Chapter 4
871 Words
Micheal’s POV
The road curled like a snake through the pines, winding deeper into nowhere.
Ethan was strapped into the backseat, bundled in blankets, finally quiet.
Michael gripped the wheel tighter, every muscle in his neck coiled. The night outside was pitch-black, save for the headlights bouncing off pine trunks and deer warning signs.
His phone buzzed once in the cupholder. No caller ID, just like she always did.
He answered without hesitation.
“You close?” her voice rasped.
“Ten minutes out. Maybe less.”
“Good. Got everything ready. Nobody followed?”
“Of course not. You raised me better than that.”
She chuckled, low and grim. “Damn right I did.”
Static hissed in the background. Her CB radio was always on. Still running that scanner, just like old times.
“Do you have formula?” she asked. “Diapers?”
“Enough for now. I’ll make a run when things calm down. Don’t want to risk a*****e yet.”
“You won’t have to. I’ve got a guy coming tonight. He’ll drop what you need and keep quiet. As long as you pay cash.”
“I’ve got the stash from the camper.”
“Then we’re golden.”
A beat of silence passed between them then her voice softened.
“He looks like you, you know.”
Michael’s throat tightened. “Yeah.”
“They were gonna poison him,” she said. “Those people. All their rules. Their therapy talk. They don’t see what we see.”
“No,” Michael murmured. “They never did.”
“You’re protecting him. That’s what a father does.”
“I keep telling myself that,” he whispered.
“Don’t just tell yourself,” she snapped. “Know it. This world doesn’t raise good men. It raises obedient ones. You’re doing what they don’t have the guts to.”
The trees broke ahead, and Michael spotted the flickering lantern at the edge of the clearing. Her signal.
“I see you,” he said.
“Bring the boy in. It’s cold tonight.”
The call cut.
Michael pulled into the clearing, gravel crunching under the tires. The cabin was small, half-sunken into the hillside, with plywood over one window and a crooked chimney coughing smoke.
She stepped onto the porch before he even had Ethan unbuckled gray braid, flannel jacket, and eyes that had once talked him through building a bomb shelter before she taught him to read.
“Come on, baby,” she said, arms already open for her grandson. “Let’s get you safe.”
Michael handed Ethan over.
And for the first time in days, he let himself breathe.
The cabin smelled like cedar, mildew, and wood smoke. Exactly as he remembered.
Evelyn moved through the space with precision loading the woodstove, checking the blackout curtains, placing Ethan in a worn bassinet lined with old army blankets.
“I’ve still got the old battery bank running,” she said. “Solar panel’s garbage now, but the generator’s clean. Lights only. No cameras. No Wi-Fi. You know the drill.”
“No digital footprint,” Michael echoed.
“Only kind worth having.”
She poured a can of soup into a dented pot, added powdered bone broth, and stirred it over the fire. Michael watched her from the table, his legs jiggling with nerves.
“You look like hell,” she said without turning.
“Haven’t slept since I took him.”
Evelyn nodded. “You will. Once the adrenaline burns off. First time’s the hardest.”
“This wasn’t supposed to be the first, Ma. It was supposed to be it.”
She finally looked over at him face lined, eyes sharp. “You think this is over already?”
Michael exhaled. “I don’t know. I keep hearing sirens in the wind.”
Evelyn walked to the radio by the window. Turned the dial slowly through static until voices broke through. Police frequencies. Highway chatter. Small-town gossip cloaked as code.
“They’re not close,” she said. “Not yet. But they will be. They always come eventually.”
“Then we move soon.”
“Not tonight. He’s too little. Weather’s dropping. You want him to survive this, he needs sleep and warmth.”
Michael rubbed his eyes. “He cried for her once. Nadyia. Just once. But it rattled me.”
Evelyn didn’t flinch. “She’s not his mother. Not in the ways that count. You’re his blood. That matters more.”
Michael wasn’t sure if that comforted or gutted him.
A log cracked in the stove. Ethan stirred but didn’t wake. Evelyn checked him again anyway fingers light, practiced.
“You should rest while you can,” she said. “I’ll keep watch.”
Michael hesitated. “You trust me not to crack?”
“No,” she said flatly. “I trust me to catch you if you do.”
Michael lay on the cot near the fire. Listened to the radio buzz. The baby’s tiny breaths. The creak of Evelyn’s boots as she paced, rifle never far.
And for a few hours, in a cabin swallowed by woods and ghosts, Michael slept.
- Writer
