by Harley Tate
No matter how much she wished for the Jeep, they had to keep going. Madison depended on her. The sunlight waned behind them, barely edging over the trees. Within half an hour it would be difficult to see. An hour would bring on darkness.
Brianna pushed her hood off her face and squinted into the impending dusk. “There it is.” She pointed at a speck of a house, white clapboard blending in with the snow all around.
“Are you sure? It doesn’t look like a vet. It looks like a farm.”
“That’s why I thought of it. Dr. Benton didn’t advertise. If you didn’t know him, he didn’t see you or your animals.”
Tracy grimaced. A vet without a sign who worked out of his house didn’t instill her with confidence, but she pushed the doubts aside. They needed to get in and get out without any drama.
“Let’s loop it, make sure it’s clear, then we can head in.”
Together, the women walked the edge of the property, skirting a fence line and the worst of the snowdrifts. It collected against any barrier, piling up like confetti in gutters after a parade. The house hugged the southeastern corner of the property, with a barn out back and a lump of something that could have been a car in the drive.
“There are no tire tracks or footprints anywhere. Are you sure he didn’t retire?”
Brianna shrugged. “He was still here a month or so before the power went out. Maybe he packed up and left after.”
“What about the vaccines? Don’t they need to be kept cold?”
Brianna shivered. “I don’t think that’s a problem right now.”
Tracy bit the inside of her cheek. The temperatures in the foothills didn’t reach the triple digits of Sacramento, but it still warmed into the low eighties. Left exposed, would a round of vaccinations even be effective? She shoved the thoughts aside. Even a less-potent vaccine was better than nothing.
She eased closer to the house. “I’ll try and get in.”
Brianna checked her shotgun. “I’ll stand watch.”
Tracy pulled off her gloves as she walked up to the front door. She wasn’t as skilled as her husband at picking locks, but he’d taught her the basics last time they were out on a supply run. The metal skewers he found in a ransacked dollar store were better than any bobby pin.
Using her left hand to hold one skewer low in the lock, Tracy used her right hand to jiggle the tines. Up and down she worked the loose skewer, straining to hear the lock fall into place.
The cold wasn’t helping. With a deep breath, she tried again. Tracy leaned closer, struggling to see in the fading sunlight. Frustration gnawed at her, but she pushed it back. Walter was missing and Madison was injured. If she didn’t get into this vet’s office, what hope did she have to keep going?
I might be the only Sloane left. The thought shoved her back on her heels and a skewer fell from the lock and landed in the snow.
I’ve been so complacent and lazy. All those summer months when the harvest came in easy and laughter filled the cabins. She’d discounted winter and bad weather and freak accidents. Other people who might want to do them harm. It hadn’t been that long since a crew tried to take what they had. But she’d let the repetitive days and the hard work lull her into a false sense of security.
Tracy shoved her hand in the snow, digging for the now-frozen bit of metal.
Crunching footsteps sounded behind her and Tracy turned around. “I can’t get it open.”
Brianna hoisted a hunk of rock in her gloved hand. “Then we get in another way. I’m too cold to wait out here any longer.” She pulled back like a shot-put champ and heaved the rock at the door’s window.
The glass shattered and Brianna reached her arm inside. She unlocked the door from the inside and pulled it open.
Tracy stared at her for a moment.
“What? I’m surprised someone hasn’t done it already.” The younger woman stepped into the dark. “You coming?”
Brianna’s flashlight flicked on as Tracy eased inside. Dust and stale air and the stink of animals dead and long past rotting filled her nose. She used a glove to block the worst of the smell.
“Did he board animals here?”
“I can’t imagine that many locals needed a place to keep their chickens while they went on vacation.” Brianna canvassed the lobby with the flashlight.
Plastic chairs. Peeling linoleum. Stained wallpaper. The place had seen better days.
“Did it always look like this?”
