ESCAPE! My first steps to freedom.

     I'm almost out the door.  The kids hear me, try to follow me.  Now what?

      Minutes passed.  The cabin was still.  I crept to the door to remove the long two-by-four Docker put across it each night.  I had to get up under it to lift it out of the brackets.  Sweat ran into my eyes and down my sides.  The strut slid out; now I had to ease it down.  My legs and arms quivered as I upended it.  It slipped through my fingers and clunked to the floor.  Shit!  I listened beyond the racket in my ears before tilting and lowering the two-by-four to the planks.  Shaking with a sudden chill, I turned the knob and pulled the door toward me.  It wouldn't budge.  I cursed, then remembered the dead bolt, took a breath and drew it back.  The door swung open; I stepped out, closing it softly behind me.  The frosty, pale dawn echoed with intermittent cries of birds.  A pinkish-grey sky crowned the looming mountaintops.  Sitting on the porch steps, feeling the cold stone seep through my jeans, I pulled on my jacket and boots.  Then I stood up and hoisted my pack.  I skirted wide, avoiding the others huddled together in their plots, and took my first steps to freedom.

I edged close to the surrounding rimed brush towards where I figured the trail to the vehicle compound might be, hoping to find a way out.  All I could see were trees and more trees.  

Everything looked the same.  I stopped a moment to get my bearings, then started off again.  Finally, I found the deer track that traced the creek and followed it, praying it would lead me to a river and, eventually, a village.  I hadn't gone but a quarter of a mile, climbing around boulders, sliding down culverts, when I heard what sounded like kids shouting.  Maybe I wasn't so far from help after all.  I thought I was going towards the voices, but now they sounded as though they were coming from behind me.  I turned around.  I couldn't see anything because of the thick forest of pine and hemlock.  Suddenly, I caught a glimpse of early sunlight flashing off shiny tow-heads.  Ducking beneath branches, I made my way towards them.

            "Where ya going?  We wanna come with you!"

            "Shhhhh!"  I grabbed the boys, knelt down, pressed them to me for a moment.  I put my finger to my lips.  "Listen," I said, "Now.  Be quiet, really quiet and listen."  Their eyes widened.  "It's really important that you guys go back.  I'd take you, but you can't leave your parents."  Papa Jo had gashed a knee, ripping his pants.  I poured some water on my scarf and cleaned the wound.  He opened his mouth to speak.  Billy-Bob raised his fist in the toddler's face.  "What is it, Papa Jo?"  The older boy gripped his shoulder.  He winced.

            "Nothin', ma'am."  He looked up at Billy-Bob.

            "We just don't want you to leave, do we, PJ?" Billy-Bob said.  Papa Jo shook his head and started to cry.  The older boy held him close, patting his back.  "Come on, we gotta go back," he said.

            Tadpole said, "Please don't go."  I brushed his rust-colored hair from his eyes.

            "Promise you guys won't tell your Dad you saw me leave or that you followed me.  He'll get mad at you if you do.  You have to go back now, quick as a wink, before you're missed.  Understand?  Promise you won't tell?  I love you all very much.  I have to go home now."  I kissed their hot, damp faces.  "I know you're scared, but being scared makes you brave.  So, be three brave guys, three musketeers, okay?  Go back, now, really quiet, like when we play Robin Hood sneaking up on the Sheriff of Nottingham.  Go back.  Mormo will take care of you."  They nodded, wiping their noses on their hands, and started walking slowly back to the cabin.  "Hurry!" I whispered hoarsely and they ran.  Heartsick, I watched them lose themselves in the trees.  I picked up the trail to go on and realized I'd forgotten about Docker's briefcase.

            The creek I'd been following gradually deepened and continued beneath an impassable dank thicket of slippery, moss-hung, scrub-willow branches.  I grabbed them and hauled myself up the bank.  I wasn't afraid of animals.  My pot-farmer and I had confronted bears, so I knew what to do if I came upon one; but cougars were something else.  I felt safer here than at the cabin.  This was my call.  Whatever happened, I could only blame myself.  After a few miles of trudging up and down, and hiking diagonally, on a mountainside, then dropping down again, I came to a wide, meandering creek, shallow enough to wade in when the bank became an impenetrable tangle of heavy brush.  The sun had risen higher; it had grown hot.  I refilled my bottle.

