Chapter Sixty-Two
We drove back to where I had left the bike and Robin helped me lift and toss it into the back of the truck, tying it down with ratchet straps of blue nylon. Then, Robin drove off into the brush following my directions towards the borders of the park.
Once we found the main road that was black-topped, Robin cranked the big truck up to 75 and pushed it as hard as he could. Mairy gave me the once over.
“You sure you’re alright?”
“Yup. I’m fine. A few irritating blisters from my backpack rubbing,” I shrugged.
“No, you idiot. Your wound.”
“It’s nearly healed.” I opened my shirt and showed her. It was only a thin red line under the sutures. Mairy pursed her lips.
“Those need to come out.”
“Haven’t exactly had time to worry about that,” I grumbled. “Been busy running. From the government. Spies, assassins and all that.”
“Well, we’re stopping at the cabin and fixing that,” she ordered just as Robin hit a pothole the size of Kansas. The bike slammed into the bed with an awful crunch. I winced.
“Where is it?”
“Small town north of Red Cat. Near the Devil’s Breath, it heads all the way to Montana and Canada.”
We traveled the back roads and small state highways into the night. Stopping only at secondary routes with small gas stations for gas and snacks. Robin paid for the gas with cash, he had nearly a hundred thousand in an old duffel bag with St. Louis Cardinals on it. It sat between him and Maiara. I rode in the jump seat taking naps and eating the junk food he’d bought at the stations. I had rewired the radio so that we could pick up every police, fire, rescue and emergency bandwidth to monitor all the channels and hear what was going on. And it scared me. I heard nothing.
Not even on the radio, TV channels or my quipp accessing the news reports. It was as if the entire country was in the middle of a news blackout.
“Something’s…not right,” I mumbled as Robin turned down another state road onto a rural route. We were headed over the border into Montana, at the foothills of the ridge that became the Rockies. Some of the wildest country in the world. Forests so thick that a horse couldn’t make its way through it, where cliffs were a footfall away from the solid ground and mountains that topped out at over 16,000 feet in elevation. Where the weather changed from 65° to 25° in the matter of hours and lost campers were the victims of grizzlies, falls or exposure. Victims of their own stupidity.
These were all pine, hemlock, and spruce which was all that grew above the frost line. Huge trees that had umbrella skirts to the ground and you could hide a marching band beneath their bows. The ground was soft loam covered with pine needles and ferns. Not much light made it down past the hundred foot crowns; it was a sort of twilight in there.
Both of them were watching my face as we emerged into a tiny clearing with a small cabin made of logs. A covered porch circled the front; I saw no electrical wires feeding to the cabin nor lights on in the windows. Two with a door between and bear bars across all three. A large stack of split firewood lay some yards away from the porch with an ax stuck into a stump.
“Generator?” I asked.
“Wood stove, kerosene lamps. Well water from a pump spigot in the house,” Mairy told me.
“Who owns it?”
“Some family in Boston. Bought it after the ‘Twilight’ craze. Bigfoot nuts used it to film a docu-drama.”
“Humph,” I grunted. I looked at the sparse grass and few tire tracks as he brought the truck to a halt. Opened the door and stepped out, checking the bike in the bed. It had a few more scratches but the biggest problem was that the gas tank had leaked from lying on its side.
“We only came up here twice,” Robin said. “We stayed in town, mostly, except for bringing in supplies.”
“We stay the night or go?” she asked and I hesitated.
“I don’t know,” I was confused. “Something doesn’t feel right about the mad rush of emergency vehicles out of town and the cops, the so-called bus accident and the lack of activity on the scanners is…odd. I ought to be able to pick up some chatter about my escape. About the hacking of the NSA, the free Canadian trips. Something.”
I sat on the edge of the porch while they went inside and started packing for our departure. Top of the line stuff, all geared for the serious hiker and survivalist.
Reprogramming the quipp, I checked the Darknet and there, I found rumors that were flying at the speed of light.
