Gone to Ground

by Cheryl Taylor

  As the pair bent over the math problems in the glow from an oil lamp, Maggie dimly registered a thump outside the door. Gypsy lifted her head and rolled to her chest, ears alert, and let out a soft growl. Immediately Jack scrambled to his feet, and stood, facing the door. Just as Maggie pushed back her chair and started to rise, the door slammed open and in stepped a tall, muscular man wearing the navy blue uniform shirt of an Enforcer, carrying a rifle at the ready with a handgun snugged into the holster at his belt.

  “Mom, who...,” Mark started to say, but stopped when Maggie put her hand on his shoulder and sank slowly back into her chair, wide green eyes, the match to her son’s, fixed on the terrifying image in the doorway.

  A thousand thoughts rushed through her mind, crashing off each other and causing roadblocks to action. How could they have found us? What do we do? I won’t go down without fighting,! I won’t. How do I protect Mark? What... what... what...

  Maggie finally found her voice and asked in tremulous tones, “Who are you?”

  5

  This sucks, thought fourteen-year-old Christina Craigson as she sat on a bed in the tiny windowless room on the subterranean level of th

  e converted hotel. This totally, completely and fully sucks!

  The “this” she was referring to was the entire situation she found herself in. Parents dead; mother of the disease and father at the hands of the Enforcers. Separated from her brothers and now locked in this little cell. THEY may call it a “time away” to rethink her choices, and say it was for her own good, but she knew what it really was: a way to keep her from questioning what they were doing, and what they wanted her to do.

  THEY didn’t know Christina well at all, though, if they thought locking her away would shut her up, she thought. Uh uh, no way. Questioning how things worked was what Christina did best. Her mom and dad are - were scientists and taught her the value of questioning her senses and not accepting things at face value. God, she missed them, she thought as unshed tears stung her eyes. She was sure they had cameras in here, and she refused to give them the satisfaction of seeing her cry. They would take it as a sign of weakness and no one was allowed to think of Christina Craigson, daughter of William and Elizabeth Craigson as weak.

  Christina had been at the Laughlin, Nevada, APZ for nearly six weeks. Before that she and her brothers had been staying at the shelter in Ash Springs, Nevada, where they’d been taken after their father’s death.

  “Poor little mites,” the smelly old lady in charge of the shelter said in treacly, over concerned tones. Her hair, died an unnatural shade of red, bobbed as she shook her head in sympathy. “So hard to lose your parents at this age. Just you trust your Aunt Sue, honey, I’ll make sure you’re okay.” Christina was afraid she was in imminent danger of falling into a diabetic coma if Sue continued in this sugary style.

  “You’ll be fine,” said the harried looking social worker assigned to them. There weren’t many social workers left alive, and those who were found themselves overwhelmed with the number of orphans left as the influenza swept over the country.

  Then, in the manner of most clueless adults who tended to view kids as a lower form of life that didn’t rank especially high on the intellectual scale, the social worker, “call me Jeannie,” walked over to “Aunt” Sue and began talking quietly. Apparently she was unaware that Christina could hear and understand every word as she stood there, flanked by her two eight-year-old brothers, Ryan and Nick. Unaware, or just didn’t care.

  “It’s such a sad story,” Jeannie said in her high, nasal voice, “mother dead of the influenza and the poor children left with just their father. Then he commits treason. Actually stands up in front of a crowd and stirs them up against the authorities with some made up stories about how the government is working on some conspiracy and using this terrible disease to gain control over the people. As if our elected officials would do something like that,” she huffed, looking out of the corner of her eye at Christina and her brothers.

  Christina wanted to march up to the two busy bodies, kick them in the shins and yell, “Hey, I’m right here! I’m not deaf!” but she kept in her place.

  “Then,” Jeannie continued breathlessly, with Sue shaking her head and clucking her tongue against the roof of her mouth, “when the Enforcers were brought in to get things under control, Craigson tried to incite the crowd against them. Of course they had to do something. It’s such a shame that the little ones had to see their father die that way, especially so soon after losing their mother.”

  “Did they have to shoot him?” Sue asked avidly, leaning forward to catch every word, mouth hanging open like a baby bird waiting for a juicy worm, her watery blue eyes eager behind half moon glasses.

  “Yes,” Jeannie verified. She nodded vigorously, her frizzy, streaked-blond hair writhing around her head like Medusa’s snakes. “They say Dr. Craigson pointed the Enforcers out as agents of the government which was trying to deprive them of health care and food and everything. The crowd rose up and charged the Enforcers. The officers opened fire to protect themselves. Fifteen were killed, and one of those was Dr. Craigson, shot down right in front of his children.” Jeannie shook her head as if despairing over this terrible situation that had fathers being shot down in front of their kids, but her voice betrayed the degree to which she savored the image of the dramatic scene. “It’s shocking for the little ones, but what end do you expect for a traitor.”

