“Like prison or the Marines. A man gets used to a rough life. Some don’t have a problem with everything laid out for them.”
“I do.”
Derek laughed. “And then some. I’d say you’ve had a few skirmishes.”
“I don’t think I can enjoy a day someone doesn’t shoot at me.”
“You were really never in the service?”
“I’d have fought them, too.”
Derek lay on his back and looked at stars through the trees. “Denver finds out it was us, we’re all dead.”
“First, it was me, and I’ll be gone tomorrow. Second, they have to find you and connect the dots. If you’re traveling with people who’ll spill their guts and get you shot, I suggest you do something about it. For the record, Megan told them we were in the barn.”
“What do you expect me to do, kill her?”
Karla shook her head. “Go your own way.” She rolled into his shoulder and yawned. “Wake me if something exciting happens.”
Chapter 122
Derek and Karla scouted the area at dawn, finding within a mile, several houses and a manmade pond. She let Derek enter the buildings first, then inspected them for her purposes.
Derek watched Karla scrutinize the third house. “What are you looking for?”
“Something safe and comfortable. This isn’t it.”
“What is?”
“Let’s keep looking.”
Two houses later, Karla completed her inspection. “This one has a half-full propane tank, a cellar, and a full bath up and down.”
“Okay. Why is that good?”
“You can haul the stove to the cellar and cook without smoke or a heat signature. The upstairs bath will make a cistern, feeding toilets and sinks downstairs—a cold shower, if the need arises. Water is a couple miles down a dirt road, so this is not the first place anyone will look. You have good visibility if they do, and a back door through that field.”
“Sold. When can we move in?”
“I could repipe the water and gas in a few hours.”
They drove back to the scattered camp, and Derek set about winning support for the new home.
“Where are Tim and Elena?” Karla asked.
“Took the truck to town.” Megan said. “Caleb’s sick. They’re looking for medicine.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
“Cold most likely. Kid’s are always sick.”
Karla shook her head, then let it go. It wasn’t her child. She turned to Derek. “Everyone satisfied they’re safe here?”
“After yesterday? They’re terrified. Tim and Elena were the only ones willing to leave.”
“We’re halfway across Kansas.” Karla scanned the campsite. “You staying here, or do you want to give me a hand at the house?”
* * *
Karla finished the plumbing late in the afternoon, then she used the Golf to power a well pump and fill the bathtub. Derek handled the gas line, and the two of them dragged the stove downstairs.
“The women are going to like this,” Derek said.
“I know. There’s always a tree for the men.”
Derek smiled. “Let’s bring them over for the open house.”
At camp, Tim and Elena hadn’t returned. Caleb was worse, and his older sister Jenny was now sick.
“Did Tim say where he was going?” Derek asked.
“He liked the sound of Medicine Lodge,” Megan said. “He was going to try there first.”
Derek turned to Karla.
“Bring everyone to the house,” she said. “I’ll drive to town.”
“It should be both of us.”
“If they’ve been caught, you’ll be getting visitors. You can handle it your way, this time. I’m not big on encores. And if I run into trouble in town, I’m not leading them back here.”
“Where will you go?”
“It’s better if you don’t know.”
“Is this goodbye?”
Karla shrugged. “If I find them I’ll be back.”
* * *
Karla turned off the highway and followed back roads into Medicine Lodge. At dusk, she located a house screened by hedges and fence, and parked her car in the garage. She cut through yards, crossed two streets, and climbed a flat-roofed industrial building. Perched beside an air-conditioner, she raised the binoculars and slowly scanned the small city, north to south.
The Ford pickup was parked near the door in a commercial lot three streets over. Elena, clearly dead, lay a few feet away. Karla swung her scan farther south. A man in fatigues stepped around a building and moved away. She raised the glasses, projecting his destination, and froze on another pair of binoculars held by a man on a tower staring back and speaking into a handheld.
A Humvee roared into view on the street below and headed straight for her. Karla sprinted across the roof and reached the ladder as bullets raked the roofline behind her. She slid down hand rails, skipping five rungs at a hop, then ran across a graveled lot. The Humvee grew louder. Karla scrambled over a wooden fence, landed in a backyard and tripped on a root. She went face down as machine gun fire ripped holes in the wood above her.
Running footsteps. Karla rolled as a man hopped the fence. She shot him and a second man trailing. She took an M4 rifle and a handheld then scrambled through shrubs into the next yard. Coded chatter sounded on the handheld.
The Humvee moved away as a second vehicle rolled up the street in front. A spotlight weaved between houses in the twilight. Karla ran. Then shouts and rifle fire. Bullets hit trees and buildings. The Humvee reappeared, cutting between houses into the connected back yards, brushing aside swing sets and plastic wading pools. Karla rounded a house, and the spotlight from the vehicle in the street caught her. She fired two rounds and ducked back the way she’d come.
The Humvee crashed through a fence one house over. She rolled under a truck in the driveway, punched through the gas tank with her Ka-Bar, and lit the leaking fuel. She did the same to another vehicle a few feet away. Flames whooshed. Karla rolled and ran, bursting through the side door of the house then out the street door.
