The initial beat down had been almost perfunctory. They’d flex-cuffed his wrists and ankles, and two of them held him upright while a third worked him over with fists and feet. The one called Carr had just stood back and watched, a smile on his face, until the men grew tired of the sport and threw him facedown in the dirt and chicken droppings.
Anderson figured he was dead already, and the only question now was whether he could deflect attention from Cindy and Jeremy. If these guys thought he’d taken out their friends alone, they’d take him back to HQ to make an example of him. With the shooter eliminated, the SRF no longer had any reason to be poking around in these woods.
He contemplated the best way to play it. The uniform would help sell his story, but if he confessed too quickly, they might put two and two together and figure he was protecting someone. On the other hand, Cindy was sure to come looking, and if he was still here and alive, she might do something stupid.
He didn’t really know how much time had passed, but he grew increasingly desperate for them to either take him away or deal with him quickly, before Cindy arrived. He might have to provoke them.
That was still a half-formed thought when he was jerked to his feet and held erect by a strong hand in each armpit. His eyes had barely focused when the rifle butt struck him in the stomach and doubled him over. The men on either side jerked him back upright, and suddenly Carr was in his face, the man’s pockmarked visage mere inches away as his fetid breath washed over Anderson.
“That was just another little love tap, asshole,” Carr snarled. “We were gonna take you back to base, but I thought about it and decided we can have more fun here. I’m gonna skin you alive and make it real, real slow. But I’m a fair guy. You seemed real interested in us, so I’ll let you have the first question. What would you like to know?”
Anderson smiled through the pain. “I’ll take personal for five hundred, Alex. Didn’t your mommy teach you to brush your friggin’ teeth? Your breath smells like a skunk crapped in a sweaty jockstrap.”
Carr flushed and delivered three hard rights into Anderson’s gut in the general vicinity of the rifle butt strike, then stepped back with a malevolent smile.
Anderson gasped, and only the men on either side of him kept him from collapsing.
“What was that, tough guy?” Carr asked. “I don’t think I heard you.”
“I said you hit like a girl, and your mother blows sailors in bus station bathrooms.”
Carr reddened again, but this time he pulled a knife from a sheath on his calf and came toward Anderson with blood in his eyes. I guess I hit a nerve with that one, Anderson thought as he closed his eyes.
Something warm splashed his face a split second before he heard the crack of a rifle shot. He opened his eyes to see Carr sinking in front of him, his face distorted and bloody. The men supporting Anderson released him to reach for their own guns, and rubber-legged, he did a strategic face-plant in the dirt. There was a protracted roar of gunfire that seemed to go on forever, and in the midst of it, a body landed on top of him. He heard the man curse and attempt to rise, then felt him jerk before the man’s entire dead weight crushed him into the ground.
And then it was quiet.
He heard the whisper of rapid footsteps through grass, then the welcome sound of Cindy’s voice.
“Cover them with the shotgun, Jeremy. If any of them move, shoot them.”
Then he heard her grunt, and felt relief as she rolled the dead man off his back. He rolled over to find her staring down at him, her face a mask of fear.
“Are you hit?”
Anderson shook his head. “This isn’t my blood.”
He sat up and looked around in amazement. The four sprawled around him, all dead from head shots. Cindy ignored them and grabbed the knife Carr dropped and cut the flex cuffs off Anderson’s wrists and ankles. He sat there a moment, rubbing his wrists.
“Where the hell did you learn to shoot?”
Cindy shrugged. “Right here. Tony used to bring his AR out every weekend. Jeremy and I both got pretty good with it.”
Anderson shook his head. “That’s an understatement.”
She shrugged again. “The dumb asses were standing in a tight group fifty feet from the nearest cover. My biggest worry was the body armor and whether I could take them all down before they got there.”
“Still, head shots …”
“Only the first one, really. He was about to gut you and I had no choice. I shot the legs out from under the others and finished them when they couldn’t move around.”
Anderson just stared. She’d said it matter-of-factly, as if she were discussing taking out the trash.