  Finally, Christina couldn’t take it anymore. “He wasn’t!” She yelled, fists balled at her sides as if ready to fight, dark blue eyes blazing in a white face framed by dark brown hair. “Take it back! My dad wasn’t a traitor! He was a great scientist and he knew more about what was going on than any of you stupid bitches, so you take it back!”

  Christina paused, breathless, chest heaving and struggling to contain her sobs. Her brothers shrank behind her, scared brown eyes looking back and forth between their sister and the two shocked women.

  Christina turned her back to the two women. They didn’t know. They didn’t care. Christina had been the one standing next to her dad when the Enforcers arrived. She was the one who was next to her father as he tried to reason with them, who saw the angry crowd turn on the uniformed men carrying the guns. She was the one who was splashed with her father’s blood when the Enforcers opened fire with their assault rifles.

  “Well, I’ll...” Jeannie stumbled to a stop, protuberant brown eyes regarding the girl with amazement.

  Aunt Sue was made of sterner stuff, though. “Young lady, I know you’ve been through a lot, but I’ll thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head,” she snapped, glaring at Christina’s back, double chins wobbling in sympathetic outrage.

  Christina turned back around and clapped her lips tightly together, staring defiantly at the pair of women.

  As though frozen to the spot by the power of Christina’s glare, Aunt Sue hesitated for a moment, looking at the three on the rug in front of her. When it was clear that Christina wasn’t going to say anything more, she muttered, “good,” turned back to the social worker and finished the transfer. Occasionally, though, she looked back over her shoulder, as if puzzled at this force of nature standing on the rug in the shelter’s entry way.

  Christina and her brothers remained at the Ash Creek shelter for just under three weeks, during which time Christina made a name for herself as a “defiant” child. She really didn’t care what the adults thought, but the constant turmoil that surrounded her began to affect her younger brothers, already badly traumatized by the death of both parents. Nick and Ryan began to retreat into their own little world, using their own “twin language” for the first time in at least four years. It pained Christina to see the distance grow between them, but she was so caught up into her grief and sense of injustice that she couldn’t bring herself to meekly acquiesce to the demands of the grownups.

  At the end of the three weeks, Christina, her brothers, and all the other children at the shelter, as well as all the
adults in the town were gathered and moved to the Laughlin Authorized Population Zone, one of the first APZs in the state. There the children all found themselves housed in a converted hotel, the boys in one wing and the girls in another. With them were other children from all over the state of Nevada and western Arizona up to the age of sixteen.

  Once settled in the hotel, Christina continued asking her questions and spreading the information that had gotten her father killed. The caretakers in charge of this new shelter told her that until she began to follow directions and stopped stirring up trouble by spreading false information she wouldn’t be allowed to visit with her brothers. When she still didn’t fall in line, the adults told her that she would have to be removed from the program for awhile. That was how she found herself sitting in the little concrete cell.

  Actually, Christina thought, it wasn’t all that bad down here, without people yammering at her all the time, telling her that her dad was a liar and didn’t know what he was talking about. The only people she saw were the people who brought her food and the occasional ‘counselor’ trying to talk sense into her. She had her books, and her thoughts, and was content for the time being until she could figure out a way to get free from here and take her brothers with her.

  The other good thing about being here was that she’d met Him. He was the officer who’d brought her down here, and who came with the shelter staff when they showed up to try and convince her to drop her ideas. This Enforcer had nice eyes, though she thought they looked sort of sad and haunted.

  Then, one afternoon, about three days after she’d been put in the cell, he came by himself. He told her he was in charge of the security station that afternoon, the one where the camera in her cell was monitored. He wasn’t there about that, though. He wanted to ask her about the information her dad knew. Over and over again he asked her to repeat what her dad taught her and his eyes became more and more haunted with every telling.

  This went on for several days; her talking, him listening. She wanted to know more about the APZ, and what was happening in the world outside, but he resisted her questions, always posing another of his own. Then, one day out of the blue, he began telling her about a place where one wasn’t punished for telling the truth. It sounded truly fantastical, this place he described, as though it was in another dimension. He said it was a “camp” which seemed to mean a place where cowboys lived out closer to the cows. He said he’d been a cowboy. She studied him, trying to see the cowboy in the Enforcer. He was tall, with short-cropped wavy hair the color of the newly husked chestnuts she and her brothers used to collect every fall from the tree in their backyard; a sort of dark red-brown. His eyes were dark brown, almost black, and seemed so deep that you could fall into them if you weren’t careful. She guessed that maybe he looked like a cowboy, but she wasn’t sure.

  He said that this camp was in a place that no seekers could find, and that if you hid there, you would be safe. Many of the things he described were hard to grasp. Christina had lived all her life in the city, seldom going camping or even spending days in the country, but as the man built upon his description of the camp, it began to take root in her mind.

  Then one afternoon he didn’t show up. When her meal was brought that evening, it was a different Enforcer escorting the shelter staff. The next day again he wasn’t there. She wanted to ask about him, but was afraid of causing trouble. Besides, he’d never even told her his first name. All she knew was that the tag on his navy blue uniform said “O’Reilly.”

