by Stone, Kyla
“They’ve got hunting dogs. They’ll track us right here. Plus, they’ll see our tracks in the snow.”
The rumble of an engine reached them, then another and another.
“They’re coming,” Liam wheezed.
Behind the wheel, Travis froze. “What do I do?”
Liam said, “Drive!”
20
Liam
Day Eighty-Eight
“Where are we going?” Travis asked, terror in his voice.
Liam gritted his teeth. The pain was a hot poker searing his side. Even talking hurt. “There’s a map in the glove compartment with escape routes marked. Skirt Champaign and keep to the back roads—they aren’t as clogged. Head northeast toward Michigan.”
Travis started the engine, and it coughed and choked before roaring to life. He backed out of the barn, spun, and tore down the driveway, chunks of snow and gravel spitting from beneath the tires.
Several pairs of headlights flickered through the thick stands of trees behind them.
“Faster, Travis!” Evelyn shouted.
Travis swung a hard left and roared up a side street. The truck’s headlights caught wide swaths of empty, snow-blanketed farmland on either side of the road, pockmarked with farmhouses, fences, and scraggly trees.
Everything beyond the beams of yellow light was endless darkness.
Travis shifted into gear and floored the accelerator. They bounced and jostled over fallen twigs and branches, swerving sharply around the occasional stalled car filmed in dirty snow and dead leaves.
A gleam of headlights flashed through the rear window. Even in the dark, Liam recognized the wide fat beams of a Humvee speeding toward them.
Travis cursed, spun the wheel, and turned right onto a larger road. “I-57! Sorry!”
“Just head north and get off as soon as you can. It’s a straight shot and too easy for them to catch us. We need to lose them in a neighborhood.”
“Tree ahead!” Evelyn cried.
Travis cranked the steering wheel and barely missed the branches of a massive downed sycamore tree looming like some monstrous, spidery creature.
Gunshots exploded the air. Automatic fire blasted from the Humvees.
The baby woke with a startled yelp.
Travis ducked and wrenched the wheel, nearly swerving off the road. “I don’t know where to go! Someone needs to help with the map!”
Despite the nausea wrenching through him, Liam twisted around and braced himself against the back seat, looking backward, M4 in hand. He flipped the NVG optics down over his eyes.
The beams of two Humvees bounced wildly behind them, lighting up the trees. Maybe two hundred yards back but gaining ground.
They were up-armored. He could just make out the shapes of the turrets.
He flicked off the safety. “I’m shooting out the back window. Cover the baby with something!”
“Liam, your injury—”
“Won’t matter if we’re all dead in the next thirty seconds!”
Evelyn nodded tightly. She grabbed a blanket from the diaper bag and spread it over L.J.’s screaming head.
The truck bounced and jerked. The pain was immeasurable, every jolt an electric shock that sent red arrows spearing through his vision.
Liam fired three controlled bursts, the gunfire explosive in close quarters. The freezing wind buffeted him, howling in his ears, drowning out the baby’s terrified shrieks.
No one could spare a second to comfort him. They had to stay alive first.
The Humvees kept coming. With his NVGs, Liam made out a hostile rising to man the turret of the first Humvee.
His lungs constricted. They wouldn’t survive a hit from the M2 .50 caliber machine gun. With an effective range of two thousand yards and 750-850 rounds per minute, they’d be instantly eviscerated.
Liam fired at the gunner but missed. “Get us off this road! Now!”
“There’s a neighborhood to the right, just past the overpass bridge,” Evelyn yelled.
Travis shook his head frantically. “There’s no road!”
“It’s a berm,” Evelyn said over the baby’s screams. “The bushes don’t look that big. Just go!”
Liam fired again and again. The gunner ducked. “Now!”
Travis jerked the wheel to the right, barely letting up on the gas. The truck squealed, the tires lifting off the road, jarring them so violently that both Liam and Evelyn were thrown against the seats. L.J. shrieked in protest.
Behind them, the M2 unleashed a thunderous roar.
Liam glimpsed chunks of asphalt blasting from the road, caught frozen for an instant in the twin yellow beams like a slow-motion disaster movie.
And then Travis turned up a grassy slope, bumping and tearing through underbrush, twigs and thorns scraping the truck’s sides, and rammed through a wooden privacy fence at forty miles per hour.
They crashed into the backyard of a brick bungalow.
With Liam facing the rear, he caught flashes of the detritus as the truck plowed over a patio set, plastic chairs flying, the folded umbrella thumping over the hood and roof before striking the bed of the truck and landing, khaki fabric whipping wildly.
A second later, they broke through the opposite side of the fence, raced across the driveway, and bounced over the curb onto a residential street.
Liam could barely hear over the roar of the wind, his eyes straining for a flicker of yellow headlights in pursuit. The rush of the air dried out his eyes, partially blinding him.
He blinked, and there they were—the Humvee bouncing from the backyard onto the road behind them as Travis banked into a sharp ninety-degree corner.
“Turn off the headlights!”
“What? Then I can’t see! I’ll crash—”
“We’ll never lose them otherwise!” Liam tore off his bump helmet with the optics and thrust it at Evelyn. “Give it to your husband!”
