White House White-Out

by Ron Roy

  “She might, especially if the woman had any food in her pockets,” KC said. “Natasha would follow anyone for a treat.”

  “But just because they’re both gone doesn’t mean the woman took Natasha,” Marshall said. “Maybe Jo Payne woke up and decided to take off while she had a chance. If she left the doors open, Natasha could have escaped that way.”

  “But why would she leave Natasha in the van after she went through all this trouble to steal her?” Josh asked. “I think she took Natasha with her.”

  “Marshall’s right,” Dink said. “They are both gone, but we don’t know if they’re together.”

  “Will you help me look for Natasha?” KC asked.

  “Sure,” Ruth Rose said. She closed the doors again.

  The snow pelted their faces as they peered into the darkness. The wind made their eyes tear.

  “NATASHA!” they all called over and over into the night. There was no returning bark. Natasha didn’t come bounding through the snow.

  “Try using your whistle,” Ruth Rose suggested to KC.

  KC blew on the dog whistle, but still no dog appeared.

  “She’ll freeze!” KC wailed.

  “Dogs are descended from wolves,” Josh said. “They know how to take care of themselves.”

  “Maybe she went for help,” Ruth Rose suggested. “She might have run back to the White House.”

  “But that’s miles away!” KC said.

  “I saw a dog on TV who walked all the way across the country to get back home,” Marshall said. “Natasha is pretty smart, KC. And don’t forget, she’s wearing that sweater your mom knitted.”

  “Hey, what’s that?” Dink said. “I see lights over there!”

  The kids turned and looked to where Dink was pointing. The glow of moving lights could be seen through the snow and darkness.

  “What are they?” Marshall asked. “Could they be cars? Is that a road up there?”

  Dink shook his head. “No, they’re too slow, and the lights don’t look bright enough for cars,” he said.

  “I’ll bet they’re snowmobiles!” Josh said. He began jumping and waving. “Hey, snowmobiles! Yo, look over here!”

  The other kids began to yell, too.

  Dink turned on the flashlight and waved it over his head.

  The lights continued moving, but they didn’t come any closer.

  “Wait a sec!” Josh said. He leaped for the driver’s door and flung it open. He leaned in and pressed the horn on the steering wheel. Dink and the others heard a muffled sound. It wasn’t nearly strong enough to carry through the night. The lights they’d seen might be a mile away.

  Dink continued to wave the flashlight over his head. He screamed until his throat hurt.

  Then the lights were gone. The kids stared at the spot where they’d seen them, but it was all blackness again.

  “Maybe they saw us,” Marshall said. “Maybe they went for help.”

  Dink knew Marshall was just trying to make everyone feel better. “Yeah,” he said. “For all we know, we’re right next to a town.”

  “I have an idea,” Marshall said. “The keys are still in the ignition. Why don’t we start the motor? Maybe we can get the van out of the snowbank and drive away!”

  “Marsh, you don’t know how to drive,” KC said.

  “How hard can it be?” Marshall asked.

  “I know how,” Josh said. “My dad taught me. I drive our tractor all the time.” He slid into the driver’s seat and turned the key. The van shuddered once, then went still. Josh tried again. They all heard a ticking sound.

  “Josh, even if you could start it up, the van is tilted,” Dink said. “You’d need a crane to pull it out of the snow.”

  Josh turned the key again. This time they heard nothing from the van’s motor.

  “It was a good idea, anyway,” Dink told Marshall and Josh. “Come on, let’s get back inside. My nose feels like an ice cube.”

  The kids climbed into the back of the van and huddled together. They covered up with the quilted blankets.

  KC began to cry. “I miss Natasha,” she said. “She always sleeps next to me.”

  The others tried to comfort KC, but she kept on sobbing.

  “You know,” Marshall said after a few minutes, “Natasha would hate to see you crying. She’d bark at you until you stopped.”

  KC sniffed. “You’re right,” she said. “Okay, no more crying.”

