Page 50 of Creed
He pointed toward a car sitting on the side of the road near the center of town.
“I know that car.”
I squinted against the afternoon sunlight in the car’s direction. “Are you sure?” It was a silver, four-door sedan, no different than any other car and as forgettable as a car could be. Yet, Robyn nodded with absolute certainty.
“See that dent in the back fender? My sister and I accidentally did that when we were riding our bicycles and ran into it. My sister put a sticker of a kitten over the dent, because she thought it would work like a Band-Aid.”
Looking again, I noticed the sticker that he was talking about. From a distance, it was little more than a white dot on the car’s silver surface, but the dot was in the recognizable shape of a cat.
“So, that car belongs to someone from your community?”
Robyn nodded again.
I bit my lip to keep from cursing out loud.
The cult had already caught up to us. That was the problem when running from an enemy that had so many more people than you. They could afford to send out search parties in all directions rather than trying to follow you directly.
There was no point in leaving. We’d probably find cult members in every nearby town.
“Okay, let’s think,” I muttered to myself.
The town wasn’t very big. It would take almost no time for our pursuers to search every nook and cranny of the place. Whatever we were going to do, we had to do it soon.
A rumbling sound drew my attention away from the silver car of our pursuers. A pair of delivery trucks pulled up behind the post office, slowly backing themselves up to the garage doors. Robynand I watched from the roof as cartful after cartful of packages, all different sizes of brown cardboard boxes, were hauled off the truck. The post office seemed to be short staffed, so the process took a while, giving me plenty of time to think.
Since Whimborne was so remote, it had to get a lot of its supplies delivered. The post office was one of the few thriving parts of the town, and most importantly, the most modern. They had a satellite dish. They were connected.
Each package had its own label with a barcode specifically for keeping track of it.
Off to the side of the garage sat another pile of packages. This one was much smaller than the number of incoming packages and were labeled as “outgoing”.
An idea came to me.
“Okay, Robyn, here’s what we’re going to do,” I told the boy. “We wait for them to finish unloading those trucks, and then we’re going to climb down there. While I handle things here, I need you to run back to Kayden and your sister and tell them to meet us here immediately. Got it?”
With a very serious look on his face, Robyn silently nodded.
It took another few minutes, for both trucks to finish being unloaded. After that, the drivers and unloaders went back inside the main building, probably to handle whatever paperwork was required for the delivery.
Robyn and I took the opportunity to climb down from the roof. He took off running in the direction where we’d left Kayden and Mavis, while I headed for the stack of “outgoing” boxes.
Selecting one from the top of the pile, I headed for the payphone hanging on the wall.
Luckily, Robyn had included a bit of cash in the supplies that he’d brought along. Otherwise, without quarters for the phone, this whole plan would have fallen apart.
The phone picked up on the first ring.
“Hello?” Brody’s voice echoed through the line, distorted by static and white noise.
“Brody,” I said urgently. “Write this down.”
Anyone else would have demanded to know what was going on, but as soon as he heard my voice, Brody was all business. He didn’t say a single thing as I read out the number on the package that I held.
“That’s the tracking number for a package. Come find it.” Voices alerted me that the delivery drivers were already returning. “Hurry up.”
Then I slammed the phone back on its receiver. I had about thirty seconds to find a hiding place before the drivers returned. Not enough time to get back to the roof. Instead, I tossed the package I was carrying back into the “outgoing” pile, then crammed myself into a metal storage locker. Hopefully, none of the supplies inside the locker would be needed, because if anyone opened it, I had no place to run.
Through slats in the front of the storage locker, I watched as the drivers and loading staff carried the “outgoing” packages onto the trucks. The package whose number I’d given to Brody was on the top of the stack, so it was one of the first to be loaded onto a truck.
