“Brittany, your mom was right. But you had a place to live. It was Jessie and I that didn’t. You remember on the day we arrived I said we’d move as soon as the snow melted.”
“I remember.”
“Was your mom happy when we set up the tent?”
“Ray was mad. But mom thought it was a good thing.”
“She liked her privacy, too.”
“Ray’s coming,” Brittany said.
It was a few seconds before Karla heard the truck.
* * *
A cluster of trees ran along a sharp rise two hundred feet from the highway. They winched the machine gun truck into position, moved their trucks behind a hill to the west, and returned on the utility vehicle. It was the emergency exit; their feet the final backup.
They spread out in a line: Karla on the left, Ray in the middle with the machine gun, Brittany on the right with a sniper rifle. They all had captured night vision equipment.
“Think they’ll come?” Karla asked.
“If they don’t by a couple hours after sunrise, we’ll go.”
“I dread that as much as staying.”
“We’ll take our time picking a new spot. Get well clear of these folks and their expanding ambitions.”
“There will just be somebody else,” Karla said. “Don’t you get tired of this?”
“I learned not to sweat things I have no control over. We just need to do what’s right for us as it happens.”
“It’s there.” Brittany pointed.
The plane was north and east. They followed its faint progress west, while remaining under the trees. This one flew higher, more cautious.
“They’ll be coming,” Ray said. The plane’s having a look see.”
The plane circled the mountains to the west three times, then flew north.
* * *
They came in fast without lights—four vehicles, not two. A Humvee led. An SUV followed. Two armored trucks in the rear. Karla, by virtue of her armor piercing ammunition, had been designated to stop the lead vehicle. She’d been expecting something smaller. At four hundred yards, she nailed the windshield in front of the driver, then hit it twice more before shifting left. The Humvee slowed and drifted off the road.
Ray shredded the SUV with machine gun fire. It veered right and overturned. He raked the trucks, flattened tires, and ignited the fuel tank on the last vehicle. Brittany kept up steady fire. Karla couldn’t tell what she hit.
Karla emptied her last clip into the Humvee. As she hurriedly reloaded, a large weapon popped from behind the vehicle along with the head of the man aiming it. Karla smacked a partly filled clip into her rifle. Before she could raise take aim, the man’s head jerked and he fell away.
Ray hit the gas tank on the overturned SUV, and it, too, burst into flames. The large gun appeared again from behind the Humvee. It fired with a whoosh of flame as Ray strafed the vehicle.
“Cover!” Ray screamed, keeping up fire on the Humvee.
Karla hit the ground. Automatic fire ripped into the ridge below her. To the right, past Brittany, a tree exploded into a hundred fiery pieces. Karla pushed the Mini-14 over the lip and fired blindly.
“Fall back,” Ray jumped from the truck, caught sight of Brittany and urged her on.
Karla crawled from the edge then charged down the backside of the hill to the UV, tossing her gear in back and taking the driver’s seat. Behind her, a huge fireball backlit Ray and Brittany, running hand in hand, as hunks of the truck rained across the hilltop. They jumped in the vehicle and Karla tore away.
Flat out, she crossed the scrub ground, turned onto a gravel road, and sped southwest trailing heavy dust. Ray pushed Brittany down and fired at the position they’d just yielded. A bullet thunked into the tailgate. An explosion hurled dirt and rock from their right. Then the road curved behind a hill.
The vehicle lost speed and pulled sharply left. Two hundred yards farther, a rear tire came off the rim as they climbed a rise.
“Shit!” Karla slammed the steering wheel and brought the vehicle to a lopsided stop.
They grabbed their things and charged up the hill. Bursts of automatic fire sounded from behind, the men shooting wildly, guessing at the direction Karla had taken.
Karla reached the top of the hill first and scanned the way she had come. Three men fired from below the ridge where the truck still burned—three quarters of a mile. A bullet pinged off nearby rock, surprising her. Three grenades burst hundreds of yards short. A rocket did the same with a huge boom. Karla lay in the road and sighted the M24. She let off a round at each of the men. She smiled as they dove for cover.
