Black Helicopters (7 page)

If Bo and I were home, there would have been three of us. More eyes to see. More hands to fight. I wonder what that would have meant. Then I hear words in my head that sound like Da: “You were following orders.” The words in my head are right. We were following orders.

We still have orders to follow. We are at the bottom of the hill. Two days ago we would have been standing beside the back porch. Tonight we are walking past a stinking black place crowded with burnt things and nothing.

The root cellar is cut into the bank of the hill over there. In daylight it looks like a woodpile with a tarp over it from most directions. You can only see the plank door if you go behind the stacks of split wood. If you do go back there and open the door, all you see is a hole in the ground, some board shelves with cans of food and some jars of things Mabby canned before she died. We never ate that food. It’s too old to eat now. We don’t put food in the root cellar anymore.

When Bo pulls the door of the root cellar open, it smells like dirt and wet. It doesn’t smell like smoke. We pull the door closed behind us. Bo finds the flashlight hanging on the back of the door. He cranks it up and the light shoots out onto the dirt floor. He hands it to me. Part of me wants to look at the words Mabby wrote on the jars:
PEACHES, CARROTS, PICKLED BEETS
. Sometimes in the summer, I come in here where it’s cool and dark to look at the letters my Mabby wrote. It helps me remember that she was real.

I can’t read the labels now. Bo needs the light to see, so I shine it where he is working. He shifts some plastic milk crates full of rusted hinges and parts that don’t fit anything. He moves some boards leaning up against the back wall. He steps aside, and the beam of light threads down into the tunnel. This is the back door to the den. This is the way out Da made. Da might be in there, waiting for us.

We need to go find him.

There’s a med kit in a coffee can on the shelf. We need that. I hand the flashlight to Bo. He moves fast to the first turn point, then he keeps going, silent. I follow in the dark. I know where I’m going. It’s like getting a cup of water in the middle of the night. I’ve done it so many times.

Then the light swings back on me and makes me blinder than the dark ever did.

“He’s not there,” says Bo. “It’s caved in at second turn.”

Da probably got out before the collapse. He didn’t need the med kit. That’s what I think.

When we get back to the root cellar, Bo pushes the few last jars of food Mabby left behind out of the way. Behind them, there are other jars. Nothing says what’s in them, and you can’t tell by looking because they just look black. One, two, three, four, five. All there. Da never took a jar, either. He might have just been in a hurry; that’s what I think.

Bo picks up a jar and unscrews the lid, and then he dumps it out on the floor. Inky water and another, smaller jar. He opens that jar. There’s a little kiss of air when the seal breaks. There’s a neat roll of money inside, just like Da stashed it. Five jars, five wads of money. The money and the med kit go into the backpack. The jars and the lids go back on the shelves. The boards and the milk crates cover the entrance to the den. We turn off the light and wait for our eyes to adjust. We open the root cellar door and step from the darkness inside to the darkness outside.

The air smells bad. The smoke has all blown away, but the smell of burning is thick as snot. It makes my eyes water and my nose run.

Before we leave, we have to retrieve the intel from the job shed. The padlock is still on the door. That’s a good sign. The little twig jammed in at the top corner is still in place. That’s a better sign. Nobody but us would know to look for that. If Those People opened the door and then locked it up again, they wouldn’t have known to put the twig there as a sign.

I squat down and wait while Bo goes inside. It doesn’t take him long. Everything is always ready to go — the intel, the solar, the gun, the ammo — all in one package. Bo’s got it. He locks the door. He puts the twig back. If Da comes, he will know we were there. He will know we have the intel and everything is safe.

We have everything. It’s time to get out.

One thing I wish we had is the night-visions, but they were in the house, and now the house is gone. I wish we had the night-visions not just so we could move through the dark faster; I wish we had them so I could look at what’s left of my home. I wish I could look at that, and really see it, because what I can see doesn’t make any sense to me. Maybe if I could see in the dark, I could know what happened better.

I walk over the flat rock that was the front step, and I stand on it.

If I opened the door that isn’t there anymore, I would have been in the kitchen. The grey enamel coffee pot would have been on the stove. I think that shape used to be the stove. I step to it and touch it. It still holds the warmth of the fire, even though they doused so much water on it. It was made for fire, but fire on the inside. When the floor burnt out from under it, it fell over. I squat down beside it and remember how I used to put my socks in the warming oven in the winter. Warm winter socks in the morning. I wish morning would come and I could climb down the ladder from my loft and put on my socks, warm socks.

“Valley, we got to go,” says Bo.

And we do.

I’m disappointed when we come to the gate of the retreat property and it’s locked and twigged, but Da would have locked it if he came this way. And he would have twigged it, too. Da is always careful about the rules.

So I’m optimistic again while we take the bike down the rutted dirt to the place where the bus is parked under the trees. I’m optimistic until I can’t see any smoke rising from the stovepipe sticking out the bus window. Maybe Da isn’t cold. That’s good, if Da’s not cold. That means he’s feeling strong. But when we stop the bike’s engine and there is still no Da, no smiling Da, then I have to start being optimistic that he will be getting here when he can. I have to remember that we had it easy. We had the bike for transportation. Da is having to figure things out. That can take time.

Right now, we’re tired, but that’s OK. We’re home. This old school bus is
wala
for us, a den, a home. Da brought us here often enough to know the area — not often enough for anyone to notice that we were here.

