Tent City (6 page)

The station has seen better days. A window is broken out and the open sign is blinking on and off in sputters. I pull up by the pump and a bell dings as I drive over a sensor covered by rubber tubing.

“So, your friend never told us, where you guys headed anyway?” the gas attendant asks. He’s got red hair and freckles to match. The girl I see standing behind him must be his sister because she’s got the same.

“How much for the gas?” I divert. No reason for him to know where we are headed. I don’t care how nice Kit thinks they are. He plays nice and begins to fuel up my wheeler.

“It’s okay Dani, they know about The Council,” she says, as she dangles a can of soda in my face and I can’t help but wonder what she had to trade for that.

“Touchy, touchy,” the redheaded boy says. “It’s not like I’m gonna report you. Just making conversation.” I don’t like being here and I’m ready to go.

“They are heading south,” Kit says. “They have an aunt there who says she can hide them for a while.”

“Why haven’t you left yet?” I ask. “One more day and news breaks.”

“Yeah, we’ll head out here in a bit. That’s why the gas is free today. We’re abandoning ship.” He says, but he seems to be searching for something inside the gas station. He looks back to me, but he seems skittish.

“Our parents died a couple years back and we’ve been taking care of this place. For the last couple of days, we have been running a kind of an underground railroad.” He says as he glances back into the gas station.

“We’ve been giving away gas, and what supplies we’ve got left, to the kids who want to make a run for it too.” He says as he jiggles the nozzle and places it back in its holster. I breathe a sigh of relief. At least I’ve got my gas.

“Lots of kids already know?” I ask, as a tiny bit of apprehension scratches in the back of my mind. Not such a big secret. Makes me wonder how safe we are and suddenly I feel like maybe we are being watched.

Just then, I glance up in the gas station window and I catch a glimpse of the redheaded sister on the phone. She sneaks a look at me and immediately looks away.

“Kit,” I call and suddenly feel panicked because I can’t see her. “Kit! It’s time to get moving!” I yell and hope she can hear me in the store. I want to just run in there and get her, but I don’t want to cause a stir and upset Brody, and there’s no way I’m leaving him out here with this guy.

“What’s your hurry?” he says, with a grin that is starting to look more sinister as the seconds go by. I have a very bad feeling.

I take another look up and see the security camera pointed directly at me. This was such a bad idea stopping here. Why did I let Kit talk me into this?

Just then, she bounds out of the store looking happier than she should.

“Kit, get on your ride now. We’re leaving.” I look over at the carrot-topped gas station attendant and say, “Thank you for the gas, but we really need to be going. We’re heading south too and have a lot of ground to cover.”

“Not so fast,” he says, as he opens the vest he is wearing to reveal a small black pistol tucked in his jeans.

“What’s going on?” Kit asks. Instinctively, she raises her hands and is scanning the area slowly. We lock eyes with each other and silently our plan is made.

“You’re not going anywhere,” he says. As he starts to pull out the weapon, the only thing I can think to do is start the engine and cut out of there. I don’t know if I have enough time to clear him, or how good of a shot he is, but I sling Brody to the front and take off as fast as I can with Kit not far behind me. I look behind me to see she has hurled a full soda can at his face and it has connected.

As I pull away, I hear him spit out blood or teeth, maybe both. I veer to the left and to the right a little, hoping he’s bad with moving objects. We have cleared at least a hundred yards and still there is no shot. I turn around to see what’s happening and I see the sister struggling with her brother. It looks like she is pleading with him not to shoot, but he shakes her off and then the bullets finally start to fly. I feel a couple connect to some part of me; whether it’s the wheeler or me, I’m not stopping to find out.

Finally, we pass a couple of miles of highway and are out of his range when Kit motions to head back down into the wooded areas so we can get off the highway. I hope he hasn’t followed us, but I can only assume it’s going to be a matter of time before they find us. I pray he bought the part about us heading south. And finally, I vow to not make such a mistake again. No one is to be trusted.

We catch our breath and I check Brody and myself. By some miracle, no one has been shot. He did get a couple of bullets into a couple of the cans, but luckily missed anything of real value. I’m so busy checking the supplies, I don’t even notice Kit is crying.

“Have you been hit?” I ask. Suddenly, I’m terrified something has happened to her.

“No, no, I’m fine. I’m so sorry! We should have never stopped there. This is all my fault. We could have been killed all because of my stupid ass!” she wails.

“She said a naughty word,” Brody quips, as he is amazingly calm and I start to laugh. I don’t know if it’s the insanity of the situation or my appreciation that we’re all okay, but I feel giddy with relief and now Kit is laughing too.

“Well,” I say, as I catch my breath. “It was stupid, but we need to move on. We need to learn from what we’ve been doing wrong and never do it again. We’ve got too much on the line. Did you see the cameras back there?”

A frightened look crosses her face and I have my answer.

“Well, maybe they were old and not in use anymore, or maybe they didn’t catch a good look at us. You didn’t tell them where we were headed, did you?”

“I’m not a total moron,” she says, as she readjusts her long blond hair into a ponytail, fully expecting me to assure her she’s not. She might be waiting a while.

