Susie leaned farther out the window and looked left and right across the parking lot.
Odd. She hadn’t seen Morty, the other security contractor, in at least an hour. She guessed Thomas was still down at the stream with Ellarose. That made some sense. That was about the last time Susie had seen either of them. Ellarose probably had both down there building her dam for her. Her daughter could charm the spots off a leopard, that’s what Chuck always said.
She laughed at herself.
“Bon Bon, get down from there. Please.”
If someone could tap this kid’s source of power, bottle it up, the world wouldn’t need fossil fuels anymore. Climate change solved if humans could figure out where Bonham got all his energy. She smiled. Her son was now climbing a set of wooden shelves built into the wall by the living room window. If he fell from that height, he might hurt himself.
“Bon—” she started to say again but stopped.
Within reason, Susie and Chuck let the kids make their own mistakes. Hurt yourself by sticking your fingers into a fire, and you won’t do it again. More effective than nagging them to keep their hands away from flames their whole lives.
The main living area of the cabin was thirty feet across and open, the kitchen, living room, and dining room all one space. A twenty-foot cathedral ceiling arched overhead. The second-floor atrium had doors leading to the four bedrooms, with a stairway leading up and down into the basement, which was dug into the earth.
Huge front windows looked down from the four-thousand-plus feet of altitude here onto the plains of Virginia and DC sixty miles away. Rain clouds still sat heavy below them, but the sky at this height had been clear all day—except now a dark smudge appeared in the near distance.
The whole house was constructed with massive poplar logs, even the shed and outbuildings. Poplar was an underappreciated wood for building homes, Chuck liked to explain to anyone who visited. The tulip poplar here grew to two hundred feet, although it was more closely related to the magnolia than either the tulip or the poplar. It grew straight and almost knot-free, and was a joy to notch and hew, Chuck said.
Not just that, but its R-value for insulation was better than any other wood out there, and it had immense stopping power—that was the final point Chuck loved to tell people. The combination of the huge tulip poplar logs and the cement mortar that bound them could just about stop a tank shell, and easily absorb .50-caliber rounds.
His father had built the place with his grandfather, years before Chuck was born, and before they restricted construction in Shenandoah National Park. No other houses allowed now, which was why they’d snapped up the Baylors’ place when it came up. Just two hundred yards through the woods, but getting that cabin together with this one turned their place from a cottage into a compound.
Chuck loved it.
And that this place was literally grandfathered to them.
Chuck had told her about the Burling Cabin Site in the nature preserve next to Senator Seymour’s house. How old man Burling used to go there well into his nineties, and wouldn’t let anyone cut down trees to put in telephone lines. That’s what Chuck wanted to do with this place. Become an old man here.
It was their oasis.
Really more of a bunker.
Chuck’s father and grandfather had built the place, but Chuck had rebuilt it from the inside out to be their bolt hole if—and when—civilization disintegrated out there. They didn’t wear tinfoil hats or anything, and if she was being honest, she didn’t think it would ever come to that. The cabin was more of a hobby. Just about every penny from their restaurant businesses went into this place.
But after what happened six years ago, their desire to be prepared had accelerated.
Other families went to Disney World, but the Mumfords did weapons training and close combat classes and wilderness survival camps on their holidays. In the last two years, they had done some massive construction work here instead of taking trips anywhere. She had married Chuck and everything that came with him—and she loved it, no regrets.
Susie had even done advanced tactical training last year at a boot camp.
It was a bit of a mystery how they’d become the fastest of friends with the Mitchells, who were so different from them. They were CNN people, whereas the Mumfords were Fox. It was that experience when they’d lived in the next apartment over in New York that had bonded them forever. Mike hated guns—Susie wasn’t even sure if he could fire one—but Susie had convinced Lauren to take up weapons training.
They even did some hand-to-hand combat classes together. Girl stuff.
Bonham was now about seven feet up from the hardwood floor. He turned to grin at his mother. “I can climb all the way to the top,” he proclaimed.
That was another two shelves he planned to scale. Susie decided it was time to intervene. “You fall from there, you’ll probably break an arm, and don’t scre—”
“Hey, what’s that?” Bonham pointed with his left hand, his knees on the shelf below, his right hand the only one keeping a grip.
“Bonham, you keep hold.” Susie broke into a jog across the dining area toward the living room.
“Is that a dog?”
“Bon Bon, what did I just tell you?”
Her boy put his left hand back up and steadied himself.
Susie reached out her hands and grabbed her son. He turned and let go to drop into her arms, his mischievousness suddenly gone. She turned in the direction he was looking, just in time to see an animal disappearing.
It was not like any creature she had ever seen before.
The light was dim, and the thing was a hundred or more feet away, but the bounding gait was beyond odd. Something unnatural about it, and the legs—they seemed straight, gray. The body oblong and black and squat. It bounded away like an awkward deer. Or a big dog. A very big dog.
A huge murmuration of starlings undulated in the distance over the trees. She’d never seen that up here before. Not this high.
Closer to the horizon, she could see that the dark smudge she’d noticed before wasn’t rainclouds. The black smoke curled and billowed from a ridge in the foothills. How had a fire started now? It had just been raining down there.
