“There are other gates they can use.”
“It will buy us a little time. And a lot of confusion. Once you assume they are following us, time will be short no matter what we do.”
“Okay, you’re right, it’s the best we can do. And then we all go north, right?”
“Yes. There is a safehouse. We can get across the border from there.”
“I thought you didn’t know about those things,” Ruppert said.
“I only know about this one. I’m not supposed to know about it, either.”
“Then it’s a lifetime of ice fishing and beaver trapping.”
“God willing.”
“God willing,” he agreed.
Goblin Valley was a low, rocky place between the Fishlake Mountains to the west and a dry tundra of badlands stretching away to the east, where the wind had carved the stone into elaborate fortresses, as if a forgotten race of giants had once lived and fought there. The valley itself teemed with thousands of enormous stone mushrooms, or “goblins,” the size of suburban homes. The school compound was barricaded inside concrete walls at the western cliffs of the valley, where the oddly shaped rocks created a landscape resembling vast human faces and skulls. The valley was without water and clearly never meant for human habitation.
Ruppert and Lucia drove through the open desert, far east of the valley, and also explored the mesas and canyons in the San Rafael Swell to the west. In the evening, they passed through the nearest town, Hanksville, whose main attraction seemed to be the Hollow Mountain gas station, carved into the side of a rock.
Hanksville provided much support to the Goblin Valley facility, judging by the numerous vans and trucks with “Goblin Valley School for Males” stamped on their doors. Ruppert noted six such trucks parked outside “Berna’s Lounge,” a cinderblock building with a sheet-metal roof, the town’s only apparent drinking establishment, located just outside the official town limits. He noticed a few more of them at a five-story brick apartment building at the center of town, and others parked in the driveways of small houses.
Their plan took shape as they studied the situation. At night, they hid in the shadows among southern Utah’s endless slot canyons and narrow, rocky valleys. They slept in the back of the truck on the forest-camouflage tarp, all their clothes piled around them for warmth, each one sleeping half the night and keeping guard the other half, watching for bandits, police, or Terror.
On their fourth night in Utah, a Friday, Lucia parked the Brontosaur in the parking lot at Berna’s Lounge, positioning it so that the driver’s-side door faced the bar, while the passenger side looked out to the empty desert. Ruppert was slouched down deep in his seat, out of sight. It was a few minutes before eleven.
“Wish me luck,” Lucia said. She’d dressed in a long cotton skirt and a skimpy top that left most of her belly and chest exposed. Dressing that way could get you arrested for public immorality in Ruppert’s old neighborhood, but such attire on a young woman was always welcome wherever men gathered to drink.
“Luck,” Ruppert said. He took her hand, which was decorated with chunky, glittery fake jewelry she’d purchased in a flea market three towns away. “This is your last chance to turn back. Are you sure?”
Lucia shook her head. “No second thoughts.”
“No second thoughts,” he agreed.
“Are you ready?”
“As much as possible.”
“Good. Keep your eyes open.” Lucia reached for the door handle, then surprised him by leaning over and kissing him on the mouth. His hands reached to embrace her, and he had a quick impression of ribs, taut muscle, and hot skin before she pulled away.
Ruppert gave her a smile. “Remember-”
“I know,” she interrupted. “Identify the highest-status male in the room.”
“I was going to say, be careful.”
“That, too.” Lucia half-smiled at him, then eased the truck door open. They’d long since dismantled the cab’s interior light. She dropped to the blacktop and closed the door behind her. Ruppert slid across the seat and peered over the edge of the window, keeping his head low. He watched her pass the row of Goblin Valley School pick-up trucks, her skirt fluttering around her in the cool desert wind. Then she opened the front door and disappeared.
Ruppert slid back to the passenger side and opened the door about half an inch. He reached under the seat, and his fingers closed on the cold, heavy mass of the tire iron. Then he returned to the driver’s side, and he looked out the window, and he waited.
When he’d suggested to Lucia that they should arm themselves with guns, she’d refused the idea immediately.
“To carry a gun is to become a beast,” she’d said. “Like them. Guns are for those who live in fear.”
“But you carry that knife,” Ruppert had pointed out.
“A knife has many uses,” Lucia said. “A girl has to be sensible.”
Ruppert clutched the tire iron in both hands and tried to think of it that way. It was the sensible thing to do. In this situation, it was entirely reasonable. He thought of the picture of Lucia’s boy, Fernando Luis Santos, barely ten years old, his entire education focused on mountain warfare and counterinsurgency, and probably a fair amount of Dominionist dogma. He hoped the kid was worth it.
His thoughts drifted to Madeline, as they sometimes did. She was probably happier, he’d decided, as long as Terror left her alone. Certainly a Terror alert for her own husband would be more than an embarrassment at church-she might even have been banished from the congregation. He hoped Pastor John hadn’t done that. Madeline lived to belong and be accepted.
The door to Bertha’s opened, and Ruppert’s hands tightened on the tire iron. A bearded man in long shorts emerged, meandered across the parking lot to a beaten old Mustang, and drove away, drifting slightly into the wrong side of the road.
It was another hour before Lucia finally emerged, stumbling as if she’d had a little too much to drink, and Ruppert wondered if she really had. She beamed at the man who escorted her out. He looked to be in his late fifties, his hair cut into a flattop the color of steel. He possessed the wide neck and arms of a former athlete, with a paunchy gut to match. He wore a khaki uniform jacket with golden epaulets, unbuttoned now, displaying a loosened tie and a partially untucked shirt. Lucia swayed and leaned on his arm as he guided her toward the row of Goblin Valley trucks.
Ruppert slid back to the passenger side door, which he’d left ajar, and nudged it open. He eased down to the pavement with the tire iron in his hand. He looked up and down the empty road, grateful they were in the middle of nowhere.
He crept around the front of the truck, keeping himself lower than the hood. Ahead, the uniformed man opened the passenger door on a Goblin Valley truck and gestured for Lucia to get inside. Ruppert would have to pass two more trucks and then cross two open parking spots to reach him. The distance might have been thirty or forty feet, but it looked as wide as the Great Plains to Ruppert.
Lucia rested a hand on the side of the man’s truck, bent down, and began working at one of her shoes, apparently intending to remove it but having difficulty. Buying time.
Ruppert changed course and passed behind the tailgate of the first Goblin Valley truck. He dropped even lower, into a kind of walking crouch, as he passed behind the second truck. He stopped at the rear bumper and peered around. There was nothing but open blacktop left between himself and the school officer.
Lucia had removed one shoe and was working at the other. Her stooped-over position held the man’s attention. He stroked his hand down her smooth, brown back, then cupped her buttocks through the thin material of her skirt. Lucia looked back over her shoulder, gave the man a wink. The man tugged the waist of her skirt down and poked his fingers at the black fringe of her panties.