The Hunt: The Oakmont Saga, Book 2

We got to the cul-de-sac that Coach Sullivan lived on a few hours later. His house stuck out, since it was the only house that wasn’t huge and fancy. It was a nice house, but definitely not a rich house like all the others around it. He told me once that they built the neighborhood around his house after they tried to get him to sell and he wouldn’t.

We walked onto the porch and I pressed the doorbell button. It was only a moment before the door opened slightly, Coach Sullivan looking at us.

“Melanie, Aliyah, what are you doing here? Are you alright,” he asked, opening the door completely and ushering us inside.

“We need help and a place to rest,” Aliyah told him. “Rest I can do. What kind of help do you kids need?”

A plan suddenly bloomed in my mind. I wasn’t sure how well it’d work, but it was better than trying to trek across the country by ourselves. And it was all I could come up with at that moment.

Aliyah and I were now Pioneers in our AHG troop, which meant we were able to attend High Adventure Camp. This past summer, the camp was held at the fort on Caines Head, south of Seward. That old fort would be perfect for us to hide out and if necessary, defend ourselves.

“Could you drive us to Seward?” I asked. Coach Sullivan and his wife were silent, as if they didn’t know what to say, or what they could say.

“We can pay for gas,” I added.

“Gas isn’t a problem,” he replied, finally getting over whatever shock he had been in. “That’s a long way and why would you want to go to Seward?”

“I think we could hide out at the old fort on Caines Head,” I told him.

“What will you do about food and water?” he asked.

Food I had thought about. Although we’d definitely be hungry in a short amount of time, we could get by on trail mix, like Aliyah and I had done once before. Water was a different matter, and I hadn’t thought about that.

“There is another place that might work, though. It has water year round and typically has food stocked. You’d have to kind of break in, but if you’re desperate, it would work. Heat is kept on during the winter, so the pipes don’t freeze, but it isn’t used during the winter, so you’d be safe there,” he said, definitely getting my interest.

“But, before I tell you where it is, I want to know why you’re running and from who. Breaking into a place is a crime, and I’ll be complicit in it, so I want to know why I’m going to help you,” he continued, after a pause to look at me intently.

I never understood why adults did that look to kids. Did they think we weren’t aware of how serious whatever they were talking to us about was?

However, Aliyah and I needed to decide if we were willing to tell him. Anything he knew about us would put him in danger, and the more he knew, the more danger he’d be in. That was my answer, I realized.

“Coach Sullivan, everything I tell you about us will put you in more danger. The less you know, the safer you are,” I said.

“Then I guess I can’t help you,” he replied, standing up, as if he was going to go somewhere.

“Please don’t make us tell you,” I begged, tears forming in my eyes. I didn’t want to be the reason for him getting locked away for the rest of his life and I knew it’d happen if I told him.

“I’m not willing to put my career and reputation on the line without knowing why I’m doing it,” he stated, adamant about his need to know. I was unable to say anything. Tears, which had already formed in my eyes, were now pouring out in a river. I was sobbing, unable to control myself.

I could feel him watching me, but he wasn’t doing anything else. That was how I remembered him from my time at the school. He never interfered with kids that were having emotional moments, allowing them to work it out for themselves. He only interfered when they became a disruption to the class, or a danger to themselves or others. However, he always kept a watch on them, ready to be there if he was needed.

What bothered me though, was that I was now that kid. I’d never been that kid before, the one he watched slyly, but didn’t interfere with. I had always been better controlled than that, but I wasn’t anymore. I was weak.

Wanting to hide my weakness, I got up and walked into the kitchen, not caring that I hadn’t been invited. I put my back against a wall and slid down, my emotions too much for me to control.

“We can read your mind,” Aliyah said, making the decision for me and carrying on in my absence.

“I already gathered that,” he told her.

“Please don’t mess with her, Mrs. Sullivan. She needs to be alone for a little while. She’ll be okay, I promise,” Aliyah said. I guessed that Mrs. Sullivan was worried about me and was coming to try and help me, but Aliyah was right. I needed to be alone for a little while.

“Our Dads were given something before we were born that gave this to us, but our Dads got something different than all of the others in the experiment. We can do more and they know it, but they don’t know what we can do, and they want to,” she explained.

“And?” he pushed.

“Mel, can I tell him?” she asked me, raising her voice to make sure I could hear. I wasn’t sure what she was referring to at first, but suddenly I knew. Goosebumps sprouted all over me, I began sweating really bad and I started shaking like a leaf, but I nodded, through my sobs.

