The Dark Road Series Collection

by Bruno Miller

  Maybe he would just make himself a cup of coffee and wait close by for Joel to finish up and come inside for the night. He entered the mudroom off the kitchen and pulled the door partially shut so it was still open about an inch. With Joel still outside, he felt better about having it partway open and kept the door in his line of sight as he made the coffee. While he was waiting for the coffee to brew on the camp stove, he peeked around the corner and into the living room. Allie was still sleeping on the couch next to Gunner, who took up more than his share of it.

  “Never one to miss an opportunity, are you, boy?” Ben whispered to the dog.

  Gunner looked up slowly and gave Ben a guilty look, wagging his tail a few times as if he was trying to gain approval. Ben shook his head and grinned as he went back into the kitchen. Taking the coffee off the stove and turning the flame off, he poured it out of the small cooking pot.

  He couldn’t help having second thoughts. Was he crazy to drag two teenagers across the country and into the unknown? He had no idea what they would find when they got there. With no way to communicate with his ex or the kids, they couldn’t even be sure they would still be there. It was a risk he—they—would have to take.

  A deep grumble from Gunner in the living room interrupted his thoughts. Ben instinctively looked at the partially open mudroom door, but there was nothing there. He listened for a second and didn’t hear anything out of place. Gunner came around the corner and into the kitchen. Hackles up, he growled again and followed it up with a low grumble of a bark. He focused his attention toward the door, stealing glances at Ben in between protesting growls. This was enough to convince Ben there was something—or someone—outside.

  Gunner had been known to bark at a mule deer or two crossing through the property. It wasn’t an uncommon thing to happen at their house; in fact, he had even once chased a small black bear to the edge of the yard. Afraid the bear would decide to stop and stand its ground at any moment, Ben and Joel had frantically yelled from the porch to try to get Gunner to stop the chase. All Ben could think of was having to run him into town to the vet to get stitched up from a fight with a bear. Fortunately, Gunner decided to heed their calls and stopped the pursuit.

  Gunner was acting differently this time, though, and Ben took notice. He quickly checked back in the other room and saw that Allie was still sleeping before he and Gunner cautiously made their way onto the deck. Just then, Joel wandered out of the garage, pulling the door closed with an unfortunate thud before locking it.

  “Joel!” Ben said as loud as he could without breaking a whisper. Joel spun around to see his dad with his left hand up to his face, finger pressed against his lips.

  “What?” Joel whispered.

  “I don’t know if it’s anything, but Gunner’s not happy. Did you hear anything out here?” Ben asked.

  “No, I just finished up in the garage and was coming in for the night. It’s all locked up.” Joel looked back at the garage, double-checking the door he had just locked.

  Ben pulled his Glock out and came down the steps toward Joel. Gunner was right behind him, silently working the cool night air with his nose. Walking around outside his own house with the pistol drawn, Ben felt foolish for a split-second. Was he being paranoid? It was probably just some poor critter. Still, though, after the day they had in town, he wasn’t taking any chances. He quickly regained his senses, shaking off the notion he was overreacting, and held the gun firm.

  “Where’s your gun?” Ben looked at Joel and then turned his attention back to their surroundings. Joel put his hand to his waistband and clenched his teeth, making a sheepish grin.

  “I…ah…left it inside.” Joel looked down.

  “Joel, I thought I told you to keep it with you at all times.” Ben clenched his jaw.

  “Well, you’re no use to me out here then, are you? Get your butt inside—quietly.” Ben nodded toward the house and silently slid past Joel without making eye contact. He continued down the outside of the garage wall toward the end of the building.

  “Yes sir.” Head down, Joel turned away from Ben and snuck inside promptly.

  “That kid sometimes, I swear.” Ben looked down at Gunner, who was by his side, but the dog was too focused on what he heard earlier to even look up at Ben.

  He felt guilty for coming down on the boy so hard, but he had to hold him accountable, now more than ever. They were potentially dealing with life and death situations here. Joel was going to have to learn to take what he said at face value and follow his instructions to the tee if they were going to make it. It was too easy to make a mistake or get caught off guard as Ben knew all too well. It only took a split-second of poor judgment. He’d seen too many young men sent home in a box because they had grown careless, and he had no tolerance for apathy.

