Broken Angel (18 page)

When Carney seemed satisfied that he’d tied it tightly enough, he tossed the branch into the stream. “Dang things are indestructible. Hopefully, it will look like we’re walking downstream for help. After surviving the explosion.”

“We?”

“Toss me your vidpod. You don’t want to go back to Cumberland Gap. And you don’t want to wait around until someone investigates the wreck.” Carney began wrapping Pierce’s vidpod to the other stick. “But you do want to find Mason because he’s after the girl. You’ve still got a way to track him with that device you planted in his cast, right?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, then. After a couple of miles on the river, we’ll go up into the hills…the hard way. Outlaws mainly watch the river farther down and the easy paths along it, so we’ll avoid them.”

“How do you know this?”

“I know it. That should be enough for you.”

Pierce made a point to watch the current as it bumped the sticks with the vidpods until they rounded the next bend. He deliberately surveyed the steep walls of the valley on each side, then turned back to Carney. “I don’t understand you, Carney. Wrecked car. No vidpod. You get home and you’re in a factory. Automatic.”

“It should be obvious by now that you won’t be allowed to take the girl Outside through official channels,” Carney said. “You’d be stupid to let Bar Elohim put you in custody, which is his plan. He and Mason Lee will get the girl, and Lee will probably torture and kill you. Bar Elohim doesn’t see any value in you, so you need to get out of Appalachia. I assume you’ll want help.”

“One way or another.”

“Exactly.” Carney grabbed the shotgun and started walking. “It’s the same thing I want. Escape, then asylum. We can help each other.”

THIRTY-EIGHT

C
aitlyn checked her vidpod for the time every few minutes.

The group felt like it was collectively crawling; it had taken nearly an hour to travel only a couple of miles. She walked slowly because of her limp. Billy was unable to carry Theo because of his stomach cramps. Another one of the men carried Theo, and one of them walked well ahead, occasionally talking on his vidpod.

She didn’t think they would make it to the rendezvous in time. The GPS location pinpointed on her vidpod was less than an hour away. If she missed it, she’d have to wait another twenty-four hours. Every hour seemed to bring new dangers, and she didn’t want to spend a night in the woods again.

But she couldn’t abandon Billy or Theo. The boy was unconscious, and Billy’s effort at hiding pain showed in a sweat that made his face shine.

Caitlyn realized they were walking through a clearing and that the men with shotguns were steering them toward a grove of trees. She thought she saw a cabin, sitting in the shade of a tall pine. When they’d cleared the field, the two men told Caitlyn and Billy to wait, and they took Theo with them inside. Billy collapsed into a rocking chair on the porch, and Caitlyn stood near him, wondering how long they’d be delayed. She consoled herself by thinking about Theo getting the medical attention he needed.

Ten minutes later, an older man with a goatee walked up the path to the cabin. He wore dark sunglasses, and his face was expressionless.

When he arrived, he spoke. “I’m Brij. You’ve been looking for me.”

“My father, Jordan, sent me. How did you find me? We aren’t at the rendezvous spot.” Caitlyn searched his face for answers, but Brij remained blank. Could she finally relax? Was she safe? Would he answer all her questions?

“I was halfway to the rendezvous and was called back here.”

Caitlyn took a step toward Billy. Was this an accusation? Had they made a mistake trusting these men?

“I couldn’t leave either of my friends.” Caitlyn addressed Brij earnestly. “There’s a boy in the cabin. His name is Theo and he’s a factory runaway. He cut a chip out of his own arm. Can you make sure he gets help?”

“No one gets turned away.” Brij was gentle. “Inside, someone is already looking after him.”

Brij turned his face toward Billy. “You know her, son. Gloria Shelton from Cumberland Gap.”

“Mrs. Shelton!” Billy straightened briefly in surprise but doubled again as the next stomach cramp seized him.

“It’s Saturday. This happens to you every Saturday, doesn’t it? Maybe not always this bad, but regularly.” Brij put his hand on Billy’s shoulder.

“Yes, how did you—” Billy convulsed again.

“You attend church every Sunday, right, son? Partake of communion?”

Billy managed to nod.

“Ever take more than one communion wafer?”

“No sir,” he grunted. “That would be stealing.”

The old man nodded; a slight tightening pulled the corners of his mouth.

“You need a couple of communion wafers. Someone as big as you won’t get enough dosage with just one.”

