The man called out several times. He took his time, then fired into the hall to Ray’s surprise. Ray backed into the stairwell. The man called out again, then reached through the doorway of the greatroom and fired a burst on full auto. He crept in and moved toward the door in back. Ray stepped around the corner and shot him.
Ray secured the outer door, then moved toward the bedrooms and rapped on the door.
“Brittany, Ray. Open up.”
The door opened. “It’s okay. It’s okay.” Ray hugged Brittany, rubbed her back and repeated the reassurances. They watched the small monitor. “Stay here,” Ray said. “No matter what. I’ve got to go upstairs.”
Ray climbed the spiral stairs dragging the M16s the men had carried, leaving his rifle with Brittany. The shooting platform on top of the building was a twelve by twelve space with gun ports on all sides. Karla’s articulated, hinged closures were just partially installed and the future concrete ceiling now simply plywood forms beneath a sheetmetal exterior. But the platform was the only means to fire out from that building. He quietly opened a working port, smiling at Karla’s sense of priorities.
The truck mounted machine gun sat in the drive with a full view of the front of both buildings. The man behind it scanned with his eyes instead of the gun. Ray shot him and another man, then ducked. He popped up at a second port and shot a man exiting the old house. Bullets sprayed the concrete walls of his platform, some flying through an open port, sticking into the pine planked walls. Ray moved again, shoved the rifle out and let loose on full auto. The machine gun raked the building and ripped the rifle from his hand. Then engines started and vehicles pulled away.
Ray returned to the ground floor and checked the monitor. The men had really gone. He hugged Brittany. “I’m going back up. You see anything call out.”
Ray heard the machine gun before he reached the platform. North. The men had run smack into Karla and the returning crew. Ray climbed down. He saw no choice but to abandon the house and go to her aid. If she held them in the road. He’d kill them from behind.
Heavy gunfire continued up the road. Ray and Brittany stepped into the yard with M16s and the keys to the Toyota. An engine roared south on the road. They took positions behind a low planter, facing the road. The vehicle continued toward them, no sign of slowing.
“The SUVs got our food and gear. Try not to hit the cargo,” Ray said.
They fired as it came abreast—at the driver then the tires. The vehicle swerved off the road, slowed, and returned to the pavement. Ray and Brittany ran for the Toyota.
Chapter 92
Karla passed the farm, saw the Toyota in the road, the SUV beyond it, and her immediate danger. She ducked, stopped the truck at an angle and hunkered behind the engine as bullets shattered the windshield and bounced around under the hood. She unlatched a door and kicked it open. Three bullets greeted it.
“TJ! Brittany! Hey. It’s Karla.” She took off her white top, hung it from the rifle and poked it out. “It’s me!”
She waited thirty seconds and stepped into sight, waving the top. Brittany waved back from the ditch.
“I’m coming down with the truck.” It was leaking fluids but still running. She stopped behind the Toyota, leaving the machine gun in view of the SUV, then she dropped into the ditch.
“I’m sorry.” Brittany was in tears.
Karla hugged her. “I’m okay. You didn’t do anything wrong.” She glared at Ray who turned to the SUV.
“There were two men. We shot them up. They haven’t moved since we got here. Our stuff’s in the back. Be careful.”
Karla took the M16 from Brittany and checked it over. “I’ll take the right side. The one over there.” She crossed the road without waiting for an answer and circled into the field. Whoever was in the vehicle was low, below the windows. She fired twice, high into the door. Ray fired from the other side.
“Step out with your hands in the air.” Karla counted to three and fired lower. “Now!”
The passenger door opened. A man stepped out with one arm raised, the other bloodied.
“How about your partner?”
“Dead,” the man shouted.
Open all the doors. Drag him out.”
* * *
The two wounded prisoners were given first aid and secured in a grain crib. TJ was buried in a cleared space between the now fallow field and the drive. Rainy stood by the grave with Brittany long after Karla had departed. She had pressing matters to attend to.
Karla escorted the man captured in the SUV to the barn, where Ray waited. He needed much less persuasion to talk than the man from Pueblo.
“Where you from?” Karla asked.
“Moline.”
“You’re a long way from home.”
“Food’s hard to come by. We keep spreading out.”
“You find much?”
“Some had things stashed. You know, before they took sick.”
“You take mostly from empty houses?”
“When we find people, we know they got something, done our work for us.”
“You see many groups like us?”
“Some.”
“You know about big groups?”
“Minneapolis. Supposed to be thousands there.”
“How many with you.”
“Not close to that. We got a few hundred.”
“That takes a lot of food.”
“We got gardens, but the seeds don’t work right. You can’t grow enough for how many we got.”
“People die off.”
“Some. Not from starving. They just die from anything.”
“You ever been this way before?”
“We don’t go the same place twice. Why would we?”
“You know there are people in Cedar Rapids?”
“We don’t mess with cities. They ran out first. All the food’s in the country. Leastwise it’s easier to find.”
“Where’d you get the machine gun?”
The man smiled. “National guard. They got some cool stuff.”
“Left in the open?”
