Dawn of Destruction

by Ronald Williams

  Chapter 6

  “Got your bear spray handy?” Cole asked.

  “It’s not a bear,” Jenny said.

  “It’ll work on a mountain lion, too.”

  A little up the draw, they heard something move slowly through the brush. It was steadily getting closer.

  “No time.”

  “Close your right eye, JJ.”

  Jenny knew what he had in mind.

  She shut one eye and said, “K.”

  Cole also shut his left eye and switched on the Mossberg’s tactical light. He caught the glow of the mountain lion’s eyes. It was already moving, making a leap towards Jenny.

  There was a sharp report as Jenny knocked off a quick shot at the mountain lion, punctuated by the bark of the Mossberg spitting out a load of shot. The big cat let out a sudden high-pitched, angry and scared sounding roar as it knocked Jenny flat, then leapt off of her, sprinting away into the brush.

  Cole heard Jenny, writhing on the ground, choking. He swung his tactical light towards her to see what was up, then remembered it was attached to the barrel of a firearm and aimed it away from her.

  It did illuminate her just long enough for him to see her flat on her back, holding her side, and blood.

  He swallowed and braced himself for just a second before pulling his flashlight out, and shrugging out of his daypack. He and Jenny had both loaded one up, with first aid supplies, an emergency blanket each, lightweight fleece pullover and poncho, and a little bit of food.

  When he was ready, he switched on his flashlight and took a better look at her. His sister had a very pained expression on her face and looked to be struggling for breath. Her t-shirt was torn wet with a spreading dark stain.

  She was making noise, which meant that she was still getting air in and out of her lungs. That was the first thing he’d been taught to check when he learned first aid – can they breathe.

  Next, her arms and legs were moving, but he didn’t know exactly how hard she’d gone down, so it was safest to assume a possible head or neck injury until he could confirm otherwise. That would affect how he dealt with the bleeding.

  “Hey, JJ,” he said. “Did it just get your front?”

  Jenny nodded.

  “Wind knocked out,” she choked out, through tightly shut eyes and clenched teeth.

  “OK.” He was relieved to hear that was at least part of her writhing around, and not something worse. “Let’s take a look at what we’ve got on the side here.”

  “Pushed off,” Jenny said, touching her side.

  Cole got a penlight out of his first aid kit, and stuck it between his teeth so he could free up both hands to work. He put his bigger flashlight into Jenny’s hand. “When you’re able to, give me some more light.”

  He slipped on some gloves, and took her other hand away from the wounds on her side so he could look at them. The cat’s claws had torn her shirt and a bit of the waistband of her jeans, and left three deep gashes in her abdomen.

  It looked like the paw had at least caught a bit of her hip bone which gave it something solid to launch off of. Otherwise, he was sure the cuts would have been longer and much deeper.

  “Sorry,” he said, preemptively, as he moved her left hand away from the wounds again.

  Jenny gasped and groaned while he spread them open to see how bad they were. The cuts looked deep, but still superficial, which was a great relief.

  He had no idea where he would even start if he had to deal with wounds that went through the skin into the organs without 911 being an option.

  “OK. The best thing will be to clean these, get you bandaged up, and get back to the cabin.”

  “A couple of shots for the pain?” she asked, as she started to get her breath back.

  “Morphine or vodka?” Cole asked.

  “Don’t make me laugh.”

  Since there didn’t seem to be any arterial bleeding or any large veins opened up, Cole decided the best option was to thoroughly rinse the gashes out from his canteen, apply antibiotic ointment, then cover it over with gauze and apply pressure until the bleeding stopped.

  Once the blood stopped flowing freely, he started assessing Jenny for any head or neck injuries.

  Carefully reaching around the back of her head and neck, he didn’t feel any cuts or bumps, and she didn’t have any tender spots.

  Talking to her, she seemed reasonably coherent for somebody that had just been tackled by a mountain lion, then used as a springboard when it leapt off. She was able to wiggle fingers and toes on command.

  “I think it’s safe to move you,” he said, hoping there wasn’t anything obvious that he’d missed.

  “OK,” Jenny said. “Get my fleece, too. I’m freezing.”

  Cole touched her hand, this time to feel her temperature and not focused only on whether she could move it or not. The skin was cold and clammy. He pulled up another mental checklist and took her pulse – rapid and thin. Shock.

  “Let’s get you warmed up,” he said.

  He couldn’t get her pullover on her until after he got her bandaged. The best he was able to do was lay out one of the emergency blankets, put his pullover onto it, and roll her onto that. He also didn’t want to elevate her legs with the deep abdominal wounds.

  With the darkness and him needing to keep moving her hands away from her sides, where she kept trying to hug herself to alleviate the pain, it took a lot longer than he’d hoped to finally get her wrapped up and into her own pullover.

  “Here’s the best I can do for you,” Cole said, tearing open a packet of ibuprofen tablets for her and giving her some water to wash it down.

  He found a comfortable spot against a tree where he could lean back, and Jenny could recline against him. This put some of his body heat between her and the ground so she could cover up with the blanket and stay warm.

  “We’re probably out here until dawn, aren’t we?” Jenny asked. Cole was relieved to hear that her voice was starting to sound normal, if still pained.

