The Falling Away (21 page)

Webb returned, a plate and glass of milk in his hands. He put them on the coffee table in front of Dylan, sat next to him on the couch.

“I made you a sandwich, figured you'd be up soon.”

Dylan felt his stomach grumble, picked up the sandwich, and took a bite of whole wheat and chicken. He had to admit, it tasted great. The milk was cold, smooth, and fresh.

“Gotta be early afternoon,” he said around a mouthful of sandwich. Webb picked up the remote and hit Info; the screen displayed the time as 1:37 p.m.

Dylan nodded. “So we've been down here, I don't know, a couple hours.”

“Yeah.”

Dylan took another bite, stopped. “Wait a minute. You carried in a plate and a glass.”

“Yeah, I'm multitalented.”

“What I mean is, you used your bad arm.”

Webb rotated his shoulder a bit. “Tell you the truth, the arm's not feeling so bad. Nurses came in, checked the bandages earlier; it looks a lot better than I thought it would.”

Webb picked up the remote, reclined on the couch, put his feet on the coffee table.

Dylan felt his temper flare. “So that's it?” he said. “Here's a sandwich, Dylan, I'm gonna watch TV, and oh, by the way, we're being held hostage?”

Webb shrugged. “Pretty much.”

“None of this bothers you?”

Webb shook his head. “I'll tell you what bothers me. Getting shot by a couple of tripped-out Canadians. Driving through snowstorms, getting chased by a bloodied psycho.”

The commercials ended, and Webb turned up the volume. On the screen, a young woman sat in a room, surrounded by half a dozen people who told her what they were going to do if she didn't go into rehab.

“This,” Webb said, holding up the hand that still held the remote and gesturing to the room around them. “This doesn't bother me in the least. It's like the dude said: safe. Frankly, seems like a pretty good place to hide while we wait for the heat outside to cool down. And even if I did want to get out of here right now, how would I do it? And where would I go? Back to Billings?”

Dylan sighed. “I don't know,” he said quietly.

“No, you don't know. So if you'll just shut up, I'd like to see what happens to Erica here.”

Dylan sat quietly for a few moments, watching the TV. Erica's mother said she was going to kick her out of the house and cut off all contact if Erica didn't accept this gift freely offered to her today.

“This that
Intervention
show?” Dylan finally asked.

“Yeah. Erica, here, is bulimic. Also, she's developed a taste for meth.”

Erica, tears streaming down her face, agreed to the rehab. Her family and friends erupted in joy, wrapping her in a tight group hug.

“That meth's bad stuff,” Dylan said as they watched Erica being whisked to the airport, where she would catch a flight to a detox clinic in the Arizona desert.

“Yeah,” Webb agreed, his eyes still on the TV. “Should stick to scrip drugs.”

The next five minutes recounted Erica's experience at the rehab clinic. A follow-up said she'd been clean and sober for eight months, and had reunited with her kids.

“Lookie there,” Webb said. “A happy ending. All she had to do was roll with the punches.”

Dylan looked at Webb, then back to the TV, which had started the intro segment to another episode of
Intervention
. Obviously a marathon.

Okay, okay. He got it. This was his intervention, of sorts. His mind had rebelled against that, but maybe it was just the drugs talking. Maybe these people really were trying to help him, and he was just playing the part of the drug-addled addict.

Roll with the punches. Isn't that what your Amazon girlfriend said
?

Yeah, Joni. That's what she said
.

Dylan picked up his glass of milk and drained it. “Okay, Webb,” he said. “I'm rolling.”

34

Quinn pulled to a stop on the lonely, snow-covered road and turned the key to shut off the old Chevy's big-block engine. She sat in silence for a few moments, listening to the slight breeze outside, letting the rays of the sun warm her through the pickup's windshield.

The old 4x4 Silverado had only cost a couple grand; she'd seen it advertised in the
Thrifty Nickel
in Billings, and talked the guy down from three grand by flashing two thousand in cash. Not that it mattered. She could have spent ten times that if needed. One benefit of being a part of the Falling Away: an unlimited expense account.

