Push Back: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller (The Disruption Series Book 2)
Page 43
“Karen’s folks were killed in a car wreck when she was in college, but my folks love her as much as I do. She had a real hard time when Billy was born, and my folks were right there with her.” His face clouded. “But I wasn’t and I’ve never really forgiven myself.”
“Why? What happened?”
“Billy came early and Karen had to have a C-section. I planned to work until a couple of weeks before delivery so I could be there and still have most of my vacation left to help out, but I was a day out of port when she went into labor. I practically rode the gangway down when we made port, but by the time I got home, it was all over. Luckily it turned out okay, but this time I was determined to be there.”
He shook his head. “Look how well that turned out.”
“When is she due?” Tex asked softly.
Wiggins didn’t respond. “Five days ago,” he said at last. “And she was likely going to need another C-section. But now …” He trailed off, unable to complete the thought.
“I’m sure she’s fine, Bill,” Tex said, but it sounded lame even to her.
“She has to be,” Wiggins said, his face a mask of grim determination.
They lapsed into silence, checking the luminous faces of their watches as the minutes dragged. Finally at eleven, Wiggins could take it no more.
“Screw it,” he said, and donned his NV glasses and started the truck.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Riding the rails
Northbound
Near Biddeford, Maine
Day 36, 2:25 a.m.
They got off to a good start, managing to get the pickup lined up on the rails and the guide wheels locked on the second try. Wiggins started down the track and they were soon at the proscribed safe speed limit and then five miles over it. Tex said nothing as Wiggins stared ahead grimly.
They rolled through Exeter and Newmarket without difficulty and barely slowed through the University of New Hampshire campus at Durham. Movement seemed to lighten Wiggins’ mood, and he began to make small talk once again. They slowed for the Cocheco River bridge at Dover but found it clear, but only five miles further down the line, they spotted a self-appointed toll collector at the Salmon Falls River bridge at Rollinsford.
They surprised him with their high beams and air horn technique and were almost across the bridge before the man recovered and fired at them, or rather their sound, somewhat perfunctorily.
Wiggins let out a relieved sigh as they rolled off the bridge on the far side.
“We’re in Maine, Tex! That was the border!” he said.
“How far to Biddeford?” Tex asked.
“Thirty miles to the switch for the spur,” Wiggins said.
“Do you have any idea how we’re going to manage that? Don’t they have padlocks or something?”
“We’ll figure it out,” Wiggins said.
Tex raised her NV goggles and studied the map. “Maybe we don’t have to. After the lines diverge, they cross Main Street about three blocks apart. We can follow this line to Main Street, get off and drive three blocks, and get back on the spur at the crossing. That should be a lot faster than messing around with a switch when we don’t know what we’re doing.”
“Agreed. Good thinking.”
Tex smiled. “That’s why I’m the navigator.”
The miles clacked by beneath the truck’s multiple sets of wheels. As they entered Biddeford, the track curved to the right, and Wiggins was forced to slow so the screeching wheels didn’t announce their presence as they made their brief foray on the city streets. The transfer to the spur was uneventful, and the rail bridge was unguarded. Wiggins picked up speed again, rushing through dark residential areas before plunging again into heavy woods.
Tex looked at the map. “Take it easy, Bill. There’s a sharp turn to the left coming up.”
Wiggins slowed, but not enough, and the metal guide wheels screeched a piercing lament as the truck rounded the curve at speed, barely managing to stay on the track.
“Oops! Sorry, Tex,” Wiggins said, slowing the truck even more. “I guess I need to keep it together. “Any more curves I need to worry about?”
She looked at the map again. “There’s a slight jog to the right around some sort of big facility ahead on the left. Then a bit farther there’s a sharp turn to the right under the interstate and maybe a quarter of a mile to the dead end.”
Wiggins sighed. “Almost there.”
