HUNTER Page 17

  “Rose claims her information comes straight from one of the operatives from the Congo mission, Sergeant Hunter Sykes, who, you may remember, recently escaped and returned to the United States. Rose and Sykes made headlines back in 2010, when rumours began to spread about her sleeping with Sergeant Sykes while in a relationship with another Special Forces operative, Sergeant Samuel Patrick.”

  “I don’t know,” the co-anchor chimed in. “It kind of sounds like this Kyla Rose girl just loves herself some media attention.”

  “I don’t know what to believe,” the lead anchor continued. “Nintipi residents have confirmed with our reporters that Rose and Sykes have been close, long-time friends. Rose herself claimed that, just last month, she spent a week alone with Sykes at a cabin in northern Kansas. According to a press-release, Sykes was in a PTSD rehabilitation center that week, but our reporters could find no records with any treatment center.” The station replayed footage of my press release.

  My gut turned and I cringed, forced to relive that loud sigh of disgust that rose from crowd when I told the world I cheated on Liam. Since the press release, I hadn’t heard from Liam. Now that it was all over the news, I was wondering if I ever would, or if he was too ashamed, too humiliated. Liam made some mistakes, but he didn’t deserve to be belittled on every news station in America.

  “Rose claims the government sent Sergeant Sykes and Corporal Cherovitz, the other surviving member of the Congo Operation, to be killed, so they would keep their mouths shut about Meraux. Once again, the military has responded by saying both Sykes and Cherovitz are in a rehabilitation center, seeking treatment for PTSD.”

  “And are they?”

  “Once again, our reporters found no record of either men in any rehabilitation center. So now, it’s on the military to prove that Sykes and Cherovitz are alive.”

  “You want to know what I think?” the co-anchor asked.

  “What’s that?”

  “I think they should check this Kyla Rose girl’s basement. She sounds like a real nut case. That’s where you’ll find those men—in Kyla Rose’s basement. I’m willing to bet she’s at her house right now, trying to figure out a way to get rid of two bodies.”

  I expected some backlash, but things were out of control. The crowds out front of my house were ten times the size of the ones when Hunter returned home from the Congo. It was a good thing I wasn’t epileptic, or the constantly flashing of cameras in my windows would have given me a seizure.

  Within minutes of the nasty co-anchor accusing me of murdering my best friends, there were reporters at my door. “Ms Rose! Are you hiding Sergeant Sykes’s body in your basement?” they shouted through my thin walls.

  The suggestion alone made my heart palpitate. I wanted to throw the door open and strangle each of those reporters.

  This time around, I didn’t have the military on my side. I didn’t have a team of government lawyers making sure the reporters didn’t cross my property line. All I had was one police officer who I went to high-school with, who I could tell hated me like the rest of Nintipi because he made no effort to stop the reporters from crowding my house. When I peered out the window, I could see him standing three houses down, facing the other direction, playing with his pistol like he was a cowboy practicing for a showdown.

  I had no chance.

  But I didn’t have any bodies in my basement. I didn’t even have a basement, I lived in a trailer, for crying out loud. There was nothing in my house to hide—nothing that would make things worse, anyway. Sure, I would rather the media didn’t explore my lingerie drawer, and there was a carton of milk in my fridge that had just past its expiration date that I didn’t need the world to know I was still using. But if it would shut them up, fine. I opened the door and the reporters erupted.

  “Go ahead,” I said, stepping aside.

  They became silent and confusion riddled their faces.

  “Go ahead. Search my house. I don’t care,” I said.

  There was a hesitation, no one totally sure what to do. Even the veteran reporters in the crowd exchanged silent glances and pinched expressions. Then, as if they all shared one big, stupid brain, they raced towards me, up my steps, and into my home. The savages tore the place to shreds, turning every cushion upside down, flipping every rug over, pulling every appliance out from the wall as if my little trailer contained secret passageways. It didn’t, and that’s what they discovered.

  They weren’t even interested in my lingerie. They threw my panties aside like they were packing peanuts in a box full of human organs. The frustrated and sad looks on their faces were priceless when they realized there were no organs, just panties and a few pairs of mismatched socks.

  “The crawlspace!” one man yelled, and all the reporters rushed out the door and began crawling under the house. Still, they found nothing.

  I sat on the bench in front of my house as they all regrouped on the front lawn. After another moment of confused hesitation, they started asking questions. Without hesitating, I answered every single one of them. None of their questions addressed anything new, and none of their questions were terribly interesting. Even they knew it, but they didn’t know what else to do. “Did Sergeant Sykes tell you whether or not they killed Lieutenant Meraux in the Congo?”

  “He didn’t say, but I don’t think so.”

  “Were they really ambushed and kept in a prison camp for four years?” another asked. “Or was that also a lie?”

  “They really were in a prison camp. And it was more like four and a half years,” I said.

