Ryan sighed as his car whined slowly up the hill. The road conditions had been this terrible for almost two hours, and no relief was in sight. The last of the water was gone from the plastic bottle under the dashboard, the box of greasy crackers now contained only greasy crumbs, and the radio had been unable to locate any stations for the last half of the trip. The uneven road was far too jolting to allow the use of the CD player.
Driving on a road like this could be fun under the right circumstances, or so he remembered from his youth. Right now, though, the monotony of the trip had patiently removed all pleasant sensations from his mind. If only the damn sun would finish setting, so I could at least see where I was going, that would be something.
The road thrashed back and forth in a series of switchbacks, attempting to climb the mountain pass with a passable grade. It was difficult to say how much farther he had to go, but it was clearly altogether too far.
Well, I haven't seen him in, what, eighteen years? The least I can do is put up with some dust and boredom. Still, his mood was less than pleasant. At least he didn't ask us to come up here in the winter. According to Damian, this pass was buried under fifteen feet of snow for about half the year.
As Ryan slowly negotiated another hairpin turn, his face relaxed. The glare of the sunset swung slowly around him and he blinked, trying to ease stiffened muscles in his face.
"Yaaaahgh!" His right foot shot over to the brake and he slammed the clutch into the floor with his left, while wrestling the gear shaft into reverse. He was able to make out far too many details of the grill of the truck facing him as it barreled down the dusty incline, billowing dust far up into the air. Miraculously he managed to work the car back into the turn and partly off the road, just as the pickup rumbled by. A mighty steel red-flaked side mirror clanged loudly as it tore off his own, feebler plastic version, sending it spinning off into oblivion.
The pickup seemed to be an ancient Dodge of some sort, with red coloring due more to rust than to paint. The ruts in the road sent it lurching about frantically as it skidded around the corner, shoving rocks and dirt over the edge of the road and down the steep hillside, rusty bits creaking and slamming together in an awful racket. There seemed to be no one driving it, although it had obviously made the turn with help from some guiding source.
Ryan lay in his seat, panting and generally feeling adrenaline rushing about his body in a "what's all this about?" sort of frenzy. He stared as the truck continued its unstoppable rampage down the trail, vanishing into a cloud of dust and noise. Apparently whatever navigational power had seen the turn coming had not noticed him there, or else didn't feel the need to stop and explain anything.
Once he had begun breathing normally, Ryan left the car and went around to the other side to inspect the damage. It looked pretty grim for the mirror. Feeling that something practical needed to be done, but having no idea what it was, he eventually gave up and got back in the car.
The car started normally and began stubbornly climbing the hill again. Ryan wondered idly what kind of lunatics Damian had for neighbors up here and where they had learned to drive. Apparently they were either invisible or very small.
Eventually, after passing over the summit and descending a bit, Ryan came to a closed gate which barred his way. The gate was a metal structure of bars and sloppy welds, fixed to stout wooden poles planted firmly in the ground. These were in turn connected to an impressive barbed wire fence that stretched away to both horizons, tightly stretched and seemingly in good repair.
The two wings of the gate were fastened in the center with a stout chain and an enormous padlock.
Ryan put the car in neutral and set the parking brake. He got out and frowned at the gate, stretching irritably. His legs felt numb and his butt was particularly sore from the long, bumpy drive.
"Hello! Hello? Damian?"
After a pause of silence, birds resumed their whistles and chirps. Crickets squeaked happily at each other in the nearby grasses and shrubs.
"Hello!!" Ryan yelled, cupping his hands about his mouth. This time the silence was longer, but no more effective.
"Stupid..." Ryan mumbled quietly. There was no obvious motion anywhere, no signs of civilization other than the road and the fence with its gate. There was, most certainly, no sign of anyone coming to open it and let him come through.
"He might have mentioned a gate," Ryan growled. Perhaps it slipped his mind that no one can get up this damn road. Not without getting killed by maniacs on the road, or climbing fences and leaving their cars behind for those maniacs to molest...
Finally, he decided to wait in the car and see if anyone came looking for him. He was expected, after all. There was no need to stand around looking like a fool.
Ryan turned and jumped up in the air a few inches with a cry of "Gyahh!". A smallish girl was standing silently next to the driver's side of his car, with largish shotgun pointed more or less at his chest.