“And you devised this plan on the fly?”
Cindy flushed. “Not completely. I’m a single mom living in the middle of friggin’ nowhere, and I couldn’t exactly expect to call 911. So yeah, I had a pretty good idea of what I’d do in different situations and just modified one of my imaginary scenarios to fit. The only reason I didn’t have an AR yet was because I couldn’t afford one, but I was saving up. And you’re welcome, by the way.”
It was Anderson’s turn to flush. “Thank you.”
Cindy nodded as Anderson crawled to his feet, unable to suppress a groan as a sharp pain gripped his midsection.
“Are you all right?”
“Nothing serious. He worked me over pretty good, so I’ll probably be sore for a few days. But there’s no time to worry about that now; we’ve got to decide what to do.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
The Cabin Site
Day 36, 3:25 p.m.
It was obvious they couldn’t stay. Elimination of a second patrol in the same area in less than a week was sure to bring a massive response, including dogs and thermal imaging sweeps by chopper. As much as they loathed the idea, they’d have to leave their comfortable cave and flee.
A big unknown was the length of their escape window. The unauthorized nature of Carr’s visit would help, but they had no clue whether the patrol was outbound from nearby Buena Vista or returning to the FEMA base there. Sooner or later they would be missed, and it was only prudent to assume it would be sooner.
They couldn’t afford the long round-trip to the cave, so they abandoned Cindy’s and Jeremy’s sleeping bags and left the chickens to their own devices. Cindy and Jeremy went to get the Mule from where Cindy left it upstream while Anderson set about salvaging things from the Hummer.
Forty-five minutes later, Anderson heaved the last of the bodies into the back of the vehicle and closed the door. He then climbed into the driver’s seat and locked the differential just as Cindy and Jeremy emerged from the woods in the now-loaded Mule in time to see the Hummer back across the clearing and settle its rear bumper against the cabin.
Anderson floored the accelerator, and the house shook and began to move, then toppled off its cinder-block piers in a cloud of dust to settle upright on the ground. He pulled the Hummer away from the cabin, then threw it in reverse to crash backwards through the cabin wall. He emerged from the ragged hole only seconds later, coughing into his fist from the billowing dust.
Cindy stopped beside the cabin and leaped out. “Are you nuts? What are you doing?”
Anderson shook his head as he finished his coughing spasm. “Buying … a little time,” he said at last.
“How?” Cindy asked.
“They seem pretty lax about tracking their patrols; otherwise I don’t think Carr would have taken the chance on his unofficial side trip. So even if the Hummer has a working tracking device, I don’t think they’ll monitor it until the patrol is overdue. And since I’m not real sure where to find and disconnect a tracking device, or if there might be more than one, I figure we just burn up the whole car. That should destroy any trackers.”
Cindy grinned. “Pretty smart.”
Anderson nodded. “Even if they track it to this clearing as the last known location, they still won’t know what’s going on. All they’ll find is a raging cabin fire, an
d it’ll be too hot to poke around in the ashes for at least twenty-four hours.”
“Think it will stay lit this time?” she asked.
Anderson looked up. “It doesn’t look like rain, and the cabin is mostly charred now and pretty dry. I’ve got ten gallons of diesel from the back of the Hummer to help it along,” Anderson said, then nodded to a pile some distance away. “Come look at what I salvaged. You guys can load up while I start the fire.”
Cindy shook her head as she followed Anderson. “We stopped and loaded the stuff from the trailer, so there isn’t much room left, and when we run out of gas, we’re afoot.”
“How much gas do we have?” he asked.
“I topped up with gas from the trailer, so we’ve got a full tank plus part of a five-gallon can. Why?”
Anderson grinned as they reached the pile and he pointed to two red plastic containers. “Because now we have ten more gallons. I guess our friends were doing a little scavenging. There’s also a box of MREs, several jugs of water, and a couple of boxes of canned goods.”
Cindy’s initial smile faded.
“I thought you’d be pleased,” Anderson said.
