American Dreams | Book 2 | The Ascent

by Parker, Brian

  “And these people took you?”

  “Yeah.”

  Cassandra glanced up at Rogan, who shrugged. What did that shrug mean? Did it mean they would take the woman with them or leave her here? Did it mean he didn’t care? She barely knew the man, but she felt the very little bit that she did know, along with the things that Bodhi had told her, meant that he was a good man. But being a good person didn’t necessarily translate into breaking the Resistance by bringing an unknown into the heart of the Revolution. Dammit, she needed to think.

  Instead of thinking about it, Cassandra decided the go with her heart. “We can take you out of here with us,” she said. “We… We know people who are illegals and haven’t registered with the government for whatever reason.”

  “You do?”

  She smiled. “Yeah. You could say we’re somewhat opposed to the way things have changed over the past couple of years and we want to make things right again.”

  “I just want my family back together and for this—for this—”

  Cassandra reached out tentatively and placed a hand on the woman’s foot. “I’m so sorry that this happened to you. We can’t make it right, but we made sure those people won’t ever harm anyone again.”

  The mass of dark hair bounced as the woman nodded. “You have an RV, right?”

  “Yeah. It’s right outside.”

  “Do you think—Would it be too much to ask you to take a shower? I haven’t had anything except baby wipes in a long time.”

  “Yes, of course, ah… I never got your name.”

  “Patricia. And thank you. Thank you for helping me.”

  Cassandra tried to stand, but couldn’t find the leverage. “Can you help me, Jason?” she asked Rogan.

  “Uh, sure.” He stepped inside and reached out a hand. She grasped it and he helped to pull her to her feet.

  The weariness that she’d felt outside seemed to vanish, or at least diminish significantly. Hers had been an emotional exhaustion after a long day that had begun with her killing several CEA agents and ended with her killing a group of neo-Nazi thugs. This woman, Patricia, had been physically assaulted for God knows how long. Cassandra could put aside being tired and help take care of her needs.

  She helped Patricia to her feet and wrapped the old blanket around her. It stank of horses, sweat, and other things that she didn’t want to think about. “Jason?”

  “Yeah?” he answered.

  “Can you look around the barn and see if you can find Patricia’s clothes? I bet they’re somewhere in here. Once she’s done showering, we can get back on the road. I’d like to try to make it to Bodhi tonight.”

  “Yeah. I think I saw some clothes in one of the other stalls. I’ll go see.”

  Cassandra helped Patricia walk out of the barn. The woman was bruised and battered with a severe limp, favoring her left side. She said she’d been punched and kicked repeatedly in the stomach and the ribs when she refused to be a willing participant. If the kicks had been hard enough, then she probably had a few broken ribs to go along with the other trauma she’d experienced.

  Patricia spat on the woman’s body as they passed it on the way to the RV and kicked the dead man’s body beside the steps. When asked about the third one, Cassandra told her she’d shot him three times while he followed along behind the RV and the last time she’d seen him, his car was rolling down the interstate toward a guard rail at seventy miles an hour.

  “Mind if we just leave this blanket outside?” she asked, wrinkling her nose.

  “No. It’s part of them. You can leave it here.”

  Cassandra set her rifle down to help her out of the blanket. They tossed it on the body of the one she’d shot in the face. It seemed appropriate to leave any traces of the madness here in the barn. Maybe they should burn the place down while they were at it.

  Between Patricia’s injuries and the size of Cassandra’s pregnant stomach, the two of them struggled to get up the stairs into the RV. It would have been comical to watch if it hadn’t been so serious.

  Once Patricia was in the shower, Cassandra washed her hands and sat down heavily at the dinette. The day had been terrible, easily the absolute worst day in her life. Bodhi and Rowan’s parents were dead. She’d become a murderer, a fugitive for an entirely different reason than disagreeing with the government. And now she had to become some sort of mental health trauma care worker. It was exhausting and she wanted to just go to sleep.

  But she couldn’t. “I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep,” she mumbled aloud.

  “What was that?” Rogan asked from the doorway.

