Chapter 1: Even in the Quietest Moments

John had hidden under the stacks of hay in the loft of the old barn innumerable times before, but this time was very different.  He didn't feel the normal nervous, giddy thrill of adrenaline as he struggled to remain quiet; this time the chemicals coursing through his veins seemed to want to explode through his skin, putting pressure on his chest, constricting his breathing.  He tried desperately to control the volume of the rasps of air entering his lungs by breathing very slowly, but the individual straws of hay were tickling at his nose, threatening to turn his slight wheezing into an audible cough - an audible cough that could give away his location and possibly get him killed.

John wasn't sure he didn't deserve to die.  He was just so scared - he didn't think back at the house, he just reacted.  He'd always hoped that he'd be heroic if it ever came down to it, but when the improbable finally happened, he sprinted away from danger without a second thought for his parents' safety.  And now those thoughts were plaguing him as he hid.

John tried desperately to reconstruct the events that led him to the hayloft.  The farm house was quiet today, almost serene, and serenity was something that was very precious in his family's home.  Each time they had run before, there was an almost palpable sense of anticipation… even in the quietest of moments.  When you've been running for a very long time, brief moments of calm feel like being caught in the eye of a hurricane.  You know the moment can never last.

But this time, it had lasted.  Days turned into months.  Months turned into years.  Even his father's constant vigilance seemed to have dimmed.  It was nearly six months since Dad last caught him the hallway, pulling him aside, hidden from his mother, to cryptically remind John yet again "Johnny… if anything happens, run, and don't look back.  No matter what…"  The terror slowly faded, and John's memories seemed more like a bad dream that was so very close to being forgotten.

John had been getting ready to go over to his friend Mike's farm.  Mike was John's first real friend in a very long time, and John was desperate for a friend.  John's father wouldn't let him make new friends - they were in hiding after all - but Mike was an inherited friend.  Dad knew and trusted Mike's father, and by a quirk of fate his family was squatting in a farm house near where Mike's parents were hiding.  Yes, Mike was a friend by circumstance… but John couldn't have chosen a better friend. 

The family's two cats attempted to catch John's attention as he pulled his coat from the closet near the front door on his way out.  Pandora, a small, thin cat with a black, brown, and red brindle coat rubbed against John's leg.  John recalled slowly running his fingers through Pandora's coat, and letting his finger's trail across her three-quarters of a tail.  The missing portion of tail, along with a cloudy grey area of scar tissue on the surface of one of Pandora's green eyes, were reminders of ancient battles with larger animals. 

Alexander, an enormously fat grey cat with black and white stripes and large blue eyes flopped directly next to Pandora, eliciting Pandora's warning hiss.  Alexander thought of John as his personal possession, and always hurried to push the smaller Pandora out of the way with his bulky body when John gave her attention.  Alexander immediately went into a submissive position on his back, exposing his fat belly to the smaller cat; in the end, Pandora was the alpha cat of the two.  John continued to pet Pandora with one hand while tickling Alexander's belly.  Alexander responded by playfully nipping at John's hand, while Pandora lowered her back and raised her ass high in the air, releasing one quick, satisfied, trill of a purr.

"Dear God Dad," John remembered calling back to his father in the living room with a grin. "How the hell did these cats ever evolve?  Alexander exposes his belly at the first sign of danger, and Pandora is 'presenting' herself to the wrong species!"

John never had time to hear his Dad's return answer.  It happened so suddenly - there was no warning.  There was no knock at the door, no sound of footsteps crossing the half-acre open yard that led to the farm house.  The doors to all three entrances to the house had burst open simultaneously, two men at each door.  In each case one man had knocked the door down leading with his shoulder; the lead man at all three doors had stumbled awkwardly into the house and fallen down in almost identical fashion, the second man trailing afterwards. 

His brain barely had time to process the scene.  John's father reacted first, instantaneously leaping up from the couch where he'd been serenely reading an old book one second earlier, as if he'd been expecting the unwelcome intrusion.  Ignoring the lead man on the floor at the front door, his dad crossed the distance from the couch to the door and tackled the second man much faster than John could have believed, propelling both of them outside the house and down the front steps.  John got the fleeting impression of a crimson red stain spreading on the back of his Dad's white sweatshirt as if in slow motion, a marked contrast to the violent speed in which the two men toppled down the small stairway to the front porch.   

By pure chance John was right next to the front door as it burst open, in perfect position to take advantage of the opening his Dad had created.  His body moved without conscious thought; he immediately bolted out the front door and raced desperately across the unbroken sightline of the lawn in his front yard, only looking back once at the now limp figure of his father on top of the second man.  Somehow he knew instinctively to suddenly change directions once he was out of sight at the tree line. 

Only one thought had been in John's head - to hide.  And the only place he could think of was the hayloft in which he had hidden when he was younger.  He skirted the yard, sure to stay hidden in the trees, making his way to the backyard towards the old barn.  Now he hid once again in the hay, keenly aware he was no longer a child, yet still hiding never the less.  John couldn't even reconstruct the scene at the house in his head well enough to hazard a guess as to what had happened to his mother, but fear still kept him hidden under his suffocating warm blanket of hay.