“Well, we told them we were headed south and hopefully they buy that. But just in case they have us on camera, we have to be super careful from now on. No mistakes.”

“I know, I know, I got it. I don’t think I realized until today just how serious this was,” she says. “If they were hired by Burke and The Council, then this may be even bigger than we thought. I mean if they were willing to kill us…”

“Okay, shhh….,” I say, trying to calm her down, “if we still want to get to camp by nightfall we better start moving now. We’ll sort through all of this later. You good with the map?”

“Yup,” she says. She looks relieved to have something to do and busies herself with figuring out our next move.

We ride for hours, not even stopping for lunch. Brody hasn’t whined about being hungry and even though I’m worried about it, I’m grateful we can keep moving. Every mile we put between us and the gas station makes me feel a little better.

Now I’m looking forward to just getting somewhere we can make camp permanently, even if it’s not really home.

The terrain is starting to feel really familiar. It’s been years since I’ve been here, but already I can feel a sense of Mom and Dad here. Memories of camping, fishing, and hunting in this area are coming back.

I wasn’t doing a lot of hunting at that time, but Dad brought home plenty of game on those trips. I can only hope these Black Hills have just as much wildlife now.

The trees have grown. Some look to be hundreds of feet tall. The smell of pine hangs in the air. It smells nothing like the air freshener pine, which in comparison is stale and artificial. This is fresh and alive.

This spot is desolate, but I know just up ahead there will be a half dozen cabins or so that were owned by us and families like us. The one next to ours would have been my uncle Randy’s. I am not even sure if we own them anymore, because no one really owns anything anymore.

Most people were allowed to stay where they lived after The Council was formed, but it was made pretty clear General Burke could force you to leave, if he found a purpose more useful for your property or your home.

Even the family farm was no longer the family farm. It was government property and they were allowed to come in and take all the harvest without a cent paid to my family. Mom said being left alone was payment enough.

As we seem to be getting closer, I swear I can hear voices, and instantly I’m afraid again. I can tell Kit can’t hear them over the engine on her wheeler and I pull ahead of her and signal for her to stop. We turn around and get the wheelers to a more hidden area and park them.

“I thought I heard something up there,” I say to Kit.

“We’re finally here. This is it on the map. High-five little man. We made it!” she says to Brody, as he jumps to connect.

“I think there might be people up in there,” I say, as I stretch out my legs.

“Well, let’s check it out first then. We can sneak around over there. There are so many trees, they’ll never see us.” She’s got a crooked grin smeared all over her face.

I give Brody the instructions on how to be quiet as a mouse like in his stories and we make our way to a good viewing spot that kind of overlooks the area where I heard the voices and where the cabins should be.

It’s pretty dense around here and I find myself getting scratched as I pass through the heavy growth.  I brush my hand into something sticky that must be sap. I hope it’s sap.

We crouch down low and slowly maneuver ourselves up to the top of the overlook. Nothing could have prepared me for what I was about to see.

We’re at the right spot all right. Only instead of just six cabins, there are probably a hundred tents as well, surrounding the area of the cabins. Small yellow ones, huge green canvas army looking tents, and even tents that sort of look like little houses.

There are loads of fire pit rings for every two or three tents or so. Piles and piles of firewood are stacked by trees. There are bikes lined up all over the place.
  But where are all of the people?

“This is incredible!” Kit whispers.

“What is it?” Brody asks as he peels the scales off a pine cone he has picked up.

“I’m not sure,” I say, as I’m trying unsuccessfully to clean my sticky hand on the ground. All I’m accomplishing is gluing dirt to the sap. “But it looks dangerous. Obviously people are living here, but who? We can’t go in there until we know for sure. The sun will be setting soon. We need to get out of here before it’s too dark to set up camp. Maybe in the morning we can check it out and figure out what’s going on.”

I feel better about coming up with a plan, but I also feel something else I can’t quite explain. I’m sort of angry someone else thought they had the right to come in and take over our family cabin. But is it even ours, anyway? There’s no way Dad could have anticipated this. I’m not even sure he would know what to do. Would he tell us to keep moving and find somewhere else to hide out? But where would that even be?

This was our only option. If we have to stay away for months, we need real housing. Winter will be coming soon. Even if we had a tent to camp out in the forest, it would never hold up and we would freeze to death. We’ll just have to take this one day at a time and figure out a plan in the morning.

We head back far enough away so we are sure not to be seen by whoever is in that area. I skip setting the tent up. It’s pretty warm out here and there’s a sense of peace being able to just stare up at the stars.

We have canned deer for supper, since it’s now officially been shot twice, and some crackers that might go stale eventually. I wish we were having that bacon Mom cooked a few days ago that I don’t even remember eating.

I’ve snuggled Brody into the sleeping bag close to me, and I’m starting to like him sleeping cuddled next to me. The scent of baby shampoo is fading. His head feels warm and I say a little prayer asking whoever is up there to please let him be okay.

He didn’t eat much again at supper. I tell myself it’s because it’s canned deer and no one actually likes canned deer, but I can’t help but worry. Just in case, I ask Kit to get me some government-distributed Tylenol out of the bag and I give him a dose. Almost instantly, he’s asleep.