Deadfall

by L. Douglas Hogan

  “If the Russian Federation is here, surely we have to fight back.”

  “Are you recommending we start fighting against a fully armed military? Because if you think this is crazy, that’s insane!”

  “I’m just thinking we have a lot to bring to the table. There’s a lot of experience between the two of us going to waste running from Rueben.”

  “Marcus, I have a sick wife and a son to raise. I can’t be gallivanting around like a Templar knight fighting against an invasion force.”

  “Not now, but – maybe later.”

  Darrick knew Marcus was referencing Tonya’s imminent death, but he wasn’t ready to accept it. There was an awkward silence. It was a welcome silence. Neither Darrick nor Marcus wanted to talk about Tonya’s condition. It was a clumsy mistake that it even came up. The impromptu silence was necessary. They needed to focus their attention on the matter at hand: appropriating the supplies so they could receive their compensation – the relief for Tonya’s pain.

  “Why don’t you head to the north side of the camp and take up a position. If shooting starts, at least we can catch them from two angles, and they’ll think there’s more than two of us.”

  “Good plan. We won’t be shooting each other, either.”

  “True dat! Maintain radio silence. Key your mic every top and bottom of the hour. I’ll do the same in response.”

  “I can do that. See you on the flip side.”

  Pontybridge

  0400 hours

  Tonya, Carissa, and Andy had been patiently waiting the whole night for an opportunity to get away. The information Andy had shared with them was disconcerting. Tonya didn’t have the focus to do it, but Carissa did; she’d spent the last several hours counting the lap time it took the roving patrol to pass by the front of their door.

  Tonya and Andy fell asleep waiting. Carissa though? She felt it would be prudent to have a pair of bolt cutters on hand if they were to make their getaway. She slipped out into the train yard and was gone for some time. When she returned, as luck would have it, she had a pair of bolt cutters. A toolshed sat in the back, not far from the station house.

  Carissa awoke Tonya and Andy. “Twenty-three,” Carissa whispered. “We have twenty-three minutes once they pass to make our way out before they come around and possibly catch us trying to leave.”

  Tonya tried to focus, but she was out of it. The morphine bled her of concentration, strength, stamina, and even concern. She was zombie-esque in her behavior, and Carissa knew the escape was going to be a shortfall without Andy’s help.

  Carissa tried to bolster his confidence. “Andy,” she said, catching his attention, “we’re down to about twenty-two minutes before those guys come back. You’re going to have to help me get your mom out of here. They’re not aware that you overheard them and told us their plans for your mom. We have to keep her quiet, too. She’s out of it,” she said, unhooking the IV from the wall. “Here, you hold this up high like this.” She demonstrated, holding the IV up in the air. “I’m going to take the lead and get us out of here.”

  Andy acknowledged.

  Carissa helped get Tonya up off the cot. Carissa poked her head out the door, and the two roving men were now several yards away. She looked up and around to see if any more guards were watching from atop the train cars. “The coast is clear,” she said, leading Tonya and Andy out the door. Tonya was skin and bones. It was only moderately difficult for Carissa to carry half her weight. Tonya’s free arm was around Carissa’s neck, where Carissa had it locked in place. Her other arm dangled loosely at her side. Andy was vigilant at his task. He made sure he held the IV bag high over the port on his mother’s arm.

  Carissa moved them along the length of the train cars. She was careful to watch ahead and up above them. She also listened. She listened for sounds of guards and patrols as they hastened along. They did so until they came to a train car with its side hatch open. Snores. They were loud snores, too. Not a light wheeze or snuffle. These snores drowned out other sounds in the area.

  They stopped at the edge of the train car with the snoring men inside. Carissa wanted to lower the group down and crouch beneath the view of anybody who might be awake inside. No, that wasn’t going to be possible with Tonya on her neck. She opted to move around to the back side of the train.

