They got lost only once following Cornwell’s directions, and by midnight, they were coming into Helena on Highway 12. They passed a mileage sign that said Helena 14.
“How’s the gas, Dad?” asked Eddie. “We’re pretty much out of money.”
“The dial shows we got about a quarter tank left,” said Eli. “Better than I thought we’d do. We need to get off this highway. We could start running into military patrols or those private goon squads the cop mentioned any time now. This is where the dangerous part begins.” He chose a side road at random and exited. A few miles down the road he pulled over into a stand of pines and killed the engine and the light. “I’m going to put the gas from the jerry can into the tank,” he said. “That ought to do it for us, for better or worse. Give me a hand, Ed. Bring the funnel. You girls get out and stretch your legs. Hang onto Tommy’s hand.” They carefully drained the fuel from the can into the gas tank, and Eli tossed the empty can into the trees. He looked up at the star-filled sky. “Guess I know now why they call it Big Sky Country. Let’s see how much I remember from my army map and compass training. That’s the North Star, so we need to keep on moving west, in that direction,” he said, pointing down the road.
“Dad!” said Eddie. “That sounds like a helicopter!”
“Get away from the van!” commanded Eli. “They may have infrared tracking equipment, which means that hot engine will show up like a Christmas tree on their scope!”
The family moved off at a trot up a small hill and lay down behind it, almost a hundred yards from the vehicle. A helicopter slowly settled down into the air over the little pine grove, hovering, and then a spotlight beam snaked from the chopper’s belly, weaved around for a bit, and found the parked van. Eli couldn’t see any markings at all on the chopper. It seemed to hang in the air over the van below it for a long moment, like a scientist studying a specimen under a microscope, and then a chain gun opened fire on it in a stream of lead and tracer bullets. The van’s gas tank exploded and a ball of fire rose into the sky, singeing the pine needles on the trees and hurling burning debris all throughout the stand. Then the copter rose lazily into the air and ambled off back into the sky.
“Those stupid assholes set the woods on fire,” said Millie, staring after them. “They just don’t care.”
“They wouldn’t have cared if we were in it,” said Eli. “Maybe they thought we were.”
“They didn’t even try to find out,” whispered Lorna, horrified.
“They probably have a quota of white people they have to kill every week, like cops have a quota of speeding tickets,” said Eddie.
“Oh, Eli, everything we had in the world was in that van!” cried Lorna in despair.
“No, honey, everything we have in the world is right here. Tommy, are you okay?” asked Eli, reaching over and giving his son a hug.
“Bad men,” said Tommy calmly.
“Yes, son. Very bad men.”
“Now what?” asked Lorna.
“If I remember the map right, I figure we’re about three miles from Interstate 15,” said Eli. “We walk. We have to stay on the road because if we blunder around in the woods we’ll get completely lost. It’s risky, but we have no choice. I’ll go first, then Eddie. Eddie and me will take turns carrying Tommy. Lorna, you and Millie follow us, and hold hands, to make absolutely sure you don’t get separated. If somebody comes and I yell move, we get off the road and hide about twenty yards into the woods. We stay together at all times. Now let’s go. Millie’s right, those stupid bastards have probably started a forest fire here, and we need to clear out. Maybe it will serve as a distraction, although again, I think Millie’s right. They don’t seem to care what they do.”
The family began walking down the road, away from the burning trees and the smoke. There was no moon, but the sky was clear and the stars overhead were bright enough to illuminate the two lanes of asphalt in a thin, ghostly light. Every now and then, they passed unpaved access roads gleaming white in the half-light, leading off to the right or the left, and occasionally darkened houses and mobile homes on either side of the road, none of which seemed to be occupied. Twice vehicle headlights appeared, once behind them and once in front, and they scuttled off the shoulder and into the woods to lie in concealment in the scrub brush. The first vehicle was a private car of some kind. The second set of lights turned out to be a pair of Humvees containing men with M-16 rifles, moving slowly down the road. In the darkness it was impossible to discern any insignia or tell who they were, army, FATPO, Blackwater mercenaries, whoever. When they were gone Millie and Lorna took the last two small bottles of water out of their handbags and shared them around, making sure Tommy drank most of it. Then they trudged on.