  As the week went on, and O’Reilly didn’t come, Christina continued to think about the things he’d told her. She didn’t know if he’d been killed in an uprising. He’d said there were some in the APZs when the residents protested the rules imposed upon them. She was afraid that maybe he’d been a late victim of the disease that had taken her mother. But the thoughts that occupied her mind the most were those of the camp he’d told her about. The place where someone could live without worrying about this new government and this new rule where truth didn’t count for much. It sounded lonely, and Christina wasn’t sure if she could find it, let alone stay alive there, but it haunted her dreams more and more until she finally decided that, live or die, she had to try and get to it. She and her brothers.

  The first thing, though, would be to get out of this isolation cell. And to do that, she would have to play along with the adults in charge of the shelter. With her mind filled with O’Reilly’s descriptions, Christina waited for the shelter staff to arrive at the cell with dinner. As soon as the server got there, Christina would ask her to tell the administrator that she was ready to be a productive member of the APZ. Once she was out of here, she’d find her brothers and she would make a run for it; the camp he called Hideaway.

  6

  Two sets of wide, terrified green eyes met his as he stood in t

  he doorway surveying the room. The woman’s oval face, leached of all color under her summer tan, took on a grayish tint, as though she’d aged twenty years in twenty seconds. The boy beside her flushed, his mouth open as if to protest. The woman’s hand rested on his shoulder, halting his movement and voice.

  For one second... two... a thousand, there was silence, then in a soft voice robbed of all color she asked, “Who are you?”

  When he didn’t answer her immediately, but stood in the doorway as still as a statue, watching them, gun in hand, she spoke again, this time in a stronger voice, though with no less fear.

  “How did you find us?”

  “Are you the only two here?” the man asked, even though he was sure he knew the answer. He was curious to see if she would lie and try and convince him that help was only a short distance away, and would be home at any time.

  The two plates on the side of the sink, the two glasses beside them, the two coats hanging on nails beside the door, and the two pairs of boots sitting underneath them all spoke of only two people being in residence. There was no indication anywhere in the front room that anyone else was living there.

  The woman watched his eyes roam around the room, resting here and there. Her gaze followed his, and apparently she realized that it would be useless to try and prevaricate.

  “Yes, there’s just my son and me. What are you going to do with us?”

  “Where are your guns?” He’d already seen one rifle on a rack near the door, but surely the woman couldn’t be such a greenhorn that she only had one gun. He saw her drop her head slightly and knew that it was true. Only one gun, and she didn’t even keep it nearby. Unbelievable.

  “That’s the only one. There by the door.”

  The man relaxed marginally, but didn’t let his guard down completely. Just because she didn’t have a gun didn’t mean she wasn’t dangerous. The proverbs of a mother bear protecting her young were accurate. There was nothing more cunning or more dangerous.

  He stepped further into the room and closed the door behind him, shutting out the soft night sounds of crickets and frogs. Again he surveyed the room. Keeping the pair in sight he moved around the living space, turning as he went so that they were never behind his back. As he reached each of the four doors at the back of the main room, he opened them, and using a small pocket flashlight, quickly surveyed the interiors.

  These rooms, closer to the actual wall of the canyon and tucked further back underneath the overhang, were windowless, side walls made of the same material as the outer wall of the house, but with a solid rock back wall and ceiling. The first three rooms were bedrooms, two evidently occupied and one used as a storage room, with bundles piled on the two double bunk beds. The fourth door hid a pantry which was pitifully empty, testifying to the hard work the pair was required to go through just to keep themselves fed.

  As he moved around the room, the woman and her son swivelled in their seats, keeping him in sight, but they remained silent, the woman’s hand still resting on her son’s shoulder. Finally he returned to his original position near the door and looked directly at them again.

  In the
wordless stretch while he explored the house the woman had evidently regained some measure of her composure. Her body was still tense, but she met his stare directly. Her face was still ghostly pale but her gaze held a degree of challenge which surprised him. Her hand moved down from her son’s shoulder to the table in front of her. Beside her the boy still looked terrified, his face so much like his mother’s. The same honey gold hair, the same wide bottle green eyes, the same smooth, tanned skin. But where the mother had an oval face, and a long thin neck, the boy showed evidence of a more masculine structure to come with age. His chin was more squarely shaped, neck stockier, his shoulders already beginning to take on the broadness that would come with his future growth.

  The pair sat still while the man studied them, tolerating his examination without protest though he could see a rising anger in the woman’s eyes. He was impressed at how quickly she regained command of herself after the surprise of his entrance. She must have thought she was well beyond the reach of the Enforcers, and to have him show up on her doorstep had to have rocked her carefully tended belief that they had escaped.

  Finally, when the suspense, fed to ripeness by the silence and menacing appearance of the man, was no longer bearable, the woman spoke.

  “I asked who you are.” Soft voice, a little husky. Tremors of fear under control.