I exhaled.
“Won’t this just be seen as a fake?” Bruce said. “Explosions from regular explosives?”
Agatha shook her head. “Not at their compounds. Coordinated explosions at those sensitive locations—and there’s more to it. We don’t have a long time to get ready for this. In addition to trainers, La Tène’s best and brightest have been doing research. And in the course of their studies, they talked to some NASA scientists who said a meteor is headed our way—it may collide with Earth, or it just may fly through the atmosphere like a fireball. But this is the kind of thing that could be a sign of the Calling. I spoke with a friend about it last week and the asteroid should either impact or pass through the atmosphere around August 10th. No one can fake that.”
She was right. No one could fake that. But that wasn’t what made up my mind for me. It was staring at Mary that did it. We weren’t from the same line. They’d said I was probably Minoan and she was probably La Tène. I didn’t have anything else. I couldn’t go back to Berkeley, couldn’t go back to my parents. I needed to grow a beard just to stay free in town, and even then it was a crapshoot. So I could find an apartment, get a crappy job, and say good-bye to Mary, or I could go with her and do something that saved lives.
If it was true.
It had to be true.
Agatha disappeared after the meeting. The only evidence that she left was the book and a handful of loose papers, and John wanted to keep that to read it first—he said he’d pass it along soon enough. I wondered if anyone had followed her—was there a Walter-type person from the La Tène line who had watched Agatha come to our meeting and was going to kill us off if we got involved?
I wasn’t the only one who wondered if it was all a ruse: an ex–La Tène Player’s plan to have us stop the other Players and clear the way for her line. Tommy and I talked about it, and he voiced the same concerns, when he brought me some clothes from our room. Mary had more confidence, but Mary always seemed to have confidence.
I spent the next five days in a motel on the edge of town. The plans were set and everyone was getting their affairs in order. All of Zero line was going to spend the several months between now and August at Mary’s ranch, hiding on a back road somewhere, preparing and training, getting ready for the meteor to signal a Calling.
It was only a five-hour drive. Mary could go home on the weekends, not giving her parents any reason to think she wasn’t continuing on with her internship.
She came to the motel every day. And on the last day, she spent the night.
CHAPTER TEN
In Reno—it was the closest city—we bought a few of the supplies that we didn’t think we could get in Susanville: three pairs of walkie-talkies, four large canvas tents, an ax, a few cast-iron skillets and Dutch ovens, and canvas tarps. Walter was watching us buy everything, directing us.
Afterward we stopped at an army-surplus store, and Walter filled our carts with three huge rolls of camouflage netting, camo clothing for all of us (although Lin and Mary couldn’t find sizes small enough for them, and Rodney couldn’t find a size large enough for his beer gut). Most of the gear was Korean War– or World War II–era equipment. Walter found two ghillie suits and immediately bought them, even though they were in strange sizes—one very small and one very large.
Our final stop in Reno was at the grocery store, where we stocked up on cases of canned goods: beans and corn and chili and peaches. We cleaned out their shelves of dehydrated potatoes and instant noodles.
We drove in silence for most of the rest of the way. Mary’s ranch was still 45 miles past Susanville, on a turnoff that was obscured from most of the houses and buildings by a small row of hills.
We soon came to the familiar turnoff. We all stopped.
“We’re going to be here for a while,” I said. “What’s the chance that your family comes up?”
“My parents normally wouldn’t come up until fall for the hunting season. But if they find out that I’m not at Stanford, they might come up here to look for me.”
John came to her window. “We’re leaving Bruce, Jim, and Walter to watch the road. Eventually we’ll all rotate through security detail, and the rest of us will head up—” He handed the map to Mary. “Pick the place they’re least likely to check.”
“Sheep Creek Canyon,” she said, without even looking. “There’s nothing up there—it’s just rocky, and the creek is always dry. My brother and I used to go up on horseback, but Dad never had a reason to go there. Plus, it’s got a good place we can set up a shooting range, and there’s a small lake that’s good for fishing.”
“Can cars get up there?”
“It’s rocky, but it’s our best bet. At least for now.”
He nodded and smiled. “I’m just being overcautious. I think we’re going to be okay.”
“I’m right there with you,” she said.
“I’m excited for this,” he said, patting the roof of Mary’s car. “We’re going to do good things. Can I fit in your car?”
“Sure,” I said. “It’ll be tight.”
“Well, we’re all good friends,” he said with a laugh.
Henry took John’s place in the van. Mary drove at the head of the caravan, the van right behind us. Henry stopped three times to drop off the security team—Walter first, by a group of trees, then Jim at the crest of a hill, and finally Bruce at the house. Each of them had a walkie-talkie, and John kept one for himself.
“Other than the M14, we have deer rifles and shotguns in there,” Mary reminded John as we watched Bruce. “And not enough for everyone.”
“I’ve thought about that,” John said. “We’re going to need to be training. Seriously, real training. Training until August is going to chew through a lot of ammunition.”
I nodded and took a deep breath. I knew that what we were preparing for was going to be intense. It was going to be hard—the hardest thing I’d ever done, by a mile. I had nothing to compare it to.
