D Carpenter - Infertile Grounds

“Hello?” Chris said.

They ignored the salutation.

“I had an accident,” Chris said.

Again they were silent.

He started to walk toward them.

“Stop right there,” the man on the left said as he leveled his gun. Chris stopped.

“What do you want?” The other one said. They had thick accents, or maybe they just talked real slow.

“I don’t want anything,” Chris replied. “I just had an accident.”

The two men looked at each other and Chris noticed the faint, red glow of a cigarette in the car. There were at least three of them.

“Why’re you trying to reach the FBI?”

“It’s a long story. Who are you?”

The man on the left pumped his shotgun. “What do you think, Ted?”

“Hold on a minute, Jake,” the other man said. “Before we do anything rash—”

“He was trying to call the FBI. He’s probably a narc. Do you want to go back to the pen?”

“No,” the other man said in a conciliatory tone.

“Then let’s waste him.”

“I don’t know?”

“I say we shoot now and ask questions later.”

“Just a second, guys. I don’t work for the FBI or the cops. I don’t know who you are or what your deal is, and I don’t care. I was trying to find someone who lives out here. I’ve got no beef with you.”

The smoker climbed out of the car but stayed in the shadows. Only the slowly moving tip of his cigarette was visible. “Who were you looking for?” The man asked. His voice was much clearer than his partner’s. He spoke in an unmistakable northeastern accent – a fellow Yankee.

“Why were you driving so fast? You on the run?” The man on the left said as he started to walk toward Chris. “And why were you calling the Feds?”

“It’s a long story,” Chris replied. He felt disconnected, like he was having a bad dream and couldn’t wake up – maybe he hit his head in the crash.

Jake walked behind Chris and prodded him with his shotgun to walk toward their car. He kept the gun barrel pressed firmly into Chris’ back. If he made any wrong moves, Jake could blow a hole in his abdomen big enough to put a fist through. He was at their mercy.

What was he going to say? Was there any chance of escape?

“Put your hands on the hood,” Jake said as he pushed him into the bumper and frisked him. “He’s clean,” he said after a painfully thorough search.

“Of course I’m clean,” Chris said. “Like I told you, I was looking for someone out here. I followed him from LA, and we got separated just as he turned onto the dirt road.”

“Who was it?” The voice from the dark asked.

“Albert James Winslow.”

“And you say you followed him from LA and then you got separated right up here?” Jake asked as he turned Chris around. For the first time, Chris got a good look at him. He wished that he hadn’t. The man was tall and lanky with a ratty, unkempt beard that covered most of his face – a jagged scar ran from just below his left eye, down his cheek, under his chin, and disappeared into the collar of his faded, black Allman Brothers t-shirt. He definitely wouldn’t be winning any handsome contests.

Jake smashed the butt of his shotgun across the side of Chris’ face, knocking him to the ground. His head rang. Pain exploded from the spot where the gunstock had made contact.

“Jake, hold on a minute,” Ted said.

“Hold on, my ass. You follow somebody for that long and then lose him? He’s lying. And look what he had here in his jacket pocket. I told you he’s FBI,” Jake said as he held up Pell’s ID wallet and spat on the ground narrowly missing Chris. “Stand up,” he ordered.

The two other men walked out from behind the car so Chris could see them. Ted looked very much like another version of Jake – without the scar. The other man was clean shaven and dressed in a suit. He looked like he could have come straight from work at a bank or an insurance office, and appeared out of his element here. What were they doing out here in the middle of nowhere at this time of night in the first place?

“Now listen, mister,” Ted said. “Jake’s getting nervous, and I can tell you from experience, you don’t want to make him nervous. So if I were you, I’d start talking – real fast. Who are you and what are you doing here? And you best not be feeding us a story. Got it?”

Chris nodded as he looked at each man individually. He wasn’t sure what to say. He was too confused to make up an elaborate lie so he decided to tell them the truth – the whole story – and hope they bought it.

“Start talking,” Jake said pushing the shotgun into Chris’s side.

“All right. My name’s Chris Foster. Last Sunday I was fishing at my camp in northern Maine…”

The banker had time to smoke several cigarettes while Chris told them about his ordeal. Ted and the banker listened intently, but Jake kept looking around as if he expected something to happen.

“And that, as unbelievable as it sounds, is how I ended up here with you,” Chris said. “So, like I told you, I could care less who you are and what you’re doing out at this time of night with guns. I just want to wash my hands of this whole thing. I was trying to do my part, and all it has brought me is grief…”

His three captors looked at each other.

“Sounds like a bunch of BS to me,” Jake said.

“Didn’t you hear what I just said? What sort of idiot would think I made this story up on the fly?” Chris snatched the ID from Jake’s hand and held it up. “This isn’t even me. Look at the picture, does that look like me?”

Ted took the ID from Chris and examined it with the light on his iPhone and then tossed it to the banker saying, “It ain’t him.”

“I told—”

Jake rammed the barrel of his gun into Chris’ chest and said, “Who you calling an idiot?”

Chris turned his attention to the banker. “Come on, buddy. I’m not making this up. All I want to do is make sure the authorities are on the case, that they’ve got as much information as possible to find this Sarah Burns woman and then all I want to do is get as far away from here as possible and forget the whole damn thing. I don’t know what you’re all about, but you’ve got to look at the big picture. These zealots want to change the course of mankind. It’s bigger than whatever you have going on, and it’s the only reason that I’m even here.”

“Hey Ted, didn’t you say you saw people out at the old McGuire place?” The banker said.

Ted nodded. “Yeah. I noticed lights on up there tonight on the way down here. You think it’s them?”

“Could be,” the banker replied as he flicked the cigarette butt onto the road and looked at Chris. “What do you want to do? We can give you a ride out to the main road, or drop you down by the McGuire place so you can have a look around. Your call.”

“Are you crazy?” Jake exclaimed. “He wants to bring the fucking FBI right into our backyard, and you’re going to give him a ride? Where’s your head at?”

The banker snapped, “Didn’t you hear what he said, Jake? The FBI is going to be dealing with the people he’s after. Looking for this virus. They’re hardly going to be interested in us are they? Sounds like they’ve got much bigger fish to fry.”

“You’re making a mistake,” Jake said.

“I don’t think so,” Ted said as he stepped closer to the banker as if to emphasize their allegiance. “The Feds won’t be interested in us. They’ll have their hands full already and I’d rather give them who they’re looking for than have them up here crawling all over the place and poking around willy-nilly. That’s when we’re really in trouble.”

“Where’s this McGuire place?” Chris asked.