“If they have gas and boxes of canned goods, it means they’ve already BEEN scavenging. Which likely means they were headed back to base, which means for sure they’ll be missed sooner rather than later,” Cindy said.
“Point taken. I’ll get that fire started.”
***
Despite Cindy’s misgivings, she was able to cram everything into the back of the Mule. They left the clearing twenty minutes later, all jammed in the front bench seat, with the remains of the cabin burning brightly behind them. Cindy was at the wheel, and she cast a worried glance over her shoulder at the rising smoke.
“I didn’t think about the smoke,” she said.
Anderson shrugged. “I doubt anyone is manning the fire towers these days.”
Cindy nodded and turned her attention to the road. Their only real option for going off road and making any time was the Appalachian Trail. However, the Mule left tracks, and they didn’t want those tracks leading from the burning cabin to the soft dirt of the AT on the opposite side of Lexington Turnpike. They had to run on the hard pavement a while, a long while preferably, so it wouldn’t be obvious they’d taken the AT.
Cindy was familiar with both the Appalachian Trail and the back roads and knew a circuitous route to intersect the AT over ten miles away. The bad news was a two-mile run on Lexington Turnpike, north towards Buena Vista. The good news was the guys tasked with patrolling that road were all now well on their way to well done in the remains of the cabin, presuming no one came looking for them early.
They turned right on Lexington Turnpike, the Mule straining immediately as they crawled up a hill. Anderson looked ahead nervously.
“Is this as fast as this thing will go?”
“It’s got a governor. Top speed is twenty-five,” Cindy said. “But that’s not the problem. We’re going uphill with three adults and twice as much cargo weight as we’re supposed to carry.”
“Is it uphill all the way to the turnoff?”
“No, just this stretch,” Cindy said. “Relax, George. We’ll be off the highway in ten minutes or so.”
“Won’t be soon enough for me,” Anderson muttered.
It took seven minutes, and Anderson breathed an audible sigh when Cindy turned left on a gravel track and they disappeared into a dark green tunnel of woodland. It was a twisting odyssey she apparently knew by heart, never hesitating at the numerous intersections or forks in the path. They moved slowly but steadily, occasionally climbing hills requiring her to stop and lock the differential before she engaged four-wheel drive to crawl up a steep slope at a snail’s pace.
“How far did you say it was?” Anderson asked. “Seems like we’ve been traveling forever.”
“It’s eight or ten miles as the crow flies.” Cindy looked over at Anderson and smiled. “But obviously we’re not crows. We’ll hit the AT in twenty minutes or so.”
Her prediction was accurate, and twenty minutes later, the gravel track they were on intersected a slightly better state road. She darted across the state road to a footpath through the woods.
“We’re on the AT,” Cindy said.
Anderson nodded, then noticed a paved road through the trees to the right. “Uhh … what’s that road?”
“The Blue Ridge Parkway,” Cindy said. “We’ll cross it just ahead; then the trail moves away from it. But I think they weave south together for quite a ways. I don’t know for sure because I’ve only been as far as the James River.”
“I think that’s right,” Anderson said. “I remember that from the trail guide …”
He cursed.
“What’s the problem?” Cindy asked.
“The trail guide. It’s back in the cave.”
Cindy shrugged. “We didn’t have time to go back for it anyway, so it doesn’t matter.”
Anderson gave an unenthusiastic nod of agreement just as Cindy emerged from the woods to scoot across the Blue Ridge Parkway. She drove several hundred feet into the woods and stopped.
“It might get a bit hairy here. We’re going up Punchbowl Mountain, and I have no idea if the Mule will make it on this trail,” Cindy said.
“Do we really have a choice?” Anderson asked.
“No good ones. If we can’t make it, we either abandon the Mule and proceed on foot or back down the mountain and try our luck on the Blue Ridge Parkway,” she said.
“Then let’s hope we make it,” Anderson said.
Cindy nodded, locked the differential, and put the Mule in four-wheel drive.