Even summer nights in Montana were cold, and all their warm clothing had been in the van. No one complained, and Tommy did not cry. Eli’s heart swelled with pride at his family’s courage and hardihood in the face of an adversity that Americans weren’t supposed to be able to meet any more. He began to get a glimmer of understanding as to how the rebels of the Northwest had done it, how they had thrown off the tyrant’s chains. At the very last minute, just before the darkness descended forever, something had awakened in the white man. Eli could see it now in his wife and his children. Freedom was near. They could all feel it, sense it.
Eli had no idea how far they had walked, but at around three o’clock that morning they saw a glow of light ahead, and ten minutes later they were standing at a chain link fence looking down an embankment at Interstate 15 below. Now the McCurtain was literally a curtain of steel, through which they could actually see the Homeland. The roadside lights were still on, and they could see the empty highway below them clearly. “I remember from the news something they said about this border along 15,” said Eddie. “Technically speaking the border runs down the median strip. The northbound lanes are on the American side and only American official and military vehicles use it, otherwise you have to have a permit. The southbound lanes belong to the Northwest Republic and they let anybody use it who wants, just remember it’s at your own risk because of all the gun-toting federal goons on the other side of the road.”
“I don’t see anybody,” said Eli. “Our bolt cutters got incinerated in the van. We have to find some way to get through the fence.” He looked up and saw a coil of razor wire at the top. “Climbing’s out. We have to find someplace to dig under. Let’s move along and see if we can find some kind of dip in the ground, but be careful. Remember what that state trooper said about land mines.”
As they moved along the fence, searching the ground, Lorna said to her husband, “Eli, I don’t know if this makes it any better or not, but Stash was right. There is no way we could have made it this far with him along.”
“I know,” said Eli. “It just pisses me off. I always accepted that one of the immutable facts of my life was that my father was an evil son of a bitch, and I was this really big man for turning the other cheek and taking him in, and not letting him die in one of those hellish state nursing homes. One of the few points in my plus column. Now as the last act of his life, Stash proves he was a bigger man than I’ll ever be. Damn him!”
“You’ve got four other points in your plus column, Dad,” said Millie.
“Thanks honey,” said Eli.
“Dad, look here,” said Eddie, pointing. By the dim light of the interstate lamps, they could see a small, grassy ditch worn by rain water drainage, about two feet wide and two feet deep that ran under the fence. There was about a foot of clearance between the jagged bottom of the chain link and the ground. “We can enlarge this.”
Eli and Eddie both had clasp knives on their belts. They attacked the sides and bottom of the ditch with the blades, breaking up the soil, for about five minutes at a time, and then they and the women clawed at the earth, burrowing the dirt away with their bare hands and throwing it aside. Then it was back to hacking away at the ground with the knives. “You don’t think this fence is electrified, do you?” asked Lor
na.
“I don’t hear any humming, and I don’t see any joint boxes or ceramic fittings or connectors,” said Eli. “We may have lucked out, honey. Just dig this out enough for us all to slip through, then we dash across the highway and we’re free. I doubt we’ll be the only white people showing up in the Northwest with nothing but the clothes on our backs. As long as Eddie and I can work, we’ll make it. But we have to get this done before the sun comes up. If anybody does see us, we’ll be sitting ducks in the daylight.”
They dug away like lunatics, even Tommy helping to carry the soil, and slowly the hole under the fence grew bigger. It was on a downward slope, and so if they could just get the aperture beneath the fence deep and wide enough, they could get through. But dawn comes early in Montana in July, and by the time the hole was sufficiently enlarged, they could see without the need of the stars or the highway lights. “Okay, Millie first, then we hand Tommy through to Millie,” said Eli. “Then Lorna, then Eddie, and me last.” Eli was a large man, and the hole wasn’t quite big enough for him, and so for another five minutes he had to chop away with his knife and dig with his hands, but finally all five Horakovas stood erect in the dawn on the other side of the fence.