  They asked question after question. Nothing phased me. Not even, “Aren’t you ashamed to suggest all of this about our troops? Are you not ashamed to call yourself an American?”

  I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “I love America,” I said. “I’m proud to be an American, and it makes me sad that there are hardly any Americans left in this country.”

  The crowds erupted again. I couldn’t hear any one question over another as everybody fought for my attention. Finally, one question found my ears. “Do you love Hunter Sykes?” It found the ears of the other reporters too. They all became silent in anticipation of my response.

  “Yes,” I said. “I love Hunter and I always have. And I’m sorry to all the people I’ve hurt pretending otherwise.”

  The crowd took a moment to digest my answer before erupting once again into unintelligible hysteria. On the other end of the street, beyond the reporters, I could see Liam.

  He had his hands in his pockets and his hood over his head. My words hit him hard. His body slouched, deflated as he turned and walked away. I wanted to chase after him and apologize, but it would have been impossible to cross the frenzied sea of media fast enough. Liam made some big mistakes, but he didn’t deserve this. He didn’t deserve this level of public humiliation.

  As the days passed, I became worried the media would lose interest. I started to wonder if being so open was working against me, boring the media. I went out every day and answered all of their questions—hours and hours of questions, until they couldn’t think of anymore. “Um, was Sergeant Sykes a Kansas City Royals fan?” one reporter asked. I wondered, had I been more private, would the story have become bigger?

  Then I woke up to a loud hysteria outside of my house, just ten days after the first wave of reporters landed in Nintipi. I peered out my blinds and thought I was still dreaming. The crowd had grown ten times in size. Every policeman in Nintipi was out on the street, trying desperately to tame the masses. It took my eyes a moment to adjust to the morning sun before I could read the signs they were holding up.

  Free Hunter

  Love is stronger than war!

  One of the signs had my face on it—not a photograph, but a painting. It wasn’t the most flattering painting, my eyes looked way too small, but there was no question it was me. Most surprising of all, there were no Hitler moustaches or devil horns on my face. Just the caption:

  A True American Hero

 
My heart fluttered and my legs became weak. I had to sit down right there on the floor so I wouldn’t fall over and crack my head open. What was happening? Why had they suddenly changed their minds?

  Hunter was still nowhere to be seen, and the military were still refusing to say anything more than, “Hunter is in a PTSD rehabilitation center. He was admitted under an alias to preserve his privacy.” It was a load of hooey, seeing as reporters were scouring every clinic in the country.

  I pulled the morning newspaper out from my door’s mail slot.

  I didn’t understand it. The night before, when I’d gone to bed, the newspaper read, “Could this e-mail that Kyla Rose sent in 2008 be proof that she made up the story about the Black Knight?” Six hours later, the same paper asked, “When will the military admit that the Black Knight craft is real?” What changed?

  “We love you, Kyla!” someone outside yelled.

  I went outside to face the crowds. The sudden cheering was deafening. Faces lit up as if they were seeing the Pope step out onto his Vatican balcony, and not Kyla Rose stepping out of her trailer in Nintipi, Kansas.

  Once the cheering died down, the reporters piped up and it was business as usual—an indistinguishable mess of questions I’d already answered one hundred times over.

  But there was one question that took me by surprise. “What are your thoughts on the transmission that was recently released by WikiLeaks about Corporal Cherovitz?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  The reporter was quick to pull an article up on his cellphone. He handed it to me. Everyone waited and watched while I read the article. If it was true, Greg was dead.

  My ears started ringing and I became faint. Someone noticed and helped me over to the bench beside my front door. I had to read the transmission a second time to convince myself it was real. It was given to the WikiLeaks website by an anonymous source who claimed to work with a man named General Chesney, the same name that was on the previous transcripts.

  General Peters, to General Chesney

  I understand your concerns in regard to public relations. If I may be blunt, I don’t think it matters. People are going to come to those conclusions regardless of what we choose to do with Cherovitz. If you really think the shock therapy will make a difference, we can give it a try. But in my twenty-six years of experience, it’s hopeless. I’ve always found that shock therapy works better in correcting attitude.

  Come to think of it, Sergeant Sykes would be good candidate for shock therapy. But for Greg, I would say our best options are to neutralize him or perform a lobotomy.

  A lobotomy’s pretty cruel, if you ask me. Plus, then you still need to figure out what to do with him after he’s brain dead.

  But it’s your call at the end of the day. Let me know by tonight. Neutralize him, shock him, or poke him in the brain?

  General Peters, Ph. D, M.D., F.A.A.E.M.

  P.S.: I’m sorry to hear Sykes is being such a pain in the ass. A couple more weeks and some Polack inmate will be a pain in his ass, if you know what I mean.

