Page 48 of If You Go
On the monitor, Gavin’s head snaps toward the gallery. He gestures, and two men peel off, guns up.
“Good girl, Bridge,” Joshua breathes. “Let’s go while they’re idiots.”
“…Isn’t that, always?” I ask. Josh beams at me before nodding and turning the supplies.
We start packing—quiet, efficient. Gunnar’s not here, but his systems are; Josh dumps the live buffer to an encrypted drive. Bridget queues the cameras to record on motion until the batteries die if the power doesn’t come back on first. “If ye must leave a house,” she mutters, “leave it watchin’.”
We gather at the back panel—the one that looks like a bookcase. It hisses when Bridget slides the keycard and turns the hidden crank. Cold air leaks in. The passage yawns open—black, ribbed with old stone and new conduit.
The first step down always takes something from you. I tighten my grip on Brenden’s shoulder and take it anyway. He insisted on going first so that if anyone falls he can catch us, but also if he falls he won’t drag anyone else down.
The passage is barely wide enough for two people to walk side by side. The walls close in, sweating damp against the low hum of emergency lights that flicker overhead. It smells like copper, wet earth, and old secrets. Papa used to joke the tunnel was from “the bad old days”—and every Irish child knows there are a lot of those—built first to move people, then to move contraband, then—when we tried to be better—to move our own safely when the world forgot how.
My blanket drags, the edge dark from the floor, but I keep moving. My heart won’t slow down—it’s in my throat, in my fingertips, in the echo of our steps. Each sound makes me flinch. It’s too much like before—the hiding, the silence, the hope that staying quiet means staying alive.
Halfway down, a dull, heavy thud rolls through the stone—something above, something big.
We freeze.
Another thud. Closer to the study this time. Then a muffled voice: “Clear.”
Brenden’s thumb strokes the side of my hand once, a small, deliberate anchor. I lift my chin. I won’t be small again.
“Go on, then,” Bridget whispers behind us, voice soft and flint. “Lead us out, a chroí.”
We move. One turn, then another, the tunnel pitching gently as it follows bedrock. We must have walked four or five miles at this point when finally a steel door looms out of the gloom—industrial, over sized, a wheel at its center like a ship. Bridget spins it. The seal sighs and releases. Cold, dry air rushes over us.
The lights flick on in stages—fluorescent strips blooming awake one by one. For a second I’m blind. Then shapes resolve: shelves of sealed crates, stacked fuel cans, pallets of MREs, tool chests, three covered vehicles gleaming under tarps…and at the far end, the chopper.
Hope, mechanical and loud, with rotors like razor-edged promises.
Hazel makes a delighted, slightly feral sound. “Hello, gorgeous.” She’s already moving—checks, switches, straps. Her hands are sure, practiced. Of course they are.
“Helmets,” Bridget snaps, tossing them out like loaves of bread. “Ear pro. Belts on.”
The rotors begin to turn, slow at first, then faster—wind tugging hair and clothes into flapping banners. Dust lifts in veils. Juniper whoops and immediately clamps a hand over her own mouth to muffle it. Alisha’s fingers find mine, squeeze hard, let go.
“Buckle up, kiddies,” Hazel says, voice steady as earth. “Mama’s driving.”
The floor shudders as the roof panels above us unlatch and peel apart like the petals of some black steel flower. Night air pours down—wet, sweet, full of pine and the ghost of river.
Then we lift.
Weightlessness snatches my stomach and sets it back down somewhere behind my ribs. The chopper rises through the open mouth of the bunker; the tunnel throat shrinks below us, the overhead panels sliding back into place with a soft hydraulic kiss. Hazel noses us sideways and up, keeping the pine canopy between us and the manor as long as physics allows.
We skim the treetops, drowned in rotor thunder. Through the open door, I catch the faintest glow—the manor’s silhouette, blacked out and armored, holding its ground like an animal baring its teeth. Somewhere inside, men are opening cupboards and finding ghosts. Let them. Let him.
“Talk to me,” Brenden says, mouth to my ear to beat the noise. “You okay?”
“I’m… here.” It isn’t eloquent, but it’s true. The wind steals the rest.
We bank south, hugging the dark spine of the hills. The compound melts into forest, then forest melts into nothing at all. No headlights behind us. No beam raking the sky. Hazel flies low and dirty, the way a guilty thing flies when it intends to live.
On the far monitor bolted near Hazel’s knee, a split screen runs from the house—motion only. Black and white ghosts drift room to room. I watch long enough to see Gavin pause in my doorway again, eyes sweeping the bed one last time, like a man convinced a sea will give back what it has already taken.
“Next time,” I whisper to the wind that shreds the words before anyone else can hear, “we won’t be the ones running.”
Brenden’s hand tightens around mine. I don’t look away from the trees.
