The Toyota was gone from the road as was the utility vehicle. It was on her list, and she hoped it had travelled no farther than to one of the barns. She’d also seen a large plastic water tote—at least two hundred gallons—and a myriad of farm implements that could prove useful.
From the windbreak, she scanned the back side of the farmyard. The door to the big barn was closed. To the far right, a smaller building with a garage door was open and empty. Next to that was a similar sized building but closed. Between her and the farmhouse was the stand alone building Macy had hid behind to shoot at her. Karla jogged to the large barn, in view from the house for half the distance. She listened at the door before sliding it open.
Little had changed from her last visit, except the bodies were gone and the utility vehicle now rested where they’d been. She checked for the key and was disappointed. She unscrewed the ignition switch from the panel and examined the wires. She stripped three of them then cut two pieces of wire from a lead to the rear light. She used one wire to connect the battery to the ignition module. The other she spliced to the battery then touched to the starter just long enough to hear it engage. She broke the connection with a smile.
The tote she wanted sat against the far wall. She removed the cover and sniffed. Moldy water as expected. The container would have been useless if it had been used for chemicals. She eyed the tote. It wouldn’t fit on the vehicle, but it would on the trailer that had hauled the family’s bodies, and sat next to a flatbed farm wagon. She pushed the trailer to the tote, dragged it on, then maneuvered the trailer to the utility vehicle and hooked it up.
Two more things. She had seen a diesel generator in the barn and a hundred twenty gallon vertical propane tank next to the house. She rolled the generator to the trailer then stepped into the yard and jogged to the small outbuilding between her and the house.
She peeked around the corner. No obvious vandalism to the house and the tank was there. She’d still need to clear the house and remaining buildings. Squatters could be anywhere. She moved to the door of the building beside her and pushed open the door.
Cold air rushed out. Two carcasses hung from a wooden beam in the center of the room. The hair on Karla’s neck stood and her pulse jumped. They were humans, gutted and hung like field dressed deer. The nearest was a woman. Next to her a boy nearly the woman’s height. The air-conditioner built into the wall kicked on.
“Oh shit,” Karla mouthed the words and backed out, shutting the door quietly. She jogged to the barn keeping an eye on the house. Inside, she crossed toward the utility vehicle, debating whether to risk making off with her goods.
She had seen no vehicles near the house, though she doubted, now, the farm was deserted. The noise from the engine would be heard and her exit briefly visible from the house. It would take time for the noise to register and for someone to investigate. She’d be across the bridge. A truck couldn’t follow, but . . . .
The bullet struck the small of her back and threw her into the corner of a flatbed trailer. Karla turned as she fell and caught two more bullets in the chest before landing on her back beside the trailer. The pain was intense. She struggled for breath. She reached for the rifle that wasn’t there.
Shuffling footsteps moved closer on the other side of the trailer. Karla fumbled the handgun from her belt, held it in her right hand, beneath the trailer. A wiry man stepped into view and kicked her leg. He glanced at her then took a step and knelt to pick up her rifle. He was six feet away, partially visible below the flatbed. Her shot hit him just below the shoulder. He lurched forward. She fired twice more, hitting his head and his neck, not chancing he wore body armor, as she did.
* * *
Karla lay beneath the trailer and waited for the men to come. She held the pistol to her head, afraid to guess what such men might do. Minutes passed. Her breath returned, and her wits. She retrieved her rifle, rose to her feet gripping the trailer, and began the slow walk, finally collapsing in the seat of the utility vehicle.
Every bump in the rutted road sent stabbing pain. She crossed the bridge with gritted teeth and before anything else, downed three Percocet from the first aid kit in her truck. She worked slowly as she waited for the pills to kick in, winching the tote and the generator into the uncapped truck bed and the utility vehicle onto her trailer. She drove across the field and parked behind a row of round baled hay sitting on a slight rise. She set up the M24, lay prone on the bales, and sighted in. Then she closed her eyes and waited.
* * *
The lead pickup was a heavy duty Ram with a long barreled gun mounted in the bed. The second was a stake side, a little larger. They stopped in front of the house and men piled out. Karla shot the Ram’s driver and three more before the remainder of the crew found cover.
Rifles fired. Bullets zipped through grass. A few whizzed over her head. One hit the bale Karla lay on. A man behind the larger truck’s front tire fired at her with an open sight rifle. Karla put a bullet through the tire. He stopped shooting. She flattened tires on both trucks for good measure.
Another man climbed to the big gun in the Ram. Karla shot him as he spun the weapon. The return fire became sporadic. Karla scanned the yard in the scope. A woman in shredded jeans and no top stood in the bed of the second truck, her hands tied to the top rail. Karla pictured her in the meat house. She sighted on the rail and let out a breath, then pulled the trigger, knowing what little chance the woman had.
The rail splintered but didn’t break. The woman stunned at first, slid her bonds to the fracture and finished the job. She hopped off the truck and ran. A man went after her. Karla dropped him. Then a shot from the left spun the woman. Blood pulsed from her chest. Her legs gave out in slow motion and she collapsed, not fifty feet from the truck.