He increased speed again as they hurtled through the thick woods, but mindful of the slight curve ahead, he kept the speed well below the prescribed limit. They rounded the curve, and the trees thinned enough for him to catch fleeting glimpses of a huge industrial building through the trees to his left. He saw movement on the track ahead and glanced back toward a large sign on the building. Uh-oh!
The movement resolved itself into two figures standing astride the track, both in full combat gear with helmets and NV gear. Wiggins watched in mute surprise as one raised his hand in a stop gesture.
“Who the hell are those guys, and what are they doing in the middle of the woods?” Tex asked.
“Army, National Guard, or FEMA I’d say,” Wiggins replied. “That building is the General Dynamics Weapons facility. It was a big employer here, but I forgot all about it. They make machine guns and ammunition, so no doubt any number of groups want to control it. They probably heard us screech around that curve and sent guys to check the track.”
“What are we going to do?”
“Well, I’m NOT letting them stop us this close to home. At a minimum they’ll be suspicious about all the guns and how we happen to be riding the rails. Nothing good can come of dealing with them. Get ready to sound that horn and dive for the floorboard.”
The men were both raising their assault rifles now, and Wiggins braked, the rubber tires squealing on the slick rails. He saw their body language relax slightly, and one stepped to the side, obviously intent on questioning them, while the other remained in place on the track. They held their rifles ready, but pointed down. The truck was fifty feet away and coasting to a stop when Wiggins raised his NV goggles and told Tex to do the same.
“NOW!” he hissed, and stomped the accelerator as he hit his high beams.
Tex blasted the horn at the now blinded men as the truck tires squealed and spun on the rails. Wiggins realized his mistake and eased off the accelerator, allowing the tires to bite, and the truck shot forward. They brushed aside the man blocking their way, who barely managed to get off the track in time, and a hundred feet away they heard gunfire. A round slapped into the truck, and Wiggins belatedly killed the lights to make them a more difficult target.
“You all right?” Wiggins asked.
“I think so. You think they’ll chase us?”
“No clue, but we need to disappear as soon as possible,” Wiggins said.
He pushed the truck as fast as track conditions would allow, and less than five minutes later they rolled under the interstate and into the industrial park. There were multiple places to exit the rails where entrance drives crossed the track. Wiggins overshot the first one, but got the truck stopped at the second.
He raised the front guide wheels, freeing the front tires from the rails, but when he hit the control for the rear guide wheels, there was no response. He cursed and they both got out. Oily hydraulic fluid dripped off the back bumper, and a quick inspection found a bullet hole near the bottom of the hydraulic tank for the rear unit.
Wiggins cursed. “We can’t raise the wheels without hydraulic fluid.”
***
“What are we going to do?” Tex asked, but Wiggins already had the back door open and was pulling out empty water bottles.
“Drain oil out of the front unit and transfer it to the rear. We only have to get enough in to cycle the rear wheels once.”
“But the hole—”
Wiggins started toward the front of the truck with an armload of water bottles. “One problem at a time. Grab a bunch of those bottles and give me a
hand.”
He squatted down and located the drain plug for the front unit and loosened it with the multitool.
“Okay, Tex. There’s no valve on this thing, and when I pull that plug, it will be slick as hell. I doubt I can screw it back in without dropping it, especially with hydraulic fluid gushing out. We’ve only got one shot at this, and if we don’t catch enough, we’re screwed.”
“What can I do?”
“I’m gonna have a bottle in each hand and swap them out one after another. I need you to take the full ones, set them out of the way, and feed me empties. You ready?”
Tex nodded, and Wiggins pulled the plug. Fluid gushed over his fingers and ran down his elbow as he jammed the narrow neck of the plastic bottle under the stream. It filled in seconds and he swapped bottles, trying and failing to capture every drop. They ran out of bottles before they ran out of fluid, and though he tried to get the plug back in, most of the remaining hydraulic fluid ran onto the pavement before he managed to do so.
“Well, let’s just hope we have enough,” Wiggins said and started toward the back of the truck with an armload of bottles. Tex did the same.
