It didn’t matter what Keith said though. His brother was fuming, angry with himself and enraged at the people that had done this. “What I could have done different was to refuse to talk to any of those assholes in the first place, like Dad said. I should have fired warning shots when they first entered your driveway, and I should have made sure they got their asses on down the road before I left in the dinghy. I’m sorry, Keith. I really am, brother.”
“If they hadn’t stolen the truck, they wouldn’t have had time to get far on those bikes,” Bart said. “I betcha we could find them.”
“I wouldn’t be too sure of that. They’ve been traveling a long time. That professor said they were averaging more than 50 miles a night. It might be possible to spot them if we happened upon them while they’re on the road, but during the day, they just carry their bikes into the woods and disappear from sight when they camp. It would take sheer luck to find them even if they didn’t have Keith’s truck. With it, they may already be somewhere in Texas.”
“I imagine they would ditch it before they went that far,” Keith said. “It’s too conspicuous, with the sheriff’s department markings on it.”
“You’re probably right. I’m sure they took it to gain some initial ground because they were scared I’d come back early,” Eric said. “I told the girl I wouldn’t be back until the next day, but her friends wouldn’t have believed that. They probably figured by taking the truck they would also be taking my means of pursuit, since she told them I left by boat.”
Keith had little doubt that Eric was correct in his assessment. They’d also discovered that two of the tires had been slashed on the Jeep Cherokee. With the truck stolen and the motorcycles lost in the fire, the gang had left no operable motor vehicle available in case Eric returned, and any distance they made good in the stolen truck would make them that much harder to find.
“I don’t know how they started it,” Eric said, handing Keith the key that had been in the ignition switch when he’d killed the three that were carrying Keith’s things down to the truck. “I took this with me and locked the doors before I left.”
“From what you’ve said of them, they’ve gained some experience along the way. I’m sure at least one of them knew how to steal a vehicle,” Keith said. “It’s not that hard with these older trucks our department was still running.”
“I guess they figured you wouldn’t be going after them on those,” Bart said, nodding at the three bicycles the thieves had left behind. “I’m surprised they didn’t go ahead and throw all of them in the back of the truck.”
“Well, they already had the five they rode back here on, plus the one that belonged to the girl they set loose. That’s six people and six bikes, plus all their gear, piled into one pickup. And then they might have taken some stuff out of the house too, before they torched it.”
“True,” Keith said. “It also backs-up my theory that they planned to ditch the truck sooner, rather than later, otherwise they might have taken them all. They only took as many as they could ride.”
“I want to throw these three in Greg’s truck and take them with us when we go back to Vic’s, if you don’t mind,” Eric said.
“Sure, no reason we can’t,” Keith said, although he wasn’t quite sure why his brother would want them. “We’ll grab them before we leave. I want to check a few other things first.”
As he surveyed his property, Keith still felt little emotion about the house itself, but it was starting to hit him that he’d lost all of the special things of Lynn’s he had in there, not to mention her photographs and handwritten letters. Like most people these days, Keith had his important images, like their wedding photos, backed up to cloud storage, and someday when Internet service was restored, he hoped he could access and download them again. But until then, he had what was in his wallet and that was it.
He’d lost a lot of valuable gear in the fire too, of course: his personal gun collection and ammo, his food and other stores, and his tools, but that wasn’t the end of the world either. He had his main weapons with him and between him and Greg and what they’d taken from the fallen members of the department as well as their adversaries, Keith could quickly lay his hands on all the weapons and ammo he needed. His underground fuel storage tank, located at the far corner of the yard near the bayou upstream of the dock, was intact, as he’d made sure it was far enough away from the house to survive just such a disaster. The dock was undamaged as well, as it was completely separate from the house and far enough from the flames that it didn’t catch. Keith could still access the fuel tank with his boat and the remaining vehicles, and his land was still there for rebuilding someday if he wanted. For now, he simply had to keep doing his job, especially with Greg still laid up in the hospital. In addition to that, he intended to do everything he could to help Eric prepare for his journey. Eric was still beating himself up over what happened though, and nothing Keith had said to him made a difference.
“This just really sucks, Keith! All this time since we’ve seen each other, and look at the trouble I brought you! You’re probably wishing I’d stayed the hell overseas!”
“Don’t be ridiculous bro! You got Dad out of Florida and brought him here, not to mention Shauna and her family. If it weren’t for you, they’d all be stuck in Florida for God knows how long. They’re a lot better off here. At least we’ll all be together while you’re off to Colorado, although Shauna says she’s going with you.”
“That’s not gonna happen. She ought to know better than that.”
“She says her hand isn’t going to stop her.”
“Regardless of her hand, I wouldn’t take her. She has no idea what might be involved. Hell, I don’t either, but I’ve got to go anyway.”
Keith understood perfectly well why Shauna felt she had to go too, but he didn’t say anything else about the conversation he’d had with her on the way to the hospital. That was for her and Eric to work out, and he planned to stay out of it. Bart interrupted them before it could go any farther anyway.
