Mark Dunn - Under the Harrow

With a leering smile and a nod, McIntyre indicated that he would like to answer this question for himself. “I don’t know what he’s going to do with you, A-A-A-Alice, but I know what I’m going to do. I mean, before we lay your dead body on that pile over there.”

Alice shuddered. The Senator closed his eyes and swallowed. What was Phillips doing? What in God’s name was he permitting to happen here?

“Please. I beg of you.”

“Beg. Yeah, that’s good,” said the barrow-boy through a toothy grin. “How old are you?”

“Th-thirteen.”

“You look older. Which is why I’ll still do you. Unless these Suits want to do you first.” Turning to the Senator: “Age before beauty. I can wait my turn.”

The Senator shook his head, his look fixed, intentionally unrevealing of the terror now striking his heart.

“We don’t have time, kid,” said Phillips calmly. “Let me go ahead and take her out.”

The Senator felt faint.

“You want to, really? Because I was actually starting to look forward to doing it myself. See, I came too late for the party and by the time I’d gotten here, it was already clean-up time. Okay, okay, okay. Here’s an idea. Let me have a little fun with her first, and then you get to put her out of her misery. Is that a deal?”

“I have an even better idea,” said Phillips. “I’ll kill you… ” The first shot went cleanly into the young man’s jabbering mouth, the second squarely into his neck. “And nobody has fun with her. Does that sound like a good plan?”

The young man dropt to his knees, blood spraying from his neck like a geyser. Then he fell flat upon his face.

The elderly jeweller, as it turned out, was an excellent shot.

The Senator remained frozen where he stood. Alice was equally immobilized by what she had just seen.

“Well, what would you have done, Senator?” asked Phillips.

“Exactly what you did. Although I probably wouldn’t have waited so long.”

Phillips turned to Alice: “Miss Trimmers. You’re safe. You’re coming with us.” The jeweller took Alice’s hand and together the three turned their steps away from the Summit and toward the forest path that had delivered the two men to this spot only a few minutes earlier.

For the Senator, the time that had just passed seemed like an eternity. He fumbled with his cellular telephone, his hands shaking.

“Phillips, can I — can I get a signal up here?”

“There’s a tower not too far from here. I should caution you, though.”

“About what?”

“About whom you call. The president, the Pentagon — you’d be amazed at who’s in bed with these people.”

“I could never in a million years think that—”

“Think what you want to. I’m telling you what I know .”

The Senator stared hard at the jeweller. “Look, Phillips: I’ve been in government service for decades. And I’ve known corrupt administrations and I’ve known trigger-happy Joint Chiefs. But I’d wager all the money I have that this particular president and this particular Pentagon would not countenance this ‘final solution’ being played out to-day. I wager, as well, that they’ve been intentionally left in the dark about all of the other more nefarious aspects to this operation.”

“Say I give you that, Senator. You’re still not going to get swift action from a bunch of suits and uniforms who’ll more than likely spend the first several hours of this crisis comparing notes — wasting precious time thinking of every way possible to spin their personal versions of plausible deniability as they watch the shit on its way to the fan. By the time they finally get their heads out of their asses and their index fingers out of each other’s faces, it’ll all be too late. Eleven thousand people will be dead. Right in the heart of your state. And with you standing impotent on a mountainside while it plays itself out.”

The Senator thought for a moment. “That doesn’t leave us a lot of options. There are men in the Senate whom I would trust with my own life, but they can’t be of any use to me unless they’ve got the ability to beam themselves over to the Tiadaghton Dam like right now , Phillips, and defuse whatever bomb is set to go off there. But if what you tell me is true, and some of these Dinglians know about the flood, then they’re probably spreading the word right now and taking the necessary steps to brace themselves for it, and I pray that the body count will be kept low. What I’m most worried about is the snipers who will go after all those survivors. We need to stop them. And if we can’t depend on the federal government to do it, we’ve got to figure out some other way.”

Suddenly, the Senator’s eyes brightened. “There is one man I trust who could do us some good. We’ve been close friends for years — worked under me in the Philadelphia D.A.’s office.”

“You’re referring to the new governor.”

With a nod: “He may be a member of the other party, but we’ve both been crabbing for years about the great political divide in this country. Now we get to put our money where our bipartisan mouths are. How are you doing, Alice? You holding up okay?”

Alice nodded. The Senator put his arm around her to guide her down a short rocky incline.

“The governor’s already been complaining to me about how hard it’s been getting any information from the administration about what has been going on in this damned valley. And I’ve been of no help to him. But now he can be of great help to me .”

“How?”

“Something called the Pennsylvania Air National Guard. Maybe you’ve heard of it.”

izz Kreis had called us an ant farm, and for this afternoon at least we did quite resemble a hustling, bustling little insectival operation. With no designated leader (save my friend Muntle in whom some of the offices of maintaining order and lawful civility were invested), we were a fairly headless army, and like workers in the formicary of Mizz Kreis’ analogy, each of us took upon his own shoulders the weight of a particular important responsibility for which he (or she) felt most suited.

When he realised, for example, that the Respectable Hospital — nay, any of the hospitals in the Dell excepting Bethlehem would not be a safe place to deliver the invalid and infirm, Dr. Timberry began to direct Susan Fagin and those other nurses and orderlies and the two doctors still remaining in Dingley Dell to convey patients to the All Souls Church and put them high within the campanile where they could lie flat and not roll away, as the slanting roof of that church could not make the same promise.

A good many Dinglians had already fanned out to evacuate the homes and shops of the Dell long before the Reverend Upwitch had made his public plea from his pulpit and explained in stark, realistic terms what was soon to happen to our valley home.

Mrs. Lumbey and Jemmy the stableboy had taken it upon themselves to go and release all of the horses from the Regents Park stables, so that they could gallop off to the woods before the floodwaters came. Other animal-lovers, shewing equal concern, rode off to pay expeditious visits to farmers in the Dell, and with a “Hi-ho, the derry-o,” purposefully leave the cheese standing alone.

A few matters took some coordination of intention: the resourceful minds bursting forth from the attic of Bedlam through a shattered window and those other resourceful minds that dropt a sturdy rope from the roof to pull the men and the one boy to safety had to work together in mechanical concert and by use of an improvised pulley system to accomplish their goal. When it was done and all were atop, George and Vincent Muntle held each other in a fraternal embrace for the first time in a quarter century (though only one of the two had eyes to see his brother, the older having been blindfolded along with some of his companions, since the harsh light of the afternoon sun would surely have seared their sun-sensitive retinas), and a father and mother gave copious kisses to the cheeks and neck of their prodigal son Newman.