“Dr. Benton didn’t win you over with style, but he also took all comers. People down on their luck, local farmers, anyone.” Brianna pointed toward a door. “Medicine should all be in the back through here.”
Tracy pulled her main weapon from her holster before clicking on her own flashlight. She held them in a cross in front of her like her husband instructed. “How old was he?”
“Ancient.” Brianna pushed the door open. The smell intensified.
Tracy gagged. “Whatever animals he kept in here, they’ve been dead and shut up a long time.”
“We’ll have to search the whole space. I never came back here.”
Occupying no more than a few hundred square feet, the vet seemed more like a prep space for a home business than a hospital. Cabinets ran across two walls and an oversized exam table sat in the middle.
They worked as a team, Tracy shining her light while Brianna opened doors and peered inside. First aid supplies, shampoo, nail clippers, boxes of flea and tick preventive, but no medicine.
Tracy slowed. They were going about it all wrong. “Everyone knows vets keep medicines on hand, right?”
Brianna snorted. “That’s why we’re here.”
“But it’s not just vaccines, it’s all sorts of things. Antibiotics, pain relievers, even antidepressants.”
“Your point?”
“Dr. Benton probably kept them somewhere safe. You said he was old. If he thought someone might break in and steal the goods, he wouldn’t keep them in here.”
Brianna paused. “We’ve searched the whole vet space. If they aren’t here, where could they be?”
Tracy pressed her lips together. “This can’t be all there is; we haven’t found the source of the smell.”
She used her flashlight to scour the room, stopping on a door with a metal bracket bolted to the wall and a padlock dangling from a hook. “What about that?”
“It goes into his house, I think.”
“Then so do we.” Tracy walked up and gave the lock a tug. Without bolt cutters, she wasn’t getting it open. She cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted at the wood. “Hello? Is anyone in there?”
No response.
She whacked on the upper panel of the door. It echoed. “I don’t think it’s solid.”
“Are you serious?” Brianna joined her and gave the middle panel a solid rap with her knuckles. She laughed. “A massive padlock and a hollow-core door. Who’d have thought?”
“I think that’s the idea.”
Tracy took a deep breath and kicked a lower panel. It cracked. She did it again and the wood splintered. With a few more well-placed stomps, she broke through enough of the thin wood to squeeze through.
Ducking into the jagged opening, she inhaled and immediately gagged. Bile rose up her throat and saliva pooled in the pockets of her mouth. The smell had grown from nauseating to almost unbearable.
Brianna clambered through behind her and cursed. “I’m gonna hurl. There’s got to be a horse dead in here.”
“Look for a small medical fridge or a locking cabinet. The good stuff has to be in here somewhere.”
Brianna headed toward a hallway and presumably bedrooms and bathrooms, and Tracy took off in the opposite direction, fighting the urge to vomit and run. The house could have been a time capsule of 1955, full of furniture city dwellers paid a fortune to reproduce before the EMP.
A dining room table with angled legs and a rounded top. A three-tier planter on wire legs. A banquette with sliding doors. She pushed one open. Linens and dishes
. No medicine.
She eased into the kitchen. White cabinets, Formica countertops with metal edges. Same linoleum floor as the vet side of the house. Tracy opened the cabinets one by one, searching past glassware and pots and pans. Where was the medicine?
Tracy glanced up at the kitchen window. Darkness blanketed the snow and turned their flashlights into homing beacons. The longer the search took, the more dangerous their position became. If someone spotted them, they had nowhere to run.
As Tracy hurried to pull open drawers and eliminate the kitchen, Brianna called out. “Over here!”
Tracy rushed toward the younger woman’s voice, gun ready. Her flashlight beam bobbed and weaved down a hallway and into a home office. Brianna stood on the other side of a dark wood desk, bare hand pinching her nose.
“I found the smell. It’s not a horse.”
Tracy eased around the desk. Brianna’s flashlight beam lit up the desiccated form of a man. His skin flaked like bits of paper. His eye sockets sunk into his head like moldy prunes. A syringe lay on the floor beside his shriveled hand.
