Stephani nodded, her lips pursed so tight they were discolored. “Got it,” was all she replied in a hushed voice.
Jared almost turned back to the barn door, but stopped. “One last thing. This shit is scary, I’m scared, but you can’t let the fear control you. Be amped, have some healthy fear, but be in control. We are not going to shoot at anything that moves. There may be people just as screwed as us in there, and I know you don’t want to kill an innocent person. Finger off the trigger. That should give you the time needed to identify anything that moves inside.”
Jared didn’t wait for a response, which with Stephani, under these circumstances, was quite unlikely anyway. Jared moved around the side of the barn and was relieved to see one of the double front doors standing slightly ajar. He glanced hastily at the house as they moved toward the barn doors and saw nothing seemed to have changed. Jared turned his shoulders sideways and slid through the narrow opening and into the darkened interior of the old barn, gun up and scanning the low-light environment.
Jared turned left and immediately wished he’d brought the NVG. He heard Stephani enter to his right, but stopped himself from checking on the woman. The interior of the barn was fairly open, with several stalls lining the left side. There was a feed station as if animals were kept in the barn at one time, but had been moved when the land turned into a cherry-growing operation. Jared finished clearing his side, and he swung back to Stephani’s side in time to see her looking at him. Jared shrugged, and together they moved forward.
Slowly, Jared and Stephani went through the entire barn, both the ground level and a loft area. When they were finished, the two exited and began clearing the smaller buildings. Jared moved past a chicken coop and could still smell the presence of the fowl even though they were long gone. Next to another shed was a large pen that stunk of either sheep or goats, Jared didn’t know. Inside the shed, Jared found seven compressed bails of alfalfa hay and made a mental note to feed his animals with it. Even though they were in the middle of California’s agricultural epicenter, there wasn’t much for the horses to graze on. Nearly all the ground crops were gone, and the horses couldn’t eat cherry trees, so the hay was a Godsend in Jared’s view.
Jared found it took nearly thirty minutes to secure the property, which worried him because they still needed to check out the house and were losing light at an alarming rate. He and Stephani hurried along the north side of the property in their approach to the house instead of walking through the middle of the yard. The front door faced the river, so Jared was forced to pass from the rear of the house along the side in order to access the tiny front porch.
Jared groaned inwardly when he stepped gingerly onto the porch and it creaked so loud, he was sure Shannon and Essie could hear them. Without further ado, Jared turned the door’s knob, which thankfully gave way. Jared swung the door open, then had an epiphany. He would never have just walked into someone’s home before the solar flare, so why was he doing it now. It was rude and very dangerous considering the way he’d seen people acting lately.
“Hello there,” Jared called out in a voice loud enough to carry throughout the house, but low enough not to attract attention from anyone across the river or on an adjoining property.
His call was met with an eerie silence as he and Stephani stood on the little porch waiting. The tension was thick enough to slice with a bread knife, and Jared wanted nothing more than to be done with all this skulking around. He prayed the house would be empty and the group could have just one night out of the elements. The tent kept them relatively dry, but they inevitably tracked mud inside, and the fabric never fully dried, making the overall experience miserable. A solid wood structure was a welcoming thought to Jared.
When after twenty seconds no answer to Jared’s call came, he and Stephani swept into the little house and had it cleared and secured in less than a minute. The inside of the two-bedroom home was not ransacked, but it was empty of anything substantive. The cupboards were open and bare, as was the refrigerator. The living room was completely intact, including the useless little color television resting atop a rickety old wooden stand next to the front door. The bedrooms were empty other than the blankets atop the two beds, which looked as if they’d been kicked to the beds’ bottoms by restless sleepers. A meager amount of cheap adult clothing hung in each closet, not coming close to filling the tiny enclosure.
Jared did not want to stay inside the house. It didn’t appear anyone had used the place in quite some time, but he felt if anyone did stop by the property, the house would be the first place they would check for food or other usable materials.
