Chapter Eight: The Crossing at Cumberland Head
Rachel was pacing inside of the sealed pre-fab unit that Zaeed called home. Shepard had remained in place on the floor, but was watching her stride across the room, much like watching a tennis ball hit back and forth across a court.
"You know, you could sit-down."
She just looked at him, bitting her bottom lip, but didn't make to change her pace or stop moving.
"I don't trust him." She finally said.
"Well that's good. I do."
"He could be selling us out. You heard what he said about the price on your head."
"Zaeed has had bigger payouts for doing infinitely less work, if he wanted the money, we'd be dead already"
"He's also currently making money by compacting trash." She looked over at the cubes of compressed metal in the corner.
Shepard laughed, "Did Zaeed ever tell you where he spent his time during the mission to stop the Collectors? Because this isn't the first time he's spent time sleeping next to a trash compactor. Honestly, I think he just finds it comforting at this point."
Rachel look at him with an eyebrow raised, one hand at her hip, and her weight supported by her further back right leg.
Shepard's laughter died. For a brief second a different woman stood across from him, dark hair loose across her shoulders.
Shaking his head, Shepard ignored the look of concern on Rachel's face.
"Anyway," he said, trying to re-direct the subject away from whatever - or whoever - had just been on his mind, "Zaeed isn't the kind of guy who would sell you out behind your back."
Rachel scoffed, "great, he's the stab me in the front rather than the stab me in the back kind of mercenary."
She went back to her pacing, and Shepard went back to his watching.
Around noon, the rain began to pick up again. The water ricocheting across the roof reminded Shepard uncomfortably of gun battles in metal plated corridors. His eyes drifted shut.
Cold. Grey. Dead leaves gathered at the base of equally dead trees.
Laughter. Laughter that felt out of place. Laughter that sounded wrong against the ears. Laughter that echoed just on the edge, between comfort and concern.
The world had slowed, like moving through molasses. Centuries passed in the gap between the tick of a clock's second hand.
Snow, or perhaps ash, fell from the sky, indistinct from the ground under foot.
Laughter again. Circles of lighter ground, and light reflecting off frost, or maybe it was just grey light reflecting of equally grey details.
His armour felt heavy. Much heavier than he remembered it feeling, much heavier than it should feel.
A grey shape. A different grey. A lighter grey, crouched at the bottom of cluster of trees.
Laughter again. Maybe this time he could move faster, maybe this time he could-
Shepard woke with a small start and a quick intake of breath as the door to the pre-fab unit was pushed open, and a rain-dampened Zaeed appeared with several muttered curses.
"Of all the half-arsed, pieces of shit plans -"
"Had a pleasant trip into town then, Zaeed?" Shepard asked, pushing himself to his feet. Rachel had stopped her pacing and was now standing opposite Zaeed, in the far corner near the trash compactor.
"Shepard," Zaeed responded, taking off a thick poncho that covered his yellow armour, spraying water across the floor as he tried to dry it with a couple of brisk shakes. "If you knew what I had to do to find a smuggler with enough salt to transport three people across to Cumberland Head-"
"So, just once, you'd like to ask someone for help and hear them say, 'Sure, let's go. Right now. No strings attached'?" Shepard's eye's lit up with mirth and the corners of his mouth twisted upwards in a boyish display of hope as the other two failed to get the obvious joke.
"What are you on about, Shepard?" Zaeed finally responded. Rachel just folded her arms and raised an eyebrow.
Shepard chuckled to himself, "Never mind Zaeed, I guess you had to be there."
"Anyway, before old crazy horse here interrupted, I was beginning to explain how incredibly difficult it was to find someone willing to cut the mercs at the crossing out of any transport related transaction."
"Then why not just pay them?" Rachel asked, while Shepard kept grinning at his own joke.
"Doc, these bastards would sell us without batting an eyelid. And not to some nice, respectable merc group either-"
"There are 'nice, respectable merc groups?" Rachel asked, the corner of her mouth twitching up with a sign of obvious disagreement.
"You might not like me. You might not like what I do. But unfortunately for you, you need me to do it. You need me to do all the shit that your high and mighty society can't be seen to do. And right now, that includes a small amount of human trafficking. If you want to take your chances with them lot by the gate, go on then. Mean's there's a third less risk for Shepard and me."
Rachel did not respond to that, and while her mouth had flattened into a taught line during Zaeed's speech, her eyebrow remained raised.
"Right. Thats what I thought." Zaeed responded with a gruff whistle of air between his teeth. "This is how it's gonna work."
As they listened to Zaeed explain the plan, Shepard wondered if they might have a better time just trying to swim the distance.
