“That’s not what they think,” Pete said, drawing the guy’s attention back to him—and away from Marie. “They were dead certain the military had sent me as a mole. Marie and I found ourselves in prison there. Had to fight our way out. Which is why we came skidding up in a stolen military-grade Hummer. We stole it from the people who stole it from you.”
This time, a grin actually did stretch across the guy’s face. “In that case, we’re happy to have it back. As for you and your friends…”
“The man is the guy who helped us break out of Clearview,” Pete said quickly, his nerves riding a sharp edge at the soldier’s attitude.
Pete would have assumed that the military had orders to take in any strays they found and get them to safety. Wasn’t that standard operating procedure when there was some sort of natural disaster? But this guy wasn’t acting like they were going by that rule.
He was still acting like Pete, Jack, and Marie might be some sort of threat.
He’d also barely reacted to the story about Mueller Max and David Clyde.
And that made Pete extremely nervous. He was damn tired of people treating him like he was some sort of spy. And he was even more tired of feeling like he had once again led Marie—and now Jack—into a situation where their lives might be in danger.
The soldier’s eyes turned back to Pete. “And what about you? How do we know you are who you say you are?”
God, what was it with people and their paranoia? Ever since the lights had gone out, everyone was acting like the entire world had turned into a spy novel.
“I’m as good as my word,” he said sharply. “I’m assuming you’ve got a line to the federal government on your base. Get in touch with the main office of the National Guard and check my bonafides. They’ll give you everything you need to know. Hell, if it helps, I’ll join up again, just to prove my commitment.”
A long, hard stare, and then the man seemed to relent. He turned, gesturing for Pete and his friends to follow.
“Right. Come on, I’ll take you to my CO. He’s the one who’ll make the final decision.”
Pete jumped after him… already wondering whether he’d done the right thing or not.
Chapter 14
Pete, Marie, and Jack scuttled after the nameless soldier, their eyes on the fence/gate situation in front of them. Pete’s eyes were also on what he’d immediately come to think of as the gates into the city. He’d been born in Anchorage, had grown up here, and knew the city like the back of his hand.
Hell, when he was young, he’d spent more time out in the city than in his actual house.
But right now, the place didn’t look anything like the laid-back, out-in-the-wilderness town he’d known as a kid. Yeah, it was obviously bigger now than it had been, and he was looking at it through the eyes of an adult rather than a kid, but everything about it seemed… off. The place had always been filled with people who looked like they’d either just come in from the fields or were ready to go out hunting, and even the biggest businessmen and women in town had lived in houses that had full-home generators, just because electricity could be so unstable up here.
Everyone knew how to shoot a gun. Everyone knew how to gut a deer. Half of them had survived on fish and game they caught themselves, and mountain climbing was practically a citywide pastime.
And nobody had acted like they were anything more than the local country kids. No attitudes, no egos. It was a big city, as far as Alaska was concerned, but everyone had acted like they knew everybody else.
Because when you lived in a city smack dab in the middle of a wilderness that could easily kill you if it chose to, you generally didn’t have time for petty fights amongst your fellow humans.
But the city he was looking at now didn’t have anything like that easygoing attitude. Or rather… Well, he guessed that the people might, when he actually got to them. But as for the city itself? The place looked like it had become a damn military compound. They passed through the fence that had made up the military checkpoint, and beyond that they found the outskirts of the city—which had been essentially walled in with enormous, should-have-been-movable sections of fencing.
The fencing had been cemented together, though, so that it was no longer so movable. In fact, it looked more like a wall than a fence, at this point.
Beyond that, he could see the homes that made up the outer layer of the city, most of them small—so they took up less energy—and all of them built to last, out of sturdy wood and plaster.
He recognized those homes. He’d grown up in one that looked a whole lot like them. But they definitely hadn’t had a fence around them when he lived here. And there hadn’t been a large gate leading into the city, like the one they were walking toward now.
“You guys thought you had to wall the city up to keep it safe?” he asked, guessing at what was going on here.
