True Allegiance

Minot, North Dakota, lay near the banks of the Souris River, a midsized town of forty thousand just south of the Canadian border. It was truly the middle of nowhere, Soledad thought. They’d moved north, then north, then north some more, out of the populated areas, out where it would take a lot of manpower to track them down. They’d nearly been tracked down in California; the authorities still thought they were there, having originally believed, mistakenly, that they’d been burned during the fire at the ranch. By the time investigators caught onto the fact that they were still alive, they were in Idaho. Every few days, they moved.

Until they reached Minot. In Minot, Aiden had allies and friends. His parents had come from there before moving south, and he still had a pack of relatives unafraid to lend him a covert helping hand. It wasn’t like the FBI had a heavy presence in the area, and Aiden figured that everybody up here pretty much kept their mouth shut as much as possible. “Neighborly,” Aiden had called it.

The only major employer in the area was the US Air Force base they’d all need to avoid, although since the attack, the base had been pretty much abandoned, with all the National Guard being called to New York for cleanup. The nearby turnoffs were all smaller towns, many of less than a thousand people. The land was relatively treeless, but Aiden had managed to find a more heavily wooded area for the group to hunker down; there had been an abandoned barn and a decent-sized cabin he’d rented in cash from a distant cousin under the table.

And there, the acolytes had begun to arrive. The first were men who had approached Aiden’s family about finding help during the big call-up. They were mostly local boys, men who didn’t want to be sent to New York for an indeterminate length of time, who had joined the National Guard mainly out of state pride and a feeling of local duty. Some were cowards; those, Aiden spotted and turned away. But some, he thought, could be useful.

Aiden had a few rules about the new recruits. No married men—they had too many ties that could be exploited by the government if their identities were uncovered. No cell phones—the government’s surveillance programs were far too sophisticated to allow uncontrolled transmission. No Internet, for the same reason. And no leaving the base: a random spot check by a local cop could bring the entire weight of the federal government down on them, even if the feds were currently busy cleaning up the atrocity in New York. That meant that the group was immobile, in constant need of supplies.

Nonetheless, in days, the group had grown from the handful of original militiamen into a small force of nearly forty. Soledad had gotten to know each of them. She had a gift for connecting with people, the same gift that had made her a staple of the evening news coverage, and she was truly interested in all of them. It flattered most of them. And all of them were grateful for a place to go.

Aiden clapped his hands together, trying to warm them. Another freezing day in paradise.

They’d settled into a kind of routine. Every morning, Aiden would check the barn door, make sure that nobody had been snooping around, make sure that none of the vehicles had been moved. The early snow had been their ally: he could see by footprints who had been where. Next, he’d take the truck down to the road, see if he could spot any traffic coming or going, anybody snooping. He’d put together a little task force to walk the perimeter of the property and stand shifts during the day. Aiden wasn’t taking chances.

After ensuring that the posse was alone, Aiden would take the truck into town. He’d pick up supplies with the cash the posse had brought with them. They were beginning to run short on money; Aiden figured that sooner or later, they’d have to begin sending in members to make withdrawals, a risky business at best. A disproportionate number of cash withdrawals would certainly raise red flags in the middle of nowhere. He’d been trying to come up with alternatives, but other than robbing banks, he couldn’t think of a quick or easy solution.