Karla considered the nature of her favor and sought a target to vent her anger. The men stayed hidden. She shot the truck engines, the gas tanks, and the windows. Then she slid from the hay and drove away.
Karla was sure there were other vehicles on the farm. There had been before. The men would be cautious. They’d been kicked hard, and couldn’t be sure if another ambush was waiting. They would come, though. There were fewer of them, but they would lust for her blood.
The sun dipped lower. Karla saw no chance to make it home. She headed north, then west, off road into desolate hill country. Each breath brought pain; each dip in the suspension even more. Karla guessed she had broken a rib.
She parked in a wash miles from a road, then struggled up a rise. Dust trailed two vehicles far to the east. They hit a paved road and their progress disappeared. Karla lay in a sleeping bag with her rifles, a can of beans, and a bottle of water. She watched until she fell asleep in the dark.
* * *
The drone of an engine startled Karla awake. Not a car or truck: a plane, without lights, cruising the valley. She let her panic wane and thought about it. The plane was flying a pattern, as if searching. That meant the pilot had night vision equipment, maybe even thermal imaging. The question became: were they looking for her or for anyone?
She thought maybe both. People couldn’t be captured unless they could be found. The method fell into place. People burned candles, oil lamps, they cooked in the dark to hide the smoke. Night was the best time to search from the air. Mark the locations and come back with force in the daylight. Where there were people there was food.
The sound moved closer. She scanned with binoculars. No good. Stealth in a new era. Were these the same men? She thought not. Men who had a plane would live nearby, perhaps at an airport. They could be scouting hundred of miles, looking for easily identified targets. The men she’d seen might be part of their crew or there could be other such operations. How many men, she wondered, had sunk so low?
Karla moved off the hilltop and hunkered by a large rock outcropping, still warm from the sun. It would help hide her from thermal imaging. It would be plain bad luck if they found her with night vision among all the miles of
open land.
At dawn, she scouted the skies and saw only puffy clouds. She took more pills and left for the mountains. Four hours later, she struggled to her tent and collapsed on her bedroll.
Jessie followed her inside. “Mom! Mom! What happened?” Karla didn’t answer and Jessie ran from the tent.
Chapter 73
Brittany and Jessie pulled weeds in the garden. The adults sat with rifles a hundred feet away. It was the morning following Karla’s return, and she told them what she had seen.
“Spotters and kill teams,” Ray said.
“Cannibalism doesn’t surprise you?” Karla asked
“There’s a long history with desperate people.”
“Trust me. This isn’t three survivors of a plane crash feasting on the recently departed.”
“It’s still life or death. The stores have been picked clean, farms raided. I haven’t seen livestock anywhere, have you?”
“No, but I haven’t had a plane to search with either. They could be hunting for a city, take any meat they can find.”
“What if they come here?” Caitlin asked.
“In the cave, we’re invisible to night vision or infra red.”
“The fireplace,” Karla corrected. “I’m not sure what they’d make of it from a plane—a narrow hotspot in a mass of rock. Be no mistake what it is in the winter.”
“Any suggestions, short of radar and hand held rockets?”
“I’d definitely work on air defense,” Karla said. “If we hit a plane with even a single bullet, it’ll shake them up. They won’t be in a hurry to come back. Probably figure us as a band of survivalists holed up in rough country.”
“Still, they might come, one day.”
“One thing I’d make sure of. Anyone goes to town takes a spotter in the truck. There’s nothing to say they don’t fly in the daytime, too. We don’t need to lead them here.”
“You’re the only one who’s gone alone,” Ray said.
“I wouldn’t have taken anyone to the farm. It was creepy enough before I knew what it turned into. I’m never going back.”
“How many do think were there?” Caitlin asked.
“I counted twelve in the trucks. Thirteen with the man in the barn. Six are down for the count. Two others are hurting. I can’t imagine they’ll do well without medical care.”
“Five left. I don’t think you have to worry about them coming here.”
“A couple hours more daylight, there wouldn’t have been that many.”
“Have you considered maybe they called in the plane to look for you?”
“If they did, it was based a long way off, or they started searching in the wrong direction.”
“Lucky for you.”
“I expected them to come after me. I didn’t think about a plane, but I spent a night in the scrub, making sure I wasn’t followed, and ready if I was.”
“You can hardly walk.”
“I can still pull a trigger.”
They talked at length on what to do, then called over the girls.
“Have either of you seen an airplane?” Ray asked.
They shook their heads in unison.
“Bad men have one not far from here. They hurt Jessie’s mom. If you hear an airplane, don’t look for it, run for cover. Get under trees if you can. Don’t let it see you. Don’t move till it’s gone. You can yell to warn us. They can’t hear you in a plane.”
“What if they see us?” Brittany pleaded.
“Don’t let it upset you,” Ray said. “We have dealt with bad men. If we see a plane, it’s a good thing in a way. We’ll know we have time to get ready.”
