Hooker stood in front of the large truck. It felt strange. Though it was a much larger truck than average, it was also much smaller than the truck he was used to driving. The moon was about a half hour from touching the trees. The hair on the back of his head began to tingle.
Hooker didn’t move. “Hello, Mouse.”
The voice was at the back of the truck. “It smells brand new, Hooker.”
“It is. It’s only a loaner until my truck is running again.”
She walked around to the front and leaned against the bumper. “I love the moon when it is like this. It is so full of life.”
Hooker looked at her. She was tired. It was as if there was no strength left in her. He worried.
She sensed his eyes on her. “Don’t worry, Hooker. It will all be over soon.”
“We have to go over what is going to happen, but we have to go there. It’s at the end of the airbase—the old section.”
“They were busy there the last few days. They do these things a couple of times a year. It disturbs the animals.”
Hooker wondered if she meant the little fuzzy four-legged ones or the two-legged ones she called her family or tribe. He decided he did not want to know.
“Do you think anyone is watching it?”
She thought. “No.” She looked over her shoulder. “It’s too bright for most of them... and there would be no food anyway. Not for a few days or so.”
“We need to go over there so I can show you what you have to do.” He looked past her. “Will Dog be okay riding in the truck?”
She thought a moment and then nodded. “On the truck—he’ll ride on the back.”
Hooker leaned off the bumper and stood. “Well, get him, and we’ll go.”
She moved around Hooker and headed for the passenger side door. “You’re getting slow, brother. He was on the back minutes ago.”
Hooker did not even look. Somehow, he knew he wouldn’t see the man even if he tried. He opened the door and climbed up into the cab. His sister oozed up into the seat. Hooker still marveled at how she could move as if she didn’t have a bone in her body.
He reached for the little silver button on the dashboard out of habit. There was nothing but a new black dashboard. He swore silently and then flicked the key once. The gas engine turned over and rumbled into life. Hooker’s right hand wavered in the air where gear shifters should be and then moved his right hand up to the stick on the column. He pulled... Nothing... And then he remembered to step on the brake. He pulled the selector down to drive and eased the truck out of the old parking lot.
The night air was nice as he hung his left arm out the window.
“Do you still eat ice cream with the window down in the winter?”
He smiled. For her, it would be a memory going back to when they were kids. “Sure.”
The Mouse laughed. “French vanilla in a sugar cone.”
He held up three fingers. “Triple scoop.”
The memories with his sister were special. Of all of them, it was ones like this he loved. They were the ones Hooker held on to for dear life.
He looked at her. She was leaning against the glass, looking at the world go by a lot faster than it had been passing for her the last many years. Hooker knew the look—she was hundreds of miles away.
He parked on the old runway. The cracked concrete looked like a filigree of snakes in the dimmed moonlight. The occasional truck on the freeway from a mile away made a sighing sound. The night was alive, and Hooker knew he probably could only grasp a tenth of what his sister was sensing.
Her nose was slightly up. She moved more from the currents of the air than from footsteps. Hooker saw the shadow move low about a hundred feet away.
He spoke to the air quietly. “Dog needs to be close to hear what we have planned.”
She turned in the moonlight. Her face glowed from the extra phosphorous in her skin. With enough exposure to light, Hooker knew she would glow in the dark. He also knew the glow was one of the special things about her giving her control over her tribe. They were not sure if she were human or a spirit.
“He can hear your heart beating. You’re anxious, and it is very loud and fast.”
Hooker knew she was being truthful. He relaxed. “In seven days, we will meet here at midnight. There will be a tugboat standing offshore. He will blow his whistle three times, and then once. That is your signal to be here in ten minutes.”
She looked out into the night. Then turned and nodded.
“Dog needs to be very close. We will be meeting out here on the airstrip, and then we will start arguing. When the argument becomes angry, you can start backing up, back up toward those two ridges of dirt. You are going to end up running through the gap. It is very important.”
They started walking toward the gap. He pointed beyond everything and out into the black of the brackish water of the flats. “Do you see the buoy out there? It is the one with a red light over a green light?”
She nodded.
“The buoy is only there for you. You can only see those lights if you are here in this cut between the two ridges. When you run through here, find the buoy, and run toward it. You must always run toward the buoy. It is the only safe place.”