“I say we ride around a bit and have a look for ’em. They may not be out on the road in the daylight, but you never know, we might get lucky. It’d be a shame to just let a bunch of good-for-nothings like that ride away to do the same thing to the next fellow they run into on their way.”
“I seriously doubt it will do any good,” Keith said, “but sure, we can take a drive around all the likely roads nearby. There’s still plenty of gas, but if we don’t spot my truck pretty soon, I doubt we’ll ever see it again.”
Bringing criminals to justice was extremely hit-or-miss these days and the best Keith could usually hope for was to catch them in the act the way he and Greg did at Mr. Patel’s store and the way Eric did with those two attacking the woman on the road. Swift and final justice could be meted out in those cases, but with little contact or cooperation between departments outside his jurisdiction, organized and effective manhunts were out of the question. The arsonists would likely ride free to engage in more criminal acts down the road, and there was nothing he could really do about it. Still, the drive with his brother and father gave them all more time to talk and catch up, so Keith didn’t mind at all, even if it was a fruitless endeavor. But after three hours of combing the local highways and back roads and seeing nothing, he finally suggested they return to Vic’s.
“He’s going to be wondering what’s taking us so long. The last thing I want him to do is come over there and find the house burned and no sign of any of us. We’ll go back and tell him what happened and maybe eat some lunch. By then it’ll be time to go back to the hospital and see about Shauna.”
“If you say so,” Bart said. “Damn I hate the thought of those bastards getting away with what they did!”
“They didn’t all get away,” Keith reminded him. “Eric took out their leader. That might discourage them from actively looking to take out their hatred on any more cops.”
“It was pretty stupid of me to let them think I was the sheriff,”
Eric said.
“Well, I don’t know about sheriff, but there’s plenty of available badges around here if you want a job after you get back with Megan,” Keith laughed.
“When I get back with Megan, we’re gonna be pointing the bow of that schooner downriver to the Gulf, I can assure you of that. I hope you and Dad will go with us. There’s plenty of room on board for everybody. Even that prick Shauna’s married to, I guess.”
“Not impressed with him, huh bro?”
“I was hoping he would stay in Florida. He sure threatened to. They fought about it bitterly, but worked it out before we left and he gave in, of course. His kid is okay and Shauna’s pretty attached to him, so I guess it’s best they came. I don’t really give a shit one way or the other, to tell you the truth.”
Keith doubted that. Eric had been madly in love with Shauna when they married. He just couldn’t make it work because he was even more addicted to the adrenaline high of special ops missions. It had to be painful for him to see her with another man; to know he’d been replaced after she’d finally run out of what had been an unreasonable amount of patience with a husband who was never home. Keith wasn’t trying to remind his brother of all that though, so he changed the subject.
“What’s the story with Jonathan? He told me how you two met, right after you made your landing in Florida. It was kind of surprising to me really, that you went out of your way to help him. That doesn’t sound like you.”
“Doesn’t sound like who? The asshole I usually am? Yeah, he’s lucky I didn’t shoot him in the face. I almost did when he tried to take my kayak. But then, I could tell he was just a kid and that he just fucked up. I questioned him a little because he was my first contact on the ground here and I was desperate for any bits of intel I could get. The more I talked to him, the more I realized he was all right. He’s a survivor, Keith. He was living out there in the mangroves off of his fishing, keeping to himself rather than running with the gangs of looters or looking for a handout in a shelter. I respected that. When I realized Shauna was long gone and hadn’t been in her house for a while, I went back to the kid’s camp to make a plan for my next move. The rest just sort of came together when these two dirtbags in a stolen sailboat dropped their hook nearby that evening. Anyway, Jonathan’s a fast learner and he’s unafraid and eager to help. He could have probably been an operator in another life; he just didn’t have any direction before the shit hit the fan. He’s a good kid and I want to help him out. That’s why I agreed to bring him on as crew when we sailed. He did a good job of that and he held his own in our little firefight with those ‘fishermen’ that followed us offshore. All he wants is a small boat and a place to hang out in the woods and fish. I told him the Atchafalaya would be perfect for that, and that you’d probably be able to hook him up with a boat. I was planning to talk to you about that when we got here.”
“Sure, we can come up with something for him, but when I chatted with him while we were driving around looking for you, I got the impression he was planning on going with you to Colorado too. He said he was looking forward to it because he’d never been to the mountains.”
“I don’t know where he got that idea. I never said anything to him about that. He’s been helpful, but like Shauna, he has no idea what’s involved. That’s why I’m going alone.”
“I’d love to go with you,” Bart said, “but we already know I’d just slow you down.”
“I appreciate all the offers, but this is my job. It’s my fault Megan’s so far away in the first place. I should have been here all along to be the father I was supposed to be to her. Things might have been different if I had.”
