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A quote: “I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape. Something waits beneath it; the whole story doesn’t show.” ~~ Andrew Wyeth
I’ll start with a story …
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Worst winter since ’54. We had little choice but to spread our scouts thin.
I’m alone here at dawn, glasses up, watching one of our catches.
Intel has City doing a winter purge. Undesirables sent in our direction. Who is inside this catch? Criminal? Spy? Refugee? Something move, dammit!
As if on cue, there’s a flicker in the dark – small, frantic, and suddenly I’m running to the catch.
The bodies are stiff, curled around each other save for one small space where an arm is waving. I pull the toddler out, securing her inside my jacket, murmuring promises of home.
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Now, it’s your turn.
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. featured image, cropped, Adobe stock standard license.
GWB says: No, look, I get it. It’s ‘festive’.
But, Jim, wouldn’t you have better spent the time and effort you did to lug up that small generator for the lights putting a DOOR on the thing? See the snow inside? Sorta defeats the purpose of a shelter.
Cameron says: From where I stand, Jim had his priorities straight.
Cameron says: The agents closed in quickly. More undesirables to be rounded up which meant a good bonus. The point man got to the tent made of sticks and felt amusement that these people thought they could hide.
But there was no one inside. He beckoned the other agents over and they looked around in confusion.
Underneath their feet, I shushed the people that I’d brought out here. A smile crossed my face as I pushed the button. We felt the explosion that killed the agents and I pointed down the tunnel.
“One thousand yards straight ahead,” I said. “Welcome to Haven.”
Lewis says: We were on patrol, almost home, I was looking forward to seeing my wife. Where did that shelter come from, lights and all, what the heck?
The guys cautiously did the perimeter and surroundings, no tracks in the snow so much have been earlier. Nobody around, looking inside I see a box at the far end. No cover, filled with fabric, no wait, it’s a blanket, whoa, it’s a baby!
We bundled her up in my back pack and started off. My wife was always expecting me to bring her a surprise. This probably would do fairly well I thought!
The cold seeped through the heavy winter gear and into Mikhael Yehuda’s flesh and bones. Why had he volunteered to take this mission, to lie in a snow-covered blind and gather evidence? He was the son of a warm and sunny land, where snow was an occasion to be remembered for years.
But here he was in the Pacific Northwest, watching a warehouse that was believed to be an operational base for one of the more secretive new agencies of the Flannigan Administration. Probably better than back when he’d been tasked with tracking down those young fools who thought that playing with symbols and imagery of a certain regime of the last century was transgressive in the cool sense of the word. It had always left a sour taste in his mouth, to have to ruin lives that were just beginning, but he also understood why they had to be made an example of. The stakes were simply too high.
And if the Flannigan Administration, or even just a rogue element within it, were up to what Governor Thorne and her advisors thought it might be, this had to be stopped just as quickly, and just as firmly.
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