“When she left your school, she went to a school called Oakmont. It was a secret government program to train telepathic kids to be spies, I guess. She wasn’t treated very good there. Just before we were ready to escape, the research doctors took her and started doing experiments on her. They did really bad things to her and made her even stronger. They want her back.”

“What kind of bad things did they do?” Mrs. Sullivan asked.

“Stop!” I screamed, the memories becoming too much. My legs were now curled up to my chin and I was rocking back and forth. Tears were pouring from my eyes, if possible, even faster than they already had been.

“Dear God, what did they do to you?” she asked, realizing she’d pushed me too far with her curiosity. From the corners of my eyes, I could see her standing nearby, looking down on me.

“You don’t want to know,” Aliyah told them.

“What kind of abilities do you have, that they want that badly?” Coach Sullivan asked. He hadn’t come to see me.

“Even if it means you won’t help us, we won’t tell,” Aliyah replied.

“I assume her Dad has been hiding and protecting you girls since you escaped?” he then asked, but Aliyah was done answering questions and I was in no condition to reply.

“Alright. I won’t push anymore. I’ll take you there,” he said.

Coach Sullivan’s wife sat beside me, probably to try and comfort me, but I had fully reverted to my old self. I scurried as fast as I could into a different corner, curling up and shaking, with no concern for how it looked anymore. I didn’t want anyone near me. I had thought I was past all of that, but I was wrong...very wrong.

“You know, there might be only one way for you to be somewhat safe,” Coach Sullivan went on to say, after thinking for a little while.

“What’s that?” Aliyah asked.

“Tell the world what they did and live as openly as possible, right in front of them. Dare them to take you, because then everyone would see it happen,” he suggested. I had never thought about something so brazen, and I knew Dad hadn’t either. Considering Dad’s background, that kind of idea was probably foreign to him. Thinking about it actually started bringing me out of my stupor.

It took a couple more minutes, but I calmed myself down and finally wiped my face off. It actually felt like there was something helping me calm down, but my mind was too messed up to think about it.

“I’m sorry,” I said, once I looked up at Mrs. Sullivan, who was still sitting on the floor across from me. She looked worried, and maybe sympathetic, but not angry or anything like that.

“Melanie, I’m sorry I brought bad memories back to you,” Coach Sullivan said, very apologetically, when I finally walked back in the living room. “Now, let’s go and get you kids someplace safe,” he said, once he was sure I was alright.

Once we had loaded up in his large SUV, his wife came up to his window and he rolled it down. “There are roadblocks set up on the Glenn, just before the Knik River, and also just before Muldoon. They’re searching every vehicle. They’re talking about it over the police scanner,” she informed him, and us as well.

“It’s a good thing we’re not going that far,” he said, with a broad grin.

“Be careful,” she said, and kissed him.

“I will,” he replied, once they separated.

“I can’t believe we’re going to let four kids go off by themselves,” she exclaimed.

“I don’t know what else to do.”

“We could let them stay here, with us.”

“No,” Aliyah and I both said together, and with force.

“Why not?” she asked.

“Because, if they find out you helped us, they’ll lock you up forever,” Aliyah replied.

“Taking us to wherever it is we’re going, you can still claim you never saw us. They won’t know any different and,” I added, but she cut me off before I could finish with, “we stay safe,” to which we both nodded.

“But, I don’t care about staying safe. I care about helping four kids, who need help,” she countered.

“We’ll just run away,” I said, somewhat quietly, knowing it was true but not liking that it sounded ungrateful.

“You would too, wouldn’t you?” she prodded, to which we both nodded.

“At least leave the younger kids,” she suggested.

“We can’t. They’ll come after them too and you can’t keep them hidden forever,” Aliyah replied.

“I don’t like this,” she said, seeming to have given up the argument.

“Dana, at least we’ll know where they are and we can check up on them once in awhile,” he told her, to which she nodded acceptance.

“What if someone notices you coming to check on us?” Aliyah asked.

“We’ll take our chances,” he replied, as if that was the end of the discussion.

It was, I guess, but it meant we needed to figure out another way out of the area. And if they had the roads blocked, then they probably had all transportation out of the area watched as well. What could we do?

