Storm Tide Rising: Blackout Volume 2

by D W McAliley

  The power line cut through suddenly turned to the south, and within a few hundred yards, Mike and Alyssa came to Mountain Island Lake. Mike stopped and Alyssa came up next to him to stare across the water. They stood at the mouth of a narrow arm of the lake where the water was only about five hundred feet across. Still, it looked like a very long way standing on the bank staring across the flat brown water. To their right, the lake broadened out in its main body, and to the left, the arm ran for a good quarter of a mile or more before tapering to a thin drainage creek.

  "Should we walk around it?" Alyssa asked.

  Mike arched an eyebrow and shrugged slightly. "How strong of a swimmer are you?"

  Alyssa's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Pretty strong, I guess," she answered with only a slight hesitation. "I don't think I've ever swum that far at once, though," she continued as she pointed across the five or six hundred feet between them and the far shore.

  Mike turned to the underbrush at the edge of the cut over back a few dozen yards from the water's edge. Finally, he dug into a pile of leaves and retrieved two neon orange life jackets. He dusted them off as he walked back down toward the lake and handed one of them over to Alyssa.

  "Where did you get these?" she asked, confused at their sudden appearance.

  "Flip it over," Mike answered, and Alyssa complied. On the back of the life jacket was a large logo for the U.S. Whitewater Center a few miles downstream. "I picked them up on the way to you. I figured they could come in handy, and I was out by the Whitewater Center anyway. When I came through here the first time, I hid them under some leaves for the return trip."

  "What about our backpacks?" Alyssa asked, pulling at the life jacket straps doubtfully. "Won't they weigh us down and sink us even with the life jacket?"

  Mike shook his head. "They shouldn't. Definitely not for you," he said as he gave Alyssa a clinically appraising look. "They're rated for up to four hundred pounds, and you could carry both packs and not come close to that."

  Alyssa smiled sweetly, but her eyes narrowed dangerously. "Thank you,” she said in a voice dripping with sarcasm.

  Mike could think of nothing to say in response, so he just brushed it off and snapped the clasps on his own life jacket as Alyssa did the same with hers. Once they were both in their vests, Mike showed her how to wrap one arm through the straps of her pack so that the pack would be mostly out of the water. “The pack is water resistant, but you’ll want to keep the top up and clear of the water so it doesn’t seep in too much. You can use your free hand to pull yourself through the water, and make sure you kick your legs too. Leg muscles are about three times as strong as arm muscles, so use them.”

  Alyssa nodded impatiently, her breath coming in quick, shallow gulps. She closed her eyes tight to steady herself, and when she opened them again, she nodded confidently. Her hands were beginning to tremble with anticipation mixed with a heavy dose of fear.

  "No sense talking about it all day," she growled as she stalked down the shallow bank to the water's edge. Alyssa stood there for the space of two heartbeats, her eyes closed and her lips moving quickly and silently.

  Then she stepped into the water.

  Ch.16

  Running Fence

  Eric leaned against the thick pine tree to catch his breath. The trees wove together high overhead to shade out the intensity of the sun for all but a few clear patches here and there. The heat, on the other hand, was oppressive and the air was heavy with humidity from the sporadic rain of the early morning hours. Not even the slightest hint of a breeze moved beneath the canopy, and it was stifling. Eric was soaked with sweat from the top of his head to his knees.

  He pulled on a pair of old leather gloves and began bending and twisting the end of a spool of barbed wire into an eyelet. He bent the loop first, then wrapped the end of the wire the way Granddaddy had shown him to make the wire bite back on itself and still hold the loop open. The first ten times he'd had to do it, the task hadn't seemed that difficult. Now, though, his hands and fingers were throbbing, and his forearms burned. Eric expected them to lock up with a cramp at any moment.

  Tom stuck the straight end of the spool they'd just finished through the eyelet Eric had so laboriously created. He gave a few quick turns of his hands and wrists, locking the free wire into the eyelet in such a way that with three quick tugs on either side of the knot, the two had become so enmeshed that only wire snips could cut through them. When Granddaddy had seen the method the first time, he'd smiled and patted Tom on the shoulder, saying with a chuckle, "That's a neat little trick." That was his highest praise and meant he was deeply impressed.

