by Harley Tate
Unless something changed, he would survive.
He swallowed and asked the question he couldn’t shake. “Would you have gone off with that man if he’d asked you to?” The fear of her answer twisted his heart.
His wife exhaled and stared him straight in the eye. “If that’s what it would have taken to ensure my family’s survival, in a heartbeat.”
Walter opened his mouth, but she put up her hand.
“Right then, I cared more about flushing them out and finding out where you were. Like I said, I thought we were too late. The truck was gone.” She glanced down at the dish towel. “If you and Madison were already dead…”
Her voice cracked on the last word and Walter reached out to touch her hand. Tracy looked up through a curtain of unshed tears and the sight almost broke him. “I wouldn’t have had anything to live for, Walter. You have to understand that.”
He squeezed her hand, desperate to ease the pain etched into his wife’s face. “I know exactly how you feel. When I saw you out there, talking with that man, something inside me broke. I couldn’t let him touch you.”
“I would have been fine. I had a gun.”
“I didn’t know.” He let her hand go and rubbed his beard up and down in frustration. “If I hadn’t rushed into the clearing… If I’d trusted you…”
Tracy reached up and stilled his hand. “You were trying to protect me.”
“And I got two people killed. Tucker was just a kid for goodness’ sake.”
“He chose to run into the middle of it, Walt. Just like Drew chose to drive the Jetta. You didn’t tell them to do it. You didn’t make those choices.”
“But it’s my responsibility.” He pressed a fist to his heart. “They were my responsibility.”
“No, Dad. That’s where you’re wrong.” Madison stepped into the room, her jeans and shirt covered in dirt, smudge marks marring her beautiful face. “Ever since you found us on the road, you’ve been trying to shoulder all of the burden. But you can’t. You have to rely on us, too.”
“I don’t want you to get hurt.”
She smiled, but it was out of sadness. “You can’t protect us. All you can do is help us to the best of your ability. Even as a pilot you’re not on your own. There’s a whole crew of people helping you keep that plane in the air and land it safely.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“You can’t tell me that in the Marine Corps you didn’t rely on others to do their job. You weren’t out there on your own, trying to take down all the bad guys like Bruce Willis in a Die Hard movie.”
“That’s not what I was doing.”
His daughter raised an eyebrow. “It wasn’t?”
Walter exhaled. She had a point. But purposefully putting his wife and daughter in harm’s way wasn’t something Walter was sure he could ever do. “It’s different when it’s your job. Those men and women signed up to risk their lives. They aren’t my flesh and blood.” He reached for her and she stepped closer. “They aren’t my daughter.”
Madison bent down and wrapped her arms around his neck. Walter breathed in the scent of her. Youth and innocence and the tang of hard work. His daughter was right. Without everyone pulling their own weight, they would never survive.
This wasn’t a mission to complete or a plane to land. It was the future.
It was life.
She pulled back and he smiled. “I’m never going to give up trying to protect you.”
“And I’m never going to stop proving I’m capable.”
As Madison stood up, Peyton entered the room. He nodded at Walter. “If you think you can stand, everything’s ready.”
Walter eased his leg down to the floor. “If you can help me up, I’ll make it.”
Peyton rushed forward and slipped his shoulder underneath Walter’s and wrapped his arm around his back. On a one-two count, Peyton lifted and Walter stood up. The room spun for a moment, the pain in his leg shooting straight to his toes, but he didn’t pass out.
“Let’s go.”
Peyton started slow, easing around the coffee table one small step at a time. After what seemed like forever, they made it outside to the makeshift cemetery. Peyton eased Walter down into a plastic chair and stepped away.
A candle burned at the head of each grave, and every living member of their makeshift family held a light of some kind. Brianna stood by Tucker’s grave, clutching his phone that still held a charge thanks to his solar panels. Her face was swollen and raw from crying and Walter wished there was some way they could comfort her.
But no words said over Tucker’s grave would bring her boyfriend back.
Walter cleared his throat. “We’re gathered here to celebrate the life of two men, Drew Jenkins and Tucker Eldrin. They gave their lives today as brave men, fighting to save all of us from death.”
Brianna choked back a sob.
“Although we can’t bring them back, we can honor their memories by remembering the joy they brought to our lives and those of everyone they touched.”
“Drew might have had a hard time adjusting to this new world, but he did. Even after getting shot and losing Anne, he persevered. He dug down and found a way to survive. We are all thankful for the time we had with him and only wish it were longer.”
As Walter finished, he said a small prayer and his wife and daughter joined in.
Brianna waited until they were finished to speak. “Tucker…” She paused, her voice trembling too much to carry in the night. “Tucker was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
She kneeled down beside his grave, the light from his phone casting her face in a glow. “He loved me for who I was and didn’t try to change a single thing. Even when I was being stubborn and irrational, he never blew me off.”