I took another deep breath and exhaled slowly. I told myself that it was going to be okay. And I thought about the viciousness that Agatha had talked about: the cold-blooded murderers we were going to have to stop. I knew it had to be done—for the preservation of humanity. I was committed. But that didn’t chase all my fears away.
John handed the walkie-talkie to me and turned the knob to increase the volume.
Walter’s voice: “Okay, I’m about thirty-five feet up the fir. I’ve got a good look in every direction. I see two cars coming from the south. Wait—let me look through my scope.”
“They have rifles?” Mary asked.
“Just as telescopic sights,” John said.
“Okay,” Walter said. “A Ford Galaxie and a station wagon. I think it’s a Chevy Brookwood. Galaxie’s blue and Brookwood’s tan. Neither of them is slowing down.”
Mary’s eyes never left the road as she spoke. “What will they do if they see my dad’s car? They won’t shoot him, will they?”
“No,” John said. “No way. The whole point is to watch him come and do what he came to do, and then let him leave. Hey—this is a big mud puddle. Is there a road around it so we don’t leave tracks?”
“Yeah,” Mary said. She followed side road by side road. We passed several outbuildings: two barns, a toolshed, a birthing pen, multiple corrals, water tanks, and a utility shed. And Mary said there were more in the fields and woods.
Near the canyon road, John got on the walkie-talkie and told Eugene and Kat, who were driving in a Jeep—definitely the most rugged vehicle with us—to go up the other three canyons and see if anyone was out there.
The Sheep Creek road was worse than Mary had described it. It was narrow—frighteningly narrow, with a 50-foot drop on one side. And the roadbed was nothing but rocks the size of baseballs. The wide van probably had the worst time of all, sliding in the scree, perilously close to the edge.
After half an hour the road we were on widened, and Mary pulled to the side. The other cars behind us did too.
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“Here we are,” Mary said. “Just right up this embankment there’s a meadow. I used to bring my horse out here.”
Mary went to the trunk of her car and found a saw while we were all climbing out. She handed it to me. “We need to cover the cars with pine boughs—a lot of these ranchers have airstrips and little Cessnas.”
John turned to Henry and Phyllis. “Get these tents up. Follow Mary—she’ll show you where.”
Mary was listening to the walkie-talkie.
I nearly stripped a couple of pines, sawing the low boughs and putting one after another onto the car. Before I could finish, the tents were all erected, and they’d spread the camo netting across the top of them and the cars.
Every five or 10 minutes Eugene reported that they had cleared a building and were moving on to another. The worst wait was when they took a drive up Christmas Tree Canyon to check on a small hunting cabin. It was 45 minutes up and 45 minutes back. Henry and Tyson spent the time splitting wood for a campfire. Douglas lit one cigarette with the end of the last one. Rodney surprised us all with sandwiches, and I could see why his deli had been so lucrative.
Finally Jim gave the word that Eugene and Kat were back from the hunting cabin, the last outbuilding where we might find Mary’s extended family, and all was clear. He was stopping at the house again.
Mary and I sat in the grass and talked, and I wished, not for the last time, that we were alone and had never heard of Endgame or Zero line.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The next morning I woke early. Tommy was next to me on one side and Larry and Bruce were on the other. I was the only one up, and I carefully got dressed, trying not to disturb anyone else. I stepped out of the tent and checked my shoes for bugs, a lesson I’d learned in the Forest Service: it wouldn’t be unusual to find beetles and ants in there, and once, I found a scorpion.
There was no sunlight in the meadow, and the sky was still gray. I walked over a large fallen tree to where Walter, John, Jim, and Julia were looking at a map. Barbara and Kat had made a small fire and were warming themselves by it.
“What are you guys doing up so early?” I asked.
“Trying to put together a training regimen,” Walter said without taking his eyes off the map. He shook his head. “I’m telling you, John. There’s nothing we can do in time to get these people ready for direct combat with a Player.”
“I don’t think they can beat one,” John said. “But training results in discipline. And even if they can survive a minute longer in a fight with a Player, that’s an extra minute that someone with a gun can help.”
“It can give them complacency. Let’s worry about guns first, and then I’ll see what I can put together.”
“Bruce knows karate,” Julia said. “He said it in the car on the way up. We could put him in charge.”
Walter didn’t answer, but John nodded. “Good idea. So what do we need for the gun range? A pistol for everyone, and a rifle too?”
“How are we going to get our guns over to Germany?” I asked.
“Lee and Lin,” John replied. “Three weeks before we go, we’ll ship them, and they’ll work their smuggling magic.”
“There are twenty-one of us,” I said. “Where are we going to get that many guns?”
“Excellent question,” John said, smiling and clapping me on the shoulder. “We’re picking a team to do just that, and we thought you were a good candidate.”
“A good candidate for what?”
“I have rifles,” Mary said, as if she wasn’t sure of what John meant. “We can use them like we always do.”
“We need more close-quarters guns, I’m thinking. A deer rifle might get you one sniping shot at a Player, but if you miss and they run, then it’s all over. We need to have people on the ground with pistols, submachine guns, assault weapons. Anything semi-or fully automatic. We need to train with them, and we’ll need to get them to the Calling.”
