Jessie fiddled with the radio but didn’t find a signal. “Does Uncle Ray have a farm?”
“No. He lives in the mountains.”
“Will I have my own room?”
“Where he lives is very small. No one has their own room.”
“Can I go to school there?”
“Schools are closed everywhere, Jessie. Maybe someday they’ll open. But not this year.”
Ahead, a van sat in the eastbound lanes, snow halfway up its front grill. As they got closer, the front doors flew open and a man and a woman climbed out. They started across the median, waving frantically. Karla accelerated to thirty-five and plowed past.
“Mommmm.” Jessie stretched the word as she turned to watch the couple standing in the snow. “They’ll freeze.”
Karla continued half a mile, then crossed the median at an emergency vehicle turnaround.
“We’ll pull them out of the drift. That’s it. Don’t get out and don’t open the door.”
The couple continued to stand in the road, now next to the van. Karla stopped thirty feet short and opened her door. They started toward the truck.
“Back in the van,” Karla shouted. They plodded on and she raised the rifle. “Now! I will haul you out of the drift and get you going.”
“Give us a lift,” the man yelled back. “We can’t drive in this.”
Karla shook her head. “Get back in the vehicle, or I’ll leave you here.”
The couple moved slowly and climbed in. Karla waited a minute then pulled past them and backed to within ten feet. She dug a heavy rope from behind the seat and took another look at the van. Its windshield wipers moved. Karla saw two children hugging the front seats.
“When I get out, put your window down and aim the rifle at the van.”
“Will they try to hurt you?” Jessie asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t think they want to, but they are in a bad spot. And they might be sick.”
“We can give them medicine.”
Karla shook her head. “It doesn’t work that way anymore. We have to stay away from strangers. At least for a while.”
Karla retrieved the shovel and stepped out. She cleared snow from in front of the van and secured the rope to it. She pulled out her pistol and circled into the road ten feet from the driver’s window. He lowered it.
“I’ll tow you to a crossover. You can follow my tracks east from there. Are you ready?”
The driver said he was and Karla returned to her truck. It took three tries and still more digging to break the van free. Once she’d dragged it from the drift, Karla built up speed to a steady twenty. Jessie stared at the side mirror and said nothing. The next turnaround was three miles.
Karla swung into the westbound lanes and lined up on her tracks. She towed the van a hundred yards, stopped and backed a foot, taking tension off the rope. The driver’s door opened and the man jumped out. Karla stepped into the road and leveled a handgun on him.
“Back inside. I’ll take care of this.”
“I only want to help you.”
“I don’t know that, and I’m not taking chances. Get in the van.”
He did as she said. Karla untied the rope, turned her truck around, then drove past the van and backed her bumper to it. She stepped out once more and stood off from the van’s passenger side. The woman put down the window.
“I’ll give you a push,” Karla said. “Once you’re moving, stay in the tracks, and don’t stop for anything.”
“Why can’t you give us a ride?” the woman whined.
“I don’t have room. I’m headed the other direction. And it’s not worth the risk, hauling people I don’t know.”
“Tow us to the next town, then,” the man said. “Or at least follow us.”
“The exits are blocked. When you reach the next one, you’ll have to walk.”
“You can’t leave us like this,” the woman said. “We have children.”
“I didn’t put you here. You screwed up. You did this to your family. I’m giving you another chance. That’s all anyone can ask for now.”
Karla climbed into the truck, threw it in reverse, and nudged the van forward. She struggled to hold a straight line, but the method was least likely to damage her truck or the front mounted winch. The vehicles rolled together, slowly building speed, then she hit her brakes and broke contact. The van continued on. Karla quickly resumed her course west, putting distance between them. She did not want to see the vehicle founder.
* * *
The wind howled up a whiteout. Karla stopped and waited it out. Even without traffic it was too dangerous to move forward. The ground sloped away from the pavement on both sides. If she veered off course, she would be a long time digging out.
