John Krygelski - The Aegis Solution

The former Zook jerked his hand back, startled by the contact.

He jumped up, the back of his knees ramming the chair backward; it slammed into the wall of the shack with a crash.

“I gotta go!”

“Where? Why are you leaving? You’re safe here,” Tillie sputtered, wanting to calm him down.

Zack took several side steps toward the front of the porch, his head now swiveling wildly as he tried to see into the dense curtain created by Wilson’s plantings. “My mother. She’s in W…Walden. I gotta go find her.”

Tillie and Elias both stood and moved toward him. This caused him to bolt, almost jumping down the steps.

“Zack, you shouldn’t leave yet,” Elias cautioned in a steady voice. “They’re out there, and we don’t know where they are. You’re better off here.”

With a violent shake of his head, Zack nearly shouted, “No! My mother is out there. I gotta go.”

Before either Tillie or Elias could move closer to him, the young man bolted again, running down the path with his arms flailing, batting the encroaching branches away from himself.

“Zack!” Tillie yelled, and started to follow him.

Elias grabbed her shoulder and stopped her. “We can’t keep him here if he doesn’t want to stay.”

She whirled to face him. “But he doesn’t understand. The Zippers are going to kill him, too!”

“He understands.”

They both heard the clanging of the cowbell as Zack found his way to the end of the path and exited from the atrium.

Wilson emerged from the shack, carrying a plate with two sandwiches. Seeing the knocked-over chair, he sighed and placed the plate in the center of the table, picked up the chair, set it upright, and sat down.

“I take it that our guest did not want my sandwiches.”

As Elias and Tillie walked back slowly, Stone explained, “His mother lives in Walden. He wanted to get to her.”

“I see.”

Tillie, still obviously upset, rejoined them at the table, followed by Elias. “He doesn’t stand a chance.”

“And we do?” Elias asked.

“We have a better chance than he does.”

“I’m glad you think so.”

“Dammit, Elias….”

“Please,” Wilson interrupted the two of them before they could escalate. “Don’t you think we should stop squabbling and come up with some sort of a plan of action?”

“I agree,” Elias said, turning in his chair so that his back was to the angry Tillie.

Balling up her fists on the table in front of her, she forced herself to calm down. Through clenched teeth she asked, “What kind of plan? What’s the goal?”

“We need to figure a way out of here,” Elias responded.

“What would that accomplish?” Tillie grabbed one of the sandwiches made for Zack and took a bite.

Stone spoke firmly. “What do you mean? Both Elias and I have been tricked into coming inside Aegis. Obviously, this is supposed to be our prison. Of course we need to get out of here.”

They all waited while Tillie chewed the large wad of sandwich and swallowed enough to be able to talk. “Wilson, what the heck is in this sandwich?”

“Hummus.”

“Hummus! No wonder Zack left. Where am I? Suddenly in Walden? Whoever heard of a hummus sandwich?”

She peeled back the bread and looked inside. “And cucumbers! A hummus and cucumber sandwich! Next thing I know you’ll be wearing tie-dyed T-shirts.”

She leaned to the side and looked under the table at his running shoes. “Oh, thank God. At least you haven’t switched to Doc Martens.”

Slapping the two slices of bread back together on the partially eaten sandwich, she tossed it into the foliage.

“That will attract ants,” Wilson protested.

“No self-respecting ants are going to eat a hummus and cucumber sandwich. If Zack hadn’t run away before, he would have after one bite of that garbage.”

She looked innocently around the table and resumed, “Anyway, where were we? Oh, that’s right, a plan. Eric, you think that you and Elias should clear out of Aegis, and you probably don’t care if you take Wilson and me with you.”

“I didn’t say….”

She cut him off. “Save it. Whether you do or you don’t is irrelevant. The point is, I don’t think the two of you were suckered into Aegis only to get rid of you. I mean, isn’t a normal part of your everyday job killing people? You know, do a little filing, make some copies, kill Joe Blow, have lunch. If Faulk wanted either or both of you gone, he would just rub you out.”

“Rub us out?” Elias barked. “I haven’t heard that phrase since I watched an old James Cagney movie.”

She waved a hand in his direction dismissively. “Kill, eliminate, take you out, terminate with extreme prejudice, bump you off, send you to sleep with the fishes, snuff, wipe you out, blow you away, extirpate….”

“Extirpate?”

“Exterminate,” she continued, ignoring Elias’ interruption, “deracinate, whatever! All I’m saying is, why wouldn’t he just do that? Wouldn’t that be a lot easier than this whole elaborate ruse?”

Still grinning from Tillie’s rapid-fire tirade, Elias looked at Stone and said, “She has a point.”

Stone looked at Tillie and back at Elias. “And a hell of a vocabulary, too.”

“She’s right, you know,” Wilson interjected.

“Well, then what is the point?” asked Stone. “Why did Faulk want us both here?”

“That’s the $64,000 question,” Tillie asserted.

All three of the men turned to look at her. Elias was the first to speak. “Did you spend all of your time watching TV Land as you were growing up?”

Grinning mischievously, Tillie answered, “Not important. What is important is why you two were sent here.”

Elias started to say something, when Wilson suddenly jumped up, grabbing the ever-present shotgun that was leaning against the wall of the shack. “They’re here!” he shouted as he whirled the barrel around to aim it at the wall of fronds and branches.

Elias turned to look and caught a glimpse of beige through the boughs.

KA-BOOM!

He saw a wide area of leaves and branches turned into mulch as Wilson’s first shot blasted into the spot where the beige had been.

Cursing the wind for masking the sounds the Zippers would make as they dashed through the bushes, Elias ran through the door of the shack, grabbed the AK-47, and was nearly knocked aside by Tillie, who was also dashing inside. On his way out, he saw the shotgun they had taken from Zack, and grabbed it. Once on the porch, he tossed the shotgun to Stone, who was attempting to spot for Wilson. Before the springs could fully close the door, Tillie burst out with her backpack.

“Keep them in the bushes!” Wilson shouted. “Once they get into the clear, we don’t have a chance. Tillie, the net!”

Dropping her pack, Tillie ran to the corner of the porch and yanked down hard on a large wooden lever mounted to the wall near the point where the overhang attached to the shack. Hearing a loud THUNK, Elias saw netting tumble down all the way around the perimeter of the porch roof. The netting completely surrounded them, leaving no openings.

“Close the door!” Tillie barked, and Stone ran to the shack door and slammed it shut.

“We don’t want them breaking through into the shack and coming out here from behind us. Bar it!”

For the first time, Stone noticed a drop-down bar clipped into the door frame, and swung it down. It fell neatly into the u-shaped catch on the door.

Through all of this, Elias had not taken his eyes off the perimeter. Since the first quick look at the Zipper, he had not seen any other indication of him or any others. In his peripheral vision, he could tell that Tillie was pulling things out of her pack and, by the sounds he heard, assembling something. He appreciated the fact that the railing around the porch was not a typical open frame, but was solid from approximately thirty-eight inches high down to the porch floor. As he crouched behind it, he was able to determine that it was built using stacked 2x6s, with no gaps. There was enough density to stop bullets fired from most guns.