  Carissa and Andy quietly traded positions so that they could move in the opposite direction. When they did, Andy’s curiosity got the best of him. He peeked into the train car and saw a man lying on his right side, facing inward. On his side he brandished a semiautomatic pistol. It seemed loose enough to grab, so he carefully went to work sliding it out of the wobbly cheap holster. He got it! And just in time, too. The line between his mother and him had reached its max. With the IV bag in one hand and the pistol in the other, he rushed to get closer to his mother.

  Carissa turned the corner of the train car, not knowing that Andy was now armed.

  The stranger had his face mask pulled up over his mouth and nose. The security here is thick, he thought. Looking around, he saw several guards standing on top of an old train station and more standing watch on top of the train cars. It was going to be difficult getting through the fence, let alone the security guards. He kept scanning the environment, looking for a weakness, when he saw two women and a boy sneaking around the compound. He was well concealed in the brush on the other side of the fence, trying to find a way in. These three, though? They looked like they were trying to find a weakness in the security so they could get out.

  What’s going on here? he thought.

  He watched with great interest as the three made their way toward the fence where Carissa had plans to cut her way out. When the stranger was aware of her intentions, he cast his eyes upward and watched for security guards. He spotted one atop a train car and he was walking in the direction of the three would-be escapees. Being a quick thinker, the stranger sprang from his cover and yelled at the security guard, “Hey, mister, I’m hungry. Do you have any food?”

  The shout startled both Carissa and Andy, who stopped dead in their tracks and looked at the stranger.

  “Freeze,” the security guard shouted. A bright light flooded the vicinity of the stranger. The station house security heard the guards yell and gave him assistance.

  Carissa and Andy remained still and worried for their safety. They were confused, not knowing for sure what was happening. The stranger outside the fence cast his eyes toward them and motioned with his head to continue on. Carissa understood the body language, but Andy didn’t catch it.

  “Come on,” Carissa said, leading him and Tonya toward the fence. She picked a spot that was out of sight of the security guards. Everybody seemed to have their attention fixed on the stranger. They made it to the edge, and Carissa lowered Tonya to the ground, where she then went to work cutting the fence open. Whatever the man’s intentions were, he served as a great distraction for their escape. Carissa pulled Tonya through the fence, and the three of them made their way across the rest of the tracks and into the foliage.

  When the stranger saw they were out, he ran off into the woods.

  Security at the train station had strict rules about opening the gates after hours. Within moments, everybody was awake and alerted to the presence of an unwanted guest.

  Carissa, Andy, and Tonya were moving as fast as they could get Tonya to move. They had a new issue: Tonya’s IV line was snagging on everything from leaves to sticks.

  “This isn’t working,” Carissa said, pulling the IV from Tonya’s arm. It was pitch black in those woods. Andy couldn’t see what Carissa was doing, but he heard her instructions. “Drop the IV, hon. It’s slowing us down.” Andy dropped the IV, and the three of them kept moving east, using the forest as their cover.

  The stranger was running in the same direction. He wanted to call out to the three people he rescued, but doing so would give away his own position. He was concerned that he was now being pursued by the folks at Pontybridge. Not only that, but there w
as also the much larger group of people who were pursuing the homesteaders. Things were getting uncomfortably real for the stranger. He had survived by being alone. But now he was faced with involving himself. A concept he always tried to avoid.

  After some time of travel, he stopped and settled down for the night. The man had a backpack that didn’t consist of much more than a small lightweight portable hammock and a few things to munch on that he’d found in the wilderness. Tonight was different, though. He didn’t feel safe enough to set up his hammock, so he pulled it out and spread it open upon the ground. He lay on it and dozed off to sleep.

  Twelve

  THE YIN IN ME

  The morning of August 20th

  Pontybridge

  “We still don’t know what happened to the women and kid, either,” one of the previous night’s security guards said to Steven.

  “And exactly how did they get out?” Steven asked in his usual raspy-sounding voice.