I mulled over our nonexistent options the entire trip to the place Coach Sullivan took us. It was amazingly close to where he lived, taking less than ten minutes to get there. It was off South Birchwood, well into the woods, and off the musher trails. It looked like a church camp.

“There’s a key hidden under the mat behind the kitchen you can use to open up the main lodge, the bathhouse and a cabin. Put it back when they’re all opened,” he told us, and Aliyah took the key that he offered.

“We aren’t actually breaking in, are we?” I asked.

“No, not exactly, but if anyone found out you were here, we’d all be in trouble,” he replied, as Aliyah went to open up the buildings he instructed her to open.

“What is this place?” I asked.

“It used to be a church camp, but they sold it to a non-profit youth organization, which I’m a member of,” he answered.

“Please clean up after yourselves, and please don’t break anything,” he said, to which I nodded.

“There is a phone in the main lodge, if you need anything. My number is on a piece of paper beside it. I think that’s all.”

“Thank you, Coach Sullivan,” I said, as I climbed out, Ben and Eliana following me.

We all took our packs and headed to the cabin that Aliyah had opened. By the time we came back out, Coach Sullivan was gone.

Since it was getting rather late, and none of us had eaten, we went to the lodge to see what we could do about dinner. There was plenty of food, but all of it required us to cook, and it also required a lot of preparation. There was no meat, however. Coach Sullivan’s assessment of the food at the camp was a bit inaccurate.

Finally, we found something that would work, even if it wasn’t ideal. We had crackers, as well as peanut butter. Looking in the fridge, there was jelly, so we had peanut butter and jelly crackers for supper.

Once we were done, we went to the cabin, locking the door behind us, and prepared for bed. Before we finished getting ready, I remembered something Uncle Mike had told me.

I pulled out one of the cell phones and went into the contacts list. There weren’t many, so finding the one I wanted was easy. I pressed the call button and put it to my ear.

“Hello?” Simply hearing his voice almost made me start crying, but I just managed to hold myself together.

“Mr. Ciansa,” I asked, using his alias from Oakmont. There was a short pause before he replied. I had seen him quite a few times since we escaped Oakmont, and I knew his name, so using that name should tell him something’s up.

“What’s wrong, Mel?”

“I don’t know how much I can say,” I replied.

“If you have one of your Dad’s or Mike’s phones that were in the baggies, then you’re safe,” he told me, confirming what Uncle Mike had said.

“They arrested Mom and Dad and I think Uncle Mike and Aunt Sarah too,” I replied, to which there was another pause, this time a little bit longer.

“Alright, I’ll be there in a few hours. Are you safe until I get there?”

“I think so. But they’ve blocked all of the roads and stuff,” I informed him, to which he actually laughed.

“Although I know those phones are safe, don’t tell me where you are right now. I’ll call back once I’m in the area and get your location then.”

“Thank you, Uncle Collie,” I said, still struggling to stop the tears, the past two days beginning to crash down on me.

“I’ll be there soon, I promise,” he tried to assure me, which actually did help. I hung up and lowered my hand, not letting go. I only realized I was still holding it when Aliyah gently pried it out of my grasp.

“Aliyah, back at our house, there was something you weren’t telling me,” I said, as the memory suddenly returned to my mind.

“The girl was my sister,” she said, and looked very unhappy.

“I’m sorry,” I told her, knowing it was pathetic comfort.

“Does anyone need to go to the bathroom, before bed,” Aliyah then asked. She very deliberately changed the subject. Everyone raised their hand, even me.

“We should also brush our teeth. Ben, you’ll use a stall in the girl’s bathroom, so we can all stay together, okay?” she said.

“Okay,” he replied. Why was he being so agreeable with her, considering how he usually was with me?

We all paraded to the bathroom, took care of our natural needs, then brushed our teeth. Once everyone was done, we paraded back to the cabin and locked the door behind us again.

“We should be safe here, but keep your flashlight close, just in case,” Aliyah instructed all of us.

“Mel, should we go ahead and give Ben the stuff?” she asked me.

“Not yet. We don’t know how he’ll react and we might have to leave fast. It’s too risky right now, and there’s plenty of time,” I replied, my brain actually beginning to function again.

“What about starting to train him?” she then asked, after thinking about my reply and finally agreeing to my logic.

“That’d probably be a good idea, but where do we start?” She only smiled at me and we began.

