So instead, Sarah did the prudent thing. She’d told her daughters, “We’ll wait it out. We’ll do whatever we have to do to survive. And one day, we’ll be called upon to help your father kill every last one of these bastards.”
Chapter 9
Dave started his trek back to the farmhouse going the hard way… through the dense woods. The going was slow.
Then it dawned on him there was no reason to make things so difficult on himself. There were nomads wandering all over this part of the country. Many were living off the land and hunting or fishing for their supper each night. Many survived from visiting abandoned farms and ranches or other places where they knew there to be food.
And others just happened to be passing through from one place to another. Perhaps, like Dave himself, headed somewhere to reconnect with lost loved ones.
“This is stupid,” Dave muttered to himself under his breath. “No one here knows me, except for my family and in-laws. And they aren’t in a position to see me hiking along the roadways.”
Talking to himself was a habit he’d developed during the previous year, when he’d lived alone, fighting for his survival in San Antonio in the newly harsh world. He hadn’t even realized he was doing it for a long time. Then he wondered why he’d developed the peculiar habit and whether or not it meant he was going mad.
He finally decided it was borne from boredom and the desire to hear another human voice… any voice. Even his own, if that was the only one available.
Now, adopting a frozen corpse named Mikey and talking to it all day, then considering it his best friend. Or naming two fuzzy little rabbits and carrying on long one-sided conversations about the meaning of life. Those, he had to admit, were a little weird and might be early indications of an onset of insanity. But talking to himself, that was minor in the grand scheme of things.
And perhaps perfectly normal for a very social guy suddenly thrown into a world where there was no one else to socialize with.
Once he’d decided he could walk the country roads in the area without fear of being recognized and blend in with the other nomads, it made things much easier on him.
And it would save a lot of time.
Half an hour later his new plan would be put to the test.
Headed north on a narrow road, Dave crested a hill to see two men a hundred yards ahead of him and headed his way.
Like Dave, they carried backpacks and rifles.
Unlike Dave, they also carried fishing poles.
Dave remembered studying the Rand McNally maps, trying to match up an aerial view of the farm Sarah had printed from Google Earth with the terrain, so he could determine the exact location of the farm.
One of the things that helped him find the farm’s exact location on the map were the many blue lines, meandering in all directions. Each one indicated a creek or a stream, most leading to ponds or lakes. This part of the country was covered with them.
And in this new world, where many of the survivors fished, hunted or trapped to get by, it just made sense for such men to be carrying around their gear as they went about their daily travels.
It just so happened that Dave had fishing and trapping gear, packed into the back of the Explorer. So far he’d only had to use it a couple of times, since he’d been living on packed provisions since he left San Antonio a couple of weeks earlier.
He’d brought it along, though, as part of his contingency plan.
If his vehicle had broken down on his way to Kansas City, he’d have had to press on by foot, and he wouldn’t have been able to carry enough food and water to sustain him for long. If that were to happen, he’d have had to live off the land. And the trapping and fishing gear would have been essential for his continued survival.
Now it would serve another purpose.
From now on, he decided, he’d carry it with him as he traveled through this area.
It would make it easier to blend in, and to explain what he was doing here if challenged.
The approaching men grew closer, and Dave grew just a bit more apprehensive.
It would be the first time he’d speak to absolute strangers in many months.
He wondered whether they’d be hostile, or friendly.
He wished he’d reached down to his holster and unstrapped it, then taken it off safe, when he first saw them on the horizon. Now it was too late, for if he reached down and touched his sidearm now it might be considered an act of aggression.
In his mind he was kicking himself. He hadn’t practiced a quick draw, although he should have during those long months locked up in his house with not much to do.
If he had to draw his weapon to defend himself against these men he’d be at a serious disadvantage. Yes, it would only take a couple of seconds to unsnap his holster strap, then enable his gun to fire.
But he’d been a Marine. He knew only too well that even a couple of precious seconds can mean the difference between life and death when the shooting starts.
The men were thirty yards away now.
Dave steeled himself for trouble.
What he got instead was a friendly greeting.
“Hello, stranger. Any game that way?”
The rifle across Dave’s back had done the same thing a fishing rod would have. The men mistook Dave for a man simply out gathering food for his evening meal.
“Rabbits. That’s about it. I’m damn tired of rabbits.”
One of the men, the taller of the two, chuckled.
“Yeah, me too. I’ve eaten a lifetime’s supply of rabbits and squirrels over the last months. But I’ve heard some of the city dwellers are eating housecats and rats now, so I guess it could be worse.”
Dave asked, “You been able to find any good fishing?”
“Yeah, the rivers and a lot of the larger streams have dollies and on a good day you might get lucky and take a catfish or two. And if you’re partial to red meat we talked to a guy yesterday who took a whitetail, maybe three miles farther up the road. He said he saw a couple of others while he was dressing it and packing it out.”