“Come on, let’s get the rest of ’em and see about setting up in the barn for the night,” Jared said tiredly.
“I agree,” Stephani replied like-mindedly.
When Jared watched the last horse pass into the barn, he turned to Devon. “Ya mind doing what you do and make sure we don’t have any close neighbors?”
Devon dropped off his mount and handed the reins to Jared before slipping back through the barn door and into the dark and chilly California evening. Jared studied the inside of the barn doors and realized he could secure them by simply dropping a two-by-four board into the cradles mounted on the inside of both doors. Old-fashioned, but effective.
Jared instructed Shannon and Essie to climb the wooden ladder to the loft and set up for the night. He warned Shannon about cooking in the old barn. There was enough dry fuel to burn the place to the ground if they got careless, and Jared knew a fire would strip them of tonight’s shelter while at the same time signaling anyone within miles of the barn to their presence. Jared preferred to avoid those types of incidents if he could manage it.
After ensuring Shannon and Essie were familiar with where everyone would stay inside the barn, Jared crept outside and to the shed where he’d seen the hay earlier during his search of the little property. After ten minutes of physically struggling against the weight of the hay, Jared was able to get it into the barn. He searched a workbench and found an old rusted set of wire snips he used to open the bale of hay. The horses smelled the not-so-fresh hay and began moving about impatiently. The scent must have sparked some nearly lost memory of days gone by when they were fed hay and didn’t have to graze off the land in order to survive.
Jared and Stephani unsaddled all the animals and placed them in three of the stalls before tossing equal amounts of the bale into each stall. Outside, Jared found a plastic tub full of rainwater he used to water the animals before climbing up the wooden ladder, where he found Shannon and Essie preparing food. Though Shannon had the little stove resting on the wood planks of the loft, she also was intelligent enough to have a water bottle within arm’s reach in case there was any accident.
The loft was a third the size of the ground level of the barn and, like most barns, had a hay door that faced the front. The loft stopped less than halfway back into the barn, with only a railing in place so no one would accidentally walk off the back edge. A catwalk ran along the right side, allowing Jared to leave the loft and walk all the way to the rear of the barn. At the rear of the barn was a large opening with a drop-down-style door. Jared pushed the door out and up and saw it had a long piece of steel that could be used to hold the door in the up and open position. Jared left the door in the down position.
Jared walked back to the wooden ladder, inspecting how the device was secured to the loft. Unfortunately, the ladder was held in place by two large screws that anchored it to the floor of the loft. Jared climbed slowly down the ladder and went to the workbench in search of a screwdriver. A minute later, Jared stood on the ladder, working on one of the stubborn screws. He planned on removing both screws and then hauling the ladder up into the loft, therefore denying anyone else access to their sleeping quarters. If things got bad, they could use the ladder to exit the window in the rear of the barn by moving down the catwalk. If the barn was surrounded by a superior number of armed people, then Jared just didn’t know what he’d do.
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It took Jared thirty minutes to remove just one of the screws, and that was with the luxury of standing on the ladder, facing the obstinate bolt. When the oversized wood screw finally fell to the barn floor, Jared knew the second one was going to take twice as long. His forearms ached from wrestling the large wood screw from its mooring in the ladder, causing him to lay the screwdriver down and seek Shannon for some food and a little rest.
Three sharp raps came on the barn door, and Stephani, who was finished eating, got to her feet to grant Devon the wraith entry. As Stephani swung onto the ladder, Essie called out to her, “Be careful, it’s only half safe.”
Jared chuckled as Stephani shot Essie a quizzical look.
“Half?” Stephani asked.
“It’s missing a screw,” Essie said with a pleasant smile.
Jared was always amazed by how Essie could be silent for literally days and then out of nowhere have something to say about the oddest of things. At least she was paying attention, Jared thought to himself as he shoveled another spoonful of food into his mouth.
