Fire From The Sky | Book 12 | Embers

by Reed, N. C.

  He had taken all the steps that could realistically be taken tonight and planned to investigate further in the light of day. That would be sufficient.

  As he started home, he felt the snowflakes hitting his face. It seemed it was snowing all the time, nowadays.

  -

  Titus Terry sat in the enclosure that was part of the Hilltop water tower, using a night vision device with a low power magnification to scan the area around the cabins. Two other people would be patrolling on foot down below. Jose hadn’t said why he had upped the alert factor, but Titus had learned that, one, he didn’t need to know why in order to follow orders, and two, Jose Juarez didn’t do anything without good reason. And that was good enough for one Mister Titus Terry.

  A soft noise below him alerted Titus that someone was on the ladder. He eased to the trap door and pulled it open to find Marcy George climbing toward him. He waited for her in silence as she finished the climb, then closed the door.

  “It’s cold out there!” Marcy said, wrapping her arms around herself and shivering slightly.

  “Snowing again too, I noticed,” Titus nodded, taking his seat again after pulling up a stool for her. He added a blanket to the stool for her to wrap up in. Kissing his cheek in thanks, Marcy draped the blanket around her and took her seat.

  “I don’t know how you guys sit up here,” she said quietly. “Not in this cold.”

  “You learn to ignore it, after a while,” Titus shrugged, once more scanning the area around them.

  “I notice the security is ratcheted up tonight,” Marcy continued. “What’s up?”

  “Don’t know,” Titus replied simply. “I was just thinking about it when I heard you coming up the ladder. No one said anything, just doubled the watch and said be alert.”

  “I was at Troy House earlier, and there’s two people patrolling there, and two more around the Sanders’ homes and buildings. That ain’t counting the people out on the line, neither.”

  “Like I said, got no word other than we were upping the ante, so to speak,” Titus shrugged. That hurt his shoulder, which had taken a bullet a few weeks back, before the Plague had hit. It was healed, but still pained him on occasion.

  “How’s your arm?” Marcy had seen that wince despite the low light.

  “Hurts,” Titus admitted. “Not all the time, just when I make a quick move, or maybe use the arm too much at once. Still getting used to it.”

  “Long as you do what Thatcher tells you,” She ordered. Titus suppressed a snort, wondering at how quickly and easily Marcy had slipped into the role of ‘woman of the house’, even though they didn’t live together and there was no house.

  “Yes, dear,” he replied deadpan, to which she responded by sticking her tongue out at him.

  -

  “I meant to ask you earlier how it went with the girl?” Sienna Newell asked her roommate, Kandi Ledford.

  “She’s hesitant, but willing so long as someone is there to make sure she doesn’t do something incorrectly,” Kandi replied. “I think Brick is right though, after talking to her. She does have at least a slight problem with PTSD. She needs help, but I think she’s afraid to ask for it, or take it if it’s offered, worried we would separate her from her sisters.”

  “Can’t see Angela Sanders letting that happen,” Sienna was shaking her head before Kandi finished.

  “I said the same thing, and Brick agrees, but Olivia, I don’t think she understands,” said Kandi. “I feel bad for her. There are others here that have had it just as bad, if not worse, but most of them have a lot stronger support system than Olivia does. And we haven’t done a very good job of giving her one, either,” she frowned.

  “Well, in our defense, there has been a lot going on,” Sienna pointed out, pulling the blanket around her shoulders a bit tighter. “All of it pretty important, too.”

  “I know,” Kandi nodded. “Thing is, how many others here are suffering in some kind of way? I mean, Beverly is great and all, and she’s always willing and ready to help, but some people might shy away from talking to a real therapist. That leaves them with whatever is around them. And Olivia is not trusting to start with. Losing Kaden didn’t help that, either.”

  “He was a good kid,” Sienna nodded. “Didn’t know him well, but he was disciplined and focused. Would have been a good soldier. No,” she corrected herself, “he was a good soldier. The fact that he wasn’t on the Army rolls doesn’t take away from that.”