Dylan was inside the compound. She was sure of it. She just needed to find him.

Getting in and getting out with Dylan in tow, however—that was going to be a bit tricky, and the plan was only half formed in her mind. Which was why she was here.

She forced open the door of the Silverado, slipped her portable scanner into the pocket of her camo jacket, looped the rabbit earpiece around her left ear, and pulled her hood over her head. Next, she grabbed her field glasses and a 12-gauge shotgun (another quick buy found in the
Thrifty Nickel
), then locked the pickup. Her tool kit was wedged behind the seat; she didn't feel comfortable having it out of sight, but there was really no way to carry it and maintain the illusion.

It was the middle of the fall/winter pheasant season in Montana, and she was a pheasant hunter.

Her feet created small sprays of white as she hiked through the fresh powder, making her way toward the phalanx of giant turbines in the distance. The HIVE compound was largely surrounded by federally owned land operated by the Bureau of Land Management; bird hunters were welcome on BLM lands.

She continued hiking for another ten minutes, making her way across the open range and keeping her eyes on the wind turbines, praying silently with each step.

Finally, at the barbed-wire fence lining HIVE property, she stopped and scouted the view ahead with her field glasses. To any casual observer—and to security cameras on the HIVE compound—she would look like just another hunter glassing the landscape for pheasants. Nothing out of the ordinary.

But she wasn't hunting pheasants. She was hunting a man named Dylan Runs Ahead, somewhere in the hundreds of acres rolling away from her current position. She put a gloved hand into her pocket and turned on the portable scanner; several seconds later she picked up a short-wave transmission from inside the compound, someone reporting a security check at Turbine 19. Over the past two years she'd listened to their short-wave transmissions inside the compound—the open, unsecured transmissions of general chatter, as well as the secret number-encoded transmissions.

With the luxury of time, she'd been able to crack their encryptions. Her scanner's built-in digital recorder would help her capture any secret transmissions for later decoding.

Of course, she'd never monitored and recorded HIVE activities from their fence line before. But this was a special situation, and she needed to get a better visual reference than anything she'd previously gleaned from Google Earth and other satellite tracking of the compound.

She looped the field glasses around her neck and began walking again. She could walk the fence line for the next few days without attracting any kind of suspicion. Watching. Listening. Learning.

Soon she would know where Dylan was hiding.

35

Dylan was feeling less trapped, and more . . . was
free
the right word? Maybe not free, but relieved. Yes, they'd been shanghaied, and yes, they were hostages—two things he thought he'd never quite get over—but he had to admit, they were much better off in here than they were out there.

Out there they'd be hounded, maybe even caught, by law enforcement officials and agents from just about every government entity you could name. In here, as Webb had pointed out, they had a well-stocked refrigerator and pantry, as well as cable TV. For 90 percent of America, that's really all you needed out of life. Why should they be any different?

And maybe, just maybe, there was something to this whole old-world-meets-New-Age cult thing. Maybe working the earth, getting back to the basics, joining a larger cause, would cleanse him inside.

He certainly needed cleansing.

Claussen had said he was chosen, spouted off about the Bible and humankind falling from grace. Maybe this was his chance to reclaim that grace. Maybe this was his “chosen” assignment. The thought made him smile, made him feel a sense of belonging he hadn't felt since the violent end of his army career. Made him actually long to see Claussen, hear him pray.

It was 7:59 in the morning, according to the digital clock on the satellite receiver. Was it the
next
morning? Two mornings after? He couldn't be sure; time ceased to exist when you were in a giant box with no windows, and he'd drifted into and out of sleep several times. As if he were on drugs of some kind, even though he knew he was going through detox. A little bit of irony, there.

