Nathan halted and turned around so fast she almost ran into him. They were close enough she could smell his breath. It was odd being this close to a man and not catching the scent of alcohol.
“Ms. Spears, I also have family out there. My nephew is at a camp not too far from here. I appreciate you wrapping my ankle, and I understand your concern. But I can’t tell you anything beyond what I’ve already said. If I learn otherwise, I will gladly share this information. But for now, my mission is to get to the nearest town and find a way to communicate with command.”
Sandra sidestepped around the pilot and kept walking down the hill leading back to Highway 34. He followed in silence, descending carefully down the steep trail. Yellow and purple wildflowers with bell-like petals grew along the path. The bottom of the trail opened into a meadow carved in half by the Fall River, which cut through the green pasture and wrapped back up to the highway.
“Keep low,” Nathan said, watching the cars and stranded motorists on the road above as if he wanted to avoid civilians.
Sandra considered asking why, but she’d had the same idea to avoid other people. For a fleeting moment, the observation terrified her. If Nathan wanted to avoid contact with anyone else then something was really wrong.
The country had been at war for as long as she could remember. But that was overseas. Had he meant there was an attack on American soil?
Of course that’s what he meant.
Sandra paused in her tracks, her heart beating so hard she could feel it throbbing in her neck.
“Major, should I be worried about my daughter’s safety?”
Nathan had opened his mouth to reply when a shout echoed from the road.
“Hey! Hey, you. Down there!”
Sandra and Nathan looked up to the road. A crowd of stranded drivers had gathered along the railing by the side of the highway. In the front of the group stood a barrel-chested man wearing a tight flannel shirt. He wedged a cigarette between his lips, took a drag, and then shouted, “You one of them pilots?”
Sandra took a step back when she saw the shotgun the man was carrying.
“Stay by your vehicles, help is coming,” Nathan yelled back.
The man flicked the cigarette onto the ground, crushed it with his cowboy boot, and hocked spit over the railing. “Like hell. I want to know what killed our cars.”
“Keep walking,” Nathan whispered. He started moving back to the trail, and Sandra trotted after him.
“Hey!” the man yelled. “I asked you a goddamn question. Don’t you turn your back on a soldier.”
Nathan stopped and pivoted back to the road. “I don’t know what happened, sir, but help will be coming soon. Just stay where you are or walk into town.”
The other people muttered and began to disperse, but not the soldier. He climbed over the railing and slid down the embankment. “Get back here and tell me what the hell is going on.”
“Is this guy serious?” Sandra muttered.
Nathan turned his back on the irate man. “We don’t have time for this.”
Sandra eyed the shotgun one more time, then took off running after Nathan. He moved fast enough that she had trouble keeping up, and when she told him to slow down or risk doing more serious damage to his ankle, the pilot only sped up.
“If you hurt yourself, I’m not carrying you through the woods into town,” she said. “And since I’m the only one of us who actually knows how to get there, maybe you could slow down and let me lead.”
That made him pause. He looked back at her and then stepped to one side to let Sandra walk ahead of him. She would have laughed at the surprised expression on the major’s face, but she was too worried to enjoy the moment.
Only an hour had passed since the planes had dropped from the sky, but some people were already panicking. It wouldn’t take long for others to follow. Fear was, in Sandra’s opinion, the most powerful emotion in the world. It was fear, not love, that had trapped her in a series of bad relationships with addicts who vented their rage on her. Fear turned normal, law-abiding citizens into panicked mobs—and drove paranoid soldiers to chase strangers through the woods with a shotgun.
Sandra flinched at the crack of a gunshot nearby. The blast echoed through the valley, framed on both sides by raging fires, and she began to run.
“Did you hear that?” Raven asked.
He helped Colton lay Melissa’s limp body in the back seat of the Chief’s Ford Explorer. They draped a blanket over her.
“Sounded like a gunshot.” Raven pulled off his baseball cap and looked toward Highway 34. “My ears are still ringing from those explosions. I must be hearing things.”
