by Jack Hunt
“I’ll handle myself.”
“Like hell you will.”
Just as I was saying that, I noticed out the corner of my eye movement. I looked off to the right and saw Ally. She was behind one of the trucks and motioning with her arms. If she was trying to say something I couldn’t understand. I beckoned for her to come over but she just ignored me. Both of us watched wide-eyed as she tore her shirt so her bra was exposed, then jammed her gun into the back of her jeans and covered it up. She made one final gesture to us and then she stepped out but began running towards the hunters, screaming.
“What the heck?” Billy muttered.
“Quick, let’s get up there and get him out.”
“Uh, you don’t think I’ve been trying?” Billy held up what little rope he had in his hand. The frayed ends dangled and blew in the breeze.
We double-timed it up the tires and did our best to not fall off the top of the fifteen-foot barn. There was a small hole near the edge where they had pulled off the shingles and burrowed down through decayed wood. Every step on top of that barn made it feel like the whole thing was about to cave. It was hard to concentrate on getting Luke out when I knew that Ally had just run into a pack of wolves and was showing her cleavage.
I peered off the top of the roof and saw her talking with the men.
“Okay, I’m going to lower you down and you’ll feed the tail end of that rope to Luke, then I’ll pull up.”
“Screw that. Why do I have to hang in the air upside down?” Billy protested.
I grabbed one of his scrawny arms. “You think I’m going to trust you holding on to me?”
“I’m stronger than I look.”
“Right, well, for now I think I will take my chances lowering you down.”
Billy refused for another minute before giving up and leaning over the edge. Down below in the darkness, Luke looked up, squinting and coughing every few seconds as dust fell.
Taking a firm hold of Billy’s pant legs I began lowering him.
“Don’t you dare let me go.”
“Shut up and just get down there.”
It had to have been the most absurd attempt in all of history to get food. I would have rather eaten insects than endured what we had been through over the past two hours.
“Nearly there, just a little lower,” Luke said.
As I was holding on to the tail end of his jeans, his pants started coming loose. I had visions of him slipping through and collapsing on top of Luke in a naked heap. Instead, what happened next was even more startling.
The barn doors were unlocked. Here we were in the middle of trying to help Luke out and we were about to get busted. When it cracked open, and light flooded in, I think we were all surprised to see Ally holding a gun to the back of one of the hunter’s head. I had no idea what she had done but the other five were disarmed and moving backwards into the barn.
“I will shoot him and unload a round in each of you. Now get in there.”
As they caught sight of us, the look on their faces was priceless. Luke had a hold of the end of the rope, Billy was reaching down and I was barely clinging to Billy. My hands were slipping from the weight of both of them. When I saw Ally, I let go and Billy landed on Luke in a crumpled mess.
“Amateurs,” Ally said before casting a glance at me.
Once I had managed to get down from the barn and make my way around to the front, she had all six of them inside. Luke and Billy had taken out more meat than we originally came to collect.
“Nice doing business with you.”
“You won’t get away with this.”
Luke snorted. “We just did.”
With that he slammed the door on the barn and put the lock in place. I blew out my cheeks.
“You think next time you want to go all Dirty Harry on them, that you can give us the heads-up? I’m starting to see why you are Murphy’s daughter.”
I don’t know who was more stunned, Luke or myself? We stared at Ally with a newfound respect and awe. All the way back to the truck we tried to get her to explain how she managed to pull it off but she refused to tell us. She said it was something that her father had taught her and if she told us, she would have to kill us. She smirked and jogged on.
“By the way, Frost, you know this doesn’t change anything between us. Theoretically you didn’t save me. Ally did.”
“Ah, but I came back to get you. I could have left you there.”
“Yeah, but I would have got out of it.”
“Would you both stop the pissing match,” Billy said. “Both of you got off lightly. I’m the one who had to suffer the embarrassment of hanging upside down from the rafters with my ass hanging out.”
Luke and Billy piled into the back of the truck and Ally hopped up front riding shotgun as I peeled out of there. We left the forest and made our way out on a dirt trail. Stones spat against the sides as I navigated through a rough patch of terrain. Within a few minutes we were back on the main road.
The bunker was four miles away. The truck rumbled along and every now and again I would glance over at Ally. Kiera had her head leaned against her shoulder. It took a lot of balls to do what she did. Regardless of what her old man had taught her, the chances of it having gone south were high. Murphy had brought up a daughter who wasn’t afraid to roll up her sleeves and get her hands dirty.
“You said your father taught you to shoot, but what about the rest?”
“What do you mean?” she asked stroking Kiera’s hair like a puppy.
“Fear. Back there. You had to have to been afraid.”
“Of course.”
I gripped the wheel a little tighter.
“You did the same thing back at the residence in Mount Pleasant.”
“And?”
“No offense but it’s rare to see someone like yourself—”
She chuckled. “What, because I’m female?”
“No.”
“That’s what you’re implying.”
I cleared my throat. “Um.”
“You are digging yourself even deeper, Sam. Quit while you’re ahead. I get the point.”