“I can teach gun safety,” Julia said. “Proper grip too, I guess. But even that’s going to change since we don’t know what kind of guns everyone will be using.”
“So,” Walter said, looking much more sober than I was used to seeing him, “we’re going to rob a gun store.”
“What?” Bruce said, wandering up behind us. “Maybe you don’t understand gun people. But they don’t get scared and hand you their wallet and tell you everything is okay and please don’t shoot them. Gun-store owners have a sawed-off shotgun behind the counter, and they eagerly wait for the day they get to use it.”
Walter seemed unmoved. “If you did it, Bruce, how would you do it?”
“Well, I wouldn’t do it.”
“If you had to.”
He sighed. “Send someone in first to scout the place, but they can’t look like a scout. They have to know about guns, and they just go in and out. Just go in to buy some ammo. Count how many customers are in there. If there’re customers in the store, they’re just as bad as the guy at the counter—they could be carrying. You need to look and see if there’re any employees in the back, but without looking like you’re checking the back.”
He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and continued. “Then, if there aren’t customers, and if there isn’t someone in the back, you hit the place fast and hard—rush it, guns up, everybody ready to shoot the guy behind the counter—before he can get his shotgun. And time it perfectly with your scout customer: he cuts the telephone as soon as you go in.”
Walter scratched at his beard and then lit a cigarette. “That’s about how I figured it too.” He took a long pull on the cigarette and blew the smoke out his nostrils. “Julia will be our scout. She knows plenty about guns. Our assault team will be me, Bruce, Mike, and Tommy.”
“No,” John said to Walter. “If shit hits the fan, we can’t afford to lose you.”
“And we’re expendable?” Bruce asked.
“I want you to be the squad leader,” John said, lowering his voice. “I need you to clean out that store—rifles, handguns, and ammo, lots and lots of ammo. We don’t need deer rifles. Guys are coming home from ’Nam and need money, and they’re selling their souvenirs. I’m talking anything full auto, or something they’re selling out of the back: AK-47s, MAC-10s, AR-15s, grenades, grenade launchers, mortars. You’ll know it when you see it. The good stuff. But clear out everything. Take the van.”
“I want at least one more guy,” Bruce said. “I’ve got Julia as scout, and she can cut the phone lines, but that just leaves me with Mike and Tommy. I want at least one more with real combat experience.”
“I’ve only shot at targets with a rifle,” I said, feeling my heart begin to race. “Nothing close. Never a person.”
John clapped me on the shoulder and said, “Mike’s got one mean punch. I think he’s going to teach us all a little bit of hand-to-hand combat in the next couple of months.”
I scoffed. “I’ve heard you’re not supposed to bring a knife to a gunfight. But just bringing fists? I think the gun would win.”
“Right,” John said. “I mean, we’ll give you a gun, but you have instincts. That’s the key.”
“Give me Eugene too,” Bruce said. “He knocked over a couple banks. This is a little similar.”
“Okay.” Walter nodded. “Eugene is out front watching the entrance. Take Lee with you and switch him out.”
Bruce agreed, and went to his tent to get his gun.
I found Mary sitting on a large rock by the fire pit, holding her hands out to warm them. “What’s up?” she asked as I sat down next to her, and she put a hand on my knee.
“We’re going to rob a gun store,” I said, trying to sound as unconcerned as possible, but inside I was filled with fear. A month ago, I had never committed any crime worse than a parking ticket. Now I’d punched a cop and was about to commit armed robbery. I was only at 51 percent agreeing with this plan. We needed the guns, sure, but what if the shop owner got to his weapon and shot us all? I’d thought getting arrested was the worst thing that could h
appen to me. Now I couldn’t believe what I’d gotten myself into.
I could still walk away from this. I could take Mary’s car and just head out on the open road—go to Canada and live off my 3,000 dollars, get a job, get an apartment. Hide.
“Mike,” Mary said, leaning against me. “Don’t let anything stupid happen. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“Mary. I’ll be fine.”
“That’s what everyone says. Just promise me you’ll be smart, stay out of the line of fire.”
“I will,” I said. “That’s what John told me. I swear, they said they want me because I can throw a punch, but I’m sure they just need an extra hand loading the van with all the boxes of ammo.”
She turned to look at me. “Mike, I really care about you.”
I stared back at her, our faces inches apart. I touched her face with my cold hands. “I care about you too. More than I ever have about anyone.”
We kissed, silent and slow. Her face was cold, but her lips were warm, and she put her arms around me. I promised her I’d take every precaution.
She could have talked me out of it. I half expected her to. But she didn’t. She wanted me to go. I think that was the moment when everything changed for me—when I fully embraced Zero line. When I knew I’d follow Mary wherever she took me.
I looked across the fire. Lee and Lin were grinning at us.
I pointed across the fire. “Lee, you’re moving up to a guard post.”
“Cool,” he said with a nod.
“Be careful,” Mary said, looking at me. There were a thousand words in her eyes. A hundred emotions. But all that came out was “Be careful.”
“I don’t want to do this,” I whispered.
“It’s okay to be scared,” she said. “But that’s courage, right? It’s being afraid and doing it anyway.”