“Not formally; if the SOCC knew what I was doing right now, I would likely need that zip cuff back for my own wrists. But as I was saying, you can’t bring firearms onto the NSA campus. Should I even ask what is in the ammo can, Miss LaCroix?”

“You are not read on to that compartment. Just kidding. It’s a fuel pump from a junkyard for the same year as this Ford Econoline van, along with a forty-five-foot roll of wire with alligator-clip terminals and thirty-five feet of three-eighth-inch tubing. Malorie fabricated it all for me, soldering the connections, and then mounted it to a piece of plywood cut the same size as the side wall of the can to give extra static electricity protection if I had to use it. The fuel pump is for extracting fuel out of a tank if ever needed and there was no grid power. I also keep a can of Slime fix-a-flat, a tire plug patch kit, a spare serpentine belt for this van, multitip screwdriver, pliers, a ‘shifting spanner,’ as our Brit friends say”—she held up an adjustable wrench—“a tube of RTV silicone, a small LED Maglite, a road flare, nonemergency contacts for every county sheriff’s department between here and home, and a small box of blade fuses.”

“Megan, I have certainly grown to love you, but after seeing you produce a gun that was hidden in plain sight this whole time, I love you all the more.”

“I think it was God’s providence that brought us together. Let’s saddle up; we’re burning daylight here, cowboy.”

Unceremoniously, Joshua’s Jeep pulled out of the overflow parking lot and turned right onto Canine Road, and then headed toward Columbia on 32.

“I don’t take it lightly that you trust me; I want you to know that I’m committing myself to the success of you and your boys. I’ve done my growing up and lived life. Leo and Jean are likely going to grow up in some austere times ahead—you know it and I know it. To that end, I wanted to tell you what my plan is.

“You remember me telling you about my buddy Ken Layton, from the Catholic summer camp that I went to years ago? Well, he and his wife, Terry, have been hooked up with this guy named Todd from Idaho. He said that if things ever went really bad, that he and Terry were going to drive out West to ‘bug out.’ He’s been trying to tell me for years about the survival retreat, but I just thought that was all Chicken Little–type stuff. I mean we made it through two World Wars and the wheels have not fallen off of the bus yet, so what was he talking about? As it turns out, he has been texting me these past few days in one last attempt to reach out to me. Ken, Dustin, and I have always loved each other like brothers, so I don’t discount Ken’s sincerity and his fervor to try and win me over to his point of view.”

“Do you think that we can really make it all the way to Idaho?” Megan asked.

“No, I don’t. At one time, Ken even got me on a three-way Skype call with this Todd guy. I was rather incredulous, his screen name was ‘End of Beans,’ and he didn’t use the camera. Ken later told me that it was a play on the phrase ‘The end of the world as we know it’ except that Todd was an accountant so I guess he managed to merge all that weirdness into one tidy screen name.

“Todd wanted me to sign up for the mutual assistance group package and was even willing to have Terry send me a buying list of where to start based solely on Ken’s recommendation and that he knew that I was a cop. I politely thanked him and said that I had a lot of years of service in and that I was going to stick it out here in Maryland at least until I retired. With all of the redundancy built into the government, we should fare better than everyone. That was my thinking then, but today is a different day.”

“The suspense is killing me here. Where are we going?”

Joshua took a long drink from his stainless steel REI bottle, offered some to Megan, and said, “Dustin invited me to a picnic.”

“You quit your job to attend a picnic?”

“Dustin, who is of the same mind as Ken, called me last night and wanted to catch up since the last time we talked a month or two ago. He asked me about you.”

“Moi?”

“I told him that I was falling in love with you. He said that if the situation ever worsened—how does he put it?—‘When the Schumer hits the fan,’ that I should proceed directly to his house for the picnic, and that I should bring you with me as my wife. The implied task is to ‘Get here, Wingnut!’” Joshua smiled as he retold the story. “He sometimes adds ‘Wingnut’ to the end of the sentence to tease me about not joining another branch of the military.

“After Ken’s text messages and Dustin’s call last night, I packed that footlocker you see in the backseat, just in case. All I have at my apartment is my music stuff, a crossbow, a used couch, some thrift store kitchen stuff, and my laptop. I’m not a materialistic person, except for my Jeep. I just can’t live without you, Megan; I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”

“Well, whisking me away out of the belly of the beast was a good start.”

“So, here’s the turnoff to cross the Potomac—whoa, that’s a lot of flashing strobe lights up there! I wonder what that’s all about.” Joshua reflexively reached for his holstered pistol, but he remembered that he had turned in his issued pistol and that his personal one was in the footlocker behind them.

Joshua was still wearing his NSA police uniform and he silently prayed that he would have favor with this checkpoint. Families with overloaded cars trying to get somewhere were unpacking all of their belongings on the side of the road for police dogs to sniff and rubber-gloved personnel from the Department of Homeland Security “Field Operations” to go through.

“Megan, go ahead and get your ID out. And keep that AR-7 wrapped up. The laws about even having a gun in your car in Maryland are not Second Amendment friendly.”

After half an hour, Joshua inched up to the Maryland state trooper and the Frederick County policemen who were conducting the checkpoint.

The young trooper said to Joshua, “Identification, please. Where are you going?”

Joshua did all of the talking. “I am taking my fiancée here back home to West Virginia.”

“You’re not from West Virginia, Officer Kim?”

“No, sir, I live in Howard County, but I’d like to think I could live out this way one day.”

Reciting as if he’d said it many times before, the trooper said, “Any of the following are declared contraband as of 2:00 P.M. EST by order of Governor O’Malley: magazines of any caliber that can hold eleven or more rounds; any physical gold, silver, or platinum not in worn jewelry form; any cash in excess of fifty-five hundred dollars, or durable goods of that same amount. Do you have any of those items?”

“No.”

“Just that footlocker with you is all?”

“Roger that.”

“Here are your IDs, have a good night.”

The Maryland state trooper thought it odd that Joshua would be this far from NSA, but ultimately it was Megan’s West Virginia driver’s license that got them through the checkpoint. Joshua didn’t ask what the situation was, and the trooper didn’t tell him anything except that it was “Just a precaution, on orders from the governor’s office.”

“Well, it appears that you successfully just emigrated out of the People’s Republic of Maryland, Officer Kim.”

“Better a year early than a day late.” Joshua sighed.

They arrived at Megan’s house an hour later, just before dinner.

11

YOU CAN’T GET THERE FROM HERE

Do not by any means destroy yourself, for if you live you may yet have good fortune, but all the dead are dead alike.

—The Horse Hwin, in The Horse and His Boy by C. S. Lewis

LaCroix Homestead, Kearneysville, West Virginia—October, the First Year