to link to any individuals, let alone identify or decipher. They have no head of operations, and they have no real system or unity. They are chaotic faceless cells! You’re right, this won’t be the last we hear of them, but we’ll never see the end of them if we don’t do something personally. I just hope you see that before someone gets hurt.” He drew an end, and finally relinquished his position, having seen that he’d gotten through. Shannon was glad for it. She’d never had much taste for arguments, and still didn’t.
As her father sighed, finally finding the debate resolved, he moved to rise, striding to the back of the room for a coat-rack along the wall beside a water cooler. She watched him go, and remembered vividly as he all but disappeared off the left edge of her window scene, and there in the dark she spotted a silver flicker like before. This time, it was much closer, and though she couldn’t discern what it was in the swiftness with which it came and went, it was there certain enough. She let the two men slip out of focus again, peering into the dark, straining in vain to see what moved with such swiftness and peculiar light. Only now, as a bystander to her own past, Shannon thought she knew exactly what could move as thus and shine so strangely.
“Daddy.” She started to say, wonder in her tones, wonder marred by subtle fears due to all this talk of eco-terrorists and attacks on people. She was surprised to feel herself speak the words before her young self had. But surprise didn’t come as her child-shadow suddenly witnessed a pulse down below. She stood rock solid, disconnected and looking on the past, as a great truck just burst into light. It went up in a flashing silver blaze that came and went in an instant. Then a tremendous booming report erupted in the night, casting out a terrible thumping echo through the Cascade Range’s endless foothills.
A fireball rose up where the truck had once been whole, and in a great shuddering it rolled into the air like a glowing mushroom, profuse with black smoke darker than the night itself. The whole office shook on the exposure of the rocky hill and the glass shattered right before her eyes.
Shannon heard herself scream a childish chirp of fear and pain, and watched her seven year old self make to shield her face as she felt the bite of dozens of glassy shards and slivers in her arms and legs before she tumbled off her cozy chair and toppled to the floor. Chaos, fear, and pain became her world, but now she remembered she’d seen a glittering silver trail in the air with her last glimpse before the window crumbled.
She could hear Evan gasping out a string of numerous curses, and her father, even for his dumbfounded look, was to her in an instant.
“Shannon!” He cried in terror as he cradled her up. A second boom erupted in the night, and another truck went up in smoke. Evan rushed past, and leaned out the shattered remnants of the window, looking down on the destruction. He had a gun in his hands. Shannon could see it. A hunting rifle fetched from a mount along the wall. She had always presumed it was just a display piece, but sure enough she heard the echoing shots. The likeable fellow was shooting into the dark, aiming at nothing but the shadow of the hillside. Each shot he took shook her entire dream world. The agony started to come back, little by little. The memory began to unravel piece by piece. Objects simply ripped away in the room, vanishing violently into the ether of her darkest imaginings as though they never were.
“Evan!” Her father was shouting at him in the chaos. “Damn it, Evan, knock it off!”
Evan only ceased shooting when he ran out of bullets. He then turned to shouting curses at the dark. Again, as though in response to Evan’s fury, Boom! A third went up, but her father knew the best way to resolve this unexpected attack was to shed some light on the culprits. He rushed her to the back of the office, and through a door with a square boot blasting the barrier wide before him.
“Shannon, are you alright?” He was asking her. She couldn’t tell. She couldn’t answer. She was terrified, and that was enough. He slammed the door to the office, sat her down in a visitor’s chair at the desk, and turned to fetching a box of tissues. Her injuries were light, but she’d been given the scare of a life-time. She didn’t even remember bawling and whimpering, but now she saw indeed just how afraid she’d been.
He dropped the box of tissues in her lap, wheeled and flung open a metal cabinet at the back -one which she knew held the circuits and breakers and innumerable switches for the lumber yard’s many flood-light systems. Today had been Saturday. Not nearly as much had been transpiring, so the lights were kept at a minimum, but her father now flipped on the many switches. He wheeled back to the desk, picking up an old microphone patched through a transmitter to loudspeakers. He pushed the button.