That gave her a chill.
This place was a fortress, but fires were her nightmare.
No neighbors meant peace and quiet, but it also meant no neighbors. No help. No emergency services for miles—and anyway, right now emergency services had been crippled across the entire nation. No GPS. Not even any power in half the country. Nobody would come up here to dig fire breaks for just two houses.
She was on her own, but then that’s what they designed the place for.
“Hello?”
Susie froze in place with Bonham in her arms.
Who was that? Thomas? The timbre of the voice was different, and she had told the two of them to come in whenever they wanted for coffee or the bathroom or whatever. It was someone outside, toward the driveway.
Someone she didn’t know.
She reached for the inside pocket of her yoga pants for her keys and clicked a remote. All the locks in the house slid shut at once with a satisfying, coordinated chunking sound. She took a few steps through the living room and peered out the kitchen window.
A young man stood in the gravel driveway, about fifty feet up, behind the two Escalades and near the edge of the fir trees.
He hovered. Looked uncertain. Waved when he saw her.
Susie went to the front door, put Bonham down behind her, and opened it an inch after checking her three and six. “Can I help you?”
“Sorry to bother you, ma’am, but our car broke down on the 55.” He hooked the thumb on his right hand and indicated back up the driveway. He was wearing only a Black Crowes concert T-shirt—despite the chill growing in the air and darkness descending—with jeans and Converse sneakers. His accent was southern. “No cars going up or down the road, not at this time. We waited an hour, then I walked. No gas stations—”
“Ma’am, six miles? That’ll be twelve miles up and down this mountain. And the power is out everywhere. We drove up through Riverton on the way in. Not a light anywhere. My girlfriend is pregnant, ma’am. It’s getting cold. Do you have a landline? Cell phones are not working, as I am sure you know. I could call a tow truck?”
“We have no working phones.”
He scratched his left arm and shifted from one foot to the other, glancing away at the trees and then back at the gravel before returning to look at her. He had shaggy blond hair and a tattoo on his neck. “My name’s Billy, ma’am. My girlfriend, Shonda, well, she’s pregnant, like I said. Could we maybe come in? Warm up? I hate to ask, but we got nowhere else.”
Susie leaned the door open an inch more. It was twilight already. Still no sign of the security contractors. They were somewhere with Ellarose.
Tattoo.
She squinted. When she talked to Lauren, her friend mentioned that one of the people—the terrorists—that had kidnapped her a week ago had a tattoo of a rose on his neck. But a lot of people had neck tattoos these days. The hair on the nape of hers prickled. Was that a rose?
Susie leaned another few inches out of the door, still in its protection, but enough that it seemed like she was being inviting.
“Yeah, sure. Okay,” she said “But let me put on a jacket and get you a couple of coats. Then we’ll get you in and warmed up, get you some food.”
She beamed her best southern hospitality smile, then turned and half closed the inside door.
“Bonham,” she said in her I-am-not-the-hell-kidding voice. “You go downstairs. Get into the secret room. Remember how we did in all the drills? You remember?”
Her boy’s face went slack.
“I am being serious. This is not a drill. There are very bad people outside. You remember everything we said?”
He nodded.
“You leave that door open a crack down there. No way in or out except that hallway.” That wasn’t exactly true, but she couldn’t make it complicated. “Anyone but me comes in that hallway, you shut that door and lock it. You hit the flares. You understand? Repeat to me what you understand.”
“Go to the safe room. Anyone but you comes in the hallway, I shut the door. And then the flares.” He still lisped his “f” sounds.
Susie’s heart felt like it broke into a million pieces seeing the sudden fear in her boy's face, but pride swelled in her chest, too. He stood up straight and still, his eyes focused and steady on her, if tearing up more than a little. Hers too. She wiped them away.
“Go now,” Susie said, “run, and don’t open for anybody.” She hesitated. “And if you have to, blow the whole thing. You remember?” She pulled her keys out and unclipped a red one and handed it to him.
“Now?”
“Run!”
Bonham took off and skidded to a stop on the hardwood floor in his socks, paused and looked at her as he grabbed the banister going down. She nodded and he nodded back before he padded cautiously down the stairs, the red key swinging in his hand. They always told him to be careful going down the polished wooden stairs in socks.
Susie had to go outside the house and find Ellarose.
Her hands shaking, she turned back to the young man in the driveway. He walked toward her. She waved through the glass exterior door, then came back inside around the main door to the jacket hooks.
She didn’t take a coat, though.
She used her keys to unlock a bolt hole in the wall. Then hauled back on the top hook of the coat rack. A switch that released a hidden compartment behind it. The panel swung down and open. The jackets attached to the hooks flopped to the floor.
Behind the panel was an arsenal of weapons.
First, she needed protection.
As quick as she could, Susie slipped on a ballistic vest and chest plate, then a neck guard.
“I’ll be out in a second, just hold on,” she yelled as loud as she could while she put on the rest of the body armor. Shin guards. Upper and lower arm protectors.
They practiced this in drills.
