“Good doggie,” the girl said, ruffling the fur on his head. She turned to Nate. “Don’t worry. He’ll warm up to you sooner or later.” Then before Nate could reply, she said. “Listen, I wanted to apologize for before. I don’t know what came over me.”
“You have trouble with authority figures,” Nate said, closing his go-bag. “I suppose I can’t blame you, given your history and what not.” He was referring to the time she’d spent being unceremoniously shuffled from one bad foster home to another. “Anyone else would feel the same way.”
She quit scratching Shadow’s chin. The wolf sat there, staring back at her with a look that said, Hey, why’d you stop? When it was clear the chin scratch was officially over, Shadow got up and sauntered off back into the woods.
Dakota watched him go. Her gaze then fell on the two dead men lying around the dying campfire. She held out her hands, wielding an imaginary gun. “I should have listened to you, I know that. But that’s not why I’m ashamed, least not the only reason. When the shooting started, it felt like every joint in my body locked up. I was like the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz. Beth, my very first foster mother, she played the movie all the time. Thought it would keep me occupied. She didn’t realize I was way too old. Even so, it still left me yearning to click my heels and go back home. Not to my parents—they stopped representing home a long time ago—but to Uncle Roger. Of anyone, he’d be the most disappointed since I had a gun in my hand and I was too scared to use it.”
Nate didn’t say a word. He simply laid a hand on her shoulder. This young girl might have learned a trick or two about staying alive in the middle of winter, but she still had a lot to learn about overcoming the paralyzing effects of fear. Nate’s years as a beat cop and more recently as a PI had helped to hone those particular skills.
“You also knew they were lying,” she said, amazed.
“An old police trick,” he explained. “You throw out false information during an interrogation and see if the suspect goes along. He mentioned Canyon Street and my antenna perked up at once. Not enough to start shooting, but enough to lay a trap. There isn’t a Safeway grocery store anywhere in the county, so when he agreed his parents lived near one, I was convinced they were being deceitful.” Nate glanced down at the two dead men. “We better drag these guys off and bury them under a few feet of snow. Let spring take care of the rest.”
Dakota stood, glanced over her shoulder and let out a little cry. Nate swung around, still reaching for his pistol when he saw what she was looking at. His heart sank. One of the horses—Sundae—was lying in the snow, dead. The rifle shot meant for his head must have hit the mare instead.
“You bastards!” Dakota screamed, spinning around and firing two shots from her Glock into each of the dead men’s bodies.
“Easy, girl,” Nate said, pushing the pistol down and pulling her into a hug. “They already got what they deserved. Let’s save the ammo. We’re likely to cross paths with many others just as deserving.”
Dakota glared down at the pistol in her hand, grimacing. “One of them said something right before you shot them. Do you remember?”
Nate did. “Yeah, that they’d been tracking us. I heard it, but I wasn’t sure if he meant it literally or to mess with our heads.”
She knelt down and collected one of the men’s pistols from the snowpack and held it up to the firelight. She spun the weapon around to show Nate, creases of fear forming at the corners of her hazel eyes. Scratched into the slide was the same symbol as the Glock Dakota had taken from the thug in Byron. “What do you make of it?” she asked.
Nate studied it long and hard before answering. “Hard to say, but whatever it means, it can’t be good.”
Chapter 31
Day 5
Nate awoke early the next morning to soft whispers of light streaming in through the snow hut’s narrow entrance. It had taken him a few hours before he felt comfortable enough to drift off. Dakota had faded almost at once, her nighttime breathing settling into the faintest hint of a snore. Had it been any louder, Nate would have recorded it, if for no other reason than to show her he wasn’t the only one who could saw some zees.
He lay there for a while, zipped up in his compact winter sleeping bag, slowly digesting everything that had happened over the past few days. Recent as his memories were, many of his experiences since the blackout had somehow taken on the consistency of a fine mist. The more you tried to close your hand around it, the quicker it evaded your grasp. The sight of his wife’s face, that was always what helped to center him.
