Dark Crossing

by Thomas A. Watson

  “Lance, how much weight have you put on?” Lilly asked, rubbing her hand over all the patches.

  “Thirty-one pounds,” Lance answered and looked over at Jennifer. “Yeah, we measured ourselves last night and I’ve grown an inch since we’ve been here, but Ian’s grown two and now he’s taller.”

  Jennifer looked at Ian’s face to find him beaming. “Finally,” Ian said proudly.

  “Ian, your dad is taller than Mr. Johnathan and look at the size of Jason,” Jennifer grinned. “It only took a little time.”

  Looking down at Jennifer with pain, “Can I take it off? You’ve seen it but until I get a new one, I’m not putting it back on,” Ian begged. “Lance wasn’t putting his on for Lilly unless I did, and now I know why you wanted to see me in my uniform again.”

  Standing on her tiptoes, Jennifer kissed him. “Thank you,” Jennifer smiled, stepping back for the stairs.

  She turned to see Lilly still rubbing the patches over Lance’s uniform. “Lilly, the uniforms are hurting them,” Jennifer said.

  “The only place they fit is the waist,” Lance moaned.

  “Sorry, but this was important to you and a big part of your life. I just wanted to see it,” Lilly told him, looking up into his face. “Thank you.”

  Blushing, “If I find a bigger uniform, I’ll fix it up,” Lance mumbled.

  “No, that’s alright,” Lilly said and kissed him hard.

  After several minutes, “Lilly, please, I’m having trouble breathing,” Ian whined, and Lilly broke the kiss.

  “Wow,” Lance gasped. “Okay, I need out of these clothes, baby doll.”

  Lilly moved to the stairs and ran down with Jennifer. “I can’t breathe,” Ian groaned, taking the scarf off and tossing it on the bed, then pulled the sash off.

  Lance went straight to unbuttoning his shirt, feeling his chest able to expand. Taking a deep breathe, Lance sighed in pleasure. “Hope Mom doesn’t get mad, I outgrew it so fast,” he mumbled, taking the sash off.

  “Lance, help. I don’t want to tear it,” Ian gasped, and Lance turned around. Ian couldn’t get the shirt to roll off his shoulders. Grabbing the shirt, Lance helped Ian tug his arms out of it. When he was out, Ian held up his hands, slowly opening and closing them, feeling the numbness going away.

  Struggling out of his clothes, Lance grabbed some clothes he knew fit and looked decent and threw them on. When he headed downstairs, Ian wasn’t but a few steps behind him. They found everyone sitting at the table and talking. “I miss that,” Ian said as they stopped, looking at everyone.

  “We talk at the table all the time,” Lance told him.

  “No, the sound of older voices,” Ian said quietly.

  “Well, I bet you’ll be tired of the parents’ voices a week after they get back,” Lance laughed, punching Ian in the arm.

  Seeing the boys coming, Heath grinned. “I must say, when your parents get here, they will be very impressed,” he said.

  “Heath, the parents gave birth to them. They know what they can do,” Jennifer assured him, filling glasses of tea. “They will be proud of them, but to be honest, if Lance and Ian had a Space Shuttle parked here, then I think that would surprise them.”

  Heath watched Jennifer as she passed out glasses of tea. “I’m not being rude,” Jennifer said. “I lived next door to them and yes, they still impress me. But their parents talked to mine all the time, and their parents knew what they could do. If I told you just what I know they did before this, you would pass the fuck out.”

  “Hey, you took a vow, woman,” Ian snapped.

  Walking back to the bar and grabbing more filled glasses, “I will never tell,” Jennifer giggled.

  A small hand slapped the table with a loud smack, making everyone jump, “Eight times six, Denny!” Carrie shouted.

  Almost jumping up in a dead run, Denny gave Carrie a deer in the headlights look for a second, “Forty-eight,” he cried out.

  When the adults saw Carrie smile at Denny, each exhaled in a sigh of relief. “Very good,” Carrie beamed, pulling her hand back from the table and grabbing the glass of tea Jennifer had put down for her.

  “What happens if he gets them wrong?” Robin asked, looking at her son while he looked around grinning.

  “I do pushups,” Denny said proudly. “I thought my arms were going to fall off last night.”

