THIRTY-EIGHT

Caitlyn 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.