  She smiled sadly. “It’s a line from that old Robert Frost poem about the winter woods.”

  “Ah. Never really got into poetry,” he replied.

  She nodded. “Okay, so what’s the plan?”

  “We can’t stay here.”

  “Obviously,” she scoffed.

  “Are you okay to drive this thing? I’m not entirely sure, but I think we’re about an hour or two from Austin.”

  Her heart sank. “To be honest, I’m not sure I’m up for that long of a drive.”

  He nodded. “I didn’t think so.”

  “So, what do we do?”

  “I have two guys with me, but neither of them are in any shape to drive. We could load them up in the RV here and abandon the car.”

  “I wouldn’t ask you to leave your car,” she replied.

  He shrugged. “It’s stolen. I don’t care about it.”

  “Oh…”

  “The real problem is that I have three bodies in the trunk. Resistance fighters who died today and I don’t want to just abandon them out here.”

  “Oh…” she repeated.

  “I’d suggest taking them with us, but if we get stopped at a checkpoint, we’re done for. We can hide the injuries of the other two for a little bit, but there’s no hiding the bodies.”

  “Isn’t it kind of a moot point if we get stopped at a checkpoint?” she asked, pointing at her face. “They’ll have biometric scanners and I’ll pop as a fugitive. Patricia will pop as an illegal. And I assume you’ll come up as something else besides an agent who’s on duty.”

  He frowned. “Yeah. Hadn’t thought about that part.”

  “There’s a storage compartment in the back. You can access it from the outside. I think there’s just an old camp stove and a few camping-type things in there that we could move up here into the living area. The bodies should fit in there as long as none of them are overly large.”

  He shook his head. “No. None of them were fat.” His frown deepened.

  “What is it?”

  “Cassandra, I have something to tell you.”

  Her stomach dropped, making it feel as if her entire body was falling down a never-ending well. “Bodhi?”

  “No. He’s at the safehouse. It’s his brother.”

  “Rowan?” she cried, her hand going to her mouth.

  “He was killed at the police station.”

  Tears flowed down her cheeks uncontrollably. She was overwhelmed with sadness at the senseless loss of Rowan, but she was also glad that it wasn’t Bodhi. Talk about a fucked up emotional response.

  “I’m… I’m sorry,” Rogan stammered. “I shouldn’t have allowed him to come on the mission.”

  Cassandra heard the shower turn off and the telltale bumps and knocks against the wall indicating that Patricia was toweling off in the tiny shower space. It would have been easier to dry off out in the open, but Rogan was there.

  She wiped at her cheeks, then screwed her fists into her eyes. “Did you find Patricia’s clothes?”

  He held up a pair of jeans and a shirt along with a pair of tennis shoes. “I found these.”

  Cassandra took them. “Okay. Thank you for telling me about Rowan. I’m going to get Patricia situated, then we can move the bodies into the back and get out of here.”

  “Cassandra—”

  “No,” she cut him off. “I’m fine. I m
ean, I will be fine. We need to just get off the road and get to a safe place. Then we can deal with everything that’s happened.”

  “Okay,” he answered. “We can do that.”

  “Please close the door behind you. I’m sure Patricia doesn’t want anyone seeing her right now.”

  He stepped down out of the RV and closed the door. She heard his boots on the gravel as he went around to the back of the vehicle to where she told him the storage area was located.

  “Patricia?”

  “Yeah?” the woman’s muffled reply came from the bathroom.

  “Rogan found some clothes that might be yours. Are you a size…” She examined the tag in the jeans. “Size four?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, there’s nobody in here but me if you want to come out and get dressed.”

  The shower door opened and steam roiled out, filling the air. Cassandra held up the shirt. “Are these yours?”

  The woman nodded. “Okay, here you go,” Cassandra said, handing them through the steam. “There doesn’t seem to be any underwear though. You can have a pair of mine, but I’m an eight, but I have a big butt, so I have to wear large underwear.”

  “I’m sure they’ll be just fine. Thank you.”

