“How long is it going to take to get there?” she asked, already moving on.
Leshaun laughed. “You know how your dad is,” he said. “Even if he gave you a time, he’d be late.”
Annie snickered and then ran off down the hallway. Mike turned to look at his partner. “Seriously?”
“What?”
“Just throw me under the bus like that,” he said, and Leshaun laughed again.
In the living room, all the adults spent a few more minutes fussing with gear and food, stalling. None of them wanted to go. They’d spent several hours arguing about it already, and although they were in agreement that the risks of trying to get east were fewer than the risks of staying where they were, it didn’t mean anybody was excited to leave Dawson’s cottage. Finally, however, travel couldn’t be put off, and they headed down to the boat. It was another gray day, and Mike wondered if it was simply the weather or if it was fallout. He wasn’t familiar enough with nuclear weapons to know, but that was part of why they were getting out of there. If he knew, maybe they’d be able to stay.
He’d made everybody bundle up so that their hair and as much skin as possible was covered. Thankfully, with the weather finally turning appropriately seasonal, it wasn’t uncomfortably hot, and they weren’t complaining. All five of them were also wearing face masks they’d made out of T-shirts. Mike couldn’t decide if they looked menacing or fashionable.
The lake was calm. There was enough of a breeze to send ripples across the surface of the water. The tops of the trees ticked back and forth like metronomes. If he weren’t so afraid of nuclear fallout, it would have been a pleasant day.
Dawson drove the boat. He kept it cruising at a relatively low speed, no more than twenty miles per hour. As much as Mike wanted to put miles between them and Minneapolis, he’d decided that it was best to be overly cautious, particularly while they were still in the boat. The truth was that none of them knew what the hell they were doing. They were leaving because it seemed dumb to just try to hunker down so close to where there’d been a nuclear explosion, but it wasn’t like any of them actually knew what it meant to be so close to one. Was it in the water? The dirt? The air? The only thing Mike knew for sure was that the longer the exposure to radiation, the more at risk they were. Maybe if instead of a fancy house on a lake Dawson had had himself a good old bomb shelter, they could have stayed in place, but he didn’t have a lot of faith in the efficacy of duct taping garbage bags over the windows.
“Hey, hold up!” he yelled to Dawson. He stood, holding on to the back of Dawson’s captain’s chair, looking around. “Cut the motor.”
In the sudden silence he could hear it clearly. The throaty buzz of a motor. It wasn’t a boat. It was—
“There!” He pointed up and behind them.
The airplane was gaining altitude off the lake. It had floats on the bottom. A seaplane. It had come from farther down the lake and was clearly just taking off. It looked like a small plane, maybe only a two-seater, but Mike couldn’t tell if that was just a trick of distance. The plane banked lightly, a gentle turn that put the pilot in prime position to see them on their boat. Mike raised his hand and then, frantically, pulled the shirt off his face and started waving. Leshaun did the same.
The plane kept turning, a half circle, but then it kept going, disappearing over the treetops and past them. It was low enough that after a few seconds, it was hidden by the trees.
“Crap,” Mike said. “I was really hoping . . .”
He fell quiet. They all did, and they heard the change in the sound of the motor. The plane was turning again.
They watched it come toward them, so low that the perspective made Mike momentarily afraid it was actually brushing the heavy pines. Once it cleared the woods and was over the water, the pilot came down smoothly. There was none of the wobble that Mike sometimes saw with amateur pilots. It touched down much closer than Mike would have expected, so that the plane passed by them. By the time it did so, however, it was moving slowly enough that he could ID the pilot: the older-looking black dude who’d done them a solid the previous week.
The plane was bigger than Mike had originally thought—still small, but big enough to give Mike a little hope—and Dawson waited for the plane to turn a slow circle and come back near them before firing up his motor and bringing his boat alongside.
“Keep it about twenty feet out,” Mike said. “Don’t want to make him nervous.”
