“Get your eyes on those trucks behind us. Those look familiar to you? Should I be worried? Or does everyone up here drive Hummers?”
A long, tense pause followed as the trucks behind him rounded the curve—slower than he had—and came into view. Pete’s hands tensed on the steering wheel. Wait for it, wait for it, he told himself firmly. Jack didn’t have military training, and it was going to take him a second to identify the trucks. They weren’t incredibly close, either, which would make it even more difficult.
Hell, for all he knew, Jack had never even gotten a really good look at any of the other trucks in the warehouse. Or, more likely, he’d actually been riding in several of them but hadn’t bothered to commit any details to memory.
Like, you know, what the fuck they looked like.
This might be an exercise in desperation, and nothing else.
“Those are Clearview’s trucks,” Jack said suddenly. “I recognize the damage to the one in front. I did that myself, running into a tree on the way back. Couldn’t get the damn wheels to stop skidding once I hit the snow.”
“Shit,” Marie said succinctly. Moments later, she was back in the passenger seat, her seatbelt buckled again and her eyes on the road in front of them. “What can I do?”
“Try not to fly out the window,” Pete said. “And get the guns ready. If they get close enough, start shooting at them. See if you can slow them down. I’ve got the rifle in the back, and that’ll be best for this distance. Give Jack one of the Glocks. I’m going to do my best to keep them at a distance, but if they get close I want you two shooting at them. I don’t know about you, but I’m not planning to go back into those jail cells.”
“I doubt they’d even bother to take us back to the village,” Marie noted, undoing her seatbelt again and sliding to her knees in the space between them. “We shot Thomas, and I’m guessing they’re the sort of people who’re going to take that personally.”
“I suspect you’re right,” Pete said.
He didn’t expect an answer. She was already in the backseat and hurling herself over it—he knew because he saw her feet in the air in the rearview mirror—in search of the guns. He heard her cursing as she hit the ground, and then another curve came up and he was sliding through it, the ice on the road making this a hell of a lot tougher than it should have been. His arm strained against the pulling vehicle, but he kept his eyes on the road in front of him, sending all his willpower down into the wheels and praying for them to maintain their hold on the road.
Then they were shooting out of that curve and back toward the edge of the mountain.
“Why the hell do they always put these roads so close to the edge?” Marie snapped, frustrated.
He agreed. It made it far too easy to picture them flying over that edge and to their deaths.
“Easier to make the switchbacks that way,” Jack piped up. “They didn’t want to blast through the mountain itself to make tunnels. This road’s easier than most, though. The switchbacks happen so often that the level below us is only about fifteen feet down. Annoying to drive, but makes it—”
“Makes it less of a drop to the next level,” Pete finished for him.
God, was it that easy?
He was driving in the lane closest to the edge right now, and he edged over as far as he dared, getting very close to the fence that never would have kept anyone on the road if they hit it hard enough.
“Marie! Get to the window closest to the edge of the mountain and look down!”
A shuffle, and then: “Got it! What am I looking for, exactly, aside from my death?”
“How close is the next level of road down? Where is it?”
She paused for a moment. “Maybe fifteen feet down from where we are and about ten feet out?”
His heart jumped a little bit. “How steep a drop is it?”
“It’s not,” she said, her voice filling with the same excitement he could feel bubbling in his own stomach. “More like a gentle slope.”
“I hope you’re right,” he muttered.
And he yanked the wheel to the right, sending the Hummer through the fence and down the slope to the next level of the road.
They came off the last bit of road on the mountainside slipping and sliding through the snow, Pete having decided that they could get down more quickly if they skipped that whole staying-on-the-road thing entirely, and he hit a crevice in the ground, and cringed as he heard what it did to the undercarriage. When the Hummer didn’t fall apart at the seams underneath him, he jerked the wheel and slid back onto what had to be asphalt.
“Is this road a straight shot to Anchorage?” he shouted toward the backseat, where he hoped Jack was still alive and functioning.
“Sure is!” Jack shouted back, finally having gotten worked up about the amount of action they were seeing and deciding, evidently, that he needed to take it seriously.
The man had, up to a certain point, acted like this was old hat. Like it was something he did all the fucking time. Hell, Pete thought, maybe it was. Maybe this was what life had been like under Thomas. Constantly running. Constantly planning and scheming like the government actually had time to come after your podunk town and the small amount of tech you’d managed to secure.
He’d almost acted bored up to now.
Now, though, he was up and bouncing around in the back, his voice coming from one side of the truck and then the other as he checked the windows.
“They’re only halfway down the mountain, Cap,” he muttered.
Pete twitched at the name. The last time anyone had called him Cap, it had been in Mueller.
It had been what his men started calling him the moment Sadler lost control of them and they turned to Pete as their leader instead. That was a role he’d failed at, given that none of his men had made it out alive.
Hell, he’d watched some of them die right in front of him.
But he wasn’t going to stop Jack from using it. Right now, he was too happy that Jack had come down firmly on their side. Up until this moment, he’d had his doubts, and had wondered if Jack was some sort of plant, there to stab Pete and Marie in the back when they least expected it.
