Chapter 22

Tuesday, 10 p.m. January 7

Larson woke up with a start. As if something terrible was in the motel room with him and Marajo. He lay on his back for a minute before he sat up and put his feet on the carpeted floor. It was warm and that made him happy. He didn’t like putting his feet, even with socks on, on a cold floor. The chill from the floor ran through his feet to his legs and to his body. He wasn’t young anymore and he was a bit more sensitive to cold floors than he’d been when he was younger. He knew he could adjust to the cold once they started on the road, but he also knew he wouldn’t enjoy it.

He turned to his left and looked at Marajo. She was lying on her left side sleeping quietly as if she didn’t have a care in the world her chest falling and rising with every breath. She looked peaceful.

“Years of hiding from monsters has apparently taught her how to control her fear and get a good night’s sleep.

He looked at the telephone on the night stand next to her and saw the time on the cradle.

10 p.m.

He looked at his watch. 10 p.m. He looked back at Marajo and shook his head thinking, she probably hasn’t had a nightmare in ten years.

It was dark outside and he couldn’t hear the noise of traffic on the street, but he did hear the roar of planes coming and going from the airport. Everyone else, except night workers, was probably at home in bed.

He got up and walked to the window and pulled back a corner of the heavy beige drapes and the thin white curtains and looked out.

There wasn’t even a moon out and no clouds that he could see. The clear sky had a few bright stars in it the city lights couldn’t hide, and a foot of snow on the ground meant the temperature was probably at zero or below. He secretly wished he was back at his warm home in Oak Park instead of preparing to go on a wild adventure to expose a society of damn greedy, ruthless fools.

Someone should have exposed those bastards centuries ago.

He looked at the tops of the trees on the outside edge of the parking lot behind a dull grayish-green slapped together looking Toyota Highlander. Their branches weren’t moving. That meant no wind, but the wind chill was still probably low. He closed the drape and curtain and walked back to the bed around to Marajo’s side.

“It’s dark out,” Larson said, gently pushing Marajo’s right shoulder.

She snorted once, resisted waking up, then opened her eyes and looked into Larson’s face. “What?” she asked.

“It’s dark outside,” he repeated as he turned and walked toward the bathroom.

“What time is it?” she asked.

“Ten o’clock,” he said as he closed the bathroom door.

“I guess we’d better go,” she said, sitting up.

He heard her through the closed bathroom door.

“Yeah,” he said in a depressed tone of voice. In the back of his mind, he wished he could wish himself back home. Of course, that was impossible. Like it or not he was going on an adventure filled with the possibly of a violent, and probably, painful death.

It took them only fifteen minutes to wash their faces, gather up their things – including the towels from the bathroom, and leave the room.

“How do we get to where we’re going?” Larson asked, standing behind her as she closed the door of the motel room. “Take public transportation?”

“It would be a little less conspicuous, but no,” she said. “That make shift looking Highlander across the lot is our ride. I told you about it.”

Larson turned and looked at it. “I remember. It looks like it’s made up of rejected auto parts.”

“No most of the parts are original and first rate,” Marajo said as she walked toward it. “I made it to go places other SUV’s can’t go. And it can go faster.”

“Why?” he asked, following her.

“You ask me that when we’re headed to a place where the Society keeps its information?”

“Oh, yeah I keep hoping I’m having a terrible nightmare and I’m having trouble waking up.”

“If we fail, neither you nor your family will ever have to worry about nightmares again,” she said, stopping at the driver’s door and taking a key out of her pocket. She stuck it in the lock and gave it a slight twist. A clicking sound indicated the door was unlocked.

“Rare,” he said, watching her. “Keys to unlock cars have all been electronic since 2007.”

She opened the door. “Electric key locks can be easily bypassed with a good com-cell and a little imagination. Simple key locks, on the other hand, are a lot harder to get pass. I don’t want anybody stealing this vehicle. I spent a lot of time and money building it, and I don’t want to lose it. I even took public transportation to work rather than drive it.” She pushed a button on the armrest unlocking all the doors. “You can get in now. Throw your stuff in the back. By noon I want to be way out in the country side with as few people around as possible.”

“You opened the doors electronically,” he said as he watched her. “Why have a key when you can do that?”

“First you have to open the driver’s door to unlock the others electrically,” she told him as she walked to the back of the Highlander and raised the back gate. She tossed her backpack and the other empty bag in the back. “Put your bag back here.”

“There’s no way the Society can track this SUV?” he asked, walking around to the back of the Highlander and tossing his bag in the back next to her backpack. Then he walked to the passenger’s side and opened the door. Cold, stale air with just the hint of a woman’s perfume in it hit him in the face.

“No. It’s just a simple SUV without any global positioning or trip recording devices in it,” she answered as she slammed the back gate close and walked to the driver’s side and climbed into the two foot high SUV. “I spent a lot of time thinking about what sort of car I’d need when Julian’s chosen person contacted me, and more time building it. My female neighbors thought me crazy. They thought I should have spent my time looking for a good man.” She reached out with her left hand grabbed a steel door rail just above the armrest and pulled the door shut.

The door slammed shut with a thick and heavy sound.

Larson pulled his door shut. “Sounds heavier than it feels,” he said. “You must have some strong hinges on the doors.”

“The best heavy duty hinges I could find at the local junk yards. I got them real cheap, too.”

Larson looked around at the gray clothe seats. He bounced once on the seat, and nodded his approval at the comfortable feel. “You should have been an electrical auto mechanic,” he said. “You would have made a good one.”

“I use to work in my brother’s garage before I started college.” She started the engine. A soft whine came from the engine compartment. She shifted the gearshift to drive and looked at him. “I started working for Julian’s hardware stores two years after college. I gave up my life to help Julian expose the Society twenty years ago, Larson.” She paused and looked at him as she buckled her seat belt. “We can’t fail. I’ve sacrificed too much, and your family and mine with suffer terribly if we fail.”

He didn’t want to respond as he buckled his seat belt. He kept thinking what a fool he was to go see Julian about that letter. He kept wishing it would all just go away. He refused to think about what would happen to his children and ex-wife - he still liked her and felt responsible for her, if they failed. “Don’t you think you should check out of the Motel?” he asked her.

“I paid for ten days,” she said as she drove off. “I’ve been here only one day. They’ll consider the towels we took as an acceptable loss. Why don’t you crawl in the back and put your things in that extra backpack? It’s behind the backseat.”

“Why did you choose a Highlander?” he asked.

“I didn’t know what type of vehicle I’d need so I chose one that could go on the roads and across country,” she said. “Then I made changes to it that made it much better than the average SUV.”

“Tell me how you got involved in all this to begin with,” he said as he turned around and moved with some effort between the seats into the backseat.

“It’s a long, long story.”

“We’ve got the time,” he said as he pulled the backpack over the back of the seat his traveling bag was on and opened the backpack.

“Where are we going?” Marajo asked him as she drove out of the parking lot onto the street and turned right.

“Head west,” he told her.

“There’s a lot of west ahead of us, Larson.”

“We’re going to the Simpson Park Mountains in the state of Nevada.”

“Do you know how to get there?” she asked him.

“I’ve got maps in my bag that shows where it’s at, and roads that pass by it,” he told her.

“We’ll go overland,” she replied.

***