J Bryan - Dominion

“Do you think you can handle tapping the call box?”

Lucia shrugged. “Decent chance, as long it’s configured like a normal data system.”

“Let’s do it.”

They put the car in neutral and pushed it as far as they could to the edge of the clearing, and a little beyond, so that it hugged against the dense trees. Then they locked it up and began the downhill hike back the way they’d come, walking in the woods but keeping watch on the road.

It took fifteen minutes to reach one of the yellow call boxes mounted into a telephone pole by the side of the road. They moved towards it, then scrambled back into the undergrowth when a hulking pick-up truck barreled around a sharp corner.

“Hope he slows down before he hits the roadblock,” Ruppert said.

“I hope he crashes right into a Hartwell supervisor,” Lucia said. “That’ll distract them.”

They slipped back to the roadside, and Lucia opened the call box. Inside was a very old-fashioned telephone, the kind that sat in a cradle and was connected by a wire to the main console. The console itself had only one button.

“It doesn’t even have a screen,” Ruppert said.

“It’s ancient,” Lucia said. “Probably a copper line, too. Let’s see what we can do.”

Lucia opened the small toolkit she’d used to pry the uplink out of Ruppert’s car. She lifted the receiver very slightly, then took Ruppert’s hand and positioned his fingers to keep the latch depressed.

“Hold it down,” she said. “It may signal as soon as you lift the phone.”

Ruppert watched as she checked over the receiver unit, shook her head, then worked the flat tip of a screwdriver into the seam between the mouthpiece and the rest of the handset. She tried to pry it loose, grunted, then inserted it into another spot, and then another.

“This is taking too long.” Ruppert glanced in the direction of the roadblock.

“I can’t help it.” She continued working at it until, finally, the mouthpiece popped loose, trailing long strands of a clear, gummy glue after it. She lifted the microphone and wires from inside. “This is like something built by a caveman.”

“Can you do anything with it?”

“I’ve got a couple of programs that might work. This won’t help.” She tucked the modified remote control into the pocket of her jeans. Her fingers worked quickly to patch the phone into her palmtop computer, but to Ruppert it felt like centuries were passing. He could imagine them finding his car up the road, and uniformed cops, possibly even bearing the Hartwell Civil Defense Services logo on their shoulders, poking around the Bluehawk, calling it in to their commanders.

“That’s the best I can do.” Lucia inserted an audio plug into her ear, then tapped at her palmtop. She frowned, tapped again. Frowned, tapped again. Ruppert felt sweat all over his body. His eyes twitched back and forth between the phone and the road.

“Okay,” she said. “Let it go.”

Ruppert released the latch. Lucia tapped at her computer again. Ruppert waited forever for her to speak.

“This is the courier,” she said. “I have the package, but-no, I’m calling from an emergency box. I know, so keep it quick. We’ve got a roadblock across our path-no, up ahead-no, they haven’t spotted us as far as I know, but-look, I just need an alternate route.” Lucia quickly described where they were, then paused for a painfully long time, listening. “But there must be something. I’d rather backtrack a hundred miles rather than-well, tell me quick, then.” There was another long, tense pause, during which Lucia stared at Ruppert with wide eyes.

“What’s going on?” he whispered, and she gave him an exaggerated shrug.

“Oh,” she said. “Is that-no, it’ll work, it just seems a little-okay, how long will that take?”

Ruppert saw very bright headlights around the next bend, approaching from the direction of the roadblock. Blue lights flashed through the trees.

“Lucia-” he said, but she waved him off.

The headlights brightened. It sounded like multiple cars approaching, and the lead one was turning the corner ahead. They were about to be spotted.

Ruppert grabbed Lucia around the waist and pulled her into the shadows. They stumbled for several feet, then lost their footing and rolled down a steep hill littered with sharp rocks, crashing through brambles along the way, finally coming to rest against the broad trunk of an old redwood.

“What the hell, Daniel?” she snapped, trying to disentangle her arms and legs from him. He clapped a hand over her mouth and pointed.

Up the hill, blue lights pulsed from the area where they’d been standing, sweeping out like sheet lightning through the trees and brush above them. He heard crackling voices from multiple radio channels.

“Right here,” a man’s voice said. “Yeah, someone’s been monkeying around back here. We must have just missed them. Their console’s still attached.” The man paused. “No, sir, we haven’t found a vehicle yet. I’ll have some men-yes, sir. We’re going to need more men for a foot search. I’ll radio-thank you, sir.” There was a brief pause, then the unseen police officer began belting orders.

Search beams flared, filling long swaths of the woods with daylight. Ruppert and Lucia crept around behind the redwood, flat on their stomachs, just as one of the beams flashed onto the tree’s wide trunk. There was blinding light on either side of them, but they were hidden for the moment.

“We should have taken my computer,” she whispered. “If they can trace where I called, then the whole deal is blown. Wow. That was stupid.”

“We should get moving,” Ruppert whispered. Already he could hear boots crunching through leaves as they descended the slope towards them.

They crawled along the ground, moving straight downhill from the redwood, the only direction along which they had any hoping of concealing themselves. Narrow shafts of light streaked across the woods ahead of them, either flashlights or gun lights.

Ruppert’s hand reached ahead into empty space, and he toppled forward. Lucia grabbed onto him, which slowed his fall but did not break it. They went over the edge of what he first thought was a ditch, until they slid down a muddy bank and splashed into frigid, running water, deep enough that Ruppert’s shoes only brushed against the pebbled bottom. They’d fallen into a creek.

Ruppert grabbed onto exposed tree roots to keep himself from drifting away, though he wondered if drifting might not be the best option. Lucia clung to the bank a few yards downstream, and she was looking at him with wide eyes, pressing one finger to her lips.

“Watch your step there,” a man’s voice spoke directly above them. Ruppert heard several branches snapping, and a clump of loose earth tumbled from overhead, between Ruppert and Lucia, and into the creek.

The narrow beams played along the surface of the water, dangerously close to them. The police were about ten feet over their heads, and only the darkness of the waning night and the shadows of the forest protected them.

“Kill the lights,” a voice said. Then, several seconds later, “I’m not reading anything on thermal.”

Ruppert believed it; he and Lucia were neck deep in what felt like the runoff from a glacier.

“We’re gonna need more feet down here,” another voice said. “Get some guys downstream, too. They might be swimming.”

Then a sound like a clap of thunder boomed in the distance, echoing down all the ridges and canyons of the mountains around them.

“The hell was that?” one of the cops asked. They muttered among themselves.

The crackling crosstalk of the police radios ended, replaced by a single commanding female voice. “All units, all units, we have a possible T1 on Diablo Mountain,” she said. “Repeat, Diablo Mountain, possible T1. All units respond.”