  Eric took a deep breath, tucked the gloves back behind his belt, and started unspooling the wire, walking away from the thick pine tree in as straight a line as he could manage. Ahead, he could see clearly a line of bright pink surveyor's ribbon tied to young maples and cedars. An occasional large bodied pine tree was used as a corner or to bridge a gap between more suitable fence post trees. Eric tried to dodge the briars and underbrush as much as he could, but his arms and chest were covered with a pattern of red and bleeding scratches, some of them deep enough to trickle thin streamers of sweat and blood.

  Tom followed behind Eric and hammered in iron brackets to hold the fencing in place once it was wrapped around the trunks. The fence would eventually rust through, but that kind of corrosion would take years to set in, maybe even decades. Once the first run was through, they would stretch another length over top of it and one closer to the ground. The final product would be a three-strand fence that ran from a couple of inches off the ground to nearly chest high. If someone was serious about getting through the fence, they'd be able to do so either by cutting it or cutting down one of the trees that served as fence posts. Either way, this fence would be enough to slow them down, maybe enough so they would lose the element of surprise.

  Eric was just beginning to think that the morning was going to last forever when he rounded a large pine tree and found himself face to face with Christina and Beth-Anne. The two women held baskets layered with bundles of neatly wrapped and carefully tied old newspaper. Nanny kept sacks and sacks of old newspapers tied away and stuck in most of the closets, both underneath the clothes and on the shelves as well. The newspapers were used for everything from starting fires in the winter to wrapping snacks and jars of tea or water like a cooler in the summer.

  "Nanny thought you 'boys,' her word, could use a snack," Christina said with a wink as she handed her basket to Eric.

  Beth-Anne smiled and handed hers to Tom, then turned to go without saying a word. Eric frowned and shook his head slightly, "I don't get her," he said truthfully.

  Christina chewed her bottom lip in thought as she watched Beth-Anne picking her way through the trees back toward the field. "I think she's just scared and grateful and a little bit uncertain all at the same time." Christina turned back to Eric and squeezed his hand. "Babe, even though I've known your family for more than two years, and I’ve decided to become a part of it, the whole clan can be a bit overwhelming at times. Beth-Anne just got tossed head first into it, and she's probably just trying to figure her way around everybody."

  Tom tried to cover his laugh with a cough, and when Christina shot him a glare, he turned and took a few steps back down the fence line safely out of earshot. He took one of the round bundles of newspaper that held a mason jar of ice water and picked up a few peanut butter and Ritz cracker sandwiches from one of the other bundles.

  "Just give her some time, Babe," Christina said as she leaned over to give him a quick kiss on the cheek. "She'll settle in after a while, once she figures out where she fits in with the rest of us."

  Christina squeezed Eric's hand and turned to follow Beth Anne through the trees. When she caught up with the older woman, Christina put her arm across Beth-Anne's shoulders. It was almost a motherly gesture, but instead of brushing it off like Eric thought she would, the older woman patted Christina's hand and walked a little closer to her than
before.

  As the two women disappeared through the trees, Joe, Chris, and Henderson all arrived from back down the fence line. They joined Eric and Tom as they took long drinks from the several mason jars of water and sweet tea. The brief meal was shared in silence other than the occasional clink of ice against the thick side of a glass jar. Henderson was every bit as out of breath as Eric, and he quickly downed a few crackers and tried to catch his breath as best he could. The three older men were winded, but handled it better. Still, they didn't talk, and Joe seemed consumed by some deep thought or worry.

  Joe ate only two cracker sandwiches and drank sparingly from the quart jar in his hands. Still, he waited for the rest of the men to finish their refreshments before breaking the silence. "We're making good time, men. Actually, we're making much better time than I thought we would. We're more than halfway finished." Joe pointed ahead and to the right. "You'll angle out to the right up here and come out of the woods on the right side of the old hog house. I want you to follow the ribbons I tied up on the tree line and then close off the road to the river. The line goes along the back edge of the old hog pen, around the bottom corner of the garden field, then straight back up the hill behind the old pack barn to the road."