The moment he started calling out real instructions for Pete, though, Pete knew that they had a convert. Out of the cult and into the…
What? Partnership? He guessed that was as good a term as any for what he and Marie had built.
He jerked the wheel to the right, narrowly missing a boulder that had somehow found its way into the middle of the road and then disguised itself with snow, and then jerked the wheel to the left again to keep the truck on the road.
“Straight shot to Anchorage,” he muttered. “That means an easy drive for me. And easy shooting for them.”
“If they’re truly in faster trucks, they’re going to catch us on a straightaway,” Marie muttered back. “You have any other brilliant moves up those sleeves of yours?”
“The only thing I have up my sleeves right now is cold air,” he replied. “We’re just going to have to hope that they take their time coming down the mountain.”
“They’re at least using the roads regularly,” Jack said, his head appearing between them. “Not shooting off the side like you did.”
“Maybe it’ll give us enough of a head start,” Pete said. “But I’m not counting on it. What I said earlier about the guns stands. If they get close enough to start shooting at us, you two return fire. Don’t aim for their windshields. Military-grade Hummers means those are probably bulletproof and you’ll be wasting your time and ammo.”
“So what do you want us to shoot for, then?” Marie asked.
“Their tires,” Pete said quickly. “Take out the tires of the lead vehicle and it’ll skid out. I’m betting the others will hit it and you’ll have a pileup. If we’re really lucky, that will be the end of the chase.”
“And if we’re not?” she replied.
Pete blew a breath through his nose. “If we’re not, they’re going to catch us and
probably ram us off the road. But let’s hope that doesn’t happen, shall we?”
She didn’t answer. Instead, she checked the rifle’s chambers, clicking through the check like she’d done it a million times.
“What?” she said, answering his questioning look. “You’ve seen me shoot before. You know I’m not a virgin.”
Pete opened his mouth to answer, but at that moment, he saw something come up between them and Anchorage. He hadn’t seen it before amidst the glare of the snow and the drama of trying to get away from those maniacs behind him, but now that he was getting closer…
“What the hell is that?” Marie asked, leaning forward and staring through the windshield.
“Looks an awful lot like a military checkpoint,” Pete answered, squinting his eyes.
It shouldn’t have been there. But unless he was seeing some sort of mirage, it definitely was.
There, in the middle of the vast white expanse around the city, sat about ten Humvees, complete with what looked like fifty military personnel of some sort, and a fence. The fence was stretched right across the road, and they had two of the Hummers sitting behind it.
There was no way to go through that. And Pete didn’t think that trying to go through it would make a very good impression on the people he definitely meant to ask for help.
“Well, I guess that answers the question about whether the military is in town,” he muttered.
He brought the Hummer skidding to a stop about twenty feet from the fence, his eyes on the people around it. He couldn’t see too much identification from here, of course, and he definitely couldn’t see the patches that would identify them as one branch or the other. But their cammo looked like army fatigues, and a quick scan of his mental database told him that there was, in fact, an army base near here.
“Let’s go,” he said, throwing open the door. “We wanted military and we’ve got it. If the folks from Clearview are truly scared of the army, I’m guessing this will be enough to put them off our trail. And unless I’m missing my mark, anyone from the army will know more than we do about what’s going on out there.”
He jumped out of the truck and headed for the fence, his hands in the air and his eyes on the first man he could see. He didn’t wait to see whether Marie and Jack followed him.
Chapter 13
It took Pete less than no time to get to the guards standing in front of the fence, their guns up at attention in front of them, their eyes covered by sunglasses, and each step he took made him more certain that he was doing the right thing.
They’d been right to come to Anchorage. The Army was here, and if they were here, then it meant they knew at least something about what was going on. Otherwise, they’d still be at their base, focusing on normal army activities like training with their guns. They must have heard from someone in DC—or they had an emergency plan in place for something like this happening, which was almost as good. Once the power had gone out, they’d hightailed it to Anchorage, intent on making sure the closest city was safe.
Either way, it meant there was someone here to give him orders. Someone to tell him what to do and how to get himself and his friends out of this mess.
Of course, he wasn’t able to communicate any of that to the soldiers themselves. To them, he must have looked like some sort of maniac, sliding up in a military-grade Hummer when he was obviously a civilian, and then walking quickly toward them like they had the answer to the question he’d been asking for years.
Or, in this case, a couple of days. But who was counting?
“Halt!” the first soldier said, jerking the nose of his gun up and pointing it directly at Pete.
The soldiers behind them lifted their guns more slowly and pointed them behind him. At Marie and Jack, he assumed. So they’d followed him, then—which, he realized abruptly, could be either a blessing or a curse. A blessing if these military guys turned out to be the real deal and could take them to safety.
A curse if they turned out not to be the real deal, and he got into trouble. Because now that he was thinking about it, it seemed awfully convenient that they were just here in the middle of nowhere, having set up a checkpoint on a road that probably wouldn’t be seeing much traffic, considering all the cars in the area were most likely defunct at this point.
