by Noah Mann
“Movement to the east,” he said. “Nothing to the west.”
“They’re sentries,” I suggested. “Controlling access.”
“We’ll find the same on the other roads in and out,” Del said, putting his binoculars away. “This way is a no go.”
“Let’s backtrack, come in from the north through the rail yards.”
Del didn’t seem entirely enthused by that approach.
“We’ll have to chance the rail bridge or the ice to get across the river,” he said.
“Ice, I’d say. It’ll hold.”
“I’m sure it will,” Del agreed. “But if we need to get the hell out fast, there’ll be a river between us and our way home. Unless you want to take a helluva long walk around the east side of the lake.”
It was a risk, to be sure. But we’d come to get information, and we couldn’t accomplish that without getting closer. Much closer. Through the rail yards was the best avenue to making that happen. And the safest, in my opinion.
“It’s worth the risk,” I told Del.
“Okay,” he said, without hesitation, trusting in my appraisal.
We followed the path I’d proposed, skirting the sparse number of dwellings on the west side of town, each and every one we passed seeming left to the elements. Windows smashed. Doors wrenched from their hinges.
“Looks like they don’t want folks even this far out,” Del observed.
“Concentrating the population to control them,” I said, echoes of a history almost forgotten rising. “Like a ghetto.”
Near the golf course we chanced entering a house, to check its interior, no obvious traps set to deter squatters, though the destruction of its barrier to weather made it all but uninhabitable. What we found inside painted still more of a picture of what had happened. Cabinets were cleaned out. Refrigerator empty. A basement dry room, where the resident had once obviously kept preserved goods and home crafted beers, was empty, the machinery to process the foods gone as well, leaving dusty footprints of where they’d been.
“Turn in your food, right?”
“If they had anything left,” I said, mostly agreeing with Del’s rhetorical recollection. Most people would have exhausted the food kept in their house within a week. Some, maybe the people in this house, were keepers of preserved foods. Not survivalists, but just individuals who chose to be prepared.
We left the house and continued, crossing the frozen mouth of the river just upstream from the rail bridge spanning it. Shallow water bubbled beneath a few inches of ice, the footing solid as we hurried to the far side and scampered up the embankment. To our left, Whitefish Lake lay still and flat, iced over, a carpet of snow thick atop that. Ahead, the open expanse of the rail yard stretched for hundreds of yards, the space broken by maintenance sheds, trailer offices, and a mix of train cars and one locomotive scattered about the spur lines feeding the main track. Using the structures and cars as cover, Del and I leapfrogged to cross the yard, one moving and then the other, until we had reached the Baker Avenue Bridge. We passed beneath it and found cover behind the museum at the north end of Depot Park.
“There,” Del said, pointing around the corner of the trash dumpster.
I tracked his direction and saw a few people down the street, congregating in front of the middle school. None appeared to be armed. Two looked to be women, the other a man much older. He leaned on the women, and their arms curled behind his back, supporting him.
“You notice anything else?” I asked Del.
“You mean how clean it is?”
“Not a wreck on the streets,” I said. “Every window I see is unbroken or boarded over.”
“We’re inside their zone. They don’t have to discourage people from being here.”
Del was right in his analysis. We’d easily penetrated their perimeter, which, when one considered the facts, was unsurprising. Most of the citizenry was dead and gone. The force that the Major would have arrived with, and built from any willing residents, would hardly be sufficient to seal the town fully. There were too many ways in and out. Fear and intimidation, with maybe a promise of order and food, was enough to keep most every survivor in place. This we knew.
What we didn’t know was what their reaction to intruders would be.
“Patrol,” Del said, ducking fully behind the dumpster.
I heard the rumble before seeing the two large pickup trucks rumble over the bridge to our right, arriving from the northern part of the town. Each had a machine gun mounted similarly to the vehicle we’d seen at the roadblock. What was different here were the two armed men in the back of each truck, one on the machine gun and the other next to him with an assault rifle at the ready.
“They’ve been scrounging weapons the Guard left behind,” Del said.
From the look of their armament, and what Del described seeing on a scouting trip before we’d met, he was dead on. It made me wonder, with such a display, if they’d tried to disarm the surviving population, maybe taking a cue from FEMA, as indicated on the notice Marco had shown me. No weapons allowed in the camps, centers, whatever they were calling them down in Arizona. If such places existed at all. Or existed anymore. They would have been overrun with refugees, I knew. People just like Marco, desperate for food, and medical care. And stability.
Is that all Major Layton had had to do? Dangle stability in front of the desperate population of a small town, a good portion of which was well armed in their everyday existence? Some had resisted, as Sarah had implied. The firefight I’d watched from a distance now seemed all but certain to have involved the Major’s men and noncompliant townspeople.
And it was clear who had won that skirmish.
The patrol worked its way off the bridge and drove through the snowy streets, nearing the trio of people gathered near the middle school. The two vehicles pulled up and stopped, five armed men exiting the vehicles and approaching the people. One man remained on his truck’s machine gun, covering not the interaction beginning, but their flanks and rear.
