Gone to Ground (3 page)

The man’s gaze was pulled back to the barn’s opening when a small blond boy, about ten or twelve from the looks of him, came running out, followed by two dogs and a young calf.

“Mark,” came a  voice from within the barn, faint but discernible.

The boy skidded to a stop, only to be run into by the closely following calf, knocking him to the ground. He got up, pushing the calf’s nose away from his face and called back, “Yeah, Mom?”

“Would you brush Hank then take him back to the pasture, please?” the voice called. “I’ve got to milk Lizzie if we’re going to feed Jenny and have some milk for supper.”

“Sure, okay,” answered the boy, Mark.

He walked to the hitching rail followed by his small entourage, and bent to pick something -  a brush -  from the ground near the base of the post and proceeded to brush off the horse’s back. Once finished, he untied the gelding and headed for the pasture gate, putting the animal inside and removing the halter. The horse turned, nuzzling the boy and apparently received a treat for his efforts, then ambled off to rejoin the other three horses in the band. The boy returned to his original trajectory, heading for the creek where it widened into a small pond. There he picked up a fishing pole, planted himself on a boulder and cast his line into the water. The dogs and the calf who had accompanied the boy down to the creek, settled in to await the outcome, the dogs curled up in the shade of some nearby willows, and the calf grazing in the lush grass.

He saw the woman head out into the pasture toward the small group of cows, returning shortly with a small brown model and disappearing into the gloomy interior of the barn. Not long following this vanishing act, the sounds of banging and clanking and the occasional indecipherable exclamation wafted out of the structure, resulting in a soft chuckle from the observer. After about twenty minutes the woman emerged, looking slightly the worse for wear and carrying a bucket of what the man assumed to be milk. Toting her hard fought for treasure she headed toward the house, passing out of his sight as she made for the door.

The man saw no one else, nor any indication that anyone but these two were at Hideaway. As he worked his way back down the trail to the canyon bottom he deliberated his next move. It was time, he decided, to make his presence known. Regardless of where it went after that, it had to start somewhere.

4

Maggie, unaware that she w
as being followed, drove her small group of cattle down toward the barn. She was trying to steer them toward the pasture instead of the garden when Mark came running up from the creek, followed by Jack, Gypsy and Jenny, the small orphaned calf Maggie found next to its mother’s dead body two weeks ago. She waved to him, and received his wave in return.

“Mark, run down and open the gate to the pasture,” Maggie called out as the boy approached. “Then stand off to the right so that the cows don’t turn the wrong way. And keep those dogs from spooking the cows, got it?”

“Okay, Mom.” Mark turned and headed for the large gate next to the barn. The dogs hesitated, but responded when the boy let out a loud whistle. Jenny, the calf, started to head toward the cows, then suddenly cranked her tail high into the air, let out a strangled bawl and tore off after the threesome.

The gate Maggie had indicated opened into a large pasture that ran down to the stream and across to the far wall of the canyon and all the way down to the northern end of the pasture. Another gate at the far end opened into the canyon where it narrowed again. That trail followed the creek to where a spring burst out of the canyon face several miles further on, then up a wash to the pasture that bordered the canyon on its eastern edge.

Three cows, two calves and a bull were already in residence in the large meadow, as were the other three horses. The grass, fed by creek and spring rains, was deep and green, and the new cows headed gladly into the pasture through the open gate where they immediately began grazing on the unaccustomed abundance.

Maggie turned Hank and rode back to the barn where she dismounted, tying him to the hitching rail outside. Having shut the gait, Mark ran over, followed by his animal bodyguards.

“What were you up to today?” Maggie asked Mark as she started unsaddling Hank “Did you get your school work done?”

“Yes, Mom. I finished all of it except I had some problem on the fractions in the math,” Mark answered, looking up from the kneeling position he’d taken while playing with the dogs. “Then I watered the garden and I took Jack and Gypsy out into the pasture to try some of that stuff they talked about in that dog training book. You know,” he said, face animated, “if we can train Jack and Gypsy like that book says, then they can gather the cows and horses, and you won’t have to work so hard.”