Rolling slightly to one side, Nate fished his cellphone from his pocket and called up his pictures. A notice in the screen’s top right corner let him know his battery was down to thirty percent. Funny to think that without internet or cell reception, these devices were nothing more than expensive flashlights and photo albums. But there was a magic to looking at images of loved ones during good times. Focus hard enough and you could transport yourself back to that very moment, much like the picture he was looking at now—him and Amy standing on a sunny beach in Koh Samui, Thailand. They had gone there for their fifth anniversary, traveling from the mountains of Chiang Mai in the north to the tropical paradises down south. The next image was a selfie she had taken with his phone—the two of them having dinner on the beach, waves lapping mere feet from where they sat, giggling and enjoying pad thai and chicken green curry. He could smell it wafting up at them just as it had back then. Their smiles were a combination of love mixed with blissful ignorance of the future that awaited them.
And with that the cold swept back in. The number in the top right of his screen now read twenty-nine percent and he put his phone back to sleep. These images were his lifeline, the invisible cord linking him to his family, waiting for him in Rockford.
Nate glanced over at Dakota. She was awake now too and also looking at her phone, except she wasn’t looking at pictures. She was reading something.
“What’ve you got there?”
She tilted her head, her eyes sleepy, her hair more disheveled than usual. “Just re-reading an old email.”
Nate frowned. “How do you have reception?”
“Nah, I saved a copy of it in notes. Wanted to be able to read it whenever I could. It’s the last message I got from Uncle Roger, about a week before the lights went out. He wasn’t a softie by any stretch of the imagination, but it showed a side of him I’d never seen before. He’d even mentioned he was about to send me a special heartfelt message and not to worry, that his phone hadn’t been hacked.” She laughed at that.
“Emotions weren’t Roger’s strong point, I take it,” Nate observed.
“I guess you could say that. It’s true of most men, wouldn’t you say?”
Nate’s head bobbed up and down. “It’s the way we were raised. And rightfully so. I can’t remember the last time I cried and I’m not the least bit poorer for it.” He reached out a hand, indicating her phone, grinning slyly. “You mind if I read what happens when uncles go soft?”
“Be my guest.” She handed it over.
Nate went over it with great interest. “In case this here letter didn’t make it obvious,” Nate said when he was done, “the guy loved you like a daughter.”
“Not more than his booze, he didn’t.”
Nate’s face squished up with disapproval. “That’s not very fair. Your uncle was an alcoholic, an addiction that’s often more physical than it is mental. I’m guessing you’ve never seen what happens to a person who quits cold turkey? Their hands start to shake. They get hit with cold sweats. It ain’t pretty. So you can stop beating him up over it. His struggle has nothing to do with you or how much he loved you.”
Dakota became quiet for a moment. Then she said. “Yeah, I suppose you’re right.”
“I am,” he said, winking. “We better get a move on before a fresh batch of Dylan’s buddies shows up.”
They exited the snow hut and both of them saw the dead hare at the same time.
�
�It’s a snowshoe,” Dakota observed. It lay next to the fire pit. A frozen smear of blood stained the white fur around its neck.
“A warning?” Nate wondered out loud. Although he knew the chances of anyone sneaking up on them in the middle of the night were slim.
“No, I think it’s a gift,” Dakota said. “From Shadow.”
Grinning, he scooped the dead animal up off the ground. Its body was still soft, which meant the wolf had killed and left it there fairly recently. Removing her knife, Dakota began to skin the animal while Nate stepped away in search of a thick branch they could use to cook it with.
Along the way, Nate’s mind traced over the events from last night. It seemed hard to fathom that a group of thugs would track them down in the midst of such chaos for revenge. There had to be something else going on. He thought back to Evan’s work at the plant or any recent cases he’d taken on as a PI. Could any of those things have played a role?
After finding a branch that was just right, he returned to a fresh fire and a skinned hare. Dakota speared the animal and held it over the fire. The smell made Nate’s mouth water. When it was done, both of them took turns eating. Nate let the girl go first. After all, she had done most of the work. Once she had eaten her fill, he did the same. Rabbit grease ran down his fingers and he licked it greedily. Without a doubt this was the best meal he’d ever eaten. What remained, they would keep for Shadow, a small reward for a much-needed gift.
