Ever Hayes - Emergency Exit

“Danny,” Sam murmured nervously.

“What?” Danny whispered back.

“I think they’re gonna search us,” Sam replied urgently. Danny started to sit up. “Hold on.” Sam said sharply. Danny froze.

Our former passenger had turned his attention to the man with the dog. They talked for a minute, and then the guard with the dog became rather animated, gesturing at our trucks, all the while restraining his lunging animal. But the soldier who’d ridden with us was clearly not backing down from his own position on whatever they were discussing. He pointed back at us, then through the gate ahead of us, and then reached into his pocket. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes, waving them before each guard, and stepped into the guard shack, beckoning for the two guards to join him. That seemed to do the trick. The guard with the dog pulled the barking animal away from the trucks and behind the shack. He came back around the corner and stepped into the guard shack with our former passenger. The other guard opened the gate and waved both our trucks through. Sam waved back as we passed them. That was way too close .

As we began driving again, Danny uncovered himself in the back seat. Sam hadn’t said a word since the soldier had gotten out, and Danny hadn’t known what to say. “You did good, bud,” he finally said to Sam.

“How did you know they were going to search our trucks,” Sam asked.

“I didn’t,” Danny replied. “Honestly. And we would’ve killed them if we had to.”

“I’ve never been so scared in my life.” Sam continued, his voice still shaking. “I almost took the gun out of his hands and shot myself.”

“How far into the song?” Danny asked, laughing.

“It’s not funny, man. Why didn’t we kill him once we left the parking lot?” Sam asked in all seriousness, looking back at Danny’s face.

“I thought about it. I really did.” Danny responded. “Easily twenty or thirty times on the way down. I can’t explain it.”

That wasn’t good enough for Sam, but he didn’t know what else to say.

Danny reached forward and patted him on the shoulder. “You did real good, man,” he said. “I’m sorry it couldn’t have been me up there instead of you.”

Sam nodded. “Yeah,” was all he could say.

“You good to drive until we need gas?” Danny asked.

“Sure,” was the soft reply.

“Okay,” Danny said, closing his eyes. “Try to get us to Copper Mountain. Should be about one hundred miles. Drop straight south to Interstate 70, and take it west to the Breckenridge exit. Should be gas there somewhere.”

From the second jeep Isaac and Blake had watched a man get out of Sam’s jeep in Grand Lake, walk up to the guard at the gate, and high five him. What the heck? Suddenly Isaac was glad he hadn’t continued to flash his lights at Sam, and he realized he might have put them in enough of a bad spot by doing it when he did. They had a soldier in their jeep the whole way down?

“Unbelievable,” Blake said. He ducked down in the back seat as Isaac drove through the gate, and the man waved at them. Isaac waved back and kept driving. “Wonder why they didn’t just kill him,” Blake muttered, and Isaac laughed. “That had to have been awkward.”

Awkward wasn’t a strong enough word .

We pulled off Interstate 70 on Exit 195 and filled up with gas at a station next to the Copper Mountain Resort before 6 a.m. Danny checked with everyone in the back of the jeeps to make sure we all were okay. We still couldn’t risk moving up into the passenger seats, just in case. We were cold, but otherwise good enough. Several military jeeps had passed us a few miles back, heading the opposite way towards Denver, but they didn’t give us a second glance. We paused for a quick bathroom break at the west end of the Eisenhower Tunnel about fifty miles west of Denver but otherwise hadn’t stopped or been stopped since Grand Lake. It felt great—but strange—to move so freely, especially in the daylight.

The sun had risen over the mountains behind us a few minutes earlier. I knew we had a serious decision to make. We had originally planned to go straight south from here through Buena Vista, but we could cover amazing ground disguised in this jeep. We could get further faster, staying on Interstate 70 and racing west, perhaps even getting to Glenwood Springs before dropping south. That would save us a ton of travel time. Danny told us a little about the ride with “High Five.” It was funny to everyone but Sam. He added that the soldier had come from the base in Grand Junction a week ago. That told us we couldn’t chance going that far west. It seemed smartest to make the run for Glenwood Springs.

Hopefully everyone up at the Alpine Visitor Center was still unaware of what had taken place. In all likelihood we’d have a couple more hours before any alert was sent out regarding the missing men, and beyond that who knew how long it would be before the dots were connected and the message was spread to the other bases. If that even happened. We figured we were in the clear for a little while longer, and we needed to make the most of that advantage.

With a full tank of gas in each jeep we cruised towards Glenwood Springs. Arriving a little after 7:30 a.m., we took Exit 116 and headed south across the Colorado River and alongside the Roaring Fork River on Highway 82. We passed a small camp that was active but not attentive and moved through as quickly as we could. We traveled 120 miles down to Montrose and had just filled up with gas again when we saw the first drone pass overhead. Crap. Forgot all about those .

We’d been careful all the way down here and stopped at every convenient form of cover every thirty miles or so—for fifteen to twenty minutes each time—to see if anyone was following us. We hadn’t seen anything yet, but then there was no radar on these jeeps, and the radios hadn’t made a single sound.

It was almost 11 a.m. now. We’d been stopped at a checkpoint, a half-hour back in Delta, but the soldiers had easily accepted Sam and Isaac’s one word responses of “Durango” to their “Where you go?” And we’d moved on. At least we knew they weren’t suspicious here yet. But when the drone passed over us a second time, ten minutes after we left Montrose, we began to wonder if our wonderful run of luck was about to run out. Perhaps word had started to spread back at the Alpine Visitor Center. Or maybe the guys in Delta had figured us out.

We made it to the Ridgeway Reservoir north of the fork in the road heading to either Durango or Cortez, and Danny thought it would be a good time to stop and let everyone out. There was a bridge over shallow water south of the reservoir on the Uncompahagre River, and we pulled our jeeps into the water under that bridge.

A few hours later, after several more drones had flown directly overhead, we heard what sounded like a thousand trucks drive by, heading south on the road a couple hundred yards east of us. Protected by the coolness and structure of the bridge, we managed to avoid detection. Neither of our jeeps had a THIRST system, which was both a blessing and a curse for us. No one could track our system, but then we couldn’t track anyone else’s either.

A half hour or so before dark we heard another vehicle race by, also heading south. There was definitely a lot going on around us, but we couldn’t just sit here. We stayed under the bridge until nightfall—the jeeps and bridge having provided the best possible cover from every direction for us—but now it was time to move again.

It’d been a rough few weeks for Eddie and Lazzo in Buena Vista since the new general had taken over. General Roja and his four officers had made their lives a living hell. Anyone who associated themselves with either of the brothers was put through similar bullying and ridicule, so fewer and fewer people were willing to even be seen with them.