All Fall Down: The Chronicles of Altor, page 16
“As I always am, I stand by to do what you need. However, I don’t have my dive equipment.”
“The pilot who is coming to pick you up will either have the necessary equipment or know where to find it on the way.”
Nyx looked around her. A spring breeze caused the trees around the pond to sway and hum their song.
“When?”
“He will be there in two days. I’m sending you the coordinates. His name is Emmanuel.”
Nyx, who had been Zari until that moment, said, “Let’s hope so.”
“Pardon?”
“Emmanuel means God is with us.”
“Thank you, Nyx. I’ll look for your reports.”
The screen went blank. Nyx sat on the steps and took off her muddy shoes. When she went inside, it looked like someone had, perhaps, died.
“You’ve already done so much for them,” Shalva said, as though they were already in the middle of a conversation.
Perhaps they were.
Nyx looked up at the high-beamed ceiling, at the beautifully appointed kitchen, the thick area rugs that covered the hardwood floors.
“And they’ve done so much for us, haven’t they, Mother?”
Shalva closed the distance between them and wrapped her in a mother’s hug. In her ear, she whispered, “I am selfish. I don’t want to see you go.”
“And I don’t want to go,” Nyx whispered back. “But I must.”
“When?” Adva asked.
“I’ll need to leave tomorrow.” Nyx didn’t bother to tell them how far she would have to hike to meet the plane or any of the other information about her mission. None of it mattered. The only thing that did matter was that she was leaving and her return, as always, was uncertain.
“I will start the babka so you can take some with you,” Shalva said. “Tonight, I’ll make a feast.”
Nyx and Adva exchanged a knowing glance. Whenever a crisis was upon them, Shalva thought it could be solved—or at least momentarily forgotten about—with calories.
While Shalva busied herself in the kitchen, Nyx, Adva, and Franklin sat around the kitchen table.
“Here are the things you’ll need to think about while I’m gone.” Nyx started to make a list.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Flightseeing
Nyx left the cabin early the next morning. She only had to cover ten miles and didn’t think the hiking would be bad, but she didn’t want to risk being late. She had slept fitfully the night before, but that was nothing new to her.
The coordinates the General had given her were for a clear spot in a valley over a ridge to the east. She didn’t know how her ride was going to drop in there and land safely, but that wasn’t up to her.
She packed a backpack that she would stash somewhere close to the meet-up spot. She would travel light from there but wanted to have a small tent, sleeping bag, and food in case her contact wasn’t where they were supposed to be.
She managed to get out of the cabin without waking up Chaya and Millie, but all the adults were awake to see her off.
She hugged them, then shut the door firmly behind her and stood for just a moment on the porch. It was just starting to get pink in the east, making everything look a little surreal and completely lovely. It was like a picture postcard for Wanna get away from it all?
Nyx gave herself ten seconds to drink it in, then wiped it from her mind. Focusing on the task at hand, she adjusted the pack and set off toward the sunrise.
She had a small pocket map of the area tucked away in her pack but didn’t really need it. She had studied it the night before until she had it memorized. There were no real trails this far out in the wilderness, and that was the way she liked it.
It turned out to be a perfect day for hiking and since she only needed to cover such a short distance by the next day, she took it easy and conserved her strength. She knew she might need it in the days ahead.
There was one slightly tricky part in her hike. She either had to go up and over an area where two smaller mountains met, or go around them. Looking at the map the night before, she had figured it would take her at least an extra ten miles to go around in either direction, so she decided to go over.
She got to that area in the early afternoon and was glad to arrive in full daylight. The pass between the two mountains gained perhaps two thousand feet in elevation, so that wasn’t a challenge. There were just a few spots that would require Nyx to do a little climbing.
She was not a top flight rock climber, but like so many skills, she had enough training in it to do a basic climb.
As one of her instructors had drilled into her, “By the time we’re done with you, you’ll know a little about a lot.”
She thought of stashing her pack before she climbed, but that would have defeated the reasons for bringing it. If it had endangered her, she would have done so, but in the end managed to make the climb without abandoning it.
She stood at the flat area at the top and looked east. From there, she could see a green valley that stretched on for many miles. Somewhere down there was her rendezvous spot, though she couldn’t make it out.
She dropped down the other side to the valley floor and made it the last few miles to the designated spot. She shook her head admiringly at how perfect it was. There was something like a natural landing strip that was perhaps a half-mile long. It wasn’t paved, of course. There were no paved areas that close to the cabin, which was how Nyx liked it.
Even so, the potential landing area was almost smooth. There were no trees growing in it, or large rocks that might make landing impossible. There were blackberry vines and other small bushes here and there, but that was all.
Nyx looked up at the sky and saw that the sun was now behind her. It would be dark in a few hours.
She scouted the area and found a good spot to camp for the night. She didn’t want to be right on the makeshift runway but also didn’t want to be too far away in case her contact arrived earlier than expected. She hoped to find a small cave or rock wall that she could camp in, but there was nothing like that in the valley.