The trail got ever steeper and rockier as the Mule inched up the incline. Halfway up, they had a series of switchbacks, and the mule tipped and swayed precariously as they crawled through them. At one point, the UTV teetered at the very edge of overturning before settling back on its springs.
“Why don’t I drive while you and Jeremy go ahead and check out the trail?” Anderson said. “That will take some of the load off the Mule.”
Cindy shook her head. “Good idea. But I already know what’s ahead and I’m considerably lighter than either of you two, so y’all get out to lighten the load.”
Anderson hesitated.
“Go on and get out,” Cindy said, “because I’m not stopping. It’ll be a bitch to get this thing moving uphill again from a standing stop.”
Anderson shook his head and grabbed the overhead handhold to swing out of the slow-moving vehicle, with Jeremy close behind. The Mule was going so slow they passed it in a dozen long strenuous uphill strides, all of which Anderson felt in his knee. Once ahead of it, and unburdened by packs, they easily maintained their interval.
“It’s making a difference,” Cindy called. “She’s not laboring as bad, and the engine temp stopped rising.”
They reached the summit fifteen minutes later, and Anderson and Jeremy climbed back in to ride another mile and a half along the ridgeline to Saddle Gap. Cindy said the trail rose another four hundred feet to a second peak before starting an equally steep descent. They decided to stop for the night, both to allow the Mule to cool down and because, if something happened, they didn’t want to find themselves on the equally steep descent in the dark.
Saddle Gap
Appalachian Trail
Mile 1398.2 Southbound
Day 36, 8:50 p.m.
The ridge between the peaks was relatively narrow, but they managed to find a wide enough stretch of level ground to allow them to pull the Mule into the trees well off the trail. Anderson and Jeremy cut brush and low-hanging tree limbs to camouflage the Mule in the unlikely event of unexpected company. Cindy got evergreen boughs and piled them behind the Mule before covering them with the camouflage tarp to make a communal mattress.
They decided against a fire and had a dinner of MREs warmed by the chemical heaters included with the meals. Jeremy, as usual, had gone down with the sun, and Anderson and Cindy sat on
the ground nearby, sipping MRE coffee as they leaned back against a large fallen log.
Anderson looked over to where Jeremy snored on the makeshift mattress and smiled as he shook his head in the dim light. “I envy him his ability—deep sleep in five minutes flat, every time.”
Cindy smiled. “The sleep of innocence. Some folks pity me, but every challenge has its silver lining. Jeremy is a truly good human being, and I doubt he’s had a mean or evil thought in his life. How many mothers can say that?”
“Very few, I expect. But I think it may be the sleep of the secure as well. Jeremy knows you’re in his corner. Not a lot of people have that either, especially these days.”
“Yeah, well, I’m afraid I’m not doing too well in that department lately. Which brings me to the elephant in the room; where the hell are we going, George?” Cindy asked.
Anderson sipped his coffee. “God, this is foul crap!”
“You’ll kill for it when there’s no coffee at all,” Cindy said. “But quit stalling. What are we gonna do?”
“Honestly? Not a clue,” he said. “All I really know is what we CAN’T do.”
“Which is?” she asked.
“Live out here in the woods, at least when it starts turning cold. It would’ve been a stretch even in the cave, and there we had a shelter with an even year-round temperature and a protected source of fresh water. All we really had to do there was make sure we got in an ample supply of firewood and that we smoked meat or made jerky from the game we trapped. Out here, we have no durable, weather-tight shelter unless we managed to stumble on an abandoned cabin, and I put that chance somewhere between slim and none.”
“I’ll take my chances out here before I go to one of those hellhole FEMA camps.” There was steel in her voice.
“Well, if you stick with me, that’s not an option anyway. I doubt I’d be welcome in a FEMA camp, for obvious reasons,” Anderson said.
“Actually, they’re not—obvious, I mean. But what IS obvious is that we ARE going to stick together. I think it’s time for you to tell me what you’re running from.”
Push Back: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller (The Disruption Series Book 2) Page 45