Smiling through tears, she kept going. “This one time we were going kayaking in the river. He kept telling me the water levels were too low and we’d never make it, but I insisted.” She wiped at her face and let out a small laugh. “We ended up carrying that stupid boat for three miles along the shore since the river was too shallow to paddle, but he never complained. Not once.”
She paused and bent her head. “That was the day I knew I loved him.”
Tracy reached for Walter’s hand and squeezed, holding on as Brianna told more stories about the young man who had changed her life. Walter would have given anything in that moment to bring him back. But they couldn’t change the past.
They could only keep moving forward. No matter the challenges or the obstacles in their way, they would keep going. Walter would get that girl to her parents’ place in Truckee if it took his very last breath.
At last, Brianna turned off Tucker’s phone and placed it at the head of his grave. She kissed her fingers and placed them on the screen before standing up. “I know you all planned to come with me to Truckee, and you’re still welcome. But I can’t leave here.”
She wiped away another tear before wrapping her arms around her middle. “I’m going to track down the men responsible for Tucker’s death and I’m going to kill them. One by one. They don’t get to take the only good thing in my life away from me and keep breathing.”
Walter nodded. He understood the need for vengeance. “Whatever we can do to help, you have it.”
Brianna stepped back without another word and walked back into the house. Walter meant what he said. If she wanted to find those men, he would help. His leg might keep him from the front lines, but he could still fire a gun.
Peyton stepped over and helped him up. Together they walked back into the house. Walter turned and said goodnight to him, looking over Peyton’s broad shoulder to find his daughter.
A chill rushed through Walter.
Madison wasn’t there.
Chapter Twenty-Four
MADISON
Chico, CA
11:00 p.m.
Madison cinched the small backpack she carried tighter to her back and eased between the bushes. Hearing Brianna talk about Tucker solidified the plan she
had come up with while shoveling all that dirt. Back when she first met Brianna, one of the first stories she told was about her cousin’s little Honda Civic.
While Casey had been at the movies one night, someone stole it. She had walked outside, ready to hop in it and make curfew when the parking spot was empty. It made Casey so mad that she spent the next week driving down every street in the neighborhood, searching for her car.
On the fifth day, she found it parked on the street. The steering column had been pried open and the car hot-wired, but other than that, it was fine. No damage. The police couldn’t believe her determination, but Madison could.
Tucker died protecting their truck and everyone around them from a massive explosion. The least Madison could do was find it and get it back.
Thanks to the full moon and cloudless sky, Madison didn’t need a flashlight. As long as she kept to the edges of the light, she could see well enough to get around and not trip over broken concrete or a stubborn tree root.
Based on her memory of the campus while they drove in circles looking for the student health center, Madison searched. She spread out in concentric rings, down one street and up the next, walking each one to the next block before turning the corner and doing it again. Over the next two hours, she circled the house ten times. A ten-block radius and no sign of the truck.
She knew it could take days to find them. For all she knew, they could be a hundred miles away or more. But Madison didn’t think so. Thieves never fled as far as they should. Something about the arrogance of not getting caught the first time made their getaway weak and shallow.
Based on the way these men acted, they were local. That meant a house somewhere in town. If they worked on the farm, they were CSU employees. It would make sense they lived close.
The more she walked, the more Madison thought about everything that happened since she convinced her father to detour to Chico. The student health center and the communications building. The greenhouse and the farm.
Only one turned out to be safe. Was that what the future held? Seventy-five percent risk of death, twenty-five percent chance of a lucky break?
Madison frowned as she eased around a tipped-over trash can in the road. She could lie to herself or try to ease her conscience a million different ways, but the end was always the same. Tucker and Drew were dead because she insisted they come to Chico.
One radio broadcast and Madison uprooted a logical plan and threw their whole existence into chaos. Peyton got a concussion. She almost died. Her father got shot.
Drew and Tucker were buried a few feet underground never to see the light of day again.
She stopped in the middle of the road. Brianna was grieving the loss of her first love because Madison listened to her heart. She let her sense of pity and compassion for a stranger upstage her duty to her family and friends.
No more.
It didn’t matter if she walked these roads for the next year. She would find the men who stole their truck. She would help Brianna avenge Tucker’s death. She would atone.
Two hours later, a light in a front window caught her eye. Madison eased into the bushes beside a house a block away and waited. She had given up sticking to the dark after circle number ten without a single person sighted, opting instead to walk straight down the middle of the road. But now, she had reason to hide.
With every house she passed, her caution increased. Shining a light in a powerless world meant whoever sat inside that house possessed plenty of confidence and ammunition. Madison didn’t want to find out how much.
It took over half an hour for Madison to navigate the front yards and shadows of the street. She stopped one house away, hidden behind a thick azalea and the front porch steps. The steady hum of a generator obliterated any chance of hearing the occupants. She exhaled in frustration.
Leaving while this close wasn’t an option. With a deep breath, she snaked around the house next door, easing up onto the back porch on silent feet. As she stepped toward the rear door, the wood creaked beneath her foot and she bit back a curse.