“They don’t feel fully secure,” I commented as I watched the machine gunner swivel his weapon slowly, searching for threats.
“Compliance hasn’t been total,” Del said.
The next thing to inform our opinion of the force that had taken over Whitefish was not anything we saw. It was what we heard.
A blood curdling scream rolled up the street from the two women as the older man was pulled from their embrace and dragged toward the lead vehicle. One of the women tried to push past the armed men and she was knocked to the ground, courtesy of a rifle but strike to her back. The other woman dropped to the ground and shielded her companion with her body. The armed men, satisfied that they’d stopped any resistance, returned to their vehicles, the older man heaved roughly into the first truck, only a single man required to keep him subdued as the patrol drove away.
“What the hell was that?”
Del didn’t have an immediate answer to my question.
“That guy didn’t look like he could muster much trouble for anyone to be concerned with,” he observed.
The trucks pulled away and disappeared down the street, the women still huddled on the snowy sidewalk, one hurt and the other sobbing over her.
“They might have some answers for us,” Del said.
He was right. But to seek those answers we’d have to expose ourselves as we hadn’t yet. We’d actually be venturing into the town, with little idea who might be watching from any of the windows. Or who might come around a corner to spot us.
“Everything looks clear between us and them,” I said, scanning the park and buildings ahead.
“We move together,” Del said.
I nodded, and he left the cover of the dumpster first. I followed quickly, keeping up, with just ten feet separating us. For a guy in his mid-sixties with cancer eating at his bones, Del Drake was swift and sharp. He maneuvered from cover to cover. Using poles and signage to obscure our dash to the middle school. When we reached its corner, Del
stopped us and took stock of the way ahead. Buildings lined the opposite side of the street. Empty buildings, we hoped, but couldn’t be sure.
“We’re damn exposed,” I said.
“Yeah.”
Twenty yards ahead the women now clung to each other on the ground, hugging and sobbing.
“Let’s get them to come to us,” Del said.
Rather than making a dash to where they sat just in front of the school’s entrance alcove, we needed to draw their attention. And, quietly, urge them to move our way. It was all great in theory, but after what they’d just been through, there was no guarantee they’d have any trust toward men with guns.
Doubts aside, it was our best choice.
I fished around in the snow near the building with my gloved hand until I found what I was looking for—a rock. I leaned out past the corner of the building and hurled the chunk of stone toward the women, but not directly at them. It found its mark against the front side of the school and skidded off the brick façade with a stark scraping sound. The woman who hadn’t been struck looked up at the impact. She was younger, I could see, maybe late twenties or early thirties, though with the physical hardships many had been through a true sense of age was more difficult to come by. The woman she’d shielded looked older, in her fifties, I gauged. The relationship and the situation began to gel in my mind. Daughter and mother, who’d just witnessed their father and husband being taken away. That was what we’d stumbled upon.
Del waved his hand as the younger woman looked our way. There was little chance she could not see us, but for a moment she did not react, simply holding herself frozen, gaze wide and wary.
I waved at her now, motioning with my hand to come in our direction. Now she did move, if only her head, swiveling to check her surroundings, much as the machine gunner had scanned for threats.
“Come on,” I said, not loud, but also not hushed, urging her further with a more vigorous motion of my hand, practically windmilling it in the open.
The younger woman leaned toward the older woman, saying something, then she, too, looked at us.
“Come here,” Del said, louder than I had.
The women stared at us for a moment, then looked to each other. Finally, the younger one helped the other up and they shuffled together up the sidewalk, moving our way, glancing behind every few seconds. There was true fear in their eyes. A look edging on terror. When they were only a few steps from us they stopped.
“You’re not from here,” the younger woman said.
“We want to talk to you,” I said.
Del glanced across the street. A small office building sat on the corner there.
“Let’s get inside,” he said, looking to the women, their hesitance palpable. “We’re not going to hurt you.”
Again the women looked to each other, and the older one nodded. I stepped forward and slipped my arm under hers, helping as the four of us moved across the narrow street. Del reached the glass door of the office building first and pushed on it. It swung inward freely and we entered quickly.
I led the women away from the front door and into an empty office as Del searched the building, making sure we were secure within.
“My name is Eric,” I told them, almost adding my last name, but quickly catching myself. Just as I’d stripped the license plates from my truck while fleeing to my refuge, lest the pursuing Trooper be able to identify me, here I wanted to share as little information as possible, not knowing how many records existed in town of ‘Eric Fletcher’ that would tie the name to my house in the woods.
“I’m Alicia Peterson,” the younger woman said. “This is my mother, Lorraine.”
“My friend is Del,” I said, and he rejoined us from his survey of the building.
“We’re pretty good here,” he said, nodding to the women.
I did the introductions, then hesitated. Broaching what we’d witnessed would clearly be painful, but it was already that for these women.
“We saw what happened,” I told them.