“Yeah, that would sure be great,” answered Maggie, smiling into the saddle where Mark wouldn’t see. “So, how did it go?”

“Well, not so good, I guess. I think I need to read some more in that book. Jack went out like they said, but he only got the calf.” Mark paused looking down at the dog’s ruff gripped tightly in his right hand. Then he glanced up with a hopeful look on his face, his green eyes flashing with excitement.

“But he did bring it back to me. It’s just that Gertrude, the mom, got angry when the calf bawled, and took out after him full blast.”

Maggie stopped what she was doing and turned to look at Mark. “What did you do?”

“Well, Jack wouldn’t stop when I yelled at him, so I ran for the fence. Gertrude caught Jack and rolled him over, then took her calf back.” Mark ducked his head again, sure what was coming.

Maggie took a deep breath and counted to ten. “I think from now on we’ll wait until we’re both here before we do any more dog training, okay?” Maggie stated, looking at Mark’s bent head, the dark blond hair floating lightly on the breeze. “I do not want you taking those dogs into the pasture without me. Understand?”

Mark blew out a sigh of relief, glad that his chewing out was relatively mild. “Yeah, okay,” he agreed, “but I really think we can get the dogs trained so that they can help us. That book talks about cool things and Jack and Gypsy are awful smart. They just get so excited sometimes, see, and they just can’t help it.” The excitement started to light his face again.

“Alright, alright, we’ll try,” Maggie said. “Just remember, not without me. And would you get this blasted calf away from me before I turn it into a pair of calfskin boots and a plate of veal fettuccine!”

While Maggie had been unsaddling Hank and talking to Mark, Jenny, apparently feeling that dinner was entirely too late in coming, began butting hard into Maggie, searching for milk and striking any available body parts, which unfortunately were all at rear end and crotch level. Maggie kept swatting it away, whereupon it turned its quest to Hank, who pinned his ears and stomped his feet in an irritated manner, apparently unappreciative of being butted in the stomach by the determined calf.

Mark laughed, and grabbed the small black and white calf by its rope halter and dragged it off toward the barn. Maggie followed with her arms full of saddle, pad and bridle, heading for the tack room. The cavernous area was cool and dark, the only residents being a flock of blue-gray pigeons. The air smelled of dust, hay and old manure. Maggie set the saddle down with a thump just as Mark came up.

“Mom, I left my fishing pole down by the pond. Can I go get it?”

“Go ahead, kiddo, see if you can get us something for dinner while you’re at it,” Maggie agreed and watched smiling as Mark took off running out the barn door, followed by his posse. Then, as a second thought, she called out after him, asking him to brush Hank and put him away first so that she could get on with the milking, a chore she hated.

Before finding Lizzie at an abandoned farm on the way to Hideaway, Maggie had never milked anything before, and she wasn’t sure that Lizzie appreciated her newly developing technique. Milking usually devolved quickly into a wrestling match. Over the past few weeks Maggie had improved so that now the milk was only kicked over two or three times during a session, but she still put off the activity as long as possible.

Oh, well
, she thought, heading for the pasture where Lizzie grazed with the other cows,
I’d better get on with it. If I don’t do it, no one else will and waiting won’t make it any better. Besides, if I don’t get it done soon that damned calf will probably show up again and then I won’t be able to get anything done.

Later that evening, after a meal of bread, butter - made with her own little hands, thank you very much - and fresh baked trout, only slightly burned in the huge wood range, Maggie settled down at the table with Mark to deal with the dreaded fractions. The two dogs were stretched out on the cool stone floor after dining on the bits of bread and fish that were too charred to be eaten by the humans, their paws twitching occasionally as they relived the excitements of the day.

It’s amazing how well Mark’s adapted to life at Hideaway
, Maggie thought.
Better than me, I think. I still miss the stores, and the restaurants, and the people. Mark’s content with his animals. At least for now.
Maggie looked at Mark’s tousled blond  head, bent over a math problem, a slight frown creasing his face as he chewed on the end of his pencil.

The dogs were Mark’s constant companions since coming out to Hideaway, with Jack filling the post of special guardian. Their presence calmed Maggie’s worries when she left him for short periods of time while looking for cows. When Maggie brought the orphaned calf back one day, she’d joined right in with Mark’s animal posse, doing everything with them.