Devon ascended the half-safe ladder and was handed a cup full of food by Shannon. He moved next to Jared and started eating while Jared waited patiently for the teen’s report. After the third bite, Devon swallowed and spoke.
“We’re good, I think. I didn’t go too far, but it doesn’t seem like anyone lives around here.”
Jared clapped Devon on the back. This was exactly what he was hoping the teen would come back and say. Everyone finished eating, packed up the stove and utensils used for the meal, and began to ferry up the sleeping bags from the barn’s ground floor. Jared made sure everyone’s sleeping bags were brought into the loft before he spoke.
“Everyone sleeps tonight,” Jared announced. “I just don’t see a watch giving us much more than Crank has to offer in the way of an early warning. Horses are inside, we’re inside, and up top we have three avenues of escape,” Jared added, pointing to the front and back of the barn before kicking the toe of his shoe toward where the ladder was still anchored by a single screw. No one in the group argued a good night’s sleep, which didn’t surprise Jared in the least.
After relaxing in the darkness of the barn for a few minutes, Jared crawled over to the top of the ladder with his screwdriver. Groping about in the dark, he was able to get the head of the tool into the grooves of the Phillip’s head screw and start the grueling task of backing the second and equally pigheaded bolt out of the loft’s wooden flooring.
“Don’t fall,” came Essie’s sweet voice from behind him.
Jeez, who does she think she is now, the group’s safety officer? Jared thought in amusement.
“Don’t worry, Ess, it’s way too far to fall. I’m not going anywhere,” Jared returned through clinched teeth as he fought with the screwdriver.
“Yeah, that’s why,” Essie shot back as if Jared were thick and didn’t grasp the obvious. It was a long way down, and that was exactly why she was worrying about him falling.
Jared sat up and kicked himself for working harder and not smarter. “Devon, grab some rope and slide over here.”
When Devon crawled to Jared’s side, Jared took the rope and, by feel, tied it to the top rung of the ladder. “Hold this so the ladder doesn’t fall backward into the barn. I’m getting on it so I can get more leverage.”
Jared’s new plan saved him a lot of shoulder, elbow and hand pain along with what would have turned out to be an extra thirty or forty-five minutes’ labor. Once the ladder was freed from the loft’s flooring, Jared and Devon dragged it up and laid it along the catwalk. In the darkness Jared doubted any haste could be achieved were they ever in need of moving the ladder to one of the openings. Everything they did was a one-handed affair since they could see little to nothing in the growing darkness, made worse by the angry cloud covering overhead. Ladder in one hand, feeling their way with the other hand.
As Jared often did, he found tonight’s darkness a cup-half-full situation. They would all sleep like the dead in the absolute darkness of the barn’s interior. As if on cue, a soft pattering of rain began to pelt the top of the barn in a rhythmic cadence Jared knew would make sleep even easier. The barn’s roof held the rain off its occupants, and the roof’s wood shingles dulled the thudding of the rain to a near hypnotic melody.
Since leaving Clarence and his family, there had been exactly zero romantic feelings and/or advances on the part of either Jared or Shannon, but tonight she laid her sleeping bag alongside his, with Essie’s somewhat smaller sleeping bag on Jared’s other side. Tonight, he would be surrounded by the two most important females in his life. He smiled in the blackness of the barn at the thought. Every member of the group, including Devon, was in the barn and wrapped tightly in the warmth of their individual sleeping bags, trying their best to combat the last few days’ prying cold that had come close to reaching their very cores.
As some semblance of warmth eked its way back into Jared’s chilled body, he began to relax after yet another tension-filled day in the post-solar-flare world. His mind drifted to the real reason he lay in this barn’s loft, and if it weren’t for the glow of his newfound body heat, he might have been overcome with the stress related to rescuing John. Jared cleared his mind, just wanting to feel the euphoric sensation of being wrapped warm and safe like a babe in the womb. Within two minutes, Jared could hear Essie’s breathing deepen, and he knew she was fast asleep.
