New York City.
Gideon thought that placed them somewhere in rural New York or Pennsylvania. When he mentioned that to Ruth in a whispered voice, she responded, 'Where are they taking us?'
'I don't know.' Gideon edged over in his seat until he was next to Ruth. He grunted when he stopped moving. His arms had fallen asleep, and his bad arm ached. He was beginning to worry about lost circulation. The hood he wore stank of his sweat.
They rode in silence for a while after that. It gave Gideon another opportunity to wonder why the two of them had been taken prisoner. He hadn't said anything to Ruth about it, since he'd have to point out how much easier it'd be for them to have killed them on the road with the driver.
Why would these people need them?
If Julia was really calling the shots here, she might feel something for her sister, ordering her spared. But if that was the case, taking him would make about as much-sense as taking the driver.
It felt like late afternoon when they stopped for the last time. Gideon heard the side door slide open, and a blast of cold air filled the rear of the van. A gruff voice told them to get out. Gideon did his best to stand without help from his arms, and someone grabbed him and pulled him out of the van.
He took a step and felt his feet sink into a layer of snow. In a few moments he was shivering. It was probably twenty degrees colder here than it had been in New York.
Without warning, someone stripped off his hood, and the glare blinded him, making him squint. The cold air was like a slap in the face. While he was dazzled, he felt a knife cut the nylon cord binding his wrists.
He stood there, blinking, eyes watering, trying to rub circulation back into his wrists. It took a moment before he could see much of anything. First, he saw Ruth standing next to him, rubbing her wrists, her face screwed up in a squint as she looked past him.
Gideon turned away from the van and Ruth to look at where they were. The van was parked next to a stand of evergreens that opened out ahead of them into a clearing that must've been a couple of acres. Beyond the trees on the far side of the clearing, Gideon could make out a line of mountains against a painfully blue sky.
The snow covering the clearing was undisturbed; there was only a slight depression to mark where the road they were on continued. Right in front of the nose of the van was a gate that was painted a bright red in contrast against the snow. A battered sign stood next to the gate, and Gideon had to blink a few times before he could make out the words—
'Limited Use Seasonal Highway. Closed Nov. 15-April 15.'
Their captors stood around, as if they were waiting for something. Ruth muttered, 'Looks like you were right about upstate New York.' Her words came out in a puff of fog.
Gideon turned to the man who looked like the leader and asked, 'So what are we waiting for?'
The man didn't respond, didn't even look at him. Gideon kept looking at him. He had donned a white parka for the weather, and held a Kalishnikov rifle whose black composite stock stood out against his clothing. This was the man he'd seen shoot Kendal. The expression on his face was frightening, almost mechanical, as if there wasn't any emotion there at all. Gideon looked into that face and wanted to jump the man, strangle him. . . .
Then the man barked something in a foreign language and pointed with a gloved hand. Gideon looked in the direction he indicated and saw a vehicle across the clearing. At first it was hard to make out what it was. It was painted white and difficult to make out against the snow.
As it closed on them, Gideon could see it was a Hummer. He also saw the exhaust stack that marked it as a military, not a civilian model. It pulled up on the other side of the fence.
The leader waved Gideon and Ruth toward it with his Kalishnikov. The two of them slowly waded through the calf-deep snow to the open rear door of the Hummer. The leader followed them, leaving the others to get in the van and drive back down the way they had come.
The man with the Kalishnikov pushed Gideon and Ruth into the back seat, then got into the front passenger seat himself. Once the rear door was shut, the Hummer backed up and turned toward the snow-covered clearing. The snow, which probably would have mired any other vehicle, was pushed aside by the Hummer, spraying up on either side of the vehicle. Clumps of snow obscured Gideon's view out the passenger windows; all he could see was a vague impression of trees passing by as they left the other side of the clearing.
They went a couple of miles into the woods when the driver slowed on the buried highway and took an unexpected turn to the right, pointing the Hummer up the side of the hill next to them.
Gideon craned to see out the front, but what he saw wasn't even a footpath. It was a gully cut in the side of the hill by water runoff. It was a ditch that was barely wide enough for the Hummer, and the driver aimed them straight up it. The grade steepened, but the Hummer's low center of gravity kept the wheels on the road on a grade that would flip over just about anything else. The grade passed forty-five degrees at several points, and there was no point where any two wheels were on the same level.
Ruth grabbed his arm and wouldn't let go during the nerve-racking ascent.
Eventually they emerged on another, more conventional road, that snaked around the hill. The driver turned right again, following this road back the way they'd come. It was a buried dirt road, in worse repair than the first one. Still, it was a relief after the drive up the side of the hill. At this point, the driver seemed very aware of the canopy above them. When Gideon first noticed the driver looking up, he thought it was nothing, but when he started taking turns when the road divided, Gideon began to realize that he was avoiding the paths that didn't have the shade of a lot of branches.
After three or four more miles, they passed a point of transition. It was only marked by a few signs posted on trees by the side of the road: 'Private Property,' 'No Hunting,' 'No Trespassing.' After that, the woods around them seemed to undergo a subtle and somewhat threatening change. The first things that Gideon noticed were the logs and windblown trees—piles of deadwood that were innocuous at first glance, but after seeing a third pile, it was obvious that they were placed by man, not nature, concealing cameras, or some other security measure. A few times Gideon looked up, and saw a bare spot in the canopy supplemented by a sheet of camouflage netting. And once, in the distance, Gideon saw another man with a Kalishnikov, wearing a white parka, appearing as if he were on some sort of patrol.
They were entering some sort of military encampment.
When they reached the end of this private road, Gideon and Ruth stepped out of the Hummer into the road, followed by the man wielding the Kalishnikov, who took them fifteen yards back down the road, behind the vehicle.
Gideon watched as the driver got out of the car and went to a tree by the side of the road. Gideon could see rope and part of a scaffolding—dressed with more camouflage netting—next to the tree. The driver pulled on the rope, and the floor of the forest next to the road opened up.
A camouflaged trapdoor opened up on a dirt ramp that led down into an unlit hole. The driver pulled until the trapdoor was at about a sixty-degree angle, and when he let go of the rope, the door stayed there, expertly counterbalanced. Then he got back in the Hummer, angled back, and backed it into the hole.
'Come on,' said their leader, once the Hummer was off of the road.
Gideon looked at-Ruth. She looked at him, still rubbing her wrists. He had the uncomfortable sense that she was relying on him to show her what to do.
He hugged himself. The cold was beginning to seep into his leg and his arm, burning in the newly-healed flesh. When he started walking in the direction the Kalishnikov indicated, he noticed his limp was more pronounced. His leg felt as if he'd been on his feet all day.
The man with the Kalishnikov took them out into a clearing, occasionally prodding them with the rifle.
They followed the private road out into a field. Once they left the woods, the road was marked on either side by a long, gray split-rail fence. The fence enclosed sloping pastures on either side of them, flat white expanses of snow. The pasture to the right sloped down toward a tree-line, and the one to the left sloped upward until it reached a rocky hillside that shot upward at a steep angle.
There was a cluster of buildings far in front of them.
Gideon could make out a Victorian farmhouse, and a weathered gray barn adjoining the left pasture.
It was a long walk toward the buildings. They trudged through the snow, their breath coming out in wisps of fog. The landscape felt oddly empty. The people here had gone to great lengths to cultivate a feeling of abandonment. The one subtle sign otherwise was a complex set of antennae mounted, only half-hidden, in the Victorian's weathered gingerbread.