The Messiah was on earth. Earth had found an immortal. A person who could heal the sick and raise the dead. The NIA had him. The CIA wanted him. The President had issued a $5-million-dollar reward for his capture. Russia was sending people to steal him. China already had agents here closing in. Israel wanted him and even Rome was becoming interested in this ‘miracle’ person.
Oh God. There were even pictures of me. Both as a girl and a male. Photoshopped images of me to show what else I might look like. My face paled and both of them stopped piling to ask what was wrong.
“Did you buy all this stuff from one place?” I asked, my throat tight. Three piles sat on the meager grass, three backpacks, three compound bows, quivers stocked with hunting points, three sleeping bags, three small one-person tents, three sets of rescue grade first aid kits, camp pots, water purification tablets, food freeze dried and vacuum packed. Sets of clothing in space bags, boots, socks, lanterns, GPS, detailed waterproof contour maps, whistles, flashlights and glow sticks.
Everything and I meant everything you could possibly need or want for the trip was on the pile. Two of the piles were considerably larger and I assumed that one was Robin’s and the other mine until I saw ladies boots next to the pile. Mine was the smallest as if they thought I could not carry my own weight.
“We bought them from two different places,” Robin said defensively. “On three separate days. Walmart and Dick’s Sporting Goods.”
“Big purchases?”
“Four hundred or so each time. Chain places,” he answered.
“Cash?”
“We burned my credit cards,” he nodded. “Mairy is too young to get one.”
“I sent you some,” I pointed out.
“We used them to pay for the truck and the rentals. Hotel rooms. Nobody takes cash for those, anymore.”
“That’s okay. They were legit cards from real people. The NIA can’t track them easily without corroborating their actual physical presence and that would take days’ even if their computers weren’t compromised.”
I showed them the stuff circulating on the Darknet. “There should be the same thing going on in the news, radio and Internet. There’s nothing.”
“If they know you’re here, then why haven’t they stepped in to grab you?” Mairy asked looking around nervously.
“If they knew where I was, they’d already be here,” I agreed. “Unless, they are waiting to catch all of us.”
“Are they smarter than you?” Maiara asked in a surprising way. I snorted.
“There’s always someone smarter than you think you are, especially if they’re older and sneakier. Not that there are rules but there are some things I just won’t do.”
“Like what?” Robin stepped in, dropping the last bit of gear on the pile.
“Like kill a kid. Or a pregnant woman. I have no qualms about killing a woman if she’s pointing a weapon at me. Desecrate a burial ground. Turn on a friend. Or lie to one.”
Neither of them said anything until Robin gestured to the pile. Slightly huge. I wasn’t sure if it would fit inside the nylon-framed pack. I rolled my eyes.
“That’s a blivet, you know.”
“Blivet?”
“10 lbs. of shit in a 5 lbs. sack,” I snickered and stood up to help.
We had finished by the end of the hour. It would have taken less but when I said we didn’t need something, Mairy would argue that we did. So, it took twice as long as it should have. After that, we went inside the cabin and it was a nice surprise; lined with honey colored tongue and grooved horizontal planks. Comfy couch, table and four chairs, two twin beds and a cook stove set against the native rock chimney. A small counter top was split by the old-fashioned spigot water pump and the water came out clean and pure, Colorado Rockies’ finest. It was ice cold.
Kerosene lanterns hung from the walls. Bright flowery curtains hung down from the two windows and matched the colors in the southwestern rug on the plank floors and in the same covers on the beds.
“Toilet?”
“Outhouse out back. And an ice-cave where they stored stuff. Pretty cool, actually. The owners found a cave and made it into a root cellar, wine cellar/ice box. Water drips in through the rocks and freezes in the back of the cave. He put in stainless steel shelves and wine racks. It’s about the size of a large storage trailer. No exit other than the way in but it’s really hard to find.”
“Only one way out is a death trap,” I returned and sat on the bed. It was a hard mattress. Mairy came over with a small kit that I recognized. Medical stapler and remover. Alcohol pads and ointment. She gestured and I pulled my t-shirt over my head. Both of them stared at the spot where I had been sawed open and put back together. It was sore underneath, deep under the bones.