  With Gunner shadowing less than a foot away, Ben continued to the edge of the building. Stopping at the end of the wall, Ben looked around the corner and down the driveway. The dim moonlight barely provided enough light to see all the way to the end, some 80 yards away.

  “Nothing.” Careful to stay concealed in the shadow the building cast out over the driveway, Ben deliberately moved to the front side of the garage.

  “What do you think, boy? I don’t see anything.” Ben was about to head back to the house and do a perimeter check there when Gunner stiffened up and tilted his head to the side.

  “What is it?”

  Just then, a black-tailed jackrabbit bounced out of the scrub brush and landed less than 20 feet away in the middle of the driveway. Ben was surprised at Gunner’s composure, given the opportunity literally sitting right in front of him. Ben had witnessed Gunner chase many a rabbit around the yard until exhaustion. To Ben’s knowledge, he had never caught one. That didn’t seem to stop him from trying, though, but not this time. Instead, the dog didn’t budge and stood there motionless, seemingly focused beyond the rabbit.

  The rabbit sat up on its hind legs, moving its ears like two mini radar dishes straining to pick up a signal. Suddenly, out of the brush a coyote exploded onto the moonlit driveway and ran full-tilt for the rabbit—and them! Before Ben had a chance to process what was happening, two more coyotes fell in behind the lead dog in a full sprint.

  Gunner took two short steps toward the intruders and blasted a few thunderous barks in their direction. The lead coyote, realizing the error of his ways, hit the brakes hard in a cloud of dust and gravel, then scampered back to a protected position behind the other two. The second and third coyotes now stood side by side about 30 feet away. With the rabbit long gone now, they focused their attention on Gunner. Snarling with their teeth barred, both began to advance. Gunner returned the sentiment and began moving toward them.

  Ben had to intercede. Gunner could handle one of the coyotes without any problem. He outweighed the 35-pound animals by at least 50 pounds, and one-on-one it would be no contest. Three against one was a different story entirely, however, and they would work as a pack to bring Gunner down. Ben stepped out of the shadows, exposing his six-foot-three frame to the pack of dogs. Rejoined by the original animal, the pack was three strong again. They stopped closing in when they originally saw Ben, but they weren’t giving up any ground, at least not as fast as he hoped they would.

  Over the years, Ben had a few run-ins with coyotes in the wild and once in town of all places. The encounters had always gone uneventfully and ended peacefully with the coyote ultimately slinking away. They were generally timid by nature on their own and in small numbers. So why were these three so hell-bent on blood tonight? Had the animals gone crazy too like the looters in town?

  He didn’t have to wonder for long what was driving them to this level of aggression as he heard the other members of the pack chime in. Their high-pitched howls and cackling taunted them from a not too distant location in the woods off to their left. Ben switched on his headlamp and scanned the woods, counting several pairs of eyes glaring back from the brush. From what he could see and the racket they were making, Be
n figured there must have been at least another dozen waiting in the wings to back up the advances of the three.

  Ben needed to get this under control—and fast.

  “Gunner, heel up!” Ben huffed, keeping his gun trained on the lead dog. Gunner knew this command well from duck hunting, and he swiftly closed in tight to Ben’s right leg and held that position. Ben really didn’t want to fire a shot and advertise their location, but he saw no other way out of this. It would be hard for anyone to pinpoint a single shot in the mountains, so maybe he could scare them off with just one round if he could intimidate the leader.

  He aimed a little to the left of the alpha’s head and squeezed off a round into a nearby tree stump. The explosion drowned out the dog’s calls immediately and was followed by an intense flash of light and flame that leapt from the barrel, cutting the darkness like a knife for a split-second. If the sound and flame wasn’t enough to convince the coyotes to seek their fun elsewhere, the shower of wood splinters and dirt from the tree stump was. Their confidence shaken to the point of retreat, the leader quickly turned and ran with its tail tucked. The remaining dogs followed obediently, disappearing one by one into the shadows from which they had emerged. Within a matter of seconds, silence had reclaimed the night, and the chaos was over.

