Chapter 87 - The Road to Oakhaven
The tactical team reached the fence line. A burst of automatic fire ripped through the siding of the burning silo, splinters raining down on us like hail.
"Go!" Dad yelled, levering a round into the chamber and returning fire. The sharp crack of the hunting rifle echoed across the pasture, kicking up dirt at the lead contractor's boots and forcing the team into the dry ditch. "Get to the truck, Caleb! Get to Oakhaven!"
"I'm not leaving you!"
"You have to!" Dad’s voice was steady now, the tremor gone from his hands, replaced by an iron resolve I hadn't seen since Mom passed away. "Your mother spent twenty years fighting their bank paper because she knew if they foreclosed on this parcel, they could open the floodgates under the courthouse. I can hold them here for ten minutes. Take the back ridge trail! Move!"
He fired twice more, pinning the contractors behind the stone culvert.
I turned and bolted for our old Ford pickup parked behind the tractor shed. The engine screamed as I turned the ignition, the tires tearing through the mud of the pasture before catching the gravel of the ridge road. Through the rearview mirror, I saw Dad fire a fourth time, then duck behind the stone foundation of the well-house as a smoke grenade exploded in the yard.
The ridge road was barely passable. The ground was splitting in jagged, black zigzags, the asphalt of County Route 9 cracked and buckled like ribbon candy.
Down in the valley basin, Oakhaven looked completely unaware of the catastrophe creeping toward it. The morning sun shone on the brick steeple of the Presbyterian church, the flat roofs of the hardware store and the diner, and the white limestone columns of the historic courthouse.
Beneath that peaceful veneer, fifty million gallons of pressurized subterranean water were shifting toward the structural faults Silas Miller had mapped in secret.
As I crested the final hill above town, my phone on the dashboard—which had been without a signal for three days—suddenly crackled to life with a blast of static.
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A voice cut through the speaker, crisp, close, and chillingly polite:
"You have five minutes, Caleb Miller. The courthouse sits atop Chamber Zero. Bring the gold leaf to the town square, or the foundation drops."