“Lock the gates!” He shouted. “James, lock the gates!” Then he turned to Shannon, and began plucking little shards of glass out of her leg with diligence and a gentle touch he rarely showed. She was crying, but mostly out of fright. She embraced his doting presence as he cooed to her, but the stress and anger behind his eyes cou
ntered his loving attention. She wanted to recoil, but clung to him as he then cradled her up, ignoring brief case and coat in exchange for the keys to his brand new, white Ford F-350 -which he’d let her pick out to replace the loss of their old truck.
“Evan, stay here at the yard! See if anyone’s been hurt and call the police.” He instructed, rushing out of the office. “I’m going down to the gates, and from there to the hospital. Call me as soon as you know anything. And for God’s sake don’t shoot anyone! The last thing we need is a public relations nightmare.”
Evan tailed him like a faithful, ferocious hound, empty rifle still in hand, and Shannon met his eyes from her father’s cradle. He had the softest look of sympathy she’d ever seen at that age. Evan had been right, she realized now as she watched herself cling to her father. She had been in danger all along.
The rest of that night came and went in a blur as her agony receded a bit and she fell into the memories. A bystander no more, Shannon relived her traumatic encounter specifically triggered in memory by the ordeal at Murton and Norton, but even aware of the dream she couldn’t control it.
She welcomed the safety of the big truck and its power as he dumped her gently but hastily in the passenger seat. But when her father fired it up and stepped on it, driving down the gravel roadway, she only felt more terror. The speed and fury with which he drove frightened her again. She’d never seen her father like this. He was her hero, yet the look in his stern eyes was livid, like someone else was driving. She began to feel a rift had formed between them, but she could not fathom how her eyes had been ripped away from childish things. She’d suddenly become aware of things children need not be aware.
Down the rocky double-width roadway he raced her, leaving the yard and all of the lights behind in exchange for the dark and the gauges of the dash reflecting off shadowed glass. He didn’t say anything to her, and she didn’t do much more than sniffle. The truck’s big wheels hit concrete in a barely noticeable jostling, running an eerily silent drone beneath as the powerful engine wound up further only to abruptly die as her father slammed the breaks to come skidding to a halt at the gatehouse.
The gates had been ordered closed, and so they were. Two of the three men stationed there promptly emerged from the gate house. The third was down at the gate. She could see them in the warped reflections off the glass. It was Jerry, and a slightly unpleasant fellow named Rich, who every body called Dick. It was some sort of running gag that she hadn’t understood. James was further on.
“Stay in the truck, Shan.” He instructed as he threw it into park. A grim look overcame his face as his jaw muscles flexed. Then he was gone and she was left in silence. She heard muffled, muted voices, and finally got up the courage to sit up and look through the windshield.
There her father was talking with the two, with James coming up swiftly, and all four were framed in the exceptionally powerful headlight rig her father had insisted go with his truck. Beyond them, easily twenty yards down the last of the roadway were the gates - chain-link lengths topped with coils of razor-wire. They were thrown shut, and upon them was a huge white sheet. It was a banner.
“E.L.F.” It said. “If you build it, WE will burn it.” And beneath both it read. “The Mother is not your playground Humyns.” All scripted in sloppy green spray paint.
She didn’t remember much more than that. She only vaguely remembered going to the hospital that night after falling asleep during the lengthy drive back to town, and she remembered getting some stitches in her left arm. The doctor was a very gentle older woman. But that was about it. It didn’t matter anyway as it had all happened so long ago. The only dominatingly important factor of it all was the elf on the hill and that strange silver light. It ruled her life now.
Then the eerie hissing sound of its arrow screamed a distorted cry in her ear –more bizarre and threatening than the echo of a gunshot at point blank. And just as it had already shattered her world with its sound, she found it could also shatter dreams.
Chapter 3
Shannon grimaced, come away from her dream. While time and space and the events of her life traded blows back and forth she felt gutted by a hot iron length, and her extremities went cold. It took only an instant to burn her system like ice in her veins, but that sensation swiftly throbbed into receding and became an aggressive raw tingling that spread from head to toe. However, she couldn’t cry out her own pain. She was breathless, choking on something coppery and thick. She could not move. She could only lay in the gravel, gasping for breath that would not come.
