Southern Cross (18 page)

24:00:00

At
exactly midnight, someone blew up the power station that generated electricity
for Justice and its outlying areas. Juarez got the call, and I watched a shadow
fall over his face. He hid it well, but the fear in his eyes in that split
second before he regained control spoke volumes. Juarez isn’t the kind of guy
who scares easily.

“They’ve
called the National Guard in,” he told Diggs and me. We were outside the
hospital, standing in an ambulance bay far from prying ears. “They’re talking
about evacuating the town.”

“Forget
it,” Diggs said. “Nobody will go with you. They don’t like outsiders telling
them what to do—and if they think there’s a holy war coming, they’re sure as
hell not gonna want a bunch of Feds telling them they have to leave.”

“That’s
what we assumed,” Juarez said. “They’ve also taken out a cell tower, so
communication is spotty. I’d like you two to stay back here until we can get
you out of the area.”

He
said it like he was giving us a Christmas wish list:
A shiny red bike, a new
sled for Jimmy, and for you two to stay the hell home
. Not surprisingly,
Diggs shook his head.

“You
know I can’t do that,” he said. “Danny’s missing. These people are family to
me.”

I
didn’t mention that Einstein was still with Mae, and there was no way I was
sitting back and letting my dog get swept up in a zombie apocalypse. Einstein
was occasionally a sore spot between Juarez and me.

Juarez
held up his hand. “I know you won’t stay. I said it was
what I’d like—not what I thought would actually happen. Agent Blaze wants you
both back at the station, anyway.” He looked at Diggs. “You know the area,
which could prove invaluable for us. That and your knowledge of Barnel and
several of the key players in this plan mean Allie isn’t anxious to see you go
just yet. But it’s my job to let you know the risks.”

“We’re
fine,” I said quickly. “We’ll go.”

Diggs
nodded, his decision already made.

We
moved out.

22:48:01

About
an hour into the drive, Diggs made me tune the radio to WKRO and his Buddy Crazy
Jake came over the airwaves.

“If
what our friend Reverend Barnel tells us is true,” Crazy Jake said, “and we’ve
got just a few hours left here on the planet, you know there’s no place I’d
rather be than right here, brothers and sisters. I’ve got a generator, a six
pack, and a carton of smokes to carry me through, and to celebrate the end of
the world as we know it, I’m spinnin’ the full length, top twenty-four records
of all time…”

I
could all but feel Diggs perk up. “Damn. This’ll be good,” he said from the
back seat.

“We
just heard
Bridge Over Troubled Water
,” Jake continued. Diggs groaned.
“By the legendary Simon and Garfunkel, and now we’re into an album that started
as a rock opera but never quite—”

“
Who’s
Next
,” Diggs said. Juarez looked back over his shoulder. I rolled my eyes
when, sure enough, Jake listed the Who’s sixth album as number twenty-three in
his End of the World list. Diggs reached up front and turned down the volume.

“So,
let’s have it,” he said. “Top twenty-four records of all time, you two. Don’t
think, just go.” 

Juarez
started to speak. “Don’t let him bait you,” I said. “It’s
a trick. You start listing your favorite records of all time, and pretty soon
you’re in a lengthy debate over popular music and the decline of civilization
and whether Frank Zappa could kick Tom Waits’ ass in a fight.”

“I
resent that,” Diggs said.

“But
you don’t deny it,” I returned.

“Not
completely,” he agreed.

I
turned the music back up. We drove on. Shortly thereafter, Juarez stopped the
SUV and a bright white light moved toward us. It was raining outside. I’d been
lulled into a kind of trance state between the music, the rhythm of the
windshield wipers, and my own exhaustion, but the white light brought me out of
that. A man in fatigues and a rain poncho appeared, rifle at his side.

He
stopped at Juarez’s window and shined a MagLite inside.

“ID,
please?” he asked. He lowered his light seconds before my retinas burst into
flame.

Juarez
handed over his badge. “Special Agent Jack Juarez. What’s
the status?”

The
man grimaced. He was early forties, clean cut, military posture. “They took out
another cell tower—there’s still some reception, but we may need to switch to
sat coms before the night’s out. Slippery bastards. Whoever they are, these
sons of bitches are organized: they know the countryside a whole lot better
than we do, and somehow or other they’re having no trouble getting around us.
We’ve got people covering every road in or out of town, but it’s a lot of
territory. Looks like it’s more widespread than we thought, too—maybe the whole
county.”

“Thanks
for all you’re doing,” Juarez said. He took his ID back. “Be careful—I don’t
have a good feeling about this.”

“Agreed,”
the soldier said. “And you watch yourself, too.”

The
night was taking on a distinctly surreal quality.

“Can
I ask you a question?” Diggs asked after we’d been on the road for a few
minutes.

Juarez
nodded. “Of course.”

“How
the hell is this happening? I mean… What about the Patriot Act? Wire tapping
and satellite surveillance and all the rest—isn’t that specifically to guard
against something like this? Something this organized, shouldn’t there have
been some chatter?”

It
was a fair question—one I’d been asking myself since the local Dairy Queen went
up in flames. True, Diggs’ tone could have used some work, but I was too tired
to defend Juarez’s honor.

“We’ve
been hearing some rumblings recently about something happening in this region,
and Allie—Agent Blaze—has been following Barnel’s activities for awhile. But
there’s never been anything to suggest a plan of this magnitude. Someone new
must have come on the scene, because we’ve watched all the old players. No one
is sophisticated enough for something like this.”

“But
you don’t have any idea who this someone might be?” I asked.

Juarez
shook his head, not happy to admit he was in the dark on
this one. “I welcome any suggestions.”

I had
none.

