Page 95 of Eco-Activist's Mountain Men
Another silence. Eventually, Jack gets up and refills his coffee from the jug. The waiting is… painful. The ominous feeling of dread that has been with me since I first saw that text from Tim Collier seems to grow and loom greater in the quietness. I need to do something—anything—to distract myself.
"How long will it take the boys to fix those cameras and get back here, do you think?" I ask Jack.
"An hour and a half, maybe two hours."
I consider this. Then make up my mind.
"Right then," I say as brightly as I can manage, given the circumstances. "I'm not sitting here like this for two hours. I'm going to clean the kitchen from top to bottom."
"Good idea."
"Yeah, and you two can help."
We turn the kitchen upside down, scrubbing surfaces, paying attention to the stuff that usually doesn't get properly cleaned—even the coffee jug gets a going over. At last, everything is shiny and clean, and the kitchen almost sparkles in its newfound cleanliness. Just as Luke is wringing out the sponge he's been using to clean the sink with, we hear the quad bike motor inthe distance, getting louder, informing us that Toby and Eric are back.
I make for the door, but Jack reaches out an arm and holds me back. "Sorry, Luna. Not today. Not tomorrow either. Best stay inside. Just for a day or two. For your own good. Don't forget you're car?—"
"Carrying a baby," I finish for him. "Yeah, I know. I guess you're right."
"Just for a day or so. Until this all blows over." He reassures me.
"Better safe than sorry," Luke adds his own thought. "We'll all wait here. Let them come to us."
So we wait in the kitchen until Eric and Toby come stomping in, Eric holding the rifle, which he immediately puts down in order to turn his laptop on.
"They're in place," he tells us. "We're pretty sure no one saw us. We certainly didn't see anything, anyway. Now… let's see if we can…" He busies himself, tapping the keyboard and moving the mouse around for a moment or two.
"There we go. All working."
Just as before, we all crowd around to take a look. Sure enough, just like earlier, we see the screen divided into four equal boxes, two of which are grayed out and not in use. The top two boxes, though, are both occupied with real-time video images. We can see they're real-time because there's some leaf movement in the gentle breeze.
"The one on the left is the main track. It's up by that big boulder. You know… past the sharp right bend as you go down the hill."
"Got it," confirms Jack, and Luke nods to show he recognizes the spot.
"The other one is about halfway down the steep slope where it bends slowly to the left. A bit higher up towards us than the other camera."
"Right."
"Yeah, they look fine. Now I guess we need to make sure at least one of us is monitoring them."
"Oh yeah," I say. "I hadn't thought of that part of it. Isn't there an alarm system, or anything?"
"No, nothing like that. You can set it to only record when it detects movement, but it doesn't actually send an alert or anything."
"So that means if we're not really careful, someone could easily slip past and we wouldn't ever know," I say.
Toby bends down to ruffle my hair. "You know you said you wanted a job, Luna?"
"Oh, for fuck's sake." I throw my hands up in disgust. But secretly, I am glad for the touch. I catch myself wondering if I'll still be around this time tomorrow to enjoy it. I gulp. I hope so. Truly, I do. But I have to be brave in front of my boys. I can't let them see how much this asshole Tim Collier is getting to me. It wouldn't be fair to them. They're worried enough about me already.
"Alright, alright, I'll do it. But I'm not doing it on my own. I'll need company. Besides, I might miss something. Better to have two people. You guys can take shifts with me. Then, when I need a rest, someone can take over for me. Alright?"
"Alright, we agree."
"What about nighttime?"
"What do you mean?" Eric responds.
