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

That question brought everything in the world to a screeching halt. Brandon stood frozen in front of his friend, not knowing whether to just give in and come clean or to shoot for his best Hollywood performance in maintaining the status quo. He turned suddenly and walked away from Riley, tripping slightly over the crumpled carpet that the coffee table was sitting on. In doing so, he exposed the city map that was forced into his left rear pocket. Riley’s eyes dropped to the crudely folded, yet clearly discernable, street guide. Without saying a thing he took a quick lunge in Brandon’s direction and reached out, snatching the paper from Brandon’s jeans. Brandon spun around to catch his friend in the act… but was too late.

“I don’t believe it! You are getting the hell outta here aren’t you? Riley said smiling and almost laughing. “I wanna go with you man. Don’t you dare beat it without me”

Brandon knew the charade was over and he was now going to have to hurriedly explain the whole situation to his friend. Thinking quickly, he drew his phone out and brought the note from his mother up. Handing it to Riley he spoke.

“Notice anything about that message?” he questioned. Riley’s face drew into a quizzical study and a slow head shake. Brandon was only going to give him a few seconds.

“Nah. I mean… it’s a nice note from your mom. I’m guessing there’s something else to it?” Riley concluded.

“The underlining. It’s Morse Code” the younger boy pointed out. “My mom and I had both learned it and she used it to sneak a message past my dad”

“WHAT?!?” Riley blurted out, now smiling even more. “That’s bad ass man! Morse Code?!? No way?!” Now starting to smile a bit himself, Brandon ripped the phone out of his friends hands and turned to pull his duffle out from it’s hiding place. The thought of not having to go through all this alone appealed to him and he was actually now glad Riley knew.

“Look Riley. I maybe have less than five minutes to finish up with my planning” he said while busying about. After a moment of shoving his last few things into the bag, he turned and stood facing Riley.

“OK. If you want to come along… I’m game. But you’ll have to be ready to ditch in like…” he looked past his friend at the old, hand styled oven clock. “… 2 hours”

“Oh. So you’re not trying to slip out right this second?” the bulky young man questioned.

“No way. If I leave right now, the second my dad get’s back here, he’ll know something’s up. He’ll have them stupid ass ANTIFA mobs out scouring the streets for me within minutes” Brandon explained. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned in these past few months it’s that my dad sleeps like a rock. A nuclear blast won’t wake him once he’s down”

“So you slip out when he’s asleep and that way you’ve got until he wakes up the next…” Riley was able to start before being cut off.

“Yeah yeah yeah. You got the picture” Brandon said hurriedly. “Now I have got to finish up Rye! Go. Get yourself ready. Meet me over by the housing playground two hours from right now” He began gently shoving his friend towards the door with one hand while reaching for the door knob with the other. Riley stumbled backwards, looking around his friend at the clock in order to properly register what the time would be 2 hours from now. Before Brandon’s hand could grab the knob, the sound of a key slipping into the deadbolt was heard. The two young men’s heads turned and looked at each other in wide eyed horror.

 Chapter Seven

From directly beneath the window of the room Buck was in, Shane could hear him discussing plans with several other men. When he first positioned himself there, they were talking about food and water issues as well as morale problems that were starting to arise. Despite the ‘broad daylight’ situation, Shane had managed to maneuver his way across a large part of the compound. The heat of the desert day was climbing fast and it appeared everyone was opting to stay indoors. This inspired one simple main objective for Shane to contend with. Stay out of direct line of sight with any windows… if possible.

‘Enough of this jibber jabber’ the escapee thought. ‘I need to move it’. Just as he scooted himself along the wall from under the window, Shane heard a loud and sharply shouted question shatter the silence.

“AND WHERE THE HELL IS TRENT WITH THAT CAMERON GUY?”, Buck’s boisterous voice could be heard exclaiming. Shane paused just long enough to roll his eyes and shake his head in response to the name thing. But he was acutely aware that this was his cue to get moving… ASAP! Before he had left the warehouse, Shane had quickly drug Trent’s limp body over to his cell room and slipped him into bed under the stiff woolen cover. Additionally, he had placed him on an empty potato sack, making the dragging process easier as well as avoiding a long smear of blood to clean up. A few force-fed Tylenol PM’s would eventually plunge Trent into a long peaceful sleep. And what the heck, Shane had thought, it might help with the pain of his busted up face. After locking him inside the room and making him look like the sleeping Cameron (lol) he was hopeful the plane’s sudden and unplanned departure might be viewed as Trent deciding to bolt or something as such. But Shane still had a long trek to the aircraft and he had no idea whether or not someone might be guarding it.

