“Thanks to you we didn’t!”
“That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
“Sleeping nearly naked with you? Heck no, it wasn’t!”
She blushed and then smiled. “It could have been a lot worse if you were stuck out here with Eric instead, huh?”
“We’d probably both just have to freeze to death in that case.”
“It’s amazing what a difference one day can make isn’t it?” Vicky was staring over at the site of the cabin now, reduced to a pile of blackened rubble. “Yesterday we woke up in a cozy warm cabin, making coffee and breakfast on a wood stove. Now, all we have is the clothes on our backs, and no breakfast, and no coffee.”
“Now that you mention it, yeah, I’m pretty hungry. And you don’t want to know what I’d do for a hot cup of coffee. No telling when we’ll get that again. Dang, I wish you hadn’t reminded me!”
“Sorry! Hey, before we get any hungrier, we’d better get to looking for that cache you were talking about. If it is real, it might take a while to find it.”
“Yeah, and if it isn’t, then we’d better find something to shoot pretty fast. We won’t last long up here without food, especially as cold as it is.”
“Bob said it was at the base of a cliff? Did he say which direction it was from here?”
“No, he didn’t go into any details because he said he was going to show it to me himself. I was in no shape to go there with him though before he left with Shauna to go to the ranch, so he never got the chance. You’ve explored some around here with her though. Have you seen any cliffs that might be the one?”
“That’s just it. I really haven’t. There’s plenty of steep slopes around here, but not an actual cliff that I know of. I’m trying to think of where one might be. Looking at the way that drainage runs, it’s bound to be somewhere off to one side of that, but we don’t even know if it was upstream or down from here.”
“Well, we didn’t see anything like that yesterday, and we went all the way down to that road and back. Maybe it’s upstream, somewhere between here and up on the Divide Trail.”
“That’s what I’m thinking, and I believe that’s where we ought to start looking.”
Once Tucker was saddled up, Jonathan mounted him with Vicky’s help and they headed up the steep slopes of the drainage towards the Continental Divide. The springs feeding the creek were only a short distance up, and beyond them the basin widened, and it was in that area that it seemed more likely they would find this “cliff” that Bob spoke of. They explored several frustrating dead ends, but it wasn’t until they were almost up to the saddle of the ridge, near the place where Jonathan broke his leg, that Vicky spotted something high up on a steep slope to the south that looked promising. It was more of a small rock wall than a “cliff,” but it was the closest they’d seen to one, and it seemed to overhang beyond vertical, indicating there could be a cave at the base.
“Tucker can’t get up there, so you’re going to have to wait here,” Vicky said.
“Yeah, yeah. I know the drill. Just be careful, okay? Take the .44 Magnum with you and if there is a cave, make sure it’s not a bear or mountain lion den!”
“Not likely, but I’ll make sure nothing’s home before I go in.”
Jonathan didn’t like the idea of poking around in caves out here himself. It would really suck to crawl into one and corner a big pissed-off animal like that. Thinking about it reminded him how lucky he was to have Vicky and Tucker. He figured if he’d been left alone out here in the shape he was in, it would just be a matter of time before something came stalking out of the woods and made a meal out of him. Predators always preferred weak or crippled prey, given a choice, and he figured being eaten alive would be about the worst way to go he could imagine. It made him so nervous thinking about it that he wanted to call out to Vicky to make sure she was still okay. She was out of sight from where he waited, but they were also close enough to that trail up on the ridge above that he didn’t want to risk it. There was no way of knowing who might be passing through the area, and keeping a low profile was essential. But she was gone so long that he was almost ready to break that rule when he finally spotted her coming back down. Vicky was carrying something balanced across her shoulder that looked like a wool blanket, tied up into a bundle. In her free hand, she was carrying a short rifle.
“I hit the jackpot! Old Bob wasn’t just telling a tall tale, Jonathan! I found his cache!”
“No shit? What was in it?”
