“It worked, Dad,” Sam chattered when we surfaced, giving him a fist bump. “Worth every penny.”
“Yes, it was.” Wes agreed.
“We’ve got to go, guys.” I whispered, a tad reluctant to break up the moment of pride between them.
We joined Danny and Dad in heading to the opposite shore. As we got out and changed, we did our best to restore the body heat of the three without wetsuits, wrapping them in thick blankets and instant heat packs. Soon everyone was dressed again, head to toe in black, and we were ready to head towards the car dealer.
Well, almost. “Guys,” Hayley spoke up. “We have a problem.”
We were missing a bag. Wes shook his head as we circled around him. “I left a bag in there, guys. I don’t know how…but I did. I was supposed to have two bags and only came out with one.”
Danny remained calm. Wes had a lot on his mind. Now was not the time to overreact. “Did anyone else grab the bag?” He looked around. None of us had, so he then asked, “Which bag was it?”
“Care to guess?” Wes replied with a strained laugh, but he answered before Danny could prompt him further. “The one with the maps.”
“Shit,” Cameron muttered.
“Yes.” Wes nodded. “I know.”
Danny knelt and tapped his fingers on a large rock at his feet, reciting from memory the inventory of the bag. “Tent, sleeping bag, guns, ammo, food, the folder of maps…anything else?”
No one could think of anything. None of the maps had our exact route, but the national one had a general hand-drawn line from Northern Minnesota through Colorado to Hawaii. To save space we had only included the maps of the states we intended to cross. That could be a problem. Our route could be relatively obvious to anyone flipping through them.
Another problem was the guns. If these were the same soldiers from Grand Forks, and they were smart enough to compare the serial numbers on the guns to the registry back at Cabela’s they’d know they were still following the same people. This captain seemed intelligent. That couldn’t be much of a stretch. With no bodies in the bunker, wouldn’t he figure we were still moving and pick up the chase again? Yes. Probably. I leaned over and voiced my concerns in Danny’s ear.
He clearly agreed. Turning to Wes, Danny asked, “There’s no way to get back in there, right?” Wes shook his head. “All right.” Danny shrugged and stood. There went that idea. “Then we’ve gotta go.”
Lugging all our gear, we hiked across the road and around the outskirts of Fort Totten to the used car dealership. The door was unlocked, as were the key boxes. Danny and Cameron searched for the best transport options while the rest of us huddled in the main lobby. No one said a word.
We were all deeply affected by the town’s surround stillness. Our softest footsteps on the way here had reverberated like drumbeats. Our nervous breaths echoed like shouts. And now, even the meek and innocent chirps of a few surviving crickets ricocheted through this building like gunshots. So this is what deafening silence is like.
The boys found three trucks, loaded them up, and once again we got on our way. At this point, it was close to 3 a.m. The sun would be up in a few short hours, and it wouldn’t be long until the soldiers blew the bunker open. We had a long way to go.
Hoping no drones would be flying at night, we raced west towards Medora. We arrived at Belfield, a few miles east of Medora, a little before 7 a.m.. Wes had given Danny his older, American model, thermal detector and Danny had it plugged into the lead vehicle. It wasn’t as high-tech as the enemy THIRST systems, and Wes wasn’t certain of the range, but he knew it worked well for tracking deer, turkeys, and even lifeforms as small as squirrels and rabbits. He figured it would be worth having along. Danny tested the system out on the drive towards Medora and claimed it was pretty accurate to ten miles or so, best as he could tell. At least now we weren’t completely blind.
The sun was rising steadily above the Badlands now, and we knew we had to find a place to hide soon, but for the moment our minds were trying to handle what our eyes were seeing. At first, when Hayley said the word ‘cow’ I thought nothing of it. I had seen it too. Several of them in fact. But when she whacked my arm, poked Dad in the back and said, “Seriously! Cow!” I knew what she was getting at. We were driving by a farm and there were living breathing domesticated animals there. Two dogs were running alongside the road barking at us. And then there were people. There was a man walking from a barn towards a house, another riding a tractor, and a woman out raking in the yard. She waved amicably at us as we drove past. Okay… what the heck is going on here?
Danny pulled his truck over to the side of the road and we slowed to a stop beside him. We could see more cattle up ahead, and a green combine cutting through a field of corn. “What do you make of this?” he asked us.
“I have no idea.” Dad replied.
“They’re acting like nothing has happened.” Mom chimed in.
“Maybe they don’t know anything has.” I heard Kate say from the other truck, beside Danny.
Wes had pulled up to our left at this point and he joined in the conversation. “There’s nothing around here,” he said vaguely.
“Actually,” Danny disagreed, shaking his head. “That’s the problem. There is something around here.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Wes clarified. “There are no airfields around here, and we’re surrounded by canyons. There’s a chance the chemicals missed these people entirely and they have no idea what’s going on.”
What he said made sense, and being from the area, he would know better than we would. Wes volunteered to stop and talk to them, but urged us to continue on to Medora. We all knew we couldn’t stop the army that was coming, and we didn’t have a lot of time to spare, but maybe we could round up some people and at least say something. We agreed to encourage as many people as we could between here and Medora to meet us at the town square in an hour. We had to give it a shot.
As we continued west from Belfield, we urged everyone we came across to follow us into town. We didn’t have time to tell the story a hundred times. We hoped to effectively present it to a crowd just once. Then we knew we had to keep moving.
SEVENTEEN: “Bully Pulpit”
Loosely translated, a bully pulpit is an organized summit where someone forces their views upon others. It’s also the name of a great golf course a few miles outside Medora, carved through the North Dakota Badlands. I couldn’t pass through here and not think of it. Not even under these circumstances.
Teddy Roosevelt was credited with coining “bully pulpit” in reference to the White House and the president’s powers to advocate his agenda. Here, surrounded on all sides by Theodore Roosevelt National Park, we pulled into the Medora town square to give our own speech. We had spent almost an hour driving around to area homes and farms trying to convince local residents to come to the center of town, to hear out our formal warning. Those efforts had minimal success and carved into the valuable lead we had on our pursuers.