Ever Hayes - Emergency Exit

Blake, Isaac and Sam were learning how to shoot a bow from Hayley, and Danny was giving them all lessons on knife throwing. Everyone was making time indoors as productive as possible, but it wasn’t all peachy and perfect. Isaac was driving Danny crazy. He was a quick enough learner, but largely uninterested in anything military. Sam was constantly on his brother to pay more attention and to participate more. If there was any friction in the cave it was Danny and Sam’s frustration with Isaac, but Hayley and Blake were great peacekeepers. They constantly tried to make the learning more fun for Isaac, and to keep Sam and Danny’s intensity away from him. Their intervention definitely helped. Still, I knew it was bothering Danny, even more than it was Sam. Danny was looking for people he could count on when he needed them. He didn’t think he had that in Isaac.

Dad always kept a watchful eye on all matters in the cave. He’d intervened on Isaac’s behalf a few times, and talked Danny down a few times, but mostly he stayed out of it. All things considered, he and Mom were still doing pretty well. They’d always been avid outdoor people, which seemed to help them adjust to the cave after awhile. Mom either made or helped make our meals every day, and Dad was always playing with Emily and Abbey or talking strategy with Danny.

I could tell that helped Danny, as those were conversations he’d always had with Cameron. Dad knew his stuff, and Danny trusted him. I’m sure it was good for both of them. And speaking of good for Danny, that girl, Kate, she was a definite keeper. She’d absolutely been his rock. She’d been there for him every way he needed her to be. Her soft-spoken nature and persistent love was perfect for Danny.

He did his best to push her off for most of December, but you could tell—on Christmas Eve no less—he finally realized she wasn’t going anywhere, and that was the first time I saw him put his arm around her since we’d left Minnesota. They’d spent a lot of time together, just the two of them, talking, laughing, and even occasionally holding hands.

It was good for him to be able to relax now. He wasn’t going to be able to keep that guard down for long, as we’d be on the move again soon, but while he could, it provided yet another example of how we all managed to make lemonade out of the lemon groves we’d been given. I guess you could say, in a few ways, I was honestly thankful we’d been stuck in this cave. This hole in the mountain, in the middle of the country, was a welcome eye in this crazy storm. For a while at least, it sure beat being outside on the run, trying to outsmart the African captain and a million other madmen.

We all were wondering where Eddie was at this point. Was he ahead of us? Behind us? Alive? Dead? I looked at the map on our makeshift dining table and followed the route we’d traced down to Mexico: over Trail Ridge Road down to Grand Lake and Granby, then down to Buena Vista and on to Montrose. We’d then cut through Telluride, Colorado, and directly west to the Colorado River in southeast Utah. We’d try to stay off the high-traffic open roads where the drones would always be circling and try to maintain mountain or canyon cover whenever possible. It was genuinely our only hope for survival.

I looked from the map on the table to the whiteboard, where a number of things had been tracked all winter. It was completely covered with notes now. Originally, we’d had the date scrawled in huge numbers and letters across the middle. Now, the date had been reduced to a small number in the upper corner. May 18. Danny’s birthday. He was twenty-one today. Mom made a cinnamon rice cake for him. It was pretty good, but probably not the way Danny had intended to spend this day. He should have been off in the Middle East somewhere looking for terrorists in caves rather than hiding from them in one. He should have been somewhere with Cameron.

Oh well, what can you do? We didn’t have any gifts for him, but he had one for Blake. In a roundabout way he’d heard the story of Blake shooting the elk to save him and Cameron. Danny wanted to show his appreciation for everything Blake had come to mean to us. He gave Blake Cameron’s Kevlar military uniform Mom had patched up and Cameron’s R11. It was a pretty cool gesture, and I could tell Blake was honored. All in all, it was at least a semi-happy birthday for my Danny. He deserved more, but I was glad he at least got to have this.

In a matter of days we’d be leaving this cave behind. I looked around at my friends and family laughing, talking, shooting arrows, and playing cards. Once again, I felt a twinge of sadness about leaving and imagined others were feeling the same. I smiled and wondered if we’d ever be back. What if this cave were famous someday? Like Anne Frank’s house . I envisioned tourists lining up to look inside and laughed aloud. Hayley asked what was so funny. “Nothing.” I said, clearing my throat and glancing in her direction. It wasn’t really funny. It was a ridiculous thought. “Nothing,” I repeated, although she wasn’t listening anymore. I shook my head and looked back down at the map. What still lay ahead of us wasn’t humorous at all. Our current security was a fading illusion. Life was about to get real again.

Eddie picked the camp at Buena Vista because the Americans had to come through here. There was only one other option for them, and that was an interstate littered with roadblocks and monitored heavily by drones. Only the military would be able to make it along that pass. They’d be coming here. He was sure of it.

The town did have a beautiful view… if you liked mountains, snow, rivers, and tons of small animals. Eddie missed Africa. He didn’t care for this continent. He hated the snow, hated the cold, and hated all the annoying deer, birds and rodents. How so many of them had survived was beyond him. He couldn’t eat a sandwich without being attacked by a jay or set any food down beyond the reach of a dozen chipmunks. Those sneaky little bastards were everywhere, and had ferocious appetites.

It had been almost six months since his demotion—six months since his reassignment to this hole. He wasn’t a fan. His base commander here was a stupid drunk fool, on his best days, but it was hard for Eddie to hate him. He was almost a nice guy—though definitely not worthy of his post. The military had to have been desperate, or this base commander was related to someone important. Eddie and Lazzo had feared a backlash when they arrived, that certain information would be shared with the commander, but that had never seemed to be the case. If he knew about what Eddie was accused of, he never let on. In fact, he didn’t pay any attention to them. In order to get the commander’s attention, Eddie would have had to be a bottle of whiskey.

Given Eddie’s size and intimidating glare, most people left him alone. But Sergeant Agos at the base was a real pain in his side. The loud but diminutive man was constantly bossing him around to do the smallest, simplest tasks. He seemed to enjoy his power a little too much, and the absence of leadership from the base commander gave the sergeant a void he intended to fill. Sergeant Agos was only five foot one, from Mexico, and clearly not a fan of those with darker skin than his. Eddie and Lazzo were two of three Africans at the hundred-man base. The sergeant, other than bossing Eddie around, had never crossed the racial line with him. But Lazzo had been directly subjected to many racist comments and noises from the sergeant. Lazzo, a generally peaceful man, was ready for blood. But in this army, as in any, you had to fall in line for your superiors, regardless of their lack of class or character. So Eddie and Lazzo sucked it up and dealt with it.