  “I wanted to assign that particular job to Devin, Clint, and Allen, but they haven’t checked in yet, and they’re not responding to radio calls, either” the sergeant at arms replied.

  “What time do they usually check in?”

  “Zero seven hundred hours. They’re over an hour late. This is unusual for them.”

  “Alert everyone. Recall the rovers and get a head count. Something’s not right,” Steven ordered, turning to give himself a moment’s thought. His bushy beard was menacing when combined with his raspy voice. He generally made sound decisions, but something was afoot, and he was hell-bent on finding out what it was.

  “Should I send someone out to find the others?” Roy asked.

  “No. Tighten things here,” he said, turning to look through the fence at the woods across the way. It was eerily quiet. “We’re not alone.”

  The stranger slept well. The sun’s warmth could be felt on his face, and the shade from the canopy above danced on his skin. He hesitated to open his eyes for the first time of the day, preferring to sleep more and take in the much-needed sleep, but he felt compelled to open his eyes. He was startled from his position by the boy from last night. He was standing over him, pointing a .40-caliber pistol at his face. Now backed against a tree, the stranger threw up his hands and said, “Easy, kid. I mean you no harm.”

  “Are you following us?”

  “No,” the man lied, but corrected himself, perhaps out of a sense of duty. “I mean, I am, but not to hurt you. I’m following you to help you. There’s some very bad people looking for some homesteaders named Mitchell.”

  “I’m Andy Mitchell.”

  “Hi, Andy. My name’s Curtis Creason.”

  Andy held the gun up with both hands. He wasn’t about to budge. Curtis grew more nervous. “Andy, would you mind not pointing that at my face?”

  Both of Andy’s hands dropped as he took two steps back. “I’m not afraid to kill you.”

  “I can see that, but I honestly mean you no harm whatsoever.” Curtis looked over Andy’s shoulders, wondering where the other two were. “Where’s the two ladies you’re traveling with?”

  Andy brought the gun back up.

  Curtis lifted his hands even higher. “Please try to relax a bit. I’m not armed with anything that shoots.”

  “Do you know where my mom can get some medicine?”

  “Is your mom sick?”

  “She’s got the cancer and she’s going to die.”

  Curtis’s heart sank and he lowered his hands. He was beginning to understand the gravity of Andy’s situation. He thought for a moment and came up with a way to manage his situation. “I’ll tell you what, Andy. If you stop pointing that thing at me, I’ll lead you and your mom to a place where there’s an abundance of medicine.”

  Andy put the gun in the waistband of his pants. “Fine. If you try to do anything funny, I’ll shoot you dead.”

  “Fair enough,” Curtis said. He started packing his belongings. Andy started moving ahead. When Curtis was done, he ran to catch up to Andy. He followed him along to a road where a storm ditch intersected.

  “We slept here last night,” Andy said, pointing to the culvert beneath the road.

  Curtis jumped down into the ditch and turned to face the slab of concrete where Tonya and Carissa had been sleeping. Carissa was already awake and was startled by the man. She reached for her side, out of habit, but her pistol had long since been confiscated at Pontybridge.

  “I’m not here to hurt you,” the man said. About that time, Andy jumped down into the ditch and landed behind him.

  “Who are you?” Carissa asked.

  “His name’s Curtis,” Andy said, interrupting his aunt’s inquiry. “And he knows how to get Mom an abundance of medicine.”

  “Andy, move away from the stranger.”

  “He’s not a stranger anymore. He said his name’s Curtis and he can help Mom.”

  “Andy, you know nothing about this man! Please move away from him.”

  Andy ignored his aunt’s order and walked right by the stranger and took a seat by his sick mother.

  Carissa, who was now standing, didn’t turn her back on the man. She maintained very intimidating contact with his eyes.

  Again, he found himself raising his hands with his palms facing outward. It was the best way he could offer up his in a nonthreatening manner. “Look,” he said. “I’m not here to harm you. You have nothing but the clothes on your back and, as you can see, I’m already dressed, so…”

  Carissa took a long hard moment to think about it. To a defenseless woman, she thought, there’s more a man can take than clothes out here.