An hour passed. The wind relented and Karla crept forward into an endless string of drifts. She worked through three deep ones in five miles—each eating valuable daylight. Another mile and they crashed into a sea of snow more than two feet high. The truck swung sharply right and came to a halt. Karla tried to back away, but this time heard the chains spinning uselessly.
Karla was exhausted and considered for a moment spending the night in place. They would have to sleep somewhere. Then she thought about the warm metal melting the snow and refreezing, locking the truck in place. She climbed out and took a measure of the obstacle. At one hundred feet forward the snow still reached her thighs. A second run wouldn’t get them through, or even a third. She returned to the truck and retrieved the shovel. She’d be half a day plowing through. Now, she just needed to dig out.
Thirty minutes got the chains to the pavement and she backed the truck away. Karla first thought to move safely away from the growing snow field and sleep in the cab. Then she considered a rest area they’d passed a few miles back. It wouldn’t be warm, but they’d have room to lie down.
She turned the truck and followed her tracks. Karla parked in the rest area with the tailgate tight to the glass front door. She forced a side door with a tire iron, then she and Jessie carried in bedding, weapons, and a little food. They huddled under blankets in the frigid air, never removing their gloves, never touching anything.
Karla rose at first light. Several inches of powder covered the truck, but the sky had cleared ushering in a bitter cold. She nudged Jessie.
“Time to go, kiddo.”
Jessie rubbed sleep from her eyes and helped load their gear. Karla collected an official Colorado highway map from a rack by the door. She started the truck and let it warm a minute. Even as alone as she thought they were, Karla would not let the truck idle unattended. To lose the truck would be fatal.
Yesterday’s tracks had been filled in some spots but the depression remained where they’d passed twice. Karla spotted the giant snow drift and plowed into it at forty, left of her first entry. The truck slewed right and carved a fifty foot path in the snow.
Karla dug the truck out, made a dozen passes over her incursion, packing it, then took another forty mile per hour run, clearing another fifty feet. Each attack took them deeper into the snow and longer to dig out. The sixth saw them finally burst through.
“We did it!” Jessie squealed. She’d actually enjoyed the flying snow and the sliding truck. She’d escaped the digging because they only had one shovel. And Karla used it far more effectively.
“We’ve still a long way to go.”
“Will we be there today?”
“I hope so, honey.”
The drifts became smaller as they traveled west and they made better time. Karla’s mood brightened when they managed an hour without a serious obstruction, then sank again forty miles from Denver. A wall of vehicles blocked the road. Karla stopped well short and examined the scene with binoculars.
Three rows of cars placed sideways obstructed both lanes and the median. Four semi cabs sat behind them, overlooking the cars and facing down the interstate. Fifty other vehicles lay haphazardly in the depressions lining both side
s of the highway. Cameras hung from steel posts twenty feet high and five hundred apart—three between her and the trucks.
Karla saw movement in one of the semis and threw the truck in reverse. A semi door opened and a figure swung out, holding binoculars and a rifle. She stepped harder on the accelerator. The figure put down the glasses and raised the rifle.
“Get down!”
Karla shoved Jessie and yanked at the steering wheel. The truck swerved. A bullet pierced the windshield and struck the headrest behind Karla. Eight seconds. Another bullet hit just above the windshield wiper. Karla spun the wheel, beginning a turn. If a bullet hit something critical in the engine, they were sitting ducks.
The next bullet came through her door and imbedded in her seat back. The truck rocked forward, completing the turn. She spun the wheels, heard the chains dig. She swerved left then right. A bullet ripped the top off the console. The speedometer struggled to thirty. A thunk from the tailgate and another from the back. She was sure more bullets hit the truck. She just didn’t hear them.
Seven tenths, eight, one mile. Karla overcame the urge to stop and fire back. It was suicidal. The shooter had hit a moving vehicle at considerably more than half a mile. He was far better than her. And there were assuredly more men in the other trucks. If she got close enough to do damage, they would kill her.
