“I don’t mind,” Dillon said.
Hutch smiled.The kid’s resilience impressed him.Then he noticed Dillon’s expression; he had missed something. He leaned closer and said, “What?”
Dillon drew closer still.Their noses were almost touching when he repeated, “How about a mine?”
Hutch drew back. “Mine?”
“An old uranium mine. Pretty close.”
“Abandoned?”
Dillon nodded.
“Where?”
Dillon pointed, only a few degrees off their intended direction. “Over that hill.”
Hutch had not seen a mine on the map, but many man-made changes to the terrain took longer to appear on topos. If the mine had operated for only a few years, the cartographers may have overlooked it or deemed it unimportant.
“Dillon,” he said, “you are a brilliant guide and navigator. Let’s go.”
41
Declan,s skin was pink from long minutes of hot water. He was patting his shoulder with a thick towel when he heard the door downstairs bang open.
“Dec! Declan!” It was Pruitt. He sounded excited or panicked or something Pruittish.
Declan lifted his foot to the cushion of a settee. He began drying his leg. Below, doors banged and Pru continued calling out to him. Declan shifted the towel to the other leg. He stood, tossed one end of the towel over his shoulder, grabbed it near his opposite hip, and buffed his back. Pru’s heavy footsteps stamped up the stairs.
“Declan!”The knob on a door down the hall slammed into a wall. A few moments later another door crashed open.
Declan had not bothered to shut either the master bedroom door or the door to the adjoining bathroom; when Pru appeared, it was with considerably less banging but no less drama. His shoulder hit the bathroom doorjamb.
“There you are.”
“Here I am.” Declan brusquely moved the towel over his hair. “Did you see the dryer downstairs? Did you notice if my clothes are dry?”
“Uh . . . I didn’t notice. Sorry.” In a rush Pru said, “We couldn’t get in the community center. Cort didn’t answer.”
Declan’s hands stopped. The towel draped over his head like a boxer’s hooded robe. “That was twenty-five minutes ago, dude.Why are you just now—”
Pru held up his hand. “We kept knocking.Tried all the doors. She finally opened up. Somebody broke in and knocked her out.Two people, they had guns.That woman with the kid, Laura, and some other guy. She thinks it was the one who shot at us after that fisherman—”
“Did they release the cattle?”
“No. They took the bike, the motorbike. You know the one we had—”
“That’s it?” He looked up at the ceiling, thinking it through. “They break in. Knock out the only person we have there. And all they do is take the dirt bike?”
“Yeah, but that’s not all . . . I mean that’s not it . . . I mean . . .”
Declan pulled the towel off his head. “What?”
Pruitt stepped fully into the bathroom. He lifted his camera, angling it to show Declan the monitor. The crushed and burning Hummer was frozen to the screen. “While we were waiting for Cort, I went back to the car to review this new footage. Look.”
He pushed a button.The flames and smoke on the monitor sprang to life.The focus was on the interior, seen through six-inch-high gaps that used to be the side windows. Pruitt had circled the car. A shortened, accordioned windshield pillar blurred past, and they were viewing the interior through the now-glassless windshield opening.
“So?” said Declan, losing patience.
Pru’s eyes widened. “So . . . what’s missing? What’s not there that should be?”
Declan raised his head away from the monitor. “I know what the word missing means. Are you going to tell me, or do you just like sharing the bathroom with my naked self?”
“Declan, there are no bodies. Nobody’s in there. The Hummer was empty.”
Declan squinted at the monitor. “That can’t be.We followed them the whole way.”
“Did you see their heads before targeting them?”
Declan didn’t look up from the monitor. “The windows were too dark.You know that.”
“And look here.” Pruitt pointed at the screen.
The camera had moved around to the passenger side window. Through flames that had engulfed the seats and center console, Declan could tell the steering wheel had been crushed.
Pruitt pushed a button, and the image froze. He pointed. “On the steering wheel,” he said. “I think that’s a belt. See? Here’s the strap . . . and doesn’t this look like a buckle?”