“Must be, ‘cause I didn’t hear anything,” Colton said. He carefully shut the door to the truck. “You heading back to town?”
Raven shrugged and looked toward Estes Park, trying to find its familiar glow in the distance.
“You can follow me to the station, and I’ll have Margaret cut you a check.”
Raven put his soaked cap back on and attempted to straighten the bent bill. “Sounds good.” He turned to his Jeep Cherokee but hesitated. “You sure you don’t want to tell me any of your theories about those jets?”
Colton climbed into the driver’s seat and inserted the key into the ignition. “I thought you were already convinced it was the end of the…”
He trailed off as he turned the key and nothing happened. “What the hell?” Colton muttered. He cranked the key again, but there was nothing. No click, no whining sound. Nothing at all. Glancing up, he checked the overhead lights, then turned to look in the back seat.
“Won’t turn on? I have a pair of cables,” Raven said. He stepped closer to the truck, eyeing the dark taillights. That was odd. Not a single light had turned on. They hadn’t been gone that long. No way the truck would lose all of its juice so quickly.
Colton stepped back out onto the parking lot, rocks crunching under the weight of his boots. Raven lit a cigarette. Drawing in a long drag, he watched warily as the Chief began eyeing his Jeep.
Colton held out his hand. “Give me your keys.”
Raven took in another drag and raised a brow. After exhaling a cloud of smoke, he said, “Keys to what?”
“I don’t have time to play games right now. Just give me your keys.”
Raven fished in his pocket and pulled out a keyring with a coyote’s foot on the end. He wasn’t sure what the hell was going on, but he was too cold and downright scared to argue with Colton. Instead of tossing the keys over, however, he slid behind the wheel of his Jeep and cranked it. The engine rumbled to life. He turned it off again and looked at Colton.
“Looks like it’s just your ride,” he said.
“How old’s your Jeep?”
“1974. This baby’s older than me.”
“Shit,” Colton muttered. “This ain’t good.”
“Chief, you want to tell me what the hell is going on? You’re really starting to screw with my head.”
“You want to know my theory? Well here it goes, Raven. I don’t think this was an accident. I think an EMP did this.”
“EMP? Isn’t that a band from the 70s?” Raven asked.
“Electromagnetic pulse,” Colton explained, shaking his head. “Could be caused by a nuclear weapon being detonated in the upper atmosphere.”
“A nuke? You got to be fucking kidding me. You think someone nuked the United States?”
Creek sat on his hind legs beside Raven and whined, pawing the man’s leg. Raven bent down and stroked the Akita’s fur.
“You been listening to the news, man?” Colton said, “The situation with North Korea is really bad. One of my old service buddies told me there’s a rumor that a senator’s kid got herself caught on the wrong side of the border, and a whole platoon of Marines had to blow up a prison compound to get her out.”
Raven scratched nervously at his nose and considered setting the record straight. He tried not to think about his final mission too often, and he’d been swor
n to secrecy about what he’d witnessed in North Korea. In the year and a half since leaving the Corps, Raven had tried to drown those memories in a bottle, but he could still see Billy’s shattered face and the look of betrayal in Lee’s eyes in the split second before Gunnery Sergeant Black blew his brains out. But surely that mission had nothing to do with whatever had happened here tonight?
The Chief was doing what cops always did—looking for somebody to blame. He didn’t know the North Koreans were behind this, and he certainly didn’t know that Raven had been part of the team who rescued Sarcone’s granddaughter.
“You remember that flash we saw up in the meadow that was followed by what sounded like an explosion? That could have been from a bomb,” Colton was saying.
“Hold on, Chief,” Raven said, holding up his hands. “If that was a nuke, it would have been much louder than thunder and we would have seen more than a flash.”
“Not if it was set off really high in the atmosphere. That would let the electromagnetic pulse cast a very large umbrella. Think of it like a massive lightning bolt that hits every house, car, and electrical device in a region. It would fry everything with microcircuits. That’s why my car won’t turn on and why my radio is dead. My cell signal is gone, too.”