With the NVGs, Travis could avoid driving headfirst into an obstacle that might kill them. Within a few blocks, he was blowing through four-way stops and darkened traffic signals.
Evelyn clutched the map with white-knuckled fingers, shouting instructions. Somehow, she kept them from turning onto a dead-end street or cul-de-sac.
Travis sped up, increasing to dangerous speeds, turning at every block, nearly tipping the truck, almost crashing into stop signs and stalled vehicles in the center of the road.
With a metallic screech, he sideswiped a minivan, losing the driver’s side mirror.
In the tight corners, narrow roads, and clustered houses, the gunners couldn’t get close enough for a clear shot. Especially without the truck’s headlights drawing them like a beacon.
The glowing eyes of the Humvees stalking them grew further and further behind. After an eternity, they flickered and winked out for good.
“They’re gone!” Evelyn said. “I don’t see them anymore.”
“Keep watching…doesn’t mean they won’t show up. And keep driving.”
Evelyn managed to soothe L.J. while simultaneously directing her husband. Travis wove through a few more neighborhoods before leaving Champaign and hitting the back roads that led them northeast through miles and miles of farmland toward Michigan.
Liam struggled to remain alert in case the Humvees appeared again. They didn’t.
Nothing outside their vehicle but the dark, empty, endless night.
Finally, Travis switched on the headlights and gave a shaky sigh. “Well, that was quite the adventure, wasn’t it, darling? Weren’t you just saying how you missed long drives in the country?”
Evelyn gave a half-hysterical laugh. “Peaceful drives in the country.”
Liam’s fingers slackened on the carbine. Dizziness washed over him. He felt himself slipping.
“Liam!”
Fighting unconsciousness, he sagged against the back seat. “I think I…I think…”
“Save your strength.” Instantly composed, Evelyn dropped the map and pulled an Israeli trauma bandage ou
t of Liam’s go-bag at his feet. “Lucky for you, I’m an ER nurse.”
“Feel damn…lucky.”
“You should.” Evelyn peeled back his blood-drenched shirt to get a good look at the wound. “You have anyone? Someone special in your life?”
He gritted his teeth against a tsunami of pain. “I do.”
“That’s good. What’s her name?”
He hadn’t told a single soul of his true feelings. “I…”
“Her name, Liam.” Evelyn’s face dimmed, her voice far away. “Tell me her name.”
He didn’t know what he said, or if he said anything at all. His ears rang like a struck bell, his brain mush, everything going fuzzy and distant.
He was drifting on waves of pain, yet one image fixed in his mind like the spark of an ember in a sea of darkness. One face.
Just before he blacked out, Evelyn said, “Stay alive, Liam. Stay alive for Hannah.”
21
The General
Day Eighty-Nine
The General leaned forward in his overstuffed leather office chair and stared at the satellite phone set atop his expansive cedar desk.
He’d been calling his contact repeatedly, with no answer.
It concerned him.
With a sigh, he picked up his tumbler of cognac and swished the ice in the dark liquid.
The whirr of the generator buzzed in the background. No lights were on in the governor’s offices—they relied on daylight as much as possible, using precious electricity for heat and refrigeration.
Water treatment and sewage had been offline for months. The pipes in Lansing—and in every city across Michigan, across the entire country—were bone dry.
Currently, drinking water was brought in from outside the city and treated manually, reserved for government officials and other VIPs, of course.
The General didn’t care where it came from, as long as it came.
Ice was a precious commodity the General had no intention of doing without.
For the last two months, he’d called the George W. Romney Building on Capital Avenue in Lansing, his home away from home. The historic thirteen-story limestone and brick structure had once served as a hotel, but after being purchased by the state of Michigan in the 1980s, it was gutted and renovated as the new Office of the Governor.
The current governor of Michigan—Henry Duffield—was just down the hall, a few short doors away.
The General leaned back in his chair with a sigh. He had always enjoyed basking near the seat of power—if not sitting on the throne himself.
Someone knocked on the door. “Sir, the Governor’s debrief has started,” his assistant said.
Out of habit, he glanced at the clock on the wall, still frozen in time.
The debrief was early. That calculating little minx of a Secretary of State was once again attempting to undermine him.
“Thank you, Osborne,” the General said as he rose.
He brought the cognac with him to the governor’s office, where Governor Duffield bent over a bundle of files and paperwork on his immense desk.
The Secretary of State, Lauren Eubanks, leaned against a bookcase with her arms crossed. Her eyes narrowed as he entered.
Osborne, the General’s assistant, trailed into the office after him to remain quietly in the corner unless called upon, avidly taking notes.
A slim, stoop-shouldered man stood beside Eubanks, clearing his throat and shuffling a sheaf of official-looking papers in his hands.
“Started without me, I see,” the General said, modulating his voice, keeping his temper in check.
“My fault,” the Secretary of State said, smiling. “Seeing as you’ve been so busy. I didn’t want to disturb you with yet another meeting.”