"Oh don't worry, Shepard, Im sure there's plenty of opportunity for you to get wet. It's supposed to rain again tonight." Zaeed said, throwing his meagre possessions into a small, over the shoulder pack. Shepard groaned in response.
"We should rest up," he continued, looking up from his packing to where Rachel had continued her pacing, "it's going to be a long night."
Several hours later -
It was after midnight when Zaeed led Rachel and Shepard out of his house. The rain had started to fall in earnest about two hours earlier, so the ground had that spongy, too full feeling when you stepped on it. Not exactly wet enough for footprints to leave an obvious trail, but enough that someone who was looking could tell that three people had left this particular building, and traveled North, past the Lake Champlain Basin Cleaning and Maintenance Warehouse.
The trio had the relatively easy task of trekking the short distance from Bell Hill Road up to Wilcox Point, where their transport would be waiting for them just out of sight of Gordon's Landing, in Wilcox Bay. From there, they would travel North, up the coast until they were past Gravelly Point, on the opposite coast. From there, their transport would turn West, and angle into Martin Bay. Once there, it was up to Zaeed, Shepard and Rachel to sneak ashore, and head back South to Plattsburg, and from there, figure out transport into Canada.
The Captain of their boat - if it could be realistically called a boat - was a short man, with tanned skin from a life of working on waves. Close cropped black hair, and a hispanic lilt to his voice suggested that this stretch of water wasn't the only that he had .
"I am Marco. This," he pointed to a younger, but taller, version of himself, "is my son, Daniel."
Zaeed nodded, clearly already knowing the pair.
"And you," continued Marco, "are late."
"Yeah, yeah" responded Zaeed. "I'd say blame the weather, but-"
"- Many a man curses the rain that falls upon his head, never realizing that even the weather must change its path sometimes." Marco nodded as he interrupted Throughout the entire exchange he had never stopped tidying and readying the boat.
Shepard and Rachel looked on, before Daniel said,
"You should get onto the boat now. They are starting to run patrols up here at night, to try and catch people doing what we will be trying to do." He looked at Zaeed, "And they are not gentle with the people they find."
Zaeed snorted.
"So," Shepard interjected as he watched Zaeed, "What's the plan?"
It was Marco who responded, his smooth voice quiet over the lapping waves.
"We cannot pull up to the actual crossing, or the men on the other side will wonder why they were not told of an arrival this late. We will head up the lake, to Point Au Roche.
There will be a little bit of swimming. We can't pull up to the actual crossing, or the guys on the other end will wonder why they weren't told. So we are going to head up the Lake to Point Au Roche. From there, we will head up to Treadwell Bay, and past Middle Point and into Deep Bay.
We cannot risk a landing, but we can try and get you close enough to wade across the last few meters to Camp Red Cloud Road."
Shepard raised his eyebrow at Zaeed, but it was Rachel who answered his non-verbal question.
"It was never a military camp. Years ago, it was a State Park and the corresponding Ranger's offices, but now its a campsite - or rather, it was."
Rachel looked over to Zaeed before continuing.
"I'm guessing its too much to hope that there would be a hovercar there?"
"There might be," Zaeed responded, "but it'll have been picked over by looters by now. We might find some old credit chits lying around, but don't hold your breath."
"Pappa." It was Daniel who had called. Lights were present on the old Shore Road. Several lights, bobbing and moving as their owners jogged along the waters edge.
"We had best get moving." Marco responded.
Rachel, who had been crouching on the waters edge, stood and dusted herself off before stepping onto the small, three rung ladder that acted as the entrance to the boats bow. A small section of the railing was missing, allowing someone to climb onto, or off, the boat while it was still in the water. She pulled herself into the boat, hunkering down with Shepard and Zaeed inside the boats hull.
"Pappa, we must move."
Marco jumped down from the boat, and motioned for Shepard to help him. The pair braced their shoulders against the boats transom, and pushed the light craft with its illicit cargo of people, into the water. Marco was the first to climb aboard, turning to pull Shepard from the water while Daniel manned the boats machinery.
Marco moved quickly from Shepard's side, pointing the soldier to a cramped but sheltered area below the half deck.
The pair spoke softly in Spanish as they moved around the boat, with Daniel moving from the wheel as Marco approached.
Marco switched to English before explaining,
"Luckily, the wind is with us tonight. Otherwise we would have to wait until those men had long passed before starting the engine. And we have the rain to mask our trail."
"You don't need lights, or stars to see by?" Shepard asked.
Marco smiled, but said nothing, his tanned face
The rest of the voyage passed peacefully, serenely almost, as the rocking of the waves lulled the travellers into a state of calm, but it wasn't long before their small vessel had traversed the lake, and was gliding its way silently into Deep Bay.
"We will hold here until you reach the shore, but if you wish to cross, you must do so soon. They will notice the boat is missing before long."