Wind howled through the trees, breaking the spell of his anguish. Only after he stood again did he realize it was not the wind howling. It was the rowdy cries of escaped prisoners, borne on the wind.
The predators Tom Duggan had lured to Gilchrist were on the road. He started toward the house in search of a weapon. For the first time in his life, he considered objects in terms of killing potential, of which his mother’s house held very few. Knives, yes, but nothing to fend off more than one convict at a time. They would not get him, he determined. He would survive this if only to see to his mother’s final details.
Tom Duggan eyed the woods behind his mother’s house. He entered them, slowly at first, still weighed down by despair. But by measures his pace increased. Murderous thoughts raged inside his head like the hungry voices of the prisoners as he headed north, tearing through the trees, not quite blindly, heading in the general direction of the old asbestos mine.
Kells entered the parlor just before the report came through. He was holding his parka and gloves, his brown face flushed from the cold. All eyes turned to him.
“Where were you?” said Terry.
“Car ran off the road,” he said, unwinding a snow-dusted scarf from around his neck. His thick, khaki pants were wet to his thighs. “Bad out there. Had to walk back.”
“Where’s Mr. Hodgkins?” asked Fern.
Kells said, “What do you mean?”
“He isn’t with you?”
Terry upped the volume then, as the CNN anchor interrupted a taped piece. “We are going to the telephone now, where one of our news producers, Justin Keane, has breaking information on the Vermont prison break. Justin, where are you?”
There was no graphic available. The shot lingered on the anchorman’s tanned face.
“Yes, Martin, there’s been an extraordinary turn of events here... I am calling from a pay phone in Beckett, Vermont, a few miles north of Gilchrist. Approximately three hours ago there was an attack upon the Gilchrist Penitentiary. A surprise attack, armed gunmen, believed to be parolees of a sympathetic national prison gang, opened fire on federal officials stationed outside the siege. The battle was brief, terribly one-sided, culminating in all law-enforcement and news-media personnel being loaded onto trucks and escorted out of town through a barricade of farm equipment. Martin, the prisoners of the Gilchrist penitentiary are free. And they have seized control of the town.”
Everyone in the parlor was standing. Sentences unfinished, then shushing each other as the report resumed.
“... equipment, radios, weapons. Also our satellite broadcast truck. My cameraman and I were taken at gunpoint.”
The anchor’s face reflected the nation’s confused dismay. “You’re saying you had a gun pointed—”
“I personally witnessed the shooting death of one Gilchrist police officer. None of us believed they were simply going to release us... The only thing I can compare this to, Martin, is a military coup.”
Fern was staring at the television, both hands covering her mouth. Terry looked dumbfounded.
The rest were like Rebecca: moving about, but not knowing which way to turn.
The anchorman said, “Justin — we know from earlier reports that many people have already left the town. What is being done for those who remain in Gilchrist tonight?”
“Martin... I can’t imagine what they might be going through.”
Kells switched off the television. It was as though all the oxygen had been sucked out of the room.
“We leave now,” he said. “Everybody upstairs. Pack essentials only, the warmest clothes you have.”
“Pack...?” Terry said, incredulous.
“One bag. The police station is just up the road. They will be here any minute.”
Terry said, “How can we drive—”
“We can’t. They own the roads. We go on foot.”
Mia cried, “Where?”
“Out of here. Right now, we just go.”
Dr. Rosen said, “Shouldn’t we wait here, for help?”
Terry was at the telephone next to the deacon’s bench. He picked up the receiver, poised to dial. The numbers wouldn’t come.
“You dial nine-one-one,” Kells said, “you bring them right to us.”
Terry dropped the receiver. “Cell phone,” he said, and rushed out of the room.
Bert-and-Rita were the next to leave, starting past Kells and moving quickly up the stairs. Rebecca lingered near the doorway. Fleeing seemed so rash. Staying seemed so wrong.
The existential jury. Rebecca hurried out of the parlor and climbed the stairs behind Fern.
Inside her room, she got her cargo bag open on the bed and went around grabbing things, still not convinced. It was as though she were acting out a scene of people fleeing danger. Socks. Boots. Gloves and hat. Toothbrush, underwear. Moving automatically.
Kells’s room was directly above Rebecca’s, and she heard his heavy boots moving from bathroom to dresser to bed. It was beginning to sink in. She had no choice. All of a sudden they were running for their lives.
Her jewelry kit, a fleece pullover, her handbag, her cell phone. She nearly left without her laptop, and forgetting her manuscript heightened her panic more than anything. She slipped the laptop with battery charger into its carrying case and slung the leather bag over her shoulder, taking up her cargo bag without zipping it, stopping at the door to look around the room. She was terrified to leave. She looked at the things she was leaving and wondered if she would ever return.
Kells’s deep voice upstairs got her moving. She set her bag down in the hall and ran up, ruffling the hanging quilts as she brushed past.
Fern was in the middle of her bedroom holding Ruby while Kells zipped up a bulging paisley carpetbag. “She’ll be fine,” he was saying. “They’re not after cats.”
“But she’s never been alone, she doesn’t—”
“She’s fine,” Kells said, reaching over and plucking the black cat from her arms.
Ruby squirted out of his hands, wriggling under the low bed. Kells clapped shut the wooden handles of Fern’s carpetbag and moved to the door, leaving her looking at the empty bed. He went back and gripped Fern’s arm and brought her along.
Rebecca followed them downstairs. The others stood in coats and hats at the reception desk. Each person carried one bag, except for Bert-and-Rita, who wore their matching backpacks, and Terry, who carried two. Bert-and-Rita’s cross-country skis and poles stood against the reception desk. Robert held Mia, who was staring out from his dark coat. Terry was frantically punching buttons on his phone.
Fern went to Coe. “It’s okay,” he said, but a frightened boy had replaced the easygoing teenager in the fool’s cap.
Kells pulled down an old hunting rifle from its mount over the front door. “This work?” he asked, checking the action. Flakes of rust twinkled to the floor.
“I... I think so,” Fern said.
“Last time it was fired?”
“Ten years ago?”
Kells hung on to it anyway. “Cartridges?”
Fern looked spacey. “Maybe the side drawer.”
He pawed around inside the reception desk, pocketing a few rounds.
“Where are we going?” asked Mia, her voice tremulous, tear-choked.
Kells came around to the front of the desk. “They don’t know the town. They must be going by maps or street-to-street. We need someplace...” He found a brochure next to the burning candle — Welcome to Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom! — and unfolded it. “Someplace not marked on a map. Someplace remote, where we can rest awhile, think.”
He showed the map to Fern with Coe looking over their shoulders. “The golf course?” Coe said.