Shannon also heard Essie’s sleep come on and wriggled closer to Jared until their hips were touching, the only barrier being the sleeping bags and clothes they wore. Jared felt Shannon twist, and turned his head toward her. Her hands snaked out through the darkness and found his face. He shifted in his bag until their faces were within inches of each other.
This time, Jared pulled Shannon to him and kissed her long and passionately. He was too tired to be animalistic or overly aggressive, so the kiss turned out more controlled and thoughtful, which did nothing to quell either of their roiling emotions for one another. When they separated, Jared fell back into his sleeping bag, succumbing to the fatigue, staring up at nothing but black, too tired to pursue an interlude that couldn’t happen anyway. Not with the entire group lying within a few feet of them.
Now more than ever Jared wished it were Shannon who wanted to be out with him hunting and scouting and not Stephani. If the roles were reversed, they could sneak off regularly like two teenagers at summer camp. As Jared began to drift, he could still smell Shannon’s scent on his face. Maybe from the kiss or possibly from her hands as she’d groped for him in the darkness, he didn’t know, nor did he care. What he did know was it smelled delicious. Being cocooned in the toasty sleeping bag coupled with Shannon’s musk on his face was how he preferred falling asleep.
Jared wasn’t sure if what woke him was Crank’s low growl or the distant crunch of what could only have been an explosion. Jared’s sudden movement to an upright seated position seemed to wake the rest of the group as well. Jared looked at his watch through blurry eyes, but was unable to make out the time. Jared wasn’t at all sure whether he’d been asleep for just a few minutes or hours, which didn’t help him any as he struggled to calculate the approximate time.
Two more distant crunches assaulted Jared’s ears, and now he was standing, wobbly, but standing all the same. Essie’s words came back to him, and he crouched so as not to accidentally topple off the loft.
Chapter 25
The SEALs stayed out of the river, moving at a slow jog, or what John would have called a recon shuffle. All the men could move at this speed for hours, covering miles of ground if needed. The SEALs, along with John, were moving along a dirt access road on the east side of the river when they heard shouts from their front. The shouts were replaced almost instantly with the roar of heavy machine-gun fire, followed instantly by the snaps of dangerously close incoming enemy fire.
Matt, who was in the lead, had pushed his NVG into the up position on his helmet for their little run and therefore
had missed the Humvee parked on top of a bridge spanning the river ahead not more than a hundred yards away. The first volley of fire tore into and around the SEALs, killing two instantly. The heavy machine-gun fire was long and undisciplined, but on this cold and rainy night, two of Matt’s SEALs’ luck ran dry. The remaining men scrambled for cover behind the levy the road ran along the top of as the last of the incoming rounds flew high.
One of Matt’s SEALs, known as Rip, did not seek cover, nor did John. Both men raced to their fallen comrades, grabbing each man by the handle located on the back of their plate carriers. Within seconds, Matt and the rest of the SEALs were returning fire, which seemed to quiet the gun on top of the Humvee temporarily. Before John and Rip reached the edge of the levy, another barrage of fire rained down on the men from the bridge. This string of fire was shorter and far less accurate, telling Matt whoever was manning the weapon was not a professionally trained warfighter, and the return fire he and his SEALs poured downrange had affected the gunner’s confidence significantly.
A couple of SEALs had responded with accurate fire by the sound of the bullets tinging against the armored Humvee. The fact that the Humvee was being pelted most likely had whoever was inside in a panic, which was fine with Matt. Matt was confident the soldiers in the field knew they were pitted against the highly trained group of SEALs and would want to avoid any sort of fight that wasn’t slanted in the soldiers’ favor. This suited Matt just fine as long as he could keep the playing field at least tilted slightly in his direction.
His thoughts were interrupted when John and Rip came sliding over the edge of the levy, dragging two very dead SEALs by their plate carriers.
The Jared Chronicles | Book 3 | Chains of Tyranny Page 23