He needed to get going.
Walking farther away from the house, he tried to make the night shadows jibe with his memories of the drive in on that first night, but the two were not equating for him.
We arrived in the front, he thought. I must be in the back now.
Moving even farther away, he navigated a wide circle to his left around the building. He was looking for a long tree-lined driveway leading to an elevated front porch. Once he saw that-or at least what looked like that in the darkness-then he could begin to retrace their route.
As his eyes adjusted to the night, he realized that the lack of a moon was at least partially compensated for by a sky full of stars. The edges of the shadows were surprisingly sharp, he thought, if mottled by the trees, and he realized that he would be visible to others who might have been gazing out at the night.
When he turned the second corner, he saw the porch and the long driveway. Their minivan was gone, though. In fact, there were no vehicles at all. Yellow light flickered in the windows. He had no way of knowing if there were more people inside, or if the place was empty, and he couldn’t afford the risk of checking.
His mission was to get help. If he went back to the cabin and got caught, God only knew what would happen to them, but the one thing that was guaranteed was that this opportunity for rescue would evaporate.
And then there’d never be another chance.
He had to keep going. He’d promised he’d keep going.
Dropping to a low-profile crouch, he turned his back on the cabin and moved to the cover of the trees.
His plan-if you could even call it that-was to avoid the roadbed itself because he thought he’d be too visible. Problem was, by staying off the road, he had to walk, climb and crawl through all kinds of weeds and sticks and shit, and in the process he made the noise of an advancing army. After about twenty yards of that, he made the decision to stick to the edge of the roadbed and move slowly. If a vehicle or a person came his way, he’d just have to hope for enough time to drop out of sight.
He had no idea how long he’d been walking down the driveway, but it felt like a long time. Was this the correct way to the fence? He knew they’d spent hours on the road, but he really had no idea how long they’d driven from the front gate to the cabin.
The cold was becoming a problem again, causing him to shove his hands deeply into his coat pockets. His nose ached from it, and when the wind blew, it hurt his eyes. He tried to remember what the local weatherman had said about this cold snap, but Ryan never paid any attention to the news, unless there was a possibility of schools closing.
Is anybody missing me at school? he wondered. Outside of his track team, he didn’t know many people. Come to think of it, he didn’t know that many on the track team, either. Since most of them had grown up together, there really wasn’t a lot of room for newcomers in their cliques.
He and his mom had left their real friends down in North Carolina at Fort Bragg-those were the ones who would notice they were missing, except they’d been missing since summer, when his mom had decided to come north. Other than Aunt Maggie, no one in their circle would care enough to report them missing, and Aunt Maggie was visiting a friend in France.
All the more reason for him to be heading off for help on his own.
As he trudged on, it was hard to tell if the road he was walking on was paved or if it was merely frozen dirt, but as he hunched against the cold and watched the shadows of his feet take step after step, he wished he’d thought to wear warmer socks. The cold came up through the soles of his Nikes as if he were barefoot.
He heard a voice.
His body acted instinctively, without him having to tell it a thing. He dropped to a low crouch and duckwalked quickly to the edge of the roadbed, where he fell to hands and knees along the edge of the tree line.
He heard another voice. Both were male, and neither sounded all that close. Certainly, they didn’t sound angry or threatening; just two guys having a conversation about something. Ryan couldn’t make out the words, but when one of them laughed, he felt tension drain from his shoulders. They clearly hadn’t seen him.
He wondered where they were. The night was so quiet, the air so cold and pure, and the breeze so constant, that they could have been thirty feet away or thirty yards away. Maybe even farther.
But if their sound carried so easily, so would any sound that he made. It was time to be very careful.
From where he lay in the ditch that ran along the raised roadbed, he couldn’t tell if the owners of the voices were moving or stationary. He remembered that the guards who manned the front gate carried guns, and he wanted nothing to do with any of that.
But he couldn’t just stay here. Sooner or later, he was going to lose the darkness. When that happened, it was all over.
He needed to move closer. He crawled on his belly at first-the way he saw soldiers do it in the movies-but that full-body dragging created way too much noise. He decided to risk rising to his hands and knees and advancing that way.
Once again, the cold became a real problem. Why hadn’t he thought of bringing gloves?
Yeah, he chastised silently, next time you get kidnapped, be sure to dress warmly.
By being able to place one hand and one knee at a time, Ryan was able to move far more quietly. He still made noise, but not that much more than the wind. Besides, the wind was blowing in his face, away from the people he was approaching, so that should help him be quieter, too.
At least that’s what he told himself.
He figured it took five minutes to crawl close enough to be able to see who was talking. Barely silhouettes in the darkness, they were tall enough to be adults, though to Ryan’s ears, their voices sounded young. They both wore bulky coats, and from the roundness of their heads, he assumed they were wearing stocking caps to stay warm. He envied them those. He also envied them the rifles he could see slung over their shoulders.
And then there was the good news: Beyond their silhouettes, Ryan could clearly see the outline of a fence. He’d finally made it to the edge of the property.
Now that he’d finally gotten so close, he realized how flimsy his plan was-or, more accurately, that he didn’t have a plan. Somehow, he was going to get over the fence unseen, and then somehow, he was going to find a place where he could make a phone call. That was a lot of somehow.
And all of it depended on these guys moving on. Or falling asleep. Or getting struck by lightning. For the time being, Ryan settled on becoming invisible and allowing his breathing to slow down. As the sound of blood thrumming through his ears died away, he could actually hear the words they were saying.
“… starting a war. Like any war, people are going to be killed.”
“But kids. I just don’t see how that is anything but wrong.”
“It’s about the anger. It’s about focusing it on all those godless rag heads, and so far, Brother Michael says it’s going great.”
A long pause followed-long enough for Ryan to wonder if maybe they’d moved along.
Then, “Are you willing to go that far?”
“I’m a soldier. If I have to kill, I’ll kill. If I have to die, I’ll die.”
“I don’t mean that. That’s all of us. I mean kids. You’re willing to kill kids?”
A derisive laugh. “Name me one war in the history of wars where kids didn’t get killed.”
“That’s different. It’s one thing when a bomb falls in the wrong place, or a stray bullet goes through the wrong wall. I mean, are you willing to target kids?”
“I will follow the orders that are given to me.” Another pause-a shorter one this time. “Are you saying that you wouldn’t?”
Ryan heard a distinct change in tone. “N-no, of course not. I’m just saying I’d try to find a different assignment.”
“But if you were given an order-”
“I’d do my duty.” Another long pause. In Ryan’s mind, the guy was getting defensive. “Seriously. I’m just talking here. Don’t look at me like I’m a traitor. I’m a loyal servant to the cause, just like you are.”
“You make me wonder sometimes, Brother Samuel.” The other one said this in a tone that dripped with disapproval. “Questioning leads all too easily to disloyalty. You know this.”
“Of course I know it. And Brother James, I’m sorry that I said anything. I think sometimes that I am not as strong as the others. I worry that when the time comes, I might freeze. I don’t want to be one who fails.”
Who the hell are these freaks? Ryan wondered. Brother this and Sister that. Killing children? Holy shit.