And why the hell were they blocking the city off in the first place? If a national disaster was underway, shouldn’t they be out in the country, gathering everyone who had survived and bringing them back to safety?
All problems to be dealt with if and when you need to, he told himself firmly. Stop borrowing trouble. They’re just the Army. Tell them who you are and you’ll be fine.
He put his hands up, glad that he hadn’t come out of the car with one of the Glocks up and ready.
“Calm down,” he said, keeping his voice reasonable. “I don’t mean any harm. Lieutenant Peter Marshall, National Guardsman. And boy am I happy to see you guys.”
The guard in front of him did not let his gun drop. Pete saw the nose of the rifle twitch as the guy reacted, but nothing more than that.
“And what are you doing at our checkpoint, Lieutenant Peter Marshall? How, exactly, do you come to be skidding up to us in a military-grade Hummer like someone’s on your tail and you’re trying to get to safety?”
Pete glanced over his shoulder, remembering suddenly that there was, in fact, someone on his tail—and that he was, in fact, trying to get to safety. They didn’t have time to be standing around chatting with these guys. Not with the villagers from Clearview hot on their…
To his surprise, though, he saw that the convoy of villagers had come to an abrupt stop in the distance, right up against the base of the mountain. It looked like they’d gotten to the flat area below the mountain and then come to a screeching halt.
Maybe because they saw the military checkpoint, and remembered that they weren’t friends of the military. Hell, if they were in the habit of stealing their equipment, they might even be on a wanted list somewhere.
As Pete watched, the group swerved around in unison and made their way quickly back up the road on the mountain, their wheels spinning in their hurry to get away.
Pete watched them with more than a little bit of satisfaction. If he’d been closer, he would have reveled in the squeal of their tires as they tried to go—and might have even sent some rude hand gestures after them.
As it was, he was mostly just happy to see the end of them.
“And who are the people speeding back up the mountain like they’ve seen a pack of zombies down here?” the soldier asked, his eyes following Pete’s toward the mountain.
Pete turned back to him. “I was part of a company of National Guardsmen sent to Anchorage to help clear up the damage from the recent earthquakes,” he said quickly. “Raven Company from Portland, Oregon. You can check the files for the city. I’m sure there’s a record of our presence.”
The man cracked a bit of a smile. “I would, but our computers are currently down.”
Pete didn’t smile. “Right. We were here when word came down the pipe that David Clyde needed an escort to Mueller Max.”
A slow whistle came from the guard’s mouth. “David Clyde. The infamous cult leader.”
“The very same,” Pete answered, warming up to the story. “Guess the government wanted to send him up here, get him away from society. Make sure he couldn’t cause too much trouble, you know?”
“I’ve heard of him. Seems like that would be a safer play than keeping him anywhere close to civilization,” the guy said, the tip of his gun coming down a bit. His eyes turned up to watch Marie and Jack as they came to stand behind him. “Who are your friends?”
At that prompt, and knowing that he didn’t have much choice, Pete launched into the story. The attack on the road to Mueller and the death of some of his men. The chaos they found in Mueller, and the further chaos when the power suddenly went out and the inmates—who’d been abused by Warden Andersen and his guards—had suddenly been free.
The way Clyde had riled them up. Made it even worse. The fact that some of the inmates had actually been followers of Clyde’s. The death of more of Pete’s men. The cage match. The escape with Marie.
The guard turned his eyes to Marie, and though he was wearing sunglasses, Pete thought he could see the growing respect there. Military guys trained hard to do what they did, and they didn’t generally think that regular old civilians could keep up with them.
The idea that this woman had not only taken on a group of inmates but then jumped out a window and escaped into the wilderness—and lived to tell the tale—impressed him.
Pete just hoped it impressed him enough to make him want to let them into the city. Because he couldn’t help but notice that they were still standing at the checkpoint rather than being taken into any staging area.
“We made it out of the prison and survived the next couple of days, thanks to a deserted Ranger station,” he said, thinking that there was absolutely no need to mention the doctor they’d found in that cabin—or what he’d been doing.
Never tell them more than they need to know, his superior had told him when he was training for the National Guard.
And if it had been true then, it was certainly true now. He didn’t even know whether he could trust these guys yet. He wasn’t going to give up any information that might implicate him or Marie.
He tossed another look over his shoulder at the quickly retreating Hummers. “Problem is, we found our way into a town that operated more like a cult. One leader, lots of people taking orders. Lots of alternative power sources. Lots of guns.” He looked back at the soldier. “They didn’t exactly take kindly to finding strangers in their midst. Especially when one of those strangers turned out to be military.”
The soldier’s lips thinned at that. “So, you found Clearview.”
“You know about the town?” Marie asked, surprise clear in her voice. “And you just let it be?”
The soldier’s eyes slid over to her, narrowed at the fact that she’d spoken out of turn. “Course we know about them. They’ve stolen from us multiple times. They’ve just never been worth going after.”
Stone Cold Fear | Book 3 | Ice Burn Page 7