by E. M. Kokie
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
They can die in their beds for all I care. All of them.
Especially Mark.
Mom’s always been hopeless, but now Dad’s checked out, too. He spends more time thinking about baseball than what we need to be doing to prepare — like knowing game stats of rich guys who wouldn’t spit on us if we were on fire is going to matter at all in a grid-down scenario.
Then they give me crap for trying to prepare on my own.
Well, fine. Screw them.
My boot catches on a root, and I almost go down, grabbing the tree to save myself from a header into the trunk. My face scrapes down the bark until I get some purchase and stop the slide. The weight of the pack shifts to the side, pinning me against the bark with the rifle in its sling between me and the tree. I focus on the arm that’s keeping me upright and turn just enough to brace my body against the tree until I can get my footing.
Once I can peel myself off the tree, I assess the damage. Stings, scrapes, aches, but nothing serious.
Before moving on, I adjust the shoulder straps on my assault pack and tighten the waist belt to make sure it won’t shift like that again.
If I knocked myself out, I’d never hear the end of it. Instead of just being restricted to Uncle Skip’s land, I’d probably be housebound, too. Maybe roombound. That would make them happy: me “safely” locked inside. Like keeping me from training will make me safe.
At least before he gave up, I had Mark. He rolled his eyes at all my plans and would never train seriously, but I knew that if we needed to bug out, he’d be there, right beside me, helping me get them out of here. With both of us, we might have a chance. Dad would rally. Uncle Skip would be another armed man, if we could get him to leave. Mom would need help, but with all of us, she’d be okay. But without Mark, it would be just me. They never listen to me.
I could survive by myself if I had to. Hook up with a good Mutual Assistance Group. Or form my own MAG. But that’s only if I would go and not look back.
What kind of person leaves their family behind? What kind of person even thinks about leaving their family behind?
Thinking it is giving up.
I won’t give up.
We should all be preparing. But until I can make them see what’s coming, I will keep preparing on my own. And then we’ll be that much further along.
Because it’s only a matter of time until we will have no choice but to fight.
My phone vibrates, and I drop to my knees behind brush as if evading a scout. I work deeper into the brush and then pull the rifle to ready while I go prone. A perfect transition. Sweep the area. Acquire my target: a knothole on the tree. Sight and hold, as if waiting to engage. Dry fire, work the bolt to load the next imaginary round, and scan the area for other hostiles. I’m pretty sure I would have hit the knothole. With dry firing, it’s hard to be sure, but it felt right.
When the phone buzzes again, I take it for the all clear and sprint for the pond, ignoring stealth. Sprinting all out like I’m being pursued.
They say that the difference between getting away from danger and not is the ability to sprint for three minutes. If I was ambushed — or even now, if someone tried to jump me on the street — the energy exertion to break away from the initial threat would be like sprinting all out for two to three minutes. I might not be able to outfight a grown man, or a trained soldier, or a bunch of hostiles, but I will be able to outrun them, outthink them, and hide, especially in wooded terrain. I could last a long time in dense woods.
At the pond I sweep the area, as if the dirt berm we use for shooting could be shielding hostiles. I sight on a fragment of clay disk still stuck in the dirt, steady, sight, and pull the trigger. I know I would have hit it.
It would be better if I could be sure, but Mom would go ballistic if she heard live rounds. Dad isn’t crazy about me shooting alone, either, but he’d be most pissed at the “wasted” ammo, especially with Mom’s ban on unnecessary spending. Like anything is more necessary than ammo. We don’t have near enough on hand. I can only squirrel away so much without Dad noticing. The message boards and forums say you should have at least a thousand rounds for each armed member of a unit. If our family is a unit, we are nowhere close. We couldn’t each carry a thousand rounds, but what we have is not nearly enough if we have to defend ourselves here or fight our way out.
If I were already eighteen, then I could stock up whenever there’s a deal on ammo, but we don’t have two years and I can’t get Dad to see reason. The government is restricting guns and ammunition already, cataloging us with permits and paperwork. Supply is already disrupted, and if the online warnings are right, supply could be cut off at any time.
With every incident — protest or shooting or whatever — the pressure builds. I watch the news and the sites. I stay on high alert, everything packed and ready to go. We are one rancher standoff or police shooting or massive protest away from all-out chaos, followed by a military state.
In the forums and message boards, people are sharing leads, talking about what they’re hearing. The guys in Texas are freaked. Their governor is mobilizing the National Guard, in case those army training exercises end up being cover for something more.
Some people think it’s the multinational corporations turning us on each other and distracting us with foreign problems and culture wars so we don’t have time to watch them take over everything. Some think it’s the government stirring up all this unrest so they have an excuse to declare martial law. I think it’s all related. Dad loses his job because some rich guys decide to send the jobs somewhere else, and then we lose the house because the banks get paid either way. The rich guys and their corporations own the government. They won’t be happy until they own everything else, too.
Whatever sparks the chaos, the result will be the same. It will be us against everyone. We’ll need to be ready.
