Ever Hayes - Emergency Exit

I moved over by the cave entrance and gazed out a small hole into the bright afternoon sky. Why couldn’t Tara have been ugly? That would have been so much easier. In fact, we probably would have just left her in Medora then. But no, I had to go and insist we bring them. That beautiful long brown hair hanging in braids beside her tanned face…the cowgirl attire with the low-cut white tank, unbuttoned plaid shirt and skintight jeans. Those muscular arms and well-defined curves. Couldn’t she at least have left more to the imagination? Instead I was imagining her in even less, and experiencing sensations I hadn’t felt in years. My eyes could get me in trouble with her. I slumped down to the floor and leaned my head against the wall.

Hayley sat down next to me, leaning her head on my shoulder. “You look stressed.”

I laughed. Then I sighed. “Yeah.”

Tara was standing by Emily with her back turned to us. She bent over to hand her daughter something, and as I watched her do so I was aware of Hayley’s eyes watching mine. Talk about embarrassing. “She’s pretty, isn’t she?” Hayley whispered.

Stunning . “But married,” I said, tapping my own ring, still embarrassed I’d been so obvious.

“Maybe.” She traced a circle in the dirt with her finger. “Or maybe not. You do still wear yours.”

Touché . I looked down at my ring and regretted the depth of my sudden feelings for Tara. Sophie. Dang it. Sorry, Sophie .

“Mom wouldn’t care, Dad,” Hayley added.

How did she… ? “You don’t know that,” I replied with a little too much edge.

“Hayley, will you play cards with me?” Emily asked, interrupting our conversation.

“You bet, Em.” Hayley stood up and walked away, but not before looking back at me and saying, “Yes, I do, Dad.”

Dang it . The girl could read me like a book. I lay back on the floor and closed my eyes. God and I hadn’t been that close in awhile, but I managed to piece together a little prayer in my mind. It was a jumbled collection of thoughts, and I fell asleep mid process, but I knew if God did exist (and if He was listening) He knew what I was thinking and what I was feeling. If Sophie was there with him, she knew how much I missed her and that I’d give anything to have her back. I had to stay away from Tara. Yeah, right. Good luck with that!

As I drifted off to sleep, I didn’t feel Tara cover me with a blanket, and I missed Hayley’s pursuant smile. The intended “quick nap” turned into a few hours, though when I awoke I felt as if I’d barely slept. Stress sure could take a lot out of you. I got up and made sure Danny slept a couple hours too. He was on high alert, and didn’t want to miss anything, but we were as safe as we were going to get for a while. He needed to take advantage of that fact and rest a little now.

We woke Danny and Cameron up around five o’clock, about an hour and a half from darkness. It was the girls’ turn to nap for a while. The rest of us needed to prepare for our next move.

Captain Eddie and his seventy-three men arrived in Medora around four in the afternoon. The drones had been here hours before and bombed the town repeatedly. Apparently, these people had been too far from the nearest airstrips and had managed to evade the original chemical bombs. A few farmers had avoided the drone bombings and other Qi Jia patrols found them heading north towards the Canadian border. Before execution, a couple of them had spoken of some people who had passed through and urged the town to flee for Canada or Hawaii.

The confessing prisoners had been killed before Eddie could interrogate them, but based on the descriptions they’d given, he had little doubt his “lions” had not only passed through here, but were probably the people they spoke of. Perfect . They had left shortly after 9 a.m. but likely hadn’t gone far, probably no more than an hour or so, and most likely south. Now that he knew there were only about a dozen of them, he knew he had more than enough men to handle the task.

Eddie divided his men into three squads, each covering one of the main roads south from Medora towards Rapid City. If they didn’t come down those roads, they’d have to travel one of the smaller roads between them, and there was no way they’d get by the THIRST systems doing that. The trap was set. It was time for the hunt to end. Captain Eddie, his brother Lazzo, and twenty other men set up camp on the middle route. And they waited.

Chess is a primitive game. A few pieces, with specifically designated moves, face off against their likenesses on the other side, and after typically a great length of time, the battle concludes with one of two possible outcomes: checkmate or stalemate. Checkmate, in this situation, meant death for us. As pawns in this grand scheme, our options were limited, and we knew we were being circled and even somewhat manipulated by the rooks, knights, bishops and a particularly evil queen. The queen, Captain Eddie in this scenario, could come out of nowhere and take us with far more aggressive and effective strategies than the only move we could make as a pawn. There was no going back as a pawn—if we got caught in the open, we were done for. The advantage was to every other piece in the game. It sucked being a pawn.

No one understood our limitations and potential risks better than Danny. When he called Dad and Wes over and started his first question with, “If this were a chess match,” it was clear he was trying to put us several moves ahead. We listened to his reasoning. “Okay. We have to assume the captain found the bag. And, as a result, we have to assume he also has the maps. My guess is he’s pretty pissed he let us get away, and if he managed to connect the dots with the rifles and linked those to our vehicles, he’s probably made several other connections as well. We have no choice but to imagine we’ve made this into some kind of personal battle of wits with him. Like chess . We have to imagine he’s sitting outside our cave right now, waiting for us to come out to him. We can’t afford to assume for even a second that he’s not.” He allowed that ominous thought time to sink in.

“The problem is… we have to come out. We can’t stay here. More and more troops are probably on the way, and we don’t have nearly enough supplies to last us for more than a couple days. We need water. We need food. And we need to keep moving, or we’ll soon have no other moves.”

No one said anything. We just nodded. “Grandpa, you and Wes were checking out the maps,” Danny continued. “How many routes south to Rapid City are there?”

“From here to Highway 12…” Wes replied, pointing at the map in our remaining atlas. “There are three solid routes south in North Dakota and another if we crossed into Montana and went south on 7. That’s going to be the most wide-open one, but could therefore also be the riskiest. All the roads connect at Belle Fourche. If I were this captain, I’d be waiting for us there.” He put his finger firmly on the map. “In Belle Fourche.”

Danny looked around at the group. There were more nods, but Danny didn’t seem convinced. “I don’t know if I’m outthinking myself here or not, but that seems like the most obvious plan to me as well, and that’s why I don’t think he’s done that.” He rubbed his forehead. “Let’s say we’re right, and this guy is here and tracking us. How far ahead do you think he’d want to go to wait for us? He has to know we’re not traveling by day. We can’t, or the drones would have found us. If we’re still alive, he knows we’re only moving by night, so Belle Fourche is way too far for us to have gone. You’re right, he may eventually get there, but my money is on him trying to anticipate our next move and cutting us off before we even get that far.”