Aliyah and I both worked with Ben, sending impressions to him, the way we had for a long time with each other. Aliyah seemed to know where to start, and did a great job of getting us going. We started showing him how to control his probes, sending only one at a time and targeting them. Although I was his sister, Aliyah seemed to work better with him and I finally dropped out of the link.

By the time she was done, he had begun to understand how to send a probe into only one person, although it was very shaky. I couldn’t describe it any better than that, and although he was incredibly strong, his probes were weak and tentative. That sounded really weird, but this ability is really difficult to describe sometimes.

What was amazing was that he learned that on his first day of awakening, and it normally took months, if not years, to get that down. His raw strength was incredible, but his ability to pick this up so fast was downright frightening.

Once done with that, she got me to help him learn how to turn it all off. That simple skill would give him some ability to remain hidden...and safe.

We all slept soundly, although I had some nightmares. Thankfully, they weren’t like what I had been having lately. Maybe the activity had my mind distracted enough to keep them mostly away.

When we woke up, I was tired, but functional. We all got a change of clothes, our toothbrushes and toothpaste and went to the bathhouse. Once we were all done, we repacked everything and went to the lodge, hoping we could find something better for breakfast than we’d had for supper.

Unfortunately, breakfast wasn’t a lot better since there was no meat, eggs or milk. There was a lot of food, including pancake mix. Everything was either canned, or bagged. There wasn’t much that required refrigeration. In other words, there wasn’t anything that’d go bad. So, we made pancakes, and found a small amount of syrup.

Along with the pancakes, we ate more peanut butter and jelly crackers, and washed it all down with water. I had no idea how long it should have taken Uncle Collie to make it to Anchorage, but by the time we were done with our small breakfast, I was beginning to get a little worried. He’d said it’d only be a few hours, but it had been almost 12 by the time we were done with breakfast, not that breakfast took that long.

We sat around, playing foosball, for another three hours. Thankfully they had a couple of foosball tables in the main lodge, or I’d have gone completely crazy. As it was, I almost jumped to the ceiling when the phone finally rang.

When I managed to get control of the phone, in my fumbling hands, I answered very shakily, “Hello?” There was a pause before I heard anything, and that was only breathing for a little while.

“Hey Mel, this is Mr. Ciansa,” he began, his voice sounding funny. Why’d he use that name? Something wasn’t right.

“Where are you?”

“I’m heading to our meeting point, like we discussed,” he replied. Now I knew something wasn’t right, thanks to his reply. We’d never established a meeting point, since he was going to come here, but didn’t know where ‘here’ was. He was trying to tell me something, without someone else knowing, which meant that they must have captured him.

“I can’t wait. We’ll be at the yurt, like you said,” I replied, and hung up.

“What yurt?” Aliyah asked.

“They have him. We’ve gotta get out of here,” I then stated, trying to come up with a plan. A few years ago, I was able to come up with a plan, and I was completely crazy. This time, I couldn’t seem to come up with anything, and I was scared and crazy.

“I don’t know what to do, Aliyah,” I admitted, sitting on the bunk and putting my head in my hands.

“You’ll come up with something. You always do,” she said, with a smile. Then an idea started taking shape in my mind and I lifted my head to look at her. I couldn’t believe her words had inspired me that strongly, but it seemed that they had.

“Ben, Eliana, listen close. Aliyah and I have done this before. It’s very hard and we’ll be hungry a lot, since we’ll have a hard time getting food. We’ll also try and train you how to survive on your own, as much as any of us kids can. I promise, we’ll take care of you as good as we can, but you have to do what we say, without question and without pause. Understand?” I asked them. They both shook their heads. Ben actually shook his enthusiastically.

Being that they had Uncle Collie, I had to assume they knew about the cell phone I had been using, which meant that they probably traced the call somehow. Knowing that, I left it sitting on the bunk and pulled out the other one. If I was going to use this one, I couldn’t make anymore calls. I wasn’t positive they had traced the phone, but I wasn’t going to take any chances.

“Let’s go,” I said, confidence in my voice again. Aliyah smiled at me as we all got our packs on. We locked all of the doors as we left.

As we started walking, I pulled up the map program and started finding a route out of here that might keep us off the highways as much as possible. Unfortunately, there were no roads except the one we came in on. Then I noticed something that might be better. The road to the camp had railroad tracks crossing it, and I knew those tracks went straight through the base. That was where I wanted to go, so that would work perfectly. We just had to avoid the road until we got to the tracks.