  “You make him do pushups?” Robin asked in wonder at the ladybugs.

  The ladybugs looked at her, confused. “Mom,” Denny said, and Robin turned to him. “You punish yourself for not being the best you can be.”

  Having a thought, Kathy looked over at Carrie. “Carrie, twelve times nine?” she asked.

  “One hundred and eight,” Carrie answered almost before Kathy stopped speaking.

  Cutting her eyes to Jodi sitting beside the two, Kathy asked. “Jodi, seven times six?”

  Thinking for a second, “Forty-two,” Jodi smiled.

  Dwain leaned over and hugged her, “That’s so good,” he told her.

  “Did you do pushups?” Kathy asked, and Denny laughed out.

  “Not as many as I did.”

  A beeping sounded, and the adults jumped as everyone who lived at the cabin pulled out cellphones and their kids turned to the monitor on the wall. “Pussies are heading home,” Ian sighed, tapping his phone and the beeping stopped.

  Dwain was looking at the monitor mounted beside the large projection screen and saw the tigers walking past a camera and outlined in white boxes that followed them. “You have a program that tells you if it sees something moving?” he asked in awe.

  “Yeah, I only had to tweak it a little bit,” Lance admitted as the monitor blinked and divided its picture into dozens of smaller screens.

  “How far out are you protected?” Heath asked.

  “Booby traps start a half mile out, but in a few places, go out further,” Lance answered, walking to the fridge. “Electronic surveillance starts at five hundred yards out.”

  “Can you show me how to set up a monitoring system like that?” Dwain asked hopefully.

  “Uncle Dwain,” Denny moaned. “Why do you think I’m learning that computer code?” Dwain looked over as Denny rolled his eyes away, like only a preteen could.

  Opening the fridge and pulling out tinfoil-covered baking sheets, Lance set them on the kitchen island. “I’m going to start the grill.”

  Jumping up out of her chair, “Lance, please let me or Lilly do the steaks?” Jennifer begged.

  “No!” Lance snapped. “Dad said the grill is a man’s domain and the man code verifies that.”

  Turning to Ian with pleading eyes, Jennifer saw Ian shaking his head. “The grill is man only, especially steak,” Ian said proudly.

  Raising his hand, “I’m going to agree with them on that,” Heath said, and Robin leaned over, popping the back of his head.

  “See? Even they heard of that man rule,” Lance said, heading for the back door.

  “Lance,” Lilly cried out, jumping up. “That’s a lot of meat. Can I at least help?”

  “Not on the grill,” Lance popped off, opening the back door. Lance walked out and before the door closed, Ian followed him.

  With a snarl on her face, Lilly spun around on Heath. “Get your ass out there and make sure they don’t burn the steaks,” she snapped, and Heath took off, almost knocking his chair over.

  Stepping outside, Heath found Ian and Lance on the back porch turning on a large black grill. Looking under it, he didn’t see propane bottles. “Where’s the tank?”

  Lance pointed past the ATV shed. “Buried over there,” he said, looking at the burners.

  Walking over beside the two, Heath looked at the hot tub behind him and sighed, hoping they could get theirs cleaned soon. “What else runs on propane? I know where a truck is at,” Heath told them as Ian grabbed a wire brush and started cleaning the already clean cooking racks. “You don’t have to clean them if they are already scrubbed.”

  “Dad said it makes p
rettier grill marks on the steaks,” Ian grinned, scrubbing the racks.

  “What’s that going to be?” Heath asked, pointing at the massive greenhouse wrapped in black plastic.

  “Greenhouse,” Lance answered, moving over beside Heath.

  Dropping his arm in shock at the size of the building, “You could feed an army from that,” Heath mumbled.

  “Not quite, but we will be able to feed us, the animals, and grow soybeans for biodiesel,” Lance laughed.

  Stepping off the back porch, Heath headed over and realized the roof wasn’t on. “You’re going to bury it,” he cried out in amazement.

  “Yeah, dirt is a great insulator,” Lance replied, walking past Heath since Heath seemed interested in the greenhouse. “We’ll use hydroponics and with two levels, have almost nine thousand square feet of growing room. From our projections, this greenhouse will grow the same amount of food a ten-acre garden would, but it will grow food year-round.”