“Dosage?” Caitlyn echoed.

Brij turned his attention back to her. “Caitlyn, during the Eucharist, did your father allow you to eat the wafers?”

“He always told me to slip them to him when no one was looking.”

“Jordan knows what I know.” Brij walked to the edge of the porch and seemed to look toward the clearing. He stood with his hands behind his back, as if expecting someone. “At least when it comes to Bar Elohim’s worship services.”

In churches, Caitlyn knew that every Sunday the sermon was delivered via video screen by Bar Elohim.

Before Caitlyn could comment, Brij asked Billy another question.

“Felt good, didn’t it, being in the presence of the Lord?”

“Communion on Sundays?” Billy’s face showed a brief spasm of pain. “Yes.”

“Describe it to me.”

Billy took awhile to respond as he appeared to give it thought. “Like a happy feeling. If I closed my eyes, it was like I could move through the sky…but not flying. More like I wasn’t heavy and the clouds were reaching toward me.”

“How about you?” the old man asked Caitlyn. “Did your soul feel like it was soaring with the Lord during your communion time? Were you feeling happy?”

Caitlyn was worried about Theo and frustrated that Billy wasn’t getting any relief, but there was something about how the old man asked questions that interested her. Especially these questions. Billy was so big and so deliberate, she couldn’t imagine how prayer and communion did that to him, especially when the church experience always nagged at her. She seemed to be the only one bored and distracted, when everyone else seemed deep in joyful contemplation of Bar Elohim’s words.

She shook her head. “No happy feelings.”

“Your father’s doing,” the old man told her. “He didn’t want you addicted. The wafers are laced with a form of opium which keeps everybody as happy as possible. Ensures their need to be in church.”

Caitlyn tried to register the information, but movement below distracted her. At first, she glanced quickly at it. Then it riveted her.

Another man walked up the path, hobbling on a cane. His face was bruised and swollen, but she recognized him instantly.

Papa!

Mason had enjoyed grade school. He had fond memories of his domination of other children his age and the sense of hunting prey during the playtimes.

He had not struggled during instructions either and was able to remember numbers and calculations with the same cold logic he used as a predator.

He’d climbed partway up a thick pine tree and had a good view of the coordinates that he was easily able to recall: 36:34:14 N, 83:40:22 W. Without those coordinates, and without the unregistered vidpod locator to bring him here, he would have been convinced his wait would be futile.

His tree overlooked a sheer rock face, with the sunshine directly upon the cracks and fissures, but nothing indicated an entrance into the mountain. Didn’t matter. He’d find out, sooner or later.

He settled against the tree with the same strange mixture of contentment and excitement that he’d felt while sitting in a deer stand. In the morning heat, the smell of pine sap was pleasant. His senses were focused. He imagined he could hear the scuttling of a beetle as it climbed the bark of the tree near his face.

He slipped into a state of timelessness. The ultimate hunter. Not even the constant pain of his broken arm intruded into his concentration.

It might have been a minute later or an hour later when a sound broke into his concentration. The slap of a branch.

His nostrils flared. His mouth opened slightly.

A ten-point buck, majestic in the power it exuded, stepped along the path below him. Mason could have dropped on the buck, straddling it and ripping a knife across its throat. He’d done that once before, thinking shooting it would have been too easy. Riding a buck as its lifeblood drained, yelling victoriously until he was hoarse in the sheer exhilaration of unleashed savageness.

The buck’s ears twitched and turned.

Seconds later it sprang forward and disappeared down the path.

Mason knew that his patience was about to be rewarded. Footsteps, light on the carpet of pine needles.

A middle-aged man passed below him, pathetically unaware of the buck that passed earlier, and equally unaware of Mason’s watching eyes, unaware that the circle of thinning hair at the top of his skull was under observation.

With no hesitation, the man turned toward the rock face. Mason wasn’t surprised, as he’d been expecting the entrance to be hidden there. He now saw how he’d been fooled.

The man squatted and felt with his fingers. Mason was close enough to see the man’s fingers disappear under a flat rock. He lifted with his legs and raised a door that had been laid horizontally into the ground.

It surfaced fluidly, powered by hydraulic hinges.

The door stayed open for a few seconds, long enough for the man to climb down. Then the door automatically shut upon him, seamlessly fitting back into the ground, still covered with a mat of pine needles.

