Brad strolled to the laundry room and flipped on the light. He moved around the corner so he couldn’t be seen from the living room windows before he dug to the bottom of his laundry basket and pulled out his good running shoes. It only took a few seconds to get ready to bolt.
He moved the clothes to the dryer and started it up. It tumbled and hummed as Brad stared at the door knob. All he needed to do was reach out and turn, then he could sprint for the woods. Brad wondered why he couldn’t get his hand to reach for the door. Was this a kind of learned helplessness, he wondered.
He clenched his teeth and took a deep breath. He lunged for the door and grabbed the handle, pulling and turning as hard as he could. The door sprung open, letting in the soft evening light. The air pulled in by the outside door slammed shut the door to the living room behind Brad. He winced at the noise, but slipped out onto the porch as quietly as possible. He pulled shut the door behind him and turned to face Herm.
Herm stood there in his slacks, boat shoes, and golf shirt, on Brad’s lawn, and regarded Brad with narrowed eyes. A pair of men in sandals and shorts flanked Herm. They held their hands behind their backs, probably hiding weapons, Brad thought.
“Would you join me inside, Mr. Jenkins?" Herm asked.
Brad sighed and glanced at the woods.
“Sure,” Brad said.
Herm followed Brad back into the house through the laundry room door. They sat opposite each other on the couches in Brad’s living room before Herm spoke again.
“Believe it or not, I’ve been in your position before,” Herm said. “I’ve been held captive, and it wasn’t in nearly as nice a place as this.” Herm waved at Brad’s living room.
“For doing nothing?” Brad asked. “For just happening to have property where these vines appeared? You think that’s fair in this country?”
“For the greater good, we all may be called upon to make sacrifices,” Herm said. “That’s what living in a society is all about.”
“Spare me,” Brad said.
“We debated moving you to a facility,” Herm said. “It would certainly be easier than keeping all these guards posted around your house. But, in the end, we decided it would be less stressful for you to stay here. You’re a solitary type anyway. You seem to be happiest when you’re here.”
“I am happy here,” Brad said, “but I do enjoy the freedom to leave here, occasionally.”
“Understood,” Herm said. “And this will be temporary.”
“Perhaps,” Brad said. “But back to your statement from a second ago. I think I know why you kept me here instead of shipping me off to a prison cell. At least I can narrow it down to one or two strong possibilities.”
Herm didn’t answer, so Brad continued.
“You’re either afraid I’ve been contaminated, or contagious, or whatever, or maybe you just don’t want me to have the chance to tell anyone else what I know,” Brad said.
“If we were afraid of contagions,” Herm said, “then the men stationed here would all be wearing the appropriate gear.”
“Maybe the ones out back are,” Brad said.
“And maybe I wouldn’t be sitting here across from you,” Herm said. “I do have a strong self-preservation streak, despite my occupation.”
“You’ve been exposed already,” Brad said. “I saw you touch the vine out back.”
“So you did,” Herm said. “Back to why I’m here: can I assume you’re not going to try any more heroic escape attempts?”
“I’m not sure,” Brad said. “Can you tell me how you knew I was going to make an attempt today?”
“There are two reasons I’m good at my job,” Herm said. “First—I prepare. Second—I’m very good at putting myself in someone else’s shoes, so I can think as they would.”
“So you just tried to think like I would and you found yourself considering a mad dash from the laundry room?” Brad asked.
“Nope,” Herm said. “I just prepared for it. You went to the laundry room, so I took a walk around back. It’s the same thing I do every Sunday when you’re doing laundry. I stay out of sight of the bathroom window, of course.”
“That’s very discouraging,” Brad said. “You’ve given me an explanation which leaves no hope of improving my plan.”
“You could always just change your plan to go along with this brief occupation until our work is done,” Herm said. “By the way, the tech guys out in the van over there really enjoyed your attempt to create a new communication channel by embedding encrypted data in regular images. What’s that process called again?”
“Steganography,” Brad said.
“Nice touch using graphic pornography as the carrier. The guys were shy about the files at first until they noticed the size of the images seemed too big for the quality. I think you got a little greedy with the payload,” Herm said.
“If you’re through trying to win me over through compliments, I think I’d like my house back now,” Brad said.
“Sure thing,” Herm said. He stood in his odd way—rising up with his leg muscles without pushing with his arms. “Just try to accept our presence. The time will pass faster once you do. And please don’t drill any holes through the wall in your back room—we’ve got tarps hung around our area, so you won’t see anything.”
Brad tried to hold his face perfectly still while he waited for Herm to leave. Once the tall man shut door behind himself, Brad got up and closed all the blinds in his living room. Then he went through the rest of the house, closing those windows off from the outside world as well.
IN THE BASEMENT, to the left of his workbench, Brad kept leftover lumber and building supplies from various projects. After Herm thwarted his escape attempt, Brad found himself in the basement, cataloguing his stockpile. He grabbed his measuring tape and headed back upstairs to make a list.
His brain churned away at two different tasks: on one level, he moved through his house, taking measurements of each window and door; on a higher level, Brad analyzed his own actions. He wanted to board up every window—cut himself completely off from the government intruders on his property. They set up command tents in his back yard, and parked trailers just over the hill in his back pasture, but it was still his house. If they would deny him any access to the outside world, then the most Brad could do was deny them any access to his world.
Brad boarded up most of the downstairs windows before he stopped for dinner. The guards positioned around the perimeter of the house didn’t flinch as Brad pounded nails through the sheets of plywood fitted to the window trim. When he ran out of scraps, Brad stole sheets of plywood from the attic. They’d been stacked up there for a year, waiting for Brad to get around to replacing the creaky flooring up there.
Just before boarding up the last window in the dining room Brad paused, resting his hands on the top edge of the plywood. He stared down his long driveway towards the road. He tried to remember the last time he’d seen a car drive down the road. His road never was very busy, but he started to wonder if he’d seen even a single civilian drive down the road since the day the government guys arrived. The window he was about to seal offered the best view, so Brad set the plywood down and fetched a camera from his office closet. It was a cheap webcam—one he’d purchased for video conferences. Brad set it on the bottom window frame and ran the cord out the bottom before positioning his plywood.
Brad worked through the night, finishing with the skylights before his normal breakfast time. Instead of sealing the skylights completely, Brad built a small frame to hold the plywood several inches below each skylight. He cut the plywood extra large and painted it white, hoping to reflect some sunlight down into the room through the gaps on the perimeter. As the dawn light filtered in, he discovered his blockade let in plenty of illumination for him to move around comfortably, and enough to read at close distance.