  Cassandra slid past her new guest to the bedroom and pulled open a drawer. She didn’t have many pairs of underwear since everything she owned was just what she’d managed to throw into a duffle bag when she fled Austin in the spring, but she could sacrifice one pair to a girl who had literally nothing.

  She handed the panties to Patricia. “We’re going to be leaving soon, but there’s going to be a couple of guys who will be back here with you.” Panic flashed across Patricia’s face, causing Cassandra to hold up her hands. “Okay. Um… We can put one of them up front with Rogan if I ride back here, but the other one will have to be with us because there’s only two seats in the cab.”

  “I’d like that better,” she replied.

  “Yeah. We can do that. Um, also…” She paused, wondering what she would say. “Look, I don’t know the best way to tell you this, so I’m just gonna say it. The guys are hurt. I don’t know the extent of their injuries, but they were in a shootout with the feds earlier. We’re gonna try to avoid any checkpoints, but there’s a real possibility that if we get stopped, we’re all going directly to jail.”

  Patricia nodded. “I’m not stupid, Cassandra. I realized pretty quickly that you guys aren’t on the right side of the law.”

  “Good. I just wanted to make sure you knew.”

  “I guess I found the Resistance then, huh?”

  “What?” Cassandra asked.

  “I left San Antonio to join up with the Resistance in Austin. I was sick of hiding, moving from house to house every couple of days with other illegals, being forced to do things for food by Citizens who were willing to help for a price. I’m not illegal. I was born here. I went to school here. I worked at Starbucks and was going to college when they decided that I was illegal one day. Do you know how hard that is?”

  She shook her head. While she’d been a fugitive for the past several months, she really hadn’t had any hardships. The “worst” she’d had to put up with was the week she and Bodhi stayed in the woods while he recovered from his injuries. She had no idea of what this girl had endured.

  “I was on my way to Austin when those people snatched me. Stupid. At first I thought they were the Resistance. That only lasted a couple of hours.”

  Cassandra wrapped her in a hug. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Patricia hugged her back. “We can’t promise you safety,” Cassandra said. “But you won’t be forced to do…the other stuff to get food and shelter. I promise you that. Okay?” She nodded and squeezed harder.

  “Alright. I’m gonna go let Rogan know we’re ready to go. Maybe we can learn a little bit about each other on the way to Austin.”

  “I’d like that.”

  “I would too. I could really use a friend. We’ve been cut off for so long… Never mind. I ‘ll tell you in a few minutes once we get going.”

  She had a genuine smile on her face as she exited the RV. The prospect of having a friend who was her own age, seemed like heaven to her. She’d been cut off from almost everyone close to her age since the Crud began. Even in the CEA neighborhood, she’d been the youngest spouse by almost a decade. It would be nice to have somebody to share her feelings with.

  Then she saw the bodies of the people she’d killed and Rogan dragging a limp body from the car to the back of the RV as two injured men leaned heavily against the side of the car and her little fantasy came crashing down around her. She could have a friend, but it sure as hell wouldn’t be a happy time. There was a war being fought and she was on the front line. It had already cost her husband every member of his immediate family, what else would the fight for freedom demand of them?

  TWELVE

  “Damn, they’ve been gone a long time,” Bodhi muttered, limping away from the window where he’d been watching the street for a couple of minutes. “I hope everything’s okay.”

  “It’s probably fine,” Beth replied. She patted the sofa cushion beside her. “Come over here and watch a show with me.”

  “I’m not really a big TV watcher,” he said before pointing at her bookshelf. “But, I’ll get a book to read.”

  He ambled over to the shelf. His head was loopy as fuck from whatever the hell was in those dog drugs the vet had given him. He kept zoning out, sometimes forgetting that his ankle was messed up, and he was hallucinating a little. Talk about a trip.

  Bodhi tried to focus on the bookshelf, but it was hopeless. “Ah, dammit,” he slurred. “Maybe I need to start cutting those pills in half.”

  “The doc said to take a whole pill.” Beth picked up the blue bottle and shook it. “It’s printed right here on the label.”