The nameless soldier grunted. “Keep enemies out, keep citizens in,” he said. “You have no idea what it’s been like since the power went out. No power, no lights, no heating. People immediately started panicking. Running around like chickens with their heads cut off, if you know what I mean. Good chance that they were going to run right out into the wilderness and get themselves frozen to death, you ask me. Lot easier to stay warm inside a house than it is out in the cold.”
Well, that was true, Pete thought. If you were actually speaking about freezing to death. Because the answer didn’t take into account that these people understood darkness and were comfortable with it. They lived in it half the year, this far north. They also understood how to have heat without electricity.
He could personally guarantee that each of those houses had a long-outlawed, but perfectly working fireplace, and that everyone who lived there had stacks and stacks of firewood at the ready. Especially in the middle of winter.
So something didn’t jive here. And the soldier’s explanation also didn’t really explain the fencing—or the soldiers he now saw patrolling the streets, their guns pointing outward like they were actually searching for someone to shoot.
“And the soldiers are also to keep them safe?” he asked. He turned sideways and slid through the gate the soldier had pushed open, holding his hand out for Marie, who was following him. Jack came right behind her, his eyes wide, his mouth hanging open.
Poor guy was probably thinking the military was every bad thing Thomas had ever said it was, Pete realized. God, he was probably thinking Thomas had been absolutely right to keep them away from the military and everything to do with it. And here Pete was, leading the poor guy right into the middle of it.
Ordinarily, he would have said that Jack—and Thomas—were smoking some really good crack to think that sort of thing. The government, and therefore the military, were there to take care of the people. Make sure nothing bad happened to them. Keep the enemies out. Thinking that they themselves were the enemies was crazy.
But right now, with a fence built around Anchorage and soldiers looking like they were actually patrolling the streets, he was starting to wonder.
This wasn’t the version of the military he knew. And it sure as hell didn’t look like the one the US government paid for.
“The soldiers are here to make sure everyone stays calm and safe,” their guide said firmly. “Like I said, it was chaos. People were running around shouting, blaming everyone from the bears to the government for the power going out. Our orders were to come in and impose calm. Make sure no one got hurt. Make sure no one hurt anyone else. Sometimes that means putting down rules that the people don’t understand.”
Ah. That explained the guns and soldiers, then. As well as the fence.
“You imposed martial law,” he guessed.
“We did what we had to do,” the soldier snapped. “And what other choice did we have? We can’t get in touch with DC. Our own base is only partially operable. We’re out here on an island. We’re not going to allow the citizens to start killing each other just because they don’t have any lights.”
“So it’s better that the soldiers threaten to kill them instead?” Marie muttered from behind him.
Pete squeezed her hand quickly, praying that she’d keep her voice down—or better yet, keep her mouth completely shut.
He knew how quick she was with the smartass comments. And he knew that no soldier was going to understand or forgive her sarcasm. Particularly if they’d already put the town under martial law.
Essentially, the right to free and sarcastic speech—which Marie seemed to have made part of her core being—was going to be touch-and-go from here on out.
“Keep your mouth shut,” he told her over his shoulder. “This isn’t the time to talk back. Whole new world with the military in charge, and that means we don’t have many rights at the moment. Get it?”
He saw her eyes fly to his, narrowed and angry at his words. But she also sealed her mouth shut and nodded, and he didn’t think he’d have to tell her twice. After all, she could see the soldiers with the guns just as well as he could.
And she was a journalist. That meant, he assumed, that she’d at least seen stories written about war zones. Maybe she’d even done a couple, which would mean she’d traveled to war-torn areas and seen what the government was doing. She’d also lived in the US. She had to know that soldiers walking the streets, fully armed, was the opposite of the norm in this country. It was something they did in countries where the government and the people didn’t see eye to eye.
Or in countries where the military was taking advantage of a bad situation and performing a coup.
He didn’t think that was the case, here. Not precisely. After all, this was only Anchorage. But he also wasn’t going to give those soldiers any reason to be suspicious of him.