  Ben was glad he didn’t have to kill any of the animals, but he was even more satisfied that he resolved the incident with only one shot.

  “If only people were that easy to deal with,” Ben remarked to Gunner as he thought about the two guys he had to contend with in town earlier.

  Gunner looked unfazed by the incident, and other than sniffing around where the coyotes had been and relieving himself on a nearby tree, he seemed satisfied to follow Ben on a quick perimeter check of the house before heading back in.

  Chapter Three

  Ben was sure to lock the door behind him, and he sat on a small bench in the mudroom to take his boots off.

  “What happened?” Joel stuck his head around the corner.

  “Coyotes. Quite a few of them actually, acting really aggressive. Never seen them like that before,” Ben said without looking up. “They were after a rabbit, I think, until they saw Gunner.” The big brown dog wagged his tail at the sound of his name and looked at Ben.

  “I scared them off with a warning shot into a stump, and they left pretty quickly.” Ben scratched Gunner behind his ear.

  “Dad, I’m sorry. I mean…about the gun. I just didn’t think to carry it around the house. I mean, our own house. I didn’t think…” Joel shrugged.

  “No, listen, I’m sorry I came down on you too hard. I just need you to know that things are different now. And until things change, which could be a while, you need to be prepared for almost anything at all times. There are no more guarantees with anything that we used to take for granted.” Ben stopped himself at the risk of sounding like he was lecturing Joel. He was sure the boy already felt bad about what had happened.

  “Well, I’m sorry anyways. I’m trying to get better at stuff like that, Dad. I really am.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up over it. It’s a process and a mindset that you have to get into. You’ll develop better habits with time.” Ben grabbed Joel’s shoulder and used it to pull himself up from his seat.

  He had to keep moving. It was getting late, and he still wanted to go through the safe and a few other things in the basement. Looking down at his watch, he checked the time: nine o’clock already.

  “Where’s Allie? Still sleeping?” Ben asked.

  “Yeah, can you believe it?” Joel answered back.

  “I can actually. I don’t think that girl has had any real sleep since all this began a couple days ago. I’m sure she’s mentally and physically wiped out.” Ben walked into the kitchen and fired up the mini stove so he could reheat the cup of coffee that he had been pulled away from earlier.

  “You should try to get some rest as well, bud. There’ll be plenty to do in the morning.”

  “Yep, on my way.” Joel held his headlamp in his hand and turned it on, shining it up the stairs ahead of him.

  “Good night, Joel. Love you!”

  “Love you too, Dad. Good night.” Joel lazily ascended the steps to his room and disappeared out of sight.

  Poor kids, Ben thought to himself. This was really taking a toll on them both. Hopefully the next couple days would be calm and uneventful. He knew better than to think that would be the case, though. He dipped the tip of his finger into the coffee. Hot enough. Pouring the coffee back into the mug from the small pot, he headed to the basement.

  On the way, he noticed that Gunner had taken the liberty of resuming his position on the couch with Allie. Ben shook his head and smiled, thinking how glad he was that Gunner hadn’t gotten into a tangle with one of the coyotes and that the situation had been defused so easily.

  He held the battery-powered LED lantern slightly above his head on the way down the stairs. With his coffee cup in the other hand, he headed straight to the workbench, where he hung the lantern on a nail protruding from a high shelf and set his mug down.

  Unlike the garage, where they had hastily unloaded gear from the truck into piles on the floor, the basement was well organized. He knew how much of everything he had and where it was. It wouldn’t take too long to put together their load-out. The hardest part would be choosing what to leave behind.

  He dialed in the combination to the oversized gun safe and swung the heavy door all the way open. Stepping back, he took a deep breath and exhaled slowly before he began heaving out the heavy ammo cans and lugging them over near to the bottom of the stairs. He would pile everything up here and get Joel to help him carry it up to the truck in the morning. There was no way he was going to leave this stuff in the garage overnight.

