But now, today, whatever day today was, he had a problem—and it wasn’t poison oak because that was dried up now and it wasn’t the shits, though come to think of it he did have the shits and that was from drinking out of whatever stream whether it was in the state forest or running through the lumber company property like silver music playing all on its own or maybe the Noyo, never the same river twice, everything in flux, including his fucked-up bowels—and that problem was backup. He’d begun to realize—or no, the realization slammed into him like the hundred arrows that transfixed Potts—that he was vulnerable on his own turf where anybody could see his plants and maybe the bunker too if they looked hard enough and hadn’t he spotted a helicopter going over just the day before? And all those jets, high up, like silver needles threading the sky, every one of them equipped with super-secret spy cameras? Too much, way too much, and he’d really let his guard down this time, hadn’t he?
A new bunker, that was what he needed, a backup plan, a place to retreat to if it came to it, anybody could see that and you didn’t have to be a tactical genius to appreciate the value of it. So he had a shovel and a bow saw he’d taken from the Boy Scout camp on the Noyo which was abandoned now for the season because the Boy Scouts were all back in school and he was heading overland—no sense in showing himself on the roads—to a place he knew of six miles north, very secure, high ground surrounding the pool a spring made when it pushed out of the mountain. Pure water, that was what he was thinking. A spring. None of this bacteria and giardia and human waste the aliens fed into all these other streams. He went through the trees, down a ravine, up the other side, double time, and the air was cool and the bugs asleep, and when he got there he unwrapped a handful of Hershey’s Kisses for the sugar rush and then used the little soft foil wrappers to make himself a blunt and smoke out while he contemplated the arrangements.
The Boy Scouts, that was what he was thinking about. They were another kind of pathetic, crybabies and dudes and the sons of dudes, and they hadn’t really needed the sleeping bag he spread out by the side of the spring so he could lie back and watch the tops of the trees stir and settle and stir again before he got down to digging. And cutting. Maybe he closed his eyes. Maybe he drifted off. It didn’t really matter because he was dreaming when he was asleep and dreaming when he was awake and if the two dreams intertwined that was the way it was meant to be. What it was that woke him out of the one dream and sent him rushing into the other was a noise, the dull airtight thump of a car door slamming shut, but how could that be? How could there be a car out here? Unless—and the qualifier shot out claws to grab him down deep in his gut where he was already cramping—unless he hadn’t done a proper recon because he wasn’t a soldier at all or a mountain man either but just another unhard unprepared unfit version of the fat kids with their bags of Doritos he used to play World of Warcraft and Grand Theft Auto with before he pulled the plug on all that. Mountain men didn’t need video games. Mountain men didn’t need to waste hostiles by proxy. Who wanted to be connected? Who needed Doritos? Who needed fat kids? And nerds. Half of them were probably in China, Chinese nerds. No, he was disconnected and proud of it and had been since he was what, fourteen, fifteen?
But what about that noise? What about that slamming door? How could you have a secure backup position within earshot of a logging road? Cursing himself, knowing he’d fucked up, he came fully alert in that instant. Silently, he took up the rifle and rose to his knees, listening, trying to determine what direction the threat was coming from. The rifle had a pistol grip, which he’d wrapped in black electrical tape for the feel of it, the tactile sensation of knowing it was in his hand, wedded to it like skin, so he could feel his finger on the trigger with no interference and squeeze off rounds at will, thirty rounds to a clip and two more clips in the backpack and another 208 rounds of dull-silver Wolf 7.62mm bullets in there too. He could hold off an army. He would. Just bring them on.
Everything was silent. Some kind of peeping started up—a bird, or no, one of those chickaree squirrels, the kind that don’t know a thing beyond eating and shitting and fucking but cling to the high branches and bitch all day long, anyway—and that peeping was an unfortunate thing because it covered the sound of footsteps coming up the slope along the streambed. That and the noise of the stream itself. And that was crazy. How could you develop a defensive position and anticipate the enemy with all this racket? An electric bolt shot through him. He wanted to shout out to the squirrel to shut the fuck up. He wanted to blow him away, eradicate him with one blast, and then what? Then stomp his rodent head till it was just mush . . .
The voice came out of nowhere. “Hey, you,” the voice said, the voice demanded, “what do you think you’re doing in there?”