Max Collins: Before the Dawn

Max knew that when the sun got high, Manticore would have very little trouble catching up with a barefoot nine-year-old girl wearing only a blue-gray hospital nightshirt. From her training, she knew enough about the outside world to realize that she and her siblings likely would be described to the authorities as escapees of some kind, perhaps from a mental institution.

Her special genetic gifts would provide some protection, yes; but she was beginning to lose the battle with exhaustion.

Since leaving the cabin, she had clung to the woods, only occasionally hearing the whine of snowmobiles or the roar of helicopters, as she moved south. She still had no idea where she was, much less where she was going, survival itself her only engine.

She did know she was still too close to her former “home” to achieve any reasonable sense of safety; and she needed to put as much distance as possible between her and Lydecker and the minions of Manticore.

Ahead of her, the woods trailed off and, across a scrubby clearing, there lay the expanse of a large parking lot filled with trucks, the same type of vehicles she had noticed bringing supplies to Manticore.

These she had seen at the facility, one or at most two at a time. Now perhaps as many as fifty of them sat not a hundred yards in front of her, a virtual forest of massive vehicles. Some moved out, while others moved in, taking their places in a constant parade.

Max watched for a long time as trucks parked, their drivers climbing down and disappearing into the distance toward a building of which she had only an obstructed view. After a while, drivers would come back out, check the rear doors on their trailers, climb back into the cab, then sometimes drive away, and other times just remain parked with the engines running, studying maps, reading, resting.

The child knew that even if the trailers weren’t heated, any one of them would provide better protection from the elements than she had now, as well as give her a place to hide during the coming day.

They also presented a variety of potential hazards.

She might choose to hide in a truck that ended up back at Manticore; since she had no real sense of the size of the world beyond Manticore, this seemed a genuine possibility.

Or, if unable to relock the trailer from the inside, she might be discovered by one of the drivers, who would certainly call the authorities. And for all she knew, that could easily include Colonel Lydecker.

With the icy air biting into her, she was unsure what to do; but, as a soldier, she knew doing nothing was not an option.

Max watched patiently as two more trailers came and went, one at either end. Then she rose to her haunches and prepared to move. The tree line would provide cover for the first twenty yards or so... but after that, Max would be running over open ground, in the bright sunshine, with absolutely nowhere to hide...

When the next trailer backed in and parked — a long orange affair with black trim — Max made her move. She shot forward like a runner coming out of the blocks, streaking through the last of the trees, then hit the open field, churning along at full speed.

Her eyes swept the parking lot for witnesses to her approach, but she saw none; the rear ends of the vehicles were lined up before her, making it unlikely a trucker sitting in a cab might spot her. As she neared the designated trailer, and zeroed in on its two doors, her heart sank...

... A tiny thread of metal ran through the two pieces of the lock. There was no way to open the door without breaking the metal, thus alerting the driver that someone had tampered with his rig. If she broke the seal, she’d be caught — that much she could figure out, without ever having seen the device before.

She kept moving, ducking in and crouching under the trailer, which would provide at least some cover; huddling like the spooked animal she was, Max tried to figure her next move.

Did the trailers all have these devices? After eyeballing the doors, she realized there would be no way to lock the door from the inside, anyway, and the driver would still know his load had been tampered with. Damn it, she thought, using the forbidden words she’d heard Colonel Lydecker use, when he was frustrated or angry.

Maybe, she decided, one of the other trailers would have a different type of door...

Moving out from under the trailer, still careful to check for unwanted witnesses, she slid to the next trailer, and the next, and the one after that, until finally, at the fifth trailer, she found a single door that slid up, instead of a pair of doors that opened on hinges.

Even luckier, there was no little metal seal this time; but the driver would still know the truck had been opened when Max wouldn’t be able to latch the door from the inside...

She would have to risk it.

After unlatching the door, not rushing, she tried to raise it silently, but it squeaked, like a wounded beast, and she ducked under the vehicle, desperately, quickly scanning the parking lot for anyone who might have heard.

Nothing.

She eased back out, raised the door another six inches — just high enough for her to crawl under — and then took a step back. From a flat-footed position, Max leapt the three and a half feet to the lip of the trailer, landing nimbly, all but silently, and — in one fluid motion — slipped under the edge, pitching herself forward, rolling onto her side, under the door.

With the door still up, and the dull gray light from outdoors providing at least slight illumination inside, she checked out her latest home.

The back half of the trailer was empty, while, at the front end, five wooden pallets stacked with cardboard boxes nearly as tall as she, were jammed into the space. Behind them crouched a wooden crate that came almost to Max’s neck. Inside, two black tractor seats faced each other.

It wasn’t the cabin, but it would do.

Max pulled the door back down, careful to toss out the canvas strap attached to the bottom of the door. The unlatched door might draw attention, but leaving the canvas strap on the inside would have been a dead giveaway that the door had been closed by someone still inside.

Darkness consumed the trailer. This may not have been as comforting as a blanket and a fire, but Max certainly felt better being out of the wind. The wood-and-steel floor was cold beneath her bare feet; still, it was less wet and less frigid than standing in the snow outside. Max was not a child afraid of the dark — the tiny amount of cat DNA mixed into her genetic recipe gave her the ability to see even in pitch black.

Climbing into the crate, Max huddled low, disappearing into herself, peeking out from behind the seat back, trying to see between the slats of the crate. She stayed that way, on guard, for half an hour.

Then, from outside the trailer, she heard a man’s muffled, “Son of a bitch!”

Max had heard Lydecker say those words, too.

The door pig-squealed in protest as it rose a foot or so, the driver still hanging on to the canvas strap. He was a short balding man with a sphere for a skull, little more than a disembodied head and shoulders floating above the lip of the trailer.

Wide-eyed, a peeled onion of a nose dominating his face, the guy bobbed his ball-shaped head as he looked around the trailer, saw nothing, swore some more, muttered something about “damn kids anyway,” then banged the door down.

Max heard the latch scratch back into place; she allowed herself a minute smile.

A moment later she heard the driver’s door slam, the transmission get shoved into gear, the engine roar, before the truck lurched forward.

Some time later (Max didn’t know how long, as she’d finally gotten some sleep), she felt the truck come to a stop, back up for a long moment, and then the trailer rocked a little, as if it had bumped into something. She heard the burp of the air brake being engaged, followed by the slamming of the driver’s door again. Hopping out of the crate, Max prepared herself...