  He wasn’t sure how the veterinarian had gotten his weight before he came over to the house, but the label did say to take one entire pill for a two-hundred and twenty pound dog. Of course, the visions of a two hundred pound dog attacking him while he was at the high point of the pain medication’s effectiveness was always fun.

  “Ah, shit,” Bodhi grumbled, forgoing the attempt at picking out a book. They all looked the same to him anyway. He made his way back to the couch and sat down at the end.

  “I won’t bite,” Beth said.

  “You probably would. That’s what I’m scared of.” He laughed the joke that was inside of his head about a dog and…something. He thought he was hilarious. “Damn, I’m high,” he exclaimed, picking up the bottle of pills from the table. He struggled to open the lid.

  “Hey!” Beth exclaimed, pushing herself up from the couch as he got the lid off and slipped a finger inside. “When was the last time you took one of those?”

  He pushed the pill he’d retrieved into his mouth and swallowed. “Just now,” he said with a loopy smile.

  She grabbed the bottle and twisted the lid into place. “You’re gonna OD, you idiot.”

  Bodhi sat staring at the television as women on the screen argued with one another, drank to excess, and complained about how difficult their privileged lives were. He didn’t like the show, but Beth seemed to enjoy it, so it wasn’t that big of a deal to him. It wasn’t worth the effort to ask her to change it. Besides, it kept her attention. When she wasn’t distracted, she wanted to fuck.

  That was the joke! he thought, remembering his earlier joke. Doggy style… He rubbed at his crotch, feeling himself grow. What was the point of being here, having such an attractive and willing host if he was gonna be a bitch about it? He could bend her over and—

  There was a knock on the door. Beth picked up his pistol off the table and slid it well out of his reach before placing an open furniture catalogue over the top of it. Bodhi chuckled at the gesture. She probably thought he’d shoot her by accident if anything happened. On second thought, it was a smart move, he decided.

  Voices drifted in and out of Bodhi’s hearing. He
wondered if he’d accidentally taken a second pill because he’d forgotten that he’d taken the first. That reminded him, he wanted another pill. He searched bleary-eyed for the bottle, but couldn’t see it on the table. Dammit, Beth must have taken them. Maybe he could do a cavity search to find where she hid them.

  He didn’t even know how high he was, but he imagined Cassandra and Rogan coming to stand beside him. During his hallucination, his wife knelt down to take his hand. She said something about his parents and brother being in heaven, but it was confusing because there was blood everywhere and the television bitches were screaming at each other again.

  Damn! Bodhi thought. These are some good dog drugs. Heh. Good dog… Get it? Good boy! Who’s a good boy…

  THIRTEEN

  “I really fucked up, Plummer.”

  Chris Plummer stared hard at his former CEA team leader. He wanted to convey the message with his eyes and his facial expression that there was nothing that Jason Rogan could have done to save Bodhi’s brother. More importantly, it wasn’t Rogan’s fault. Shit happened on missions. Rogan knew that. They all did.

  Eventually, Rogan got the message and frowned. “I get it. I really do, buddy,” he said. “I didn’t make him go on the raid. In fact, I tried to get him to stay with the cargo truck. I still feel terrible about it, though.”

  “Feel bad about it and then move on,” Chris advised. “We both come from risk-adverse backgrounds—or at least backgrounds that don’t want to take unnecessary risks. But some risks are worth the rewards, man. That’s why we’re doing this. That’s why we threw our lot in with the growing resistance movement and started doing these national broadcasts. The risk versus reward is too great, even if it means that we lose everything we have. The NAR cannot be allowed to continue its dominance over America.”

  Rogan nodded. He was all on board with getting rid of the System, but Chris knew he wasn’t as passionate about the goal. He wanted to destabilize and remove the NAR, then reestablish the government as it was before the Crud, whereas Chris wanted to dismantle Washington entirely and start from scratch. In Chris’ mind, the ideal government would resemble what the Founding Fathers designed with very little government oversight and local governments holding the most power to decide their fate. It was the most logical system for such a diverse nation, not the massive, unwieldy federal government controlling everything.