by Harp, Wilson
There were three small buildings at the end of a dirt road which had almost been reclaimed by the prairie. A gas pump stood near one shed which had a big double garage door. It looked like some farmer’s equipment sheds.
Ted and Kenny slipped between the buildings and looked around. Ted signaled me and Anne to come join him.
“Abandoned,” he said. “Doesn’t look like anyone has been here for a while.”
He led us into a doorway.
“Kenny is checking out the other buildings, but we should be able to catch our breath and plan out our next move.”
“What do you think they are doing?” Anne asked.
“Probably closing the net. Or they will soon. They have to do it before dark, or there’ll be too big of a chance we can slip past them.”
“We should keep moving, then,” Anne said. “The further out they are, the bigger the holes in the net.”
“Yeah, but we need to think this through.”
I loosened my pack and dropped it to the ground. I sat on it and tried to think of any way we could hide or maybe out-think them.
I jumped to my feet when the door opened, but it was only Kenny.
“Didn’t mean to startle you,” he said. “Nothing that can help us here, but there’s a large building in the distance.”
“Which direction?” Ted asked.
“Northeast. I think it’s the best we can do.”
“How far away?”
“Maybe six or seven miles. Hard to judge, can’t tell how big it is.”
“Let’s get some rest then,” Ted said.
I don’t know how much rest I got. My heart raced every second we were in the building. I imagined a long line of hundreds of men walking slowly inward with no chance they would miss us.
Kenny unloaded the magazines he had taken from the patrol and stashed the extra ammo in his bag. Ted had pulled out a map and studied it intently. Anne looked like she had her eyes closed again. I just watched everyone and worried.
“Are we ready?” Ted asked. “We’ll head toward the building and figure out what we can do as we get closer.”
“The faster we move, the better chance we’ll have,” said Anne. “And even if one group sees us, how will they communicate with other groups to try and catch us? They can’t have that many radios.”
“I don’t know,” said Ted. “I would just as soon not find out. But for now, we have about four hours of full daylight left, so we need to burn some distance.”
We traveled without regard for being seen. Distance and speed was more critical than stealth now.
“Maybe they’ll think we’re too dangerous to hunt,” said Anne. “They would’ve seen that no one but their men got hit.”
“I don’t know which way their thoughts will fall,” said Ted. “But I’d guess it is on the side of an ambush. My guess would be they think we are a small scouting party from the base.”
There was a loud sound from behind us which made us all turn and look. It took me a second to recognize it.
“It’s… it’s a horn,” I said.
A second later a second horn sounded, this one in a different direction and further away.
“That’s how they are communicating,” Anne said. “They’re using horns.”
“I’m guessing a single note means no sighting,” Ted said.
“Why would they blow a note and give their position away?” asked Kenny.
“To make sure each patrol was still alive,” said Anne. “If a patrol doesn’t sound their horn, it might mean they met trouble.”
Every ten seconds or so another horn sounded. We hurried toward the building in the distance as they continued.
“It’s also to rattle their prey,” I said. “We’re like a fox set before the hounds. The horns let us know we’re being hunted.”
“What happens when they see us?” asked Anne.
“Probably a series of notes,” I said. “Three or four in a row.”
“And then they descend on us,” Kenny added.
We pushed ahead as the horns mocked us. I didn’t know if we were running or being driven into a trap.
“That was the same one again,” Ted said. “From behind. I think there are twelve teams looking for us. They’re definitely closer now, we have to move.”
Ahead of us was a small line of trees along a small creek bed. There was a culvert with an abandoned car which hung over the side along an old road.
“Maybe we could hide there,” Anne said.
“We’ll head that way, but it’s still too light to hide I think,” said Ted.
As we approached the culvert, Anne dropped to one knee and shouldered her shotgun. Her face took on a mask of determination as she peered into the small screen of leafless trees.
“I see them,” a man said.
Anne fired her shotgun as I dropped to my knees. I kept my rifle up and fired a shot into the innocent branches twenty feet up.
“Kenny, flank them,” Ted said.
“Cover me,” replied Kenny. He was already running up on the culvert behind the wrecked car.
Ted fired shot after shot into the trees. I did likewise, even though I knew there was no chance of actually shooting the three men I saw scramble for position inside the sparse tree line.
The men finally had found their cover and started firing back.
“David, Anne into the culvert,” Ted said as he swapped out magazines.
I jumped to my feet and followed Anne behind the concrete bulwark. Ted came a few seconds later. He had laid down fire for us to get to safety.
We heard yelling from the men in the woods and the sound of several horns echoed not far away.
“Where’s Kenny?” Anne asked. She reloaded her shotgun as she asked.
There was a fast series of shots out near the woods.
“Ted!” Kenny yelled. “Clear!”
“Let’s go,” Ted said as he led the way from the culvert.
We rounded the concrete embankment and I saw three men laying on the ground. Two of them moaned and writhed while the third lay still.
“What about them?” Anne asked as we ran to where Kenny was waving to us.
