Welcome to the latest installment of Flash Fiction Friday. Hopefully, you enjoyed the Part I of Target: Cox Junction. Once again, I will remind everyone this story is purely my imagination and not suggestive to knowledge of actual destruction plans. Thanks for reading!
Target: Cox Junction Part II
By,
Jennifer E. Miller
Once Sockeye
regained his footing, he gripped the post and pulled it up. It slid vertically
from the concrete hole, but not all the way; like it was just loose. Annoyed,
Sockeye wondered how long it sat needing repair.
He pushed his
radio talk button. “Bordman!”
“Yo!”
“Schedule
maintenance to come out here asap to repair fence post...” he squinted at the
worn typeface on the label. “…A5.”
“Sure thing.”
Jay Bordman paused. “Everything all right out there?”
“I think so.”
“‘I think so’
isn’t yes.”
“Keep an eye on
our monitors, Bordman,” Sockeye said.
“You got it,
sir.”
Their radio
communication ceased for the time being.
It’s just a
repair, Sockeye thought to himself.
With the sun on
his back, he gazed beyond the fence at the landscape carved from eons of
erosion. It was littered with crumbling rock and dotted with shrubbery. Further
up the hillside was a dense forest of trees engulfed by wilderness.
Disgruntled,
Sockeye approached the stairwell to make his descent back to the lower catwalk.
He scanned one more time over the long, narrow concrete straightaway.
Everything looked normal.
As he lowered
his head to watch his step, something glistened near one of the metal supports.
Furrowing his brow, Sockeye walked to the object, squatted down, and picked it
up.
It was a
painted rock, about the size of his palm. He was aware of this trend. Artists
paint rocks and leave them in public places for others to find. His kids got a
big kick when they found them. But this rock had a large red X on the front.
Turning it over, Sockeye found numbers and a few words written hastily in
permanent marker. It had today’s date followed by “the salmon shall be free.”
“Shit,” he
said, his heart began to pound.
Someone put the
rock here. In a restricted area.
He pushed his
radio.
“Bordman?”
“Yes?”
“Anything
unusual on the monitors?”
“No, sir.”
“What about
last night’s logs?”
A short pause
and the radio squawked again, “I don’t see anything. Is there a problem?”
Is there a
problem? Bordman’s question echoed in Sockeye’s mind. He retraced his
activities: rock, fence post, walking the dam, first stairwell, raven with
yellow legs, memo—
Sockeye
interrupted his own thought. Ravens don’t have yellow legs.
He got back on
the radio. “Bordman, you still got that department memo handy?”
“In my inbox;
haven’t deleted it yet.”
“Good. Open it
and look at the photo of the protestors.”
“Got it.”
“What is the
animal printed on their shirts and signs?”
“A raven.”
Sockeye
swallowed.
“What color are
the legs?” he was pretty sure he knew what the answer was.
“Yellow.”
Shit.
Sockeye pressed
the radio talk button again. It seemed to weigh a ton under his thumb which was
shaking.
“Evacuate
everyone.”
“Now?” came a
surprised Bordman.
“Now.
Precautionary.”
Jay Bordman
knew better than to ask for details.
“Sure thing,
Ripton. What code?”
“Code 999.”
“Say that
again?”
999 was the
code for an emergency attack and to evacuate immediately. The code was created
after 9/11 if terrorists were to target the dams. Sockeye felt this scenario
was legitimate enough to qualify as code 999. Nevertheless, it was surely
alarming to his coworker.
“999,” Sockeye
repeated.
“Roger. Now get
back here.”
Get back here.
Sockeye felt like he got punched in the gut. He’d walked across. If he drove
his ATV he could’ve zipped back in a few minutes. He couldn’t get off the dam
from this side, it was enclosed by the fence; not that there was any place to
go except the wilderness. He had to run back across the top straightaway or
down the stairs through the inside of Cox Junction facility.
He wondered if
he was being paranoid. Then he looked at the rock, which was cool in his palm.
No, better safe than sorry.
Holding onto
the rock, he began his return path, racing down the steps to another exterior
door. As he fumbled with his key card his cell phone dinged. The gentle sound
alarmed him; surprising he heard it over the mighty rush of the river. There
was no cell service in the area. Inside, they used their phones over wifi. But
it wasn’t available outside.
He slid it from
his pocket and examined the screen. It had detected a new wifi network.
Sockeye’s heart nearly stopped at the network name: RavensDam1.
(To be continued...)
Copyright 2017 Jennifer E. Miller
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