  Curtis dropped his hands. “Look, I have nothing to gain here. I’m not going to try to convince you. By the way, if you’re a Mitchell, there’s a very large group of killers tracking you across the countryside, and she looks like she’s going to be slowing you down. Given the speed of their movement versus the speed of yours, I think they’ll have you by the end of the day. But that depends on what information they pull from the Pontybridge folks. I hope they’re your allies. Have a great day.” Curtis left without incident.

  Carissa turned and confronted Andy. “Why in the world would you bring a stranger to us? He could have killed us!”

  “But he didn’t, and now we have no help for Mom.”

  The words touched a chord in Carissa’s heart. She looked down at Tonya then back at the empty space where the stranger once stood.

  Curtis was walking away when he heard Carissa shout from behind him, “Hey, mister? Where’s this place with all the medicine?”

  Curtis stopped and turned to face Carissa, who was now standing in the road watching him. “It’s not far from here. Just over the river.”

  Carissa looked back at Tonya and back to Curtis. “My brother-in-law’s headed in that direction. He’s got a horse. Two, actually. He has a friend with him.”

  “Well, if it’s not out of the way, I can help you track him down, but we’re not gonna be moving too fast. Not with her in that condition.”

  Carissa sighed. “I don’t know how much farther she can go. She’s in bad shape.”

  Curtis walked back to Carissa. “How are you related to Andy?”

  “I’m his aunt. His dad was my husband’s brother.”

  “Was?”

  “He died. The group you mentioned – they killed him. And not just him, but others.”

  “I know. I’ve been following them for some time. I saw your old homestead. They burned it to the ground.” Curtis reached into his pocket and pulled out the small toy race car. “I found this on the ground and thought it might come in handy,” he said, handing it to her.

  Carissa took the car. “Handy? Handy how?”

  “I’m not sure. It seemed like the smart thing to do at the time. I was considering maybe using it to prove that I passed through your area. I also saw the graves. There was one marked Jimmie Mitchell. Was he your husband?”

  Carissa’s eyes welled up with tears. She wiped them away and
sniffed so as not to appear weak in front of Curtis. “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to–”

  “it’s cool,” she interrupted. “Look, if you’re not in a hurry, Darrick and Marcus should be passing back through sometime tomorrow. You’re welcome to stay with us, if you like.”

  “By stay with you, you mean hide from the bad guys, don’t you?”

  “Well, as you can see, I’m not armed, and traveling like that kind of puts us at a disadvantage.”

  “I’ve been surviving without guns since the Pulse and I’m doing just fine. Besides, Andy handles his pistol quite well. I’m sure he’s got your back.”

  “Pistol?”

  “Mmm. Maybe I’ve said too much.”

  Carissa looked back at Andy. He was eavesdropping on the conversation. “I took it from the snoring man in the train car,” he said.

  “Hand it over,” she said, reaching out and flexing her fingers.

  Andy walked up to her and gave up the pistol.

  She checked the chamber and released the magazine. “You were carrying a fully loaded pistol with a round in the chamber?” She put the magazine back in. “Have you ever even handled one of these before?”

  “No, but I know how to use them. You just point and pull the trigger.”

  Curtis had been noticing something off about Andy. He seemed like a cool kid, but his words, body language, and facial expressions never seemed to match up. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but it was definitely weird not being able to get a read on him. He didn’t like the way it made him feel. It gave his mind strange sensations. Curtis was probably one of the most nonjudgmental people in the world. He lived by a dying code of live and let live. He pushed the odd speculations about Andy to the back of his head and tried his best to stay gray in a world of black and white.

  Carissa let out another sigh. “Andy, there will come a time where you will most assuredly get to have your own weapon, but for now, it’s best to leave the weapon handling to the adults. Do you understand?”