Ray and Brittany crested the rise. “Keep their heads down,” Ray said. “We don’t want them up here shooting at us.” He tugged Brittany on, not stopping.
Karla fired at a man stretched behind a low rock. She saw the spark as her bullet impacted and she adjusted. On her third try the man jolted sideways. The other two scurried for better cover. She fired a single shot at each then tore after Ray and Brittany. She caught them at the trucks.
“You run lead,” Ray said. “I’ll hang back. If someone gets after us, I’ll let you know.”
She jumped in the truck and fired it up. Brittany climbed in the other door.
“Ray says I should spot for you.”
She stared at Ray. He frantically waved her on.
Chapter 78
Karla made the turn onto 149 at South Fork. The road followed the river into a narrow valley. They drove at speed, lights off, past scattered homes and businesses that became fewer as they progressed north. Brittany didn’t speak as she loaded rifles and filled the spare clips.
Karla slowed near Creede and waited for Ray. She stopped in the road when she saw his truck and let him pull alongside. She preferred not to use the handhelds for fear of interception.
“I don’t like towns if I can avoid them,” Karla said. “This one looks worse than most.”
“You got a plan that doesn’t involve trying every road we come to?”
“Map shows a county road cutting off the hairpin. Next one’s got to be it.”
“Go.”
Karla made the turn and followed a road that quickly turned to gravel. She cursed herself and continued. Brittany pointed.
“A helicopter.”
The copter rose and headed southeast. Karla slid to a stop beside a steep rock bank. She jumped out with the M24. Brittany said “Chopper” into the handheld, then picked up the scoped Remington.
The helicopter changed vector and swung in behind Ray, half a mile back, five hundred feet up, and headed straight for them, fast. Karla lay on top of the camper and sighted in. Brittany sat in the dirt, her back against the steep rock.
Gunfire burst from the copter. Ray’s truck roared and swerved and went off road. Karla opened fire, putting five holes through the chopper’s bubble. Brittany continued shooting while Karla slammed home the next clip. The helicopter juddered sideways, tilted up, then dropped like a rock.
Ray swung back to the road. The radio squawked, “Roll!” and Ray thundered by.
Now, Karla followed, dropping back to get out of Ray’s dust. They hit pavement, then quickly slid the turn to the highway. Ray drove ninety in the dark. Karla chased him as the sky slowly lightened to their rear.
They angled south along the Rio Grande then turned abruptly north, leaving the river just east of its origin. The road gained curves. Ray slowed. The sun broke the ridge, and Ray turned onto a dirt road. Two hundred yards down he stopped. He opened the door and swung a bloodied leg out. Karla pulled behind his truck and grabbed the first aid kit.
Ray pushed down his jeans. “Four vehicles and a chopper. All headed for us.”
Karla closed the wound in his thigh and treated several gashes on his face and neck. Brittany, Karla discovered, also had shrapnel wounds, though she hadn’t said a word.
“Must have a staging area at Creede,” Ray said. “Fu
el at the least, maybe men. I was hoping the copter hadn’t had time to give a fix on our position. If we’re lucky, they’ll think we were going after them, not running.”
“What does it matter?” Karla asked.
“If they think we’re on the offensive, back in Pueblo, they’ll be trying to find our base. They won’t be plotting where to intercept us.”
“We can take them,” Brittany said.
Ray shook his head. “We can do a lot of damage, hit and run. They get the jump on us, it’s a different story. We’ll be in range of their planes for a good while. And you can bet they’ll send them all.”
“Then don’t we need to move?”
Ray nodded. He fished a packet of caffeine pills from his pocket and took one. He held out the pills for Karla.
“Got my own,” she said.