Colton jerked his chin toward the fires in the distance. “Your Jeep was built before the fancy computers were installed in cars.”
Raven patted the hood of his Jeep and forced a smile, something he had practiced many times, but deep down he felt sick to his stomach. This has nothing to do with you, he told himself. It’s not your fault.
“Must have been a really powerful EMP to drop those jets out of the air,” Colton continued. “It could have also knocked out the grid in multiple states. I’m pretty sure those jets were from Buckley AFB. They don’t fly training missions this way. I had a buddy that worked with the 120th a few years back.”
“You don’t know what really happened,” Raven said, choosing to ignore the fact that he’d been the one asking the Chief to theorize in the first place.
Colton nodded curtly. “You’re right. And I won’t know until I get back to town.”
“And I’m guessing you need a ride.”
“If it’s not too much trouble,” Colton said. “Otherwise, I could just commandeer your vehicle.”
“Okay, but hurry it up. I want to check on my sister.”
With another nod, Colton marched over to his truck and struggled to lift Melissa’s body. Raven hadn’t realized his Jeep would be serving as both taxi and hearse tonight, but he hurried over to help the Chief anyway.
Together, they carried her body out of the Explorer and put her in the back of the Jeep. Raven had added a second row of seats in the old vehicle, and the cargo space was cramped.
The blanket covering Melissa’s face slipped down as Colton set her carefully inside. He pulled it back up to cover her with deliberate care. Then he walked back to his own vehicle and started pulling out heavy duffel bags, a shotgun, and his AR-15, stacking it all neatly in the back of the Jeep.
“What is all this stuff?” Raven asked.
“My war bag and my primary bug-out bag,” Colton replied. “Plus my work gear. You tellin’ me you don’t carry a bug-out bag?”
Raven raised a brow. “I have some survival gear at home.”
“That’s the point. It’s at home, not here when you need it.”
Shrugging, Raven whistled at Creek, who jumped into the passenger seat of the Jeep. Raven shook his head and pointed at the back, and the dog reluctantly climbed into the second row.
“Thanks,” Colton said.
“For what?” Raven asked.
Instead of answering him, Colton piled into the Jeep and tried his radio again. With Creek, Melissa, and Colton’s gear safely inside, Raven climbed into the driver’s side and fired up the Jeep again. It purred to life, the forty-three-year-old engine settling into a steady rhythm. Part of him still wanted to believe that Colton was wrong, that everything they’d witnessed tonight was just a series of unfortunate coincidences.
Colton suddenly looked up, an expression of dawning horror on his face. “Oh my God,” he whispered.
“What?” Raven asked.
“I just realized something.”
Raven remained silent, afraid to ask.
“Fallout,” Colton said quietly. “If that was a nuke, then the radiation could kill us all.”
-6-
Sandra panted heavily as she ran through the underbrush. Chokecherries and junipers scraped against her legs, tearing holes in her scrubs. She stepped in a pile of elk shit and cursed as she wiped it off in the dirt.
“Keep moving,” Nathan whispered.
Moonlight guided them deeper into the forest. The steep ground was slick and studded with sharp, moss-covered rocks. She was worried about Nathan’s ankle. One wrong move, and he could end up making it worse.
He stopped and gestured for Sandra to get down. She knelt next to him behind a maple tree and scanned the meadow they had left behind. Her breaths came out in icy puffs. She was wet, cold, and now she was bleeding from dozens of scratches.
“I don’t think he followed us,” Nathan said after a few moments of silence. “How far are we from town?”
“Half a mile from the first of the resorts, maybe a bit farther.”
Nathan looked over Sandra’s shoulder, squinting as if he was trying to focus. She turned and froze, heart punching her ribs when she saw a huge silhouette moving through the trees. As the creature moved up the embankment, she saw it wasn’t the soldier but an elk. After a moment, a second, smaller silhouette moved into the light.