Dawson did as he was told and then cut the engine again so that they were drifting quietly. The plane quieted, too, and then the door opened.
The pilot leaned out. His beard was still gray and unruly, but he was wearing a big smile on his face. “Glad to see all is well with you, my friends. I take it those miscreants I warned you about weren’t a problem. You said you were feds, so I figured you’d have it in hand.”
Mike could see a figure that was no more than a shadow standing behind the man. He remembered the man saying that his wife was a good shot, and he figured she was back there keeping him covered, but Mike decided to play it cool. “Nothing Leshaun and I couldn’t take care of,” he said. “Which isn’t to say no, they weren’t a problem.” He thought of the way the three men had come hiking through the woods, their ill intentions as clear as their flashlight beams in the dark night. He and Leshaun had treated them like rabid dogs.
He felt Annie pull his sleeve. “Are you talking about those men you shot?”
Her voice was high and clear, a bell rung in a quiet space. With the stillness of the lake and all the motors cut, he knew it carried across to the plane.
“Uh . . .” He looked to Fanny for guidance, but her eyes were panicked; and when he turned to Leshaun, his partner gave him a “Don’t look at me” grimace. “Sorry,” he said to the pilot. “Just give me, uh—just a second.” He lifted Annie up with a grunt. She’d grown so solid the last few months. She was still his little girl, but he wasn’t sure how much longer he’d be able to just pick her up like this.
“You know about that? How do you know about that?”
She was straddling his front, and he had his arms hooked under her butt to keep her up. Her arms were wrapped around his shoulders, but she leaned back a little so she could look at him. She blew a puff of air from between her lips. “I’m not stupid, Daddy.”
“No, of course not. I’m not saying . . .” He trailed off. He was lost here, and he could have used some help from Fanny. Heck, he would have happily welcomed help from Dawson. The funny thing was that he usually didn’t mind having serious talks with Annie. He was okay with the birds-and-the-bees kind of stuff, and his daughter didn’t hesitate to ask for his advice if she was having problems with friends at school. But, no, he was not exactly equipped to explain to her why he had killed three men. He’d done it coldly and quickly, and he knew as much as he’d ever known anything that it was the right decision. The three men had ridden by in a boat, shirtless but gunned up, scouting the property at least twice, and then they’d come in the night, doing a poor job of sneaking along a trail that ran through the woods. They came with malice in their hearts and were sent to hell by cold copper-jacketed bullets. It was complicated, though. Too complicated to explain to a—
“They were bad guys,” Annie said, interrupting his thoughts. “And you were keeping us safe.”
Or maybe it wasn’t so complicated. “You got that right, sweetie.” She wriggled a bit to get down again, and he turned his attention back to the pilot. “Sorry about that.”
“No worries, son. I served in Vietnam, and like I said when we first talked, I was a sheriff up until a few years ago. I know from bad men.” He called to Annie. “Your daddy did the right thing, honey.”
Mike nodded. “And I’m trying to do the right thing now, too.”
“I take it you mean that the five of you aren’t just out for a pleasure cruise.”
“Well, between my daughter and”—he almost called her his wife but stopped himself in time—“Fanny, who’s preg
nant, we thought it might make sense to try to get away from any fallout.”
The man nodded. “I can see why you might think that. That’s what I was thinking myself. In fact, if we weren’t so dang slow in packing up, we— Ow!” He turned, rubbing the back of his head, and said something to the shadow standing behind him. Mike didn’t hear a response, but the man looked back at Mike with a rueful smile. “I am not apportioning blame in terms of how long it took us to get going. Let me be clear about that.” He paused, said something over his shoulder again, and then let out a barking laugh before continuing. “Anyway, point is that if we’d left any sooner, we wouldn’t have seen you out and about. I’m planning to hopscotch north and then east about as far as we can get. Of course, I’ve got myself a plane,” he said, flashing his teeth. “You, my friend, have no such thing. I have to wonder if it’s a good idea for you to be out on the roads and all. My understanding is that things are torn up pretty good.”
