Double Helix Ch. 21

"We have to plan for the future," I said. "This place is now a growing community." If we counted Alice's family, we had eighteen people in total living in the three houses and the lab's cramped quarters. "We're going to need..."

I trailed off when my phone began to vibrate in my pocket. I pulled it out and flipped it open to see the house phone number. "Just a moment," I said, and hit "answer".

"Norm," Nissi said in a tight, controlled voice. "Get inside right now."

I didn't pause to question. I grabbed Wendy's hand and ran for the back door of the house, tucking my phone back into my pocket as I went. From far behind us, a series of "pings" sounded in quick succession, just as we reached the back porch. I turned to look at the greenhouse. I saw movement through the glass as interior walls, no longer held in place by steel pins, fell in an orderly fashion, turning the greenhouse into a single large chamber for a moment. Then the walls to east and west fell slowly outward, braked slightly by the tension of cables and pulleys. The interior was now open to the outside air. Finally, the southern wall began folding inward, guided by rails in the structure's roof, allowing the slightly peaked roof to settle slowly to the ground, disappearing behind the earth berm.

I got to the living room just as the cellar door flung open and Nissi came through. "There's government vehicles, Norm," she said. "Two of them. The camera down at the road signaled movement and we saw government plates. Tilly triggered the greenhouse collapse once we were sure no one was out there."

Daniel was supposed to call us if the feds wanted to do an inspection. Was this the end? Had the FBI somehow traced us back here?

I didn't have time to puzzle it out. Tilly and Dawn had just appeared behind Nissi. Stanley, Stansy and Nonna had appeared from the living room, and Sasha was hurrying down the stairs.

"Stansy," I said, "and Stanley. Go to the den and help Nock get both terminals, the MC and the guns, and get them into the cellar. Wendy, Nonna, Sasha, start collecting the food from the fridge and the pantry." I turned back to Tilly and Nissi. "Where are the others?"

"Stan, Gena and Stanford should be over at the west house," Tilly said.

"Get on a chat and get word to them. Then contact Alice. Quick, so we can take down both terminals."

Tilly ran for the den, and I addressed Nissi. "What about Ed?"

"Oh," Nissi said, "He's been tutoring Alice's kids on Saturdays."

"Fine, he can remain there. Help with the food."

There was always the possibility that the vehicles had nothing to do with us, but we wouldn't take a chance on that. I went to the front window and peered through it at an angle towards the road. In the distance, a white pickup truck bounced over the long gravel driveway with a white sedan just behind. They would reach the house in less than a minute.

"They're definitely coming here," I said.

"We could use some help in here!" Sasha called.

I hurried to the kitchen to see Sasha and Nonna inside the open pantry, passing cans, jars, and bags to Nissi, who was packing the items into a cardboard box. "Help Wendy," Nonna told me.

I moved past them into the kitchen proper, noting that someone had thought to draw the curtains on the window that overlooked the driveway. Wendy was grabbing items from the refrigerator and piling them into a box as quickly as she could, but she had a long way to go. I started grabbing items from the upper shelves that she couldn't reach and setting them in the box as quickly and carefully as I could. I suddenly remembered something.

"We need to lock the doors!" I said, careful not to pitch my voice too loud.

"I'll do it!" Wendy said. She ran to the front door, threw the deadbolt, and ran for the hallway, heading for the side door at the end.

"This one's full," Nissi said. She grabbed the box and hurried towards the cellar door, slowed only slightly by her limp. Nonna took another box from the pantry and a roll of tape, quickly assembling the next one.

I could hear faint voices outside now, as car doors were flung closed. The fridge was mostly empty, but we still had the freezer. I needed to know why these people were here, though. I went to the window and peered carefully around the edges of the curtain.

There were three men and a woman standing there. Two of the men were in uniform, with flat-brimmed black hats circled by gold braids. Those must have arrived in the sedan emblazoned with "Linn County Sheriff". The third man wore jeans and a plaid shirt, while the woman, who had probably ten years on any the other three, wore a gray skirt suit. She was apparently in charge, and pointed at the house as she spoke, then made a motion to indicate somewhere beyond the house. The truck behind her had the USDA logo on the door.

