CW2, D.R. SMITH [little readers .TXT] 📗

can. We are sisters. Remember?” Terra stated sincerely.

“Then please hear me out before making any comments. Let me tell you the whole thing uninterrupted. OK?” Terra nodded with her brow now scrunching questioningly.

She explained her plan to bolt from the exploratory team once things were settled in. She tied in her fears of losing Brandon and her fear of what Daryl might do if she’d simply stick around after convincing Brandon to return to her. Terra simply nodded intermittently through the whole spiel. Mick brought the monologue to a close.

“That’s it. I know I’ll miss all of you and will have a difficult time surviving out there. But I feel I have no other choice.” She stated. The two stared at each other for a few moments. Then Terra spoke.

“Look… first thing you need to do is stop off at a psychiatrist. Have you gone completely crazy woman?” Terra said slowly. “I’m gonna guess you’ve never set foot in that part of Arizona. It’s a snake infested, Hell hole that has become the location of choice for gun toting nut jobs!” she scolded. “And trust me… they ain’t Black gun toting nut jobs! If one of those groups happens on you and your son, you’ll either become target practice or a means for sexual release… and neither of those is gonna be pleasant!”

McKenna displayed her frustration with Terra’s perspective on the whole thing by shaking he head while Terra spoke. There was no question in Micky’s mind that Terra was bringing up some good points. But Terra and her family were seemingly OK with the status quo. People who had settled in to this insanity rarely were able to view a dissenter as sane. McKenna was not going to let Terra’s opinion stop her from carrying through with all of this. Terra could now simply become a way to convey the false narrative on her sudden disappearance.

 

Ted Jergeson touched the Bluetooth button on his desk phone, transferring the ringing call to his cell. A voice on the other end answered.

“Security”

“Hey…this is Ted. Who am I speaking to?” He said in a cheery tone.

“This is Carlos. What can I do for you Mr. Jergeson?” the voice responded. Carlos was the head of security at EnerTech and was a government appointed and government paid employee. In the past 10 months, most major city-based businesses had been required to ‘install’ a state trained security head who oversees not only company policy security issues, but must also listen for any talk about or watch for any inclinations towards right wing ideals or actions.

Carlos Gerrara had embraced this mindset fully and was not only very good at what he did, he had become feared within the walls of EnerTech due to his fierce approach to individual physical control. Ted had taken some time to warm up to Carlos as an entity that felt extreme and unnecessary. But once Carlos had ‘done his job’ several times and Ted had seen how his presence curbed rebellion and kept everyone’s minds from straying from their work, he not only began to support Carlos’s presence, he even started slipping the man some ‘bonus money’ under the table to keep him happy.

“Oh Carlos! Good!” Ted replied “Hey… you wouldn’t happen to have some free days available later this week? I’d really like you to tag along on an exploratory trip to Arizona. I’ll make it worth your while… trust me”

“Sure Mr Jergeson. I’m available.” Carlos dutifully responded. “I can have one of my assistant Compliance Officers watch the main facility here while I’m gone”

“Great!” Ted replied. “There just might be some temptation occur once we get people out there in the wilderness. You know what I mean?”

“Oh yeah. I know exactly what you’re talking about” Carlos responded with a smile in his voice.

“OK then. Plan on leaving Thursday morning” Ted informed the security man. He stopped himself from ending the call and quickly brought the phone back to the side of his head. “And by the way… thank you”

“No problem Mr Jergeson” Carlos dutifully replied and the call terminated.

The office chair Ted was in now rocked backwards as he careened his head back and forth in tiny movements in an effort to bring Micky’s glass walled office into view through the crack in his door. He suddenly froze as one side of his mouth turned up in a slight smile. Without looking away from the two women conversing at Mick’s desk, Ted reached blindly toward his desk phone unit, touched an intercom button, and then brought both hands up behind his head as he eaves dropped on their conversation.

 

The set of keys slid across the countertop and slammed into the backsplash. McKenna really didn’t intend to toss them that hard, but she was completely exhausted and very frustrated. Passing quickly through her kitchen, she aimed for the sofa and spun around as she landed on her back in the cushy corner of the sectional. Her favorite spot. Now her hands rubbed deep and firmly into her eyes, wiping away the burn of the day that had settled onto her corneas. Although sleep would come easily, Micky knew she had time sensitive tasks that had to get done this evening.

