“Where’s your family?” Maria asked her.
Jamie took a deep, ragged breath, and calmed herself. “I lost them,” she explained. “We left Denver six or seven weeks ago, I think. But we were too late. Right off the bat we got detained by soldiers because we were carrying guns and ammunition. They took dad away for that, even though he explained that it was just for self-protection. They also took the guns and most of our gear and never gave them back. Well, actually they did give one back-- there was this one solder that I think felt bad for us, and he gave Mom’s pistol back to her when no one else was looking.
“So me and Mom and my little brother tried to keep going once they let us go, figuring we could get some help for dad once we got here. But then we had to hide from some jerks that were stopping people on the highway and robbing them, and we got lost in the woods. We found a trail and followed that for a while. Then we found a campsite where a bunch of people were staying, but instead of helping us they wanted me to go with some of them to another part of the camp. They got in our faces and Mom shot one of them and told me to run. So I ran, and I don’t know what happened to Mom or Cody, I haven’t seen them since, and I just finally ended up here because I recognized the turn-off and that one big mountain peak with the jagged edge on one side.”
Jamie broke down again after that, and Maria took her to a bedroom to lie down. The others looked at each other with drawn faces.
“We have to go find them,” Brad said. “We gotta go and find Marge, and little Cody, and Darren too.”
“For sure,” JD agreed. “Marge and Cody are just a matter of searching, and maybe kicking down some doors and taking names. If they’re alive, we’ll get them back. But if Darren’s in some kind of military holding camp… how are we going to get him out?”
Ron cleared his throat. “They were setting something like that up by Chatfield Lake when I was on my way out of town. It wasn’t very well staffed, although that could have changed by now. Even if we can get in there, though, I don’t think we want to go up against anybody military. That could put us in a very bad position. Politically, I mean. It could make us the badguys.”
“But if they’re holding Darren,” Brad objected, “we have to get him out. They have no right to imprison somebody like that.”
“We’d have to sneak in there and get out again without it coming to blows,” DJ suggested.
“We don’t actually know anything yet,” McLean pointed out. “Only that Darren, Marge, and Cody are missing. Let’s not make battle plans until we have some idea where they are. It’s just a search attempt at this point, not a rescue operation. One thing’s for sure, though. Brad’s right, we have to go and we have to go now.
“We were leaving anyway, so let’s continue as planned but detour to wherever Jamie last saw her mother and brother. We’ll start there and we’ll work our way toward Denver. That gets Rory where he needs to go, gets us the intelligence we need, and puts us closer to finding out what happened to Darren.”
After getting more details from Jamie and the approximate locations from her story plotted out on a map, they set out on horseback. McLean, Carrie, Ron, Gordo, Brad, and Rory were the expedition members, each with a full pack and all the equipment they would need for an extended journey. Four rode while two walked, and they took turns with the horses so that no animal or person got prematurely exhausted.
The group of six took two days to cross the mountain range immediately to the east of the ranch and wind their way down through the hills and into the valleys along which Jamie had traveled. There was no sign of the Bailey family there, and the few people they encountered had seen a variety of refugees but no one that matched the description given.
This country was much more easily traveled than the hard wilderness route Carrie and the others had taken to get to the ranch. They could cover more ground with less energy expended, and the horses made great time. But the gentleness of the terrain made the route more heavily frequented by other travelers. Thankfully no one bothered the heavily-armed group, not even a band of young men that were sporting hunting rifles. No one they spoke to had seen the Baileys.
The searchers split up for twenty miles in the hope that by spreading out they’d have a better chance of coming across the Baileys or someone that had seen them. The first group, Carrie and Gordo and Brad, stopped by the town of Buena Vista, where DJ had a radio contact. They spoke with the contact, but he only reiterated his previous response to DJ’s inquiries. The Baileys had not come through. Meanwhile several miles to the south, McLean and Ron and Rory ran into a few scattered groups of refugees, but no one that knew of the Baileys. They finally joined back together in the foothills of the Pike National Forest, thirty-five miles from Denver.
At the tail end of the fourth day, as the group was looking for an out-of-the-way place to camp for the night, Brad spotted something. He was on point, and called back from a rise he’d reached. “A woman and a boy, on the trail ahead!” There was excitement in his voice.
But when the rest of the group reached him and scanned the trail in front of them, there was no one to be seen.
Chapter 8 : Parting Ways
“I swear, a second ago there was a middle-aged woman and a young boy by that clump of scrub oak,” Brad insisted. “I am not hallucinating! She had a blue sweater, and the kid was wearing a baseball cap.”
“Yeah, yeah! Cody always wore a cap,” Ron added. “Maybe it was them! Where’d they go?”
“Marge Bailey!” they all shouted together. “Cody! Mrs. Bailey! We’re friends!” But no one emerged.
They followed the trail to the point where Brad thought he’d seen the pair and searched the trees, still calling out. They found nothing, and the shadows were only lengthening.
“It had to be them,” Brad repeated, shaking his head in bewilderment. “Why did they run?”