If anyone stood outside on guard, they had to hear. She rushed to the door and tried the handle. Unlocked. She send up a silent thank you and opened the door.
As she shut it behind her, a light flashed against the glass. Madison ducked and held her breath.
“You hear that, Johnny?”
“Man, I can’t hear nothin’ apart from that damn machine Leroy’s got runnin’. What’s he need to waste all our gas for anyway? Ain’t no poker game worth all that fuel.”
“Don’t say that where the boss can hear ya.”
“Piss on him. I’m sick of sittin’ around and doin’ jack. That shoot-out at the farm was the most fun we’ve had in days and he wants us to lie low? We shoulda finished the job when we had the chance. Now he’s got us chasin’ down every last little noise like some dog after a rat.”
Footsteps sounded on the porch and Madison rushed deeper into the house, crawling behind a couch as the flashlight beam tracked across the living room. Of all the houses and roads she could have searched, Madison couldn’t believe her luck.
“We shoulda taken that sweet piece of ass when we had the chance. She woulda given us somethin’ to do all right.”
Madison swallowed down a wave of bile.
“Naw, man, she was old as shit. Now that feisty little blonde with all those curls? Hoo-wee, now that woulda been one buckin’ bronco worth ridin’.”
They were more vile and disgusting than she imagined. Not that it should have surprised her, but it did. Was this the future?
No. Bad people couldn’t be the only ones left. They couldn’t be the men to carry the American torch after the catastrophe.
The more the pair talked, the more Madison wanted to drop them where they stood. But she couldn’t. Not until she cased the house out and found out exactly what they were up against. She stayed in a crouch behind the couch, waiting.
After a few minutes, the one on the porch called out. “Let’s go, man. There ain’t nothin’ here but a waste of time.”
His footsteps landed heavy on each stair and Madison exhaled in relief. After counting to five hundred, she stood up. The flashlights and voices were long gone. She made her way through the darkened living room and up the stairs, careful to avoid the creaky middle.
Two bedrooms flanked the wall next to the lit-up house and Madison eased into the closest one, keeping low to the ground as she worked her way around the bed and up to the window. Still in a crouch, she rose up just enough to peer over the sill and into the house next door.
The upstairs was dark, but down below her, the windows were bright and wide open. A man sat in a chair at a kitchen table, holding playing cards in one hand and a beer in the other. He tossed a chip into the center.
A moment later, he slammed the cards down and even from upstairs with the generator humming, Madison heard his booming, menace-laced laugh. The boss, she figured.
Including him, she counted six. They had left two men dead back at the farm. She smiled knowing that had reduced their force. But still, six armed men without a conscience among them would be hard to beat.
They would need a plan of attack that everyone followed and would all need to act together. Madison stayed at the edge of the window, watching their movements until the light turned off, the generator went silent, and even the bad guys went to sleep.
She checked her watch. Nearly four in the morning. She stood up and stretched, hoping no one still stood outside on watch.
With careful, measured steps she retraced her steps, pausing at the back door. Here goes nothing. She eased it open and waited. A shaky breath later and she stepped onto the porch. Ten steps and she touched grass. Twenty more and she was one house away.
Madison took off in a run. Weaving in and around bushes and abandoned cars and turned-over trash cans that smelled like death. She didn’t slow down until she turned onto the street she now called home.
She took the stairs two at a time
, unlocked the front door, and stepped into the living room.
“Thank God you’re all right.”
Madison jumped at the sound of her father’s voice. “You’re awake.”
“Side effect of a bullet wound, I guess.”
Madison shut the door and locked it. “Before you yell at me, hear me out. I found them. The men who attacked us at the farm. They’re about a mile away, on the other side of campus. There’s six of them from what I can see. All armed. One guy is in charge. He’s a total jerk. The rest of them are too, actually.”
She kept talking, rattling off everything she’d learned over the hours of keeping watch until her throat ached and she ran out of things to say. At last, she fell into a chair opposite her father and took a breath.
“Are you done?”
“Pretty much.”
“Good. Because now you need to listen to me.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
WALTER
863 Dewberry Lane, Chico, CA
5:00 a.m.
Walter smiled at his daughter. Sometime in the wee hours of the morning while Walter sat in the dark, waiting for Madison to come home, it hit him. My daughter’s all grown up.
It didn’t mean that she wasn’t his little girl or that she wouldn’t always wrap her arms around him for a hug. But he had to stop treating her like a child. He knew she felt as responsible as he did for the deaths of Tucker and Drew. But instead of sitting around sulking about it and pining away over poor decisions, Madison did something about it.
She risked her life, again, for the good of the group. He still remembered all the firsts. The first time he took his hand off the back of her bike and she stayed upright, pedaling all the way down the block. The first time he said goodbye when she left for summer camp. The first date he’d terrified with a 1911 and a glass of scotch.
This was a new first. The first time he really saw the woman she had become. He swallowed, hard. “I’m proud of you, Madison.”