22:00:06

By
two a.m., the rain was coming down in sheets and Crazy Jake was just kicking
off
The Allman Brothers at Fillmore East
. Apparently, Jake wasn’t a fan
of anything recorded after 1975. The wind blew hard enough to take down
branches and blow wayward woodland creatures hither and yon. Diggs, Juarez, and
I were all wide awake now, bouncing between the police scanner and WKRO as
Diggs directed us along deserted backroads.

When
we were still about half an hour from our destination, I saw flames up ahead. Juarez slowed down. In a field to our right, someone had erected and torched a giant
cross—upside down, of course. They were nothing if not consistent. Juarez called in his location and pulled over.

“You
know whose house this is?” he asked Diggs.

“When
I lived here, it belonged to a guy named Dickie Johnson.” Clearly it wasn’t the
time for jokes, but still… “He cooked meth in there last I knew. Has half a
dozen kids. Not exactly a pillar of society.”

Juarez
nodded, his hand already on the door handle. I grabbed his
arm.

“What
are you doing?”

“I
need to go in and check on everyone. Evacuate the place. If that’s a meth lab,
a fire that close to the house could kill everyone in there.”

“Shouldn’t
you wait for backup?” I had no idea when I’d become the voice of reason in this
trio, but I wasn’t loving it.

“I
don’t know when they’ll get here. We’ve got people spread all over the county
at this point. I’ll be careful.”

Diggs
got out while Juarez and I were arguing. I followed.

“I’m
not sitting here in the truck while you guys get blown up,” I said. “Besides
which, if there are a bunch of kids in there, you’ll need help getting them
out.”

“Yeah,”
Diggs agreed. “Haven’t you heard? Kids love Solomon.”

I
couldn’t even summon a proper glare. Juarez took the lead, with Diggs close
behind and me bringing up the rear.

The
cross was burning only about ten feet from the house—which wasn’t so much a
house as a westward-leaning shack built on a hillside. The smell of gasoline
fumes was strong in the air. A hound dog was chained outside, barking his head
off at us. Beer cans and toys littered the yard. A garbage can had toppled over
and animals had gotten into the bags, leaving soggy wads of trash drowning in
the mud around us.

Juarez
ordered us back behind a rusted-out car with no tires
while he knocked on the door. I couldn’t figure out why he didn’t have his gun
drawn, until I realized any spark from firing could send the whole place sky
high. As realizations go, it wasn’t a heartening one. I realized I wasn’t
breathing. Seconds later, he pushed the door open. Diggs crouched beside me in
the rain. He didn’t appear to be breathing, either. Finally, after I lost just
under a decade of my life, Juarez reappeared at the door and waved us inside.

The
shack smelled like a heady combination of backed-up sewer, chemicals, stale
cigarette smoke, and beer. Dishes were stacked high in the sink. Three fly
strips hung from the ceiling, the most recent victim still buzzing as it tried
to free itself from the glue.

I
stopped in front of the refrigerator. A picture from a Dora the Explorer
coloring book was held in place with a magnet advertising towing services for a
local garage. The picture was colored in with precision—not a single mark
outside the lines. At the top, written in a child’s hand, were the words:

To Daddy

Love Megan

I
stared at the picture for a long time. My eyes burned. Juarez came over, took
one look at the picture, and guided me away with his hand at my elbow.

“No
one’s here,” he said.

“You
think they were taken?”

He
shook his head. “I don’t know—but they’re gone now. The fire crew should be
along in five. I just checked in.”

“What
about the dog?”

He
looked at me blankly.

“There’s
a dog outside, chained up. Is there somewhere we can take him?” I turned to
Diggs.

“He’s
better off here right now than the pound,” Diggs said. “We’ll leave him some
food and water. It looks like he’s got shelter out there—we can check on him
again tomorrow.”

I
tried to think of an alternative.

I
couldn’t.

We
repeated the same procedure at another shack in the woods just down the road,
with the same results: no one home, no indication whether the occupants had
been hijacked or had taken off on their own.

The
third time, Diggs spotted the cross first. “Shit,” he said under his breath,
just loud enough for us to hear.

Juarez
pulled over. This place was different from the others,
surrounded on all sides by sturdy steel fencing, topped by a line of barbed
wire. We were deep in the woods, the house barely visible from the road.

“What
is this?” Juarez asked.

“A
clinic,” Diggs said. He got out without elaborating. He didn’t have to. In this
area, I was guessing abortion clinics didn’t exactly hang a neon sign out
front.

The
gate leading in was closed and locked, but the cross was burning on the other
side—which meant clearly someone had gotten through.

“There’s
another way in around back,” Diggs said over his shoulder, already on his way. Juarez got out his flashlight and we followed Diggs into the woods, traveling along the
fence line.

It
took twenty minutes, traveling through dense brush and half-obscured trails
before he finally found what he was looking for. There was a gap maybe a foot
wide, a creek running right through.

“The
woman who runs the place is named Sally Woodruff,” Diggs said. “She uses this
when she doesn’t want anyone to know she’s gone.”

I
looked at him quizzically.

“She’s
not real popular around here—tends to get in trouble when she leaves the
property, so she tries to fly under the radar.”

Right.

The
air was cool, rain falling a little less ferociously now. I followed the fellas
through the creek to the other side, barely registering the ice water seeping
into my sneakers.

Diggs
didn’t bother waiting for us once we were through, instead loping across the
open yard toward a pretty, two-story brick house. Gardens that I suspected had
been well tended were now in shambles, an arbor torn down, flowers trampled. A
cherub that had obviously once topped the antique fountain at the head of those
gardens had been knocked off. It lay in a pool of muddy standing water, one
wing broken.