“Right.”
I focused on the road feeling like a jackass. Minutes later, I glanced at her out of the corner of my eye. She was right. I guess what I was trying to say was that I had seen very few women like her show true grit. It was a testimony to Murphy. He had raised a kid who could not only protect herself but she was smart and crafty.
CHAPTER 3
As we burst over a rise in the road that would lead onto a trail that went out to the bunker, we saw smoke rising. A thick billow of black cloud hung in the air. At first we thought the forest itself was on fire. We had come across a few small forest fires over the past few months. Mostly it came from survivors who hadn’t extinguished campfires. No one seemed to care anymore about how it might affect others.
I squinted, then my jaw dropped.
I gunned the engine and it roared as we tried to get back as fast as possible.
The truck couldn’t go fast enough. Panic began to flood in at the thought that the bunker had caught fire or worse — come under attack. There were any number of things that could have gone wrong. While its location shouldn’t have been visible to anyone driving on the main roads, noise from a gun going off might have attracted unwanted attention.
Dan had invested over a hundred thousand dollars of his money in getting that bunker built and installed with all the gadgets and tools that a person could need to ride out an apocalypse. Until we arrived there I didn’t know what a badass prepper this guy was. Certainly our time in the wilderness had shown us that he knew his stuff when it came to survival but nothing prepared us for where we would spend the next six months. The company he had bought the underground shelter from had given him the side-by-side double shelter model. Contained far below the ground, it consisted of two pipes that were ten foot in diameter. One was used as a workshop, storage facility and plant nursery. The other had beds, couches, a kitch
en, washroom, mudroom or decontamination chamber and an escape hatch. Trees, brambles and surrounding woodland hid the main entrance. The chances of us having to use the escape hatch were minimal, as unless someone lit a fire or was tracked back to the bunker, no one would know it was there. We had gone six months living inside without a problem. Sure we had come close to having strangers find it but usually they would walk straight past it. That’s why this didn’t make any sense.
Except for a few survivors that we saw camping in the region, the only other people we had come across were in the closest town, Hayden, which was six miles from us. Last month there had been a group of military vehicles that passed through there. While Kate wanted to make it known that we had survived, Murphy and Dan were a little less enthusiastic and for good reason. We were living in a time when whatever government did exist probably had instituted martial law. Dan was nervous; some might have said he was paranoid. He wanted us to observe them. That’s what initially took us out hunting. We were going to camp a mile from the town and do reconnaissance on them, Murphy said. We’d catch our food and camp outside for a few days. That’s when our food started going missing.
As I yanked the wheel, the truck curved onto the dirt road that led up to the woodland. All of us could now tell the smoke was coming from the region where the bunker was. The moment we arrived in the clearing, I slammed on the brakes, grabbed my M4, pushed out of the vehicle and approached the edge of the trees. Luke, Corey and Billy circled around while Ally offered to stay with Kiera in the locked vehicle. After seeing what she had done, I was beginning to think that having Billy hang back would have been a better idea.
The closer we got, the clearer the flames were. Tongues of orange licked at the sides of the open hatch.
“Check the escape exit,” I said to Corey. He and Billy went off into the woods as we got closer to the main hatch. We couldn’t get too close because the fire had now burned up the brush that once hid its location. The intensity of the heat was so great that we had to shield our eyes. That’s when we began fanning out looking for anyone who might have got out.
“Sam,” Corey shouted. “You better come and see this.”
I rushed over in the direction of where his voice was coming from. Branches and brush snapped beneath my boots as I pushed my way through. That’s when I took in the sight of five bodies. They had been shot execution-style in the head. Based on the amount of shells scattered around, it looked as if they had been firing in every direction.
I was still staring down at the dead when my name was called again. Deeper in the forest, Luke had found the body of Brett with two bullets in his back, facedown and still clutching a Glock. Based on his location, it looked as if he was trying to escape. I dropped to my knees and checked his breathing even though I could tell from the color of his skin that he was gone. My chest became heavy as I inhaled faster and my brain tried to make sense of what happened.
“There had to have been a lot of them.”
After seeing Brett dead, we didn’t have high hopes for what might have happened to the rest. It was Ally that found Maria and Sophia, Corey’s mother and sister. She had seen them from the vehicle. Sophia’s leg stuck out from beyond a fallen, decaying log. When Ally reached us her breathing was fast and I could tell she was going to pass out if she didn’t slow down.
“Where’s my father?”
“We can’t find him.”
“Hey guys. Guys.” Hearing Billy’s voice off in the distance made me gulp. I had an image in my mind of Ally mourning over her father’s dead body. She reached Billy before we did. And though she broke into tears, it wasn’t Murphy. It was Dan. His body was riddled with bullets as though he had put up one hell of a fight. All around him were golden shells. A trail of blood could be seen smeared across leaves and pieces of bark.
As I bent at the knees, I noticed he was holding something in his hand. I pried open his fingers to find a piece of paper. Scrawled on it was the word — military. It looked as if he was trying to write something else but had been shot in the process. His fingers had smeared blood all over the paper.