Lorna looked across the highway. The countryside there looked no different from what they had just left, scrubby brush and low stunted pines, but they all stared at it. “There it is,” whispered Eddie. “Free land. White man’s land. No niggers with guns from the Watch, no Mexicans, no junkies, no crooked cops beating us and robbing us, no Jews laying Dad off, no more of their goddamned laws and judges and creeps in suits telling everybody what to do and how to live. No more America.”
“Let’s go,” said Eli. “Eddie, you carry Tommy.” They slid down the embankment, onto the shoulder, and stepped onto the highway, just as a convoy of armored vehicles came around the bend from the south. The lead vehicle was a black Humvee with a mounted M-60 machine gun; behind it was an eighteen-wheeler, and behind that a truck, carrying armed men in black fatigues. The lettering on the side of the Humvee said Blackwater.
“They’ve seen us!” bellowed Eli. “Run!”
The family’s sudden appearance caught the mercenaries by surprise, and they were almost across the interstate before the first machine gun and rifle bullets began snapping over their heads and cracking into the concrete. They leaped onto the soil of the Northwest American Republic and ran toward a small stand of pines, but the driver of the Humvee apparently decided to ignore little niceties like an international border, and the vehicle swerved across the interstate and pursued them. So close! Eli screamed in his mind. So close, and now these animals are going to murder my family for money! FOR FUCKING MONEY! He whirled, whipped out the .45, dropped down on one knee and carefully emptied the magazine into the oncoming Humvee that was plowing up the low hill after them, trying to hit the driver. He must have hit something, because the vehicle swerved and stopped, but the M-60 SAW gunner opened up again. Eli remembered enough of Iraq to hit the dirt, roll out, then jump up running, throwing the empty gun away as he did so. He saw his family ahead of him, and they seemed to disappear. He reached the point where they had been and saw that they were down in a kind of ditch or gully. He looked back and saw that the body-armored mercenaries had de-bused from their truck and were running through the scrubby pines after them, fanning out. He jumped down into the wash and yelled “Come on!” to the others. “Eddie, gimme the Glock! I’ll hold them off while the rest of you get into those trees!”
“Any last standing to be done, Dad, we do it together,” said his son.
Eli realized that they were trapped in the dry wash. Surrounded by the enemy gunmen, the minute any of them poked their heads up they would be picked off. At least we’ll die in the Homeland, he thought, bitter bile and rage rising in his throat.
Lorna, Millie, and Tommy were huddled against the wall of the dry wash, their faces white with terror. All around them the mercenaries could be heard, shouting and firing their weapons, maybe even shooting at each other. The gunfire seemed to increase, the rattle of the M-16s mixing with a more hollow, popping roll of automatic fire. Goddamned Iraq all over again, thought Eli, and then something hit him. “Yeah,” he said out loud, puzzled. “Just like Iraq! Those aren’t just sixteens, those are AKs!”
“What?” asked Eddie.
“AK-47s! I remember that sound!” The Horakovas heard the engine of a motor vehicle coming toward them, but from the western side of the wash. Then a man wearing tiger-stripe camouflage and a coal-scuttle helmet appeared over their heads about ten feet away, kneeling and firing a weapon Eli remembered as an MM1 revolving grenade launcher. The shield on the side of his helmet was blue, white, and green. The soldier fired again and again, and they could hear the explosions as his projectiles slammed into the targets. Then a camouflaged Humvee drove into sight behind the soldier, on which was mounted a Browning .50-caliber machine gun, the muzzle spitting fire and thunder back and forth. For another minute there was shooting and shouting and then it all died away, leaving behind an eerie silence.
