“Any luck?”
“Yes,” I say, panting as I try to recover from the journey. “She’s there. They have her at Georgia Tech surrounded by walls of rubble from the buildings. They’ve built a whole fort there.”
“Shit! How are you going to get her out?”
“I’ve got an idea,” I tell him, “but I’m not sure if I can pull it off.”
I explain my idea to Chuck, and he stares at me wide-eyed.
“Dude,” he says, “that’s like, right out of The Hobbit!”
“The what?”
“The Hobbit! J.R.R. Tolkien. Lord of the Rings and all that shit. Didn’t you ever watch movies?”
“Not a lot, no.”
“Shit, bro!” Chuck scratches his chin and shakes his head at me. “It’s a classic! How could you not know about The Hobbit?”
I shake my head. It does sound a little familiar, but I have never been one for movies. When I watched television, I tended to fall asleep in front of it.
“You missed out on a lot,” Chuck informs me.
“So, are you saying it will work or it won’t?”
“It might. It worked for Bilbo, anyway.”
“I have no idea what that means.” I’m getting more than a little frustrated. I don’t have time for this.
“It means that I don’t have a better idea,” Chuck says. “If you already got in there once without being noticed, you should be able to do it again. As long as no one sees you leaving with her, it should work.”
“I hope so. I’m not sure there is another option.”
Hearing Chuck’s opinion makes me feel a little better. Maybe I have a chance of getting her out without Caesar or Brett catching on. If anything goes wrong, I’m going to be in a lot of trouble, but I can’t think that way. I have to keep my mind focused on the goal.
“What are you going to do once you get her out?” Chuck asks.
“I’ve been taking refuge in bomb shelters over the past few months,” I told him. “They’re underground and I can use light without worrying about the fliers going overhead. When I found the first one, there was a map of other bomb shelters in the Atlanta area. I don’t know if the original owner had a group of buddies or not, but I’ve found several of them. If you don’t know what you’re looking for, they are almost impossible to see. I actually fell over the ventilation shaft for the first one. Otherwise, I might have gone right past it. There is one less than two miles from here, and it would be the closest safe place to take Hannah.”
“Who do you think built them?”
“No idea,” I say. “Definitely people with some
military knowledge, but there’s no indication of who they might have been. I haven’t run into anyone else inside any of the shelters, so whoever it was either didn’t make it or wasn’t in the area at the time of the attack.”
“Keeping Hannah underground for a while is a good idea,” Chuck says, nodding. “Safer if she’s completely out of sight.”
“It might not be a bad idea for you guys to think about moving farther away,” I tell him. “Once they figure out she’s gone, they may come looking for you.”
“You ain’t going at this alone,” Chuck says. “I’m in it, too.”
“Whoa!” I call out. “Wait a minute! This is my fight, not yours.”
“Says who?” Chuck stands up straight and crosses his arms in front of his chest.
“Me,” I respond. “You don’t have to get involved. Hannah is my responsibility, not yours. You don’t need to give those guys a reason to come after you.”
“You think I don’t already have a reason?” Chuck looks pointedly in Christine’s direction. “You don’t think it’s a matter of time before they come after her, not to mention this girl you found?”