Defeat (13 page)

What had he done after that? Had
he drugged her? Maybe that’s why she wasn’t responding.

She started slamming drawers open,
looking for keys, then she tore things off the walls, looking for a
key chain or some evidence of where the man kept his car
keys.

And in that moment she knew where
they were. She was going to have to go back out to the
garage.

With the shotgun in hand, cradling
the staff in case she couldn’t fire the shotgun, or she dropped it
in panic, Jayla left the cabin again, left her sister behind again,
and walked slowly to the garage.

If he moved, she’d shoot him. If
he made a noise, she’d shoot him. That would be
justified.

What would happen if police did
come back up here and found the man dead, tied up and executed.
They wouldn’t care what he had done. They would go after Jayla. She
had hit him and tied him up in self-defense. They wouldn’t convict
her of that. But if she shot the man while he was helpless, that
was a different story.

Maybe she should untie him and let
him attack again, and then shooting him would be justified. But the
thought of untying that monster, of giving him any chance at them,
made her legs feel like water. She felt the sweat pooling under her
arms. Her whole body felt sweaty, but cold. There was no way she
was going to let him go, and there was no way she was going to wait
around for him to free himself. She had to get herself and her
sister off this mountain.

She used the barrel of the shotgun
to nose the door open.

“
Don’t you move,
or I’ll shoot,” she yelled in. She heard nothing. He didn’t look
like he had moved. She stepped in, the gun down, pointed at him,
and she nudged him with the barrel. He didn’t
respond.

“
You stay still,
you hear?”

She bent down, setting the staff
against the door frame, and holding the shotgun in her right hand.
The long weapon was awkward as she reached forward, and although
his hands were still zip tied behind his back, she imagined him
twisting and grabbing the barrel of the gun and pulling it out of
her hands.

“
You even breathe
I’ll shoot you. I swear I will. Don’t you believe
me?”

The old man didn’t
breathe.

She hoped he had a key chain on
his belt, like a janitor might, but he didn’t. The keys would be in
one of his pockets.

He lay on his left side, and Jayla
prayed he was right-handed. She tried to remember how he held the
shotgun and thought maybe he had held the trigger with his right
hand and the pump action on the barrel with his left.

“
I’m reaching my
hand into your pocket right now. Don’t you get no funny ideas or I
swear I’ll blow your head off. You’d better believe
me.”

She reached her hand forward, and
her skin touched his jeans. She pulled back in revulsion, took a
deep breath, and tried again. She touched the cloth of his pocket
and looked at him to make sure he didn’t move. She poked into the
pocket with her finger, but she didn’t feel anything.

She shivered and pulled her hand
away. He had curled up, and if the keys had been in that pocket,
they probably would be at the bottom, and she was going to have to
dig them out. She wanted to throw up.

She set the shotgun down, leaning
the barrel on his legs where she could grab it quickly, and reached
into his pocket with her right hand, digging deep into it. She was
rewarded with the touch of metal and she pulled the keys out,
grabbed the shotgun, and fled the garage. She bent over and threw
up.

She ran back into the cabin,
spitting bile out of her mouth on the way, and set her weapons
down, picked up Jada’s torso again, grabbing under her arms, and
dragged her sister out to the porch. She ran back in and got the
shotgun and hiking staff, and brought them back out.

“
You hold this,”
she said and set the staff across Jada’s bare legs. She didn’t know
where the man had hid her shorts or her boots, but she didn’t care.
She wasn’t going to look for them.

She ran back to the garage and
stepped around the tied up man and went to the main door. It opened
easily and she ran around to the driver’s side of the car, then
paranoia kicked in. She opened the back doors and made sure no one
was there, and then she used the key to pop the trunk. It held
nothing but a fuel can and some tools.

She slammed the trunk and half
expected the man to be standing there, watching her, but he wasn’t.
He still lay unmoving on the ground.

She got in the car, started it,
and gunned it out of the garage, swinging it as close to the porch
as she could. She left the engine running, opened the passenger
side door, and dragged her sister off the porch and on to the front
seat. It was hard, and it hurt her back when she pulled Jada up to
the seat. This girl had to recover, she thought.

Jayla threw the hiking stick into
the back, slammed her sister’s door shut, and ran around to the
driver’s side, jumping in and tearing away from the cabin as fast
as she could, the vehicle careening around the bend as she got on
to the road, leaving behind the old man who had started dying the
first time she had hit him, and who had been dead by the third
strike.

Eva awoke one morning and her
apartment, her Agency safe house, was still dark.

She switched on her battery
powered lantern, not knowing how long her batteries would last.
There was a stack of them in the storage room, but they wouldn’t
last forever. She knew there had to be some kind of air handling
system that still functioned, since the safe house hadn’t begun to
smell stale. Perhaps it was solar powered. The Agency thought of
those kinds of things, but it still bothered her to use the
kerosene lamps because of the fumes. She didn’t want to
asphyxiate.

She went through her daily routine
on this morning; yoga, a light workout, cold cereal with powdered
milk for breakfast, kickboxing on the punching bag, another workout
session with weights, then running in place for an hour, the
treadmill didn’t work without power either, just like the tanning
bed, a sponge bath with bottled water, and finally, dressing for
lunch.

But this day was
different.

She couldn’t tell what changed,
but as soon as it did, she felt it while she dressed, she knew what
she had to do.