Webb was in the shower yet again. In their time here, hours or days, Webb had showered several times. The first few had been difficult, as he tried to figure out a way to avoid getting water directly on his wound and bandages. But after Dylan created a mini-sleeve out of a bread bag and a roll of duct tape he found in one of the kitchen drawers, the floodgates had literally opened for Webb.

Dylan suspected his friend was trying to clean something no shower would ever wash away.

“Morning, Dylan.” A woman's voice. He looked at the nearest monitor, saw the unexpected image of Elise.

He smiled. “Elise. How's my S.O.B. doing?”

She returned the smile. “You're keeping your sense of humor. That's good.”

“You're talking to me over a grainy camera, while I'm locked up in some hole. Humor's about all I got.”

“I told you things would get weird. I also told you to trust me.”

“Because you're a trustworthy S.O.B.”

“Exactly.”

“Okay, well, all's well aboard the good ship this morning, so you can note that on your report and go back to . . . whatever else you do here.”

“What about Webb?”

“He's in the shower. I'm trying to decide between QVC and the Home and Garden channel.”

“Right. Because you love home decoration, jewelry, and fashion so much.”

He looked at the bare walls of the apartment. “Well, the art is tacky. And the window treatments—oh, wait, that's right. This place doesn't have any windows, because it's underground.”

Elise sighed. “Sorry. And it's sunny today. But it's not so bad, is it? I mean, you get to hide out a few days, wait for the dust to settle. You understand that, don't you?”

“What kind of dust are you talking about?”

“The Fergus County sheriff, the Montana Highway Patrol, and the FBI kind of dust.”

“Just another day in the life of Dylan Runs Ahead, man about town.”

She smiled. “We get cops, investigators, disgruntled families rolling through here. You're not the first.”

“So you just hide the people they're looking for?”

“Only when it benefits them.”

He paused, thought about it. “Okay. Point taken. It's just . . . it feels wrong.”

“The first few days in here are always the hardest, no matter who you are. You're entering a new life, becoming a new person. It's hard to run from your past, especially when you're battling an addiction. That addiction is what's talking now, more than anything else.”

He thought about the
Intervention
marathon they'd watched, the endless stream of junkies and bulimics and gamblers who lashed out in rage whenever the people around them tried to help. He'd lashed out at Jeff. And at Webb. And now at Elise. Evidently, junkies were always the same. “Okay,” he said, trying to make his voice more even. More modulated. “Which brings me to why.”

“Why what?”

“Why
you
ran here. What you ran from.”

She smiled. “Not everyone who comes here is running away. Some of us are running
toward
something—something bigger, something more important than just ourselves.”

“And what would that be?”

“Earth is more important than we are; for centuries, we've been an infestation, trying to kill it. It's time for us to live in harmony with the land. You should understand that more than most.”

“Why's that?”

She seemed a bit uncomfortable for a second, doing that wonderful hair-behind-the-ear bit.

Careful, Tiger
, Joni's voice said.
You're going to buy into anything she says
.

And what's wrong with that
?

I don't know. Yet
.

Elise sighed. “Well, you're Native American.”

“You can say Indian. I do.”

“Indian, then. Your people, your culture, lived in harmony with the land for centuries, while Western so-called civilization just raped it.”

Oh, great
, Joni said.
She's going to apologize to you on behalf of all white people
.

He smiled.
What was it you said to me recently? Whatever works, I think it was
.

Now I should be telling you to shut up
.

But you can't
.

“I'm sorry if I said something offensive,” Elise was saying on the camera.

“No, no, not at all. I'm just not . . . let's just say I'm not much of an Indian. I'm the guy who joined the army to get off the rez.”

“And you got wounded in Iraq.”

“How'd you know that?”

She smiled. “Well, certainly we welcome everyone with open arms. But we're not stupid; we do some background checks. To see how we can help them adapt. Knowing that about you, knowing you were scarred by your time in Iraq . . .”

He sighed. “Elise, I was scarred before I ever listened to the army recruiter.”

“How were you scarred before?” she asked softly.

“You said you did a background check. You probably have it there.”