by Jessy Cruise
"It sounds like they're trying to make contact with us for whatever reason," Christine told them. "It could be a trap of some sort so keep your eyes out for anything else to the flanks. I'm going to gather a couple of people together in case we have to go out there."
"Copy," Leanette replied. "We'll keep watching."
Before Christine was able to gather her small force together, the women became impatient with the lack of response and tried a new tactic. They stopped waving their arms and instead held them high above their heads, as in surrender. They then slowly walked forward, crossing over the invisible line that marked the Garden Hill border. Leanette, still holding the rifle, contacted Christine and reported this development to her before acting.
"Drive them back," Christine said. "Be careful not to hit them unless they insist on continuing in, but don't let them come any further."
"Copy," Leanette said. "Driving them back."
She put the radio down and flipped the safety off on the hunting rifle. She peered through the scope, aiming at a spot about twenty feet in front of the advancing females. The angle insured that the ricocheting bullet would more than likely not pose a danger to them. As she had been taught by Skip himself in the first training class after the attack on the town, she took a deep breath, held it, and then squeezed the trigger softly. The sound of the rifle shot rolled across the landscape and she was able to clearly see the chip of pavement flying into the air when the bullet impacted half a second later.
"That got their attention," Maria, still watching through the binoculars, noted.
Indeed it had. The two women stopped instantly in their tracks and quickly backed up until they were once again on the other side of the border.
"They backed off," Leanette reported to Christine.
"Copy," she replied. "Good work. What are they doing now?"
"They're still standing on the other side of the sign. They've gone back to waving their hands in the air."
There was a pause. "All right," she said. "It sounds like they're kind of persistent. Keep watching them. I'm gonna take a small squad out there to see what they want."
She gathered up Maggie, Paula, and Mike Monahan, all of whom were off duty and easily accessible at the time. She armed them all up with semi-automatic rifles and then commandeered the Dodge Ram truck that had just come back from its fueling mission.
"Maggie, you drive," Christine instructed. "Mike, Paula, I want you in the back of the truck with me."
" Christine," Paula said a little doubtfully. "Are you sure we should be doing this? Skip never told us to go out and talk to stragglers. He just told us to drive them away."
"That was when we had stragglers coming five times a day," she said. "We haven't had any in six weeks and now all of a sudden two women show up and start signaling us. Obviously they have something to say. I think that Skip would have probably done the same thing, don't you?"
"Well..." she said, knowing of course, that Christine was right.
"Well that's what I'm going to do," Christine told her. "I've given my orders. Now let's mount up."
No one else questioned her. Maggie climbed in the cab of the truck and Paula and Mike climbed in the back. Christine jumped up as well and stood up, her weapon resting on the roof of the cab. "Get on either side of me," she told her companions. "Keep your weapons trained outward. Are we all locked and loaded?"
Everyone confirmed that they were.
"All right," she said. "Let's do it." She craned her head down a little and spoke through the opened sliding rear window into the cab. "Move out, Mags," she said. "Keep it slow. We're standing up back here. Drive out and approach them at about twenty miles an hour. Stop when you get into voice range of them."
"Right," Maggie replied. She dropped the truck into gear and started driving.
They exited the gate of the subdivision a few minutes later and started heading along Route 63 towards Interstate 80. Christine checked with Leanette via her portable radio several times during the trip to make sure that the women were still there, that they were still waving their arms, and that no one else had appeared on the scene. Leanette reported each time that everything remained as it had been.
"I'll get out and make contact with them," Christine said as they pulled up the offramp in the wrong direction to access the eastbound lanes. "You two keep me covered. I'll try to stay out of your line of fire as much as I can. If there's trouble, I'll dive to the ground. If there's a lot of trouble, like troops hiding in the flanks, then forget about me and get the hell out."
" Christine," Paula said, "we're not gonna leave you out there."
"If this is a large-scale attack, you're gonna have to and I expect you to do it," she said. "Is that clear?"
Paula looked at her, the woman she loved as a sister, as a co-wife, as an occasional lover. "Yes," she said softly. "It's clear."
They came around a small bend in the freeway surface and suddenly they were able to see the two figures before them. They were about a half of a mile in front of them, standing just as Leanette had described. They were still waving their hands slowly back and forth in a gesture indicating they wanted to communicate. As soon as they saw the truck they stopped and put their hands up as high as they could physically make them go.
"Nice and slow, Mags," Christine said loud enough for the driver to hear. "As long as there's no trouble, stop just inside of voice range."
"Right," Maggie yelled back a little nervously.
"Stick to the right shoulder of the road," Christine said. "Keep the gearshift in drive and your foot on the brake. If you have to get away quick, you'll have room to make a fast U-turn."
Everyone tightened their grips on their weapons and took aim at the two females as they approached. Maggie slowly rolled forward, the powerful V-8 engine nearly at an idle, and came to a gentle stop about forty feet away from the two women. This close they were able to see that they were filthy with mud - the mark of being outside for long periods. It was hard to tell hair color or even race so dirty were they. They looked at the truck and its occupants a little fearfully.
"Are you armed?" Christine yelled at them.
