The next morning Robert woke to the noise of green wood crackling on the fire. The Montana air smelled fresh and complimented the hint of pine smoke from the fire. Robert saw that it was Richard stoking the fire and approached him to speak.
“Kyle is going to Kansas City with me. You’re invited too. You can stay at my place. If we all work together, maybe we can have a better chance to get through this,” said Robert.
“My condo is in the middle of a concrete jungle. I don’t have a chance there. I can stay at your house… really?”
“Yeah, really. Where’s our fisherman?”
Richard pointed toward Kyle. He was already up and had checked the lines. Kyle had two fish strung through the gills using a willow branch. In his other hand, he had a large crayfish. He held the crayfish up for Robert’s inspection.
“Well, well, well… what do we have here… lobster for breakfast?” Robert asked with a laugh. “Not a bad idea. I’ll be right back,” Robert said, as he picked up an empty pan and darted toward the river.
Robert went to an area with shallow water. He carefully turned all the large flat rocks over to reveal the creatures underneath. The crayfish were plentiful. He caught seven more and returned to the campfire with his bounty. They ate some bagels with the roasted catfish and boiled crayfish. The baby ate a little crushed cereal, but no one was full. They had to stretch out the food supply.
Robert wanted to work on the bow for a while before heading downstream to the first dam. He needed a way to hold the wood tight and still so he could use both hands to hold the knife and carve the wood. He noticed a small tree that bifurcated into an acute angle at its trunk, a few feet above the ground. With Kyle’s assistance, he set the bow stave in the bifurcation of the tree trunk and Kyle stood on the other side of the tree pulling the end of the stave at an angle to lock it tightly in place. It worked; the stave held solid in that position. Robert angled the knife toward the wood and held the blade tightly with both hands. Slowly, he pulled the knife toward himself removing more thin shavings of wood. Occasionally he would remove the stave from the tree and compare both sides for symmetry. When Robert judged that he had completed enough rough carving, he held one end of the stave in his left hand and put the other tip of the stave to the ground. He pushed onto the center of the bow and it started to bend. Then he went through the same process with the other bow.
“Perfect!” Robert exclaimed. “These need to dry completely, then I’ll take the length down to size. We’ll keep them in the sun. With this dry air, it shouldn’t take too long at all.”
“We still need arrows and strings,” said Kyle.
“One thing at a time, my friend. Trust me. Now let’s get out of here. We have five dams waiting for us,” Robert said, holding up all the fingers of his right hand.
It was another bright, clear day. The morning sun was in their eyes as it rose higher in the distant horizon. Robert thought about the sun as he paddled toward it. Should he blame the sun? Or maybe the blame should go to humans for being so completely dependent on little computer chips. The answer did not matter; they could not change their predicament. He looked upward and saw buzzards circling in the sky on invisible columns of air. He reaffirmed his promise to himself that he would survive and make it back home to his family.
Where the interstate crossed the river, there was a small road running parallel and close to the water. They got the raft to the riverbank and let Beth and her child out.
“Thank you so much,” she said profusely. “I don’t know what would have happened to us if you hadn’t come along.”
Robert asked, “Where will you go? What will you do?”
“I live off base in an apartment. I’ll go back there and see what happens. I really don’t know.”
She turned and walked away, stopping once to smile back at the men as they receded from her view.
The men floated under several bridges on the way to the first dam. They observed men, wearing uniforms of military camouflage and holding automatic weapons, patrolling the bridges. Whispering amongst themselves as they stealthily floated downstream, they speculated on what the military’s orders were. Was there already martial law? They agreed this was a bad situation and they should surreptitiously continue toward the dams and away from this city and the military base.
According to the map, they would get closer to the base as they went toward the dams. At the first dam, the Air Force base came into view just past the crest of the riverbank on their right side. The men noticed a walking trail parallel with the river and going toward the dam. Unfortunately, the trail was on the military base’s side of the river. Kyle retrieved the binoculars from the backpack and slowly scanned the dam and trail. He saw no one patrolling the dam. He wondered if the military was just patrolling streets in town and roads into the military base.
The men stopped at the riverbank where a tree had bent over and leaned into the river. The tree’s fallen canopy gave them cover from unwanted observation, as well as a place to secure the rafts.
“This is it,” said Robert.
“Now what?” Richard asked.
“We get these rafts to the top of the dam one at a time, and move as fast as we can.”
On dry land, Robert placed the front of the raft on his shoulders and looked forward with an uncomfortably bent neck, but the pistol felt reassuring, tucked in the waistband of his pants. Kyle and Richard held up the raft from the back. They all moved to the top of the dam as fast as Richard could go. At the trail’s crest at the end of the dam, the rear of the raft suddenly fell to the ground. When Robert turned around and straightened his neck, he saw the horrified look on his friend’s faces. Their eyes were wide, jaws open, and their hands were in the air. Robert turned quickly forward and saw two soldiers with automatic weapons running toward them. The soldiers had been just over the crest of the dam and out of view.
The first soldier commanded, “Freeze! Don’t move or I’ll shoot!”
“The colonel said we can shoot intruders. Should we shoot them?” asked the second soldier.
“Get the colonel. He may want to see this,” said the first soldier.
Robert stared in silence at the remaining soldier. The name on his shirt was Ramirez. He looked young. Probably still a teenager. Ramirez paced around the three men, still pointing his automatic weapon at them. He had the men standing on the trail with their hands on their heads. He stopped behind them and began to taunt them.
“Bang… bang… bang,” jeered Ramirez, as he stood behind them and laughed.
“We didn’t do anything!” screamed Richard.
“Shut up, fat ass!” commanded Ramirez. “Now get your fat ass on the ground. Face down. Now!”
Ramirez stood over Richard and straddled his body. He began to poke Richard’s head, neck, and back with the barrel of his rifle. Ramirez was debating aloud to Richard exactly where he should shoot him before he threw his body over the dam. As the rifle barrel slowly worked its way down Richards’s spine, Ramirez noticed the pack of cigarettes in Richard’s back pocket and took them. He lit a cigarette, pulled the smoke deep into his lungs, and slowly exhaled.
“Thanks, fish bait. I needed a cigarette,” Ramirez sneered mockingly at Richard.
Still standing over Richard’s prone body, Ramirez did not notice the second soldier returning with the colonel.
“Ramirez, what are you doing?” barked the colonel.
Ramirez jumped at the sound of the colonel’s voice. He flicked the lit cigarette into the air, dropped the pack of cigarettes, and nervously stood at attention. “Sir, we captured intruders, sir.”
The colonel turned to the second soldier. “You said you captured terrorists.”