"They're from the Department of Agriculture," I said, as I resumed my place unloading the fridge. "And the local sheriff."

I threw the contents of the freezer into the box, cursing when a Ziploc bag came open. Peas spilled all over inside the box, but I ignored them and continued packing, being a bit more careful how much force I used. When the freezer was empty, I picked up the box and hurried to the cellar door, meeting Nissi coming out. I descended both stairways to the base of the tunnel, setting the box down next to the one she had left, and hurried back up.

"Coming through," Nock said, just as I reached the top of the stairs. He carried Sasha's boxy microcomputer under one arm and held a terminal screen in the other. Stansy followed with the remaining terminal, peripherals, and wires, while Stanley toted a large canvas bag containing the rifles and handguns that we kept in the den.

"The files," I said, and started for the den.

"Tilly's already getting them," Stanley said.

Wendy emerged from the hallway carrying a small bag that presumably came from the bathroom. She ran to the back door and locked it, while I wracked my brain to try to think of anything we could have missed. I flinched as a fist pounded three times on the front door. "Mr. Harris," a male voice boomed. "We're from the Linn County Sheriff's department and the USDA compliance office. We need to ask you a few questions."

"They're looking for Daniel," Stansy said, pausing at the top of the cellar stairs to look back with concern.

I nodded. "Come on, Tilly," I said, knowing she could hear me. "Hurry up."

"Done," Sasha said from the kitchen. Nissi came out of the pantry carrying the remaining box, Sasha and Nonna trailing just behind her.

The triple knock and the voice came again. "Mr. Harris, open the door. We have a warrant to search this residence."

I moved into the living room where I could get a view of the front door. The shadows of two figures fell on the curtains covering the four-paned window set in the door's upper half. I heard low conversation from the two men outside. "Just break it," came the woman's voice. "He's not here."

"Tilly!" I hissed. "We're out of time."

I heard footsteps from the hall and Tilly appeared carrying the entire filing cabinet in front of her. The thing was bulky and probably weighed a few hundred pounds. That much weight was nothing for her, but she was having trouble keeping it balanced while moving quickly.

"Come on, come on," I said, moving towards the cellar. I held the door and looked down the stairs, which were cloaked in darkness now, all of the lights off. There was a crackle and a tinkling of glass shards hitting the floor from the front of the house. Tilly reached the top of the stairs and someone from below grabbed the other end of the cabinet to help her carry it down. I followed just behind her. The deadbolt on the front door clicked open just as I latched the cellar door closed.

I made my way carefully down into the dark, my muscles tensed for a stair to creak. I only relaxed marginally when my feet touched the dirt floor. I heard footsteps and muffled voices from the people upstairs as I moved blindly, an outstretched hand touching the wall to my left.

If I hadn't been half-expecting it, I might have cried out in surprise when a hand closed on my right wrist. "Come on, boss," Nock whispered, leading me forward five steps in what to me was pitch blackness. "We're at the doorway now." He guided my hand to the doorframe and released it. "I'll close up once you're clear."

My heart was pounding at the thought of our intruders bursting through the cellar door and seeing us down here. I probed with my hand past the metal doorframe to smooth concrete, then moved it down to find the metal railing. I felt for the edge of the top step with my foot, then carefully put it over the edge, my toes finding the next step down, then the next, as I clung to the railing.

"Hurry, boss," Nock said. "They're coming this way."

I forced myself to move faster and had to grab the railing with both hands on the sixth step when I put a foot wrong and it slipped. It was enough, though, to give Nock the room he needed. I heard the door above me snap shut and then a rapid series of clicks as multiple bolts engaged around the top, bottom, and sides of the door. The door had a solid steel core with a cinder block facade on the cellar side. Someone would have to look very closely to realize that there was anything there other than a wall. And then it would likely take a cutting torch to get through.

A light came on up ahead as someone opened the door to the lab quarters. The passageway had overhead lighting, but we had agreed that in the event that we needed to shelter down here, we would keep the lights off, on the off chance that some of it might leak through around the door through some hidden crack. I could see the other members of the household silhouetted in that light, moving quickly and quietly down the short tunnel.