When they were all done, Dakota fed Wayne some hay before they transferred whatever they could from Sundae’s saddle bags. Seeing the dead horse, frozen nearly solid and covered by a few inches of snowfall, only served to reignite the anger Nate felt over the creature’s senseless death.
With that done, Nate climbed onto Wayne’s back and then helped Dakota do the same. The horse grunted under the extra weight. Nate rubbed the long, muscular side of the animal’s neck. “Good job, buddy. You got this.” One part wishful thinking and nine parts prayer, as his mother used to say.
Stepping out from the forest and onto the highway was like entering an Air Force wind tunnel. The blowing snow was coming directly at them, a sky swarming with tiny heat-seeking ice missiles. Nate bore the brunt of it, doing what he could to shield his face. Thankfully, Dakota had Nate to block most of the onslaught.
It wasn’t long before they came to the clear outline of an SUV. It had skidded off the highway and been unable to recover or had simply become overwhelmed pushing against deep snow. Nate scanned the horizon in all directions. There was no sign of any living creature—of the two- or four-legged variety—in sight. He dismounted, his feet landing in a cloud of deep powder.
“Whatcha doing?” Dakota asked, now experiencing the full brunt of the wind and not liking it one bit.
“Wanna see something,” he replied enigmatically. He used a gloved hand to clear the snow covering the driver’s side window. The glass inside was opaque with frost. He tried the door handle and found that it worked. He stopped short, shuddering when he saw what was inside. A young woman in her early twenties was curled up in the passenger seat next to her newborn baby. Both of them were frozen solid. Icicles dripped from the tip of the woman’s nose.
“What is it?” Dakota asked. Mercifully, her position on the horse meant she was too high to see what was inside.
“Nothing,” he lied.
The keys were still in the ignition. He turned them. The dashboard lit up, but the engine wouldn’t start. The mother had likely let it run until the tank had gone dry, waiting for a rescue that never came. Since leaving Byron, they must have passed over a hundred or more vehicles trapped along the way. How many more times had such a harrowing event played out along this stretch of road alone? He located two USB ports.
“Give me your phone and your charger,” he said, his hand out.
“Huh?”
He bobbed his hand impatiently. The sight not three feet to his rear had affected him more than he cared to admit. It could just as easily have been Amy as a stranger. “Do you want your phone charged or not?”
She handed him what he asked for. Nate plugged in both phones and saw the lightning bolt indicate the devices were powering up. They wouldn’t stay here more than a few minutes, but every little bit would count.
With Dakota sitting in the saddle, her head was a few feet higher than the SUV’s roof. Nate noticed her eyeing something in the distance.
“You see someone?” he asked, the blood starting to pump a little faster.
She shook her head. No, not someone, something.
Nate opened the SUV door a little wider and used the nerf bar to prop himself up. His eyes swept over the terrain before them for a few moments before he saw it. The distinctive back end of a yellow school bus, tipped over on its side.
Chapter 32
Somehow the muscles in Nate’s face, numb with cold, went completely slack. The phones had only been charging a few minutes when he ripped them out and stuffed them in his jacket pocket. He then jumped back in the saddle, digging his heels into Wayne’s sides, shouting, “Rah. Rah!”
Wayne whinnied in protest, but ultimately obliged, moving forward as fast as the animal could carry them.
They were still fifty feet away and Nate was already searching for reasons this couldn’t be one of the evacuation buses from the Byron Middle School. It was too small. Too clean. Too fill-in-the-blank. He needed something, anything to make it not be so.
