traitor spreading propaganda. They won’t broadcast the real video, of course, but it prepares people to dismiss the Westerly interview in case they do see it.”
Lucia shook her head. “That is diabolical.”
“In the news business, we call it muddying the stream-flooding them with so much conflicting information they don’t know what to believe. George Baldwin, the Terror agent at my studio, called it releasing the antibodies. You swarm the unwanted bit of information and surround it, steer it your own way, kill whatever leaked. That’s how you keep the official narrative intact.”
“What interview are you talking about?” Violet asked. “Who is Westerly?”
“I’ll show her.” Lucia ran outside, then quickly returned and gave Violet one of the discs. “We have more copies. I can leave some with you. It’s best to distribute these hand to hand instead of online, if you want to avoid Terror.”
Violet led them down the hall to a bedroom with another, older video screen, assuring them it was not connected to anything but its own hard drive. She closed the door and inserted the disc.
As Violet watched the video, her knees shook and she sank down to sit at the foot of her bed. She was in tears as the interview ended, but she didn’t look away. She stared at the blank screen for a few minutes.
“None of it was real,” she finally whispered. She looked to Ruppert. “None of it was ever real.”
“There’s an organization called PSYCOM,” Ruppert said. “Defense, or intelligence. They wage psychological warfare on the world, and that includes us. They have everything, the media, the schools, the big Dominionist churches you have to attend. The Department of Terror is a front for them. They went rogue, or maybe they were following orders, I don’t know, but Columbus was their project.”
“But why?” Violet asked. “To our own people?”
“To make us afraid,” Lucia said. “So they could remake everything.”
“This makes me more afraid,” Violet said, gesturing at the screen. “I’ve never been this frightened.”
Ruppert looked at the black screen. “Even this works for them, doesn’t it? It shows us how ruthless they are. What if it only intimidates people, and they keep quiet?”
“They will have the truth,” Lucia said. “It never goes away. It stays inside you.”
“I think it’s going to stay inside me a long time,” Violet said. “I’m not sure I’m glad I know this. I thought things were bad enough before.” She stood up. “We need to move fast. You need to get out of this country right away. I’ll see if I can move things up a day or two. Until then, you better get back up to the hideaway. Try not to let anybody see your face, Daniel. Even folks around here can’t always tell the difference between truth and not.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
They spent two nights in the hidden room above the stables, and Ruppert quickly grew accustomed to the sounds of the horses stomping and neighing below, and even the animal smells that reached up into the loft. They made him feel alive and, for the first time since his childhood, like he inhabited a world with some measure of sanity.
Violet, as it turned out, lived in the main house with her sister and her sister’s four children, as well as an assortment of dogs. Violet or one of her nieces delivered meals and jugs of water to them four or five times a day.
Ruppert and Lucia passed the time with the old paperbacks on the room’s only table, most of them missing both front and back covers. In the evenings, they listened to Nando and the other children describe in hushed, awed tones the goats, horses, cows and chickens they’d helped tend around the farm. Nando seemed to be adapting well, except for a tendency to bark orders at younger children.
The travelers also played cards with each other, using decks supplied by Violet. Nobody talked about their past, or how they’d arrived there, and Ruppert began to feel ashamed of how he’d questioned Sully in front of the others.
In fact, they only wanted to discuss one subject: Canada.
“I’m going to learn how to build those igloos,” one of the lone men said. “You can build an igloo, you can live anywhere. Get a couple of dogs, you’re set.”
“You go and sleep with dogs if you want,” said another lone traveler, Tarvis, a hefty black man with a Southern accent. “I’m finding me a French-speaking women, and live up in the mountains.”
“No woman who speaks French would go and live in the mountains with you,” the first man said.
“Fine with me,” Tarvis said. “I’ll move into her place.”
Violet stopped by to tell them she’d advanced the schedule: they’d be leaving a few days earlier than expected. Since she’d kept the original schedule secret anyway, Ruppert didn’t see the point, but he thanked her for it.
“Are you kidding?” Violet said. “You’re the most wanted man in the country. It’s a danger to my family, keeping you here.”
Sully continued to have trouble with his speaking and his memory. Occasionally he would blank out in the middle of a meal, his mouth sagging open, partially chewed meat or bread dribbling from the corner of his lips. Ruppert would hurry to clean him up. Sully twitched his fingers and hands constantly, unable to calm down, checking his watch nine or ten times per minute. It made the others nervous, and they tried to avoid him.
When Ruppert asked Violet how Sully had arrived, she said he’d come through some contacts of hers in the east, but refused to disclose any information more detailed than that. “You know how things are,” she’d said. “It’s best to stay discreet about your friends. It’s part of being a friend, don’t you think? I’ll do the same for you,” she added.
After talking with Ruppert about the Bronto, Violet had one of her workers deliver the truck to a junkyard owner she knew in Billings. He returned with cash, seven thousand dollars of which she gave to Ruppert and Lucia. Ruppert had insisted Violet keep a portion of the money for herself, and she assured him she'd already taken the liberty.
On their third night, Violet and her two oldest nieces arrived just after sunset and ushered everyone out of the stables. They led them into the long, caged trailer of a cattle truck. Violet’s nieces walked to the front of the trailer and pried loose a section of one of the interior cage walls. They lifted it out of the long indentation in the aluminum floor in which the wall was set. Then they reached into the indentation, and Ruppert heard a series of clanging, snapping sounds.
Ruppert and the other adults helped them lift up two panels of the floor, revealing a shallow, hidden cargo bay. The travelers-illegal immigrants, now-would have to lie underneath the floor, side by side, for the entire journey.
“Are you driving us there?” Ruppert asked Violet.
She shook her head. “Best if you don’t see the driver, and he don’t see you.”
The travelers lay down, Ruppert next to Lucia, Nando on the far side of her. Everyone’s luggage and sleeping bags was arrayed at their feet. Violet and her nieces replaced the floor panels, and Ruppert heard the clicking as they replaced the wall. They waited for several long minutes in silence and darkness, and then a low thunder rolled across the floor above them, as if someone were tumbling boulders through the truck. They would be riding underneath a shipment of live cows.
“Are we in Canada yet?” one of the children whispered in the dark.
It was another twenty minutes before the truck finally revved up and began to move. Soon the hidden compartment was hot and sticky with body heat, and it stank of oil and gasoline, and eventually, fresh manure. The road jostled them constantly, jarring Ruppert’s spine.
The long, uncomfortable ride took more than an hour. Ruppert whispered to Sully, making sure he was handling the uncomfortable, frightening situation. Once, the truck idled in place for a painfully long time, and Ruppert wondered if they’d been stopped by the police, but nothing came of it.
Eventually the road got rougher and steeper, and they were sliding into each other, as well as banging elbows and knees against the walls of the compartment. Ruppert took a sharp jab in the ribs from Lucia’s elbow.
Then the truck stopped, reversed direction, pulled forward, reversed direction again, jostling everyone back