“That’s more to my liking. Thanks for the tip.”
“You bet. See ya around.”
With that, the men continued on their way.
Dave sighed with relief.
It was nice to know that with all the changes which had taken place in the previous year, with all the hostility there was in this new world he lived in, that some men could still be civil with each other.
Still, his instincts told him that the men were probably the exception rather than the rule. The world really had become a very violent and hostile place. In this part of the country he was an outsider, and that point would be punctuated by a heavy Texas accent he wouldn’t be able to disguise or cover.
He decided to start doing some things a bit differently.
From here on, he would always have his handgun ready to fire, his holster strap undone and tucked beneath his weapon.
He’d start carrying his fishing rod with him wherever he went, even when he walked into the town of Dugan. Hopefully anyone suspicious of this stranger among them would buy his story that he was on his way from Texas to Minnesota, to rejoin his family, and that he was living off the land during his year-long journey.
To support his cover story he’d tear pages from the Rand McNally road atlas, showing the route from San Antonio to Minneapolis. If he could find a marker, he’d use it to mark the highways between the two cities, so anyone looking at his maps could see that he already had his route mapped out.
It shouldn’t be hard to convince people he was no threat. Dave was by nature a friendly sort. He’d gotten out of the habit of socializing with others in previous months, assuming Mikey didn’t count.
But he was up to the task, and was confident he could use the ruse to mingle with the locals while he was gathering intelligence about the tiny town and what resources they might have to help him in his rescue plan.
Dave encountered no one else before he reached the w
oods directly north of his in-laws’ farm. Once in the woods, he tried to place himself in Tommy’s shoes.
If he’d been Tommy, and had dug a tunnel from his farm to the forest, where would he place the exit? How would he disguise it, so marauders or a hunter out looking for game wouldn’t stumble across it and decide to explore it?
And was that even possible? Could he have found a way to hide the tunnel’s exit in the middle of the forest so that only he could see it?
He hoped so. And he hoped that he wasn’t just wasting his time.
He tried to think as Tommy would have.
He was about forty yards inside the trees. It wasn’t far, but it was far enough. From where he was, the woods blocked his view of the farm. If he couldn’t see them, then they couldn’t see him. There would be no need to dig a tunnel that extended any farther than this.
He would comb the woods, going completely around the farm’s perimeter, and about forty yards or so deep. If he didn’t come across anything that would hint of a tunnel’s exit, he would move a little farther out and make the circuit again.
It would be a major pain in the butt, and he only had a few hours left before dark.
But if there was indeed a tunnel, and he was able to find it, it would slant the odds in his favor. And vastly unnumbered as he was, he could use all the help he could get.
Chapter 10
As Dave worked his way through the woods he tried to think of the most logical place to put a tunnel. The shortest distance between the woods and the compound would have meant putting it under the floor of the feed barn, which was a hundred feet from the house.
But that would mean they’d have to cover the hundred feet of open space to get to the barn, if they were evacuating the compound. And if they were on the outside, going back in to retake the compound from bad guys, they’d have to cover the same open ground, possibly while under heavy fire.
That wouldn’t be good. And it wouldn’t make sense.
Still, it would make for the shortest tunnel. So he had to consider the possibility.
When he was more or less adjacent with the feed barn he made his way closer to the tree line. Just inside the forest, he was able to get a clear view of the farm and its outbuildings, but from a far different angle than the previous day.
He placed his binoculars against his face and slowly surveyed the area.
He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, exactly. Any indication against the back wall of the barn that indicated they’d used heavy equipment to dig beneath its foundation, perhaps. Or any long narrow depression in the ground where the dirt might have settled over the top of the tunnel.
Most of the area between the barn and the tree line was grass-covered pasture, except for a paved road which ran alongside the perimeter fence.
There was no indication that the grass had been disturbed. It was just as thick between the barn and the forest as the rest of the pasture.
The barbed wire was standard setup. Three strands of wire ran between wooden posts every twelve feet.
It was impossible to tell whether any of the posts had been uprooted and then reset to accommodate heavy digging equipment. None of them appeared to have been recently replaced, although that didn’t necessarily mean much. A good contractor would have just reused the old ones.
He looked at the three strands of wire. They were old and rusty and matched the other sections of the fence he’d seen before. The fence was well constructed and was taut. If it had been cut to accommodate a backhoe, there wouldn’t have been enough slack in it to rejoin it. The section of wire would have to be replaced with new.
And there certainly was no indication of that having happened.
He was able to get a good look at the pavement. It, too, was undisturbed for the full length of the barn. If they had dug a trench across the roadway and then repaired the road after they’d filled the trench back in, the asphalt would have been two different colors.
And it wasn’t.
