by Scott Blade
“ATF. The radio made it sound bad.”
Widow stayed quiet.
White said, “There was an explosion, actually a bunch of them. The cult blew themselves up. Killed a bunch of ATF guys.”
Widow looked at White with surprise shadowed over his face.
“They blew themselves up?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s unusual.”
“Not really. Isn’t that what they all do?”
“They don’t usually blow themselves up. Or take out law enforcement when they do. Cults usually poison themselves or some other insane thing, but not explosives. It’s cheaper just to drink bleach than to rig elaborate explosives.”
White shot Widow a sideways look.
Widow asked, “How many died?”
“A hundred, I think. Not sure how many Athenians versus ATF agents.”
“A hundred?”
“That’s the toll I heard. I shut it off soon after. The waves are too frantic to understand what’s happening now. Too many cops talking over each other.”
I imagine so , Widow thought.
“So why the roadblocks?”
“What do you mean?”
“If the Athenians are dead, then why the roadblocks? They only put up roadblocks when they’re hunting someone.”
“I guess there’re stragglers?”
“Maybe. But not just any. More than likely, they’re hunting some really bad ones.”
“The roadblocks are in all directions on all major roads leading in and out of Carbine.”
“I didn’t even notice passing through Carbine.”
“Were you riding with someone else?”
Widow paused a beat. He couldn’t tell him he was driving a stolen car. So, he lied.
“Yeah. I got dropped off before the roadblock. The guy I was with turned around, headed back the other direction. He didn’t want to be caught up in whatever was going on.”
“That’s not surprising. People around here are very particular about their privacy and their constitutional rights. They don’t like cops butting into their affairs. And they hate Feds coming around. Not because this county is full of criminals or anything. It’s just an old political view that stuck around. I guess you could say people around here are libertarian. They love their guns, like conservatives, but they also love their civil liberties like liberals. It’s a real ‘mind your own business’ attitude.”
“I can understand that. I have a similar motto.”
“What’s that?”
“Live and let live,” Widow said.
He thought, but you shoot at me, I shoot at you.
White said, “I’m down with that. That’s a good way to go about your life.”
“I think so. Life’s short. I don’t have time to be a downer on other people for the way they want to live. If you want to live on a compound and spend your days worshipping a man-child who convinced you that he’s a living messiah, that’s your business, not mine. Doesn’t affect me one way or the other.”
White cracked a half smile and nodded. He agreed, but he decided to change the subject.
“So, Mr. Widow, where you headed, exactly?”
Widow stared out the window at the road ahead.
Good question , he thought.
“Guess I’m headed to the Atlantic.”
“You guess? You don’t know?”
“No. Just figure I’ll go where it’s warmer, and I like beaches.”
“You really are a nomad.”
Widow said nothing to that.
“You don’t have any bags?”
“Nope.”
“Where do you keep all your stuff?”
“I’m wearing it.”
White looked him over from across the wheel.
“The only thing you own is the clothes on your back?”
“And the things in my pockets.”
“A nomad and a minimalist. What you got in your pockets? Pocket lint?” White said, jokingly, but Widow had nothing to hide.
He clicked off his seatbelt, let it reel back home. He leaned back in the seat and shoved his hands into both front pockets of his jeans and turned them out. The right pocket turned out to reveal nothing but pocket lint, as predicted. The left pocket turned out to reveal no lint, but a cheap, gas station-bought toothbrush. It wasn’t the foldable type he preferred. Those were hard to come by these days.
The toothbrush was a ninety-nine-cent piece of plastic with bristles and not much else. That was all he carried in his front pockets.
Stuffed in his back pocket was his passport, crinkled and well-worn, but still valid and still valuable. Bookmarked inside it was his debit card, also well-worn and still valuable, not much though; sometimes it felt like it was barely useful. His checking account wasn’t what it used to be. When you’re not depositing money, but spending and spending, your account will shrink fast.
Widow wasn’t a rich man, not in the monetary sense. He had zero net worth. He wasn’t in the game of savings accounts and stocks and holdings and IRAs and 401k’s. Widow’s financial plan was no plan. He lived off what he had or what he earned, and when that ran out, he would earn more.
No one would call Widow rich, but he colored himself wealthy in the sense that he had everything he needed. What he needed was all right there—clothes on his back and enough money in his pocket, or in his bank account, to buy coffee and breakfast and motel rooms.
White stared forward through the windshield to the horizon and drove on.
Widow stared forward and stayed quiet for a beat.
The early morning glow slowly turned into bright, early morning sunbeams. The snow continued to dance across the sky, but the sun rising made it seem a little less gloomy, like hope was on the horizon.
They drove on for a while before White spoke again.
“Mr. Widow, you got any family?”
“Can’t say I do.”
“Is that a no?”
“I got a father left. Somewhere. But I never met him.”
“So, what do you do for Christmas?”
“Nothing. I’m alone. But it’s no big deal. I like it that way. It’s all part of the price I pay for my freedom.”
White was quiet again.
