Two more cars to go. She pulled her Saab up one car length.
Shawn was still back home. The cheating bastard. Let him stay there, let him have the whole house to himself. He’d fucked around on her, she just knew it. Maybe with that little whore secretary at his construction office. He hired a girl who dyed her hair jet-black and wore all that eye makeup to be a secretary? Bernadette didn’t know what a goth was and didn’t want to know. Probably just another term for slut, which is what the little whore most likely was.
She knew he’d cheated, because the voices told her so.
One more car to go. She pulled up again. She rolled down her window. Cold winter air poured in.
The soldiers were everywhere. Soldiers and cops. They wanted to kill her, she just knew it. She didn’t want to go near them, but the voices had told her to go this way, told her she could get past the checkpoint, onto the highway and away from Gaylord.
The soldiers had some kind of test. Maybe it was like a Breathalyzer. She’d passed those before. The voices told her she could pass it, and she believed them.
After all, if you can’t believe the voices in your own head, who can you believe?
“Mom, where are we going?”
“We’re leaving, William,” she said. “Now, I told you to be quiet. Are you going to talk again?”
William’s eyes grew wide and he shook his head violently. No, he wasn’t going to talk again. If he did, she’d just have to deal with him.
The pickup truck ahead of her pulled forward. A state trooper stood in front of her car. He waved her closer. She inched up slowly until he snapped his palm out, signaling her to stop.
She stopped.
Another state trooper leaned down and looked in her open window. He had one hand on her door, the other hand on his gun. Peeking out under that ridiculous cop hat—where did they get these meatheads, anyway?
“Good afternoon, ma’am,” he said. “We’ve set up this roadblock to do a quick test for a bacteria that may be in the area. Are you familiar with the situation?”
“Of course I’m familiar with the situation. You think I don’t watch the news? You think I’m some inbred trailer-trash hick that watches the Springer show? I know all about the situation, and we’re fine, we don’t have the bacteria. We’ll just drive through, then you can get on with it.”
The trooper looked less than pleased that Bernadette would not be taking the stupid test, but those were the breaks. Fuck him.
“I’m afraid we do need to test you, ma’am,” the trooper said. “It will only take a second. We also need to test your children, but let’s get you first.” He held up a narrow foil envelope. He was wearing surgical gloves. “Please open this packet, ma’am, then pull out the swab inside, run it inside your cheek and along your gum line, then hand it back to me stick-first.”
“I’m sorry, Officer, but are you deaf? I just told you we don’t need to be tested. Let’s remember that my taxes pay your salary. Now, unless you want me to take your badge number and make your life a living hell, get your partner out of the way. We’re in a hurry.”
The trooper stared at her for a second. Then he looked at William. Then he looked into the backseat. His brow furrowed beneath the brim of his hat. His eyes widened. He suddenly stood up and took a step back.
His hand stayed on the grip of his gun. “Ma’am, step out of the car, right now.”
He knew. That fucking cop knew.
Bernadette pushed the gas pedal to the floor. Her Saab shot forward. The state trooper in front of her car dove out of the way. The on-ramp to I-75 was only a few hundred feet from here—she could make it. There was a state police car parked across the on-ramp. Maybe there was enough room on the shoulder to get around it.
She heard a popping sound, like cap guns.
Her car lurched to the left. Bernadette turned the steering wheel hard to the right, trying to recover. More popping sounds. The car pulled violently to the right and skidded. It hit the snowbank and stopped suddenly, throwing her forward.
The tires. They’d shot out the tires, like this was a fucking TV show like Frankie Anvil or something. Did they not understand that the voice told her she could go past?
Bernadette opened the door, grabbed her purse and got out of the Saab.
“Down on the ground!” a trooper shouted. More shouts, all of them saying the same thing. “Down on the ground, now!”
They had guns pointed at her. Blue jackets and round hats everywhere, in all directions. They were going to kill her.
Bernadette reached into her purse and pulled out the butcher knife. That would show them. It had worked on her daughters, made them shut up, and it had sure as hell taught Shawn an important lesson about not fucking around on his wife. It worked on them, it would work on the troopers.
She rushed at the trooper who had been leaning into her car.
Everything blurred, her body twitched and trembled, she dropped the knife and fell to the cold, slushy pavement. Such agony. The pain stopped as suddenly as it started, leaving an echo effect rolling through her body. She shook her head and tried to stand, but suddenly there were hands all over her. She felt her face pushed into the wet pavement, something heavy on her spine. Her hands were pulled behind her back, and she felt handcuffs snap into place.
ROADBLOCK
About six miles east of the I-75 on-ramp, Private First Class Dustin Climer looked to the sky and watched a Black Hawk helicopter head west. For the past thirty minutes, the helicopter had been cruising around slowly, watching the roads below. Something was up. Dustin wondered if they’d got one.
“Dustin?” Neil Illing called out. “The swab?”
“Sorry,” Dustin said, then slid the swab into the white detector. He’d been holding both, swab and detector, but the helicopter’s sudden movement had distracted him. After just a couple of seconds, the detector let out two short beeps and the green square lit up, indicating a negative result.
“She’s fine,” he said to Neil.
Neil bent down just a bit to look in the car window.
“You’re all set, ma’am,” Neil said.
The woman let out a huge sigh of relief. Dustin wasn’t sure if her relief came from a negative result on the flesh-eating-bacteria test, or because the four heavily armed men surrounding her car finally seemed to relax.
“When can I come back home?” the woman asked. “This is just so crazy.”
Neil nodded. “Yes ma’am. You should be able to come back tomorrow, or the next day at the latest. Just watch the news.”
“Thank you, Officer.”
Neil laughed. “I’m a soldier, not a cop, ma’am.”
The woman gave an exaggerated nod, as if to say, Yes, of course. Neil smiled again and stood back from the car. The woman put it in gear and drove past the checkpoint, continuing down the snow-covered dirt road.
Dustin and Neil stood there in the early-morning cold, waiting for the next car. Joel Brauer was at the side of the road, manning the M249 machine gun, so he had to endure the cold as well. James Eager, the fourth member of their team, slid back into their Hummer’s heated interior. He only had to come out when a car drove up, which meant Dustin was damn jealous of him at that moment. Fifteen more minutes, and then he and Neil would switch positions with James and Joel.