* * *
Karla rested four days, decided the rib wasn’t broken, and began construction. She built against a slab of rock two hundred yards from the trail to the cave. She worked every daylight hour and sometimes beyond. She scrounged help for a couple of the toughest projects. She took time off only to hunt deer with Ray when Brittany was unwell and for three trips to South Fork, one overnight, to acquire her missing gas tank.
She finished in early fall and held the open house on a warm afternoon, starting the explanations as she walked around the windowless exterior.
“The exposed walls are doubled eight inch block, reinforced and filled, then skim coated with cement—basically a custom built cave with amenities.” She pointed to a six by six protrusion from the right. “That houses a generator and fifty gallons of fuel. It’s auxiliary, really, good for power tools, pumping water, whatever. I won’t use it day to day.”
Karla held open the steel door and let everyone inside. “The wood stove can heat and cook—high draft, low smoke. The flue is insulated between walls.” Karla moved on. “The sink has a forty gallon cistern and a real drain. The cooktop is gas. The tank is buried and secured, seventy feet out. We have a gas grill as well, like yours.”
“I like your walls,” Caitlin said.
“Faux stucco on drywall. Framed two by tens behind that, full insulation, R-38.
“What can you watch on the TV,” asked Brittany.
“Movies, but not a marathon, unless I run the generator which I won’t. Batteries need time to recharge. The whole roof is a solar array.”
Karla slid open the pocket door to her sleeping area. “Queen bed, built in shelves for clothes . . . and weapons. Jessie’s room is on the other end, same thing but she’s not done with the decorations.”
Karla pushed aside the folding door between the bedrooms and swept the room with her arm. “The pièce de résistance.”
“Oooooh,” said Caitlin.
“The toilet is ultra low flow and has its own cistern. Thirty flushes before a refill.” Karla pointed to the corner. “Not much room in the shower, but there is a gas water heater that can be turned on for special occasions. It’s room temperature other than that. Cistern holds a hundred gallons—ten very quick showers.
“How do you refill the cisterns?” Ray asked.
“Low speed battery operated pump. About six hours to fill them all. You’ve undoubtedly noticed the two hundred gallon tote.”
“All the luxuries of home.”
“And safety features you couldn’t get in the cave.”
“I’m all ears,” Ray said.
“The main problem with sealed living is assuring an air supply. You built vents into the fireplace and wall. They are designed so that someone can’t easily shoot through them, but they can be blocked or noxious substances can be fed through them.”
“There’s no way to hide an air supply.”
“For the cave, no. Here, I’ve run four inch PVC underground. One shaft comes up a hundred feet out, the other a hundred and fifty. Both are hidden in natural vegetation.”
“What’s the second feature?”
“Say someone, a group of men, spotted your shelter. They waited patiently till you opened the door in the morning, killed you and burst in. Alternately, you lock yourself in, knowing men are out there. They lay siege. If they block your air, you have to open the door within a day. If they don’t, you could wait weeks with the food and water on hand, but in increasing unpleasant conditions. They would surely give up, or try to take down the front wall. How would you know it is safe to open up?”
“How would you?”
Karla opened a laptop computer to a screen split eight ways. “Cameras. Battery operated from a power inverter. The cell farm can run three weeks without recharging. I’m assuming an attacker would destroy my solar cells. Though I’ve got a few surprises for anyone who tries and a two KW wind generator backup.”
“Those video cables are underground, too?” Ray asked.
Karla smiled. “I had to cable them because of the need for remote power.”
“Okay. I’m impressed. Damn you don’t miss much.”
“One failure can spell disaster,” Caitlin chanted. “A single error is one too many.”
“Company slogans,” Karla added. “T
hey keep engineers busy.”
Caitlin grabbed Ray’s arm. “I don’t understand half of what Karla’s done, but we need indoor plumbing, too.”
Chapter 74
Karla kicked snow from her boots then dropped onto the loveseat, still breathing hard from the trek. Winter hunting meant skis and snowshoes, ranging miles in search of scarce game. Jessie had been with her that morning on the southern slope while Ray and Brittany had gone west.
Ray stepped through the door with Jessie. “How many?”
They had seen tracks on the return that were not game. Jessie had walked wing with the rifle as Karla used her energies to drag the deer home on a purpose-built sled. Jessie was not the shot Brittany was but she had stamina and patience. And she was fearless.
“One person. Three miles, southeast.”
“Did you follow?”
Karla looked to Jessie and shook her head. “I had the deer.”
“I’ll go in the morning,” Ray said. “Your turn to stand watch here.”
* * *
Ray lay prone beneath a ponderosa pine, on a ridge above a small pond, five miles from his own camp. Through binoculars, he followed tracks to a crude shelter cobbled together from brush and limbs—not much more than a lean-to. He handed the glasses to Brittany. He had said nothing to Caitlin about their mission that morning, anticipating her likely response.
Ray thought he and Brittany worked well together. She had learned to shoot and to hunt. He believed it was time for another survival lesson, as safe as he could make it, but there were no guarantees.
“Two.” Brittany handed back the glasses.
They ate cornbread and watched. The sun rose. The snow softened. A woman stepped to the pond, broke ice, and retrieved a bucket of water. A teenage boy practiced archery near the shack.
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