The Measures Between Us by Ethan Hauser Page A

said, “Till they come.” But they never did.
    During one of these times, they discovered several steel boxes, half buried in the dirt. Each was locked with a thick metal chain. Jack crouched down and swept away some leaves, uncovering a black power cord. They followed it several hundred feet, at which point it disappeared into the ground. Jack scooped some dirt away from the sides, and Cynthia warned, “Be careful. Don’t get electrocuted.”
    The cable ended far deeper than he could dig with his hands, so he gave up. From another of the boxes, a separate cable emerged, snaking along the ground and then up a tree, clamped to its bark with blue plastic cleats. That cable vanished too, into a canopy of leaves. He walked the circumference of the tree, hoping to find branches he could climb. Yet all the low ones had been sawed off.
    â€œWhat do you think all this equipment is?”
    Cynthia shrugged.
    The boxes had no markings, and there were no signs hanging on the trees declaring that the area was restricted or private property.
    â€œDo you think it’s government stuff?” she asked.
    â€œWhat would they want out here? There’s nothing important here.”
    â€œStudying kids on pot,” she said, smiling. “The war on drugs.” Jack laughed. “I wish we could break one open.” He looked around for a sharp rock and found one several yards away. He banged it against one of the locks, but the tip shattered before the metal gave.
    â€œSomething tells me we’re not getting into those things without some serious machinery,” said Cynthia.
    He tried a few more times, with different rocks, before deciding she was right. “I guess not,” Jack conceded. “If only JR was still here, maybe he’d have something. I get the feeling he’d be good at stuff like this.” JR was their pot dealer, a man who never took off his sunglasses, wore exclusively plaid shirts, and whose initials stood for something different every time Jack or Cynthia asked.
    â€œDid you hear that?” Cynthia asked.
    Jack shook his head. He was still crouched at one of the boxes, looking for some kind of identifying mark. “What?” he said.
    â€œI thought I heard something,” she said.
    â€œIt’s probably just an animal,” he said, cocking his head.
    Thirty seconds later, the noise resurfaced, and it wasn’t an animal. An ATV was revving through the forest. “Shit,” said Cynthia, grabbing Jack’s forearm. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
    They ran away from the approaching four-wheeler, Jack in front, looking back to make sure Cynthia was keeping up. They didn’t stop for five or six minutes, until they were out of breath and doubled over. They paused by a huge boulder and slumped along its cooling face. Damp patches of moss clung to the rock. The right knee of Cynthia’s jeans was torn from a fall.
    â€œWe must have tripped some alarm or something,” Cynthia said. “Maybe one of the cables had a sensor on it.”
    Spent from the run, all Jack could do was nod.
    â€œDo you know where we are?” he finally asked.
    Cynthia looked around. The treetops dappled the sunlight into stars. Two squirrels chased each other around the fat trunk of a maple. “No idea,” Cynthia said. “Middle of nowhere, if I had to guess.”
    â€œExcept someone seems to own this nowhere,” Jack said. “Someone who doesn’t like anyone touching his boxes.”
    They learned later that they had wandered onto the Kingman land, a vast tract owned by a reclusive multimillionaire. The mysterious metal boxes and black cables were part of a huge network of data collection; the rumor was that there were hundreds of them, strewn randomly throughout the forest. Every November, during deer season, several hunters would venture onto the property unknowingly, as Jack and Cynthia had, only none of them ever tried