  "Just out of curiosity, what time is it?" Eric asked

  Joe snorted a short chuckle. "Not sure, but it ain't midday yet. I'm going to take Chris with me, and we're going to start at the road and head in the other direction with the fence. We'll probably meet down around the back edge of the garden field before noon. Then we'll break for lunch." Joe finished off his jar of water and set it back in the basket. He collected the leftovers, gave Eric and Tom a jar of water to share, and headed back toward the farmhouse with Chris.

  Henderson lingered a little bit longer to finish his crackers. Then he too started back toward the road to gather a new bundle of barbed wire. By the time Eric finished the one he was using and got about halfway through the spare that Tom had, Henderson would have had enough time to fetch two new bundles for them. It was a tiring process so the men rotated the responsibilities to give everyone a chance to learn new and use old skills. Eric had started the day carrying barbed wire while Tom unspooled it and Henderson tacked it to the trees. They'd switched only once so far, and Eric was now determined to see this run through to the end.

  With Henderson already on the way back to resupply them, Eric and Tom got back to work. Eric found the brief respite had recharged his energy and his step seemed lighter and easier as he made his way through the underbrush. The diminishing spool of barbed wire felt lighter in his hands as well. Even the scrapes and scratches across his arms and chest didn't burn as badly as they had before. His newfound zest was short lived, though, and he was soon dripping sweat from the end of his nose again. Still, he ground his teeth and pushed on through the pain. The minutes stretched into hours, and the hours seemed to go on for days as Eric stumbled his way through the underbrush, wrapping the stiff barbed wire around the designated tree trunks. Finally, Eric wrapped his barbed wire around a pine tree roughly the size of his waist, turned, and saw his father walking easily through the woods.

  Eric and his father measured off the lengths of wire needed to hook the two strands together, and Joe twisted the final knot into the wire. "Well, that's one down," Joe said as slapped Eric on the shoulder. "Three to go. It's about noon now, so we'll start the second run after lunch."

  The woods were thin along the back edge of the garden, and in a few dozen strides the men stepped out into the field itself. The sun stood nearly directly overhead, and it was oppressively hot and humid. As they headed for the far corner of the field and the road up to the farm house, there was the sudden sound of distant gun shots. The men stopped as one and turned toward the direction of the loud pops. There were three close together, then several louder shots, followed by an outburst so rapid that they couldn't keep track of them. The echoes faded into a sudden silence, and then there was a final single loud crack that reverberated through the trees.

  Joe looked at Eric who shook his head slightly. "Sounded like it was across the river, maybe back toward the Harringtons' hunting club."

  "How far from here?" Tom asked.

  "Three and a quarter miles on the roads," Joe said, "But that's just to the entrance. Their club has about two thousand acres of land and part of it sits just across the river."

  After a long stretch of silence, the men started back toward the house, and Chris cleared his throat awkwardly. "Look, we all know that wasn't target practice. Should we be worried?"

  Joe barked a short laugh and shrugged. "Yeah, we probably should be. In fact, we definitely should be. But right now, we should go and get some lunch. I'm hungry, and we've got a lot of work to do." He glanced over his shoulder and back toward the river. "And from the sounds of it, we don't have much time to get it done."

  CH.17

  Wheels Down

  Marcus cracked the security casing and pulled out a small red envelope. Inside was an index card with a mosaic pattern on one face and the reverse was a universal calendar. The calendar was formed by a sort of grid with days of the week lined down one side, while the number of the day in the month spanned the other. Marcus lined up the day of the week with the day of the month, and wrote down the string of characters. He handed the card and the string of coded characters to the pilot afterward.

  The pilot looked down at the numbers and clicked on the radio communications. "Henry Mt. tower control, this is Ghostrider in bound. Request confirmation, Whiskey Yankee Charlie one five five nine."