The SUV with the spotlight sat directly ahead. Karla charged down the walk firing into the vehicle. She ripped open the door, yanked out the dying driver, and jumped in, flooring the accelerator. She raced two blocks, turned, and hurtled straight at an approaching vehicle. Karla swerved onto the sidewalk. She sideswiped a utility pole and plowed through bushes and back to the road. The vehicle turned and came after her. She sped a block, then a canvas topped truck backed across the street in front of her.
Karla cut sharp left. The SUV leaned onto two wheels and crashed through a glassed store front. She forced open the car door and picked her way to the back of the building as men entered the front. She shot one, then the door, and burst out into a parking lot. A man fired from her right. Karla took a wild shot then almost crashed into the truck Tim and Elena had brought to town. She jumped in and tore away in a hail of bullets.
Two tires went flat. The truck lost speed, but made three blocks before Karla abandoned the vehicle in a side yard. She ran through backyards, trying to get a bead on where she’d left her car. Vehicles screamed past in the street and stopped at the shot up truck. Karla cut through yards, crossed a street and another, then jogged two blocks straight down the road. She heard shooting, but not close. She reached the last built up street, spotted a tall hemlock in a backyard, and climbed as high as she could manage then caught her breath.
Three vehicles passed, lights out in the dark, a formality now that they’d lost her. They couldn’t search every house, every building, though, they had apparently shot up a few near where Karla had abandoned the truck.
Activity moved south, where the men had set up, probably where they held Tim. She thought of him under questioning. He’d say nothing till they beat him. Then it would all come out quickly. Karla hoped Derek had enough sense to complete the move. Tim didn’t know about
the house and couldn’t send anyone there.
Karla climbed down, cold from hours in the tree. She walked slowly through backyards, stopping, listening. She had the handheld turned low, but had yet to hear anything useful. She found the garage with her car and quietly opened it. She put on her night vision and drove west in electric mode. She wondered how many men remained in town. How long till they followed Tim’s directions to the camp.
Chapter 123
Karla drove straight to the house and parked in the woods behind it. She called out to Derek and he answered. They found each other in the low light of dawn.
“They got Tim. Elena’s dead.”
“I guess they’ll be along.”
“They may wait for help. They lost a few men, and I’m thinking they know about the farm.”
“Find us and hold. Wonder what they’ll send to take us down.”
“I’m hoping not to find out. Let’s go.”
“Couple more took sick. How are you feeling?”
“Bad?”
“Way it’s spreading, it’s not good.”
“You better roust them. I’m not going in.” Karla frowned at Derek. “You shouldn’t either.”
* * *
“Caleb’s dead.” Derek said. “April’s delirious. Three more on the floor in their vomit. Melanie’s the only one unaffected.”
“The other two.”
“Bad colds, so far.”
“You can ride with me or Melanie.”
“And everyone else?”
“Your choice and Melanie’s. You can put them in the van or leave them to whatever.”
“You’d leave them.”
“They’re going to die. We can’t help them.” Karla kept her eyes on the house as she backed toward the woods. “You’ve got two minutes to sort it out. Right now, I’m more worried about the walking dead taking it out on survivors.”
Derek approached the house as Karla clung to the trees. Melanie stepped out the door, her arm around another woman. Herb trailed them, carrying an armload of weapons. Diesel engines clattered in the distance.
“Go! Karla shouted. “I’ll keep them occupied for a few minutes.”
Melanie started the minivan. Karla headed for her car and the heavy weapons. She spun at footfalls behind her. Derek, breathing hard as he caught her.
“Forget the heroics. Drive.”
“I don’t want them behind me. Hit and run. That’s all.”
Karla followed Melanie’s dust half a mile south then veered off the road behind a low hillock. She climbed it with the TAC 50 and set up. Derek lay fifteen feet to her right with an M4.
Karla worked the scope. “I’m going for the vehicles. They’ll be days walking out. If you can hit any men, it’s all bonus.”
Two Humvees and a truck crawled up the road and stopped at the house. Men looked at the tracks in the drive and burst into the house. Karla counted five shots. She guessed the men were immune. She shot the machine gunner on the lead Humvee, then the second one. Derek opened up on the men by the house as Karla fired at the engines.
Men jumped from the truck and fired back. Derek cut down two before he and Karla dropped behind the hill and ran for the car. Karla drove through scrub, around hills, and rejoined the road out of sight from the house.
“How long have you really been doing this?” Derek asked.
“What does it matter?”
“You’re good. The barn wasn’t luck.”
“Yes it was. These men are ill-trained and arrogant. Would a Marine company act like them?”
“We tried to avoid ambushes. But we had surveillance and much better communications.”
The minivan’s dust had settled, allowing no sign of its location. Karla stopped at a series of dirt roads crossing theirs. They examined tracks and followed the road south: Derek’s idea. Karla wanted to cut east. She drove slowly, in stealth electric mode. No need to give warning to anyone in the desolate hill country.