  “We need some entertainment,” Josh declared. “I’ll sing to you! ‘Dashing through the snow, in a—’”

  “Josh, shut up!” everyone yelled at the same time.

  Dink smiled in the dark. Josh had a terrible singing voice, but at least KC wasn’t crying anymore.

  “Do you want to be a singer when you grow up?” KC asked Josh.

  Dink figured she was trying to get her mind off her dog.

  “No,” Josh said. “I’m gonna be a chef in a restaurant in Hawaii. That way I can surf and cook at the same time.”

  “Good, we can all come and visit you and get free food,” Dink said. “How about you, KC?”

  “TV anchorwoman,” KC said. “But I’ll stay here in Washington, D.C., where the action is.”

  Dink told the others he wanted to be a writer, and Ruth Rose announced that she was going to be the first woman president.

  “Cool,” KC said. “I’ll only say nice things about you on TV.” She nudged Marshall. “Tell them what you want to be, Marsh.”

  “A vet,” he said. “But I’ll take care of strange animals, not just cats and dogs.”

  “How strange?” Dink asked. “I mean, if Josh got sick, could we take him to you?”

  “Ha-ha,” Josh muttered.

  “No,” Marshall said. “It would be spiders, snakes, frogs, animals most people don’t care—”

  “Guys, I heard something!” Ruth Rose exclaimed. “It sounded like an airplane!”

  CHAPTER 6

  The five kids got up on their knees and listened.

  “There it is again!” Ruth Rose said. “Hear it?”

  “I do!” KC said.

  “We’re rescued!” Josh crowed.

  All five kids scrambled out the door. Dink turned on the flashlight and began waving it toward the sky.

  They stood in a circle, looking up and listening.

  Nothing.

  “I know I heard it,” KC said.

  “Maybe it’ll come back,” Dink said. He shut off the flashlight.

  Wind blew snow into their faces. Their boots made squeaking noises on the frozen snow.

  “There it is again!” KC said.

  “I hear it!” Dink said, switching the flashlight back on. “It sounds like a helicopter!”

  “I hear it, too!” Ruth Rose said.

  Then they all heard it. But Marshall was the first to see it. “Over there!” he yelled.

  They all saw tiny blinking lights moving across the sky. They might have been fireflies except for the thud-thud of blades.

  “It is a helicopter!” KC said. “It’s the president looking for us!”

  “Do you think they can see us?” KC asked.

  “I don’t know,” Dink said. He waved the light wildly over his head.

  “We need more light!” Josh said. “Let’s make a bonfire!”

  “With what?” Dink asked. “And we don’t have any matches.”

  “Look inside the van,” Marshall suggested. “Some of that florist stuff should burn.”

  “Guys, we need matches,” Dink said again.

  Josh raced to the van’s passenger door and tore it open. He found some papers Dink had left on the seat.

  “Any matches in there?” Dink asked.

  “No, but there is a cigarette lighter,” Josh said. He punched it in and waited, then it popped out. “It works!”

  “Why don’t we burn that wooden crate?” KC suggested. “We could break it apart!”

  The kids worked frantically. They tugged the crate out the van’s rear door. Dink
grabbed some tools from a shelf, and they were able to smash the crate into boards.

  “Kick some snow into a big circle,” Dink said.

  When that was done, Josh lit a few of the papers. They threw on some decorations from inside the van. They added splinters, then small boards, from the crate. Soon they had a bonfire that lit up the area behind the van.

  “Now just come back, helicopter,” Josh said.

  The kids waited, warmed by the fire. No one spoke. Everyone was watching the black sky. Ashes flew upward, melting the snowflakes.

  “Wait, what’s that?” Ruth Rose asked, pointing.

  “A star,” Dink said. “It’s not moving.”

  Josh dragged blankets from inside the van, and they all sat. Dink felt his face warm up.

  Ten minutes went by without another sound from the sky.

  “Be nice to have a few s’mores,” Marshall commented.

  “Be nice to have one huge marshmallow,” Josh said.

  “You’d have to share it five ways,” Ruth Rose said.

