CHAPTER 17
"Hey, man."
Mike Donovan felt his heart surge at the sound of Elias Taylor's voice. He'd fallen asleep in the passenger seat of the Chevy Tahoe. The ex-cameraman rubbed his eyes and yawned.
"Where are we? We there yet?" he asked, still unwilling to open his eyes fully. The forty-some minute nap didn't kill his exhaustion, but it was the most sleep he'd managed in the last day.
"Yeah," Elias answered. "We just got here."
"Here" was Sable Ranch, an abandoned filming location near Santa Clarita, a community about forty miles north of downtown Los Angeles. Nestled within the local canyons and surrounded by brush-covered mountains and ridges, Sable Ranch was mostly destroyed when a wildfire raged through the area a few years before the Visitors arrived on Earth. The property's owners attempted to resurrect the facilities after the devastating wildfire, but the alien occupation postponed the rebuilding indefinitely. There were still remnants of the ranch's storied celluloid history that remained relatively untouched by the fires, however, and the Los Angeles resistance was happy to take residence in the buildings and functional sets that somehow survived the wildfire.
"Damn," Donovan said when he finally opened his eyes, finding the ambient light at the point where the darkness was encroaching on the last remnants of the day. Elias was driving into a part of the property made to look like a typical Western town from the late 1800s. For the sake of verisimilitude, there was no lighting outside of the buildings, although all of them did have electrical infrastructure built into them. The inexorable coming twilight lent the anachronistic scene of modern vehicles in the Wild West scenery a bit of a weird aspect.
"I didn't realize it's almost sunset," Donovan said.
"Yep. It's about three hours before curfew."
"Yeah," Donovan agreed after a big yawn. "Curfew would have made travel more complicated."
As Elias maneuvered the vehicle into its parking spot in front of the town saloon, Donovan looked out at the rest of the vehicles and the mass of people unloading them. Because this area of the ranch was supposed to simulate a town from the Wild West, the streets were unpaved, so occasionally a cloud of dust and dirt flew up when the canyon breezes breathed through.
"This is the last load, right?" asked Donovan.
"Yeah. We had to leave some gear behind, some people's personal stuff."
"OK," Donovan nodded, when a thought suddenly occurred to him. "Shit, wait a sec. Did anybody pack up Julie's stuff?"
"Yeah. Maggie did," replied Elias. "Honestly, none of us guys thought about that. But I'm glad she did, with help from Harmony."
Donovan sighed, relieved. "Me too."
As soon as Elias put the SUV in park, Donovan moved to open his door so that he could begin unloading the vehicle's cargo. Elias grabbed his left arm. "Wait a sec."
Donovan slid back into the seat. "Yeah?"
He watched Elias scratch the back of his head, his eyes eluding Donovan's eye contact. When Elias finally met his gaze, he said, "Tell me something, Donovan. Can we trust this guy Tyler?"
Now it was Donovan's turn to hesitate. He looked straight out the windshield, his mind traveling back to the myriad occasions when his newsman's lens was trained on something he suspected Tyler was involved in.
He'd covered the aftermath of political assassinations, targeted demolitions of high-value installations, and other similar covert missions done under the auspices of the Central Intelligence Agency. While Donovan could never catch Tyler in the act, he had ultra-reliable sources who confirmed Tyler's involvement, whether direct or indirect, in such operations.
"There's no simple answer," Donovan said finally. "People like Tyler… people like him operate in the shadows. Secrecy is a life and death thing for them."
He looked at Elias, whose face was creased with what Donovan read as anxiety and concern.
"Hey," Donovan said, a tight grin on his lips. "I wouldn't worry so much."
"Him and you don't seem to get along so good," said Elias.
Donovan shrugged. "I think it's all got to do with the fact that his life depends on secrets, while my job is all about taking the lid off of 'em. I don't think it's anything personal."
Elias looked at him with doubt. Donovan squeezed his shoulder to reassure him.
"It'll be alright. This is one time where he and I are on the same side, more or less." He opened the door and stepped out of the vehicle, and Elias followed suit. They met at the tailgate.
"He did arrange for the extra vehicles to help with moving out our people and gear, right?" Donovan asked. "And he promised he'd help us find out what happened to Julie, at the very least. I don't quite know how he and his people are gonna manage that, but he's well-connected."
"I guess," Elias said as he opened up the tailgate and reached in for the first boxes to unload. "Except now we definitely owe him. And where I'm from, it ain't ever a good thing to owe anyone."
Donovan stopped shifting boxes to the edge of the tailgate and looked at Elias, who looked away and concentrated on the first box he was going to unload. "What are you trying to say?" he asked.
"'cause now he's got leverage, man." Elias shrugged. He slid a box from the edge of the tailgate, preparing to lift it. "Been my experience that people who got it tend to abuse it. Is he that kinda guy?"
Donovan looked at Elias, pondering the question.
Elias shrugged again, then lifted his box. "Just something to think about, man."
As if I needed much more of that, thought Donovan as a gentle breeze blew through the Western set, leaving him unsure if his shudders were from the cold wind or if they were from the Elias' questions.