  P.P.S.: Attached to this e-mail is my wife’s meatloaf recipe. She said that Lucy asked for it at the Christmas party. She also told me to tell you to go easy on the salt because the soy sauce already makes it very salty. Between you and me, it could use a little more salt.

  Three weeks had passed since the date on the transmission. If it was true, Greg was most likely dead, and Hunter was most likely in a Polish prison. I felt sick. The worst part of it all was that I was too late. By the time my own story reached the news, Greg would have been dead and Hunter would be days away from being sent to Poland—or maybe to shock therapy.

  The flashing of the cameras was blinding. I had to close my eyes and cover my face with my hands. But I stayed outside. I didn’t care if they saw me crying. Everything else about me was made public. So I cried there on the steps, in front of the whole country. I knew that my sad, pathetic face would be on the cover of every newspaper in the morning.

  But it didn’t seem to matter anymore.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Nintipi was out of control. I was beginning to lose count of the days that I’d been there, waiting for things to die down so I could make my move. It only took me six days to get from Duckwater to Nintipi. A cargo train took me most of the way, and I only had to hike about ninety miles from the Kansas border to the town of Nintipi.

  When I arrived, there was a small crowd outside of Kyla’s house. I should have made my move then, in the night when the crowd dispersed. But I waited, worried that I’d be caught by some perverted, sneaky paparazzi waiting behind a bush for a nude shot. I should have went for her then, but I didn’t.

  Now, there must have been hundreds of people from all over the country outside of her house, many of whom stuck around all night—probably because they had nowhere else to go. From my perch at the top of the hill, I could see the glowing red, “No Vacancy” signs for Nintipi’s one hotel and two motels. Some of the reporters were even sleeping in their vans along Kyla’s street.

  I had a tent set up two miles into the woods that hugged Nintipi’s city limits. It wasn’t much, but it was hidden, far from any road and disguised from any search helicopter that might have been out looking for me.

  Every evening, once the sun was down, I would hike down the hillside to Walter Trout’s farmhouse. Walter Trout was an old, stubborn man who refused to move into a retirement home. His children, who were old enough to be my parents, lived across the country, and only visited once every year or so to try and convince Walt to sell his farmhouse and move into a retirement home. Walt always said no and his children always got angry and went to the town meetings and tried to do something about it and then they would go back across the country having accomplished nothing at all, cursing Walt’s name under their breath as they went.

  Walt was almost completely deaf and blind, and his case wasn’t helped any by his worsening Alzheimer's. But shit Walt, if you want to live out the rest of your days alone at your ranch, then no one should be able to stop you.

  Each evening I would enter in through the back door, which he left unlocked, and I would take a bit of food and the morning newspaper, which was always left in the same spot on the arm of the couch. The day after I arrived in Nintipi, I also borrowed his hunting rifle. It had an expensive scope on it that I used to keep an eye on the commotion out front of Kyla’s house. I also thought it was a good idea to take the rifle away from the bitter, old man with Alzheimer’s whose house I was breaking into every day.

  I decided to risk making my daily hike to the ranch early, the day the crowds suddenly grew exponentially in size. I figured it was only a matter of time before I became front page material, but I thought it would be under other circumstances. I thought the headline would read, “Manhunt for dangerous pedophile!” But that wasn’t the case. Somehow, Kyla had gotten her hands on some serious documents—how, I had no idea—and released them to the media. Perfect timing too; one day later and there would have been mobs scouring the woods for me, the dangerous pedophile. She beat the army to the punch, and now the army was fumbling to put on a smiling face.

  I read the newspaper on my way back to my perch. I stopped when I came across a leaked transmission, taken from that filthy Chesney bastard’s e-mail.

  Greg was dead.

  I wanted to think the document was fake, but it knew too much to be fake. It knew Chesney’s name, it knew my name and Greg’s name. It knew that we were separated, and it knew that I was supposed to be in Poland. I wasn’t the least bit surprised to see that they were really sending me to a Polish prison. Bunch of cunts.

  It explained why Kyla was crying, and Kyla’s crying explained a lot. In previous articles, she claimed I was already dead—that they killed me to cover their tracks, the same way they tried to kill Lieutenant Meraux to cover their tracks. But the tears streaming down Kyla’s face weren’t just painful-reminder tears. They were more than that. She was broken, devastat
ed, like someone had just given her terrible news.

  Which made sense.

  Kyla had always been a clever girl. Of course she never really thought I was really dead. It was a bluff, to get the government to show their hand. Hell, it probably would have worked too, had I not taken their hand and run with it. Kyla’s plan was much better than my “run first, figure out the rest later” plan.

  I wondered if Chesney was clever enough to realize that was the plan, too? That Kyla didn’t actually care about releasing government secrets and exposing military lies—why would she? Considering the claims she was making, that the military was neutralizing friendlies to hide information, why would she think she was immune? She wanted to be proved wrong, even though she was absolutely right, the sneaky little brat.