A ‘heads-down’ run between two yellow painted pylons brought him to what appeared to be the edge of the road. But what road? And where was everyone? That condition was starting to concern him… UNTIL… he heard a roar of laughter reverberating down Main Street from the general direction of the tavern.

“For crying out loud!” he chuckled under his breath. “It’s only…”

Before he could note the time of day, he heard the clatter of running footsteps accompanied by shouting. It sounded as though they were saying, ‘They’re gone!’. But the voices were distant and were rebounding through dozens of homes and businesses, making their words echoed and garbled.

“This would be a PERFECT time for me to be firing up that plane” he pondered. “They’d all think Trent and I had found common ground and bolted together” After carefully scanning his surroundings back and forth several times, Shane felt confident no one was in his immediate vicinity. In a stooped over position with his weapon tucked into his gut, he darted to his left in between two buildings and became instantly hidden by the shadows the structures cast against each other. The walls lining the alley were void of windows or doors, save one small opening about eight feet up the left wall, and Shane tossed around the idea of remaining there until nightfall. Its weedy appearance and hundreds of aerosol cans and discarded newspapers scattered everywhere, signaled no one had set foot there for months, if not years. He could snuggle in and make his move later under the cover of darkness, and when things had settled down a bit.

That’s when he heard it. The distant but distinct sound of a small airplane engine sputtering to life with its prop chopping the air. Shane’s eyes opened wide and his hand immediately began patting the outside of his pants in the area of its pocket contents. It was still there. The key to the Cessna had not dropped out or through a hole. Obviously, this wasn’t the only key to the plane. Then another thought struck Shane. WHO was starting the plane and why? Trent had boasted how he was the only person in the compound who knew how to fly. It would be literally impossible for him to have pulled himself together physically, shaken off the effects of the nighttime pain relievers Shane had stuffed in him, and traveled the distance from the warehouse to and up the mesa in this short of time.

Shane crept quietly but quickly to the edge of the shadow to see if he had an unobstructed view of the mesa the plane was on. Sure enough, there in the bright sunlight, the white and red aircraft sat, still tethered to the rock with its propeller spinning and two men with rifles slung over their shoulders standing next to it. Shane slowly and carefully poked his head out and around the corner of the wall he was backed up against. He did an immediate double take in the direction over his shoulder. There, hurrying down the next alley over, were two men carrying Trent by either arm, his feet dragging through the sand and his head bobbling limply between his hoisted shoulders. Despite his failure to retrieve Shane for the ‘execution by mine shaft’, Shane was pretty confident they wouldn’t toss Trent down the tube, due to his ability to pilot the 150.

Shane flipped back into the shadow, allowed his body to relax, and shook his head. Wait?? Are they seriously going to attempt to put Trent behind the yoke of that plane?? Shane imagined the resulting scenario should that be the case. It wasn’t pretty. Any altitude gain at all would increase the effect of Trent’s dizziness and the medication coursing through his blood. Vertigo would more than likely send him crashing earthward. He again shook his head to throw off the idea and said, in a breathy whisper… Whatever. His thoughts then turned back to himself.

“But now what about me? What are my adjusted plans?” he pondered in a whisper. “How am I going to get away from this nut house?” He knew there was no going back at this point. There’d be no stepping out, arms raised in surrender, and professing allegiance to The Buck of the United Crazies of Arizona. In fact, he’d lay money that right about now, there was a ‘shoot on sight’ order. Kill Cameron the second you see him. Moving at night would be better…but not by much. Many of these guys had night vision gear, making his odds only slightly improved in the dark. Considering how high the alert was at this moment, he felt lucky to still be breathing. There was only one tactic that popped into his mind and it would take several minutes of planning.

A major distraction. An explosion. A building collapse or tower toppled. If he could execute this with a ‘MacGyver style’ 3 to 5 minute timer involved, he could distance himself just far enough from the catastrophe, that when Buck and company went dashing conveniently in the opposite direction of his escape route, Shane could practically walk away from this mess. There was only one problem. He was sure that anything explosive… gasoline, propane, acetylene, gun powder or any other ignitable liquids or gases… were kept under lock and key in an unknown location and were well guarded.

With a perplexed expression on his face, Shane casually glanced back down the brick walled alley way he