Ray slid to the passenger’s side and Brittany took the wheel. Karla shook her head and turned for the highway. Brittany’s skills picked up as the day wore on—long stretches of twists, turns, and changes in elevation. All day on back roads in the high country. They stopped and climbed ridges twice, scanning with binoculars. The Pueblo men stayed out of the sky in the daytime.
“Here,” Ray said over the handheld.
Karla stopped and they pulled abreast. Ray pointed off road to a steep climb into a thick forest.
Karla shrugged. “Let’s go.”
She snaked her way toward the trees and finally attacked the hill head on. She winched the truck up the last slope, then hauled up Ray’s truck. They tucked the vehicles in the trees and cut branches for added cover.
They made camp and ate cold soup and cornbread. They slept in shifts, Brittany standing her watch as well. She woke Ray and Karla hours before dawn to listen to the faint sound of a plane far to the south. They focused on its location and heading, but the sound faded to nothing. Brittany tracked it for two more minutes. She could offer little more than it was headed away.
* * *
“There’s no way around,” Karla said, studying their location south of Craig. “We could backtrack, circle over to Hayden, cross 40 there and reconnect with 13.”
“How long?” Ray asked.
“An extra hour or two.”
“Closer or farther from Pueblo?”
“A little closer. No big deal at this distance.”
“What would you do if it was you, alone?”
“Try side roads. The ones not on the map. Maybe take a look from high ground.”
Ray worked his jaw. “How’s this. Brittany and I will take point. You follow at fifteen seconds. We see anything, we’ll yell out.”
“That’s good for me. But I worry about you.”
“Is there anything you don’t worry about?”
“Sometimes it pays off,” Karla said.
Ray nodded. “Yeah. Caution can be a good thing, until it freezes you in your tracks.”
“You thinking I’ve turned coward?”
“You’re better than most at confronting what you see. Your trouble is with what you imagine.”
Karla stared at Ray, not sure how to take the blunt assessment. “Okay. I don’t like mistakes. I let one take Jessie. I’ll never get over that.”
“I’m sorry for Jessie. But your work in that house saved the three of us. Your structure survived five hand grenades and gave us a way to fight. One punch took out the cave door.”
“I built it for Jessie. I brought her there to be safe.”
Ray opened the truck door. “Since this started, my plans haven’t worked for shit. There’s just things you don’t see coming.” He paused and leaned on the door. “And even when you do, sometimes there’s damn little you can do about it.”
Chapter 79
Ray rolled down the hill and hit the highway. Uncomfortable or not. He should be at the wheel if they anticipated trouble. He truthfully didn’t expect it one minute more than the next. But no doubt, it was out there, waiting for them to stumble into it. Travel in unknown country was about the most dangerous thing there was.
“Where are we going?” Brittany asked, as if reading his mind.
“Someplace like where we were, I guess. First step is to get beyond where those men can find us.”
“Will Karla build us a new house?”
“I will.”
“I like hers.”
“So do I. I’m sure she’ll help.”
“Why doesn’t she like us?”
“She does. She just has a funny way of dealing with people.”
“Mom said she finds fault with everything.”
“I think she tries to find things to make better. There’s a big difference.”
“How?”
“One person just complains and points fingers. The other solves problems, even if no one knows they exist.”
Brittany pointed to a wisp of smoke, almost lost against the puffy clouds to the east.
“Someone’s cooking breakfast,” Ray said. “A hundred and fifty years ago, this place was more empty than it is today. A traveler might see that as a sign of civilization. Today, it’s more likely something to avoid. Better tell Karla.”
The road flattened and widened. A few houses. Empty hotels. A car dealer. Ray pulled into the lot. Karla eased beside him.
“You have the pump? Thought we might top off.”
Karla nodded and they climbed out, rifles held ready. Karla connected the pump to her inverter and showed Brittany how to fill the fuel jugs, a tedious process with each vehicle on the lot having no more than a few gallons in the tank. Karla sniffed the fuel and added it to their vehicles. Ray sat on the hood of an Impala and scanned the sky.