“I guess Dr. Benton didn’t want to tough it out.” Brianna eased past the body and tugged open a cabinet.
Tracy’s heart fluttered.
Chapter Fifteen
COLT
Unidentified Farm
Near Truckee, CA
4:30 p.m.
“I say we blow it all up like in Eugene.” Dani sat on a cleared spot of ground, sheltering Lottie from the cold.
Larkin shook his head. “And lose the potential? No way. It’s a working farm. It might have animals, seeds, a bunch of food stored. If we go in there and light it up, we’ll lose all that.”
“Larkin’s right. We need to conserve and focus on getting Walter out with the least amount of damage. Who knows, maybe at some point we can launch an attack and take it over.”
“Or they could chase us down and kill everyone.”
“I love your optimism.”
Dani stuck her tongue out and Colt laughed. “They’ve got grain silos, Dani. They could be full of enough grain to feed an entire town.”
“Then we should do it now. Take everyone out and claim it.”
“We don’t have the bodies.” Larkin stood beside an open door to the Jeep, inventorying their weapons. “With only three of us, we have a good chance to get Walter out, but that’s all. Focus on what we can do, not what we want to do later.”
Dani turned a lighter over in her hands. “If we can’t burn them out, how about smoke?”
Colt perked up. “What do you have in mind?”
“We could draw them out with the threat of fire. Then at least we could scout the place out and see what’s there. We might get a handle on their numbers, too.”
Larkin nodded. “I like the sound of that. There’s plenty of wet wood around here. If we can get some lit, there will be tons of smoke. Set it up on the edge of the farm and they’ll have to put it out.”
Dani flicked the lighter on and watched the flame. “While they’re busy, we swoop in.”
Colt thought it over. “Not a bad plan, but what do we do with her?” He motioned to Lottie.
“We can fill up the hot water bottle and build her a sleeping bag nest like last time.” Dani lifted her thumb and set the lighter on the Jeep’s bumper. “But we need to leave a window open.” She glanced at Colt. “In case we don’t come back.”
“Agreed.” Larkin pulled out the readied weapons one by one: three rifles, six backup handguns, spare magazines. He set them all on the tailgate and shut the driver’s door. “We can lower this window and muffle some of the cold with a fabric drape. She’ll be able to get out if she has to, but the water bottle should keep her warm overnight.”
They talked over the strategy of how to approach and where to go first and a backup plan in case something went wrong. After everyone agreed on the best course of action, they broke up.
Larkin and Colt set to harvesting wood. Thanks to a kit they kept in the Jeep at all times, they had everything they needed. Taking turns with a shovel, the men dug out enough fallen branches to burn for hours and laid them on a tarp. Using paracord and a multi-tool, Colt fashioned a set of pull-lines and gave them a tug.
It would be hard work dragging the load down the mountainside and into position. He glanced in the direction of the farm. They had retreated to a spot completely invisible from the valley for safety’s sake. While it meant ease of planning, it left them a long road of rocks and close-knit trees to navigate.
The closer they came to the farm, the more exposed they would be. Darkness would be critical. With the tree canopy and slow, fluid movements, they might stay concealed. It was a gamble, but what other choice did they have.
Colt wedged a dry and brittle branch he found lodged in a tree beneath the wetter limbs. “Dani can light this one. It’ll burn while the others smoke.”
Larkin nodded. “Let’s use some of our supplies, too. The beeswax tinder should stay burning for a while.”
Colt left Larkin to finish up and found Dani prepping a space for Lottie in the back seat. With two sleeping bags and a hot-to-the-touch water bottle, she had rigged up a cozy nest. Colt smiled at her handiwork. It would have to do. With any luck, four people would be coming back to the small dog in not too long. He refused to think about her future if they never made it home.