  “I wouldn’t want to move you around in the dark like this.”

  “I could really use some rest before I try to walk the rest of the way up the hill.”

  “Get some sleep,” Cole said.

  He looked at his watch. It was a few minutes after midnight. He made sure to put the two canisters of bear spray within easy reach.

  He wondered if they could have had the canisters more accessible for quick deployment at night, but they required two hands to deploy properly, and that wasn’t possible while also carrying a long arm, without dropping it or trying to awkwardly tuck the gun under an arm or something.

  He pondered whether it was better to hold the bear spray at night and sling the guns if they ever went out after dark again, and fell asleep before he ever figured it out.

  * **

  He slept restlessly, with chill of the night constantly waking him up, or stiff limbs from leaning against a tree, or Jenny moving about.

  Almost every hour he found himself looking at his watch. He’d check Jenny’s breathing and pulse.

  About half the time, he’d wake her up and make her talk to him so he could be sure that she hadn’t been concussed without any external signs of injury.

  When it was light enough for him to see more than a dozen feet, he slid out from under Jenny and walked a short distance away to relieve himself.

  “Stay there for a minute,” he heard Jenny say as he was finishing up, presumably to take care of the same need herself..

  Over a quick breakfast of protein bars, dried fruit, and water, Cole gave Jenny another check.

  She had bled through the bandages in her sleep, but he decided to wait until they were at the cabin to try and pull them off and change them.

  “That was a pretty stupid idea to go out last night, wasn’t it?” Cole asked, as the arrival of honest daylight showed him how pale Jenny was, how much blood there was in her clothes, and the litter of bandage dressings around them.

  One of them must have wing
ed the mountain lion to get it to flee like it did. Cole didn’t want to think of what would have happened if he hadn’t.

  Was there any way he would have gotten a clear second shot with the Mossberg if the mountain lion had actually gotten onto Jenny. He was sure it was mostly luck that he still had a sister.

  “It wasn’t one of your best,” Jenny said. “But don’t beat yourself up. Neither of us could have predicted the cat. I think we just startled her a bit, may have accidentally gotten her feeling cornered here in the draw.”

  She pointed up the steep cut in the hillside, which narrowed significantly not far from where they were sitting. The cleanest way out was downhill, not up.

  “I still should have listened to you when you told me it was a bad idea,” Cole said.

  “It was with good intent, and we got some good information out of it.”

  “Expensive information,” Cole said.

  “I’ll make sure you pay me back. Someday. For now, let’s get going. I could really go for some honest sleep on a real bed.”

  Chapter 7

  “Hey, Bill, Sally,” Steve Patten said from the doorway of his spare room, tapping lightly on the jamb.

  “Yeah,” Bill said, shaking cobwebs from his mind.

  It had taken him a long time to calm down enough to catch a little bit of rest, but once he’d gone down, he went down deep.

  “Three National Guard trucks rolled through a bit ago but didn’t stop here. The guy guarding us has just started nodding off. If there’s going to be a shift change, it’ll probably be on an hour, so it looks like now is your best chance to scoot, in case two is when they’re swapping.”

  Bill looked at his watch. It was 1:38.

  “Good call,” he said, reaching for his boots in the darkness.

  A couple minutes later, he and Sally stumbled out into the candle-lit kitchen. There were four wrapped sandwiches on the table, along with a pair of travel mugs and the smell of fresh brewed coffee in the air.

  “I’ll want the mugs back eventually,” Patten said.

  “We’ll even wash them for you,” Sally said. “Thank you so much. You’re a real life-saver.”

  “Family first, I’m sorry those dipshits out there don’t recognize that,” Patten said.

  With a last couple of handshakes, Bill and Sally crept out the back door. He’d given them directions to a path that ran along the lake, at least down a mile or so to a good fishing spot.

  “You’re going to have to run wide of the marina – that’s also guarded, and be careful getting through the campground. Don’t know much beyond that, but cleaving to the lake as much as you can will keep you off the road. Just be careful. The shoreline’s iffy in some spots.”

  He gave them a couple of broom handles to use as walking poles, to probe the ground in front of them as they walked in the darkness.

  A couple sandwiches, a cup of coffee, and an old broom handle each. Steve Patten didn’t offer anything more, Bill and Sally didn’t ask.

  The full extent of what had happened, how much disruption there was and how widespread, was still completely unknown.

  Bill understood that Patten had to look after himself. Cold cuts would only last so long without refrigeration, so that was an easy thing to give up to strangers.

  Anything more that Patten gave up was coming out of a finite stock, and he didn’t know how long he’d need to make that last.

  More valuable, by far, than the items Patten had given up was the time and shelter.

  As Bill and Sally stepped off into the darkness, they still had their guns. They were back on the trail to get to their children and their own cabin, where they had the resources to ride things out for a good while.

  The first mile down the lakeside trial was not bad. Even in the dark, under the full moon, by the time their eyes adapted Bill and Sally were able to make out the lighter beaten earth among the darker brush flanking it.

