THE FBI’S BELL CHOPPER WAS ON THE FIELD of the Jensen property in Wellsville, Utah. Roberta who was on suspension from duty was observing FBI Agent Maxim Harvest with the forensic expert setting up her X-ray equipment — on the recently dug grave. Another two agents, led by Agent Ruby Dillon were inside the ramshackle Jensen farmhouse.

She refused to step into the house with those agents...

Roberta felt embarrassed by the city-bred FBI agents who were now snooping around and prying into her humble indigent past. Even though she was raised and lived in the city of Columbus, Ohio for the last eighteen years — but she still hated every day thinking of why her father did not decide to move to a city like her Aunt Flo after his education — even by labouring in the crappiest job in any of the city, it would have provided better remuneration compared to the scarcity, which her parents fought and argued over daily — during her growing up years in that farmhouse.

Instead of crossing over towards greener pastures, her paternal father Herbert — had remained behind to become a ‘nobody’ small-time farmer, on his own father's heritage land. This made Roberta hate this farmhouse even more with, the cornfields, the town of Wellsville — with the school she went to, and where she was bullied for being a tomboy — and everything of her hinterland childhood hatred reminiscences that was now playing on her mind...

She saw her father Herbert as a whiny man of yesterday, ever since Agent Agatha Wolfe had stepped in into her life — as a new resourceful, paternal figure.

It was until recently when Laura’s abduction, in front of her very eyes — which had forced her to step back into her past, to find leads on the whereabouts of her missing sister. It had been three days since Roberta was moving with the FBI team since Edna Scott’s farm was torched in Mississippi. Everyone except Roberta was in good spirits — after learning that the Preacher and his rebel group annihilated two days ago in LA...

Roberta too even had a chance, to kill the Preacher herself — in New Orleans — but disappointingly, she blew it too.

She was clueless that every hint to finding Laura — had always ended into a dead-end. She was so sure that the Apache search party would find something fruition at the lakes in California some days ago — but they returned empty-handed.

But Roberta was grateful that Agent Harvest had been lenient with her — with her FBI team volunteering to stay back an extra 24 hours, specifically to investigate on the missing Laura Jensen case — tracking the abductors who might have used the Exodus trail as their route out.

The FBI had decided to come to Wellsville — to both Laura and Roberta’s former hometown in Utah — as the last stopover — although it would impossibly and might take months to go combing through every town, in those five states that stretched, in the uninhabited Exodus Trail.

Agent Harvest too had also used her resources in getting an FBI forensic team over — to examine a mysterious newly buried grave on the Jensen property. Harvest thought that what lay beneath the ground would finally give closure to Roberta.

Roberta stepped away — and was wandering aimlessly on the frozen field with mixed feelings, she was chain-smoking — she walked over to see her twin brother's grave — and spotted the Sponge Bob keychain...

Was it a rubber toy — or this key chain that she left many years ago after their funeral?

The memories were fuzzy; she could not remember — everything was long forgotten about her dead brothers — Johnny and Jimmy — except that Lilya wanted to call their soon to be born girls, by those names as veneration. Now Roberta missed her wife more...

But, Lilya Devon had betrayed her with deceits. Roberta also felt the contrite guilt of remembering herself smiling at the recent ‘scorched to the earth’ method deployed on Scott’s farmhouse — her mental revenge on her own wife — by burning her secretive past to the ground.

Her mind was going into several directions — except for her refusal to think of — who was actually buried in that newly dug grave...

She had blanked the dreadful thoughts that occasionally surfaced that it could be Laura herself — killed by the rebels — and maybe Karma had just fucked her in the ass, with those rebels who were now trying to get even with her — for pumping the bullets into the belly of their Preacher in New Orleans, and followed by Cory’s orders to execute the POWs in captivity.

But it could not be — it did not make sense — because the one who had abducted her was Laura’s own bastard son — Reeves...

‘What kind of bastard she-fuck specie would he turn out to be — if he did kill his own mother?’

The forensic agent was adjusting a portable X-ray scanner device that she had set up, which had the capability of taking images of the grave depth, without the need of disinterring.

New fears now entered Roberta's conscious — that the coma stricken Laura might have died during the journey, and probably Reeves buried her here...

‘How would the bastard know — where to bury her?’

‘But those rebels have so much of information on Laura’s background — tracking her from Columbus to D.C. — and from LA to back here in Wellsville now?’

The other FBI agent, Dillon was seen coming towards them, from the dilapidated farmhouse — which Roberta was too ashamed to step into. The FBI forensic agent instructed everyone to step away from the X-ray equipment — for radiation discharge danger.

They stood behind the oak tree, a distance away when the forensics geek suppressed a trigger on a remote-controlled mechanism that she held — and the equipment on the grave top, making beeping sounds. The CSI woman calibrated the results from where she stood, on her hand-held tablet screen — where the images of what was beneath the soil, were beginning to decipher...