Traffic was light heading southwest, but heavy going back the other way.
On their drive, they saw several police and military and medical emergency vehicles driving back the way they’d come. The police vehicles had sirens wailing and light bars flashing, almost violently, almost palpably, like concrete.
White said, “You know Christmas isn’t that far away?”
“It’s pretty far away. More than three weeks.”
“True. Still, it’s a real shame to spend it alone.”
Widow stayed quiet.
“You’re not getting a big family dinner or anything?”
“There’s no one. No distant cousins. No aunts. No uncles. No one.”
White shifted in his seat like he was trying to stretch out his back from slouching from his long, overnight ride.
“You know what you should do?”
“What’s that?”
“You should spend a day or two with us. You can have a real Christmas dinner.”
Widow looked at him.
“Have what?”
“Christmas dinner.”
“How? It’s a long way off.”
“Not Christmas dinner on Christmas, but a big family dinner like most people have on Christmas. A lot of families split up the exact days they have dinners and go to different places. We can do that tonight. Hell, all our dinners are like Christmas dinners. That’s when we’re all together, which we are right now.”
“I don’t know.”
“Come on. You should experience it, at least. Do it with us.”
“You serious?”
“We got plenty of food. Plenty of room for you to crash a night. We have big family dinners all the time. You’re not putting us out or anything. It’ll feel like a Christmas d
inner, minus the decorations. We’ve not done that part yet. Lord knows we got plenty of Christmas spirit lying around.”
Widow wasn’t sure what he meant by that almost as much as he had no idea what to say. He had never been invited to spend a big family dinner with a stranger’s family before. Not since he’d left the NCIS.
He repeated himself.
“You serious?”
White paused a beat like he was rethinking the offer, but it was too late now. The offer was made. The negotiations were in session.
“Yeah. That’s it. You can spend the day and night with us. Me and my family. You’ll love it.”
The day and night?
Widow thought about this for a moment. His first instinct was to run. He didn’t like staying in one place, standing still, but when was the last time he’d experienced a slice of American family life?
A Christmas dinner, even if it was three weeks early, with strangers was better than no Christmas dinner experience, he figured.
“You sure it’s not an inconvenience?”
White paused and stared in the review mirror at his own reflection as if he was having a meeting with himself, discussing it with himself.
“Sure. You ain’t got no real plans anyway. And my family’ll love having you around. The Atlantic’s not going anywhere. It’ll be there day after tomorrow.”
“I’ll only stay for the day. Then I’ll take off. Ok?”
“And night. I insist. We got plenty of empty beds. You can stay the night with us, and in the morning, I’ll drive you in the direction you want to go, at least to Lancaster. You can catch the bus from there.”
Widow glanced out the windshield once again, quickly, and then over at White.
“Sounds good to me. I appreciate it.”
“Great. You’ll love my family.”
Chapter 18
A RADIO DISPATCHER, who had worked for the South Carolina Highway Patrol for two decades, thought that she had seen it all. During her tenure, she thought that she had heard it all. She knew all there was to know within the department: all the radio codes, all the officers on the ground, and all the terminology. She believed that there was nothing left to surprise her—she was wrong.
Tonight had been quiet up until the ATF thing in Carbine went sideways. One moment, her radio was quiet as a church mouse, the next it erupted into a cacophony of radio chatter. Parts of it were pleas for help, but most of it was inaudible. After the radio chatter and the explosion slowed to the point where officers could understand each other across the network, she stayed quiet, trying not to interrupt, staying out of the way.
She stayed quiet for ten, long minutes and slowly counting, listening to the chatter. She heard familiar patrolmen voices and unfamiliar ATF voices over the airwaves using words like explosion and bodies and body parts . She heard things that made her cringe, that made the hair on her neck stand straight up. It sounded like a warzone. No! Not a warzone. It sounded like the aftermath of a bombing. Warzone implied a war, a battle being waged, but her side, the good guys, weren’t fighting back. It sounded like they had been attacked and were down for the count.
She stayed quiet, stayed listening. Her mind went to thoughts of her dead husband, who had been a retired patrolman. He didn’t die in the line of duty. He died from colon cancer—five years ago. He had retired and a year later, he was diagnosed and died. He was buried two miles from her home, in a nice little cemetery that she visited every Sunday morning, after Mass. The church was right down the street from the cemetery, which made it almost an obligation for her to visit.
She had stayed with the department. She was still a year away from retirement age.
Suddenly her thoughts were interrupted by the radio, but not by loud chatter or another explosion. It was interrupted by silence because just a second ago she’d heard nothing but chaotic chatter. Now, she heard dead silence, not static—silence.
She pulled her chair up closer to the edge of her cubicle desk and listened.
The silence turned to repeated clicks, but no voices, like someone was pressing the talk button down, but saying nothing. She listened closely, expecting someone to say something. But they didn’t. No one said a word. Instead, she heard continuous clicking as if one of her patrolmen was clicking the talk button, trying to say something, but not talking at all.