"No," shouted the woman on the left. "We only have a few cans of food and a video camera."
"A video camera?" Mike said softly.
Christine ignored him. "Is there anyone else out there?"
"No," said the same woman. "We're alone. We came from Auburn."
"Auburn," Paula said. "Jesus."
Christine took a deep breath, her adrenaline pumping, her mind whizzing along like mad as she considered what to do next. "What is it that you want?" she asked them. "Are you just passing through?"
"We escaped from there a little more than a week ago," the woman said. "We wish sanctuary with your town. We will trade information about Auburn and their intentions towards you for safety."
"Escaped?" Paula said loud enough for only Christine and Mike to hear.
"Intentions towards us?" Mike echoed.
"Please," said the other woman, her voice seemingly near tears. "We don't have anywhere else to go. We're almost out of food. Men from Auburn are planning to attack you! We can tell you about it but you have to take us in! If you don't take us in, we'll die and you'll die!"
"Attack us?" Mike and Paula said in unison.
"Cover me," Christine said, coming to decision in her mind. "I'm gonna go out and talk them from a little closer."
"Right," Paula and Mike said.
"Stay right where you are," Christine told the two women. "I'm gonna approach you. Keep your hands up like you have them and don't make any sudden moves."
The two women promised that they wouldn't and Christine jumped down out of the truck. She trotted over to the left shoulder of the Interstate and, keeping her AR-15 trained on them, slowly walked forward. She made sure that her body did not cross between the truck and the women. She stopped about ten feet in front of them.
"What're your names?" she asked.
"I'm
Anna," said the woman on the left, the first to have spoken.
"I'm Jean," said the second.
"What's this about an attack on our town?" Christine asked.
"There is one planned," Anna said. "That's all I'll tell you unless you give us sanctuary in your town."
"Uh huh," Christine said. "And how do I know that you really have any information? How do I know that you're even from Auburn?"
"You recently exiled a woman named Jessica Blakely," Anna said. "She showed up in Auburn not too long before. She was picked up by an attack force that had been planning to attack your town but that pulled back when they heard what Jessica had to tell them about your upgraded defenses. Before Jessica was exiled you were attacked by a group of men and you managed to repel them. In some strange way that I wasn't able to follow, this attack is what led to the exile of Jessica."
Christine relaxed her grip on her weapon the slightest bit. She knew that these women were speaking the truth - she simply knew it. "You have Jessica huh?" she asked. "Too bad for your town. What do you mean you escaped from Auburn? Are you not allowed to come and go as you please?"
"No," said Anna. "Women are slaves there. The men control all of the guns and they pass us around like joints. Escape attempts are punished by hanging. We managed to get out by using a trick we learned from you - the night vision video camera."
Any doubts about the authenticity of their tale disappeared at that moment. "I don't have the authority to grant you sanctuary," Christine told them. "Our town leaders are uh... well... out of town at the moment. I will take you in and keep you under guard until they get back however. You can discuss this with them."
"Thank you," Anna said, sighing a little. Jean repeated this sentiment.
"I want you two to slowly drop your packs to the ground and then lay down on the pavement," Christine told them. "Put your arms out in front of you and spread your legs. I'm gonna pat you down for weapons and then take you back to town in the back of the truck."
"You did what?" Skip asked upon hearing the news two hours later. He, Jack, Mick, and Paul were weary after their day of mapping the terrain and poking through abandoned trucks on the highways and byways in the area. Though they had found two more food sources - an abandoned big rig up near the snowline that had been hauling Dennison's chili and another, deeper in the backcountry, that had been hauling Skippy peanut butter - they had checked more than twenty trucks in all. And now, as they were approaching Garden Hill at last, their fuel supply dwindling, their bodies grimy and sweaty, Christine was telling them on the routine radio check-in that she had brought two stragglers from Auburn into the town. Skip's reaction to this revelation was more instinctive than anything else.
"I brought them inside," Christine repeated, her tone daring him to challenge this decision. "Isn't that what you would have done, given the same circumstances?"
Like Paula earlier, these words had a sobering effect on him. Yes, that was what he would've done in the same circumstances. These two women were potentially valuable information sources and the very rarity of their presence in the first place would have compelled him to bring them in - as it had Christine apparently. It was the thought of his young wife deliberately putting herself into harm's way that caused the knee-jerk reaction. "Yes," he told her after a considerable delay. "I suppose you're right."
"So don't yell at me then, Skip Adams," she said quite huffily. "I was just doing what I knew you wanted done anyway."
"I think she put you in your place quite nicely there," Paul, who was listening in along with everyone else in the helicopter (as well as probably half the town), noted with a smile.
"It would seem so," Skip said, reluctantly smiling. He keyed back up his microphone. "My sincere apologies, Christine," he told her. "You did the right thing and I'm letting my emotions get in the way. So where are our guests now?"
"I have them under guard in one of the storage rooms in the community center," she replied. "I let them take baths and I've given them fresh clothes. Right now they're eating some of our leftovers from lunch. They've been living on canned food for the past eight days now."
