The Kingdom - Peter Collinson

The anchorman said, “Justin — we know from earlier reports that many people have already left the town. What is being done for those who remain in Gilchrist tonight?”

“Martin... I can’t imagine what they might be going through.”

Kells switched off the television. It was as though all the oxygen had been sucked out of the room.

“We leave now,” he said. “Everybody upstairs. Pack essentials only, the warmest clothes you have.”

“Pack...?” Terry said, incredulous.

“One bag. The police station is just up the road. They will be here any minute.”

Terry said, “How can we drive—”

“We can’t. They own the roads. We go on foot.”

Mia cried, “Where?”

“Out of here. Right now, we just go.”

Dr. Rosen said, “Shouldn’t we wait here, for help?”

Terry was at the telephone next to the deacon’s bench. He picked up the receiver, poised to dial. The numbers wouldn’t come.

“You dial nine-one-one,” Kells said, “you bring them right to us.”

Terry dropped the receiver. “Cell phone,” he said, and rushed out of the room.

Bert-and-Rita were the next to leave, starting past Kells and moving quickly up the stairs. Rebecca lingered near the doorway. Fleeing seemed so rash. Staying seemed so wrong.

The existential jury. Rebecca hurried out of the parlor and climbed the stairs behind Fern.

Inside her room, she got her cargo bag open on the bed and went around grabbing things, still not convinced. It was as though she were acting out a scene of people fleeing danger. Socks. Boots. Gloves and hat. Toothbrush, underwear. Moving automatically.

Kells’s room was directly above Rebecca’s, and she heard his heavy boots moving from bathroom to dresser to bed. It was beginning to sink in. She had no choice. All of a sudden they were running for their lives.

Her jewelry kit, a fleece pullover, her handbag, her cell phone. She nearly left without her laptop, and forgetting her manuscript heightened her panic more than anything. She slipped the laptop with battery charger into its carrying case and slung the leather bag over her shoulder, taking up her cargo bag without zipping it, stopping at the door to look around the room. She was terrified to leave. She looked at the things she was leaving and wondered if she would ever return.

Kells’s deep voice upstairs got her moving. She set her bag down in the hall and ran up, ruffling the hanging quilts as she brushed past.

Fern was in the middle of her bedroom holding Ruby while Kells zipped up a bulging paisley carpetbag. “She’ll be fine,” he was saying. “They’re not after cats.”

“But she’s never been alone, she doesn’t—”

“She’s fine,” Kells said, reaching over and plucking the black cat from her arms.

Ruby squirted out of his hands, wriggling under the low bed. Kells clapped shut the wooden handles of Fern’s carpetbag and moved to the door, leaving her looking at the empty bed. He went back and gripped Fern’s arm and brought her along.

Rebecca followed them downstairs. The others stood in coats and hats at the reception desk. Each person carried one bag, except for Bert-and-Rita, who wore their matching backpacks, and Terry, who carried two. Bert-and-Rita’s cross-country skis and poles stood against the reception desk. Robert held Mia, who was staring out from his dark coat. Terry was frantically punching buttons on his phone.

Fern went to Coe. “It’s okay,” he said, but a frightened boy had replaced the easygoing teenager in the fool’s cap.

Kells pulled down an old hunting rifle from its mount over the front door. “This work?” he asked, checking the action. Flakes of rust twinkled to the floor.

“I... I think so,” Fern said.

“Last time it was fired?”

“Ten years ago?”

Kells hung on to it anyway. “Cartridges?”

Fern looked spacey. “Maybe the side drawer.”

He pawed around inside the reception desk, pocketing a few rounds.

“Where are we going?” asked Mia, her voice tremulous, tear-choked.

Kells came around to the front of the desk. “They don’t know the town. They must be going by maps or street-to-street. We need someplace...” He found a brochure next to the burning candle — Welcome to Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom! — and unfolded it. “Someplace not marked on a map. Someplace remote, where we can rest awhile, think.”

He showed the map to Fern with Coe looking over their shoulders. “The golf course?” Coe said.

“Where? This empty area here?”

“There’s a clubhouse there. Brand-new, they opened it this summer.”

Fern said, “That’s four or five miles away.”

Kells folded the brochure and stuffed it into his coat pocket, ready to leave.

Terry, getting no satisfaction from his phone, collapsed it against the breast of his overcoat. “Five miles? In this weather?”

Kells nodded. “You’re going to get your shoes wet.”

Dr. Rosen said, “If we wait here, I’m sure help will come. If we leave, how will they find us?”

Darla’s blond hair was tucked under a head wrap, ski-lift passes dangling from her parka. “They let the guards go free.”

Kells looked at her. He seemed to be constantly in motion, even when standing still. “How many of those guards do you think were women?”

Darla blanched. Rebecca did too. Now all she wanted to do was run.

“Look!” said Coe.

He was pointing to the storm door. Blue lights spun through the snow and the trees. A cruiser was rolling along Post Road, but it was not the police.

Kells threw his bag strap over his shoulder and took up Fern’s bulky carpetbag and the rusted rifle. “Out the back. We go now.”

They rushed to the kitchen. Fern was the last to leave, blowing out the spiced candle on the reception desk and looking around one last time for Ruby. Rebecca called to her from the swinging doors.

They stole out into the backyard like criminals themselves, eleven fugitives blundering into the snow-muffled night. Some drifts reached Rebecca’s knees, pulling on her legs like a soft floor in a dream, her bag cutting into her shoulder. But with fear at her back she slogged ahead. At the tree line she glanced back once at the inn, faded into the snow except for a faint yellow light in an upstairs window. Bert-and-Rita glided past her on their long skis, arms pumping. Terry followed, struggling in his long coat, eventually dumping one of his Louis Vuitton garment bags. Kells was the last, breathing hard, toting his and Fern’s possessions. Their foot trail lay glaringly in the white expanse, but the wind and snowfall followed them late into the night. By morning all trace of their journey was obscured.

Menckley, the arsonist, entered the clean, circular command Center, the technological brain of ADX Gilchrist. “The head count went better than expected,” he reported. “More than twenty confirmed dead. The Marielitos went after a couple more — vengeance scores. Some others went over the mountains.”

Luther Trait eyed the penitentiary monitors as Spotty stood next to him, impassive and broad. Cons roamed the halls freely, still basking in their liberation, exhilarated from running hard through the cold night. Trait switched on the facility intercom.

“Brothers,” he said, and watched their eyes go to the ceilings. “This is Luther Trait. I have accomplished the impossible. I have delivered you from your cages. This morning you are free men.” He saw their mouths twisted by their war-whooping, but the thick walls of the Command Center were soundproof. “You have done well by bringing the residents here. The breakout was a surprise to all of you, and since then you have been operating largely on faith. I accept your compliance as repayment for your freedom. Consider us even. I know you have concerns regarding government retaliation, but rest assured that we have anticipated everything. My address to the world will be broadcast over this same intercom in a few short minutes, so please — stay tuned.”