I went down to the basement. I pulled up the plywood subfloor with no real thought to the mess I was making.
I grabbed a bag of MDMA and a bag of meth.
I loaded them into the front of the truck.
“Get in,” I said as I climbed into the driver’s seat.
“Still not getting this plan…”
I drove the truck up the road, to the Williams cottage.
“Fiona isn’t there,” Matt said. “I looked.”
I climbed out of the truck. “I know. Maybe if you hadn’t booted me off the network, I’d be able to find her.”
Matt got out, too.
We walked over to the shed.
“She didn’t take her tablet,” Matt said. “She didn’t want to be found… guess she didn’t want to waste time figuring out how to disable the locator.”
Fiona would have known I’d come looking…
“Get back in the truck,” I said.
“What?”
I got back in.
Matt hopped in just as we started moving.
I took the keys with me again, having Matt wait at the truck. I ran down the path that followed the lake, around the bend, to the maple tree.
I stepped off the path. And that’s where I found her.
Well, the dogs found me first. Des and Juju ran up and started jumping.
Fiona was sitting in the snow, keeping her head low with the thicket.
“You’re okay,” I said. “I’m glad you took the dogs this time.”
“I’m okay.”
She stood up.
I gave her a hug and a kiss on the cheek.
“Have you found Kayla and Gwyneth?” she asked.
“I know where they are. We’re going to get them back.”
We jogged back to the cottage.
“What’s he doing here?” Fiona asked, pointer her finger at Matt. “He’s working with them.”
“He’s an idiot,” I said. “Not a traitor.”
“He let them in. He opened the gates. He pointed the shotgun at Kayla.”
“Yeah… he tends to do that. He pointed an unloaded rifle at me. We need his help to pull this off.”
“What is it we’re going to do?” Matt asked.
“Simple,” I said. “We’re going to burn the forest down.”
Fiona drove the truck, which I think was the first time she’d ever driven anything other than an ATV; luckily the truck wasn’t old enough to have a manual transmission.
Des and Juju were on the bench beside her, happy to be going for a ride.
Matt and I were in the back.
He had my C12 hanging from his shoulder, and a pack containing four of Ant and Kayla’s pipe grenades.
I had a shoulder-mounted foam launcher strapped to my back, along with four grenades of my own. And a few other odds and ends: a spool of fishing line and a steak knife, a box of matches, scotch tape, a ball of yarn, Des’ food dish, and a big bottle of lighter fluid.
It was one of those ideas that had sounded a little stupid even when I’d first thought of it. I’d made a MacGyver joke about it, and Fiona had thought I’d meant to say “MacGruber”; the whole exchange had been a little depressing.
The first piece of the plan didn’t have to work; it was the second step that counted. Ant had brought back a half dozen fire suppressors from the test site on Wade Lake, so he’d felt free to make a few creative alterations to one of them.
I hoped it would do the job.
Fiona took us to Murphy Road, stopping just north of the junction with Highway 652.
Matt and I hopped out. I had all my gear, while he was wearing nothing more than mechanic’s coveralls.
But in my defense, my job was harder.
“Remember,” I told him, “what you care about is making sure the girls are clear. Don’t start until they’re in the cab with Fiona.”
“I know,” he said.
“And if you try and fuck me over…”
“I know.”
I walked over to the driver’s side door.
Fiona opened it.
I handed her my SIG. “They’ve got armour,” I said. “So hide this until they let their guard down. If things go bad… if I’m gone and Matt’s down, they’ll probably take off their helmets and relax. That’s when you start shooting.”
“I’ve never done it,” she said.
“I know. Your goal isn’t to kill them; it’s to slow them down enough that you can back this truck out of here. If they’re on your tail, you take this truck to New Post and you cross the bridge. Keep driving ’til you get to the Walkers.”
“What if we haven’t found Kayla and Gwyneth by then?”
“You leave them, Fiona. I need you to be safe. That’s what matters the most.” I stepped up and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “I love you, Fiona. You know that.”
She nodded.
I hopped down and closed the door.
“Now remember guys,” I said, “as long as I can hold them back, you head to Helena with the girls and wait for me. And if I’m not there by tomorrow morning, you take the old rail bed to Aiguebelle.”
I made my way into the forest of blackened trees and young gray birch. I wouldn’t have much cover.
But I had my armour, and a couple of pipe grenades, and the box of fire on my back. There wasn’t much stealth required for this plan.
There were nine men total.
And two prisoners.
I had to put something between them.
With my binoculars I was able to count off five. Justin and three others were out of my view. Maybe one or two were taking a dump in the woods, or maybe they were all packing up the remaining lab equipment in the underground school bus.
I didn’t know where they were.
I snuck around to the north side of the trucks… northwest, really. As far from Kayla and Gwyneth as an attacker could get.
I took out the fishing line and tied a loop around one of the charred pine trees that stood lifeless in the burned forest. I pulled the line back slowly, moving the trunk along with the warm south wind.
Justin should have told his men to keep an eye on all approaches. The boys from Detour Lake had no clue how to set up a defensive perimeter; you’d think that would be mentioned on the first day of prepper school.
I cut the fishing line with the knife, and tied the end to the base of a foot-tall birch,
I poured some of the lighter fluid into Desmond’s metal food dish, and then I cut a two meter length of yarn. I soaked it into the bowl of lighter fluid for a few seconds, then I laid it out from the base of the birch, making sure to wrap it around the fishing line for good measure.
And I did the same thing at another pine tree a few metres to the west, with a slightly longer stretch of yarn.
With both pine trees pulled back, and both little birches wrapped in fluid-soaked yarn, I used the scotch tape to cradle two grenades in each of the bent-back trunks; the tape would hold, right up until those trees really started to move. That or I was just wasting my time.
I pulled out the box of matches.
I set the farthest line of yarn on fire, and ran back to the other. Once both were lit, I kept on moving east, hoping to circle around before the fun started.
The closer line went first, snapping the tree forward and tossing the two pipe grenades.
I saw them launch but I didn’t stop moving.
Both grenades struck about three meters away from the first truck. That didn’t do much to blast it; I’m not sure that truck felt more than a little vibration.
But that was never the point.
The five men behind the trucks rushed northward, keeping on my side of the vehicles in the hope of staying covered from whoever was coming in from the northwest.
They were maybe ten meters away from me.
The second tree went. Two more grenades, but only one made hard contact. It landed even farther away from the trucks, but it was convincing.