The oppressive darkness overcame
her, and she couldn’t take it any longer. No matter what her
instructions, or lack of instructions, no matter what her fears of
what had occurred or was occurring outside, she couldn’t take
another minute in her safe house. The walls felt like they were
closing in on her and ghosts were hiding around every dark corner.
Every fear she’d had as a child, every inadequacy she’d ever felt
as a person, all returned in one sudden moment as she dressed, and
she changed what she was putting on.

Instead of comfortable clothes for
sitting on her couch or lying on her bunk and reading, she put on
baggy camo pants over shorts, a tank top with a long sleeve shirt
over it, thick socks and hiking boots. She picked up a backpack
from the storage room and began filling it. Extra clothes, protein
bars, water, a 9 mm Glock, extra magazines, flashlight, batteries.
The pack filled quickly and she remembered the thought problems
about what to bring with you if you were stuck on a desert
island.

She laughed and it lightened her
mood. Recalling those lessons, she added matches, toilet paper,
feminine pads, a map, a compass, a combat knife, sunglasses, a
baseball hat, sunscreen, although after days in the dark she wanted
sun on her skin again, a small notepad, and a pencil. She looked
around the storage area, shining her lantern in the corners and in
the closet to see if there was anything else that inspired her that
she should bring.

She looked longingly at the MP23
rifle. It and its ammunition would be heavy. If she had to walk a
long distance she could never bring it. But if she found a ride,
she could come back for it.

Then she started packing more
bags. There were backpacks and duffel bags in the closet, and she
pulled them out, filling a duffel bag with the MP23, two more
pistols, and all the ammunition and grenades the bag could hold.
There were two kinds of grenades in storage, hand thrown and ones
that launched from the MP23. She brought both.

She carried the bag out and set it
near the door.

Eva filled a second duffel with
more food, water, vitamins, sanitizer, medicine, bandages, and
other first aid supplies. It went next to the first bag.

She stared at the two bags, and if
she were able to bring both of them she wondered which would safe
her life. The bag that sustained life or the one that took
it.

There was only one way to find
out.

She filled two more backpacks with
supplies, not having any idea of how she would get back into the
safe house or what circumstances would allow her to carry this much
gear, but she felt a need to be prepared.

She went into the bathroom and
checked the tank behind the toilet. It was over half full. She
added some water from the bathtub using a pitcher she kept there
for that purpose. She kept the bathroom drain plugged and reused
any water left over from washing for the toilet.

As she sat on the toilet, she
looked around the bathroom lit only by her tiny lantern. Relief at
having made the decision to leave overwhelmed her. She didn’t know
why it had taken so long for her to come to that conclusion, but
she knew it was the right thing to do. She was proud of herself for
what she had accomplished, living in the safe house, keeping
herself sane and prepared, motivated and alert, while alone and in
the dark.

She had succeeded.

And now it was time to move
on.

She reached behind her and flushed
the toilet, thinking about what it was going to be like, relieving
herself in the woods while hiking, she still didn’t know where she
was headed but she didn’t care, and Eva remembered that she should
add a small shovel to her main backpack. She’d seen such a shovel
in the storage area but hadn’t fathomed what she could use it for.
Now she realized why it was there and she was embarrassed she
hadn’t thought of it before.

As she left the bathroom, she
heard a spitting sound, almost like coughing, behind her. She
whirled around, something gripping her heart, and she held the
lantern up to see what was happening.

The noise was muffled, and she
realized it was in the toilet tank. She took the lid off and water
was spluttering out of the nozzle, as if the plumbing was working
itself up to try to refill the toilet.

She put the lid back on and turned
on the faucet. It coughed and spluttered, and initially a brownish
water came out. But as she watched it, the water turned
clear.

The water was back on!

She didn’t plan on staying, but a
survival instinct kicked in. Besides, someone else might need this
refuge.

She turned the water on in the
bathtub, then went into the kitchen and began filling the empty
bottles she had carefully stacked in the corner. She wasn’t sure if
the water was drinkable yet, but it could be used for bathing and
flushing. After filling a couple of dozen bottles, she ran back
into the bathroom and checked on the tub. It was full enough, so
she turned the faucet off.

She finished filling bottles in
the kitchen and felt good. She could leave now, having stocked the
safe house for the next agent, should anyone ever need
it.

She grabbed the shovel out of the
storage room and added it to her backpack.

Eva shouldered the backpack,
looked at her extra bags and wondered how she was going to carry
all that gear, and put her hand on the door. It was the first time
she had done so since she had entered the safe house, and a fear of
what lay on the other side of the door crossed over her.

She took a cleansing breath and
turned the handle.

It wouldn’t move.

Eva tried the door for over thirty
minutes, then went into the storage room to find the manual for the
door. The Agency had manuals for everything, and when she found the
one for the lock and learned that it wouldn’t open without power,
she cried for the first time since she was twelve.

Wolfgang awoke, his head on his
wife’s cot. He had slumped over on the stool he sat on and fallen
asleep.

Something felt wrong.

He was groggy, not enough sleep
for too many days, and he couldn’t think. He looked around for
water or something to drink, but there was nothing in the tiny
tent. There were no hospitals any more, or they were full, and
Wolfgang’s wife was lucky to have a cot and a tent and an IV that
hydrated her with the water Wolfgang poured into the
bag.

He stood and stretched, his back
cracking and making him aware of his age, and he shook his
head.

The feeling of wrongness didn’t go
away.

Leah wasn’t there. She had
probably gone to get food or something. He marveled at the girl.
How helpful she was. He guessed she didn’t have anywhere else to
go, but she was still helpful. He didn’t know how he could have
taken care of his wife without her. He would have, but he would
have had to leave her alone at times and that would have been
nearly impossible. With Leah, one of them could always watch over
her.