Dead Reckoning (39 page)

“Let’s get him out of here,” Josh said.

“If we move him, it may make it worse. Maybe we take out the rest of the artery, and he bleeds out before we ever get him off this ledge.”

“Well, then let’s get out of here. We’ve got to find help.”

“I think you should stay, Josh. I’m the only one that knows where to go and somebody’s got to watch over Sonny.”

“What good am I here?”

“You can build a fire, keep him warm.”

“Then you fall off a cliff and we’re done,” Josh said.

“Maybe you’re right. Let’s bundle him up. It shouldn’t be much further. We’ll come right back if we don’t find anything.” In reality, I began to resign myself to the idea that Sonny was as good as dead anyway.

It was further than I thought. It took almost an hour to reach the end of the gorge where we caught our first glimpse of the Valley of the Gods, as I called it. Only a god was big enough to occupy such a place.

Just as I began to wonder if we shouldn’t start being careful of other people again, a strange sensation of falling came over me, momentary weightlessness and then a painful collision with the ground. Josh disappeared first, but it did not register until my shoulder dug into the earth. The only thing that saved my shoulder bones from certain shatter was a bed of pine needles and leaves.

I felt the barrel of a gun poking my rib cage. A hand ran quickly up and down my legs, inside and out, around my waist and fished out my gun, then continued over my torso.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the black leather boots and the bottom few inches of the pant legs of the man that held Josh down. He wore camouflaged fatigues, old style, green and black, not the light weight brown and browner fatigues that had become all the rage in the age of desert wars.

“Base. Over.”

I could not hear a response.

“Two of the three in custody. Males. Over.”

He paused, apparently to listening to the reply.

“Stand by.”

My captor rolled me over. The barrel of his gun was now directly over my heart. He wore a camouflaged hood with a clear plastic mask covering his face. In the twilight and shade of the forest, his pearly white eyes were the only recognizable feature on his face. A little foam microphone like the ones that the skinny, fake-
boobed, charlatans wore on MTV, pressed against the inside of his mask.

“What is your name?”

I told him my name, which he repeated back into the microphone, labeling me adult one.

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m looking for someone who used to live here. Sean McMasters.”

“Base. Adult one claims to be looking for a Sean McMasters.”

I still couldn’t hear what was being said on the other end.

“I don’t have any ID,” I said, before he could ask the question.

“Negative ID. Over.”

“Look,” I said. “If McMasters is here, just tell him it’s me and he shouldn’t be jumping off ferries.”

He looked puzzled, like a man who saw something familiar but couldn’t quite place it. He repeated what I said back to base.

“Copy,” he
said. “Standing by.”

The soldiers helped us to our feet.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Stand
by,” the soldier said. “Remain where you are.”

A minute passed as everyone stood in silence. All the men were dressed in military fatigues, hoods, and masks and carried automatic weapons.

Vehicles rumbled in the distance and then grew closer. They stopped, and we heard doors open and close. Men beat through the underbrush and emerged. A man held up a flashlight and pointed it at me.

“Jesus H. Christ! Is that you? Lower your weapons, men.”

It sounded like McMasters, but because of the light in my eyes and the mask he wore I couldn’t tell. He lifted his mask and turned the flashlight on himself; it was him. He did not look a day older than the last time I saw him.

“Any chance you’ve got the plague?” Sean asked.

“No,” I said.

Sean removed his hood and mask entirely, ignoring the protest of his comrade.

“Fellas,” he said. “This is the sum-bitch I was telling you about. Got me to do all kinds of crazy shit, back in the day.”

He bear hugged me. I tried to return the gesture, but any number of pieces of equipment strapped to his person dug into me.

“I see you figured where I’d be, huh? Where have you been? What did…,” he trailed off. “You look like shit. Oh, what the hell’s the matter with me? Are you all right?”

I rubbed my forehead and eyes with both hands and exhaled loudly. “We’ve had a rough time.”

“Where's your third party?”

“Third what?” I asked, dazed.

“There were three of you coming up the canyon before we lost sight of you.”

“Oh! Damn!” Josh and I yelled in unison. “Sonny!”

“He fell down a cliff. Broken leg, badly hurt. We've got to get to him.”

I began to run back through the brush when one of the men grabbed me.

“Sir,” said the soldier, his mask still drawn. “We’ll drive,” he pointed off in the direction of the vehicles.

“Mount up!” Sean shouted to everyone and no one in particular. Like machines suddenly switched on, the men fanned out to escort Josh and me into a waiting vehicle just through the brush.

Sean piled in next to me and asked where Sonny went down. I told him about the short cut and explained the injuries. The driver clicked down his night vision goggles, and we raced off into the settling blackness at a healthy speed, headlights unnervingly off.

As we bumped along down the valley again, Sean spoke into his mic:

“Get a medic down to point seven, he said. One casualty, broken leg, possible mortal injuries. And bring Phillips. Sounds like we may need to make a remote extraction.”

“Affirmative.”

“Negative. We've already got a security detail.”

Sean was apparently done with his orders.

“Sean,” I said. “There's more. A lot more.”

“What is it?”

I explained the situation with our families on the RY.

“Copy that,” he said slowly, as if considering something.

“Sit tight. We'll get you back to base and fixed up. I'll muster the team, and we'll make the rescue.”

Sean put his arm around me.