It didn’t matter how hard Mark begged, though, Maggie drew the line at Jenny moving into the house with the dogs and the people. When night fell, Jenny was turned out into the pasture with her other bovine compatriots. Maggie refused to cave in to Mark’s sorrowful green eyes and his protestations that Jenny would be lonely in the cow herd without him. The house, no matter how bizarrely constructed, was not the place for a calf, especially one that was not housebroken, nor likely to become so anytime in the near future.

The only thing we’re missing now, other than a regular bathroom, a proper kitchen, and a clue as to what we’re doing
, Maggie thought,
is chickens
.

Maggie had wanted to pick up some chickens at the ranch where she and Mark found Lizzie, but there was a limit to what they could carry on the already overloaded horses.
Soon
, she thought,
I need to get back to the nearest ranch, before all the chickens are killed off by hawks and coyotes. It would be wonderful to have chicken for dinner again, and we need the eggs.

But she was faced with a problem. While she could leave Mark for relatively short periods of time, the nearest ranch that she knew of was a full day’s ride away, and then it would take time to round up any birds left alive. She would be gone at least two full days if not longer, and if she took Mark, who would feed Jenny and milk Lizzie. Yet the chickens were necessary and she needed more seeds for the garden. Next week at the latest she’d need to make a decision and the dilemma was keeping her awake at nights.

As the pair bent over the math problems in the glow from an oil lamp, Maggie dimly registered a thump outside the door. Gypsy lifted her head and rolled to her chest, ears alert, and let out a soft growl. Immediately Jack scrambled to his feet, and stood, facing the door. Just as Maggie pushed back her chair and started to rise, the door slammed open and in stepped a tall, muscular man wearing the navy blue uniform shirt of an Enforcer, carrying a rifle at the ready with a handgun snugged into the holster at his belt.

“Mom, who...,” Mark started to say, but stopped when Maggie put her hand on his shoulder and sank slowly back into her chair, wide green eyes, the match to her son’s, fixed on the terrifying image in the doorway.

A thousand thoughts rushed through her mind, crashing off each other and causing roadblocks to action.
How could they have found us? What do we do? I won’t go down without fighting,! I won’t. How do I protect Mark? What... what... what...

Maggie finally found her voice and asked in tremulous tones, “Who are you?”

5

This sucks
, thought fourteen-year-old Christina Craigson as she sat on a bed in the tiny windowless room on the subterranean level of th
e converted hotel.
This totally, completely and fully sucks!

The “this” she was referring to was the entire situation she found herself in. Parents dead; mother of the disease and father at the hands of the Enforcers. Separated from her brothers and now locked in this little cell. THEY may call it a “time away” to rethink her choices, and say it was for her own good, but she knew what it really was: a way to keep her from questioning what they were doing, and what they wanted her to do.

THEY didn’t know Christina well at all, though, if they thought locking her away would shut her up, she thought. Uh uh, no way. Questioning how things worked was what Christina did best. Her mom and dad are - were scientists and taught her the value of questioning her senses and not accepting things at face value. God, she missed them, she thought as unshed tears stung her eyes. She was sure they had cameras in here, and she refused to give them the satisfaction of seeing her cry. They would take it as a sign of weakness and no one was allowed to think of Christina Craigson, daughter of William and Elizabeth Craigson as weak.

Christina had been at the Laughlin, Nevada, APZ for nearly six weeks. Before that she and her brothers had been staying at the shelter in Ash Springs, Nevada, where they’d been taken after their father’s death.

“Poor little mites,” the smelly old lady in charge of the shelter said in treacly, over concerned tones. Her hair, died an unnatural shade of red, bobbed as she shook her head in sympathy. “So hard to lose your parents at this age. Just you trust your Aunt Sue, honey, I’ll make sure you’re okay.” Christina was afraid she was in imminent danger of falling into a diabetic coma if Sue continued in this sugary style.

“You’ll be fine,” said the harried looking social worker assigned to them. There weren’t many social workers left alive, and those who were found themselves overwhelmed with the number of orphans left as the influenza swept over the country.