Instead, she found a bristlecone pine tree with an odd growth pattern. Something had caused it to lean and grow out at nearly a ninety-degree angle, which gave nice shelter if it should rain overnight. She pitched her small tent toward the base of the tree and spent a few minutes gathering firewood.
She thought that it was likely the closest humans to her were the family she left behind at the cabin, and so wasn’t worried about giving her position away. The fire would deter curious four-legged creatures.
Once she had her firepit set but not lit, she walked back to the area she had already started to call The landing strip and worked for a few hours clearing away any possible obstacles. She pulled bushes up, hacked at blackberry vines with the small machete she had brought, and hauled a few rocks out of the path.
By then, it was dusk and she was exhausted. She retreated to her small camp and lit the fire. She unwrapped and ate the babka that Shalva had made. Typical of her mother, she had gotten up in the middle of the night to finish it, knowing how early Nyx would leave.
She ate some venison jerky, sprayed herself with bug spray, and lay down on her sleeping bag just as it was full dark.
Nyx never slept straight through. She had a mental alarm clock that woke her up every ninety minutes. She wouldn’t move, but would spend a minute listening to the bugs, birds, and swaying of the trees, listening for anything out of order. When she didn’t hear anything, she would drift off immediately, only to repeat the process again and again.
She woke up before the sun was up, though her rendezvous with the plane wasn’t scheduled until 10:00 a.m.
Nyx hadn’t made a scuba dive for more than five years, so she spent the next few hours reviewing what she knew, remembering the proper procedures.
At ten, she walked out toward the landing strip and listened for an engine but didn’t hear anything.
That didn’t surprise her. This was, at best, a thrown-together operation in the worst of circumstances. Things rarely worked like clockwork in the best of times.
She walked to a stream she could hear a distance away and refilled her canteen, then dropped a tablet in to treat the water.
At noon, she finished most of the babka and ate two of the corn cakes that Shalva had sent with her.
An hour later, she finally heard the sound she had been waiting for. She did not run to the field, but stored her pack in the lower branches of a tree, where she hoped she would retrieve it when the mission was done.
The plane came in from the north, circled around once, twice, then came in for a landing. She waited until the door opened and the pilot stuck his head out before emerging from hiding.
“Mr. Livingston, I presume?” the man shouted across the distance.
“Obscure reference,” Nyx said. “Emmanuel, I presume.”
“Indeed. I’m an obscure person.”
“The only way to be, especially in times like these.”
Nyx didn’t bother to ask Emmanuel any questions. She doubted if he would have answered them, or at least answered them honestly.
He took her small pack that had a few essentials in it and tossed it in the back. “No time like the present.”
The takeoff felt a lot rougher inside the plane than the landing had looked from the outside.
Soon they were in the air and pointed north. Nyx was glad their initial route didn’t take them west. From the air, she was sure her place would have stood out. She didn’t want to see it again until the mission was over.
Emmanuel leaned over toward the passenger seat and said, “The flight up won’t be too bad. Steele’s got everything mapped out for us. We’ll only have to go out of our way once. He gave me one spot on the map that he thinks not only has fuel but also a place where we can safely stay tonight.”
Nyx nodded.
“Do you have my dive equipment?”
Emmanuel jerked his head back. “That’s why I was a little late. I had to stop and pick it up and ran into a little difficulty. Nothing I couldn’t handle, but it slowed me down.”
Nyx knew that when an operative good enough to be on Steele’s gold star list said they ran into a little difficulty, it meant there had been a real shit storm, but they had survived it.
“We could just about make it to our destination on one tank of gas, but that would leave us stranded with no fuel in easy range. So, we’ll fly out of our way and refill, spend the night, then I’ll have you there by midday tomorrow.”
Emmanuel increased their altitude to between six thousand and seven thousand feet. From that height, Nyx still could make out some details below, but only in general. Mostly, they flew over unoccupied areas, but every once in a while they would fly over a town or a major roadway.
There was no sign of human activity anywhere. If people were surviving in these areas, they weren’t out and around during the day.
Once, Emmanuel pointed to a wreck on Interstate 25, just north of Casper, Wyoming. It was so huge, they couldn’t count all the cars and trucks that had been involved in it.
They banked west right after that and flew toward the sun as it dipped down to the horizon.
They passed over an area where there seemed to be no population and Emmanuel dropped them down, down, until they were only a few thousand feet up.
“There we go,” he said, pointing to a runway that seemed to appear out of nowhere. “Right where Steele said it was.”
“I haven’t seen him be wrong yet,” Nyx said.
Cautiously, Emmanuel circled the strip, looking for signs of life. He didn’t see anyone or anything, which didn’t necessarily mean that no one was there. He shrugged and said, “You rolls the dice and you takes your chances,” then made a nice landing. “A little smoother when I have actual asphalt to land on.”
He taxied to the end of the runway, then rolled to a stop but kept the engine running.
A man emerged from a hangar, hands in the air. “There’s our contact,” Emmanuel said. “Or at least I hope so.”