It was saccharine, and as fake as the sweet smile he offered in return. “It’s no bother. I’m happy to assist in any way that I can.”
“I’m sure you are,” she said.
Governor Duffield waved his hand distractedly. “Abdul Nazari here was just giving us the latest updates from Homeland Security, since they oversee FEMA. Each one is more depressing than the last.”
The man cleared his throat. “As I was saying, a few counties in California and Arizona have a plant up and running on wind or solar power, but it’s the transformers that are the problem. The few international donations went to New York and L.A. Washington has ordered thousands, of course, but they won’t be ready for two years, and you can guess where they’re going first.”
“How long until we’re back online?” Governor Duffield asked.
“The latest reports from Homeland Security suggest five to seven years for major cities. Ten years for the fly-over states.”
“What?” Duffield squeaked, even though the General had repeatedly warned him of just such an eventuality. “Are you kidding me? What are we going to do?”
Henry Duffield was a worrier, not a doer. A hand-wringer and a complainer. How the white-haired, stoop-shouldered old man had won another term was beyond the General’s comprehension. And yet, here he was.
“That’s your purview, not ours,” the Homeland paper-pusher said. “Handle things.”
“But we need more supplies. Our camps are running out of food and toiletries, not to mention room. We barely survived the winter!”
“The United States government is not responsible for you. If you haven’t prepared for emergency contingencies as instructed—”
“With what funds?” Eubanks asked sharply.
“Why, your own, of course,” the man said with more than a bit of smugness.
The General wisely refrained from cussing the bureaucrat from the room. Or pulling his pistol and shooting the waste of oxygen through his irritating pie hole.
Unfortunately, certain rules of civilization still applied.
Five minutes later, the irritating man had departed, and the governor and his secretary of state stared at each other, still reeling from a new reality that the General had accepted on day one.
“Ten years,” Governor Duffield said. “Ten.”
Eubanks simply shook her head, cradling her ribs with her arms, and said nothing.
“And D.C. insists on keeping it from the public,” the General said. “As if they can’t figure it out on their own.”
Of course, he meant D.C. metaphorically. The President, his cabinet, and what remained of congress had hunkered down at Mount Weather in Bluemont, Virginia for the foreseeable future.
He imagined they had all the ice and cognac a man could wish for, and every other creature comfort the nation’s elite government officials felt they deserved.
Cowards, they were. Frightened, bleating cows. Too timid and sheltered to deal with the world as it was.
Luckily, they had access to men like him, who were still willing to do the dirty work. For a price.
“Hell, they’re still telling the FEMA shelters to plan in degrees of months, not years.”
“You can’t panic the people—” the governor started.
The General rolled his eyes. “Oh yes, the old adage that the public can’t handle the truth. I’m well aware of the reasoning. If we told them the truth, they might riot. Or raid the grocery stores. Or burn their own cities.” He did not break eye contact, his gaze cold and calculating. “Have you considered that we’re already there?”
Governor Duffield shifted uncomfortably and coughed into his handkerchief. He was an old man, but then, politics had become a playground for old men who pantomimed at power like small children strove for supremacy in the sandbox.
The real power lay elsewhere.
A politician had to play by a set of rules, had to maintain a facade of moral and ethical certitude. A man like the General did not.
A one-star general with the U.S. Army, the General had officially “retired” after rumors of some shady dealings reached the wrong ears. As always, he’d landed on his feet, pivoting quickly, recruiting the best soldiers and ex-soldiers and establishing a private security firm for th
ose ABC law enforcement agencies and government entities who wanted certain things done off the books. Kidnappings. Security for sensitive cargo. Target elimination.
His men had given him the nickname long ago; it had stuck. To those in the know, he remained a general—the General. The epitome of the behind-the-scenes shadow, the string-puller, the puppet master.
The world at large knew nothing of his existence. He preferred it that way. In certain circles, he was revered. In others, he was loathed. And in still others, he was feared utterly.
And so, when the EMP hit and it all went to hell, Henry Duffield had called upon the one person he knew who could deliver results by any means necessary.
He might not like it, or even like the General, but the world needed men like him. Men who got things done.
What had begun as overseeing security details for the surviving members of the state legislature and the governor’s office had rapidly morphed into significantly more reach. The General had inserted himself into every aspect of the day-to-day dealings of the crippled state government. As planned, he was now indispensable.
The governor gave a wet cough. “You’re being facetious again.”
“I am only stating the truth,” the General said. “And nothing but the truth.”
The Secretary of State studied him darkly, as if she were trying to figure out what skullduggery he was up to. A tall, plain woman, with a stern, suspicious demeanor, Lauren Eubanks was intelligent and incredibly competent.
She was also one of those foolhardy idealists who still clung to outdated ideals of morality and ethics.
The General despised her.
He did not forget for one second that she was next in line for succession if something untoward were to happen to the current governor.
The lieutenant governor and attorney general had never made it home from their overseas Christmas vacations. Next in line after the Attorney General was the President Pro Tempore of the senate—deceased in a car accident—and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, a middle-aged woman who’d absconded from her duties to care for her family in Ann Arbor.