A man got out of the Humvee and walked over to the wash, where the Horakovas stared up at him. He was tall, and despite his light amber beard he seemed little older than Eddie. He wore tiger-stripes and a peaked Alpine cap, and on the cap and over his right shirt pocket was an eagle and swastika. He carried a Kalashnikov rifle on his hip, the sling over his shoulder. On one collar tab was a single black first lieutenant’s bar, and on the other were the black embroidered letters NDF. “You folks okay down there?” he called. “Anybody need a medic?”
Eli looked at his family. None of them seemed to be hurt. “No,” he croaked, shaking his head.
“We were shadowing those apes along the fire road on our side back there, and we saw you make your break for it,” said the lieutenant. “Don’t worry, they’ve all skedaddled back across the highway.” He reached down, took Eli’s hand, pulled him up to ground level and said, “Welcome Home, comrades!”
Eli Horakova looked down at his wife. “Lorna,” he said, “I think we’ve found your angel.”
VI
ONE DOWN, 999 TO GO
(One year after Longview)
Northwest Broadcasting Authority
—Channel 7 (Missoula)
Daily programming for October 21
6:30 a.m.
Morning Farm and Ranch Report (Ministry of Agriculture)
6:35 a.m.
National News and Weather (Broadcast Center, Olympia)
7 a.m.
Good Morning Northwest (current events from Broadcast Center, Olympia)
7:30 a.m.
Good Morning Montana (local news, weather and features with Jenny Stockdale, Justin Richardson, and Craig Paul)
8 a.m.
Captain Kangaroo (black and white)
9 a.m.
Sesame Street
10 a.m.
Red Ryder (black and white)
10:45 a.m.
Blue Peter (black and white)
11 a.m.
Around a Northwest Garden
11:30 a.m.
Chess Master’s Corner
Noon
The Edge of Night
12:30 p.m.
Coronation Street (black and white)
1 p.m.
Leave It To Beaver
1:30 p.m.
The Brady Bunch
2:30 p.m.
The Andy Griffith Show (black and white)
3 p.m.
Gilligan’s Island
3:30 p.m.
Deputy Dawg (cartoon)
4 p.m.
After School Theater: Crossbow. The continuing adventures of William Tell and his band of guerrilla freedom fighters against their arch enemy, the Jewish governor Geisler.
5 p.m.
Walt Disney Presents: The Swamp Fox
6 p.m.
Local News and Weather—Jenny Stockdale
6:30 p.m.
National News—Broadcast Center, Olympia
> 7 p.m.
My Favorite Martian—Ray Walston, Bill Bixby
7:30 p.m.
Mr. Ed—Alan Young, Connie Hines
8 p.m.
Sherlock Holmes—Jeremy Brett
9 p.m.
Movie—Night of the Grizzly (1966)—Clint Walker, Martha Hyer
11 p.m.
News Roundup
11:10 p.m.
Movie: Day of the Triffids (1962)—Howard Keel, Nicole Maury
12:30 a.m.
National anthem, signoff
* * *
One year to the day after the signing of the Longview Treaty, the Northwest Council of State convened in the meeting room in the old Washington state capitol building in Olympia for a breakfast session. Red Morehouse chaired the meeting in his capacity as Vice President of the Republic. Outside, bright morning sunshine was quickly burning away the ground mist and dew. A clear first Independence Day was forecast.
The building was much quieter and more orderly now that the Constitutional Convention was concluded. “Right, comrades, we’ll make this quick,” said Morehouse. “Everybody got enough scrambled eggs and toast and coffee off the buffet? Or you can try the pancakes. My wife is down in the kitchen this morning, and she made them. They’re highly recommended. Okay, we’re all here except for the State President, who is in the air right now headed for Coeur d’Alene, as well as General Barrow, who is in Montana this morning, and Comrade Stepanov, who is down in Portland where he officially commissioned our new national symphony orchestra yesterday. I will be able to give you a security brief, and we have Susan Russell here sitting in for Andrei, since we finally decided that broadcasting and entertainment were to be part of the Culture ministry and not have their own separate portfolio. For those of you who have not yet met her, Comrade Russell is the new director-designate for the Northwest Broadcasting Authority.”
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