            Continuing on, I picked some ripe berries and New Zealand spinach, and gathered pine-nuts, stowing them in my pack.  Leaving the creek, I came around a hill and found myself on an old, broken up, two-lane highway which ended at a narrow trail snaking along the edge of a precipice.  I followed the sharply turning trail cut into an outcropping of lofty granite cliffs, for a mile or so.  Hanging on to the rocky face, I inched around a curve, ending up in a small clearing, where I chanced upon a rickety, wooden shack set back among thistles and scrub oak.  Dill weeds and saplings grew through the roof's weathered boards.  Against its side, under the eaves, leaned an old woman's style bicycle.

            I approached slowly, crying out at the sudden flight of a covey of mourning doves which wheeled into the air on squeaky wings and settled on branches of nearby trees.  The door of the shack was missing so I sidled in and waited in the musty heat in darkness till my eyes adjusted.  A figure loomed in a corner.  I held my breath and waited.  After a moment, I called out, "Hello?  Who are you?"  I crept towards the figure and saw it was only a black wool coat hanging on the wall on rusty nail.  I braced myself against a beat-up wooden table, varnish flaking with age.  The table was cluttered with  insect flecked papers, discolored and stiff as autumn leaves.  I shuffled through the papers, trying to read the faded, illegible script.  A stained mattress sagged in a corner; white ashes drifted from the rusty iron stove when I opened its door.  I turned to leave, kicking smashed beer cans and stepping over empty whiskey bottles littering the bare boards.  I should take this coat, I told myself, it might come in handy later when it gets cold; may not make it to a village by nightfall.  Who had it belonged to?  I lifted it off the nail, coughing and sneezing as the dust and grime sifted down.  I reached into and inside pocket and pulled out a yellowed newspaper clipping dated July 25, 2001, three years ago.  I took the clipping outside and sat on the stoop in the sun.  Smoothing the fragile parchment out on my lap, I read:

ILLEGAL ORGAN-BROKER RING STING FAILS

Global Government Intelligence Operations (GGIO) sting fails when suspected child-abductors disappear.  Its leader, James Kenneth Peterson, uses several aliases: John Allen Petty, James John Petrie.

            Peterson is about six-feet-four, fair, blue eyes, usually clean shaven, black hair cut very short or shaved off.  As a youth, it is alleged he may have undergone extensive gang scarification.  He sometimes goes by the nickname Rocker (he once played guitar with an esoteric ritualistic group known as Plutonium Ice).

            His cohort, known only as Petey, or Bud, Whiddick; his girl-friend, Lauren; the leader's brother, Winston, and his girl, Jeanne, are also missing and wanted for questioning.  No last names are known for the women.

            Peterson is known to have served memorably in various world-wide Peace-Keeping missions in Central Africa, South Central America, Bosnia, and RusoChina.

            These abductors sell children to an illegal organ-brokers ring dealing in children's body-parts.  The ring's sophisticated operation uses forged documentation and employs helicopters, and private jets for world-wide transport of organs.

            The operation is headed by a man known by the alias Heshano Ben Amed, aka: Heshie, rumored to have once been an internationally respected, top-flight pediatric organ transplant surgeon.  Ongoing investigations on the location of his headquarters are also in place.

            It is suspected that the abductors may be hiding out in an inaccessible area of the Shasta-Cascade range in Northern California, where increasing yet unconfirmed Big Foot sightings have been reported over the years by hunters and environmentalists.  Anyone having any knowledge of these child abductors may call the GGIO hot-line or reach it on the Net @ www.ggio.gov/hot-line.

            I jumped up.  The paper slid to the ground.  I ran, fleeing into the trees, leaned against one to catch my breath.  I picked up the clipping, sat down and read it again.  My heart tripped.  I stood up and looked around.  Birds flew about from tree to tree.  A noisy woodpecker beat a tattoo high on the trunk of a pine.  Bees buzzed about from thistle to thistle, and butterflies lazed in the sun, their wings opening and closing like slow pulses.  I paced, stirring up the dry soil in front of the shack.  I hadn't seen any helicopters.  Docker and his gang were simply a bunch of losers, I reasoned, whose unfortunate children had to live with them until they were old enough to decide what they wanted to do.  I stopped.  The electric buzz of cicadas droned on.

Next up:  Mist rationalizes what she read in the news clipping.  But what does her inner voice tell her?  And what transpired between her and the kids give her all the more reason to escape.  It's not just about  her.