Page 97

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For a long time, Paul stared at the Deacon.

Paul Brightman , he’d said, to which the Deacon had replied, I thought so . So who the hell was this Stephen Lucas, and how did he know Paul’s name?

“Get in there, Brightman,” Lucas said.

Paul scrambled into the shelter. Underneath the blanket of leaves was a ridgepole supported by a couple of sturdy branches lashed together with twine. Inside, the shelter was lined with pine needles and leaves and grasses as insulation. Looking up, he glimpsed the branches that formed the ribs of the structure. This was an ingenious cocoon. His father had once made one from forest debris, meant to look like a deadfall, a pile of fallen trees and brush. It was far more elaborate than the debris shelters he’d constructed.

It was cold in there, but he knew that his body heat would warm the space up quickly. It was designed for that.

He heard Lucas say, “Hal, Leon, would you set up a stakeout, make sure this gentleman is safe?” The other two grunted, and Paul heard the crackling of twigs on the ground as they departed.

“You okay in there?” Lucas said.

“I’m good.”

“I gotta move,” Lucas said, “but I’ll be back. We’ve got our own shelters. Gotta hide, too.”

“Okay. And—uh, thank you.”

Paul listened for the FBI SWAT team, who would not be able to move silently through the forest. The Pemigewasset Wilderness was immense, nearly fifty thousand acres in the heart of the White Mountains. But that didn’t mean the FBI team wouldn’t be able to find him in this vast forest.

The Deacon and his men were obviously some kind of anarchists who rejected the government and its laws and modern society and lived in the woods, off the grid, in their own society. He remembered seeing a couple of bearded men in the woods a few days before who didn’t look like hikers, and now he wondered if they were part of this clan.

Paul stuck his head out of the shelter and looked around, but saw nobody. Nor did he hear anybody. He clambered out of the shelter, relieved himself, went back inside. He listened, heard only the sounds of the forest. The sky was dimming, and the sun hung low over an orange and pink sky.

A little while later, he was startled by a voice, which he quickly recognized as the Deacon’s.

“You okay in there?”

“I’m good,” Paul replied, poking his head out.

Stephen Lucas, aka the Deacon, was standing there, the cheeks above his beard deeply tanned and deeply wrinkled. Paul had no idea how old he was.

“Hey. What did you mean, you thought I was Paul Brightman?”

“Well, I thought you were a Brightman. You look like your father. And you talk like him.”

“You know him?”

“Long time ago. Served together in ’Nam. Then I got caught up in the Weather Underground, and a couple of explosions went sideways, and I found myself a wanted man.”

“So you’re a fugitive.”

“Call me whatever, I don’t care.”

“You live here in the woods?”

“Not here. Not anywhere. We’re always on the move. Like the Indians—the American Indians, the tribal nations. We don’t build pyramids, and we don’t keep slaves.”

Astonished, Paul said, “Are you in touch with my father?”

“I know he lives in Quadrant Twenty-Eight.”

“Where’s that?”

“Northern Pennsylvania. The Hammersley Wild Area in the Susquehannock State Forest. Closest town is Austin.”

“Austin . . . Pennsylvania?”

“Right. Not Texas.”

Paul scrabbled out of the shelter. “How do you know that?”

“How do I know that? We have means of communication. Like the tribes, like the French Underground in World War Two. Only, we’ve got walkie-talkies.”

“They work in the woods?”

“Not far. A mile, half a mile. Uses FRS.”

“Which is . . . ?”

Lucas shook his head, unwilling to explain. “We’ve got repeaters. Human repeaters, just like the Afghanis. Extends across most of the country.”

“Jesus, how many people are we talking?”

“Nearly fifty thousand, all told. Why you so interested?”

“I’ve just never heard—”

Lucas interrupted him. “You got a plan? Or are you just running?”

“I—I have someone I want to talk to.”

“On the phone or—”

“Gotta be in person,” Paul said.

“Where?”

“Western Mass. Near Lenox.”

“And how you plan to get there?”