“Leave them,” said Ted. “Hope they’ll live.”
When we cleared the trees, the large building we were headed to loomed less than a mile away. I still wasn’t sure what it was, but an industrial building for sure. Train tracks ran right into the compound of the building and several train cars were still there.
“This way, maybe we can make a stand in the building,” Kenny said.
“There is no making a stand, Kenny. They’ll be here soon. We can either run for it or hope they take us prisoner,” Anne said.
“She’s right,” said Ted. “We have to find a way out of here.”
“Where are the vehicles and horses?” I asked. “Shouldn’t we have heard them by now?”
“They must have them in reserve. Only sending them out when they found us.”
“We have no time, then,” said Kenny.
We reached a tall chain link fence which enclosed a big storage yard. Huge piles of some sort of black rock covered everything.
“What is that?” I asked as we searched for a way around.
“Coal,” said Ted. “This must be a power plant.”
We heard the horns blast again and saw some men running about a mile away from the building.
“We can’t outrun them with these packs,” said Ted. “What do we do?”
A second horn from another location told us the net was almost closed.
“I know what to do,” said Kenny. He dropped his pack to the ground. “Give me the fire-starter, Ted. Both bags. And I need a sidearm.”
Ted shucked off his bag. “David,” he said, “give Kenny your sidearm.”
I pulled the weapon from my holster and handed it to him. He was busy pulling some things from his pack and took it when he had finished.
“Thanks,” he said. “Take these. You and Anne split them up.”
He handed me his portion of the rations and his binoculars.
“Ted, you’ll need this,” he said. Ted took a small black, wooden box.
“Buy us at least an hour if you can. We can lose them in the dark.”
“I will. You take care, David. Get them back home.”
I wasn’t sure if he meant Ted and Anne, or Lexi and Emma. At the moment, I didn’t care.
“What are you doing? What’s going on?” Anne and I were asking the questions at the same time.
“I have literally tons of coal there and men who are chasing us. I think I can create a distraction. You need to go. Now!”
Ted had pulled his pack up. “Get the food in your packs, we have to go.”
“No,” I said. “We’re not leaving you behind.”
Anne grabbed my shoulder and turned me to face her. She had the same determined look as when she was firing the shotgun.
“David, we have to go. Now.”
“Go,” said Kenny. “I’ll buy you time but you have to go.”
I turned and raced after Ted. Anne passed me as we ran to the north into a small ditch which ran alongside the railroad tracks.
There was gunfire behind me. I recognized the sound of my father’s pistol. Kenny was firing to draw their attention.
We ran along the low ditch for thirty minutes before I could bear to look back. A thick tower of jet black smoke rose from the power plant. In just a few minutes, sunset would drape us in shadows and give us safety. I turned back to the north and kept going. I had to reach Chicago. I had to find Lexi and Emma. I couldn’t let Kenny’s sacrifice be in vain.
Chapter 15
We traveled through the night and all the way until daybreak. Occasionally we heard vehicles on the roads and Anne thought she heard horses in the distance around midnight, but we saw no other signs of a search. One specific thing we were grateful to hear were coyote howls. Ted said if there were a lot of patrols, or especially if they were using dogs to track us, the coyotes would have been quiet.
Soon after dawn we stopped in a stand of trees which hid us from the surrounding area. We all collapsed and worked our packs off.
“I’ll take first watch,” Ted said. “I’ll wake someone before I fall asleep.”
I was too exhausted to argue and too grief stricken to care.
I knew this was going to be a dangerous journey. I understood that. I told myself that all the time. Ted, Kenny and me talked about how we may not make it back. How one of us, or all of us, could die along the way and no one in Kenton would ever know what happened.
It was one thing to talk about it and a completely different experience to have it happen. That Kenny would sacrifice himself for us in this way was inspiring and horrifying at the same time. I knew it was my fault to drag him out here, but at the same time I couldn’t make myself say it was a mistake. This was the harsh reality I had to face, and I would feel the guilt for the rest of my life. But the fact remained I would’ve traded all of our lives to get Lexi and Emma back. Maybe it was selfish, maybe it was self-centered, maybe it wasn’t worth it to anyone else, but it was worth it to me.
Ted shook me awake.
“Morning, it’s time to get up and eat,” he said.
I looked up at the sky and saw it was almost ten in the morning. He had stayed up another three or four hours to give me a little rest.
“Get some sleep,” I told him as I forced myself up. By the time I stepped back from relieving my bladder, Ted was already asleep.
I sat against a tree and ate a bit of hardtack and drank some water. The day was cooler and the wind blew out of the north. I didn’t look forward to traveling at night as it looked like we were in for a big cold front. At this point, I didn’t really care if it snowed or not, since we couldn’t be tracked from the power plant. But traveling at night was hard enough without having to deal with icy conditions. As it was, we would be lucky to move fifteen miles in a night, and we desperately needed to get out of Miller’s territory.