  There was a short silence, and the radio operator on the other end of the line answered. "Roger that Ghostrider. Authentication confirmed Hotel Sierra seven seven."

  The radio clicked off and the pilot nodded the affirmation toward Marcus. They were home, finally. The chopper began an easy descent over one of the four broad helipads that dotted the low hills around the main complex. All of the helipads were isolated and they were covered from above at three different points. The protocol was to request authentication at least a mile and a half out from the base but never more than five miles, even under extreme duress. Waiting for proper clearance made for a tense few moments on the final approach, but in these cases the security was warranted. Marcus had never been on a flight that failed to follow protocol to the letter, and now, especially, he was rather certain he didn't want to be.

  As the helicopter neared the ground, a pair of thick metal blast doors rolled open on the low bunker to the left, and armed men spilled out of the darkness behind it. The men all wore high sierra digitized camo uniforms and carried M-4 rifles and shotguns. This was definitely not a normal landing. Someone had at least considered the possibility of trouble and had taken far more precautions than usual. At the thought of the possible complications with that many armed men facing them, the small hairs on the back of Marcus' neck rose, and he felt his adrenaline level kick up a notch.

  He had had that kind of feeling before when he stumbled on a family of black bears while hiking one day. He remembered the mother turning full toward him and chomping her jaws in a fierce clapping sound. Marcus had frozen and then slowly backed away as the cubs moved on down the path away from him. That instant jolt of fear had come with the realization that if the mother bear had decided to charge him, he'd have been completely at her mercy. The only other time he'd ever felt fear that immediate and that pure was when Captain Tillman had put his hand on his gun. In that instant he knew that even though both he and the pilot were armed, if Captain Tillman had decided they were a threat, he would have had no trouble taking both of them down.

  Marcus looked at the pilot, his questions and his concerns obvious, but the pilot just shrugged. "We got no choice. Nowhere else close enough to refuel before we go down a lot harder than this."

  Marcus drew a deep breath, pulled his Beretta 9mm, and checked the slide to make sure it was chambered. He clicked the safety off and holstered it without the holster strap snapped shut. If he neede
d to pull the weapon, he didn't want any hindrance at all. By the time the helicopter set down in a thick cloud of dust, nearly two dozen men had arrayed themselves in two ranks, ready to defend the door. The pilot throttled back the engines and began shutting the helicopter down. The rotors continued spinning for a little bit as the brakes slowed them. The dust began to settle and the air cleared.

  Marcus took another deep breath and opened his door, but the pilot didn't even unlatch his safety harness. "If they want to shoot me and steal our ride," he said in response to Marcus' quizzical look, "then they're going to have to mess up their pretty, new helicopter to do it."

  Marcus chuckled at the sentiment, but he didn't think that was likely. If the control tower had really wanted them dead, it would have been much easier to let them inside and simply kill them once their guard was down. He was truly confused by the deployment of armed security forces at all, though, as he'd never seen anything like that in the four years he'd been at the facility, even in breach drills. Marcus stepped out onto the hot tarmac and waited. Whatever was about to happen, he wasn't going to be the one to initiate it; that much was clear.

  None of the men facing him had raised their weapons, but they all held them with an air of calm expectation. Marcus had seen that kind of training before in the security personnel, though oddly none of the regular uniformed security officers were present. The hairs along the back of his neck were still standing on end, and Marcus felt an almost painful twisting in his gut. For the first time he wondered if coming back to the facility had been a wise decision.

  The sound of footsteps from inside the bunker gave a brief warning that someone was approaching, and then Mr. Price came striding out of the darkness, four armed men boxing him in. At first, Marcus thought that his boss was under arrest, but Price’s guards were facing out, their eyes looking for threats that could possibly come from the hills around them. For his part, Price was dressed in his own khaki service dress uniform; a broad panel of ribbons spreading across the left side of his chest. He wore a Commander's silver maple leaves, just like Marcus' father had worn years before. Even three years into his retirement, Commander Price exuded faultless military bearing.