Soon, through the blowing snow, he saw that the bus’s emergency back door was hanging open. An accident of some kind had occurred, causing the bus to tip over. But the door meant at least some of the people inside had managed to get out. That was all he could make out from this distance. As they closed with the vehicle, he hopped out of the saddle with practiced ease, charging through powder near waist-high. He fought through it like a man in a heavy diving suit walking along the bottom of a lake. When he arrived, he clambered into the vehicle, looking for more proof it was a convoy from another school, maybe even another town. Given the vehicle’s strange orientation to the ground, he found himself walking along the windows. Several of them looked to have shattered on impact, filling the compartment with small mounds of snow. Dakota climbed in behind him. She was smaller, nimbler and far better suited for this. She hurried past him and stopped about three quarters of the way to the front. She turned back, her eyes filled with surprise and maybe something else.
Is that sadness?
Nate hurried over and saw what she was glaring at so intently. A man in his seventies, maybe eighties, sprawled on his side. He must have died from the impact and been left behind. The scene must have been terrifying, chaotic. Two seats on, Nate found something else, something that looked familiar—a black duffel bag with the image of a man wielding two silver pistols. With shaking hands, he unzipped it, rifling through its contents until he came upon a black t-shirt stenciled with the words ‘Battle Arena.’ Nate held it in his gloved hand, a range of emotions welling up within him before he stuffed the shirt into his pocket.
“Belong to someone you know?” Dakota asked, her voice soft, almost reverent.
“To my nephew. My family, they were in this bus when it crashed. My pregnant wife too.” One of his hands went instinctively to his stomach.
“I’m sure they’re fine,” Dakota said reassuringly. But even she couldn’t completely hide the sliver of doubt she was feeling.
Quickly, they continued searching the rest of the bus. The only other casualty left behind was the driver. The guy was lying on the folding doors, still decked out in his District 226 jacket.
“Anyone you know?” Dakota asked, her gaze shifting between Nate and the driver.
Nate shook his head.
“That’s good, isn’t it?”
He wanted to tell her yes, wanted it more than anything he’d wanted in a long time.
“How many other buses were in the convoy?” she asked.
“Ten, maybe a dozen.” His mind was too chaotic right now to think straight
.
“I’m sure they made it,” she said, overruling her natural pessimism.
Nate appreciated the effort. But he also wouldn’t believe his family was safe until he saw them with his own eyes.
Chapter 33
Two hours later, they reached the outskirts of Rockford. The wind-battered sign along the side of the road told them so. For decades, this city of a hundred and fifty thousand had been one of the beneficiaries of the nuclear plant in Byron. And now it was also one of its victims. But passing that sign didn’t mean they were out of harm’s way. The exclusion zone included the bottom third of Rockford itself, which put the rendezvous point another five miles north of here. Cutting through a major city was not Nate’s idea of a good time, either, especially one with Rockford’s reputation. It had recently been ranked among the top twenty worst cities in America with a crime rate four times that of the national average. After the chief of police was arrested last year on charges of drug dealing and extortion, it became harder and harder to tell the good guys from the bad. To make matters worse, after the rot in the force had been uncovered, most of the good cops had moved out. Finding police in this city who weren’t tied in some way to a criminal gang was harder than finding fur on a rattlesnake. Still, right now, none of that changed the necessity of what they were doing.
The path northward did offer some benefits. For starters, it would lead them right past the Javon Bea Hospital, the largest in the area. If Evan had been taken anywhere by ambulance, this would be the place. Along every mile of their journey so far, Nate had kept a careful eye out for the big boxy shape of an abandoned ambulance. Mercifully, he had not seen any.
Over the past few years, Nate’s PI work had been conducted almost exclusively in Rockford. That meant he knew the city well, regardless of whether or not it was covered in a suffocating blanket of snow. It had also been a particularly profitable time for him with job offers pouring in by the bucketload. Not surprisingly, the vast majority had been for possible clients in Chicago—and why not with a city of nearly three million? But he had turned down each of those offers just as quickly as they’d come in. Life was too short to be humping up and down the mean streets of a major metropolis on a fast track to hell. Rockford was a tough nut, no doubt about it, but when your job was done you could still reasonably expect to return home in one piece.
America Offline (Book 1): America Offline [Zero Day] Page 16