“Food, like you said! And check out this rifle! It’s a .22 Magnum, like the varmint gun my grandpa had! There were two 50-round boxes of cartridges for it. There was also a nice hunting knife, a compass, a map and a couple of pencils, a box of waterproof matches and this blanket. We’ll be warmer at night wrapped up in this, Jonathan!”
“You’ll share it with me? Do we still get to take our clothes off?”
“That depends on whether you behave,” she laughed.
“I will! But right now, I’m starving! What is there to eat?”
Vicky put down her load and untied the blanket. Jonathan grinned when he saw what old Bob Barham had stashed in there. It was certainly an emergency survival cache, stocked with high-energy rations that included freeze-dried backpacker meals, high energy bars, and vacuum-packed jerky that he’d probably made himself. It wasn’t a huge amount, but used carefully, there was enough to see him and Vicky through a few days, and the .22 Magnum carbine would be ideal for hunting smaller game to supplement it if needed.
“This is awesome, Vicky! Did you get everything he had in there?”
“I think so. It was dark, of course, and the cave was really small. He’d piled rocks and brush in front of it to hide it, so that’s what took me so long. It was just big enough for a person to crawl inside and I had to feel my way around.”
“No freakin’ way I’d do something like that! You’re a lot braver than I am, Vicky!”
“Well I knew a lion or bear couldn’t have gotten in there the way he had it closed off, and it’s too high and cold up here for rattlesnakes, so what was there to worry about? It paid off, right?”
Jonathan gave her a big hug and told her it sure did. Then they opened a couple of the energy bars and shared them before heading back down to the cabin. There were two things Jonathan wanted to do there; one was to look through the cabin rubble for anything else they might need, and the other, now that they had something to write with, was to leave Eric a note somewhere that he’d find it. It was as likely he’d arrive here first as it was they’d find him—probably more so, actually—and Jonathan wanted him to know what happened to Shauna and where the two of them had gone.
They left the note at the base of the marker Eric had erected for Bob Barham’s grave. Vicky had the better handwriting, so she wrote it on the back of part of the map that had been in Bob’s cache. The map itself was a national forest map showing hundreds of thousands of acres of the surrounding federal lands. After looking it over they tore off a section that they knew was far from their route and therefore unneeded, and it was big enough to write a detailed note. Vicky worded it so that if the men that had done this or anyone else with bad intent found it, they wouldn’t be able to make sense of where the two of them were headed, but Eric would know. She also described the location of the place they’d followed the trail of the raiders to, which was Shauna’s last known location. If the same men came back and read that, they would know they’d been followed, but Jonathan and Vicky thought that was unlikely anyway and that it wouldn’t make a difference if they did. But if Eric read it, that location would be crucial information to him, even though they doubted he would be able to follow the trail from that point any better than they could have. It was going to be heartbreaking for Eric if he had indeed found Megan and returned here only to discover her mother had been abducted in the meantime. But they left him as much information as they could and that was all Jonathan and Vicky could do unless they found him first, either at the reservation or somewhe
re along the way back from there.
They carefully wrapped the note in one of the plastic bags Bob had used for the food in the cache, and then covered it under a small cairn of rocks, leaving just enough of the bag showing to let Eric know something was in there if he walked over to the grave site. Then, the two of them used sticks to sift through the rubble of the cabin. There were some metal tools and a few other objects that didn’t burn, but they never found an axe head or anything else worth salvaging that they could carry, and so they loaded up what they had from the cache behind the saddle on Tucker’s back and set out on their journey. Neither of them wanted to spend another night in the vicinity of the cabin, even if they didn’t have time to get far with what was left of the afternoon, so they headed back up the creek and stopped for the night near the place where Vicky had found the cave. Once there, they built a fire, so they could heat water for one of the freeze-dried meals. That second night was far more comfortable than the one before, as they didn’t have to try and fall asleep on empty stomachs, and they now had a blanket they could share. Sleeping close for warmth wasn’t quite as awkward this second time either, and they fell naturally into each other’s arms with little hesitation.
“I feel a lot better about our chances of making it now, Jonathan, thanks to Bob for leaving us what we needed.”