Of course, they could have dug a horizontal tunnel beneath the roadway without disturbing it. That would have involved a special boring machine and wouldn’t have been easy or cheap. But the owner of a construction company would certainly be able to get ahold of such equipment.
Dave sat back down to think.
All the clues, when considered together, added up to there being no tunnel.
But he wasn’t quite willing to accept that. Not yet. Not when an essential element of his battle plan involved his being able to move freely both inside and outside the compound with relative ease.
He slowly went to stand again, then eased back down when he heard horse hooves in the distance.
He went to one knee and remained hidden while a horse and rider slowly went past on the grassy shoulder of the narrow perimeter road.
Then, stubbornly, he rose again to reexamine the area one last time before he gave up.
And something he hadn’t seen before caught his eye.
He hadn’t noticed it before because he’d been focusing his attention solely on the ground between the barn and the forest.
Now, as he expanded his focus to a great area, he noticed a thin strip of dark black pavement against a lighter gray background, crossing the road about sixty yards south of him.
That son of a gun! He’d run the tunnel not to the feed barn, as Dave would have done.
He’d run it all the way to the basement of the house!
Dave suddenly felt adrenaline pumping through his veins.
But he wouldn’t let himself get excited. Not just yet. He could be wrong.
The farm had its own wind turbine and backup generator to make its own power. It used well water and a septic system. There wouldn’t have been any reason to dig up the road to replace a bad water or sewer line, or a buried electrical cable.
Still, utility and telephone companies had buried cables everywhere, some for great distances, and they were buried beneath farmland and houses all the time. Most residents weren’t even aware of their existence, until one of them had to be replaced.
The same could be said of water lines and even oil pipelines.
Dave tried to keep his excitement in check while he investigated further.
He retreated further into the woods, where he couldn’t be seen from the farm, and backtracked to a position sixty yards farther south.
His plan was to make his way east, back to the roadway, and examine it more closely.
But then he looked up.
And he felt like an idiot.
There before him was the most amazing clue, and he’d walked right past it the first time without even seeing it.
In the heavy woods, there was a break in the trees, about twelve feet wide or so, leading from the roadway and to the west. It was overgrown now, with heavy shrubbery and saplings. But none of the tree trunks in that twelve foot swath were more than three inches thick. The trees on either side of the swath, however, were a foot thick or more in some places.
This was where, some three years before, the land had been cleared to accommodate a backhoe.
A backhoe which dug a deep trench into the ground, which was then lined with interconnecting sections of tunnel.
This wasn’t just a tiny hole in the dirt for people to crawl through.
No, his brother-in-law had gone all out. In all likelihood this was a solid concrete lined tunnel where men could race, fully upright, from one place to another. It might even be equipped with lights.
Dave fell to his knees, looked up at the sky, and said, “Thank you, God!”
He’d found his way in.
Chapter 11
The sun was starting to get low in the sky. Dave had only a couple of hours left to finish his recon mission and make it back to the roadway.
If he didn’t make it, he’d be trying to work his way back in total darkness. He wasn’t familiar with these woods at all, and the roads which crisscrossed the area looked very similar. If he was still in the woods after dark, he’d no longer
be able to see the landmarks and reference points he’d noted as he worked his way into the woods.
He’d likely wander around and become lost.
He wouldn’t be in any danger. He’d camped in the woods all his life.
But getting lost had the potential to waste a lot of time while he first found his way out of the forest and then regained his bearings.
Time he could better use doing something else.
Before he headed back, though, he wanted to get a quick look at the tunnel’s exit. So he knew what he was dealing with. And he knew what tools he’d need to gain access to it.
He followed the line of saplings another hundred yards into the woods until he finally came to a huge fiberglass structure. It was about six feet tall, and about eight feet square, and painted woodland green.
In large yellow letters on each side of the structure were painted the words:
WINSLOW COUNTY ELECTRICAL CO-OP
Relay Station
EXTREMELY HIGH VOLTAGE!
REMAIN 50 FEET AWAY AT ALL TIMES!
A hunter tramping through these woods would have taken heed and steered clear of the big green box.
He’d have no reason to suspect that the box was anything other than what it appeared to be.
But Dave lingered to examine it closer.
It looked official enough. It had the same lightning bolt decals applied to each side that scared the bejeezus out of people and made them think they’d be zapped with a gazillion volts of electricity if they dared touch the thing.
Instead of a normal door it had an access panel with a handle, not a knob. That checked too. Dave knew instructively that a knob wouldn’t have looked quite kosher.
He reached out for the handle, which was pointing down, and tried to turn it, all the while knowing that it would be locked.
But it wasn’t locked.
That shocked him. Not in the way a gazillion volts would have. But it shocked him that the door wasn’t secured from the inside.
The Battle: Alone: Book 4 Page 4