  The fishing hole was also easy for them to make out. It was a larger, flatish area along the lake that was cleared out, and there were a few nice hunks of log set out as seats around a little ring of stones. They decided to take a short sit-down there and have a sandwich together.

  The still waters of the lake were a black expanse that spread out before them. Lake Koocanusa was a reservoir, less than a half-mile wide in most places, but more than ninety miles long.

  Rexford was about the middle of the lake. There was a single bridge over it, about 8 miles south.

  Beyond the lake, the far shore was invisible in the darkness. Taking out their binoculars, Bill and Sally couldn’t see any light along the far shore at all.

  “What do you say, three hours to the bridge if we stick to the shoreline?” Sally asked, when she finished eating.

  Bill looked at his watch again and did a quick calculation.

  Sunrise would be about 6:30, usable twilight at least an hour before that.

  “Something like that. Let’s roll, if we want to get across the lake before dawn.”

  Most of their route wasn’t bad. They were never far from Highway 37, which ran the length of the east shore from Rexford south.

  Most of the shoreline was reasonably clear, but the land sloped severely down to the water. There were a couple of spots where their only option was to get up onto the road for a while.

  Once, they heard a vehicle driving down the road and they ducked themselves under cover.

  After it passed, slowly and driving with its headlights off, Bill said, “Diesel, not much bigger than a pickup. Didn’t sound like a military vehicle.”

  “Does the military have a lot of vehicles that will still be running?”

  “A lot of the Reserve and National Guard units up here still have really old vehicles, the ones that don’t have EFI or other computer systems that could get burnt out by an EMP. They’ll be the first ones back on the road in large numbers.”

  “How soon?” Sally said.

  “I wish I knew, I just know that the faster we get across the lake, the better,” Bill said. “Rexford had just a sworn deputy and two volunteers to clamp it down, and they were only armed with a pistol and a couple rifles. It was only the real big imbalance between them and the folks in town not willing to give up their guns that kept that place free enough for us to get through it with what we’ve got.”

  He patted his pistol, which he was holstering openly again.

  “Put more people on the ground, with more serious firepower, body armor, maybe even some armored vehicles and heavy weapons, and thing will be a lot different. We’ll do much better on the west side of the lake in our cabin than anybody in a city or town over on this side is.”

  Sally nodded, and finished her coffee. She’d heard Bill tell her about what he’d seen overseas. He didn’t need to elaborate much.

  “Let’s get it going, then,” she said.

  Two hours later, they saw light up ahead: pairs of headlights.

  “Damn it!” Bill cursed, reaching into his ruck for his binoculars.

  The glow was coming from the bridge over the lake. At the far end of the bridge and in the middle there were a couple of Army deuces using their headlights to help some troops set up trailer-mounted generators with tall light masts rising above them.

  “We burned way too much time sitting tight in Rexford.”

  “No,” Sally said, taking her own binoculars from her eyes. “They’ve been set up for a few hours at least. Look again at all those sandbags.”

  Bill took another look. Sure enough, there were three sandbagged emplacements already set up on the bridge.

  At the far landing, he could barely make out another emplacement along the shore.

  Assuming they had to fill the bags on site, that did represent a good amount of work.

  “Would we never have crossed in daylight anyway,” Sally asked.

  “Right,” Bill had to admit. If they had gotten to the bridge earlier, he would have insisted they wait until dark to brave the open and exposed crossing over
the lake.

  “So…situation,” Sally said.

  “Let’s assume this crossing is a no – they’ll just disarm us and sweep us into some sort of camp or other confinement area. They will probably send somebody for the kids if we tell them how to get to the cabin.”

  “We’d be together, but still unarmed and in a camp. Not desirable.”

  “Correct,” Bill said. “At the cabin together is our best possible situation.”

  “Next nearest crossings are the Libby Dam, what, 40 to 50 miles south, or the Canadian bridge 40 miles or so north.”

  “Libby Dam is certainly more heavily guarded than this this bridge. No go there. Whatever has hit us here didn’t stop abruptly at the Canadian border, so we can assume a similar situation up there. More polite martial law than down here, but still martial law,” Bill said.

  “And two border crossings if we try to get around the river to the north. No idea what might happen if we’re caught trying to cross the border,” Sally said.

  “And if we are interned north of the border let’s assume the kids will never get picked up. For good or for ill.”

  “Long term separation from them is the worst possible situation,” Sally said.

  “OK. So surrendering and having the kids brought to us is the middle path. Not desirable, but workable.”

  Sally rocked her head back and forth as she weighed things out. “Let’s be honest, we know the government has a real bad record about keeping track of kids and parents when they get separated, and there’s a lot more room for mistakes and things falling between the cracks right now than there usually is. I don’t trust Cole and Jen in their custody unless they are physically right beside us the entire time.”

  Bill scrunched up his face and nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “We’ve got to find some way across this lake.” The thought of trying to swim for it, day or night, did not appeal to him at all.

  Chapter 8

  Instead of trekking cross-country back up to the cabin, Cole and Jenny took the road.

  With the switchbacks to get up the hillside, it was easily four times longer, but with her wounds from the mountain lion, she didn’t feel she was in any state to try going up the steep draw, which was damp and slick with the morning dew.