“Could be . . . anything.”
“Declan, look—”
Declan backed a step away from the camera. He ran the towel under his arm. “Could be a belt. Could be anything. That’s one messed-up Hummer.” When his mouth closed, his lips were tight. This did not sit well with him. Not at all. He wasn’t so worried about people reaching the next town. That wasn’t going to happen. And he didn’t think anyone possessed the means to communicate Fiddler Falls’ distress. If they did, it would have happened already. It sort of bothered him that these loose cannons were rolling all over the countryside and in town. One of them might hit him.What truly bothered him, however, was that there were people out there convinced they had fooled him. Wherever they were, they were probably laughing it up, tickled pink that they had used Declan’s own vehicle and weapon to pull one over on him.
He brought his tight countenance to bear on Pruitt. “These people Cort says broke in, they can’t be the same people.”
“I don’t know.”
“They couldn’t have turned the Hummer loose, rushed all the way back down here, and done that. Not without a vehicle. And if they had a vehicle, what would they want with a dirt bike?”
Pru cocked his head. “So there’s two sets of people running around causing trouble?”
Declan lowered the toilet seat lid and sat on it. He draped the towel over his legs. He held up one finger. “We know about the hunters.”
“But I thought you got them last night, behind the community center.”
Declan shook his head slowly. “There’s a glitch in the control, in the imaging. If I got them, there would have been something left. An arm, a leg, something. So we have to assume they’re out there.” He held up a second finger. “Then the woman and the kid. Cort said one of the hunters was with her, not the kid?”
“She didn’t mention him.”
“Weird,” Declan said simply.
After a minute Pruitt said, “So what are we gonna do?”
“Our two teams of insurgents know each other. One team just lost their wheels; the other gained a set. I think they’re going to get together. And we’re going to be there.”
The mining had started in a natural basin formed by several hills. The walls of this basin had been carved away, creating a gradual spiraling ramp from the top to the bottom. It appeared to Hutch that the ramp had been used to drive heavy equipment to the bottom of the basin. About halfway down there appeared to be an opening in the carved wall—an adit boring into the hill. That was the shelter Hutch wanted.
The rain continued to drench man and boy in an apparent effort to outperform the deluge that had forced Noah to build an ark. Curtains of water flowed down the walls of the basin. The ramp looked muddy and slick, but Hutch saw no other way to reach the adit.They needed to traverse the ramp for a full spiral and a half around the basin wall. He turned to Dillon, standing at his side on the edge of the big bowl.
“You did it,” he said. “Thirty minutes and we’ll be out of this dishwasher.”
Dillon smiled.
Hutch stepped toward the beginning of the ramp. His feet slid out from under him, and he plunged over the edge. He slipped down a steep sloping wall to the ramp one full spiral below the lip of the basin. He dug his fingers into the gravelly mud to stop his momentum from taking him over another edge and down to the next level of ramp. If he fell bel
ow the level of the adit, the slipperiness of the mud would prevent him from climbing or even crawling back up to it until the rain stopped and the earth dried. He heard a scream and saw Dillon coming over the edge and down the wall toward him. He seemed to be riding a wave of water and mud.
The boy splashed down beside him. Hutch seized the collar of his coat, preventing him from plunging farther. They were both covered, head to toe, in thin coffee-colored mud. They could have been the works-in-progress of an ambitious clay sculptor. The adit was now directly across the basin from them and a little lower. Their plummet had saved them a full circumnavigation of the basin’s top level.
“Correction,” Hutch said. “Our new ETA is five minutes.”
They walked, slipped, and slid single file, far away from the outside edge of the ramp.They attempted to stabilize themselves by running their right hands along the ascending wall that marked its inside edge. Following Dillon, Hutch narrowed his field of vision to the boy and the mud directly in front of them. Step . . . make it stick . . . step.