For a moment the ‘what’ didn’t register. Then Lorraine settled into a chair in the office and buried her face in her hands, her daughter quickly leaning to put an arm around her mother.
“That was my father,” Alicia said, confirming what we already suspected.
“Why did they take him?” Del asked.
“Because he couldn’t work anymore,” Alicia answered. “He was getting weaker. There isn’t enough food, especially if you’re working fourteen hours a day.”
“Doing what?”
She puzzled at my question for a moment.
“You really don’t know?”
“We’re not from Whitefish,” I said. “Tell us...what was he working on?”
“A bunker.”
I looked to Del, my turn to be at a loss.
“He was working to build this for who?” Del asked. “Major Layton?”
Alicia nodded. Her mother calmed somewhat and looked up.
“He wasn’t young anymore,” Lorraine said, her voice cracking. “He couldn’t keep up. That’s why we brought him to the school.”
“There was supposed to be a clinic open today for residents who needed treatment,” Alicia explained.
“But it was a lie,” Lorraine said. “A lie to get people who were sick or weak here to be taken. When we saw that no one else was showing up, we knew. We should have known better. I should have...”
She could say no more, and collapsed against her daughter, weeping again, unimaginable pain tearing at her.
“We wanted to get him help,” Alicia said. “It’s what’s supposed to happen. People are supposed to help others. Right?”
She seemed as lost in the new reality as a newborn thrust into the world wailing and flailing, ripped from the warm comfort it had known. All was unknown and frightening.
“It’s gotten worse the last two weeks,” Alicia said. “Five people have been taken.”
“People?” I pressed, keying in on the lack of specificity.
“One woman and four men,” Alicia answered, then caught her mistake. “Five men now.”
Her mother sobbed against her shoulder.
Shit...
I had to ask still more.
“Where do they take them?”
Alicia shrugged and shook her head. The not knowing had to be hell, I suspected.
“What about this bunker?” Del asked, redirecting the conversation. “What’s it for? Where is it?”
“It’s for the Major,” Alicia said. “They’re building it over at the field behind the high school. Digging down and reinforcing walls and, I don’t know.”
“What’s it for?”
She thought on my question for a moment, her gaze narrowing down, as if this was yet another subject certain to bring pain.
“He hasn’t said,” Alicia told us, though that wasn’t the end of her answer. “But some of his men have said he’s building it so some can survive the cleanse.”
“What the hell is that?” I asked, expecting no substantive answer, and receiving none.
“This Layton guy,” Del began, looking to me. “He’s sounding more cult leader than rogue military.
“Yeah,” I agreed.
“What are you going to do?” Alicia asked.
“About what?” Del replied with his own question.
“The Major.”
“We didn’t come here to take on an army,” Del told her. “No matter how puny.”
“We need information,” I explained, and her face reddened with simmering rage.
“So, you just come here to take what you want, for your own purposes, regardless of the effect it has on anybody else?” She looked between us, almost sneering the sudden hate she felt. “How the hell is that any different than what’s he’s doing?”
This wasn’t our fight. Del and I both knew that. We’d made the conscious decision, separately, to keep to ourselves, trust few, and stay alive as long as possible. Engaging with a man who’d demonstrated a r
uthless streak, along with a cadre of armed warriors at his beck and call, was beyond not only our intention, but also our ability.
“Listen, we can’t—”
The roar of an engine accelerating cut me off. It was close, and drawing closer, coming from the north. Del broke away from the conversation and ran up the office stairs. I followed, the both of us carefully approaching the windows facing the rail yard. Beyond the glass we saw three more patrol vehicles, different than the others. These were smaller, basically SUV’s that had had their roofs opened up. No machine guns were mounted, but an armed man stood tall in each hole, scanning the area as nine other men, three from each vehicle, congregated around the front of the museum, not far from the dumpster we’d taken cover behind.
“Dammit,” Del swore, just as two of the men zeroed in on the tracks we’d made in the snow as we headed for the middle school.
“Not good,” I said.
From below, the sound of the glass front door opening and then closing echoed upward, metal frame slapping metal jamb hard enough to reverberate through the structure. I shifted position, to a window overlooking the street between the office building and the middle school. Below I could see without difficulty Alicia and Lorraine running out into the street, moving with haste away from the building, both screaming something out and pointing back in our direction.
“They gave us up,” Del said, and pointed to the far side of the upper floor. “Back stairs.”
He led, knowing the way after his quick reconnaissance of the space a few minutes earlier, the throttled whine of engines racing fast rising as I followed, the both of us bounding down a narrow service staircase. At the bottom Del headed straight for a door at the end of a hallway, roughly opposite the one we’d come through when entering the building. We opened it and stepped into an alley, commotion sounding behind us, inside the office building we’d just left.
“Which way?” I asked Del.
“There,” he said, pointing across the narrow alley to the back side of another building.
We tramped across the snowy ground, leaving more perfect tracks that would lead our pursuers right to us. Or would have, if Del hadn’t stopped us at the back door to the building.