  Dink added more wood to the fire. He was sure the orange and yellow flames could be seen from miles away, if anyone in a helicopter was looking down. If there even was a helicopter.

  Josh tossed the last few boards onto the bonfire. “We’re out of wood. I wonder if there are any dead tree branches around here,” he said.

  “I think we’re surrounded by woods,” Dink said. “But I’m not going looking in the dark.”

  “We need something that will burn for a long time,” KC said. She looked around. The van’s rear doors had been left open. “The spare tire!”

  “Will that burn?” Marshall asked.

  “Yes, it’s rubber. It’ll make black smoke!” Josh said.

  In a minute, they had dragged the tire out of the van. Josh and KC rolled it onto the fire. The rubber caught fire, and soon dark smoke and flames were billowing up into the sky.

  But the new fire smelled so bad the kids were forced to move their blankets twenty feet away. Right away their warm faces felt chilled.

  The fire roared for a while, then settled into hissing and crackling. No one saw or heard the helicopter again.

  “Guys, we should go inside and sleep,” Dink suggested. “If a helicopter flies over, they’ll see the fire.”

  Nobody wanted to give up, but they were all freezing. They grabbed the blankets and crawled into the van. Josh pulled the doors closed as tightly as he could. He wound some string around the handles to keep the cold out.

  Now that the spare tire and crate were gone, there was room to stretch out. Dink kept the flashlight on only long enough for everyone to get settled.

  “You know, if we weren’t lost and freezing and starving to death, this would be fun,” Josh said.

  Dink laughed out loud, but inside he wanted to cry. His father would be sick with worry.

  “Good night, you guys,” Dink said.

  Dink dreamed about Christmas morning back home in Green Lawn, Connecticut. He saw their tree and the presents beneath it. One gift for his mom, one for his dad. But none of the presents had Dink’s name on it.

  He sat up with his heart thumping faster than normal. Where was he? Then he felt the lump of Josh’s body next to his and he remembered.

  It felt like a nightmare, but he knew it was all real. He, Josh, and Ruth Rose were trapped in a snowbank in the middle of nowhere with the president’s stepdaughter and her friend. Her dog had disappeared out in the cold. No one knew where they were.

  Dink shook his head to clear away the depressing thoughts. He tossed his blanket over Josh and crawled toward the van’s rear doors. Everyone was fast asleep as he unwound the string Josh had used to keep the doors closed. He pushed them open and peeked out.

  The fire was just red ashes now. The tire was completely burned, leaving the metal rim charred and black. At least it had stopped snowing.

  Dink hopped to the ground and closed the doors behind him. He stretched and looked up. The sky was clear. Dink smiled when he saw the moon. Its glow lit the snow all around him.

  Dink walked closer to the fire and checked his watch. It was nearly ten-thirty. Why did it feel like they’d been stuck out here for much longer?

  Firewood, he thought. Got to get this fire blazing again. He knew people were out looking for them and the fire would lead them here. He turned toward the black ring of trees around the clearing where the van had landed. No way was he going there.

  Instead, Dink headed toward the road, remembering that he’d seen a small grove of trees there.

  He crunched over the snow, sinking almost knee-deep with each step. Josh was right: this could be fun if it weren’t so awful.

  He reached the trees and got down on his knees to break off some of the lower branches. He heard something and looked up between two thick branches. Shadows were moving along the road. Behind the shadows came two people with the moon low behind them. They were walking along the road, heading in his direction.

  Dink almost stood up, but then he recognized something about the smaller figure. It was Jo Payne’s hat: white with a red ball on top.

  Dink shrank down into the snow, like a rabbit hiding from a fox. Jo Payne and her tall companion were twenty feet away and coming closer. Dink wriggled deep into the snow and prayed they wouldn’t look into the trees.

  The two stopped where the van had gone off the road.

  “Happened right here,” Jo Payne whispered. “It was like I was on ice. The next thing I remember was waking up in the back of my van with a headache. There were blankets over me. That was when I realized I had driven off with a bunch of kids along with the dog.”