Considering none of us had camouflage, and some of us even had bright colors, staying hidden was going to be difficult, but we’d have to manage. We walked in the woods, trying to remain as hidden as possible from the road, but staying close to it.

We came over the top of a hill, and I saw the tracks toward the bottom on the far side. I also saw a line of four black SUVs coming our way. We all saw them and darted back over the top of the hill and went deeper into the woods, hoping to stay out of sight.

As I heard them approaching, I started praying, “God, please don’t let them find us, please keep us hidden.”

Aliyah lightly touched my shoulder and whispered, “They have at least one telepath, but he’s not trying to probe yet.” How did she know that? I couldn’t even tell there were people in the cars, other than with my eyes.

“It’s a he?”

“I don’t know. I just called it him because him was easier,” she admitted, getting that confused look, which I still thought was adorable and funny.

“They took Mr. and Mrs. Stone too.” I didn’t bother asking her how she found that out. These were our enemies and she got information from them to help us.

Once they had gone a little further down the road, we started moving again, with a little more urgency than before. I had no idea how long it would be before they came back, but we made it to the tracks before they did. I was even more thankful that the tracks curved shortly after we got to them, hiding us from view very quickly.

We hiked for the rest of the day, the entire time hidden in the woods. Several trains came through while we were hiking, but we always knew they were coming well before they got to us.

The only time we got a little worried was when we were crossing Eagle River on the trestle. It was long and open. As we got most of the way across, we heard a train. Hearing that sound, we all started running, but we didn’t have anything to worry about, even when I tripped on one of the large wooden beams. We were long past the trestle before we finally saw the train.

That night, we set up the one tent we had in a little opening in the trees. The tent was big enough for us kids, but it was still tight considering there were four of us. However, our close proximity kept us all a bit warmer, and it was definitely getting colder outside.

“What is the status?” Raughlin asked John Wu, the chief of security for the Oakmont program, when he answered the phone.

“We had them three separate times and lost them. It’s my fault for not being more prepared,” the younger man said.

“Give me details,” Raughlin commanded.

“Agents, along with local police, went to the Brager house at 05:00 Friday morning. The adults were taken into custody. The children were nowhere to be seen, but they must have been there. Our telepath was rendered unconscious before she entered the house. A couple hours later, we went to the Draper house, and the situation was repeated, but this time we had two telepaths and both were rendered unconscious. The next night we intercepted Collier Anderson at the airport. With a little convincing, he helped us find where the children were. Somehow, they figured out that we were onto them and left before we arrived. They also left the phone that had been used. It’s an NSA device,” Wu informed the Headmaster.

“Good job, John. Very good job,” the Headmaster said, smiling broadly as he hung up.

Everything was going exactly according to his plan. If only he could make it stay that way. It had all fallen apart the last time, thanks to the idiot he had recruited to put the Brager girl in her place. The boy had fallen victim to her, although no one knew what had really happened to James. No one but Headmaster Raughlin, that is.

John Wu sat with a perplexed look on his face for quite a while after the Headmaster hung up with him. How had he done a good job, considering he had lost the kids three times? They were just kids, even if they were telepaths, and he had been unable to capture them.

Getting up from the chair he had been in, he looked at his assistant for a while before finally speaking. “Greg, put agents at every conceivable exit point in the region. I want the trains, the ferries and the airport watched. Continue the roadblocks on each side of Eagle River as well,” he ordered.

“Yes, sir,” Greg replied, with a salute.

The security team had become a lot more formal since he had taken command. As much as he admired and respected his predecessor, he never liked the more casual manner in which he had run things. There was one thing he couldn’t deny though. Chief Stone undeniably had the loyalty of his men, in a way that John didn’t.

That had been extremely evident by the fact that so many had resigned when Stone announced his resignation. John had tried to keep them, but they were absolutely loyal to Stone, so they left. Of the ones that stayed, a good number of them died at that shack in Alaska when they tried to apprehend the girls. Brager had managed to put a bullet into a propane tank, causing an incredible explosion, killing all of the agents and scientists that were there.

Oddly, none of the telepaths sent on that mission had been injured, other than the one that had his mind messed up. They still didn’t understand that and the other telepaths hadn’t revealed anything useful about it..

The entire Stone situation remained a thorn in his side, but who was the top dog now? He had the Bragers, the Drapers and yes, the Stones too, in custody. Anyone that had any confirmed, non-casual contact with the children was under his authority. He was the boss.