Mason waited five minutes, then lowered himself from the tree. That he could do it without sound was a remarkable achievement given that he was climbing one-handed, holding his cast away from the trunk.

On the ground, from the backpack that he’d hidden in brush, he found a large can filled with powder. He held it in the hand at the end of his cast. Keeping his shotgun in his other hand, he stepped into the clearing.

He set the shotgun down beside him and moved to where the man had squatted. Without disturbing the man’s footprints, he knelt, sunlight on his neck, and began to sprinkle the powder that immediately became invisible in the sunlight.

He heard another snap of deadwood. He dropped the can and whirled, his free hand grabbing for the stock of his shotgun.

“Too late,” a voice said.

Mason recognized the voice immediately.
Pierce.

THIRTY-NINE

M
ost everyone who makes it this far is offered a choice,” Brij told Gloria Shelton, safe inside the cabin. She was sitting beside the bed where Theo was under sheets, muttering as he rolled from side to side.

Gloria kept wiping Theo’s forehead with a damp cloth but turned her head toward Brij. Jordan had looked at the boy before leaving with Caitlyn. Penicillin was all Theo needed. “Most everyone?”

“If you had children, you wouldn’t be offered a chance to remain among the Clan. Living among the Clan is dangerous enough. Having a child among us would restrict our mobility. Worse, we would make decisions to protect the child that would put us in more harm. And lastly, it’s unfair to the child, who has no choice. Anyone in the Clan must be here by choice and must make the choice fully aware of the cost. Families are always sent Outside, where there would be a home waiting and support until you found work.”

“I have the choice, then. To stay among you?”

“What do you know about us?” he asked in return. “The Clan.”

Gloria chuckled. “Only the boogeyman legends. That the Clan shows up at night. Disappears at will. People only remember bits and pieces of a visit.” She spread her arms. “Like this. I’m here. But my last memory is Cumberland Gap. When I try to remember in between, it feels dark. Frightening. So I understand the boogeyman legends.”

“It wasn’t a pleasant journey,” Brij said. “I’m not at liberty to tell you more about it, except that there’s a drug involved. During the journey, the drug doesn’t allow you to move your short-term memories into long term. It protects us and keeps Bar Elohim from searching for refugees like you.” More softly, he added, “To Cumberland Gap, you’re dead. Your funeral is today. I’m told you will be well grieved.”

“That’s as much as one could hope for from this life.”

“Freedom,” Brij said. “One can hope for that. It’s why the Clan exists.”

As Gloria nodded, her eyes bright in her wrinkled face, Brij continued. “In the garden, God allowed Adam and Eve to choose. When the rich young man walked away from Christ after learning what he needed to do to reach heaven, Christ didn’t chase him to persuade him to change his mind. Any other way is the kingdom of the sword.”

“The sword?”

“Imposing beliefs by using earthly power. Like the Crusades, the Inquisition, and, in the last century, the political banding of Christians that finally resulted in Appalachia.”

Brij shook his head. “Christ’s followers begged him to overthrow Rome. Instead, he chose the kingdom of the cross. Power through powerlessness. Love and sacrifice. That’s what you’ll accept if you join us. We will not fight for Christ. But we will die for him.”

In the silence, Gloria Shelton continued to soothe Theo’s fever. She turned her hand over and gently touched her old fingers across his forehead.

“No,” she finally said. “I don’t want to join the Clan.”

Brij raised his eyebrows. “Nearly always, I know the answer before I hear it. You’ve surprised me. You already risked your life by teaching from a Bible. I expected you would stay.”

“Billy’s told me what this boy has gone through to get Outside. He watched his parents die in an execution by stoning. When he’s ready to leave, I’d like to go with him. Outside. To help him as long as I can.”

“I thought you were dead.” Caitlyn hugged Jordan. They stood several yards away from the cabin.

Feeling her arms around his back made him again conscious of how her body had changed so rapidly in the last days. He closed his eyes, washed in guilt. And relief. Mostly though, overwhelming love.

“I thought I’d be dead too,” Jordan said.

“You mean when you sent me over the cliff?” She pushed back and stared at him. He hoped her expression simply reflected a reaction to how he must have looked with the deep bruising, but he knew better.

He nodded.

“Why?”

“If we didn’t separate, the bounty hunter would have gotten us both. It wasn’t a difficult decision.” Especially, he thought, because of his guilt. And his love.

