Chapter 14 - The Dial Tone
The morning fog clung to the asphalt like wet wool. Ava dragged herself across the empty highway, her breath coming in ragged, white plumes in the biting dawn chill. The rusted sign of the abandoned roadside station read LAST STOP DIESEL, its neon letters long burned out.
The glass of the outdoor payphone booth was cracked, webbed with age, but inside hung a heavy, black receiver.
Ava leaned heavily against the metal coin box, her splinted leg throbbing with a dull, rhythmic ache that made her stomach heave. She pulled the blood-stained card from her raincoat with trembling fingers.
*JULIAN. 503-555-0199. CODE: 774-SPARROW.*
She lifted the receiver to her ear.
To her astonishment, a steady, low hum buzzed through the line. A dial tone.
She punched in the numbers with a shaking finger. The phone clicked three times. It didn't ring. Instead, an automated tone chirped twice, followed by absolute silence.
Ava held her breath, pressing the receiver so hard against her ear that the plastic dug into her skin.
"Identify," a man's voice answered. It wasn't young, nor was it kind. It was gravelly, weathered by decades of paranoia and isolation.
"I... I'm looking for Julian," Ava stammered, her voice breaking into a dry sob.
"Wrong number, kid," the voice replied, preparing to hang up.
"Wait! The sparrow is in the storm!" Ava screamed into the mouthpiece. "Karen told me to say it! The sparrow is in the storm!"
The line went dead silent for five agonizing seconds. When the man spoke again, the roughness had vanished, replaced by an intense, hyper-vigilant focus.
"Where is Karen?"
"She's gone," Ava wept, sliding down the wall of the booth until she was sitting in the wet gravel. "The tunnel collapsed. Richard is dead. Dr. Harrison... she’s after me. They know about the chip in my leg."
A sharp intake of breath hissed over the wire. "Listen to me very carefully, Ava. Did anyone scan the transponder within the last forty-five minutes?"
"The doctor did... before the cave-in," Ava whispered, feeling her consciousness slipping away from blood loss, shock, and exhaustion. "She said they were going to extract it."
"Then they already have your satellite vector," the man said grimly. "Look across the road, into the treeline. Do you see an old logging road marked with a red reflector?"
Ava turned her head, squinting through the dense fog across the black asphalt. Fifty yards into the pines sat a faded, rusted steel gate marked with an old reflector.
"Yes," she breathed.
"Get behind the gate and hide beneath the drainage culvert," Julian ordered. "I am eight miles out. If a black helicopter appears before I do... don't let them take you alive."
The line clicked off.
Ava dropped the receiver, which swung back and forth on its metal cord like a pendulum. As she began to crawl toward the road, a low, rhythmic vibration rattled the loose pebbles on the asphalt.
May you like
She looked up at the sky.
Cutting through the gray mountain clouds, two matte-black military gunships descended toward the highway, their searchlights sweeping the pines.