“They locked the real toys somewhere else. But we did okay.”
“Nice M16s.”
“We got hundreds. Six Humvees that run. Grenade launchers, machine guns.”
“How many like you?”
“What do you mean?”
“How many trained with weapons, ready to use them?”
“You don’t think you can whip us?”
“Yeah, right. Me and my three friends. We just want to survive.”
“Well, good luck. Another crew will find you. That’s how it is.”
“Law of the jungle.”
“That’s what Prentiss says. No rules but what we make ourselves.”
“Smart man. He your squad leader?”
“More’n that. He’s the man.”
“He gonna send men to find you?”
“He ain’t gonna leave us here.”
“He knows where you are?”
“Gave us the map.”
“Where is it?”
He shrugged. “In the truck, I’d guess. Won’t do you no good. He’s got his own copy.”
Karla asked a couple more questions, then left the man with Ray and went looking for the map.
* * *
“They were covering more than four hundred square miles,” Karla said. “With a seventy-five mile trail here and another seventy-five back. They’ll be a while finding us.”
“But you expect more to come,” said Lamar.
“Some would take what happened as a warning. Others would seek out the cause. I’m not sure which we’re dealing with. But I’d be prepared. Bury their vehicles. Finish security work. Wait a week before we put up the tower. If we get real lucky, they’ll stumble into that bunch from Cedar Rapids.”
“If I took the SUV to Arkansas, would that be better than burying it?” Lamar asked.
“Be my
guest. But do it quick.”
“You’re not really worried about this, are you?”
“Someday I’m going to die. In the meantime, keeping busy beats living in fear. Besides, they could send a hundred men with rifles and they couldn’t get in here. With the machine gun, they’d take a hard lick trying. They wouldn’t have the men to go twice.”
Lamar puckered his lips.
“You considering not coming back?” Karla asked.
“I don’t think I’d want to be here if you weren’t.”
“Call ahead and I’ll let you know.”
Karla’s cockiness was for show. If the men had military gear—explosives, light artillery, even RPGs, the defenders were in a world of trouble. She figured they had to find her first. Then bring up the forces. She had a couple days to work with.
* * *
Karla woke Jeff at four. “I need help. Will you join me?”
He threw off the covers and dressed. “What are we doing?”
“Maybe getting shot. Maybe finding buried treasure.” Karla saw hesitation. “Ray knows. He’s on watch.”
They arrived before dawn in Ray’s new truck hooked to a trailer with the backhoe. Karla drove it off using night vision and backed it to the power cable at the pad of the former windmill. She explained to Jeff and waited for his signal as she scooped deeper. At four feet, Jeff waved. The cable ran toward the house as she expected. She dug and followed.
Fifty feet from the house the cable entered a large junction box. One cable ran out the other side for the house. Two cables cut to the left. Karla sighted down the double line—nothing obvious to give away the shelter she felt sure was there. She realigned the backhoe, moved out twenty feet and found the cables. She backed thirty more and found them again. She tried fifty further on a cross dig. Still there. She moved down a gentle slope to the edge a small meadow that had clearly been a garden. Nothing. She shifted ten feet and hit something solid beneath a Rose of Sharon.
Karla scraped away two feet of soil and found the tree’s roots wrapped in a wire mesh basket attached to a sealed, steel hatch, like on a ship. She unhooked the cage and cut through the hatch with a gas powered abrasive saw. Foul air burst from inside. She stepped away and climbed the hill to Jeff. They watched and listened for ten minutes, letting the chamber breath, then reloaded the backhoe and drove the truck to the excavation. There would be things to take. She wanted to load and move.
Jeff maintained guard duty while Karla worked open the hatch. She waited again for the odors to subside, concluded they would not completely, then climbed down a metal ladder. She saw at once the shelter was well planned. There should have been ventilation. She wondered what had gone wrong. She found a man first, then a woman and two children in the three room home that put her mountain house to shame.
What Karla wanted filled a storeroom: canned food, military rations, freeze dried packets and an arsenal that included a heavy machine gun, several exotic rifles, and cases of ammunition. She carried it all topside and loaded the truck.
“You need help?” Jeff called down.
Karla shook her head. “Don’t watch me. Keep an eye out for intruders.”
It took two hours; the truck bed roped and tarped to contain the overflow. Karla sat on the tailgate, catching her breath from seventy trips up the ladder. She motioned Jeff down from his perch, then froze. A dust cloud rose from the north. She grabbed her rifles and jogged to meet Jeff. They cut over the ridge for a view. The house wasn’t visible from the road, and with the windmill gone, all that showed was an overgrown driveway.
Karla sighted the rifle and watched. Two Humvees and two trucks rolled past headed south. She loped to the road and stared at the retreating plume. A few miles ahead the road ended in a T junction. She watched for the dust to change direction. It faded from view first.
* * *
Jeff drove. Karla sat on the tarp in back, leaning against the cab. She held the rifle ready. Jeff stopped at the T. The shortest route home was left. She pointed right. It was more desolate, if that description could still be used.