  The other person grunted, then Dink saw him pull off his gloves and light a cigarette. He tossed the match into the snow. Ten feet away, Dink smelled the smoke.

  “I heard the kids talking,” Jo Payne went on. “When they all left, I made a leash for the dog and got the heck out of there.”

  “How’d you manage to let the dog get away?” the man asked.

  “Ace, I didn’t let it get away,” Jo Payne answered. “How was I supposed to know that thing could chew through rope?”

  The man coughed. “Well, it’ll be dead by morning. I heard the howling again last night,” he said. “The dog will be no match for a pack of hungry coyotes.”

  Coyotes! Dink squeezed his eyes shut. He tried to remember what he’d seen on TV about coyotes. Did they eat people?

  “I never meant to harm the president’s dog,” the woman said. “I just wanted the money.”

  “Don’t sweat over the dog,” the man said. “The new plan will bring more money. We’ve got the president’s daughter!”

  He pulled two ski masks from a pocket and handed one to Jo. “Here, put this on,” he ordered. “They’ll all be asleep. You grab the girl, since you know what she looks like. I’ll tie up the others.”

  “Where will we hide her?” the woman asked. “We can’t put her in your cabin. By morning, there will be cops and FBI and who knows what else searching all over this valley.”

  Dink felt himself shivering. His teeth chattered so loud he was sure the two kidnappers would hear him. He was freezing, but he couldn’t move.

  “That old hunting shack by the pond behind my cabin,” the man said. “No one knows it’s there. It’s in some trees. Can’t even see it from my windows. A perfect place for the kid.”

  “What about the other four?” the woman asked.

  “I don’t know,” the man said. “Let’s just get the president’s kid and worry about the other brats later.”

  “Ace, I don’t like this plan,” Jo Payne said.

  “You got a better idea?” Ace asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “We go to your cabin and get your truck. We drive it back here, take the president’s kid, blindfold the others. After we lock the girl in the shack, I’ll stay there. You drive the other four back to Maple Crossing—it’s only a couple of miles. There are phones there. They’ll deliver our message to the preside
nt: two million for the kid. That’s one million for each of us.”

  “Okay, I guess that makes sense,” Ace said. “Then I’ll bury the van in the snow with my plow. It’ll be six months before anyone finds it.” He laughed, coughed, and spit into the snow. “By then, we’ll be far away and rich. Different names, maybe even different faces. Good-bye, Virginia. Hello, Mexico!”

  The man flipped his cigarette. It landed two feet in front of Dink’s face.

  “Come on,” the man said. “We got stuff to do.”

  Dink raised his head a few inches and watched the couple walk away.

  Dink scuttled out of his hiding place. He found the half-smoked cigarette and put it in his pocket. Maybe Jo Payne’s fingerprints would get wiped off the van, but Dink had the man’s prints in his pocket!

  CHAPTER 7

  Dink plunged down the bank toward the van, tripping and falling every few feet. He leaped over the smoldering fire like an Olympic hurdler. He ripped the van doors open.

  “Guys, wake up!” he yelled inside.

  The lumps under the blankets moved.

  “We have to get out of here!” Dink said as moonlight shone on four sleepy faces. “They’re coming to get us!”

  “I was dreaming about cheeseburgers,” Josh said, blinking at Dink.

  “Dream later!” Dink said. Then he told them about seeing Jo Payne and some guy a few minutes earlier. “She did take Natasha with her, but your dog chewed the rope, KC.” He left out the part about coyotes prowling in the woods.

  “Natasha got away?” KC said.

  “Yeah,” Dink said. “But now they want you! They’re going to lock you in some shack and ask the president for two million dollars! We have to hide. They’re coming back pretty soon!”

  “Hide where?” Marshall asked.

  “I don’t know, anywhere,” Dink said. “In the woods. Then after they bury the van, we can sneak back and dig our way into it.”

  “I have a better idea,” KC said. “Let them put me in that shack. You four will get away, and you can tell the president where I am.”