“Bus,” Paul said. Trains were out: Amtrak required a government ID. He worried about buying another used car: too many cameras record your license plate.

“Bus terminals have cameras, you know, just like train stations and airports,” Lucas said. “More and more places use facial recognition. You can bet the FBI has sent your picture to every bus terminal and train station and airport in the country.”

“So you have a recommendation?”

“Freight trains. You want to move without Big Brother noticing, hop a freight train. I’ll tell you how to do it when the time comes.”

“Huh.” That sounded like an easy way to get killed or dismembered.

“You thinking of going off grid? Not so easy, unless you do it the way we do it.”

Paul thought for a moment. He’d come to trust this guy. “I changed my identity,” he said. “Hid out for a long while.”

“How long?”

“Five years.”

Lucas whistled. “Ain’t easy these days. Digital era. I’m guessing you couldn’t use credit cards.”

“I used Visa and Amex gift cards. Bought with cash.”

“You had a job?”

“Built boats.”

“Probably paid in cash, right?”

Paul nodded.

“Wore a disguise?”

“Not really. A beard, that’s it, but lots of guys have beards these days.”

“Gotta obey all the rules. Never break the law.”

Paul shrugged.

“And you stay off Facebook and Twitter.”

“Of course.”

“You get lonely?”

Paul shook his head. “Not really. For a while, I had a girlfriend. Good person. I wasn’t so lonely.” He thought about Sarah with a pang. He knew things were over between them, but he hoped against hope that she was okay.

“Leaving her behind?”

“It’s over. Not really leaving her behind.”

“Miss your old life?”

“From five years ago? Not a bit.”

The shadows had grown long, and daylight was disappearing. The Deacon seemed to trust him, too. “I suggest you spend the night here,” he told Paul. “Tomorrow we can move down to Concord.”

“Why Concord?”

“That’s the closest freight train. Get you down to Lenox, Mass. We’ve got people in that area who can help you out, you need help. You should join us.”

“Living in the woods? No, thanks. Not for me. I prefer a normal existence, sorry.”

“All you people living in what you call your ‘normal existence’ and what I call the Matrix, your lives are regimented in ways you don’t even see. Man, I mean, people wear T-shirts saying they’re nonconformists, same shirt their friends wear. Same Sysco trucks service all the restaurants they eat in. All the bankers wearing the same suits and ties, made by one of seven manufacturers, spending their days in cubicles. They’re all slaves of the state. I don’t care whether you call it New York State or Goldman Sachs.”

“You just have to obey the law and—”

“Sure,” the Deacon said, “the state demands obedience in everything that matters. Nursery school on, we’re taught compliance. Learn how to be a good pupil. Sit quietly in your chair! Do what teacher says. Fill out this spreadsheet, earn your wage. Well, that ain’t freedom. That’s slavery masquerading as emancipation. Back in the day, the tribal nations, they were invited to disappear into the dominant system of the colonizers—by which I mean America—and they said, ‘Hell no.’ Lots of them got killed rather than assimilate because they knew the price was too goddamned high.”

“You all live in the woods?”

“We’ve taken to calling ourselves the ‘woodsmen.’ You know that nearly ninety percent of the U.S.A. is uninhabited? Undeveloped wilderness. Forested like it was a thousand years ago. You throw a dart at a map of the U.S., you’re likely not hitting Sacramento or St. Louis. You’re hitting a place that other people say is nowhere. That’s our somewhere. There’s more space in this country where nobody is than where anybody is.”

“You’re survivalists.”

The Deacon shook his head. “Most survivalists build communities. Instead, we have an empire that’s always on the move. Like the tribal nations.”

“So you’re like a tribal nation of your own.”

“We recognize no management class, no rulers—”

“Except you—you seem to be the boss.”

“One of many. Just here to coordinate. We’ve got no system of hierarchy. No one gets assigned a number.”

Paul nodded and fell silent. Neither man spoke for a while. Finally, Paul said, “It’s not for me.”

“Maybe it will be,” the Deacon said. “You never know what happens. Anyway, I’ll send the word on ahead, tell them to be on the lookout for you.”