I hoped we weren’t on the run for no reason. That our pursuers knew better than we did where we were headed and had decided to just wait for us. I hoped once we made it to Chicago, we could find Lexi and Emma. And if we couldn’t, we could at least learn something. My biggest fear was I could spend months, even years, up there and never find answers.
Andrews was right, it was very dangerous to open the box. There was only one good answer possible and hundreds of answers I didn’t want to find. But I knew I had to open the box. It was a flaw of mine. I had to know the answer.
Anne groaned and rolled in her sleep. I looked at her and put that trouble to the side in my mind. It would stay there until I had finished my search. Then I would know better how to deal with Anne. At least I hoped I would. I wanted to wake her to have some company as I watched, but I let her sleep. I would grow tired soon enough and if she were rested, then she could watch by herself longer.
I saw a squirrel peer down at me as I was lost in thought. He seemed curious why there were three people under his tree and seemed to dance around on the branches. I took a drink of water and went back to watching him. He skittered around, as if he were on alert. I guess he was. While we had just been prey for a few hours, he had been prey his entire life. If it wasn’t a hawk or a fox, it was a human with a rifle which could end his life with no effort at all.
I took another drink from my canteen and when my eyes dropped back to the sleeping figures of Anne and Ted, I caught myself look for Kenny nearby. I felt tears come to my eyes as I considered what Sophia would say. What the kids would say.
I pushed those thoughts away and tried to focus on why I was awake even though I was tired. I knew wild animals would often give clues if there were people around. We had remained fairly still for several hours, and the wildlife around us had grown somewhat used to our presence. Squirrels went about their cheerful chattering. I heard a rustle in the grass and caught sight of a fox as it made its way past our position. The birds rested and chirped on the branches above us.
If we would just pay attention to our surroundings, we could avoid being surprised.
I thought back to when I was a kid in Kenton. I was familiar with raccoons and possums, rabbits, turtles, and frogs. Catching bugs and salamanders was a common thing for us. When I moved to Chicago, most of the animal life I saw were pigeons. Occasionally a squirrel would make me smile as he played in the suburban trees. But I had lost touch with nature. I had lost my sense of wonder when it came to the world around me.
Animals were still unpredictable, though, even for those who knew them best. After the EMP hit, the game around Kenton became scarce. Deer were almost impossible to find, and even the rabbits and squirrels seemed to move away from the town for a while.
Luke and Buck had talked about what they thought had happened. Buck thought the animals were used to the way humans sounded and acted. When the EMP hit, the constant electronic noises of our houses vanished. The sound of cars on the road stopped. Buck thought this must have spooked the animals. After all, if animals going quiet can let us know they sense danger, it would make sense, from an animal’s perspective, that if the humans all went quiet it must mean they sensed danger as well.
I yawned and stood. The minutes seemed to drag by, and yet I knew my mind was too active to fall asleep. I felt like a zombie and wished my mind would become one as well. Thoughts and doubts assailed me as I tried to focus on the sounds around me.
What if Lexi and Emma had left Chicago in an attempt to find me? Lexi’s folks lived in Des Moines. What if they had headed that way? What if they headed south to find me only to be caught by Miller? What if they had actually made it to the air base and were there while we were, only we never saw each other?
Each scenario less likely, and yet this spiral of worry and doubt grew in my mind. Andrews may have been right. This may have been a box I shouldn’t have opened.
I yawned again and decided I couldn’t last much longer. I shook Anne to wake her. She sat up and
smiled at me.
“Is it my turn already?” she asked as she stretched. “David! It’s almost dark. You let me sleep way too long!”
“You needed it.”
“You do too, now get to sleep. You’ll only get a few hours before we have to start again. We have to cover a lot of ground tonight, so get your eyes closed.”
I dropped to the ground with my backpack for a pillow. I felt Anne drop a light blanket over me and I drifted off.
I was being chased. A dark field with no way to see what was in front of me. The sound of men yelling, gunfire and footsteps. A hand grabbed my arm and I twisted away.
“David,” said Ted. “Wake up. We have to go.”
There was enough light left to see Ted clearly. He had wakened me from a nightmare, but it wasn’t night yet.
“Are they coming?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “We have another problem.”
He looked up and my eyes followed. Snow was swirling in the air and the wind was stiff out of the north.
I got to my feet and strapped on my pack. We had to go quickly. We had to be far from the search area before the snow stopped falling. Falling snow would cover our tracks pretty well, but once it stopped, a blind man could track us until it melted.
We walked into the late evening as the storm bore down on us. The deep blanket of clouds made our journey treacherous and slow. The howling of the wind and the creaking of the trees made the night ominous and would muffle the sound of anyone who approached.
Ted tried to keep us on a straight line north, but it was hard to tell with no stars or moon to guide us. I had a compass in my pack which I offered to dig out, but he declined. There wasn’t enough light to see the needle on the compass and he wouldn’t waste the batteries in the flashlight to see it. Also, the light from the flashlight might reveal us to anyone who was looking.
“The ironic thing is if we had enough starlight to see the compass, we wouldn’t need the compass because we would have the stars,” I said.