“It’s probably too much to hope for a coincidence like that,” McLean said. “Let’s set up camp here and get the horses taken care of. We’ll do a thorough search of the area in the morning, but really it could have been anybody you saw in this fading light.”
Soon they had a campfire going in a clearing off the trail, and lookouts posted at opposite ends of their campsite. The stars came out and those that weren’t on watch lay down to get some sleep.
Carrie got up and went off into the trees a way to relieve herself. She was on her way back when a small figure leaned out from behind a rock. In the meager starlight, it looked like a young boy. His voice startled her so badly she reached for her gun in spite of herself.
“Excuse me. Do you have any food you could spare?” the boy asked in a polite, tentative tone. He kept most of his body behind the rock and seemed poised to run.
Carrie calmed her breathing and reached out a hand. “Hey, it’s okay. It’s okay. Are you alone, or is there someone with you?”
The boy didn’t say anything. Carrie quickly continued. “I do have some food for you. I can help you, and I promise you won’t be hurt. Do you want to come over by the fire, or would you rather I brought something here for you?”
“Bring it here. Please,” the boy said.
“Okay. I will. Don’t worry about a thing. I’ll be right back with some food, and I won’t bring anyone else with me. Okay?” The boy nodded, his face obscured by the night shadows. Carrie saw that he was holding a baseball cap in one hand. “Don’t go away,” she said, and hurried back to the campsite, mentally marking the rock and making sure the boy was still there.
On her way into camp she passed Gordo, on watch, and told him she’d seen a young boy but to stay put and not do anything to scare the kid off. She retrieved an apple and a bag of dried venison, and told the others to stand by. Then she hurried back to the rock.
At first she thought the kid had disappeared, but he popped out again when she arrived.
“Here you go,” she told him, holding out the food. “This is for you. But can I ask you a question? We’re looking for a kid your age named Cod
y Bailey. Have you seen him?”
The kid froze and didn’t answer. Finally he spoke, but not to Carrie. “Mom?” he quavered into the darkness.
A woman in a blue sweater stepped out from the trees behind where the boy was standing. She had a pistol in her hand, and it was pointed at Carrie’s chest.
“Who are you?” she asked. “And how do you know my boy’s name?”
Carrie smiled and held out her hands in a peaceful gesture. “I’m Carrie Alton. You don’t know me, but I joined up with McLean Ferrier and his survival group. Ron Hodges and Brad Edersheim are here, by the campfire, and Gordo Barros. If you’re Mrs. Bailey, we’ve been searching for you for several days now. Your daughter reached our ranch and told us you got separated.”
Tears began streaming down the woman’s cheeks. “How did you find us? What do you want us for?” she asked. “Did someone else tell you to find us?”
Carrie shook her head. “We’re just trying to help. Please put the gun down, ma’am. And come over by the fire. You have nothing to worry about now, I promise. You’ll see. You know these people.”
The woman hesitated a moment longer, then pocketed the pistol. She and her boy followed Carrie back to the campsite. Carrie told the others to take it easy and not crowd the two skittish fugitives.
“I knew it was them!” Brad said. “Mrs. Bailey, we’ve been looking for you everywhere. Why did you hide from us?”
Mrs. Bailey stared back at Brad for a moment. “I didn’t recognize any of you on those horses. I didn’t know what to do. We’ve… we’ve had a hard time. We can’t trust anyone anymore.”
Carrie got them seated by the fire and gave them food and water. Gradually they opened up. It nearly broke Carrie’s heart to see little Cody, nine years old, wolfing down the food. But the gratitude and relief that showed through Mrs. Bailey’s stony face when they assured her that her daughter was safe warmed them all inside.
The next morning they held council. Mrs. Bailey could offer little more than her daughter had already told about the fate of Darren Bailey. She and Cody had been wandering the mountain trails since the incident at the campground where they lost Jamie. They’d managed to find some wild foods and scrounge enough to survive and keep moving, but they were both slowly starving and couldn’t find their way west. She was clearly suffering mentally and needed rest and rehabilitation.
They decided that Carrie and Gordo would escort them back to the ranch while McLean, Ron, and Brad headed toward Denver with Rory. Depending on what they found there and whether they could locate Darren, they would either return within two weeks, or send a message regarding their intentions.
The two groups went their separate ways, wishing each other the best. McLean and Carrie shared another kiss in parting, and McLean warned Carrie to resist the advances of JD and the others while he was gone.
“I’m serious about this, you and me,” he told her. “You know I’ve had my eye on you for a long time. I’m not about to lose you to some knucklehead like JD just because he gets to stay home with you while I’m out and about.”
“Hey, you never know what might happen,” Carrie teased. “You don’t have me locked down all the way yet, Mr. Ferrier.”
“I like that you said ‘yet’,” McLean replied. “I will see you in a couple weeks. Don’t you forget about me.”
Gordo and Carrie led the two Baileys at a leisurely pace back toward the ranch with Marge Bailey and her son riding one of the horses. They took a more direct route than the southerly one they’d used on the way out. It took three days, during which Carrie got Marge to open up more about her family and what they had been through. She and Gordo assured the two unintentional prodigals that once they reached the ranch, they’d find all the security they longed for.