“What about the hole?” Tex asked as Wiggins opened up the fill cap for the rear unit.
“Let’s find a plug. It’s only got to hold long enough to fill the lines and cycle the wheels once,” Wiggins said.
Tex jammed her index finger in the hole.
“Seriously?” Wiggins asked.
“Got a better idea? We’re sort of in a hurry here, right?”
“I can’t argue with that,” Wiggins said, and started pouring hydraulic fluid into the tank.
He finished quickly and moved around to the driver’s side. “Let’s just hope there’s not too much air in the system, because bleeding the lines could take forever,” he said as he got behind the wheel.
He hit the switch and was rewarded with the expected whine, followed a long moment later by a clunk as the rear guide wheels locked into their stowed position. He called to Tex, and she crawled in the passenger side, wiping greasy hands on her clothes.
“I feel like a damned engineer,” Tex muttered, and Wiggins laughed despite the situation.
“Intelligent?”
Tex smiled. “No, greasy and irritable.”
***
There was no need for maps now, and Wiggins pressed the pickup through the inky darkness with a confidence born of familiarity. They took two-lane blacktops and one-lane gravel roads through farm land and forest and across country bridges. At one point they pulled onto a dirt track, and Tex gasped as Wiggins plunged across a wide dark stream of unknown depth. Or unknown to her, anyway, for Wiggins seemed to have no doubts.
They were speeding down a county road through thick forest when Wiggins began to slow. Tex saw two mailboxes beside a driveway, and Wiggins turned up the gravel track and followed it a hundred yards through the trees. He spoke for the first time since they’d left Biddeford.
“My folks have a hundred acres, but they gave half of it to Karen and me. We built our house two years ago, or I guess I should say we started building it. We’re doing most of it ourselves, and my mom says you never really finish building a house,” Wiggins said.
They’d come to a large clearing in the woods, and the gravel driveway diverged into two separate lanes, each serving a tidy, rustic home built of logs and native stone. They had an honest look about them, and Tex thought they looked like homes Wiggins might build: neat, sturdy, practical buildings.
Wiggins stopped at the split between the driveways.
“What’s the matter, Bill?”
Wiggins didn’t answer right away, and when he did, there was a catch in his voice. “I’m scared, Tex. For over a month I’ve been telling myself everything was gonna be okay, but now I have to find out. What if it’s not okay? I … I think I just want to sit here a bit.” He nodded toward the lightening sky. “It’ll be daylight soon anyway. No need to wake everybody up just yet.”
***
They sat there silently for almost an hour as the gloom turned to gray. A light flared in a window of the house on the right, the flickering of a flame lighting a lantern. It seemed to be what Wiggins was waiting for.
“That will be Dad,” Wiggins said. “He’s always the first one up.”
He started the truck and turned toward his parents’ house. They got out in the driveway, Tex suddenly unsure what to do. She hung back as Wiggins climbed the short steps to the porch and knocked on the storm door. There was the sound of footfalls inside the house.
“Who is it?” asked a cautious voice.
“It’s Bill, Dad,” Wiggins said.
There was the sound of locks being turned; then the inner door opened and an older man burst through the storm door and enveloped Wiggins in a hug. Then he saw Tex and flushed red, obviously embarrassed by his display of emotion. He straightened and released his son.
“It’s sure good to have you home, son.” The man looked at Tex. “And who is this—”
“Dad, is Karen here or at our house?”
The joy on the elder Wiggins’ face morphed to anguish, and Tex had no doubt as to the cause.
The Wiggins Property
Near Lewiston, Maine
The lights had been out almost two weeks when Karen Wiggins went into labor early, the same day Tex and Bill Wiggins had left North Carolina. By that time, the Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston had closed their doors for good, having exhausted not only the fuel for their emergency generator, but all medicine and supplies.