  Kaden Ramsey had been a friend of Gordy Sanders, one of five that had come to live at the farm just after things had turned bad. The six of them had made a teenage ‘squad’ of soldiers, and the word ‘soldier’ was meant in every sense of the word. All six were trained far above standard and were a boon to the farm when they were struggling to find enough manpower to handle things on the farm.

  He had been killed in an attack on the farm by a group of people pretending to be soldiers, trying to take one of their vehicles. The operation had succeeded, but Kaden had died of gunshot wounds, likely before he had hit the ground.

  “We need to have a girl’s group,” Kandi decided suddenly, breaking Sienna from her memory of Kade, slim though they were.

  “Huh?” she looked dumbly at her friend. “What kind of-, what are you talking about?”

  “A social thing,” Kandi told her, her hands moving now to emphasize her points. “Instead of doing it down yonder,” her Texan came out as she pointed down the hill toward the Troy Farm, “we’ll use the Mess up here! Make it our own thing, see? It will seem more distanced from the goings on down the hill and feel more like a private club or something.”

  “Make friends and influence people?” Sienna asked with a smirk.

  “Especially the friends part,” Kandi nodded enthusiastically. “We don’t hardly know our neighbors up here, let alone anyone down below. If we knew each other better, then Olivia and others like her might open up some.”

  “It’s a good idea,” Sienna approved. “I’ll help you however I can. I would suggest you talk to Bev about it, first. She might have some ideas of things we could look at doing that would help.”

  “Yeah,” Kandi sat back, considering. “Yeah, I might just do that.”

  -

  “Is something wrong?”

  Brick turned from where he stood, looking out the window in darkness, to see Charley Wilmeth standing at her bedroom door, looking at him.

  “I do not know,” he admitted. “I have a strange feeling we are somehow being watched, but I cannot see anything out of the ordinary. Perhaps it is simply my imagination,” he shrugged.

  “Yeah, how often does that happen?” Charley snorted softly. Since her arrival on the farm, she had learned a great deal about the people, particularly her housemates.

  “Almost never,” Brick admitted.

  “What are you going to do about it?” she asked, curious.

  “Nothing unless I am asked,” Brick turned away from the dark window and settled into a chair near the fireplace. “It is not my area of responsibility. If I try to intrude on others, I may create a worse problem interfering with their actions. I will watch. And wait.”

  “That takes more patience that I have to spare,” Charley admitted, turning back toward her bed. “But if something happens, wake me up. Please?”

  “Of course,” Brick agreed with a nod. “Sleep well.”

  “If I was going to, then I shouldn’t have asked what was wrong,” she laughed lightly as she closed her door.

  “Indeed.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Weather forecasts were a thing of the past since the Storm, and Gordon missed them. He checked his own small weather station, noting there was two inches of new snow overnight. He also noted the humidity was high, and the temperature was below freezing, setting the stage for frozen precipitation of some sort, most likely.

  Pulling on his Carhart insulated coveralls, Gordon ran over a mental list of things he needed to do as he laced his boots around a pair of battery pow
ered heated socks. He’d miss them when they finally gave out. Getting to his feet he took a toboggan, a scarf and his hat and stepped out the back door of his house, headed for the barn.

  Charley Wilmeth was standing nearby, waiting on him to emerge, and smiled when she saw him.

  “Land sakes, young’un,” Gordon exclaimed. “You should have come into the house instead of just standing out here in the cold!”

  “I enjoy it,” she shrugged easily. “This time of year, with snow on the ground, the early morning is always peaceful. I spend a few minutes just…being.”

  The morning was still dark, with only the barest hint of dawn showing to the east. Work started early on a place this huge.

  “We’ll take our time this morning and check shoes and hooves and straps and anything else we can think of before riding the horses out into this cold,” Gordon told her as they stated toward the barn. “Do you know if Miss Knight will be joining us this morning?”

  “No idea,” Charley admitted. “I didn’t see her last night to ask, and she may be assigned to security duty this morning. I guess we’ll see.”