I placed a hand over my eyes.
“Look around. Check for Shaw and Murphy.”
As I came out of the thick woodland, I saw Corey on his knees in front of his mother. He was holding his sister’s lifeless hand. His head rested against his mother’s body. I had never experienced a close bond with any foster parent, neither had I known the loss of my biological parents but in that moment I felt his pain.
CHAPTER 4 - MURPHY
If I had known they were going to attack, I would have done everything in my power to stop it, even if it meant dying in the process. Shaw and I were on the way back from night fishing when our vehicle was stopped. They were already en route to the forest. The sound of distant gunfire must have caught their attention. That’s the only way they could have known our group was there. With no towns in the general vicinity, there was no other reason why they would have headed in that direction.
Initially I thought it was the beginning of the government’s attempt to bring order to the nation so there was no hesitation to stop or attempt to flee on my part.
Six soldiers leveled their rifles at us and encircled the truck. Behind them was a large truck full of people and others on horses. One of the soldiers banged on the door with the side of his fist.
“Driver, throw the keys out of the vehicle and step out.”
I glanced at Shaw, we were in no position to fight.
I killed the ignition and we hopped out. Common sense told me that if we had delayed they might have opened fire. All of them looked antsy and liable to shoot first. No sooner had our boots hit the ground than four soldiers swarmed us. Any attempt at resisting would have been ludicrous.
Stripped of our firearms, thrown to the floor and zip tied, there was no room for discussion, questions or answers. Any attempt at trying to get a clear word out of them was met with violence. I was jabbed hard in the abdomen with the end of a rifle and told that if I spoke again, I would regret it. Shaw’s treatment wasn’t any better. They strong-armed her over to the truck and forced her in the back. It was already half full with others. Strangers that looked shocked, panicked and tearful.
As we took a seat across from each other all we could do was stare. It was only when we were inside that we could see that the others were zip tied as well. Most looked like ordinary folk. People who may have been camping nearby and trying to survive.
I shook my head.
Only minutes earlier we had been laughing about what Dan was going to say when we returned with six rainbow trout, twelve loudmouth bass and four mountain whitefish. I’d been ribbing him for years about being better at catching fish than him. It had been an ongoing joke between us.
But in that instant, everything changed.
Even before we left for the short trip to a whitewater river, he had been harping on about beating his record. Ten was a lot when the only fishing rod we had was a pocket fishing kit. We had a PVC pipe with an end cap and a screw-on adapter. The outside had Magibraid Dacron line wrapped around it. Inside was everything that was needed: hooks, a bobber, more line, netting, a knife and an extendable pole.
After they had loaded us on the truck, it pulled away heading in the direction of the bunker. The sound of gunfire could be heard, screaming and the smell of smoke drifting on the wind as the truck bumped its way into the location we had spent the last six months together. The truck remained on site for five minutes. All the while we couldn’t do anything. Two soldiers kept their guns trained on us. I couldn’t see the chaos but I could feel it in my gut and hear everything.
Tears streamed down Kate’s face as the realization dawned on us what was happening. Dan wouldn’t have gone with them freely and he sure as hell wouldn’t have handed over his weapon.
“Please. Who is in charge?”
“Stay seated,” the soldier shot back. His eyes were wild as if he had been up all night on drugs. One second he wou
ld be looking at us, the next at whatever atrocity was being committed behind the green military tarp that covered the back of the truck and blocked our view.
When the gunfire stopped, no one was added to the back of the truck. No matter what I said to them, they refused to answer. Two of the soldiers hopped up into the back to watch over us as they drove us away. When they turned the truck around to head out, I caught sight of the devastation. Fire flickered, and black smoke rose in the air from the entrance to the bunker. Though I couldn’t see the dead, I knew they were there, just inside the forest.
Shaw’s chin dropped and her tears dropped against the hard military metal.
There was no sympathy to be found in the eyes of the soldiers, just a cold, empty expression void of emotion. Who were they? Why had they done this? A barrage of questions assaulted my mind. I knew answers would not ease the anguish but at least I would know who we were up against.
As they drove us away my thoughts turned to the others, those who had left a few days ago to hunt and gather supplies. The only consolation was that my daughter was safe and not among the dead.
CHAPTER 5
Grief marred the expression of everyone as we buried the dead. We dug shallow graves because we had no tools other than our rifles and branches. Once their bodies were covered up with loose soil, Ally said a few words and I banged in crosses at the head of each grave. I had a feeling that they wouldn’t be the only ones we would bury in the coming months.
Luke took the truck around the back of the woodland and found a spot to hide it. Billy gave him a hand covering it up with branches. It took many hours before the fire died down in the bunker. As the bunker wasn’t far from a river, we used some of the buckets Dan had left there to extinguish what remained. Later that afternoon I was the first one to go down into the shelter. Inside it smelled so bad that I had to cover my mouth with a rag. I had to see if anything could be salvaged. There was nothing left. It had burned, melted and turned everything to ash and a smoldering mess. All the bags of grain below the floor of the shelter were now gone.