  Following Lance over, Heath saw a hallway leading into the greenhouse on the closest side that was only half as tall as the structure. Walking through the tunnel, Heath saw wire racks sitting in the hallway, then he stepped into the structure. On the south wall toward the cabin, windows lined the upper wall and sloped back to the first line of columns cemented into the ground. “Lance, how do you do so much and make this?” Heath asked, feeling like the laziest person on the planet.

  “Three hours a day,” Lance shrugged, and Heath turned to him. “We dedicate three hours a day to the greenhouse. Well, most days. We keep several projects going at once but if we need to, we devote more time to one if it’s important.”

  “How long do you sleep?”

  “I can get by with four hours, but if I’m tired, I need six,” Lance told him and then laughed. “After we got here, I slept for over a day.”

  Moving closer to the wall, Heath ran his hands over the boards. “This is green lumber.”

  “Yeah, had to take trees down for the inner fence, so Dad, Mr. Bill and Uncle Doug decided to use lumber from here, instead of storing it.”

  “This is amazing,” Heath said, stepping back and looking up at the windows. Each window was set in a box frame with a sheet of Plexiglass on each side and a six-inch space between the glass.

  “Come on,” Lance said, and Heath followed him out.

  Chapter 17

  Following Lance out, Heath kept trying to wrap his brain around the fact that Lance and Ian had accomplished a thousand-fold what his group had. Seeing Lance turn right, Heath followed to a door buried into the hillside. Lance opened it and stood inside the door. “This is the gym,” Lance told Heath when he’d stepped in. “Workouts every day, except Sunday and Wednesday.”

  Very impressed with the layout, Heath nodded. “Yeah, the house we moved into has a nice gym,” Heath said as Lance walked back outside.

  “Use it,” Lance said, but Heath could hear the command.

  Closing the door, “We will, don’t worry,” Heath assured him, and followed Lance to another building that was half-buried in the hillside.

  Walking to the building, Heath stopped to hear the hum of an electric motor. Looking past the door, he saw a motor sitting on a stand, driving a steel cable. Below the motor was a large rock with the cable the motor was turning, dragging across it and slowly cutting a groove.

  Lance turned to see Heath pass by the outer shop door and walk over to the stone cutter. “Yeah, that’s the stone cutter we made,” Lance stated proudly, walking over as Heath looked in the steel tub the rock was sitting in. “We started with a plastic swimming pool, but it broke on the second rock.”

  Waving his hand at the machine, “Why?” Heath asked, racking his brain.

  “To build cisterns to melt metal,” Lance told him, and Heath just felt his body go numb. Lance pointed at a stack of one-inch-thick, one-foot-square plates of stone.

  “Lance, you can find metal pieces to work with!” Heath cried out.

  “Maybe, but you would have to look and build to what you find. This way, we can make what we want,” Lance told him. Then Lance pointed at a five-foot-tall steel vat. “That will be the next induction furnace we build. It will give us over six hundred kilograms of product.”

  “You have one already?” Heath asked in shock.

  “Yeah, but it only has a twenty-five cubic feet capacity, so we have to keep it working hard,” Lance said, and then pointed to the steel vat. “I’m going to have to increase our power big time to use this monster after we cover it in stone.”

  Turning back to the rock cutter, “So, you’re making a liner for the vat?” Heath asked.

  “No, we’ve done that. This is just for me and Ian,” Lance said, then pointed beside the ATV shed to an oven sitting under a small roof. “We dry the slabs out with the oven and store them in the shop. Right now, Ian and I are making stone blocks.”

  Seeing Lance pointing elsewhere, Heath turned and saw a stack of stone blocks. Some were two-foot cubes and others were foot cubes. “You’re just making blocks?”

  Nodding, “Yeah, I want to use them to rebuild Ian’s damn chemistry shop. I don’t like that tin building we set up for it,” Lance told him. Seeing the look on Heath’s face, Lance turned to face him. “Heath, it doesn’t take us any time. Granted, the saw averages about an inch an hour, but tonight before we go to bed, this cut will be done. Then Ian and I will flip the rock and go to bed. When we wake up, we’ll flip it again.”