"We know what that feels like, don't we?" Skip replied. "Good job. Have the guard posts reported anything unusual since you picked them up?"
"Negative," she said. "I've had them on high-alert ever since the first sighting and everything seems to be as it should be. However, I would suggest you make a pass around the perimeter and check everything on visual and with the FLIR, just to make sure that there's not an attack force out there."
"I concur," Skip said, taking a quick glance at his fuel gauge. It was getting pretty low but there was still enough for a quick run around the area. "We have just enough fuel to do that. It should take about ten, fifteen minutes or so. We'll report anything to you as it comes up."
"Copy that, Skip," she said. "See you on the ground."
The aerial check of the area revealed nothing but hills and trees and mud. There was no sign of a hidden attack force hiding anywhere within ten miles of Garden Hill's borders. With less than ten gallons of fuel in the tank, Skip landed the helicopter its accustomed place. He then allowed Jack, his apprentice, to go through the power-down procedure as part of his training.
"Good job," he told him after he had flipped all of the switches and turned all of the dials. "Do you think you can handle refueling by yourself? I wanna go meet our new friends as soon as I can."
"No problem," Jack assured him.
"You the man," Skip told him, opening his door and stepping out onto the wet parking lot. Behind him Mick and Paul had already gotten out. They carried their rifles, which were now safed and unloaded, over their shoulders and their packs upon their backs. Together, they all walked to the side entrance of the community center, said hello to the guard stationed there, and went inside.
First and foremost, Skip and Paul gave Christine a thorough debriefing on her contact with the two women so far. She only had a few details to share that she hadn't already told them over the radio. Basically the women were offering to trade everything they knew about Auburn and its inhabitants for sanctuary and citizenship in Garden Hill. As proof of their identity they had dropped Jessica's name and revealed the fact that she was now living in Auburn. As an enticement to take the deal, they had made vague assertions regarding both an upcoming attack by Auburnites and an aborted earlier attack.
"What do you think?" Paul asked Skip after hearing all this.
"I say we should go talk to them," he replied without hesitation. "It sounds like they might be a wealth of valuable intelligence."
"Should we agree to their deal?" Christine asked.
Paul shrugged. "Why shouldn't we? Truth be known, there's no real reason to exclude people with the... uh... vigor that we used to. Now that we have access to enough food to carry us through, a few more mouths to feed is no longer potentially the difference between survival and death. I would probably be inclined to offer them citizenship even if they didn't have information for us. As long as they don't pose a danger of any kind, why not?"
"Jessica wouldn't be very happy with that attitude," Skip told him.
"No," said Christine, who still had more than a little lingering hatred for Jessica. "I wouldn't think she would. And she was president of the homeowner's association you know."
"Yes," Paul said. "And we all saw what that got her in life, didn't we?" He silently dismissed the subject of Jessica and turned back to Skip. "So how do you want to handle this? You're the expert at questioning people."
"I wouldn't say expert," Skip said, "but I did do my fair share of it back in my patrol days. If this were a criminal investigation, I would have them separated from each other so they couldn't collaborate on stories, but in this case, we might as well leave them together. They've already had a couple of weeks to get their details straight if they're planning on scamming us in some way. I'll do most of the questioning of them and hopefully I'll be able to pick up if they're feeding us a bunch of bullshit.
If I start to feel that that is the case, then we'll separate them at that time."
"Sounds like a plan," Paul said.
" Christine," Skip continued, "you should be in the room during the questioning, just so they see a familiar face. And you Paul, you should be in there as well since you're the one that has the authority to grant sanctuary or not. But I'll ask both of you to keep your questions and comments as minimal as you can."
"Okay," they both agreed.
"And we should videotape the interview," Skip added. "That way we can go over it slowly and in detail later if we need to. We can also use it against them if it turns out they're lying or misleading us in some way. A real good technique in interrogation is to confront your subject with contradictory information that they gave earlier."
"It'll take a few minutes to rig up a power supply and the equipment," Paul said.
"We have all night," Skip told him.
"True. Christine, why don't you dig out the camera and I'll start running a power supply?"
Skip started off very low key with the two women. He introduced himself and Paul and then reintroduced Christine to them as well. Hands were shaken all around. He then explained to them that - if they had no objections - the interview would be recorded for the town archives. He strongly hinted that this was a routine Micker - as if every conversation that took place in the community center was videotaped. They both agreed to this stipulation without debate.
As he went through these initial steps he looked the two of them up and down, his sharp, observant eyes not missing a single detail of their appearance. Though they were now bathed and fed and dressed in designer jeans and sweaters that had come from Garden Hill's abundant clothing stock, it was quite obvious that they had been through quite an ordeal to get where they now sat. Their faces were somewhat gaunt, with a few premature lines and crow's feet - factors which bespoke of both a considerable amount of recent stress and near-starvation. Their hands were callused and worn, the surface marred by multiple cuts, scrapes, and abrasions. Their fingers had ground-in mud beneath the nails. Most telling of all were the eyes - one set brown, the other set blue - which were haunted and filled with desperate hope. Without even broaching the meat of the Micker, Skip was able to develop a pretty good idea that they were on the up and up.