Rifle fire popped ahead. Karla slipped into a wash and parked between hillocks. She and Derek jogged to the top and caught the view ahead. A thousand meters out, two men in ragged clothes approached the minivan. They circled it, then two more men appeared from the left. Karla dropped one, then the next. A third hid behind the van and she shot him, too. The fourth ran back the way he’d come. Karla missed him.
Derek looked to Karla. “They’ve got a camp somewhere out there. Probably not many more. Maybe just the one.”
“What do you suggest?”
“We find it fast. By the way, good shooting.”
* * *
Two rough cabins sat half a mile from the road on a small piece of flat ground. Derek covered the front. Karla swung wide for a view of the backs and sides as Derek raked the first building with a full clip. A man jumped out a side window of the second cabin and Karla shot him.
She fired on the second building. Then Derek did, and they both moved closer.
“We’re going to burn down the buildings,” Derek shouted. “Last chance to come out.” He nodded to Karla as though she had it all worked out.
She scooped twigs and dried sticks and built a fire against a windowless wall of the first cabin. Three shots came through the wall. Karla hit the dirt. Derek let loose a dozen rounds then charged the entrance. He kicked open the door and fired twice. He repeated the sequence, firing into the second cabin.
Karla walked to the door of the first one. A teenage girl lay in a pool of blood, an assault rifle beside her. The second cabin was empty. Derek scoured the camp for supplies and found little. Day to day life in rugged country.
They collected weapons, hiked to the Golf, and drove to the minivan. Three men lay dead in the road. Melanie was slumped over the wheel, a bullet through her head. Herb and the woman were dead, too. Derek took weapons and ammunition. He dragged the bodies from the road. Then he and Karla drove carefully south. Soon after entering Oklahoma, they turned east.
They stopped for the night in southern Missouri, parking in a barn. They ate Karla’s deer jerky and stale cornbread. Then they curled up on a bed fashioned of bags and blankets on old straw.
“We’re going to die,” Derek said.
“You just found that out? Let me save you some time on research. You won’t go to hell. You won’t go to heaven, either. And you won’t come back as my cat.”
He put an arm around Karla and pulled her closer. “I’d like it if we got to know each other better, first.”
“Robbie Kiefer tried that line when I was fifteen.”
“Did it work?”
“I told him I was waiting for Prince Charming. I offered Robbie my father’s forty-five to speed things along.”
“Did the Prince ever come?”
“I’m still waiting.”
“Then I suppose your daughter was an immaculate conception.”
“Her father thought so. He claimed no memory of the event.”
Derek rubbed her back. “It’s hard to tell when you’re being serious.”
“It really isn’t. Just figure on always.”
“Then tell me, what do you see in your future?”
“A quiet spot on a shady porch. Wind from the west blowing my hair and the tassels on the corn. My daughter with her man on the porch swing. My grandchild on my lap.”
“Where’s your rifle?”
“Inside, over the mantel, rusting from lack of use.”
“You really think it will ever be like that again?”
“I have to hope.”
“You don’t seem like that kind of a dreamer.”
“If there’s no chance, you may as well shoot me here and now.”
“You’re talking a long way out.”
Karla sighed. “How long do you think before we can mingle with others?”
“You talk like this is crimping your social life.”
“It is. I want to go home.”
“You’ve never said where that
is.”
“Do you think the men carried the disease? Or was it somewhere in Meade. I don’t remember where Caleb went.”
“A few weeks. A month.” Derek said. “Maybe there are places where it can live longer.”
“But you never know.”
“Unless you can find a real doctor with working equipment.”
“If they understood how it worked, it would never have gotten like this.”
“They didn’t have time. It happened fast. Like here.” Derek looked at her. “Where were you?”
“I went to the mountains.”
“You’re not immune?”
Karla shrugged.
“So you’re afraid to go back to wherever you came from?”
“Something like that.” Karla wondered how many might die if she did. “Would you help me build a house far from all of this?”
“Wherever you want. With a big shady porch looking out on the just-mowed lawn and two girls beyond that, playing hide-and-seek in the head high corn, then chasing each other to the corral where two horses wait saddled. It’ll be a thousand miles from Denver. Where no one will ever come looking, and we can tell tales to grandchildren that will leave them bug-eyed.”
“Are the girls twins?”
“Yeah, I think they are, dressed just alike in yellow sundresses.”
Karla rolled on top and kissed him. “It’s been a long time. I’m not sure I remember how to do this.”
Derek’s hands traced her body. Karla felt the warmth of anticipation that had long escaped her.
She kissed him again. “Don’t die on me just yet. Those girls need a father to round up the horses.”
Derek slid out of his jeans and worked on hers. “I’d sorely hate to disappoint my girls.”
In the night, while Derek slept soundly, Karla thought of Ray and what could have been. The two men alike in many ways and different in some important ones. She hadn’t killed Derek’s girlfriend, and he hadn’t left her when she was in desperate need, as Ray had. Her fault. She’d told him to. He’d called; that was true, but he still left. What if she had gone with him? Would it have turned out differently? She believed it would have. She and Ray were invincible. She hoped now that she had made her choice, the same was true with Derek.
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