Had she not been in shock, she would’ve realized she was in shock, and her dream had been an instant long. But she was in shock, so how was she to process the fact that she’d somehow come back to herself not a moment after she’d left. Was that what it was like to have her life flash before her eyes? A single, disappointingly terrible memory, awe inspiring though it may be given its implications?
She heard the second agent’s voice where her own had failed -a shriek of terrible agony cut silent the instant it started. And she heard him fall lifelessly to the gravel.
The first agent scrambled free from beneath her, rolling her off like a meaningless doll. She saw him standing over her, his features stunned as to how she’d snuck up on him. But worry filled his eyes as he turned to his partner. The man scrambled to Agent Fastez and knelt over him. Fastez had already gone silent. He was unquestionably dead, and Shannon’s groans of agony were the only voice that could be heard. It mingled with the soft sounds of her writhing and the fiery chaos of the yard, and utterly deafened her.
But she could see through the tears of anguish fighting to blind her. There embedded in the agent’s throat was nothing less than a lengthy white arrow, fletched silver and glittering, but as the agent touched his partner’s throat to feel for his pulse, it seemed he did not see. His hand passed right through the impaling shaft as if it truly wasn’t there, and the arrow disintegrated like so much sparkling dust.
Once more things trickled by before her reeling mind, but her agony did not lessen. It only served to prolong her suffering. Luckily, though, she could feel death coming. She could feel her senses receding, her thoughts slowing, and her breaths refused to sate her need for air.
After knowing his partner’s death, the aggressive agent turned to her with weapon low and in control. His sharp eyes scanned the entirety of the fire and smoke and darkness. He was right to suspect a sniper of some sort, and presume himself in a deadly situation. He froze, and the fear on his face was evident.
Shannon couldn’t hold on any longer. She closed her eyes. She wanted to die. If she didn’t, she would be in a hell worse than any she could imagine. She couldn’t go to prison. She refused. So she closed her eyes and willed herself to fall into the darkness and the waiting arms of the predator that waited patiently within it.
Death! She almost cried out for its release.
But the agent knew what was best to do. She felt his strong arms cradle her up and she was dredged up from the cold embrace of death. She was in federal custody, and the thought of it made her cringe. She’d been captured. She tried to fight it, but it was a futile effort. The big man gathered her up against her groans of protest and weak struggling. He carried her free of the destruction, found his unmarked black town car some distance away, hidden in a huge garage at the far end of the compound, and tossed her into the backseat.
Covered in a slick of her own blood and sick with defeat, Shannon lost consciousness with his voice echoing in her head.
“You’re not dead yet, kid.”
* * *
Shannon Hunter woke weakly with sunlight in her eyes to the tune of muffled activity and the steady, annoying, beep, beep, beep, of the e.k.g. monitoring her status. Her dark lashes slipped open as she groaned, letting her take in the plain, overall baby blues of a hospital room. Her mouth was parched and her throat raw. Her lips felt cracked and bloodied. She felt as though she’d been to hell and back.
Slowly, Sha
nnon came to grips with her surroundings, eyes rolling to the door and pulling her head in that direction. Beyond it stood the broad backside of a tall Seattle police officer.
She gasped weakly. All of the attack she’d helped plan and aided in enacting came rushing back to her. She remembered the federal agents, their entire swat team, the explosions her own fellow operatives hadn’t set off, and lastly Jason. She feared for him and prayed he made it safely away with Willie and Devin, but then she envisioned the figure on the hill. Her breath left her and her pulse quickened. Beep Beep, Beep Beep, the damned machine echoed her internal excitement.
She remembered seeing it clearly, eyes glowing back at her as it saw that she saw it. She could see it more clearly now, a dark figure wreathed in light, not made of light, with long stately ears set like little stream-lined wings broad to either side of its dome. It had held a long bow, glittering of light that fired with precision and power. The trucks could attest to that. She could feel the tremors of their explosions as they erupted with light and heat and sound in the most peculiarly slowed waves of sensation. She could even see its eyes now, dark opals that only shined back at her for an instant. Abruptly, her thoughts stopped racing.
E.L.F. - White Leaves Page 3