“No. I meant, why this plan? The letter. The horse. Instructions to come here. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“That was part of the conditions of help. Secrecy. It protects the Clan. In return, you will have a chance to save the Clan.”

“Save the Clan?” Each word was measured with disbelief.

“Brij will tell you.”

Caitlyn’s expression hardened. “I had a right to know. Before you abandoned me on the cliff.”

“It was to save you.” Jordan kept his eyes on hers, but it took effort.

“I’m here, safe, and even now you won’t tell me why.” She backed away from him. He was losing her again.

It was a chasm. His love for her on one side. His duty and honor to the Clan on the other. And a horrible darkness lay between.

“Everything I’ve done since you were little was to find a way for you to live normally, to get Outside. Where you will be free to make your own choices. Of faith or love. Tomorrow, you will be Outside. I’ve made arrangements, and there will be money waiting for you. A doctor. Surgery. A new identity.”

“Are you going Outside too?” For a moment, she was a faltering child again, terrified of losing her Papa.

He wished he could rush forward, pull her close and protect her. Tell her that he wouldn’t leave her this time.

“I can’t.” He struggled for a way to say it that wouldn’t endanger her further. “They want what I know too badly. If we are together, we will always be hunted.”

“What do they want?” Her face had instantly transformed, from lost child to resolute adult.

Jordan still could not find the strength to tell her.

“Mason was going to cut me open. He has a silver canister. What does he want?”

She raised her voice. “What does he want?”

Jordan shook his head, barely able to look her in the eyes.

She took a half step back. “What does Mason want from me?”

Jordan knew he was losing her but still could not answer. Because if he did, he’d lose her anyway.

She waited. As the silence lengthened, he knew their chasm was becoming unbridgeable.

Brij appeared on the porch of the cabin, and Jordan knew he’d lost. There was no time left and nothing he could say.

Caitlyn walked away.

Carney stood next to Pierce, maybe twenty feet away from Mason, but far enough that the dispersion pattern of shot would make it impossible to miss his target. He was close enough that the pellets would tear holes through Mason’s body.

Mason slowly stood, blinking against the sunlight. “We’ve got them, Carney. This is the entrance to the mines. The powder here shows up in ultraviolet light. We wait for someone else to go in, then follow the tracks. I’ve got the ultraviolet light in my backpack. And paint with the same kind of chemical for marking the turns in the mine. We won’t get lost.”

“No.” Shotgun held motionless, Carney used his head to motion for Pierce to get Mason’s backpack. “Duct tape. He’s always got a roll or two on him.”

Carney stared at Mason while Pierce pulled out the contents. Flashlight. The silver canister. A small spray can. Flares. And a roll of duct tape.

“Don’t do this,” Mason said. “We’re on the same side. If not, Bar Elohim will have you in a factory by tonight.”

Carney ignored Lee again. “We’ll need to tape his hands behind his back. I’d rather he walked, but if he doesn’t, tape his ankles and we’ll carry him.”

“Where to?”

Carney saw no point in answering Mason. His plan was to move the bounty hunter at least a mile away, then he and Pierce would come back. Go inside the mines and alert the Clan that this entrance had been found. As in all other times of discovery, the Clan would use explosives to obliterate it and make it impossible to find a way inside. The mountain was honeycombed with entrances. The Clan would shift to a new one.

“Where’s the girl?” Carney asked. “Inside already?”

“Doesn’t matter to you.” Mason knelt and reached for his shotgun.

“You touch that…I’ll let Pierce finish his job on you. No bluff.”

Mason ignored him, wrapping his fingers around the stock of his shotgun.

“Guess it’ll be me then.” Carney pulled the trigger without hesitation. Instead of a roar and recoil, he heard a futile click. Mason rose from his knees, swinging the barrel of his own shotgun toward Carney.

Carney pulled frantically, again and again. Nothing but ineffective clicking.

“What a shame,” Mason said. “Almost like someone got into your office and filed away the firing pins.”

Mason stepped closer. “Now that you have that duct tape out, Agent, go ahead and follow the sheriff’s plan. His hands, behind his back, like he said. Then lie on the ground so I can do the same to you. Unfortunately, you’re worth more to me alive than dead right now, but shooting you is easier than fighting you. Not nearly as good as cutting you up like you deserve.”