He looked at her. It was interesting to watch her. It seemed as though she was ignoring him, but he knew she was paying attention to everything he said and everything around her.
She turned back. “He finds it interesting how the lights hide.”
“They are set back into a tube so you have to be looking down the tube to see them.”
She nodded with a soft smile. Her little brother was telling her something she had already figured out.
Their life had always been like that. She never told him he was stupid or younger. She just nodded, and he had to accept she already knew what he was telling her, or she was acknowledging the new information. In all of the years, in good homes or ones where names like idiot or stupid were used interchangeably with your name, she had never shown Hooker anything but mutual respect and love.
He turned and walked through the gap. The dirt had been loosened up from the packing that had gone with the truck training. Hooker could imagine a company of Marines with rakes loosening the dirt, starting on the top and working down. A line of men stretched from one end to the other. He knew this would make it difficult for anyone to sneak over the ridges.
He stopped. Facing the buoy, he looked along the ground. “Can you see the arrow glowing?”
“Dog told me about it ten minutes ago.” She looked at Hooker. “Yes, I see it. It is the same as my skin. In an hour, it will fade and no longer be seen.”
Hooker took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “When you run this way, you have to be lined up and running on this arrow. I will stop here, at the edge of this circle. You must keep running. When you are about fifty feet away from me, I will cycle the shell into my shotgun. I know you will hear it.” He pantomimed the cycling of the pump on the shotgun.
“I will know exactly when to shoot because there will be a small light on the ground facing me. When it turns on, I will shoot. I will shoot every one-and-a-half-seconds. I will have five shells in the shotgun.”
A small red light, the size of a dime, came on. The Mouse twitched and whirled on Hooker.
“The light will be my signal. If you see it, it will also be your signal the world is about to end.”
He walked her forward, across the lumpy dirt field. They stood looking out toward the bay. Hooker curved his hands and arms in a rising arc.
“All along here are explosives. When they get to about here, they become very large and violent. They will make an entire ring of fire and explosions seeming to come from my gun. You will, and Dog must be, in the middle to be safe.”
They walked forward. “You must keep running. When I shoot the second time...” He raised his arm with the palm up.
The ground swung up, and the twin steel doors silently sprang open.
Hooker pointed. “You are running there. You have three seconds to get there and run down the ramp.”
He turned to her. “When I shoot the fifth time, the entire ground will explode. Two feet of dirt will end up covering everything, especially the door.”
He pointed down into the ramp where a man was standing in the dim red glow of battle station lights. “There are mattresses at the end of the ramp. Fall and lay on them. The people in the bunker are there to help you. Let them. Please.”
He dropped his arm. The doors, large enough to swallow Mae West, followed suit. But for the thin metallic click, it was as if they had never existed.
She stood silent.
He waited.
“We can’t do it.”
“It’s the only way.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because Dog goes berserk with thunder. I can only imagine what will happen when you blow up the world.”
Hooker stood looking at her. He had no argument. He had expected her to accept the plan and do it. He had no plan B.
Hooker finally closed his eyes. “Ask him because there is no plan B.”
She didn’t move. Finally, she nodded. “Yes, it will save us.”
An almost naked upright man with a glazing of dirt and sweat and air walked past Hooker. He was nothing more than a slow breeze in the night air. His white blue eyes pierced Hooker’s and dredged at the bottom of Hooker’s soul. Slowly, he came to a stop behind Hooker’s sister. His right hand rested protectively on her shoulder. The man was as if carved of a muddy marble.
Barely perceptible, he nodded.
She looked like she was going to speak, and then didn’t. Hooker knew they both knew this was it. This moment would be life or death. If it went as planned, their staged death would be the release from the life they had lived much of their lives. That life would die so they could live. Even though The Mouse said her health would eventually end, she wanted Dog to have a shot at something other than this life in the dirt. Her brother was the key to unlock the door where they now stood.
“Seven days. Midnight. When the boat horn blows three then one.” She stepped forward and stood on her tiptoe. Her left hand cradled his cheek as she softly kissed the other. “Be well met, my knight.” The night air shimmered, and like Dog, she was gone.
Hooker softly whispered the rejoinder from their childhood. “Or afore the dawn, we lay like scattered wildflowers on the field of battle. Our bones will till the earth, and our blood shall grow the field of honor anew.”