When everything was ready, he crouched in the snow-covered leaves and went over the plan. Colt and Larkin would pull the wood into position. Dani would light it up. Then each person was on their own, heading into the farm and convening at the barn door.
Larkin rose up and held out a bag of jerky and dehydrated fruit leather. “Let’s eat. Once it’s dark, we’ll head in.”
It didn’t take long. As soon as dusk darkened into the calm of early night, Colt and Larkin hoisted the pulls over their chests. Pull, break, pull. It was agonizing work and sweat broke out across Colt’s forehead. He paused halfway down.
“You all right?” Larkin wheezed as he gulped down the frigid night air.
“I’m not getting any younger.”
“Tell me about it.”
After a moment, they resumed the trek, catching up to a waiting Dani. She stood behind a tree in a leveled-off area of the mountainside, close enough to the front fence of the farm to make Colt nervous. It was as good a location as any.
“Let’s drop it here.”
Heaving in time with Larkin, they hoisted the wood into position. Dani rolled the tarp into a log shape and stashed it a hundred yards away. The two men sucked down some water and tossed the empty container into the bushes to hide it from view.
“Ready?” Colt wiped at the sweat on his forehead.
Larkin nodded.
Dani pulled out the lighter. “I’ll count to two hundred and light the logs.”
“Good.” Colt wrapped Dani up in a quick hug before taking her by the shoulders. “Only shoot if you’re shot at. Otherwise, stoke the fire and sneak away when they get near.”
“Will do.”
Colt and Larkin took off, heading closer to the farm with guns drawn and ready. Once they cleared Dani’s earshot, Larkin whispered. “You really think this will work?”
“The smoke?”
Larkin nodded.
“It’s better than the alternative. If we can draw some of their guards out, we have a chance of grabbing Walter without anyone getting hurt.”
“And if we can’t?”
“Then we protect ourselves.” Colt fell silent. As they neared the fence line of the farm, the first wisps of smoke tickled his nose. “It’s showtime.” He patted Larkin on the arm. “Good luck.”
“Same to you. See you at the Jeep.” Larkin took off, disappearing into the night, and Colt did the same.
He eased around the fencing, keeping to the shadows as best he could. The white farmhouse rose in front of him and Colt slowed.
In the closest window, candlelight illuminated a kitchen with a long island. A row of little heads
sat with their backs to Colt, all focused on plates in front of them. Children. They ranged in size from no bigger than a toddler to elementary school, but all were small and significantly younger than Dani.
Somehow the idea of the farm housing a family had escaped Colt’s mind. It had been so long since he’d seen kids, he almost forgot they existed. He glanced behind him. Larger plumes of smoke rose against the forest wall. He had half a mind to rush back to Dani and call it off. They couldn’t hurt any kids.
As he struggled with the decision, the door to the main house opened and a man stepped onto the front porch. He flicked on a light and shone it in the direction of the smoke. Colt watched the man’s demeanor. First a lean in, then a pan of the light, followed by a panicked, full circle, spin around.
He rushed back inside and in moments, a gaggle of four men tore out the door, each one struggling into a jacket while holding a long gun. Colt sent up a prayer for Dani to stay hidden. She was an expert at evading detection in a city, but out in the woods was a whole different situation. He hoped she would heed his warning and run.
With four of the farm’s residents occupied, Colt crept past the house and on toward the barn.
Chapter Sixteen
TRACY
Woodland Veterinary Services
Truckee, CA
6:00 p.m.
“It has to be in here. At least one.” Tracy held out a bag and Brianna dumped everything she could identify by name inside. Fish Mox, painkillers, tranquilizers. So far, nothing for rabies.
“There’s got to be something.” Tracy willed a vaccine into existence with every twitch of her fingers and beat of her heart. They couldn’t have come all this way to leave empty-handed. Visions of Madison growing delirious and combative before succumbing to the virus filled her mind. She twisted the bag in her fingers. “Maybe he kept the vaccines in another place.”