“He was prepared for everything, wasn’t he? He was such an interesting and knowledgeable man. It’s really too bad what happened to him. We could have learned a lot from the guy.”
“Yeah, if not for that stupid Jeremy and Brett.”
“I still think Eric went too easy on them, letting them go. He probably should have shot them then and there.”
“Probably, but of course when confronted they dropped their guns and played it off as an accident, whether it really was or not. I don’t see Eric as the kind of guy who would just shoot someone under circumstances like that.”
“No, I just wish the idiots would have tried something with him. He wouldn’t have hesitated to blow them away then.”
“Well, like he said, he didn’t do them any great favors letting them go the way he did. With no horses, no guns and barely enough food to get them down out of the mountains, I don’t imagine they had an easy time of it. And they may not have survived it after all.”
“Maybe not. It just sucks that Bob had to go that way. But a lot of bad things are happening to a lot of good people; like your grandparents, and now Shauna. Sometimes I wonder if any of us are going to make it through this, and if life will ever be normal again. I doubt it will. I really do.”
“It may not ever return to normal, Jonathan, but while we are alive, we can make the best of it.”
“I’m not complaining about that. I know we’re lucky to be alive, and I’m especially lucky to have you for a friend. Otherwise, it would be over for me out here.”
“And I’m just as lucky, Jonathan. I can’t tell you how awful it was for me those days and nights when I was alone hiding in that barn at the ranch, after having to bury my grandma and grandpa by myself. I don’t ever want to feel that alone again. It was horrible!”
Vicky snuggled closer to him as she said this, and Jonathan hugged her tightly, promising her that wouldn’t happen again. “We’ll stick together, Vicky, whatever comes next. I know Eric wants to get the hell out of the country and he’s got a great boat to do it on. He won’t leave without Megan, and I know he’ll do everything in his power to find Shauna too, if she’s still alive. But at some point, he’s going to be setting sail again, and if he’ll let me, I want to go with him. You ought to think about that too. From what I’ve seen since we left Florida, I don’t know if this country will ever be the same again.”
“Where is he planning to go? I never thought about the idea of leaving on a sailboat, but then, I’ve lived in the mountains most of my life.”
“Eric’s been all over the world in his line of work. He knows where all the bad places are and where to find the good ones too. He told me all about some of them when we were sailing across the Gulf. Whole groups of islands so far away from everything else that hardly anybody ever goes to them except a few other people with the kind of sailboats that can get there. He said there were places where you could anchor up for years if you wanted to, with coral reefs full of fish and perfect weather year-round. Wouldn’t it be nice to be soaking up rays on a tropical beach somewhere under the full moon instead of freezing our asses off up here? Think about it!”
“It does sound nice, Jonathan, and maybe I’ll dream about it when I fall asleep, at least as long as you stay close enough to keep me warm.”
Jonathan pulled her even closer to him with that and said he would dream of it too. And they soon fell asleep in each other’s arms, but when he woke it was to a bitter north wind sweeping down over the divide, shattering any dreams of tropical paradise against the harsh reality of their situation. Jonathan built up the fire for Vicky this time, and then they shared another quick meal and moved out.
“We’re going to have to find a campsite at lower elevations tonight,” Vicky said. “It feels like a front coming through, and I’ll bet we’re going to see some snow. We need to find an alternate route that doesn’t follow the divide too. That trail’s going to keep us too high for this weather. It’s way too late in the year for that already.”
Jonathan trusted that Vicky knew what she was talking about. They were faced with either taking their chances being seen by the wrong people while traveling the trails and roads of the valleys, or the prospect of dying of exposure in the high country. It wasn’t a difficult choice because freezing was certain if they stayed up there. They had to keep pushing south, and the only way to do that was to leave the divide and work their way through the mountains to one side. The map Bob had left showed a network of trails in the vicinity, and where they connected to what few gravel and paved roads there were. But the map was limited to just the national forest they were presently within.