“I'm glad to see you man,” he said. “And I'm damned glad you are ok. Don't worry, we have some of the finest men there are. We'll get 'em back here just fine.”

. . .

Sean’s men had Sonny out of that canyon, and we were all on our way to base camp in less than fifteen minutes. The medic complimented us on our first aid. He made no promises, but he assured us that the best field surgeons that government money could buy were in that camp. He told me that they’d seen much worse. Of that, I had no doubt. 

While Sean put together his team, the medic checked Josh and me over. He poked and prodded and pronounced us without the plague and in generally good condition.

When Sean returned, I refused his offer to remain at base camp. So did Josh.

The rain had stopped as we headed back out into the night. We piled back into what I now recognized to be Humvees.

“Tell me again which alcove they are located in,” said Sean.

“It's the one about three miles east of town just off Highway 101.”

I sensed we were heading east and didn't recognize the road, so I questioned Sean about it:

“So we're not going straight down?” I asked. “I don't know this road.”

“No, we can't. Not safe. If we came straight down the road, someone might catch on that we are up here. We'll go east, drop down on the highway about ten miles out and then back track.”

“I see, so anybody sees you coming, they'll think you came in from the metro area?”

“Exactly. Then we'll high tail it back that way and they will think we're gone. Anonymity is the prime directive, remember? You didn't tell anyone about my plan, did you?”

“No,” I said. “Just the people we’re with.”

“Good man.”

On the ride down, I questioned Sean about his outpost:

“So, how about all this?” I started. “How many of you are there?”

“About two hundred,” said Sean. “We started with ninety-nine of my closest friends—mostly military. We’ve almost doubled our ranks since then.”

“How?”

“We send out scouts looking for people. Everyone who lived in the valley is with us now, and we’ve gathered quite a few new citizens from the towns below. Sequim and P.A.”

P.A. was the local abbreviation for Port Angeles.

“How….uh….why?”

“We need all the people we can get if we want to survive. I mean we could have just holed up here, us guys, and then what? In ten, fifteen, twenty years, we’d all be dead and for what? It’s grim out there as far as we can tell, and we want to maintain our species. We monitor the towns and the Strait. Sometimes we watch people for days.”

“So that's how you knew there were three of us.”

“Yep, we watched you all the way up. In fact, my men probably saw your boat come in. It's kind of unusual to see many boats these days, but as long as you don't bother us, we just watch.”

“Anyway, after we watch people we approach potential targets and make them an offer they can’t refuse.”

“What offer?”

“Do you want to live in a safe, harmonious community? We can offer you protection, food, shelter, medical care. All we ask for in return is your effort. Provide us with whatever you are good at. Oh, and if you agree, you cannot leave. Ever.”

“Cannot leave?”

“That’s right. We can’t risk anyone knowing we are here. We’ve expended considerable effort maintaining operational security and secrecy, and we aren’t going to give it up for a minute. No one has ever left here once they see what we have to offer. Not yet, anyway. But we will take steps to ensure that no one can leave and compromise our security—if it comes to that.”

Both Josh and I understood his meaning, and, suddenly, the place started to close in. But we knew what the world was like outside that valley and knew we’d get over the sudden feeling of imprisonment.

“Have people refused?” asked Josh.

“Yes, many.”

“And then what?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?” I asked.

“Yeah, we never bring them here first. We approach them in the theater—I mean, out there—and give them the ultimatum. If they refuse, they can be on their way to whatever fate awaits them.”

“How do you decide whom to approach,” I asked.

“As I said, we watch the towns. We look for women and children first since women are extremely useful and children are generally harmless. Plus, women and children are the most desperate and most likely to agree, especially once they realize we aren’t like the rest out there. We also look for men who appear to be decent. You know, trying to care for families, not doing the usual things we find men doing out there.” Sean looked disturbed, as if he suddenly remembered something horrible.

“What do men do out there?” asked Josh.

Sean hesitated as he considered his answer. I could have answered that question myself.

“Not good things, as you might imagine. Anarchy rules, and that means deep-seated emotion can flow unchecked. Just last month we were watching a building in P.A. that we thought had women inside. As my scouts
surveilled the building, some men hustled several girls outside into the cold. They were buck naked and looked as if they weren’t more than fifteen. They then duct taped the girls to light poles by their hair and started spraying them with hoses. Mind you, it was cold, like now. After a few minutes of that, two of the men grabbed the legs of one of the girls and held her so that the third man could rape her. Having seen enough of that, my men took them down.”

“You were close enough to shoot them?” I asked.

“My scouts are all sniper trained. They could kill a man at a mile out, and no one would ever know they were there.”

I stared out into the black for a few seconds and then said to no one in particular: “Is that all we are, just a bunch of thugs and rapists?” Brutality was pretty much all I had seen since I set foot back in “civilization.” I had started to fear that, deep down, we all really were just animals. Eat, screw, and torment others was, apparently, all that most of the scumbags left cared about.

Sean broke my train of thought. “When all anyone thinks about is their next meal or their next orgasm, they’ll do some pretty short-sighted things. I guess they see men as a threat to be eliminated and women as useful items to be collected and used. But that’s not how we think. We are taking the long view.”

“So what happened to the girls down there?” Josh cut in.

“They are with us now. Nice girls—three sisters. And their mother too. The men had abducted the whole family, killed the father and held the women in that building. They’d been there several days when we stepped in. They don’t talk about what happened, but it’s not hard to guess.”