“Smoke looked east of town,” Karla said. “They don’t seem afraid to let people see it.”
“Because there’s no trouble here? Or because they are the trouble.”
“I’d vote for the second option.”
Ray worked his mouth. “We’d do better if we hooked up with a group of like minded people.”
“How can you tell without getting close enough they can kill you?”
“Like with Dana,” Ray replied. “Sneak in and take a look. Surveillance is one of the few things I handle pretty well.”
“Map says we’re about three hundred air miles from Pueblo. They could fly here. They might have more refueling spots than Creede.”
“We’re not dealing with the Roman Empire. There’s a few hundred in Pueblo, maybe a thousand, but I doubt it. They’re sending out crews of less than ten. They need to stick with attacks on small settlements. Your prisoner said they had four hunting parties. Now they got two. No way can they be here.”
Karla rolled her eyes. “They can equip new crews.”
“I think we set them back. I think folks in Pueblo are going to go hungry.”
“What puzzles me is if forty or fifty are out hunting, what are all the others doing?”
“In a society like that, it’s somehow connected to food or survival.” Ray dropped the tailgate on his truck. “I need to see what’s going on.” He rolled the Honda down the ramp. “If I’m not back in an hour, head north. I’ll catch up.”
“I don’t like us splitting up.”
“You want to come looking,” he pointed at the smoke. “That’s where I’ll be.”
Karla unfolded her map. “We’ll make camp near here.” Her finger sat on a junction near Laramie. “We’ll wait two days.”
Ray skirted Craig to the south then ringed the city’s east side. He went off road into low rolling hills, then parked the bike and climbed a rise. He lay in the dried grass and scanned with binoculars. He saw at once the source of the smoke: A barbeque pit in front of a church.
Three men stood beside it. As best he could tell, no rifles leaned nearby, no weapons visible at all. He watched for fifteen minutes. Two women in Sunday dresses came and went from inside the building. One man poked the coals and examined some sort of meat roasting on a hand-turned spit.
>
Ray returned to the Honda and rode it up the hill. He stopped and waved and waited for a reaction. They stood their ground. A young man hesitated then raised his hand. Ray idled the bike down the hill and headed toward them. One of the men broke from the group and moved up the walk toward the church. Ray stopped in the drive, shut off the bike, and walked it to a telephone pole a hundred feet from the building.
He stood away from the bike, his hands out from his sides. He waited a few seconds, then called out, “I’d like to say hello. If you don’t want visitors, just say so, and I’ll be on my way.”
The two men conferred, then the younger one waved Ray in.
“I’m going to chain my bike to the pole, okay?”
The young man nodded. Ray secured the Honda and walked slowly to the assembled group. As he neared the barbeque, two men stepped out of the church; one carried a handgun, held loosely by his side.
“I’ve been back in the mountains,” Ray said. “Well south of here. Men from Pueblo cleared us out. They had planes and helicopters. Armored vehicles and automatic weapons. Wondered if you’d heard about them.”
“We hear vehicles come through, time to time,” The man with the gun said. He was tall and muscled. An athlete twenty years ago. “You said ‘Us’. You’re not alone?”
“I’m travelling with a woman and a teenage girl. We saw the smoke. I rode over to check it out.”
“Where are they?” The man asked.
“A few miles. We’ve been shot at three times in the past twenty-four hours. We’re a bit skittish.”
“Near here?”
“No. Down south.”
“How many were you?”
“Five. A woman and a young girl were killed.”
“Very sorry to hear that. You can rest here. There’ll be no trouble.” He glanced at the barbeque. “You are welcome to share our bounty. Your companions as well. But they must come without weapons.”
“I see you carry a gun.”
“Yes. I alone. And only because a stranger is among us.”
A grey headed woman in a flowered dress appeared in the church doorway. “Did you say there are women in your party?”
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