Suddenly, he heard a door open and steps moving downward, the sound now coming through his cell door instead of the ceiling.
He tensed.
This is it.
The can in his throwing hand began to feel slippery. He quickly set it down, wiped his sweaty palm on his pants, and picked the container up again. That was better.
As the steps approached his door, he cocked his arm back, ready to throw.
But instead of opening it, she stopped just outside. “What’s your name?” she asked, her voice not as strained as it had sounded when she first found him.
Come on. Just come in.
“I asked you a question,” she said. “What’s your name?”
“Please, just let me out,” he yelled. “I didn’t mean to cause any problems. I…I have someplace I need to go.”
“And where would that be?”
“Uh…home. My family. They’re waiting for me.”
“So you’re telling me you live around here?”
“Yeah. A few miles away. I went out for a walk and got lost.”
“You’re packing an awful lot of stuff for someone just out for a walk.”
He had no idea how to reply to that.
“What’s your name?” she asked again.
He hesitated. “Brandon.”
“Well, Brandon. You want to tell me what you were really doing in the woods?”
Please open the door.
“Brandon? Why were you out there?”
“I…I was being chased.” The words left his lips before he even realized what he’d said.
“Chased? By who?”
“They were in helicopters,” he said. Now that he had started, he couldn’t stop. “And they had guns. They killed my friend, the man who was helping me. Please, I was just trying to get away.”
The door opened, but Brandon had already dropped the hand holding the soup. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. The woman remained out of view.
“Why were they chasing you?” she asked.
How did he explain that? “I don’t know.”
Silence.
“We heard those helicopters,” she said. “Yesterday. They were a long ways off, though. Ten, fifteen miles at least. Are you saying that’s where you were?”
“Yes.” His voice almost a whisper.
“Yeah, yeah, I know. I’ll ask him.” Her words were almost a mumble.
“I’m sorry?” he asked.
Ignoring him, she said, “You’re from over the big ridge, aren’t you? From that valley with that big building, and the airstrip?”
She’d seen the Ranch?
“Well?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Owen told me about it. Some kind of militia place, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know what that means.” Was Owen the other person in the house?
“Private army. Anti-government. Racists, maybe? Religious zealots? Both?”
“No. Nothing like that.”
“Then what is it?”
Again he paused. He’d never been good at lying, so he was sure she’d see through him if he tried now. “The Resistance.”
“The what?”
“Resistance.”
She was silent for several seconds. “What exactly are you resisting?”
“The, um, end of the world.”
He heard her mumble again, but this time couldn’t make out what she was saying. It went on for nearly a minute, with pauses here and there, like she was listening. Finally, she stepped into the doorway, the barrel of her gun leading the way.
“Are you just a bunch of brainwashed crazies? Or are you telling the truth?”
There was something in the way she asked the questions that made Brandon think she was inclined to believe him. Like she knew something. Like—
Oh, no. “It started, didn’t it?” he asked. “That’s why the helicopters attacked us.”
“What started?” she asked.
He tried to recall everything he had overheard and learned while he was at the Bunker. “The shipping containers.”
“What shipping containers?”
“They’re all over the place. They’ve been turned on, haven’t they? Is it on the news?”
Her face twisted in confusion. “The news?”
Her response caught him off guard. Maybe it hadn’t happened.
Before he could say anything more, she shut the door on him. A moment later, he could hear her go upstairs and across the floor. There was a loud scrape, maybe a table being moved or a chair, then nothing for several minutes.
When the floor creaked again, she was walking faster than she had previously. In no time, she was down the stairs and opening the door to his room again.
“Come with me,” she said, disappearing into the main part of the basement.
Confused, but hoping this might be his opportunity to get away, he followed her. Once they reached the main floor, the woman crossed over to the sparsely furnished living room, and stopped in front of a plain wooden table with a computer sitting on it. He could hear what sounded like voices coming out of it, but he couldn’t see the screen.
Brandon’s eyes strayed to the front door. If he moved quickly, he could get outside before she’d be able to do anything.
“Over here,” she ordered.
Now, he told himself, go! But instead, he walked into the living room, the power of what might be on the computer drawing him forward.
On the screen was the website for one of the cable news networks. It was playing a live feed.
The room around Brandon seemed to disappear as he was sucked into the reports of the strange containers that had been found in dozens of countries, emitting some kind of mist. Authorities were doing everything they could to keep the public away from the boxes, but Brandon was sure that wouldn’t matter.
After several minutes, the woman looked at him. “You knew.”
He nodded, his eyes not leaving the computer.
“Then tell me what’s going to happen next.”
“Almost everyone is going to die.”
A spotlight cut across the water, lighting up the Zodiac.
“That’s far enough,” a voice boomed over the electronic megaphone. The speaker was standing on the dock not far from the light, surrounded by several others.
Ash backed off on the Zodiac motor, but didn’t bring the small boat to a full stop. He had no intention of using the dock, but he had to get by it to reach the beach closest to the airstrip.
“We just want to get to our plane,” Ash yelled back, not sure if they would even be able to hear him.
Something hit the water next to the boat. A split second later, the sound of a rifle shot echoed through the air.
“Any closer and the next one will go through the side of your vessel,” the man on the dock announced.
Ash cut the engine.
“Please,” he called out. “There’s nothing wrong with us. We just need to get to our plane.”
No response.
He looked over at Red, who was sitting up front next to Gagnon. “Pass me the radio.”
Red tossed it to him. The device was a handheld walkie-talkie with eleven different channel options. They had tried it several times on the way in, but hadn’t been able to reach anyone. This time, Ash held it in the air so those on the dock could see it, and yelled, “Channel Four! Channel Four!”
There was movement on the dock, several of the men clustering together in discussion. Finally one of them broke from the crowd and jogged to the shore. They watched his progress until he disappeared into one of the buildings.
“We really need to get Gagnon someplace warm,” Red said.
The pilot, whose condition had been improving, had lost a lot of the recently regained color in his cheeks.
There was a pop over the radio, then, “This is Grise Fiord calling party on boat.”