Government forces. Militarized police. Foreign hostiles. So-called patriots. Fellow survivors of whatever plague or catastrophe hits first, maybe gone feral or just competing for scarce resources until society rebuilds. We could trap and fish and forage. We’ve done it before. But getting somewhere safe and defending ourselves will take more than that.
Why can’t Mark at least see it? I get that Mom isn’t clued in to this kind of stuff and that Uncle Skip and Dad think it’s all paranoid “wackos” with “conspiracy theories.” But Mark reads the same sites I do, or he used to. He used to be right there with me and Dad on survival skills weekends and deep-woods camping trips. It’s like when we lost the house, they all gave up. Even Mark.
Every time I try to make them see the urgency, I get in trouble.
They’re probably sitting at the kitchen table right now, Dad reading the box scores, Mom wishing he’d focus on the want ads. If they’re thinking about me at all, they’re pissed that I’m out here training instead of obsessed with useless crap the way my cousin Hannah i
s.
I like it out here by the pond. A breeze and a stump to sit on and no one bugging me.
I dig into my pack for a protein bar.
Everything I’d take if we were making a break for it on foot is in this pack — my bug-out bag.
Most guys think the bigger the better. Like a four-wheel-drive vehicle stocked to the rims is the bare minimum. They think dragging as much as they can physically carry is better than maximizing efficiency.
Even Mark. He doesn’t know what we would really need, or how it would feel to pack it, carry it, go for days on what was in that pack strapped to his back.
I do.
I’ve been training with my pack for months. And before that, I used my regular backpack, weighted down with whatever I could get my hands on.
I raided what I could from our camping supplies — compass, D rings, paracord, fishing line and hooks, a first-aid kit, the firesteel and scraper, and the aluminum tent stakes and military surplus poncho, which I can strap to the outside of the pack and use to build shelter pretty much anywhere.
But I can only add new things one item at a time, quietly, so as not to draw Mom’s attention. I need a better water-purification system and a space blanket. A portable chain to cut wood (much smaller and safer to carry than a hatchet or chainsaw). A better knife sharpener, because if ammo gets scarce, or it’s too dangerous to go where the ammo is, the fixed blade strapped to my thigh might be my best weapon.
I have a visual in my head, the pack with empty spaces where items still to be acquired should be. The written lists freaked Mom out, and the mental image plays double duty — shopping list and preparation exercise — as I visualize the contents of my pack before I fall asleep and when I wake up, so I can organize it and find what I need without thinking in a crisis.
Until my pack is complete, a couple of water bottles and boxes of bolts keep the weight and bulk right for training and acclimation. Bolts and washers in the pockets of my vest stand in for ammo. A large wrench strapped to my belt simulates the weight of my Glock, because even on our land, I don’t carry a handgun. That is Dad’s line in the sand.
My phone buzzes. Text from Mark. Leaving in 40.
Mark’s coming to the range? All right, then. He hasn’t wanted to shoot with me in months, not since we set off the pipe bomb and Mom went ballistic. He’s shot plenty of hostile beer cans with his idiot friends, but that’s not going to help him improve his accuracy or his readiness on the move.
I take a different trail back, closer to the road that runs along the far perimeter of our land, until I get to the old barn. This hasn’t been a working farm in decades. Dad and Uncle Skip grew up down the road. When Uncle Skip bought this place, he converted the barn into a workshop, with built-in workbenches and shelves for his woodworking tools, and a storage area for all our collective junk that doesn’t fit in the house. In the back of the storage area, under some boxes and a tarp, half behind a standing mirror, is an old trunk, with a combination lock added by me. I spin the dial, pull it open, and push my pack inside. I’ll bring my pack in later, when everyone’s asleep. Or tomorrow. If I bring it in now, and Mom’s itching for a skirmish, she might just try to take it away. Dad might actually change the combo for the gun locker instead of looking the other way.
I survey the house from the barn, make sure no one is looking out the kitchen window or door, and then move low and fast to Dad’s truck. I stow the rifle in its soft case, which I put in the back of Dad’s truck earlier so he’d have no reason to look for the rifle in the locker.
“Where have you been?” Mom says before I’m even through the screen door.
“What? I went for a run. I’m not even allowed to run on our own property anymore?”
Mom slaps the counter with the hand holding a dish towel, giving me that look, the one that says I’m trying her patience, that I’m not too old to be put in time-out, dragged there by a good grip on my ear like when I was six.
I stand my ground, staring back at her. We’ve been having this fight for weeks. They can refuse to do anything to prepare themselves, but they can’t stop me from training.
“I don’t like waking up to find you gone. Sneaking out while it’s still dark, running around the woods doing Lord knows what.”
“I had to get a run in before we left.” She stands there, staring. She isn’t backing off. “Fine,” I say. “From now on, I’ll wake you up on my way out, however early that is.”
Dad pauses midbite to give her a look that says he’s not in favor of early wake-up calls.