This went on for five, long minutes. Her first thought was someone’s radio was malfunctioning, but it needed to stop. The channel was important to keep clear.
She listened and still heard nothing but clicking and dead air.
She grabbed the receiver on her headset and adjusted it and spoke.
“Who’s clicking the button?”
She listened, heard nothing. No response.
“Hello? Who’s this?”
She listened again and heard nothing again. But then she heard the click one more time—one last time.
After, she heard a sound that wasn’t clicking or a radio code or anything that she had heard before over the radio. It was a sound that she didn’t often hear over the police channel. But she had heard it before. She knew it well. She’d heard the sound many, many times over the emergency nine-one-one phone lines, whenever she worked the emergency dispatch station and not the police radio station.
The sound was heavy, irregular breathing like someone who had holes in his throat. It sounded like someone blowing through a straw that had multiple punctures in it. It sounded like a deranged, broken flute that didn’t play music, but instead played terror. It sounded like drowning.
The sound she heard was someone’s last breath, their last sounds. The last sounds of breathing turned to someone’s death rattle.
Chapter 19
W IDOW LEANED to the right, his shoulder squeezed against the Tundra’s front passenger door. He blinked. His eyelids flapped slowly and heavily until they fully closed. On the last blink, his eyes closed and stayed closed and his head rolled to the side and leaned down against the Tundra’s window, involuntarily. Sleep overcame him so fast that it seemed almost like being under the power of a heavy sedative. It happened about as fast as if someone had shot him with a tranquilizer dart.
No one had shot him. Widow was tired, and that was all. He had just finished a long drive, alone. It was early in the morning. He dozed off. His brain powered down like he was lying in a comfy king-sized bed and not sitting upright in a truck.
Spending sixteen years in the Navy SEALs, rebounding all over the world, at all hours of the night, Widow had learned to sleep wherever he could and at whatever time he had available. Nothing could keep him from sleep when he was tired. He could be bouncing around the back of a cargo truck, barreling down a rocky mountain road in Afghanistan, or along a dusty dirt road on the plains of Africa, and he would stay asleep. A car could backfire, and he would stay asleep. He could be on a battle carrier in the Gulf, rocking, and swaying, and a major storm could disrupt the ship, and he would stay asleep.
Only three things could wake Widow up—gunfire, the brush of his skin from a beautiful woman, or freshly brewed coffee. He couldn’t explain it, other than to say that it was all part of the SEAL programming.
White noticed the silence and turned his head, glancing over. He saw Widow asleep. He stayed quiet and turned back to the road. He drove on, taking it as easy as he could, keeping the bumps and dips to a bare minimum because he was unaware of the power of Widow’s sleep patterns.
He knew that he didn’t want to wake a sleeping giant.
Widow slept for what felt like an hour-long nap. Actually, he had only been out for about fifteen minutes. However, his brain had transported him right into the REM cycle. At first, he woke up a little groggy, but then he felt refreshed, alert like he was heading into combat. He had to force his energy power back down to medium readiness.
A cramp in his left leg caused him to shift in his seat. Widow was cramped even in a roomy Tundra’s footwell. He turned his foot left and then right, making the best of it. White noticed and s
aw he was awake.
“We’ll be there soon, Mr. Widow.”
“No rush.”
“You can push the seat back more if you need.”
“Thanks.”
Widow reached down under the seat and snapped the adjustment bar up and held it there until the seat slid all the way back on its tracks, then he released it. It didn’t make much difference, but it was big enough for him to feel more comfortable. He stretched his legs out, expanding them to the maximum capacity of what the truck’s footwell would allow.
He opened his eyes wide and held them like that, feeling the heat from the vents on the dash blowing on his face. He hoped that it would wake him, which it did, sort of.
“Where’re we now?” Widow asked, staring forward, looking out over a scene of huge, swaying trees and white snowy everything and a wintry sky that was half gloom, half sunlight.
“Welcome to Cherokee Hill.”
Widow looked out the windshield ahead and then panned his view over to the right. He saw faint streams of early morning light and darkness and more trees caked in snow.
“I don’t see any hills.”
“It’s Cherokee Hill, singular. There’s only one hill. Well, there are lots of little hills, but one big one. You’re on it. The whole place is named after it.”
Widow nodded.
“Why Cherokee?”
“Indians lived here once. I think.”
Widow nodded.
“Possible. The Cherokee lived throughout both the Virginias and the Carolinas.”
“See, there ya go. That’s probably why. I don’t remember ever hearing a story as to why. It’s always just been called Cherokee Hill. That’s the name I’ve always known.”
Widow looked back forward and saw the faint, early morning sunrays again—hope on a gloomy day.
“Your family up this early?”
White chuckled once, unexpectedly and involuntarily, like gagging on a doctor’s tongue depressor, like a gasp of laughter.
“Oh yeah, they’ll be up. The whole family will. At least my parents will be. We’re farmers.”
“Right.”
Widow shifted again back toward the door. He twirled his left foot around and around, fighting a cramp in his shin.