When they reached the ranch Marge and Cody were overjoyed to be reunited with Jamie, and she was just as relieved to see them. There were a lot of tears shed, both of joy and gratitude and also worry about their father and husband. Their fractured family could slowly begin to heal now that they had a safe place to live, but Darren’s loss left a hole that couldn’t be filled without seeing him again.
Meanwhile, McLean, Ron, Brad, and Rory set off at a much more rapid pace to the northwest, crossing the national forest as directly as possible. For several stretches the two slighter men, Rory and Ron, shared the strongest horse, and for the rest of the way one or two men would walk to spare the animals.
They had only one run-in with other people during the long trek through the heavily wooded hills and ravines. It was a group of hikers traveling westward on foot. They proved to be friendly and asked for information about the trail ahead. In return they advised the men that Denver was no place to be anymore, and to steer clear of the freeway, downtown, and Englewood as particularly dangerous hotspots. They said the National Guard no longer existed. Nobody was really in charge of more than a single neighborhood, and it wasn’t safe for anyone to roam alone or after dark due to lawlessness.
The gunmen who had played such a destructive role in the initial meltdown had never tried to seize power or control the whole city. They continued to spread fear and instability for the first few weeks and then gradually disappeared. Some thought they had moved on to other cities, sweeping across the region as an army of anarchy. Others said they had gone to join a larger force of evil masterminds to the east, where they could find the supplies they needed to keep up their reign of terror.
Their absence hadn’t improved anything, however. There were still plenty of criminals running loose in the absence of organized policing. No one dared organize anything beyond their local sphere of influence for fear of becoming a target for the opportunists and angry mobs that remained. The few authorities that had survived the first weeks were now cowed and desperate, hiding in their immediate communities and unable to drum up any support because of their failure to prevent disaster when it really mattered.
Some neighborhoods were better off than others, guarding their water and food fiercely. Many no longer existed, aside from empty shells of buildings and scattered trails of ruined property. Refugees were streaming eastward across the plains, but so far no definitive word had filtered back to suggest that there was any refuge to be found there. This group of hikers had opted to head west into Utah, willing to tackle the expansive mountain ranges on the chance that food and comfort would be found among the preparedness-conscious Mormon communities there.
They floated one other piece of information that was of great interest to the men from the ranch. Rumors had reached Denver about a prison camp set up in Colorado Springs. They couldn’t say who was running it or on what authority they were doing so, but just that more than one Denverite had been taken there and held in harsh conditions.
The men passed Green Mountain and left the forest the next day near Highway 67, hoping to come at Denver from the south. They were stopped at an overlook, scoping out the valley below through their binoculars, when an older man approached on horseback.
Chapter 9 : Storm Clouds
At first McLean thought it was his old friend Morgan. The man wore a similar ten-gallon hat and had a gray beard. As he came nearer he kept one hand on the reins and raised the other in greeting, but plainly showed the gun on his hip and the rifle in his saddle scabbard. Once he got close it was clear he was Latino and not quite so old as Morgan.
“Hello there. Can you fellows tell me what you’re doing on my land?” the man called out.
Brad stepped his horse forward. “We certainly can. We’re moving toward Denver, just came through the national forest. Sorry to disturb you, but if you can tell us anything about the roads between here and the city, we’d be much obliged.”
The old man eyed the four of them and nodded, apparently liking what he saw. “I can do that. But I ought to warn you, don’t make any sudden moves or draw your guns for any reason. My sons are in the hills with rifles, covering me. Are we clear? It’s just that we’ve had to drive off more than one band of trouble-make
rs. We’re getting good at it, I’m afraid. But you won’t cause any trouble, am I right?”
The others heartily agreed, and the old man took a swig from a canteen he carried. Then he told them about conditions on the southern route into Denver, where the most highways robberies were taking place, and which parts were controlled by various groups that would either turn them back or charge them a fee for letting them through.
“Frankly, though, I don’t recommend going into Denver at all,” the man told them. “Can I ask why you’d want to?”
Rory spoke up. “I’ve got someone there I’m hoping to find. My friends were good enough to accompany me, and they’re interested in knowing whether the city has begun to recover any semblance of order.”
The old man shook his head. “Heaven help you, son. There’s no order there, not that I’ve been able to determine. You go in there, you’re likely to not come out again.”
“Can you tell us about a prison camp south of here?” McLean asked. “Some hikers we passed told us rumors about one in Colorado Springs, but they didn’t know who was behind it.”
“That would be the anti-Constitutionalists,” the old man said. “They’re setting up a base there from what I’ve heard. No doubt they’ve got a prison, too. They don’t like anyone that won’t submit to their new way of doing things.”
The others looked at each other. “Did you say ‘anti-Constitutionalists’?” McLean asked. “Who exactly are these people?”
“Well, that’s what me and my friends call them. They kinda came up out of nowhere, a real powerful group with a lot of resources and a lot of East Coast accents. Rolled in from Kansas City about two weeks back. I blame them for the whole meltdown. How else do you account for their working vehicles? Could be that there’s millions of them back east, slowly making their way out here to take over the whole country.”
“Are they political?” McLean asked.
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