“I didn’t know we had one.” Nyx thought about that for a second. She knew that Steele only told each of them what they needed to know, and she hadn’t needed to know that.
“Steele’s got people like us stashed all over the country, I’d guess.”
The man slowly lowered his hands. He had long, gray-blonde hair, a neat beard, and wore overalls.
Emmanuel opened the door and said, “Arturus?”
“That’s me. Bring it into the hangar. I don’t think there’s anyone within twenty miles of us, but I don’t want to take any chances. I’ll get you fueled up.” He pointed to an office adjacent to the hangar with windows that looked inside. “I’ve got some stew on the hotplate in there if you two want some.”
They went inside and watched the man they knew as Arturus fuel the plane. It wasn’t that Emmanuel was interested in seeing the plane being fueled. Like Nyx, he was cautious. If this man was an agent of Steele, then he could be trusted. Emmanuel thought that, or he would not have let him near the plane. He trusted, but watched. Verified. It was why, though there was more silver in his hair than black, Emmanuel was still alive.
When Arturus was finished with the refueling he came inside the office. “It’s not much, but it’s home.” He nodded in the direction of a room at the back. “That’s my place. You two can sleep out here.” He pointed to two old, worn-out sofas pushed against opposite walls. He went to the hotplate and dished up some of the stew. “Better eat it while it’s hot. It doesn’t get better as it cools off.”
Emmanuel and Nyx both nodded their thanks. Emmanuel waited until Arturus had closed the door behind him and said, “I know he works for Steele, but I can’t eat something prepared by someone else on a mission.”
“Of course,” Nyx said. She rustled through her pack and found the last bit of the babka and two more corn cakes.
Emmanuel opened a sealed MRE and sighed.
“Food is food, right?” Nyx said. “Fuel, nothing more.”
“Your fuel looks a lot better than mine,” Emmanuel said.
They didn’t see Arturus again. He stayed at the back of the office through the night. Both Emmanuel and Nyx were awake and alert before sunrise.
Emmanuel started the engine of the Cessna and five minutes later, they were in the air. They pointed north and within two hours, he dropped down and pointed at a small, two-lane road.
“That’s the location Steele gave me, so I guess that’s our landing strip du jour.”
“What’s that next to the road?”
“Looks like a prison to me.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
When Harry Met Nyx
It had been three days since the ill-fated raid to retrieve the water pump for the well.
Rolls had installed it and had the water flowing by late the next day.
It didn’t seem to matter at all.
Having water again seemed like a small consolation for having lost Heyo. A pall had been cast over the Longbaugh Free Prison.
Heyo was a big man, but it was his smile and outsized personality that everyone remembered. With him gone, nothing seemed the same.
Belinda was hit the hardest. She and Heyo were still young. Their kids were still young. She saw nothing but a long road ahead trying to fill his shoes, which she knew she couldn’t do. Belinda was always the practical one, the parent who said no. Heyo had been the fun one, almost a kid himself. She didn’t know how she could make things work without him.
When Jack had first said that Heyo was dead in the back of the pickup, everyone had thought that he was wrong. He wasn’t a doctor, after all. It was possible he was just unconscious.
Harry had driven them back to the prison at unsafe speeds, wanting to get Heyo looked at. They had arrived safely, but when they pulled him from the pickup bed and moved him onto a hospital gurney, they saw the problem. There was so much blood pooled in the bed, it was obvious no one could have lost it and lived.
Heyo had said he had been shot in the leg, but it was actually higher than that. He had been hit between his groin and leg. His femoral artery had been severed. He had bled so much, he had slipped quickly into unconsciousness, then shortly after, death.
The next day, while Rolls worked on the well, Jack and Bob dug a grave under the trees in the side yard.
It had been Harry’s idea to make the raid and he blamed himself for the death of his friend.
“I should have tried to bargain with them for the pump. They might have said no, but at least I should have tried.”
No one would let Harry accept the weight of that blame, but also, no one could really stop him.
Harry seemed to be shrinking by the day. His face was now so thin that he didn’t at all resemble the man who had taken charge the day the prison was shut down.
They buried Heyo on the second day. There were no caskets in the prison—any dead prisoners were sent to town to be cremated or turned over to relatives if they wanted them. Heyo had been the most clever with his hands and might have been able to cobble one together, but no one else even attempted it.
They wrapped him in the best comforter they could find and lowered him into the hole.
It was a hot, sunny day in central Montana. Belinda got wobbly and looked like she was going down before Allison and Harry led her away.
And so it goes.
Life went on, as it inevitably does for those left behind.
Even with Heyo gone, they continued to stand guard around the clock. Harry was concerned that there might be repercussions from the Montana Brigade, or whatever group was currently holding onto the town of Longbaugh.
He believed they would be safe behind their walls, but the worst part of it was, he felt like they had brought whatever response they got on themselves. If they had snuck in, grabbed the pump, and got away cleanly, it wouldn’t have mattered. It was possible the theft wouldn’t have been discovered for months, years, or ever.