The girl had long, black hair, large brown eyes, a wide nose, and a vaguely tropical complexion. She was dressed in a loose-fitting shirt and jeans which were colored remarkably similarly to the surrounding foliage. The jeans looked to have been mended more times than was good for them, and they were only a little less filthy than the hiking boots beneath them. Her expression was attentive and unfriendly. She seemed to be chewing a great wad of gum.
The gun, he noted, looked to be in excellent condition.
After a few short moments of standing in silence, watching her chew, Ryan's heartrate began to fall once again, and he decided to try and turn this situation around from the state it was in now.
"Uhm. Hi."
Chew.
"My name's Ryan. What's yours?"
The girl stopped chewing long enough to say, "Addie."
"Ah." Did Damian mention any girls named Addie? Ryan couldn't remember, but it was possible.
"So, you uh, live around here?"
The girl chewed for a moment, and then said, "Wasn't told about no Ryan. Why you up here?"
Ryan blinked. "I'm here to see my friend Damian. You know him, right?"
Chew.
"Because, he, uh, he's expecting me. Is all. Right around now, I think."
"That so? Too bad. I wasn't told about no Ryan."
"Uhm."
Addie continued to chew, and then said, "You don't look like no poacher. You a government boy?"
"Uh, no. I work for a computer company in Boise...Look, do you know Damian or not? I mean, could you go ask him or something..."
The girl raised the shotgun to eye level. The question of whether it was pointed more or less at his chest was gone.
"I mean...Uhm."
Addie stopped chewing and tightened her grip on the shotgun, inhaling slowly. The tension grew rather uncomfortable.
"You weren't told to expect any Ryan Evey today?"
The silence stretched. The girl relaxed slightly, but the shotgun remained in its threatening position.
"Evey? You're Uncle Evey?"
"I'm not anyone's uncle. At least, not anyone up here. But my last name's Evey, yes."
Addie narrowed her eyes, thought for a moment, and then lowered the shotgun to point at the ground. Ryan exhaled slowly. His adrenaline glands were getting a serious workout today.
She spat a glob of green stuff to the side, then smiled and offered up her hand. Her teeth were stained an ugly brownish-green.
"He never mentioned any Ryan. He always calls you Evey. Sorry for the fuckup."
Ryan took the offered hand and shook it carefully. Her hand was rough and dirty, and he had the impression that she could have seriously injured his hand if she had wanted to. "Uh, yeah. That's okay...I guess he did always call me Evey."
"Heh. Dad can be pretty weird sometimes, I know." Addie turned away from him, facing into the woods within the fence, and made a series of quick hand gestures which were largely hidden from his sight.
"What's that all about?"
Addie turned back to him while shouldering the shotgun and explained, "I was telling my sister not to shoot us."
Ryan closed his eyes and inhaled slowly. Think happy thoughts... "Well. Thanks."
Addie nodded to him in a strange sort of half-bow and said something he couldn't quite make out. He decided not to ask about it just yet.
"Where's Aunt Amy?"
"Uh, she couldn't make it. She's at home with our son Howard."
Addie grunted. She turned and pulled a large key from her pants pocket, strode to the gate and quickly had the padlock open. She pushed the two gate halves apart and said, "Go on through, then you can give me a ride to the garage."
"Yeah, right." Ryan was familiar with general farm protocol and was used this part of the process, if somewhat unused to the militant little girls.
Ryan idled the car slowly through the gate, watching the ruts carefully. The condition of the road directly underneath the gate was particularly bad and his shocks complained heavily, but he managed not to scrape the bottom of his car. Barely.
Addie pushed first one and then the other gate halves closed, then relocked the chain and trotted quickly to the passenger-side door, stuffing the key back in her jeans. Ryan stretched over to unlock the door for her. She pulled the door open, clunked her boots against the bottom of the door as a matter of habit more than for any practical removal of dirt, and then climbed inside. She smelled strongly of dirt and grass, and less so of body odor. The smell of gun oil from the shotgun cradled at a careful angle between her legs and over her shoulder was noticible as well. She slammed the door and said, "Right. If you can just pull up to that oak up there, we can pick up my sister and get back to the house."
"Alright." Ryan eased the gas pedal down and they started growling forward. After a moment of silence, he ventured, "Aren't you a little young to be..." He decided that playing with guns was a bad idea. "pointing a gun at people? I mean, I know this is a farm and all, but..."