Agent Ruby Dillon was then showing some fuzzy Polaroid photos to Maxim Harvest, who asked for clarification. “What's this?”

Dillon responded. “Recent footprints of different shoe sizes on the dusty floorboard — there is a possibility of four or five people who came into this farmhouse recently. Three or four were males — and some smaller ones of women.”

Harvest passed what she saw to Roberta, and she remarked back to Dillon...

“Could it be, Laura?”

“That is impossible — Laura is in bed-ridden coma. My guess, it could be someone of their bed-buddies, those fucking Aryan Sisterhood bitches — who might have been following them!” The disbelieving Roberta surmised instantly...

Despite more than a couple of weeks ago, she had personally witnessed Laura almost snapped out from her oblivion — when she spoke out in her dream state — about some girl-in-red, during her experimental TMS treatment in Los Angeles.

Everyone looked over at the forensic woman coming over and started showing her tablet to Agent Harvest. Roberta and Ruby Dillon were looking over her shoulder, hearing forensic expert’s findings...

“Judging by the size structure, the corpse — must have been about six feet tall. It is either a shemale or, it could be — the remains of a male.”

Roberta was relieved — that it was not Laura buried inside there...

“Possibility of these rebels buried someone here — someone among them may have died.” Agent Dillon gave her a quick profiling assumption. The FBI Forensics personnel shook her head — and she differed...

“It looks more like bones to me — because the flesh would not have decomposed that fast if it were to be Laura Jensen like we had earlier assumed. See this, the bones too had lots of fractures — like a cracked skull, broken ribs and shattered forearm and leg bones — all broken in many places...

“This looks to me like something similar — that an automobile crash victim had suffered.”

Everyone was hushed, thinking of the mysterious identity of the one buried beneath. The lab-coated geek spoke again to the superior officer...

“Do you want to exhume the remains — so that we can learn more, Agent Harvest?”

“It is your call, Rob,” said Maxine Harvest and the others looked at her. Roberta surmised again...

“Forget it Agent Harvest, if it is not Laura in there — then we are wasting our time — probing into some heap of bones over here. Those rebels are still having my sister as hostage out there — and I need to find her.”

The idea to disinter the grave was called off — and Harvest instructed her FBI team to wrap it up. She walked to Roberta who was lighting another cigarette near the Bell chopper. Maxine Harvest asked out straight...

“Hey Rob, level with me, will you? I have yet read the initial CIA report about this 'suspect' Reeves Jensen. Who — and how is he related to Laura?” Roberta was silent a moment before she replied...

“Laura was raped during the Medusa outbreak while she was in a coma. We had no choice but to let the bastard child grow in her womb then, because of her heart medical condition. She then gave birth to — that-thing — but we trashed it away for adoption when the shit was born...

“Now years later, that fucking shemale mongrel has come back — and he kidnapped my sister.”

Roberta shared bitterly of her past — before she laid down more of her concatenated methodological theories...

“Maxine, what if they came all the way north after the defeat of the AOG rebels in L.A. — this means they are still using the Exodus Trail — and the only way those fugitives can get out of the country is to keep on heading up further north to Canada.”

“Canada? Why do you think Canada, America too has a vast landscape — they can be holed up anywhere, in the Exodus Trail, am I right?”

Agent Harvest was thinking of the remaining time that she had allocated to Laura’s search and rescue mission — the clock showed they had less than twelve hours left — before they called it off and classify Laura’s abduction, among ‘unsolved’ case in the FBI files.

Roberta was rattling even more obstinate possibilities...

“Maybe yes, but now with that Preacher dead and gone — all of his followers are on the run from our stringent ‘search and destroy’ missions and martial law we are imposing...”

“...so to stay alive and to live free, they have to run out of the country — just as how that dead Preacher had escaped once before to Mexico. This group of rebels is definitely heading up north — to Canada with Laura — and I know it!”

The FBI agent sighed and diverged audibly to the oblivious presumptions...

“Rob, this is futile! You have now broadened the search grid here — and with our limited manpower, we cannot possibly cover every exit out to Canada. Enough! I am calling it off!” Harvest turned her back — and walked but Roberta followed her, saying...

“Wait a minute Maxine, this can help!”

Roberta took out her mini transponder device from her leather jacket and handed it to Maxine Harvest with encroached despair...

“I know it is so much to ask, Maxine — but use this — I have placed a tracker in the pendant that my sister is wearing. It is only of a half-mile radius range in its detection. Just find the frequency to this transponder — and you pass it to every Immigration, Custom and border army base that is out there...

“Anyone who intercepts it first — they then would have found my sister, Laura!”