They watched the majestic animals walk across the meadow, stopping to graze every few seconds. The male suddenly looked in their direction, mouth still chewing. Ears perking, the creature halted. A moment passed and it bent back down to eat, clearly deciding that the humans weren’t a threat.
Sandra envied the animals. They were protected by law in the park, so they didn’t have to worry about much. Most of them weren’t scared of humans anymore, and other predators were rare. Sandra still hadn’t forgiven Raven for letting a couple of rich assholes kill a beautiful bull elk for money.
The babble of the Fall River, unseen beside the trail, did little to calm her nerves as she walked. She waded through the forest, pulling back limbs and stepping over fallen trees. The hardest part was feeling out the uneven ground. Rocks of all sizes peppered the forest floor, camouflaged with yellow moss and orange lichen.
For fifteen minutes they trekked deeper into the woods. Sandra checked behind them every few steps to see if the soldier was following, but she couldn’t see much in the darkness. With only the glimmer of the half-hidden moon to guide them, she was having a hard time seeing ten feet in front of her.
But every time she stumbled, it only strengthened her resolve. She had to get back to civilization and figure out what was going on. Allie would be in bed by now, so that gave Sandra at least eight hours to find a ride to Loveland to pick her daughter up. She barely trusted Mark to watch Allie overnight, let alone in a crisis.
At last, they reached a grassy slope leading back up to Highway 34. The rooftops of a resort crested the pines down the road.
“Do you know where we are?” Nathan asked.
“We’re past the park entrance and back in the city limits.” Sandra looked to the east. “I don’t think we can go much farther without returning to the road. It’s too dark out here.”
Nathan didn’t hesitate. He continued up the hill, grimacing with each step. Sandra hurried after him. She wasn’t used to being around men like this. Her brother was a strong man, but he never seemed to have much direction, especially after he left the Marines. He wouldn’t tell her what had happened to him on his last tour of duty, but he had come back changed. Not so much that anyone other than his closest family would notice, but his smile had seemed more brittle, his behavior more reckless. The worst part was that he wouldn’t tell her what was wrong.<
br />
Nathan grabbed the side of a tree and started working his way up the steep hill. She continued after him, feet sliding on pine needles. She reached out to grab a rock, skinning her palm.
“Ouch,” she muttered.
“You okay?” He was leaning against a Douglas fir at the edge of the highway. There was a car a quarter mile away, but she couldn’t see any passengers, and there was no movement at the first of the cabins along the road.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“Let’s keep moving then,” Nathan ordered. He stood and waved her into the street as another voice echoed down the road.
“There you are!” The soldier with the shotgun stumbled out of the bushes.
“Dammit,” Nathan growled. He held up a hand. “Listen, sir, I don’t want any trouble. I’m just trying to get to town.”
“Should we run?” she whispered.
Nathan shook his head.
“I told you to wait up,” the soldier said, exhaling a cloud of cigarette smoke. He reached for the strap of his gun. “Is this some sort of terrorist attack? I need to know. I need to prepare.”
Nathan didn’t reply, and the man continued to walk toward them.
“You hard of hearing or what?” He flicked his cigarette onto the trail.
“Hey,” Sandra said. “Pick that up.”
The man looked down and then back at her like he didn’t understand what the problem was.
“I’m not talking to you, lady,” he said. Headlight beams swept across the road as the soldier hefted his shotgun. “Well I’ll be damned, looks like the cars are back on!” he shouted.
Nathan grabbed Sandra by the wrist and pulled her back. “Let’s go,” he said. She shook off his grip and started walking, but she could still feel the warmth of his fingers on her skin.
They made it a few feet before the soldier shouted after them. “Hey, who said you could leave!”
There was a clicking sound as the man pumped a shell into his shotgun.
“Just what I needed,” Nathan whispered. He reached for his gun again, but this time she was the one to grab his wrist.
Trackers: A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Thriller Page 7