He almost ran into Dillon. The boy had stopped at the mine’s entrance. Hutch stepped around him and entered the dark, cavernous tunnel. He immediately felt relief from the pounding rain, mentally and physically. He felt like a swimmer pulled from the water, three strokes from complete exhaustion.
Dillon stepped out of the rain. He instantly collapsed. Hutch knelt over him.
“Hey! You okay?”
Dillon didn’t move. His eyes remained closed. He said, “So . . . tired . . .”
“I hear you, kid.”
He lifted the boy and propped him against the tunnel wall. The rain had sluiced the mud from his hair and face and most of his clothes, a testament to his increasing ability to stay on his feet. The hair and skin at his right temple was matted and muddy, but otherwise he was a thoroughly laundered boy.
Blood—diluted by rainwater as soon as it left the wound—still oozed from Dillon’s cheek. Hutch leaned close. He pushed on the skin next to the cut. A fat drop spilled out, but it didn’t look bad. He kept a couple butterfly bandages in one of the pouches on his utility belt; lacerations, for which butterfly strips were designed, were the primary injury suffered by hunters. Arrow blades, branches, gutting knives all contributed to the disproportionate profits attributed to hunters by the Band-Aid company. He pulled one out and wiped away a spot of the water, mud, and blood. He applied the strip. It immediately came loose and fell away. His face was simply too wet. He’d try again later.
Hutch cocked his head toward the opening of the mine. “The rain, does it come down like this a lot?”
“Sometimes. About this time of year. Mom says it comes when people have been really bad. It’s supposed to wash everything clean again.”
Hutch nodded. He looked out at the downpour. Probably the worst he’d ever seen, which made what Dillon’s mother told him seem as true as a knight’s honor.
42
The shower had been just what Declan needed. He felt scrubbed and fresh and ready to go. Even the icy rain that caught him between the B&B and the Jeep and then again between the Jeep and the community center could not dampen his spirits. The thought of people laughing at his inability to find them, despite his superior resources, did what the rain could not. If he had been cold and waterlogged—like a wet dog—when the news of the empty Hummer had come, his chi would have been knocked completely out of alignment. Clean and warm, he had felt the news only darken his aura from blue to purple.
Stepping into the community center’s vestibule, he witnessed the sorry soul he could have been. Julian shuffled in from the corridor, shoulders sloped. His hair clung to his head like spilled paint. His eyes were red, canted on the outsides, reflecting misery. His skin had paled to a shade only several degrees from his teeth. He had not changed out of his wet things, despite having brought extra clothes. His brother was either trying to elicit sympathy from him or was wallowing in self-pity.
He’d better discover it was the latter, because Declan would not tolerate efforts to manipulate him. The person who did would find not a cache of concern and care, but indifference tinged with anger.
“Did Pru find you?” Julian asked.
When the boy spoke, Declan recognized that he had allowed defeat to sap the vitality from his physicality.
Declan didn’t want to keep Julian in his vision. Just the sight of such weakness could infect him like a cold germ. He may not experience symptoms for a while, but it would be there, waiting for a moment of vulnerability. Declan was inoculated against such feelings of utter despair, but like a powerful athlete, he recognized that peak performance was achieved not only through the building of strength but also through the avoidance of anything that did not build strength.
Seconds before he had been lamenting where he would be had he not taken the time to shower; then he saw Julian and recognized himself without the care he invested to prevent looking and feeling like that. He wasn’t stupid. He may be strong and cognizant of the needs of his mind and body, but he knew how easy it was to slip from champion gladiator to lion chow. Indeed, the difference was not a lifetime of conditioning but one . . . little . . . slip. It was thrusting a sword when you should have parried; it was watching a TV show when you should have gone to bed; it was remaining in cold, wet clothes when you could have tossed them in a dryer and taken a hot shower.
“Dec, did Pru find you?” Julian repeated.
“He did.Why haven’t you changed out of those clothes?”