After their friend Tony was killed here six years before, when they were attacked by raiders looking to steal their supplies, Chuck and Susie had sworn they would never be so unprepared again. Anybody ever came here again looking for trouble, the Mumfords would have some surprises waiting for them.
And Ellarose was out there.
Any fear Susie had was eclipsed by a blossoming momma-bear protective rage.
Letting out curses that would have made her pastor blush, she grabbed a belt of 37-millimeter smoke bombs, another of high-explosive ammo. The explosive rounds were illegal, but a few of the modified weapons up here stretched the limits of the law. She strapped them both to her waist. Then took one of the two modified SIG Sauer MCXs from the rack, attached a launcher, and stacked her vest with four sets of double-taped-together magazines.
She snapped one into her weapon. Banged it to make sure it was set. Paused and considered. Grabbed a Bowie knife from the wall.
“Okay,” Susie said in a sing-songy voice as loud as she could, her back still to the door. “Sorry, I spilled my coffee. I’m almost there.” She donned a Batlskin Viper armored helmet, pulled the mandible and nose guard into place, then snapped down the ballistic visor.
She closed the hidden closet back up. Pulled back the charging handle on the MCX and set the selector to live. Her heart hammering through her chest and up into her throat. She slowed her breathing and counted to ten under her breath.
Susie swung around the door and leveled her weapon.
Chapter 12
I HURRIED ALONG the forest path. Tried to command my legs to run. The best I could manage was a stumbling jog. How long did Tyrell say it would take for the miniature drones to reactivate?
Being hunted by machines.
Death from the sky.
I’d had people point guns at me, even chase me with weapons. It was terrifying, but at least it had made a sort of sense—however misguided, I knew the people attacking me were trying to right some perceived wrong or some other twisted logic. It was within the scope of my emotional understanding.
But this.
I had never stared into the eyes of a machine hunting me.
But those weren’t eyes. They were red LEDs. Maybe not even vision sensors. Running lights like on an airplane? My imagination turned them into eyes. A fantasy that made it seem like “they” were hunting us. Those things had no feelings, just algorithms. No rage. They even destroyed themselves to kill us.
Perfect machines for terrorists.
My body shook, wet and cooling down now, as the adrenaline drained from my bloodstream and created a void.
“Dad, you okay?” Luke jogged beside me, leaving me the main path while he dodged branches and bushes and gnarled tree roots to my right.
“Fine.”
“Are you hurt?”
“I’m okay.”
“Because you’re covered in blood.”
I checked myself in the gray light. My hands were caked with mud. My forearms smeared red. I swept my arms down my chest as we jogged and checked again for gaping wounds. “I think it’s from those guys in the bottom of the boat,” I replied after a second.
When Chuck had pulled me in, I’d slid over the gunwale face-first into the dead body of one of the Secret Service agents, half of whose head had been blown away.
“Good,” Luke replied. “I mean, not good, but I mean—”
“I know what you mean.”
I thought about pulling him up into my arms to carry him. A million times before, I’d picked him up when he was a baby—when he screamed, when he needed something. But my little guy wasn’t a baby anymore.
How much time did we have? Where were we going? And why hadn’t anyone come to help us yet? This guy Tyrell better have a good plan, or he wouldn’t need to worry about those
drones. I’d kill him myself.
And this could still be a trap.
Chuck and Damon jogged on the path right in front of me, Tyrell a few paces ahead of him. Archer had started out behind Tyrell, but the man seemed to melt into the shadows only to appear beside me, then behind, and then I thought I saw him up ahead somewhere. No idea where he was right now, but I sensed him hovering around us.
“I’m so sorry, Leo,” I heard my wife say behind me.
She seemed more grounded than me, and yet she had just lost her mother. The senator, Leo, had just lost his sister, his only sibling. Susan Seymour had just been killed.
My God. Susan.
As much as she had frustrated me sometimes, as my mother-in-law, I had developed a soft spot for her, even more after her husband died. She was my kids’ only remaining grandparent. I had come to love her, treasure her as part of my family. And now she was gone, just like that. An image of her blood spraying against the wall flashed in my mind. We hadn’t been able to even go back and get her. Had she been alive and struggling?
I pushed that thought away.
No way she survived what I saw.
And then another thought. How many more of us would die before this was over?
Olivia was in Lauren’s arms. My baby girl had just witnessed her grandmother being killed. Minutes before, they had been cuddling together on a couch, watching some Disney movie, and then these machines killed her. Appeared from nowhere.
Assassinated was a better word. Murdered. She didn’t just die, like at an old age home of natural causes. Someone purposely ended her life in the most terrifying way I could imagine. And personal. Right in front of us.
And what did Tyrell have to do with it?
The senator had the same thought. “We’re going to get some answers,” he said gruffly. “Get it from the horse’s mouth, and if anything he says doesn’t match what we already found out...”
He mumbled an apology and pushed between me and Luke. The senator still had on his blue dress shirt and slacks and red tie and brown loafers, but was soaking wet head to foot and spattered with blood and mud.
I looked over my shoulder and saw that Archer was behind us. Bringing up the rear.
CyberWar: World War C Trilogy Book 3 Page 8