Ray and Nancy Wiggins used the last of their gasoline and braved the chaos of the city to get their daughter-in-law to the hospital, where they’d found the doors shuttered. Desperate, they’d returned to their home ten miles out of town and done the best they could. It had been a breech presentation, and neither mother nor child had survived.
Ray Wiggins told the story in a flat monotone, as if hoping his unemotional presentation could wring the anguish from the tale. Bill’s mother, Nancy, sat beside her son and held his hand, mixing her tears with his own on the kitchen table. Tex, feeling very much an outsider, took it upon herself to entertain three-year-old Billy in the living room.
The days took on a sameness after that. The Wiggins’ homes were well off the beaten track, and they’d had no problems with marauders as of yet. Tex was made welcome, and the supplies they brought meant no immediate hardship.
The Wiggins were both avid gardeners and home canners, and Ray and Bill were hunters, so they were generally self-sufficient in the way of rural people. They had no electricity for the well pump, but a spring in the woods behind the homes and a few drops of chlorine bleach provided their drinking water. Tex volunteered for water-hauling chores, eager to pull her own weight.
Bill Wiggins became lethargic almost to the point of catatonia and went about his chores with a listlessness that was heartbreaking to anyone who had known him even two months earlier. Ray and Nancy had buried Karen and the infant on a gentle slope overlooking the two homes, and Bill moved a picnic bench from their patio up to the graveside. He was spending more and more time there, sitting alone by the graves and thinking thoughts to which only he was privy.
The elder Wigginses grew equally morose, their joy at Bill’s homecoming sapped by the enormity of their son’s loss, and their own guilt they’d been unable to prevent it. The only bright spot in the house was little Billy, who viewed life with the wonder and irrepressible optimism of a three-year-old. He took an immediate liking to Tex, and she to him, and he followed her everywhere.
Her chores done for the day, Tex was playing hide-and-seek with Billy in the backyard late one afternoon. She flushed him from his hiding spot and chased him squealing across the backyard before picking him up and tickling him. She set him down on the picnic table and was about to resume her tickling when a solemn look crossed his face.
“Will Daddy always be sad?” Billy asked.
Tex turned to follow Billy’s gaze and saw B
ill sitting at the top of the knoll on the picnic bench, staring down at the twin crosses.
“He just misses your mom and your baby sister, that’s all,” Tex said.
“But he never met the baby, and she and Mommy are happy in Heaven and that’s a good place. Nana told me so,” Billy said. “Doesn’t he want them to be happy?”
“Sure he does, honey, but when someone you love goes away, you miss them a lot.”
“But we’re here.” Billy’s lip started trembling. “Doesn’t … doesn’t he love us?”
Tex felt as if her heart would break. She blinked back a tear and folded Billy in a fierce hug. “Sure he does, baby. He just needs a little time, that’s all.”
“You’re smushin’ me,” Billy said.
Tex laughed. “Sorry,” she said, releasing him and holding him at arm’s length. “What say we go in and see if your nana might have a little snack for you?”
***
Bill looked up as Tex sat down on the bench.
“Like some company?” she asked.
He shrugged, and they sat in silence.
“What’s up, Tex?” Bill asked at last.
Tex took a deep breath. “You have to move on, Bill. Karen and the baby died, and that is truly heartrending and tragic, but there’s nothing you can do about it, and there are three people in that house who love you and need you very much.”
Bill Wiggins bristled. “You don’t get to tell me when it’s time to move on. You don’t understand—”
“You’re right I don’t understand. MY family is gone, and yours is right here in front of you, being dragged along to your pity party whether they like it or not. If my folks were still alive or if I was blessed with a great kid like Billy, I sure as hell would be counting my blessings instead of my losses. Do you honestly think KAREN would want this? Do you know Billy thinks you don’t love him?”
“You leave Karen out of—” Wiggins stopped mid-sentence. “What do you mean Billy thinks I don’t love him?”
Tex took another deep breath and told Wiggins about her exchange with Billy. When she finished, he turned his head away, but not before she saw a tear leak down his cheek. She reached over and took his hand.