Chapter 204

“Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?”
—John Keats, Letters of John Keats

I STOOD STARING AT MY WIFE.

“Is it really you? How did you find me?”

“It’s me. Who is that you just tried to kill?”

“The boss. He leads a fake National Service team that was put together to discredit me and make people think the President’s poster boy deserted,” I said. He moaned and I pulled zip ties out of my backpack, quickly lashing his wrists and feet together while Nanette checked his pulse and looked in his eyes.

“Nice blow. Knocked him out cleanly.”

“Lucky. I have to get in that locked cage. My guitar, my papers, my clothes are all locked in there.” I picked up the rock and the club again.

“Doesn’t he have a key?” I looked at Nan in disbelief and then searched the boss’s pockets. Sure enough there was a single key. I hugged Nan and turned to the locker. The lock popped open.

“We need to go before the team gets here. I’m sure he has them out looking for me. I just escaped last night. How did you find me?”

“I tracked your guitar. Come on. The car’s about a mile from here. Is there anything else you need?” she asked.

“I’ll find you,” the boss mumbled. I looked at him. “I’ll find you and put you in the ground, kid.” I snatched his phone out of his pocket and dialed 911.

“9-1-1. State the nature of your emergency.”

“There’s been an accident up in the mountains at these coordinates. A guy attempted to break into a cabin and was injured by the resident. Looks like he has a broken jaw. He has no ID and has been prowling around up here with a bunch of kids pretending to be in National Service. Better send both an ambulance and police.” I thumbed off the phone without waiting for a response when the boss started to yell for help. “I’ll see you in hell,” I said as I spun away from him, pushing Nan out of the cabin. I had my backpack on and my duffle in one hand and my guitar in the other.

“This way,” Nan said, heading down the forest road we’d arrived on a month ago.

“I have no idea where I am or how to get home, so lead on, my knight in shining armor.”

“You’ve put on some muscle,” she said, grabbing my duffle from me and slinging it over her shoulder.

“We’ve been in hard physical training for a month or so. I don’t even have an idea what the date is. He brought us up here and told us this was a new NSO program to train us for survival, search, and rescue. It’s been brutal.”

“You just came here with him? Why didn’t you go to basic with the others? We’ve been worried sick.”

“I was sick. Remember? They found me in the bathroom and gave me some drug. I don’t remember much after that. I just know I woke up on the bus with eleven others and they let us off here. All our gear was locked in that cage and we were told there was no cell signal up here.”

Nanette wasn’t running but she set a good pace and we reached Livy’s Wrangler in about twenty minutes.

“That’s Livy’s car.”

“We got terrain maps when we found where you were hiding. It didn’t take long to decide the Wrangler was a better choice of vehicle than my VW. Make sure your equipment is strapped in. It’s a bumpy road back down.” Nanette started the jeep and we were moving before I was completely settled in the passenger seat.

“I’m so glad to see you. I didn’t have any plan for after I got my gear from the cage. I was just going to head down this road and hope I got someplace before they caught me.”

“It’s a long way to anyplace,” Nanette said. “Do you need anything? Food? Water?”

“I’ve lived out of this kit for a month. I can last another day,” I said. “When we get someplace safe, I’d like to change out of this jumpsuit and into clothes. This is all any of us have worn since we got here.” We bounced down the mountain track with Nanette grinding gears as we twisted with the road. “I still don’t understand how you found me.”

“It took us a long time to figure it out. I’m sorry. We’re not that smart, I guess. Last week I went to Indiana to visit your parents. When I got the call from Beca that you hadn’t arrived at basic with them, we all panicked. Then Rachel said there was a buzz around the OCS that you’d run instead of serving. I finally decided I needed to talk to your folks and tell them you were officially missing. It wasn’t until I said you’d left without a trace, your cellphone was off, and you took your duffle and your guitar with you that your Dad got some papers. When you got this guitar, the insurance company had you attach a Lo-Jack tracking device in it. There’s one in each of your guitars, the viol, and your mandolin. Anything that’s listed on the rider. When we contacted them, it only took a few minutes to get coordinates of where it was located.”

“Good old guitar. I haven’t touched it in a month. My hands are a mess from rock climbing and scrambling. I don’t know if I can even play anymore. I just kept looking at the case through the cage and thinking one day I’d get my hands on it again.” The road was rough and I was being bounced around in the seat but my eyes were crossing and blurring. I’d had only an hour’s uncomfortable sleep under a tree all night. Since yesterday morning, I figured I’d walked and run about forty miles. I faded off into restless sleep.

“Kidnapped,” Nanette was saying. She’d pulled into a Forest Service campground soon after we’d reached a paved road. I woke up hearing her voice talking on the phone. “We need the security footage from the induction center the day they all signed in. Can Joan hack into it?” There was a pause. “He looks a little rough around the edges, but nothing that a hot shower and a hot meal won’t cure. And some love. He looks ... a little haunted.” She listened intently. “Love you, too. We’ll be back this evening.”

Nanette turned to me and caught me staring at her. I guess I had tears running down my dirty cheeks. I must have looked a mess. A little haunted? Yeah. Wait till I tell them the rest of the story. She pointed at the little building in front of us where she’d parked.

“Shower. Change clothes. Let’s go.”

I hadn’t bathed except in the pond in forever, it seemed. We’d been issued two disposable razors a week and I’d dry shaved, but it was spotty. Nanette came straight into the shower with me and carefully shaved my face as she scrubbed the various bug bites on my back and legs. I just wanted to wrap her in my arms and hold her under the water. I was still missing some of the basics. Shampoo. I was thinking Jo might get her wish for me to have short hair once I could get to a barber shop. Dana had hacked off most of her Afro with my help. All we had was our bar of soap and cold pond water for washing it. I felt bad for her.

Then I was filled with uncontrollable rage. I had no sympathy for the bitch. She was part of it all.

“The bastards!” I yelled. “Who the hell did this? I’ll kill them!”

“Shh. Shh. Jacob, it’s over. Let’s get dressed and get home. Home, love. Home to your wives who love you.”

I pulled my jeans on and a polo shirt, skipping the niceties of underwear. There were clean socks and a lightweight pair of shoes in my duffle. Everything else was slightly damp since the only towel I had was a square of microfiber we used for everything. It got most of the water off Nanette and me. Then we got back in the Jeep and headed for DC. It was a long trip. I had no idea yet where we’d been.

“Where the hell was I, anyway?” I asked.

“In the Great Smoky Mountains near the Tennessee/North Carolina border,” Nan said. “We’ll be on I-81 soon and then it’s cruising speed for 350 miles.”

“I love you, Nanette. I would never have made it home without you.” The enormity of trying to find my way out of the Smoky Mountains and four hundred miles to DC was overwhelming. My five days of supplies wouldn’t have lasted. I doubted now that I’d have been captured and returned to the cabin, but I’d have died out there eventually. And all their reports would have looked real. It would have looked like I abandoned the service and got lost.

“Rest, Jacob. There’s a Cracker Barrel at the Roanoke exit. We’ll have hot food for lunch.”

“What a dream,” I said.

Nanette had nearly the endurance of Emily when it came to driving at exactly the seventy-five-mile-an-hour speed limit on the freeway. Even with the stop for lunch and fuel, and the slow-down for rush-hour traffic into DC, we pulled into the parking area behind our house at a few minutes before six.