We build a fire in the little barrel stove and we dip into the water supply to fill the coffee pot. Pretty soon it’s on the boil. We just stand by the fire and wait. I get the front side of my body as hot as I can stand it, then I turn around and toast my backside. We open bags of food, add some of the hot water, and stir them up. Mine is gloopy and orange: lasagna. Bo’s is gloopy and tan: stroganoff. I eat a few bites before I break down and go to the metal storage box and pull out a bottle of corn syrup. After I stir some of that in, it tastes just like home cooking. Bo smiles and does the same.

We are warm, our bellies are full, and we are safer than we have been in days. We can sleep now. When we wake up, we can check the intel for our orders. That will be soon enough.

“I’ll take first watch,” says Bo. It’s still daylight, but sleeping is going to be easy.

“Four hours,” I say.

“Hey.” Bo is shaking my shoulder. Judging by the moon, he let me have more than four hours. I’m grateful to Bo. He takes care of me, and I take care of him. That’s why we are us.

I crawl out of the sleeping bag and he crawls in.

One of Da’s wool shirts is hanging on the back of the driver’s seat. I wrap it around me. The sleeves are way long, nice and cozy against the early morning cold.

I push the lever that opens the door of the bus and the doors flap open. I step out into the nearly dark world. Something happens to light when it bounces off the grey mirror of the moon: all the color bleeds out of it. It’s a world of grey-and-dark, grey-and-light that the moon shows me. There is a pair of night-visions if I want to get them. Da always made sure the bus was stocked with essentials, everything we would need. I don’t bother with the night-visions though, because keeping watch at night is more about listening than seeing. Even though my ears aren’t as good as Bo’s, I know paying attention is what matters. What I can hear now is the air moving through the needles on the trees and the squeak of one branch against another. I tuck my nose into the collar of the shirt. I can smell my Da. He’s as close as the smell of wood smoke, sweat, and wool.

The computer is charged, but we wait until the sun is up so we plug it into the solar collector for a trickle charge before we turn it on. Never waste an opportunity to conserve resources.

Bo and I sit shoulder to shoulder sharing the screen. We open the file named
TROUBLE/SEPTEMBER
. Da is talking to us. He recorded all the things we didn’t need to know until now. Five minutes later we have the intel we need for the next month. Now we just start counting off the days. Checking things off the list. When Da gets here, everything will be exactly as it ought to be. If he doesn’t get here when the month is up, we come back for the intel in the file named
ACTION/OCTOBER
.

Today’s list is a short one: Settle in, scout for wood, play chess, be good to each other.

It is very comforting having our Da with us this way.

It’s crowded in the back seat. The helicopter shark thing is still there — so are Corbin’s school backpack and his sweatshirt and a load of other crap. Now we add Corbin and his bag full of drinks and snacks. The fat dog goes in the back seat too. The dog is coming along because Hey! Why not?

I perch forward on my seat in the front. The vest is starting to rub the skin off the side of my neck, and it is hot. I tug the zipper on my hoodie, just a little, just enough to be a little cooler. Once the car starts moving, the air will circulate and I’ll be able to forget about my body and where it hurts and where it stings.

Eric turns the key in the ignition and says, “Where are we going?”

“Does this car have a computer that tells you which way to turn?”

“This car doesn’t have a
radio
that works,” says Corbin. “Mom says a radio is a distraction, and Eric should pay attention to the road.”

“Your mom is totally right,” I say. It would be handy to know what the cops are thinking, but Those People probably wouldn’t say the truth on the radio. Radio reports would be a distraction, lies and distraction. I need to trust what I know, not what they want me to know. “That’s OK about the car computer thingee, too.
I’ll
be the car computer thingee. I’ll say where to turn, how fast to go. I’ll say everything. That’ll be fun, huh, Eric? ‘Turn right when leaving the driveway.’”

My pawn Eric does what he is told. Perfect.

It is time to open file:
ACTION/OCTOBER
.

“You can’t stay in the mountains for the winter.” Da is talking to us through the screen. “If it hasn’t snowed already, it will soon, and you need to leave before you get caught. The bus is roadworthy. I always kept her roadworthy. Bo, you can drive her down. She’s bigger than the truck, steers a little harder, but you can handle it. Both of you, these are the things you got to do before you hit the road. Valley, write them down.”

It’s a long list, very specific. There are jobs for both of us.

“Once you get these done. It’s time to come back. Open the file named Castling.”

“What are you doing?” I ask Bo.

“I’m gonna swap this tire with the spare,” Bo says while he spins the lug wrench in his hand.

“Not on the list,” I say. “On the list is ‘cache supplies, take the stove apart, and make sure nothing in the bus can shift around.’ That’s what we do today. Nothing on the list about tires. Is it flat?”

“Not now, but I don’t trust it. The spare is better.”

“What about the stove?”

“Gotta wait until it cools off anyhow.”

“Not that hot. Fire’s been out since last night.”

“This won’t take long. Done before you know.”

I don’t see the point, but it’s not my call. Bo’s still got the com. I’m going to cache the supplies, just like it says on the list. The wind blows cold on my neck while I walk off with my sealed plastic bucket that holds 25 percent of our cash money, two handguns, ammo, a tarp, MREs, and a field first-aid kit. I’m going to put it in the place it belongs so it will be waiting if we need it.