After an undetermined number of minutes, Micky forced herself to rise from her soft encampment and get focused on connecting with her son. Considering it was going to be a very long night, her first order of business was to fire off the first Keurig canister. No cream. A touch of sweetener. The steam trailed the mug as it would from a locomotive stack as McKenna strolled smoothly into her home office room. She now donned a robe that also swirled behind her like Superman’s cape and had to be wrangled in for her to take the seat at the desk. A few taps on the keyboard and the screen came to life, lighting the room that was moments ago, nearly pitch dark. The mug rose to her lips and she braved an ever so gentle scalding sip. It’s temperature, more than its caffeine, raised her brows and instantly chased away any drowsiness.

In the next 48 hours, McKenna Rogers was going to take risks she would’ve never dreamed she’d plunge her life into. Contacting police would be useless in a case such as this and at this point in time. Legal authorities ALWAYS sided with an individual or a group of individuals who were united with ‘the movement’. If you supported the riffraff taking place downtown, you would never be harassed by law officers of any kind. In spite of the obstacles, there were some facets of Daryl’s disappearance that could be easily determined.

For one, Daryl did not adapt to deficient living conditions very well. He had always been a bit of a ‘wuss’ when it came to ‘roughing it’. Knowing this, Mick could eliminate certain areas of the city that she could rest assured Daryl would never occupy. Secondly, their bank account hadn’t been shut off, closed, or drained. If he had done something stupid like, quit his job, she would have seen money being drawn out in sums equal to rent, food purchases, gasoline and transportation expenses and so on. Paycheck deposits. No such activity appeared to be taking place. This led her to believe he remained relatively close to his current place of employment. Micky’s management training had created a methodical mode of thinking that helped her to narrow down possible solutions in this specific type of situation.

The cells of a spreadsheet she had thrown together began to fill up. Streets, zips, suburbs, even a phone number here and there. All of it culminating into a single hypothesis. A place to start. A point at which to give up. Slowly she eliminated column after column of data and potential locations. Finally, she settled on three specific areas.

She would now send Brandon one more message with a plea to Daryl included with it. The message would be simple and short. It would be handwritten and then photographed, and text messaged to Brandon’s phone. Daryl would understand why she would send a message in this manner. To avoid interception. But what he wouldn’t realize was that underlining each sentence would be a series of coded dots and dashes.

About the time Brandon was entering junior high, he and Micky had taken a civil safety course and were taught several different ways to communicate during a national crisis and other emergency situations. Daryl rarely paid any attention to what her and Brandon did together and was clueless to the emergency preparedness they had engaged in. Brandon and she had even gone so far as to joke around with the ‘secret messaging’ by etching coded comments into cake icing and mashed potatoes about Daryl right in front of his face. Hopefully, Brandon would pick up on the fact that the underlining of the message was Morse Code. More importantly and hopefully, Daryl didn’t decide to just read it to Brandon.

Her scripted message read…

 

Brandon,

 

My son, I love and miss you so much. I hope you are doing well and keeping yourself from any wrongdoing. I want you to know that I do want to see you again someday. Please take care and write back.

 

Your loving Mother

 

Encoded in the underline she stated…

 

Do you want to go to Arizona with me stop I can pick you up corner of E 26 & York by golf course stop Friday 0730 end

 

The 0730 meeting time would allow Brandon to slip out while Daryl headed off to work and he himself would’ve been normally leaving for school.

 

CHAPTER 5

Chapter Five

 

 

 

 

 

There was a stinging pain radiating from the left side of Shane’s jaw as he awoke. It took a moment or two for him to realize where he was. The last thing he recalled was guzzling an ice cold Coke and then… then a chair hit him?!? Wait? Yes. A chair hit him from the side. Hold on, he thought. There were some additional events beginning to creep into the story. The request he made to either join up with the Buck Band or just be freed to go his own way was met with… of course… laughter. He laughed a few times and then got up close and serious with Crocodile Buck. THAT was the last thing he remembered happening.

Now, stashed away in some filthy storage room in a building located in an abandoned town in the deserts of Arizona, it was likely Shane was destined to be either shot or recruited. The former bore greater probability. And the recruited thing would have to be faked as he wanted no part of what these goof offs were up to. His weapons? Where on earth would those be by now? He was pretty sure they weren’t sitting in a cabinet with his name on them. More than likely, they had been divvied up to any takers. The situation seemed quite grave at best.

Standing up to peer out the only window, which was bar covered, he found it was facing the desert. This was at least a positive from an escape standpoint. It was when he shifted his weight to his left leg, a new ‘not so positive’ element of the Rough Rock visit was exposed. Another