"Fuck I am," she interrupted. She sneered at him, and then broke into a grin, saying, "I shot two poachers last year. Ally didn't get any. She was right pissed."
"...Ah." Ryan blinked. He could still remember all the insanely dangerous things he and his brother had done as kids, but the concept of this prepubescent girl shooting down trespassers was a little too much.
"Didn't you, uh...get in trouble for that? I mean, with the law and all..."
"Ain't much law here. Sherrif's a good friend 'a dad. He shot himself a few poachers last year."
"Is that so?" Ryan shook his head. Different world. He's up here because there isn't any law. It's not a coincidence.
"Fuckin-a," Addie said matter-of-factly. "Okay, pull over here."
Ryan guided the car to a stop and looked around, seeing no one. Suddenly a figure rose up from a stand of grass that could not have been more than a foot high. He blinked again and stared as Addie opened the rear door and her sister got in, carefully setting a large rifle on the floor next to her. Aside from the diference in guns, the girls were identical in every way.
"Uncle Evey, this is my sister Ally. Ally, this is our Uncle Evey."
"Pleased to meetcha", Ally said while sticking her hand between the front seats. Her grip was as identical to her sister's as was her taste in clothing.
"So...identical twins, eh?" Ryan offered as he started the car moving again. The road was in slightly better condition now, and was turning gently around a clump of large pines. The dust seemed less annoying now that he had company, and reason to believe his trip was soon to be over.
Addie said "Aye," simultaneously with her sister's "Yep". Ryan smiled at their grins.
"Damian must be proud."
"Ay-yuh, dat he is. We'se his fav'rites."
Ally frowned in the rearview mirror. "Ah, ease up on the tounge, sis. He's a guest, remember?"
Addie wrinkled her nose and then nodded. "Yeah, sorry. I'm used to speaking short around Ally. I'll try and keep it to English."
Ryan nodded, and said, "Thanks."
Addie became even more wrinkled. "No, no. Don't thank me, it's proper. I've been acting like a savage, and you a guest and all. I guess I was just thinking of you like an Uncle. Really, sorry." Her tone said she seemed honestly worried.
"It's okay, forget about it." Ryan smiled, and she seemed to relax. Apparently guests were not to be offended, he supposed.
The smell of the guns in the car made him wonder just what sort of guest he was.
The road crossed a small stream, gurgling away low in the bottom of its bed. A sturdy wooden bridge spanned the stream and appeared to be kept in good condition. The wheels bumped and hummed over the wooden planks and met with perfectly flat road on the other side. A few hundred yards upstream, a small waterwheel splashed as it turned in a side branch of the stream. Everything was unpainted and rough-finished.
The road rounded a final bend and approached a clearing. A large garden with various states of growth extended before him, with a large wooden building immediately in front and to the north of the crops. Two sets of doors were closed, while the leftmost pair stood wide open, exposing a dirt floor and a vacant interior. There was enough room to park two cars side by side in the available space.
"Right in there," Addie said, pointing. "Keep the rain off it."
"It could probably use some, after that road." Ryan pulled the car to the side she indicated and turned it off. The contracting metal clanked and generally radiated weariness in the rough-made garage.
As Ryan and the two girls emerged from the car, he took another moment to stretch his abused muscles and joints. At the far end of the garage he could almost make out another car in the darkness.
"No way, is that the Nova?", he asked incredulously.
"Sure's shit - I mean, yes," Addie corrected herself nervously.
Man. Damian had obtained the Nova his second year in college, and it was a real junker then. It was older than either of them.
"Damn. Does that thing still run?", he asked Ally, who was inspecting her rifle carefully. It looked like a pretty serious caliber sort of gun.
"What, Tia? Yeah, she runs fine. Why shouldn't she?"
Tia, that's right. He called the car Tiamat. "I guess it just didn't seem like it was going to make it this long."
Ally looked at him as though she were examining someone from the other side of a glass window in an otherwise padded door. "She's in better shape than your car, Uncle. Bet your life on it."
Ryan snorted and smiled with half his mouth. "If you say so."
He turned and followed Addie out of the garage, Ally trailing close behind him. Both girls carried their guns carefully, pointing them in directions which did not contain people or buildings.