  With almost all the ammo cans moved, Ben grabbed the last one and lifted it with ease. At first, he thought it was empty, but then suddenly he remembered that he had stored a couple of Uniden GMR 5088 two-way radios. How could he have forgotten about these? They were chargeable through a dock and two rechargeable AA batteries, but he could easily swap them out for regular AA batteries.

  He pulled one of the palm-sized units out of the ammo can and looked it over. They had proven handy when he and Joel went snowboarding or skiing over at Wolf Creek. It was common to get separated in the back-country areas of the resort, where cell phone service was limited. These had a range of 50 miles. Although that was reduced by the mountains quite a bit, they were still good for a few miles. They were also waterproof, down to three feet supposedly, although he had never tested that. They even came with a little headset for hands-free use.

  He wondered if the ammo can or even the safe had insulated the two radios from the EMP and created a Faraday cage effect. Ben had learned a little about this in the Army, and it was possible that these two radios would still work. As he understood it, a Faraday cage or shield, sometimes also called a Faraday box, was any type of sealed enclosure with an electrically conductive outer layer. It worked by reflecting, absorbing, or opposing any incoming energy fields. Best-case scenario, they’d be able to pick up something from one of the many emergency advisory radio stations across the country, even if they could only get the NOAA frequency. Someone had to be operational.

  He knew the government had been ramping up its capabilities to deal with an EMP attack for years. Of course, he also knew they would be reluctant to share information via radio to the general public. Their first priority would be to secure the president in the PEOC (Presidential Emergency Operations Center), believed to be located under the east wing of the White House. Officials could communicate and coordinate with other government entities from the PEOC. Basically, it was a communications bunker and potential evacuation point for the president and staff.

  Ben pulled a small cardboard box off a plastic shelving unit in the corner of the room and hurriedly unwrapped a new box of AA batteries. He fumbled with the small batteries as he swapped them out for the battery pack in the radio
and turned it on. Leaning forward, he listened eagerly as he used the scan function and watched the display scroll through the channels. Ben watched with disappointment as the little radio zipped up to channel 40 and then started over at channel 1 with the same result each time. Nothing. It hesitated twice at channel 9 but only produced faint static. Ben knew that was the preferred channel for emergency information, but nothing was coming in.

  “Crap,” he muttered under his breath. He let out a big sigh and turned the radio off, putting it back in the ammo can and throwing all the batteries in with them. Maybe they could pick up a broadcast signal after they got out of the mountains tomorrow. It would have been nice to have a little info before they traveled. Adding the can to the pile by the stairs, he turned his attention back to the safe.

  Chapter Four

  The first gun he went for was a pistol tucked into one of the door pockets, although the Desert Eagle .50 AE caliber handgun barely fit into the elastic pocket and stretched it to the limit. The .50 AE (Action Express) round was one of the most powerful pistol cartridges in production and at 300 grains would travel over 1,500 feet per second. The pistol weighed in at just under five pounds, even with the seven-round magazine empty. And with an overall length of almost one foot, it wasn’t a gun one carried casually. Ben had taken this as his sidearm for protection from predators on a few of their elk-hunting trips, as the gun easily had enough power to stop a charging bear. He didn’t shoot it very often at the range, though, with the bullets costing upward of $1.50 each. It didn’t see much use and as a result spent most of its time in the safe. Ben stuffed it into an old leather holster and laid it on top of the stacked ammo cans.

  The next gun he grabbed was an obvious choice. It was a duplicate of the Olympic AR he had used in town today, except this one was a simplified version with a fixed-front site tower and a flip-up rear sight. He had over a thousand rounds of the 5.56 caliber ammo that they both used. It was also widely available and a common round. He had also acquired about a dozen 30-round magazines over the years and one 60-round novelty magazine that he had only used a few times when they were fooling around at the range. The two guns also featured the same key-mod rail system, so the accessories and sights were interchangeable. The AR was an excellent weapon choice for medium- to close-range combat. In the morning, he could stash it in the tactical gun bag with the other AR upstairs.