Then, in the manner of most clueless adults who tended to view kids as a lower form of life that didn’t rank especially high on the intellectual scale, the social worker, “call me Jeannie,” walked over to “Aunt” Sue and began talking quietly. Apparently she was unaware that Christina could hear and understand every word as she stood there, flanked by her two eight-year-old brothers, Ryan and Nick. Unaware, or just didn’t care.

“It’s such a sad story,” Jeannie said in her high, nasal voice, “mother dead of the influenza and the poor children left with just their father. Then he commits treason. Actually stands up in front of a crowd and stirs them up against the authorities with some made up stories about how the government is working on some conspiracy and using this terrible disease to gain control over the people. As if our elected officials would do something like that,” she huffed, looking out of the corner of her eye at Christina and her brothers.

Christina wanted to march up to the two busy bodies, kick them in the shins and yell, “Hey, I’m right here! I’m not deaf!” but she kept in her place.

“Then,” Jeannie continued breathlessly, with Sue shaking her head and clucking her tongue against the roof of her mouth, “when the Enforcers were brought in to get things under control, Craigson tried to incite the crowd against them. Of course they had to do something. It’s such a shame that the little ones had to see their father die that way, especially so soon after losing their mother.”

“Did they have to shoot him?” Sue asked avidly, leaning forward to catch every word, mouth hanging open like a baby bird waiting for a juicy worm, her watery blue eyes eager behind half moon glasses.

“Yes,” Jeannie verified. She nodded vigorously, her frizzy, streaked-blond hair writhing around her head like Medusa’s snakes. “They say Dr. Craigson pointed the Enforcers out as agents of the government which was trying to deprive them of health care and food and everything. The crowd rose up and charged the Enforcers. The officers opened fire to protect themselves. Fifteen were killed, and one of those was Dr. Craigson, shot down right in front of his children.” Jeannie shook her head as if despairing over this terrible situation that had fathers being shot down in front of their kids, but her voice betrayed the degree to which she savored the image of the dramatic scene. “It’s shocking for the little ones, but what end do you expect for a traitor.”

Finally, Christina couldn’t take it anymore. “He wasn’t!” She yelled, fists balled at her sides as if ready to fight, dark blue eyes blazing in a white face framed by dark brown hair. “Take it back! My dad wasn’t a traitor! He was a great scientist and he knew more about what was going on than any of you stupid bitches, so you take it back!”

Christina paused, breathless, chest heaving and struggling to contain her sobs. Her brothers shrank behind her, scared brown eyes looking back and forth between their sister and the two shocked women.

Christina turned her back to the two women.
They didn’t know. They didn’t care
. Christina had been the one standing next to her dad when the Enforcers arrived. She was the one who was next to her father as he tried to reason with them, who saw the angry crowd turn on the uniformed men carrying the guns. She was the one who was splashed with her father’s blood when the Enforcers opened fire with their assault rifles.

“Well, I’ll...” Jeannie stumbled to a stop, protuberant brown eyes regarding the girl with amazement.

Aunt Sue was made of sterner stuff, though. “Young lady, I know you’ve been through a lot, but I’ll thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head,” she snapped, glaring at Christina’s back, double chins wobbling in sympathetic outrage.

Christina turned back around and clapped her lips tightly together, staring defiantly at the pair of women.

As though frozen to the spot by the power of Christina’s glare, Aunt Sue hesitated for a moment, looking at the three on the rug in front of her. When it was clear that Christina wasn’t going to say anything more, she muttered, “good,” turned back to the social worker and finished the transfer. Occasionally, though, she looked back over her shoulder, as if puzzled at this force of nature standing on the rug in the shelter’s entry way.

Christina and her brothers remained at the Ash Creek shelter for just under three weeks, during which time Christina made a name for herself as a “defiant” child. She really didn’t care what the adults thought, but the constant turmoil that surrounded her began to affect her younger brothers, already badly traumatized by the death of both parents. Nick and Ryan began to retreat into their own little world, using their own “twin language” for the first time in at least four years. It pained Christina to see the distance grow between them, but she was so caught up into her grief and sense of injustice that she couldn’t bring herself to meekly acquiesce to the demands of the grownups.