She drove. The barricade faded into the background. Three miles, then four. She slowed to a crawl and studied her map. Denver had obviously established rings of protection. She needed to steer well clear of any roads that went there.
“Mom! Someone’s coming.”
Karla stomped the accelerator and glanced at the mirror. A jeep like vehicle was rapidly approaching.
“Shit.”
Karla got the truck to forty, barely staying in their previous tracks. The vehicle behind slowly gained on them. The truck reached forty-five. The chains clinked like an army of metal cicadas. The pursuers hung a half mile back as if tethered with a rope.
They covered several miles, the gap unchanged, then Karla hit a drift, slid sideways, and lost forward speed. She regained control and stomped the accelerator, but when the Jeep cleared the drift it was closer.
Karla pushed hard, increased her lead, slightly. Another drift loomed ahead. They slowed her more than the Jeep, following in her twice cleared wake. Maybe two more and the Jeep would catch them. She reached behind the seat and fumbled in her pack.
The truck hit the drift and exited sideways. Karla righted the truck and saw another drift coming fast.
“I’m sorry, honey. We’re not going to make it. Get on the floor and don’t move, no matter what.”
“Will they kill me?”
Karla fought back tears. She thought of the children in the corn killed by her neighbors. “I hope they only want me.”
She smashed into the drift, hit the brakes, and leaped out before it fully stopped. The fast approaching Jeep bounced into the drift, snow flying. Karla swung the Mini-14 and opened up. Bullets peppered the windshield and driver’s window. The Jeep veered from the track and rolled to a stop. Karla kept firing. A man swung from the passenger side, let loose a quick burst from his rifle, and fell. Karla slapped in a fresh clip and moved to her right. She fired into the vehicle’s doors, then higher as another man spilled from the back seat and went down firing a handgun.
Karla started for her truck, then dropped flat as a rifle poked from the Jeep’s rear window. Bullets zipped into the snow around her. She crawled, away from the truck, her position hidden by the deep snow. The man continued to fire, but the bullets were no longer close. She slithered thirty feet, and a vision flashed of men moving on the truck and finding Jessie.
Karla sprang to a crouch and fired at a man resting a rifle on the Jeep’s door. He crashed backward into the Jeep and slid to the ground. Karla kept up fire as she slogged to the truck, then jumped in and hit the accelerator. A man struggled from beside the jeep, stood unsteadily in the road, and fired.
* * *
Jessie lay curled on the floor. Karla said nothing as they raced through the snow, her hands white on the wheel. Miles passed. She eased up and took deep breaths.
“It’s okay, honey. We got away. The bad men are gone.”
“It hurts,” Jessie said.
Karla glanced in the mirror and stopped the truck. “Where, honey?”
Jessie wiggled into her seat. The left side of her top was wet with blood. She raised it gingerly, exposing the wound.
“Oh, baby.” Karla squeezed Jessie, then grabbed the first aid kit. She cleaned and examined the two wounds—entry and exit, more flesh than muscle. She taped in lieu of stitches, then gave Jessie Cephalexin and Percocet. Infection concerned Karla more than the wound itself, and she was sure it hurt like hell.
“We have to go, mom. Please.” Jessie stared at the side mirror and shook.
“I need to take a good look, first.”
Karla climbed to the roof of the camper and scanned the road behind them with binoculars. The land lay flat and open, nothing but brilliant white for miles. Still, when she slid into the cab, she drove east as fast as she could. The men would have communicated the situation to their comrades. More men would be on the way, to give aid, and possibly pursuit. They wouldn’t like it that men had been killed. She hoped they didn’t have a helicopter handy.
Chapter 64
Karla was elated to be alive and worried about Jessie. She flew east in her own tracks, fifty miles, then bypassed an exit barrier and took highway 71 south. It was a wide swing and would cost several hours. But the map showed no major towns on that route. Still, she feared men behind her. She was a hundred miles from Denver, but when men’s blood was up, there was no telling.