Jeff turned south on the first paved road and picked up speed. Karla stood for a front view then began a full circle scan. A dust trail appeared a mile to the east, then another to the west: vehicles on parallel gravel roads. She signaled Jeff for more speed.
The trail to the west moved past them. The one to the east held even. They approached a cross road. They couldn’t turn; both directions were blocked. If they continued straight, the vehicles to the west would eventually be able to cut them off. Karla pounded on the window and motioned for Jeff to turn around.
Jeff made a wide turn through a field and headed north. The dust trails split. A set on both sides U-turned with them. Two more continued south then turned onto the cross road and were headed for a convergence behind her—four vehicles penning them in. Karla saw no possibility of escape with the trailer and only a little without it.
Jeff stopped. Karla unhooked the trailer, smacked the side of the truck, and leaped in. Jeff floored it. The dust had faded to the south, meaning the vehicles were now on the paved road behind them. The dust to the west had pulled ahead while they stopped. They blew through an intersection, the last before a T would force a turn. Karla gauged the distances and pounded on the window.
They reversed direction again and made the turn west half a mile before the pursuing truck reached the intersection. Their truck roared past one hundred. The truck to the west U-turned to intercept them: the pursuers had excellent communication . . . or a spotter. Karla scanned the hills to the east, then she looked up. A small plane hovered directly overhead—a drone. It had to be.
Jeff flew through the intersection, seconds ahead of the western truck. It braked hard and skidded past the turn. A rifle protruded from the passenger window. Karla fired a burst from the M16. She did the same at the drone, the effort equally futile.
The truck regained the road and its partner joined it, most of a mile behind, now. Karla studied the drone. It too fell back. Top speed less than eighty. Not a military model. More like for crop surveillance—low and slow. It gave her hope. She reset the rifle and fired single shots in a high arc at the trucks. A lucky shot might slow them. Though with the drone, they didn’t need to be so close.
Another set of calculations: impossibly tight. She felt bad for Jeff, victim to her every whim. She shouldn’t have asked him. And she was going to ask him for more. She pounded on the window.
* * *
Thirty seconds. Karla went over the cab. She lay on the steep windshield resting the M24 on the roof. Twenty-five. The drone came on—less than a thousand feet. She led it. Fired, fired, fired. Fifteen seconds. She slid to the road; the drone directly overhead. She fired and fired and fired. Five seconds.
“Go!”
She hopped into the bed, sent a burst of full auto from the M16 at the approaching trucks then emptied the clip at the drone, almost straight up. Muzzle flashes from the trucks: finally close enough to shoot. Karla lay prone on the uneven tarp and fired back—single careful shots. The trucks fell away. The drone drifted north and lost altitude.
Jeff turned south. The drone continued its course. Karla hit the windshield of the lead truck twice. It stopped in the intersection. Four men scrambled out and fired automatic weapons from half a mile. Karla lay still and hoped it wasn’t her day.
Chapter 93
Lamar had the SUV packed and ready. The tank filled on Ray’s approval, but no spare containers. Lamar also had a bolt action Savage and twenty rounds, five days food and water, a sleeping bag and a map. And a six foot section of garden hose.
“Where you been?” Lamar asked, eyeing the tarped truck.
“We hit the jackpot,” Karla answered.
“And she shot down a drone,” Jeff said.
Ray stared at her. “You didn’t.”
She nodded. “It wasn’t a predator.”
“I see you lost the backhoe.”
<
br /> “We’ll get it back after a while. And anyway, it was more than a fair trade. Wait’ll you see.”
Karla turned to Lamar and hugged him. “Hurry back. I’ll miss you.”
“Not in a gunfight.”
“No. But I’d still like to see you back in one piece.”
“Want to ride shotgun?” Lamar asked.
“I don’t know that I understand you. It takes a lot to set out like this when you have a choice.”
“It’s not about us. You know better than me.” He opened the driver’s door. “I’m a teacher. I need to set an example.”
Karla shook her head. “I’m an engineer. I just need a challenge.”
Lamar slid behind the wheel.
“One more thing before you go. Would you cast your vote on what to do with the prisoners?”
“It’s not my decision.”
“Ah. The delicate moralist. “Well, if it were your decision what would you do?”
“Give them a fair trial.”
“You have doubts as to their complicity?”
Lamar started the engine, then looked to Jeff. “Clemency is not a sign of weakness.”
“You’ve got a career in politics waiting when you tire of setting examples.”
“See ya,” he said, and put the car in gear.
* * *
The discussion was short. The outcome preordained. The captured men knelt on the open ground, their hands bound. Brittany and Rainy stood behind and fired a bullet to each man’s head. They toppled face first into the dirt. The girls watched them die. Karla tried to imagine herself at their ages, faced with that task.
Part 4
Chapter 94
Karla walked the garden and pulled an occasional weed. An acre of corn stood taller than her. A second acre had been planted to beans, carrots, potatoes, tomatoes, squash, and a variety of early vegetables and berries long since harvested. Great care was required in managing this garden and its bounty—a balance struck between food for this year and seed for next.
Times What They Are Page 37