“Would you have died, Lakan?” she asked, her fingers soft on my skin yet they burned with a heat that could not be described. Sexual yet mystical. Soft yet the weight of eternity.
“Maybe. If the blood loss had been too great or the shock interfered with my brain. I think if my brain was destroyed and not enough left, it couldn’t re-build the system. I don’t know. Something switched off when I had the accident that killed my mom but it also switched on later when Cameron tested me. I hid it from him and my grandpop for a while.”
She regarded me with her arctic blue eyes but her hair was still black and braided. I gave the braid on the right a small tug and the wig came off to reveal a short crop of blue curls.
“You cut your hair!” I said in dismay.
“It’ll grow back. I tried to tuck it under the wig but it was hot and itchy,” she shrugged. “What is it with men and long hair? Shut up and let me do this.” She leaned into me, gave me a quick tease of a kiss and then proceeded to tear my flesh out. I yiked as scorpions bit me.
“Oh my God,” she laughed. “Don’t be such a baby!”
In her hand, she held two tiny metal staples that had felt as if she was tearing me open with fish hooks. In rapid order, she removed the rest and wiped off the tiny spots of blood with an alcohol wipe smearing antibiotic cream down the scar. I looked as if a slug had slimed me on his way to the cabbage patch. Then, Maiara proceeded to give me a kiss for each staple. Halfway through, Robin gave me a disgusted snort and slammed the door on the way out. When she got to the last one, she kissed me there and sent tingles of lust and joy throughout my whole body.
The room blued. She looked up at my belly and smiled as the blue glow flowed over her. It made her shimmer in a cloak of beauty, outlining her as if she wore only an aura of light. Then, around her pulsed the same corona only hers was an icy orange and I watched in amazement as the two merged to become a white hot radiance that could have melted the stars.
Her ghostly arms wrapped around me as both of us floated above the bed, our clothes somehow gone. We were melted into each other, auras bonded and when the mortal part of me slid into hers, it was as if the entire universe trembled on the brink of some sacred and awaited paradigm. When we both exploded, I heard Rachel’s laughter in my head and saw my mother, great-grandfather, and ancestors standing by with approval in their posture.
Rachel’s voice whispered, ‘I told you so’ before I forgot them in the pleasure and rightness of where we were.
Maiara gasped and we floated down towards the bed. I opened my eyes and saw her glowing face watching as that spectral illumination faded.
The blue-white glow in the room remained. I lifted my hands and they bloomed with it, leaving traces in the air like the tails of a comet. Oddly, we were still dressed but the scar on my chest was completely gone. Mairy’s hair and skin color were back to normal.
“Wow. That was some light show,” she giggled sounding like the teenager she was. She kissed me on the forehead. “Are you hungry? I could whip up some scrambled eggs and bacon. There are some fresh foods in the icehouse.”
I didn’t want to sleep but I was hungry and the more I thought about food, the faster the glow dissipated.
Rolling over, I grabbed my shirt and pulled it back over my head, smoothing it into my jeans as I went to the door. I found Robin furiously chopping wood, his body covered in sweat.
“Robin. Stop.” He slowed and slammed the ax into the stump, his shoulders rigid.
“Robin?”
Turning around, I saw his face. It looked both puzzled and embarrassed. More so when Mairy called for him to come in. Slowly, he walked over to me, his eyes questioning.
“Man, that’s my baby sister, you know?” he said gruffly. “I can stand the kissing but - You were only in there for a few minutes.” His eyes widened as he saw the last of the fading blue glow.
“Mairy?” he asked plaintively and she turned, still in all her clothes with a spatula in her hand.
“Robin Redbreast,” she teased gently and her face was the face of a woman, not a girl. Robin’s eyes grew huge and he swallowed as awe-filled his body. He gripped the doorjamb and almost fell. I reached out a hand and held him up with no effort at all. Where the words came from I didn’t know.
“Be at peace, my brother,” I said in Welsh and Abenaki. He nodded and came in to sit and eat with us.