Mark says something unintelligible around half-chewed eggs and toast, double-fisting the fork and toast like a toddler.
“Swallow,” Dad says. “And you.” He looks at me. “No more sneaking out. If,” he continues, putting up his hand to stop my response, “If you plan an early run, you make sure we know the night before.”
“Fine,” I say.
Mom stares at him for a long pissed-off beat and then turns back to the dishes, pan clanking off the edge of the sink.
Mark forces the food down. “We’re gonna be late.”
“For what?”
“We’re dropping Mark off on the way,” Dad says. “His truck died. Again.”
Mom slams the pan against the edge of the sink louder.
“Dropping him where?” I ask.
Mark mumbles a response, food getting in the way.
“Where?”
“Clearview Sportsmen’s Club,” Dad answers, like he can’t believe it any more than I can.
“A sportsmen’s club? Are you kidding me?” I can’t get either of them to train, but Mark’s going to a snooty gun club full of wannabes and rich losers? “Since when are you the joining type?”
“Daniel Trace invited me to check it out.”
“This is a joke, right? With what money? You can’t even afford to keep your truck running.”
“He’s going as a guest,” Mom says from the sink. “A free guest, right?”
“Yes. As a guest. For free,” Mark says.
The way Dad won’t really look at Mom makes me doubt it’s really free. Mom’s back is tense and angry. Dad’s looking guilty. Of course Dad’s giving Mark money. Never mind that neither of them is earning anything steady these days, or that Dad said I had to pay the range fees today out of my money. If Mark wants something, then by all means.
“Why does he get anything he wants and he doesn’t even have to —?”
“I don’t get anything —”
“Enough!” Dad yells. He can’t stand talking about our current financial condition.
By the time I’ve cleaned up and changed, Dad and Mark are waiting outside, ready to go.
Mom grimaces at my clothes — my too-long-and-baggy-by-her-standards cargo shorts, my layered shirts. Even the bandanna over my hair.
“Mom, we’re going to the range. No one you know will see me.”
She grunts and turns back to the sink. I am dismissed. I grab an apple on the way out the door.
It’s already getting hot, and three of us crammed into Dad’s truck makes for a sticky, sweaty ride.
“The rifle will be back in the locker as soon as we get home,” Dad says. “And it will stay there unless we are going to the range.”
Crap. “I was just dry firing.”
“I don’t care.” Mark’s pretending he can’t hear us. “You know better.”
“What good is practicing tactical movement without at least being able to sight and dry fire?” Dad gives me a look. “Only on our land, I promise.”
“Skip’s land,” Dad corrects. “It’s Skip’s land. We are his guests.”
“But I need to —”
“Not when you’re home alone, or like this morning, when no one knows where you are. End of discussion.”
Mark’s still quiet. Usually he’d be giving me crap or sucking up to Dad. But today there’s nothing.
He showered. He shaved what little facial hair he has. Clean clothes. New boots. Well, newer
than his old ones. He doesn’t look dressed for a snooty club, but he definitely put some effort into this.
The snotty, sulking Mark we’ve had to deal with since moving out to Uncle Skip’s place is gone. Maybe he’s finally waking up again.
Daniel Trace and his dad used to camp and do survival skills weekends with us. Mr. Trace is the one who taught me to set snares. I can’t believe they’ve gone club. Clubs are for wannabes and poseurs, and they always cost money.
“It’s really free?” I ask.
“Yeah,” Mark says. “For now.”
“Why just for now?”
“Because right now I’m a guest, checking it out. They’re just getting started.”
“And later?” I ask. He looks at me. “When it stops being free?”
“I’ll work it out.”
“How exactly are you —?”
“Leave your brother alone,” Dad says. “It’s his business. Not yours.”
Of course. Because he’s a boy. No, a man now. I’m still just a girl. And not even good enough at being that.
“There, on the right,” Mark says. “There.”
Dad slows to a crawl and then turns onto an unmarked road.
“Are you sure?” Dad asks. There’s no official sign marking the entrance. Just NO TRESPASSING signs on trees here and there.
“Yes.” Mark seems amused by Dad’s skepticism, like he’s in on some secret joke we don’t know.
After we pull off the main road, we drive for at least a mile on a country road before turning onto an even smaller one. I’m not sure two trucks could pass in some places. More NO TRESPASSING, PRIVATE PROPERTY, and NO HUNTING signs as we go deeper into woods. Then DANGER: SHOOTING RANGE signs start to appear. Then the road widens and the trees recede, and there is a metal cattle gate, with a fence extending from the road into the woods. But it’s not “gated” like where Aunt Lorraine and Uncle Nathan aspire to live, with the manicured lawns and friendly attendant in the booth to wave you through. There’s no booth. Just a card reader and a keypad. A building on the other side of the fence could accommodate guards, in a shit-hitting-the-fan scenario.
Dad slows as we approach the gate.
“Go through. It’s open,” Mark says, but Dad’s look is asking again, Are you sure? “It’s okay, Dad. We’re allowed.”