At the end of the three weeks, Christina, her brothers, and all the other children at the shelter, as well as all the adults in the town were gathered and moved to the Laughlin Authorized Population Zone, one of the first APZs in the state. There the children all found themselves housed in a converted hotel, the boys in one wing and the girls in another. With them were other children from all over the state of Nevada and western Arizona up to the age of sixteen.

Once settled in the hotel, Christina continued asking her questions and spreading the information that had gotten her father killed. The caretakers in charge of this new shelter told her that until she began to follow directions and stopped stirring up trouble by spreading false information she wouldn’t be allowed to visit with her brothers. When she still didn’t fall in line, the adults told her that she would have to be removed from the program for awhile. That was how she found herself sitting in the little concrete cell.

Actually, Christina thought, it wasn’t all that bad down here, without people yammering at her all the time, telling her that her dad was a liar and didn’t know what he was talking about. The only people she saw were the people who brought her food and the occasional ‘counselor’ trying to talk sense into her. She had her books, and her thoughts, and was content for the time being until she could figure out a way to get free from here and take her brothers with her.

The other good thing about being here was that she’d met Him. He was the officer who’d brought her down here, and who came with the shelter staff when they showed up to try and convince her to drop her ideas. This Enforcer had nice eyes, though she thought they looked sort of sad and haunted.

Then, one afternoon, about three days after she’d been put in the cell, he came by himself. He told her he was in charge of the security station that afternoon, the one where the camera in her cell was monitored. He wasn’t there about that, though. He wanted to ask her about the information her dad knew. Over and over again he asked her to repeat what her dad taught her and his eyes became more and more haunted with every telling.

This went on for several days; her talking, him listening. She wanted to know more about the APZ, and what was happening in the world outside, but he resisted her questions, always posing another of his own. Then, one day out of the blue, he began telling her about a place where one wasn’t punished for telling the truth. It sounded truly fantastical, this place he described, as though it was in another dimension. He said it was a “camp” which seemed to mean a place where cowboys lived out closer to the cows. He said he’d been a cowboy. She studied him, trying to see the cowboy in the Enforcer. He was tall, with short-cropped wavy hair the color of the newly husked chestnuts she and her brothers used to collect every fall from the tree in their backyard; a sort of dark red-brown. His eyes were dark brown, almost black, and seemed so deep that you could fall into them if you weren’t careful. She guessed that maybe he looked like a cowboy, but she wasn’t sure.

He said that this camp was in a place that no seekers could find, and that if you hid there, you would be safe. Many of the things he described were hard to grasp. Christina had lived all her life in the city, seldom going camping or even spending days in the country, but as the man built upon his description of the camp, it began to take root in her mind.

Then one afternoon he didn’t show up. When her meal was brought that evening, it was a different Enforcer escorting the shelter staff. The next day again he wasn’t there. She wanted to ask about him, but was afraid of causing trouble. Besides, he’d never even told her his first name. All she knew was that the tag on his navy blue uniform said “O’Reilly.”

As the week went on, and O’Reilly didn’t come, Christina continued to think about the things he’d told her. She didn’t know if he’d been killed in an uprising. He’d said there were some in the APZs when the residents protested the rules imposed upon them. She was afraid that maybe he’d been a late victim of the disease that had taken her mother. But the thoughts that occupied her mind the most were those of the camp he’d told her about. The place where someone could live without worrying about this new government and this new rule where truth didn’t count for much. It sounded lonely, and Christina wasn’t sure if she could find it, let alone stay alive there, but it haunted her dreams more and more until she finally decided that, live or die, she had to try and get to it. She and her brothers.

The first thing, though, would be to get out of this isolation cell. And to do that, she would have to play along with the adults in charge of the shelter. With her mind filled with O’Reilly’s descriptions, Christina waited for the shelter staff to arrive at the cell with dinner. As soon as the server got there, Christina would ask her to tell the administrator that she was ready to be a productive member of the APZ. Once she was out of here, she’d find her brothers and she would make a run for it; the camp he called Hideaway.