They came around the large, rickety door and Ally started to pull it closed, but Addie stopped her with a hand on her shoulder and shook her head. Ally tilted her head to one side and looked confused until Addie blinked at her several times in rapid succession. Ally grunted and let the door go.
Ryan shook his head at this silent display of the twin's communicative abilities. "Did I miss something?"
"Got more people coming up tonight. Don't need to close up yet." Addie spat another glob into the dirt inside the garage.
Ryan had to ask. "Is that chewing tobacco?"
"Heh. No, that stuff rots your face. Just mint leaves and other stuff. Tastes pretty good, but it makes a mess."
Ally made a face. "It's nasty."
"Heh."
The girls led Ryan around the side of the garage. The outside surface was worn and faded to an ugly grey. Rusty nail heads sometimes stuck out an inch or so, and some of the boards seemed loose or warped. Most boards were separated from their neighbors by sizeable gaps.
As they walked, more and more of the garden came into view. Ryan saw plants he recognized, potato and corn and others, and some he was unfamiliar with. Most seemed unusually large for the season. Some parts of the garden seemed abandoned or overgrown, with various weeds and crops fighting each other for space and sunlight. Others were extremely tidy and weedless. There seemed to be no pattern to the patches of chaos amidst the order.
He realized that the garden was also much larger than he had first guessed, as it was slowly exposed. The fading light and random overgrowth made it difficult to determine exactly where the garden ended and the natural state of the clearing began, but it seemed to be quite a lot more than a family could work, or eat.
Off to the south, he could see more buildings, vaguely barn-shaped and apparently white. Remembering an email Damian had written over a decade ago, he suspected that they were in fact greenhouses. Ryan idly wondered what was grown in them, and why they were needed to supplement this many crops.
They rounded the corner and began heading north, along the border between the garden and the garage. Ryan could make out various sheds and small barns, along with the large pile of junk that farms always seemed to have. The farm seemed to be quietly alive, small sounds from animals and people blending together quietly in the background, along with a smell that was part earth and part animal. The ground under their feet was bare of plants and showed the signs of years of foot traffic. Addie suddenly stopped and they waited patiently as a large pig crossed the path from the far side of the garage and wandered into the garden, snorting at them disinterestedly.
"Hey, Boris," Ally called to the pig, who promptly ignored her.
They started walking again. "Won't he wreck the garden?", Ryan asked.
"Nah, Boris knows better. The chickens are the ones who never seem to learn. Pigs are smart." Ally nodded in agreement with her sister.
They passed a few goats wandering in search of a good place to have a bit of a relaxing nap after a hard day's relaxing, and a dirty chicken that Addie shooed off, stamping her feet. "Stupid chickens."
Ryan began to wonder again. While there was certainly a large collection of typical farm buildings, there seemed to be no farmhouse, which was sort of what he'd been hoping for. Instead, they seemed to be heading for the side of a small, round hill, covered in grass and shrubs. He decided that he was through asking silly questions, and would just wait to see what was going to happen next. After all, he could smell wood smoke, so the house couldn't be far. Perhaps it was around the side of the hill, in the trees.
However, Addie and Ally came to a halt directly before the hill and turned, grinning at him. A hammock which had seen better and less stretched-out days hung between a thick, bent rod driven into the hill and a small tree he didn't recognize. Ally kicked aside a rusty toy truck that lay in the dirt without even looking down, and grinned even wider at the look on his face.
"I bet you're wondering where the house is," Addie said. "Sorry, we like to make the first time a little dramatic." She turned and grasped the rod, giving it a good twist, and then yanked hard on it.
The side of the hill pulled quietly open into the night, spilling pleasant orange light into the yard, along with the noise of quiet conversations and the distant crackle of a fire.
Ryan blinked. In the light he could see faint tracks in the dirt where the hidden door had swung countless times. Its heavy metal hinges gleamed in the light and bore the weight noiselessly. The inside of the door was a thick hardwood, recently refinished. As Addie released the rod, the metal latch handle on the inside swung back into place. The doorframe was hidden behind a layer of hard-packed dirt and short grass, with a wooden layer inside which was clearly designed to accept the door latch and fit the door snugly.
"Cool," he said, not wanting to seem too impressed. This was just the kind of ridiculous thing Damian was always talking about doing in college. I guess after twenty years it's safe to assume he figured a lot of weird stuff out. Still, it was difficult not to show a little of his astonishment.