Keith said nothing about this, but he knew his brother couldn’t have done that even if he thought he could. Eric wasn’t cut out to be a family man, at least not in his younger years. He was an adventurer through and through and had always actively sought out risk and danger. And while doing so required him to give up a lot, the experience he’d gained made him better prepared to deal with the present situation than anyone Keith knew. He had to smile when Eric told him how he’d used the old trick they’d perfected in the games they played as kids. Anyone but Eric would have drowned in that situation, and no one else he knew could have crossed that swamp on foot and then unarmed, taken out three men before they knew what hit them, all in a single afternoon.
Eric was a master of prevailing against impossible odds, but Keith understood why his brother had been duped by the smooth-talking professor and his gang of college kids. He had been overseas so long he had little knowledge of all the minor incidents that had been building up over recent years here at home. He had no idea of the size and scope of the subversive subcultures that had rapidly spread, many of them working under the cover of various organizations on college campuses where the instigators found a ready supply of young, malleable minds looking for an idealistic cause bigger than themselves. Although most such groups had been ineffective at doing anything other than making noise and disrupting traffic, that had changed when the coordinated terror attacks started and the arrests and deportations escalated. It happened so fast that few could be prepared for it, but the more the government cracked down, the more new groups sprang up to create havoc. As the killing on both sides spread, other factions formed, not only to fight the authorities, but also to wage war against those groups whose ideals conflicted with their own. A good portion of them too were simply criminal organizations or cartels, seeking profit by taking advantage of the chaos and seizing territory they could control. Most of these groups operated in their local areas at first, but before the infrastructure broke down further, some of the more powerful organizations managed to get the word out via the Internet to their supporters far and wide. When that failed, they switched to messages sent over the amateur radio networks and by other underground means to lure new recruits to the strongholds of their insurrectionist cells. Keith was sure the small group Eric had encountered was traveling to just such a rendezvous in Austin, where they’d said they were headed. It was one of the cities that had seen plenty of protests and rioting before the real violence started, and it was no doubt worse now. What surprised him though was that the riders had made it this far, if they really came from Chicago. That was certainly a long and dangerous journey, and if they could do that, Eric ought to be able to get to Boulder. The only question was how best to do it.
When Keith first learned of Eric’s proposed journey from Jonathan, he immediately thought of the dual-sport motorcycles he owned and that he’d often used for work as well as weekend fun. The bikes could handle a variety of terrain and could go around gates and other obstacles that might impede larger vehicles. The were very fuel efficient, but even with their over-sized tanks and maybe a spare gas can lashed on the rack, they would still require refueling every few hundred miles. Keith was going to offer Eric the larger KLR as an option to consider, but now that was off the table as both the Kawasaki and the Suzuki had been destroyed in the fire.
“We could get our hands on another one with a little searching,” Keith said. “Greg had a Suzuki DR650 that would have been perfect, but some idiot in a pickup ran over it when he left it in a parking lot and totaled it out. He was about to get his insurance money to replace it when all hell broke loose with the banks. That was back at the beginning of the summer, when it started getting bad.”
“That’s a hell of a note, isn’t it? Things aren’t ever going to get better as long as people can’t get ahold of their money.”
“No, but Dad said you were packing some Krugerrand. That’s good thinking. I’ll bet we can find someone with a bike that’ll work if you show them a little gold.”
“The motorcycle idea crossed my mind when I was draining your fuel tank,” Eric said. “But even if finding more gas on the way wasn’t a problem, those bikes still can’t travel anything rougher than a logging road or well-maintained dirt bike trails, and those don’t go to Colorado. I’d still have to use the paved roads to get anywhere.”
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br /> “Actually you wouldn’t, depending on where you start. Ever hear of the TAT?”
“No, what’s the TAT?”
“TransAmerica Trail; it’s a designated off-road coast-to-coast route somebody put together just for motorcycle riders on those kind of dual-purpose bikes.”
“An off-road motorcycle trail across the entire U.S.? No way! That doesn’t sound possible.”
“It’s not really a ‘motorcycle trail’ per say. They just stitched a route together using existing trails and gravel roads, like forest service roads, rural county roads, and stuff like that. You might have to get on the pavement in a few places. I’m not sure. I know you’ve gotta have the maps to find it, but Greg has them. He talked about doing the whole thing someday, if he could ever get enough time off.”
“He has the maps? What is the general route? Does it go anywhere near Colorado?”
“I’m pretty sure it goes right across it. I remember seeing Trinidad on there, but I’m not sure how close it goes to Boulder.”
“What about this part of the country? Surely there’s not enough gravel anymore to cross Louisiana off pavement?”
“No, the eastern part of the route is a good bit north of here; it goes across Arkansas, mostly in the hills and mountains, where there are lots of forest service roads and better scenery.”
“Interesting,” Eric said. “Maybe it’s something to consider then. I’d like to find out more about it.”
“Greg can tell you more than me. Do you want to see about finding another motorcycle?”
“I don’t know, but I’m thinking about my options. I like the idea of a route like that, though. There’s no telling what I might run into on the highways and paved roads, so the more I can avoid them, the better. I’m just not sure how feasible it will be to get the fuel I’d need. There may be a better way. That professor and his group were certainly doing pretty well without it.”
Tribulation Page 7