By the end of their third full day of travel, they had left the boundaries of that forest and were traveling by compass and guesswork, keeping to the trails and remote roads that led in the general direction they wanted to go. Twice when on such a road, they heard the approach of vehicles and had to quickly move into the brush to hide and wait for them to pass. On both occasions, the vehicles were running in company with others; the first a group of three pickup trucks, two of them pulling horse trailers behind them, and the second, a small convoy of SUVs following each other closely. They managed to stay out of sight both times, but close encounters like that made Jonathan nervous, and where the terrain permitted, they avoided using such roads and instead cut cross country.
This lower elevation route put them in proximity to ranches and isolated houses, but most seemed abandoned, and some were burned to the ground the same as Bob Barham’s cabin. Jonathan and Vicky took turns studying the intact ones carefully from a distance with the scope Jonathan took off of Shauna’s ruined rifle, but they saw no signs of life other than the vehicles that had passed. People apparently had either left on their own, or perhaps been killed or taken away like Shauna. Although he and Vicky figured some of those homes remaining might contain items they could use, they didn’t dare risk approaching them for fear someone might still be hiding out there that would shoot them on sight. It was far safer to make do with what they had, and so that was what they did.
Once they were a considerable distance from the last ranch they’d seen, and sunset was rapidly approaching, Jonathan had the opportunity to put the .22 Magnum rifle to use when he and Vicky flushed a rabbit that stopped after running just a few feet, presenting an easy target. He was pleased with his luck and told Vicky it was time to start thinking about hunting more, as they had no idea how long it was going to take to reach the Jicarilla reservation. When they were discussing the trip with Eric before he cut out on all of them, he’d estimated it would take about a week by way of the Continental Divide Trail. They had studied the maps enough that Jonathan
and Vicky both had some idea of how to find the place once they reached New Mexico, but the circuitous route they were forced to take now would no doubt add days of travel time.
They camped near the place where Jonathan killed the rabbit, in a sheltered creek bottom among a stand of towering pines. Then, Jonathan dressed it while Vicky built the cooking fire, and by the time they were eating, it was fully dark, and everything changed. The first indication they had that they weren’t alone was when Tucker became agitated. He had smelled or heard something out there beyond the circle of light cast by the flames, and then when Jonathan and Vicky heard the loud crack of a breaking branch, they knew someone, or something had stepped on it.
“It could be a bear!” Jonathan whispered, as he moved to reach for the .45-70 carbine. But before he laid a hand on it, a sharp voice from out of the dark stopped him short:
“Don’t touch that rifle! Put your hands up; high, where I can see them, and stay where you are! Both of you!”
Eight
FOR ERIC BRANSON, THE drive across the Jicarilla reservation in the battered old Toyota pickup bordered on surreal. Less than an hour ago, he’d been alone in the jail cell where he’d been held since his arrival, expecting yet another interrogation or worse when his Apache guards came to unlock him. Nothing could have prepared him for what happened next though, when he was led down a hall and through the doors of the tribal headquarters office. After all he’d been through and all the miles he’d traveled in search of his daughter, Megan was sitting right there in front of him! And now he was squeezed into the compact cab of the little truck next to her, as she sat in the middle between him and her friend, Aaron, who was at the wheel. Ahead of them on the dusty gravel road was Aaron’s uncle and aunt, leading the way back to their place where Megan had been staying since her arrival here.
Eric knew that Megan was beyond happy as she sat there between the two of them. She certainly hadn’t been expecting to see her dad here, and she’d been worried sick over her friend Aaron ever since she’d seen him abducted by the armed men who’d taken him away to their camp. When Eric told her he’d found that camp destroyed and littered with bodies, Megan had naturally feared the worst. Seeing Aaron suddenly drive up to the tribal headquarters in that old truck, alive and well, was almost too good to be true. Eric could tell it was the best day his daughter had seen in a long time, even though some of the things he told her during the drive no doubt brought back unpleasant memories from her recent past.
Feral Nation - Convergence (Feral Nation Series Book 6) Page 7