I easily descended the remaining stairs and hurried down the passageway, Nock just behind me. As I entered the lab quarters, I couldn't help but mentally inventory each person to make sure none had been left behind, though reason told me that every person had made it down.

"That's everyone," I breathed, and closed and locked the door behind me.

Most of the people in the room had moved to get a view of the screen to the left of the door, which displayed video of the cellar in green hues. The camera was mounted behind a tiny hole at the top of the wall in the cellar, facing the stairs. A pair of figures shone flashlights around the little storage area, and it caused the camera to switch lighting modes when one of the beams played across the wall near it, blinding it for an instant, but then returning to low-light mode once the beam was past.

Nock touched the screen a few times, activating the audio pickups that were scattered around most of the rooms of the house. A display in the bottom corner listed the rooms and a meter next to each indicated the level of sound being registered. Nock toggled the audio to match the selected camera.

"...is shit duty," one of the men said. "And there's nothing down here."

"Give it a thorough sweep anyway," the other one said. He had a slight Hispanic accent. "Look for trap doors, evidence of excavation, anything that looks out of place."

"It's still bullshit," the first man said. "This is not what I signed on for. Jailing people for keeping a little extra food on hand. Jesus, Flaco, they're just trying to survive."

"I know you don't like it, Jim. I don't like it either. But it comes with the job."

The two men continued to play their lights over the walls and floor of the cellar for a few more minutes, the one named Flaco putting a hand out and giving a hard push right against the hidden door, but then he moved on without comment.

"See, there's nothing here," Jim said. "Just the fucking USDA sending us on another wild goose chase."

Flaco put his hand out towards the other, palm up. "Alright, it looks clear to me. Let's go report that to the nice lady from the government and maybe we can get the hell out of here."

The men turned and climbed the stairs. Nock switched the camera to the kitchen, where the man and woman had gone. The refrigerator and pantry doors stood open, along with every cabinet in the kitchen.

The man was rummaging under the sink. "Nothing down here but soap and drain cleaner," he grumbled, his voice sounding hollow coming from the enclosed space.

The woman was removing dishes, pots and pans from the cabinets, setting them on the countertops. "It's here somewhere," she said. "Unless he's dumb enough to keep it at his house."

"Well, at least we know they aren't looking for us," Dawn said.

"No," I said, "but we still don't want them to find us."

The two officers came into frame and Jim tipped his hat. "Nothing in the cellar, ma'am."

"Damn it," the woman said, her face wrinkling like she had just swallowed something foul. She quickly composed herself. "Thank you deputy. I'd like you to coordinate here with Officer Mason and continue your search of the house. Make sure you check the barn thoroughly. Deputy Castillo, I'm going to perform a survey of the orchard, and I would like you to accompany me."

"Yes, ma'am," Flaco said.

I turned to Tilly. "You told Stan and the others to stay out of sight?"

She nodded. "And I suggested he tap into the camera feeds himself."

"Good thinking." Hopefully Stan already knew that they were coming his way. The far edge of the orchard was about a hundred yards from the east house. As long as they stayed inside, that pair would have no reason to go snooping over there.

My next task was to contact Daniel. My first impulse was to call him, but I thought better of it. If he had known the officers would be here, he would have given us a warning. That he didn't know meant that he might be in custody. Instead, I went into the lab and sent him an encrypted message through the darknet, outlining the situation and telling him to contact me as soon as possible. That would have to be enough.

I went back to the lab quarters and resumed watching the cameras with the others. We didn't have any eyes on the orchard, but we followed Jim and Mason's progress through the house, listening to their conversation. They had moved from the kitchen to the den.

"The report on this property says it's unoccupied," Mason said, "but it looks recently lived in."

"They apparently keep the place up," Jim said. "Not like most of these old farms."

"There's no dust on this desk," Mason said. "Who bothers to dust in a house no one's living in? And why keep all the appliances turned on? If not food, they're still hiding something here."

"I don't know," Jim said. "Maybe he's a clean freak. Why don't you ask the guy, or his son?"

"Oh, we will," Mason said. He started removing the books from the shelf that took up half of the south wall, dropping them none-too-gently on the floor. "He was arrested at his house in Portland just minutes before we arrived here. Our officers will be questioning him by now."