“That’s my understanding, too,” Mike said, “and I can’t help but notice that nifty little plane of yours is not actually as little as I might of thought. In fact, I wonder if it might be big enough to fit all of us . . .”
“Cessna 185. She’s called the Skywagon, kind of like a station wagon. I’m counting five of you. I’ve got me plus one, and technically she’s only a six-seater.”
“Seems like a nice little puddle jumper.”
“She’s amphibious.” He waved at the floats. “Land or water, it’s all the same. Costs me some range with the extra weight. Costs a bit of extra cash, too, but we don’t have kids, so what’s the point in saving it?” He gave Mike a winning smile. “We live in Fargo. Well, lived. I guess a lot of things are in the past now. But it meant we needed the wheels for home and the floats for here.”
“You said it costs you some range having both?”
“Yep. Fifty miles, give or take. Can still get about three and a half hours of flight time. About five hundred miles.” He stopped talking for a second and then turned and said something inaudible to the shadowy person behind him. Mike could see that there was some sort of back-and-forth before the man turned back to him. “Of course, if I really want to push things, I can go a bit faster and a bit farther.” He reached out and patted the side of the plane. “But between my age and the age of my plane, I’m not really interested in pushing things.”
Leshaun, standing next to Mike, called out, “You know, I’ve got to ask. How old?”
“The bird or me?” The man laughed. It was a deep chest laugh, warm and full of life. The kind of laugh that would have been well suited to a man dressed up as Santa Claus. “The plane’s a ’67. But she’s been babied. I’ve got a good mechanic and I probably take care of her better than I take care of myself. As for me, let’s just say I’m old enough.”
Mike felt Annie leaning into him. Without looking down, he put his arm around her. “I’m thinking that you probably have it right about the roads being torn up. You’ve got the right idea in terms of just hopscotching over everything. I like the sound of that. Might you be amenable to a few passengers?”
Behind the man, the shadow took shape out of the darkness. A woman holding a rifle. He’d been right about that. They might be friendly and they were clearly good people, but they weren’t suckers. Not in this new world. Not when the kind of men Mike and Leshaun had put down were roaming about. The woman let the barrel of the gun drop and leaned to whisper into the man’s ear. Without looking away from Mike, the man tilted his head a little and said something back. Then he nodded and stepped out of the way. The woman took his place. She was white, which Mike knew shouldn’t have surprised him, but did anyway. She was about the same age as the man, with long gray hair loose around her shoulders. “Rex is being a stupid mule. What is it with you military men?”
“We’re not military, ma’am,” Leshaun said. “We’re—”
“Same difference,” she said, motioning with her hand as if to brush off his words. “Military. Cops. Federal agents. ‘Gee, what kind of a plane is that? Might you be amenable to a few passengers?’ Men.” She huffed the last word. “Talking around things like you’re in some silly Western.” Mike could hear the gruff laugh that came from behind the woman, and she turned and said rather sharply, “I’m including you in that, you darn fool.” She shook her head and spoke to Mike again. “Rex said he visited you and you seemed like good people. And we both know that’s not the case with everybody around. The long and the short of it is that we’re two old people and you’ve got yourself a young one and another on the way. So the answer is yes.”
Mike felt Annie wrapping her arms around his waist. He glanced down at her and then back at the woman. “Yes?”
“Yes,” she said. “We’ll fly you out.”
Her name was Carla, and she and Rex had been married for ten years. It was a second marriage for both of them. They interacted with the ease of people who’d fallen in love well into their lives, when both of them were clearly comfortable in their own skins. They had to spend some time moving things around to fit them in, as Carla and Rex had packed the plane as though they weren’t going to carry any passengers. The Cessna was a six-seater, and they were one person over that—although, given Annie’s size and age, she was just going to be shuttled from lap to lap.