  “I imagine we will,” he grunted as he slid the barn door open to admit the two inside and get their workday started.

  -

  “It snowed at least two inches of snow after we went to bed,” Seth Webb noted as the gang of teens policed their small camp.

  “Turned a bunch colder, too,” his sister, Lila, added.

  “We need to eat while it’s still dark so we can get moving as soon as it’s light,” Nathan suggested. “We got a lot of ground to cover today, still.”

  “True enough,” Millie sighed. “What is this stuff, anyway?” she sniffed of the bar she had opened, a frown marring her features.

  “Meal replacement bar,” Janice Hardy answered. “Twelve hundred carefully selected calories chosen for their nourishment value. There are twelve grams of-,”

  “Janice,” Millie held up a hand. “Janice, please. Don’t throw numbers at me like that this early in the morning. I haven’t even had any coffee. I’ll just take your word for it that they’re good for me. Okay?”

  “Of course,” Janice smiled, dimples breaking out on her face, already red from the cold wind.

  “They may be good for you, but they don’t taste good,” Anthony Goodrum complained. Most ignored him completely and those who didn’t failed to grace him with a reply. Sullen, he continued to eat in silence, for which the rest of the group was thankful.

  “We didn’t make great time, yesterday,” Seth told them as he squatted by the fire, eating his own energy bar and drinking a cup of water that came from melted snow. “We got to make up for that today, assuming we can. We need at least four more points today out of the seven points we still have to hit on the way back to the Terminator.” It had been an almost automatic nickname when the ‘T2’ designation had been placed on Building Two.

  “Seth, be honest with us,” Millie spoke from across the fire. “Can we do this? Because if we can’t get it done, and pass, then there’s no reason for us to be out in this weather. If we can, then I’m in, all the way. I’m just saying that if we can’t do it, then let’s cut our losses and go get warm. They will let us try again, I’m sure.”

  “It’ll be rough,” Seth admitted. “I know most of the terrain, and while it ain’t all flat, there’s no major hills or other obstacles between us and the prize. That said, the soil is rocky and kind o’ uneven here and there, which means even walking will be trouble, even at best.”

  “The sticker is time,” he continued. “We have to reach the finish line by around noon tomorrow. The ground won’t stop us, but it may be slow going at times, and this weather won’t be helping. Wind’s probably blowing eight to ten miles an hour, and it’s got to be below freezing right now. Hopefully it warms up above that once the sun comes up, but there’s no guarantee of that. And it’s still snowing. So, we’ll be dealing with windchill, covered rock formations and rough ground, and every one of ‘em will slow us down. If everyone is determined and can keep moving, then we can do it. We can pass this and be done with it.”

  “And if everyone isn’t and doesn’t?” Millie pressed, glancing at Anthony Goodrum and then back to Seth.

  “Then we ain’t got a prayer,” he shrugged.

  “I say we give it a shot,” Nathan said at once. He was already packed, sitting on his bag to eat his delicious and nutritious meal replacement bar.

  “Same,” JJ Jackson spoke for the first time. He was not accustomed to cold like this and was having a rough time adjusting. He had set his cup near the fire to warm it and was now cradling the metal dish in both hands.

  “Me too,” Lila Webb said simply.

  “I’d like to finish,” Janice stated hesitantly.

  “Well, we’ve already froze our asses off for one night,” Millie sighed. “Might as well make it pay if we can.” Everyone looked at Anthony Goodrum.

  “What?” he asked, looking from one face to the next. “I don’t want to be here, but it’s not like I’m going to slow us down on purpose! I just want to be home, where I can get warm. That’s all.”

  “That mean you’re gonna shut up, step up, and keep up?” Millie asked him, eyebrow raised.

  “Fine,” he muttered something else under his breath, but so long as he got with the program, everyone would ignore that. More than one member of the group had thought about how like his father, Darrell, Anthony was behaving. Millie went so far as to wonder how long it might be before someone had to deal with Anthony the way X had dealt with Darrell.

  -

  “Wake up stupid,” Heath elbowed Corey in the ribs, startling him from a sound sleep. Instantly alert, he grabbed his rifle from his lap and sat up straight.