"You think this is a good use of your manpower?" Jim asked, rummaging through mostly empty cabinets along another wall. "Shouldn't you guys be, I don't know, trying to grow more food or something? You know, something that might actually keep the people in this country fed?"

"Huh, you're one of those, then?" Mason said, his tone more amused than angered. "You think we're the bad guys. You know those industrial-scale greenhouses we keep building, deputy? You know how much one of those costs? You know the failure rate we have to contend with?"

"Uh, no," Jim admitted.

"They cost millions to build, and we lose almost half of all of our harvests. One in four fails on the very first planting. Half of the USDA's budget goes into those monsters, and we produce about five percent of the nation's food needs. Now, the compliance office of the USDA uses less than three percent of the department's budget, but the food we seize nationwide from hoarders provides...can you guess?"

Jim sighed. "I have no idea."

"Pretty close to five percent," Mason said. "You can do the math on that, can't you?"

"Yeah," Jim said sullenly. "I can do the fucking math."

The USDA officer had finished removing books and began inspecting the shelf, presumably looking for hidden compartments. "Cheer up, deputy. We're doing good work here, saving lives. The math on this guy tells us that he's been holding back enough food from his orchard harvests to feed, oh, maybe three or four people for an entire year. That's four people who might otherwise die of hunger. All because some selfish people want to keep more than their fair share."

The deputy shook his head slightly, but didn't come back with a retort. They soon gave up on the den and moved on to the other rooms downstairs. They overturned the mattress in Stan and Stansy's room and started pulling everything out of the closet. I felt a seething anger at seeing these people invade our home and putting their hands on our belongings. To distract myself, I went back into the lab to check the terminal and hurriedly opened a message from Daniel when I saw it.

Got your message. Would have contacted you sooner if I had known. They have my dad in custody. I've been told that they sent people to the farm for an inspection of the property. I'm on my way. Hang on, we'll get through this.

I told the others about the message. While I had been away, the pair in the house had moved upstairs to Wendy's room. I really wished we could see what was going on outside. I told myself that if we got out of this, I was going to install a camera looking outward from each side of the house. Dawn was making sandwiches for everyone, so I took my turn at the little round table to eat. She had roasted some zucchini, eggplant, and peppers in the oven and then put them on toasted bread with artificial cheese. The "cheese" barely had any flavor, and was mostly there for texture, but otherwise the sandwiches were surprisingly good.

While I ate, the officer and deputy had cleared the hall bathroom and Tilly's old bedroom. They were checking the master bedroom when the indicator for the backdoor signaled on the screen. Nock quickly changed the view and we saw that the woman and Flaco had returned. Nock switched the view again when they entered the dining room. "Mason, can you come here, please?" she called. At his answering call, she said to Flaco, "Why don't you go help Deputy Roberts upstairs?"

Flaco passed Mason on the stairs as the woman set a clipboard down on the table. "I've inventoried everything," she said to Mason. "I estimate that he's been under-reporting his harvests by at least half, just like we thought. No luck finding where he's storing it?"

"We haven't checked the barn yet," Mason said. "Could be out there."

"It may not be here at all," she said dismissively. "He's probably already sold it on the black market. We'll get Roberts and Castillo to check, just in case, but it shouldn't matter. They'll put a little pressure on him and he'll break. Speaking of which..." She pulled a phone from her pocket and placed a call. "Yeah, it's Davis. How's the interrogation going?" She listened for a moment. "Hmm. You think he's telling the truth? Alright, thanks."

She hung up. "Apparently Mr. Harris' son handles the orchard harvest. He's claiming that he doesn't know anything about it. I think we have ample cause to include him in our investigation."

Wendy stomped her foot. "Fuck! And he's on his way here. Norm, isn't there something we can do?"

I could call Daniel, warn him not to come here, but that wouldn't help him much. If he ran, he would be leaving his son behind. If he went back to Portland, the police would catch up to him sooner or later. In either case, he was going to be implicated as at least an accessory to a felony. Worse, if he and his father were successfully prosecuted, the federal government would seize the farm, and all of us would be forced to flee. Perhaps most importantly, if Daniel were in their sights, that would open him up for surveillance. My call would be recorded, and that could land us all in even more trouble.