Rex had a heavy-duty camping water filter, and while it was useless against radiation, it would do anywhere they could find water. With a floatplane, they figured that would be easy enough, so they dumped the water first. Mike had made his group pack lightly as it was, but they had some basic camping gear—as did Carla and Rex—and they all decided it made sense to keep as much of that as possible. Clothing was deemed expendable, as was a lot of the packed food, particularly anything canned. They kept enough so they’d be good for a couple of days. Last to go were two large tote bags full of personal mementos that Carla had brought with them from their home in Fargo. She held the bags out for Dawson to pass down into the boat.
“Are you sure?” Dawson asked.
Mike was busy stuffing the gear they were keeping under seats and in nooks and crannies, but he snuck a peek at Carla’s face. It was clear she was trying not to cry, but she held the bags out until Dawson took them.
“I’ve got a flash drive with photos on them, and I took photos of everything in these bags, too, so that’ll have to be good enough.”
Rex turned around from where he was sitting in the pilot’s seat and reached out to touch his wife’s arm. “Carla, we can—”
“They’re just things, Rex.”
“But—”
“Rex Millington, I said they’re just things. We’ve got seven people in a six-seater plane, and even if one of those people is a munchkin like Annie, space is tight and weight is at a premium. If getting rid of a few tchotchkes might buy us a few extra miles of range, and those few extra miles of range might make the difference, then, well, I’m willing to get rid of them.”
Everybody was quiet for a moment, and then Fanny stepped from the boat to the pontoon, climbed up into the already crowded plane, and gave Carla a hug.
Chincoteague Island, Virginia
Shotgun sat with his back against the tire of the pickup truck. His ankles and feet were in the light, but the rest of him was sheltered from the sun and the breeze by the shadow of the truck. It wasn’t comfortable, exactly, but it was comfortable enough. More important, it made him and Gordo look like they were relaxing instead of plotting an escape. Nearby, Teddie fussed with her camera and other equipment, but that, too, was just an act.
“It’ll be dark in a few hours,” Shotgun said.
“That’s going to be worse, don’t you think?” Gordo said. He sat cross-legged with his satellite phone in his lap. He kept running his fingers over the rubber buttons as a way of keeping his hands busy, but he tried to keep the phone low and mostly out of sight. Given the text messages he and Shotgun had gotten from their spouses, it didn’t seem like a wise idea to advertise. As it was, Shotgun had to talk him out
of phoning Amy directly. “Let’s not call attention to ourselves. Rodriguez will definitely have guards out. They’ll be jumpy. Best bet is to just try to slip away before it gets dark.”
Teddie started packing her gear into her new backpack. There was an outdoor-gear store a few blocks away that the Marines had taken them to. The store was surprisingly well stocked, given the size of the town; it had enough camping and hiking gear that all three civilians were able to get fresh clothes and backpacks and even a pair of hiking boots for Teddie, and most of the Marines were able to supplement their own gear. Across the street from where Rodriguez had the Marines parked, there was an off-brand motel that catered to summer tourists. Even with the rush to flee from the cities, it still had a few empty rooms, and the manager, a former army infantryman, had provided them with a stack of clean towels and temporary access to showers so the platoon could clean up.
Gordo had been surprised at how refreshing five minutes in a shower and clean clothes could be. The new underwear was made from some sort of space-age material that wicked away sweat and supposedly didn’t get smelly. Between the new underwear and the new cargo pants designed for hiking, a smart-looking T-shirt with a stylized wave design, a Windstopper jacket, and a pair of thin wool socks, he both looked good and felt good. He’d topped everything off with a trucker’s cap and a pair of sunglasses, and then grabbed an Osprey hydration pack. The pack had a three-liter water bladder and enough space for another pair of clean underwear, socks, and a T-shirt, as well as a dozen Clif Bars. Since he’d lost his multitool somewhere between Desperation, California, and Chincoteague Island, Virginia, he’d also snagged a Leatherman Skeletool RX. He’d already been wearing a good pair of boots, so he kept those.
Zero Day Page 15