From the corridor, Kyrill peered out at him.Though slightly more bright-eyed, he could have been taking lessons from Julian in depressive behavior. He had not run a comb through his hair since the deluge had plastered it, and he, too, had not found dry clothes. For just a moment, Declan wondered if this lack of self-care was a product of the teen years as opposed to a deficiency in attitude.Then he remembered his own passage through that age, when he had discovered the benefits of vitamins, yoga, earth-centric gemstones, the wisdom of the ages, regardless of the world’s efforts to minimize it by labeling it this or that religion. No, it wasn’t years on Earth; it was personality. It was who you were: you had it or you didn’t.
He swung his attention back to Julian, flitting over him, not dwelling.
Julian looked down at his clothes as if noticing for the first time their condition. He shrugged. “Just didn’t.”
“Where’s Pru?” Kyrill asked. “Didn’t he come back with you?”
“He’s walking. Julie, if you take care of yourself better, you’ll be better.”
“I wanted to take a shower too.You told me to stay here.”
Declan turned the full force of his apathetic eyes to Julian. “That’s just it.You have to earn it. If you were the kind of person who changed out of cold, wet clothes when he could, then I’d have figured you would truly benefit from a long, hot shower on a day like this. Medieval kingdoms didn’t armor their jesters.The ones who got the equipment were the fighters who could do the job.”
He put his arm around Julian’s shoulders. “Show me that you care about yourself, that you want to be stronger and smarter and more in tune with the cosmos. Stop putting dead animals in your body. Start meditating. Then you’ll get what you want from me.”
Hesitantly, Julian asked, “What do I want from you?”
Declan laughed. “You want me to teach you how to be like me, right? Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted? Little man looking up to his big brother? Dad’s never around, and all he can be is a moneymaking machine.You were just a little squirt when you recognized that I was figuring it out, how to use money and people to live life more fully than most humans could even imagine. One in a million, one in a billion.That’s what I am.That’s what you could be.”
Julian shook his head. “I don’t think I want to be like you, Dec. I mean—”
“I got it. I got it.” Declan’s arm rose up Julian’s shoulder until it encircled the boy’s neck. It tightened.
Julian coughed, cleared his th
roat. He touched Declan’s arm. “Dec?”
“I was like that, too, at your age,” Declan said, infusing his voice with good-natured enthusiasm. “I wanted to be more than I was, but also my own person. See? To be more like me, you don’t have to necessarily be less like yourself.You just have to bring out the me that’s already inside you.”
Julian was silent. After a moment he said, “Yeah. Sure. I get it.”
Declan released him. He leaned his face close to Julian’s. His eyes flicked around and he whispered conspiratorially, “You and I aren’t like these others.We’re not idiots.We have everything going for us: money, brains, good looks.” He winked. “But you’ve got to work it, Julie.They’re all like muscles.They can grow strong, or they can atrophy, get flabby.What we’re doing here is important for your future. It could put you at the top of the food chain.”
He gripped Julian’s shoulder. The boy flinched. He studied his brother’s eyes—green-blue, not his own ebony, which helped keep people out of his head. “Or not. It’s your call, little man.”
Julian nodded.
Declan stretched his back, glanced around. “Where’s Bad?”
“Back on the cot. He—”
“Bad! Get your butt out here!”
Julian sauntered away, toward the corridor.
“Julie, I want you with me.We’re heading out.”
Julian looked toward the doors. Rain was still battering them. A million tiny elves knocking to get in. “Now? With the rain?”
“You do what you have to do.”
Julian continued toward the corridor.
“Julie.”
“Just let me hit the head, Declan. I’ll be right back.”
Cortland came out of the office/bedroom. Spotting Declan, she maneuvered around Julian and moped up to her man, head down, bottom lip puffed out.
“You too?” Declan said. “What?”
Cort reached him and wrapped her arms around his neck. She leaned back so he could see the full tragedy of her face. “She hit me, Dec. I was out cold.”
Declan scanned for damage, but didn’t see any.