Karla drove sixty miles without seeing another track in the snow, then grew more worried when she did, entering from a narrow side road five miles north of I-70. People had meant trouble, so far. Being alone on the road was a good thing. She stopped and examined the tracks.
The tread was shallow, an all season design, and the track slightly narrower than her truck’s. An SUV, most likely. The snow depth had declined to a bit more than six inches. Karla removed the chains. The truck could handle that depth easily enough with winter tires. The ability to make speed she now considered more important than maximum traction.
The interstate and town ahead presented many opportunities for things to go wrong. She filled the gas tank, reloaded the rifle, and spare clip. She sat behind the wheel and watched Jessie sleep for three solid minutes. Then she put the truck into gear and moved slowly on.
A sign announced one mile to the interstate. Karla continued a short distance, then pulled to the edge of the highway and shut off the truck. She took the scoped rifle and the binoculars and walked across the road and back a hundred feet to a row of pines planted as a windbreak along a long driveway to a farmhouse. She climbed the second to the end, and from a perch near the top looked south.
Two vehicles blocked the road at the far end of her vision—on an overpass, marking the junction with the interstate. One vehicle was a silver SUV. The other was a greenish Jeep, similar to the one that had chased her. Karla felt a chill. This wasn’t a fixed roadblock. These vehicles were waiting.
She gave the situation the thought she should have earlier. A person travelling west from where she was last seen, and trying to avoid Denver, would likely either backtrack to Nebraska and I-80 or turn south and pass through the crossroads town of Limon, where the vehicles sat. It would have been fairly easy for men to arrive there from the Denver blockade ahead of her. And it was not illogical that they would try or that coordinated blockades existed on all the interstates, providing even greater capacity to hunt her down.
Karla returned to the truck and backed away. She turned at the first side road east and hoped the grid was laid out in approximate squares, like in Iowa. She had to cross I-70, and there were a very limited number of places to do it. She wondered how many of those
crossings were also roadblocks. The road east ended at a north/south T. She chose south, then east again. Then south.
The overpass she found was clear. No entry to the interstate and no town in sight. She crossed I-70, then continued south and east. She encountered dead ends and backtracked. She finally reached a marked highway near Hugo and found her location on the map. She skirted the town and turned west, reconnecting with route 71.
The sky turned evening gray and the temperature fell. The detours had taken the whole afternoon and she was still at least two hundred miles from her destination. Another night in the open. Karla didn’t like it, but darkness afforded too many opportunities for ambush. She spotted a trail leading into scrubland and turned in. Half a mile from the highway she parked in a wash. She couldn’t escape her tracks. But few people seemed out. And there would be obvious risk in following tracks into the back country.
Karla cleared snow from a small flat spot fifty feet from the truck, building low wind blocks with compacted snow. She put down a tarp and returned to the truck. She and Jessie ate cold pork chops and cornbread. She settled Jessie for the night in the truck, then moved to the camp with her cold bag and the two rifles. The thermometer in the truck had read nine degrees.
More cornbread in the morning. Karla hadn’t planned on more than one overnight. She had packed a camp stove, but it was deeply buried in back, not intended for the ride. She drove to the highway and headed south.
* * *
There were few towns on their route and Karla did her best to avoid them. She no longer feared the reach of the Denver men, but each town represented its own threat. She suspected the paranoia from Denver was infectious—that small towns would block themselves from the world, until they found they couldn’t.
North of Ordway, she turned west on Road J, seeking a bypass. A single vehicle had passed earlier and she followed the tracks warily—a rancher, a militiaman, a teenager out for a ride? The road ended at a three way intersection and the tracks turned south. Karla stayed with them, studying the map as she drove. A second small town lay to the southwest. The tracks she followed turned due west, apparently skirting the towns, just as she was. She continued with them.
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