  Turning back to look on the other side of the greenhouse at the mound of dirt removed from the hillside, Heath could see several large rocks set to the side. “Won’t run out of material around here,” Heath chuckled.

  “No shit,” Lance laughed. “I thought working with metal was tough, but rock is a pain in the ass. You have to use copious amounts of water.”

  Looking at the outside wall of the shop, Heath saw a small lathe and an old end mill. “So, you work on stone outside?” Heath asked.

  “Yeah, I’m not putting that shit on my good machines,” Lance scoffed, then walked in the outer shop door with Heath following.

  “This is the wood working area,” Lance told him, and Heath saw the electric saw mill and other machines with a stack of green lumber at the end.

  With the hidden shop door open, Lance walked into the machine shop and Heath saw four complete frames assembled for the Battle Bots. Two of the bots already had some motors and electronics installed. Looking around, he saw the induction furnace sitting beside a metal table, and a small one sitting on the table. “Holy shit,” Heath said, seeing the stacks of stuff taken from Bones along the right wall.

  “Yeah, we took that from the Devil Lords. You are moving some of it to your house after you get it secured,” Lance informed him, and Heath turned to him in shock. “That’s not all of it and we need the room. You need the shit, but we decide what goes. You’re not getting the Javelins.”

  Seeing Heath just blink at him, Lance crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m serious, until Ian and I get to shoot one, they stay with us,” Lance told him.

  Seeing a large frame in the back, “What’s that?” Heath asked, almost afraid to ask.

  “Oh, Ian’s next creation. It will be a tracked buggy,” Lance told him, and they walked over. Making a guess, Heath put the frame close to eight-foot-wide and Heath could see two huge electrical motors at the back. Moving beside the frame, he guessed the body was just over sixteen feet long. Along the center of the frame, he saw stacks of aluminum boxes bolted to the frame and then a diesel generator.

  Giving an impressed nod, “He balanced it well from the looks,” Heath said, and then looked closer at the metal boxes. “Are those hybrid car batteries?”

  Laughing, “Yeah, you won’t find a Prius or any other hybrid car within five miles, Ian hasn’t ripped the battery pack out of,” Lance told him.

  Very envious of the design, Heath turned to the back counters and saw electrical gears broken apart, then noticed a map on the wall. Moving over, he saw it w
as a map of the area with Battle Bot locations. Each spot was in a valley that led into the small group of hills they were hiding in.

  Seeing all the locations, Heath felt very bad. Lance and Ian could’ve put the first ones into the valleys that led to them. Instead, they had set them up in the two valleys that fed into the area where Heath and his group was. “Robin was right,” Heath mumbled. “I knew she was, but seeing it with my own eyes…”

  “Heath, this next batch will be going near Dewitt. You needed the bots more than we did,” Lance admitted, standing beside Heath. “Besides, they do help us on patrol to the north and east. We didn’t want you to learn how to patrol with masses of stinkers in your area.”

  Smiling, Heath looked away from the map and back at the counter, then it struck him. Everything was neat. Turning around rapidly, he saw everything and everywhere he looked was stacked neatly and the areas were cleaned up. Thinking about it, everywhere he had been, including the cabin, was immaculate.

  “What?” Lance asked, seeing Heath look around.

  “It’s neat!” he gasped.

  “Uh, yeah,” Lance said, not looking around. He knew it was neat. “Cluttered areas lead to cluttered minds.”

  Heath made a mental note of that because the house they’d just moved in to, already had tools everywhere in the shop. Seeing something on a stand, “What’s that?” Heath asked.

  “Pneumatic gun,” Lance shrugged. “We found over a dozen fifty-five-gallon drums of half-inch ball bearings.”

  “We have guns,” Heath mumbled.

  “Heath, we don’t have enough bullets, or the time to use them. We’ve heard other people talking about gangs on the radio. The Nazis and Devil Lords weren’t our only worries. Granted, stinkers are the bigger worry now, but I would like to save bullets for threats that shoot back. We also started putting together a centrifugal gun that’s showing real promise. Ian and I made a small rail gun last year, and we’ve toyed with the idea to see if we can get it set up. Saw a guy on YouTube make one and we had to try it,” Lance shrugged.

  “Lance, you can’t show this to anyone,” Heath panted, moving back until he could lean against the wall.