  “Relax,” Heath told him. “Just waking you. I can hear them talking at their camp. Sounds like they’re going to keep on going.”

  “Great,” Corey’s voice was laced with sarcasm as he rubbed the sleep from his face. “Damn, it’s cold,” he shivered, getting to his feet.

  “Temperature’s been dropping all night, feels like,” Heath agreed with a nod. He reached for his radio, but it spoke before he could key up.

  “You guys awake and aware over there?” Gordy’s voice came through softly.

  “Getting that way right now, Lil Boss,” Heath replied, knowing it would wind Gordy up some. He hated the nickname for some reason, but the rest had decided it fit him better than ‘Chip’.

  “Thanks for that,” Kurtis Montana’s voice was just as heavy with sarcasm and Corey’s had been. Muttered cursing could be heard in the background.

  “Anytime, brother. Anytime,” Heath smiled in the dark. He climbed to his feet and went to empty his bladder. He figured the kids in camp would be moving as soon as it was light enough to see.

  -

  Clay had almost crept down from his cabin to stand in the trees near Building One, or T1 as it was now known, so that he could examine the southern horizon without being observed himself.

  The feeling that something was wrong had not gone away. Clay was restless and wary, but there was nothing he could put a finger to right now. All he had was a hunch. It was never wise to ignore a hunch, especially as one gained experience in such things, but you couldn’t make a plan based solely on a hunch or a gut feeling. You could wait, watch, and increase your awareness, but that was about it. The ranch had done all that.

  Now it was a waiting game.

  -

  Corey Reynard had slipped around to take the point position in the four-point diamond used to surround the struggling youngsters as they began their trek across the snow. Despite his complaining and ‘whining’, most of which was designed to just be funny, Corey took his job seriously when working. Knowing roughly the direction Seth Webb would go, it was easy enough for Corey to get ahead of the small group and stay to one side, in this case the east side, so that his tracks would not be visible.

  Concealed movement was in no way easy. Movement draws the e
ye, and noise draws attention. Concealing signs of your passage was just as important as preventing someone seeing you move at all. If your trail was found and led to you, or worse, to your base, then an enemy might be able to use that to attack.

  All the boys had been hunters, and knew the basics of concealment, and the use of camouflage, but their training under Jose and the others had taken that to an entirely new level. Even Jody, universally acknowledged as the best tracker in the unit, had difficulty finding and following their trail. This was especially true of Kurtis, who had not needed the training but had taken it anyway. He was long accustomed to moving without being seen.

  Corey moved a few steps at a time, always a random number, working to stay on ground that would not reveal that he had passed that way. He would then stop and kneel, taking a long and slow look around, studying the area around him for hints of any dangers, man-made or not.

  He couldn’t afford to linger long, as the small group behind him might catch up, or even spot him if he was careless. This meant that he had to be quick, but not careless. Carelessness killed you.

  Having seen nothing to alarm him, Corey rose from his hiding spot and began to move yet again.

  -

  Jose looked at the group before him, his face grim.

  “We think someone is watching us, over that way,” he nodded south. “No idea who, or why, though we can guess the why.”

  “You will be divided into two fire teams, one lead by Mitch, the other by Zach.” Jose was watching Zach carefully as he announced that, but if the teen was surprised, he hid it well.

  “After reaching the edge of our AO, you will separate, one team going east, the other west,” Jose continued. “This will be a blackout operation, so no coms except in an emergency. If nothing else, today will be good training.”

  Lieutenant Gillis, at Jose’s request, had placed his men along the defensive line facing Jordan while leaving Sgt. Gleason behind with his command as a ready reserve should an attack occur. Mitchell Nolan’s team would consist of Savannah Hale, Freda Fletcher, Danica Bennet, and Stacey Pryor. On Zach’s team would be Jena Waller, Carrie Jarrett, Eunice Maynard, and Greg Holloway. Jose had asked Greg to observe Zach but not to interfere unless the teen was about to make a major mistake.