Before he could ask any further questions—and before they actually got to the streets in question, so he could see more about what was going on—they found themselves being hustled right into a Jeep. Pete, Marie, and Jack were all shoved into the backseat while their guide—who Pete had decided to call Sam—jumped into the driver’s seat.
“Hang on,” he muttered.
Then he took off up the street, the snow flying up around them from the wheels. Marie grabbed at both Pete and Jack at the sudden speed, her hands tense on Pete’s arm, and he took the opportunity to put his own arm around her.
This didn’t feel right. None of this fucking felt right. And now that he was actually in the city—well, flying through it, since Sam seemed to be in an awfully big hurry to get to wherever they were going—he could see more of what was going on. The soldiers weren’t the only military presence in the city. There were tanks in here, too, and plenty of Jeeps. All of them filled with Army guys—who were all not only in full gear, but also packing rifles with sites on them.
It looked like a goddamn war zone.
This wasn’t a normal reaction to a major loss of power. He was sure of it. Sure, he didn’t know that he’d ever seen an official ”plan” from the National Guard about how to handle a major atmospheric event that fried all the electronic components in everything from the power companies to the toaster in your kitchen. But he was almost certain that “take over and treat the citizens like they’re your prisoners” wasn’t on the list of instructions.
“Why did you say you ordered martial law?” he asked, shouting so that Sam could hear him over the sound of the Jeep—and the sound of the loudspeaker in the distance, which someone was using to tell people to get back into their homes.
“Order in the chaos!” Sam shouted back. “We needed people to stay calm and stay organized, and this was the best way.”
“According to who, exactly?” Marie shouted, doing the exact opposite of what she was supposed to be doing.
Sam gave her a glare in the rearview mirror—which, Pete thought, she kind of deserved. “According to General Nolan,” he said coldly, as if that was the only answer she needed.
It was definitely the only answer she was going to get. Pete could tell that much from the way Sam’s eyes quickly swiveled back to the road in front of them.
Pete bit his cheek hard enough to draw blood, his mind racing from one conclusion to the next, none of them good. He looked to the right and saw a soldier actually accosting a woman on the street, pushing her around and screaming at her when she argued with him. Then he saw another soldier with his gun in someone’s back, pushing them toward what he assumed was their house.
There were no lights, of course, and no cars on the streets. Which made sense, considering most cars wouldn’t be working right now. Only cars that had been protected through the weather event would still be functional.
The military obviously had them. But normal people wouldn’t.
And that was starting to feel like just the opening of the imbalance here. Because the military had come screaming in and immediately told the people of the city what they were and weren’t allowed to do. They’d walled the city in and made the citizens their prisoners, more or less. And although the military—or at least this General Nolan, whoever the hell he was—might think they had the right to do it, and that they were doing the right thing, something didn’t smell right.
Something smelled distinctly wrong.
And they were currently driving at full speed right toward the center of that wrongness. To, he presumed, meet the guy who had perpetrated the whole thing.
Shit. Had he got them out of the frying pan and right into the fire? Had he managed to get them into an even worse situation than the one they’d already been facing?
It certainly wouldn’t be the first time. Not that that was any excuse. At this point, he seemed to have led Marie from one bad situation into another, and he wasn’t even counting the fact that they’d both ended up at Mueller, because she was the one who’d snuck into that place under an assumed identity.
But he’d been the one who inflamed the problem with the prisoners, which had nearly gotten her killed. And he’d definitely been the one to get them into that Ranger cabin. And into Clearview.
And now into Anchorage, where the military had imposed martial law, and arrested them the moment they showed up.
Chapter 15
They busted through another set of gates to what Pete knew had once been—and maybe would be again—the City Hall compound.
It had, like so much of the rest of the city, been taken over by the military, and now looked like a military compound on steroids. There were tanks and Jeeps parked everywhere and soldiers actually marching down the lanes in formation, all of them with guns. Commanding officers barked commands and someone was talking through another freaking loudspeaker, giving the soldiers they were in charge of directions about where they were going and what they were supposed to be doing there. Everyone was wearing cammo and carrying a gun. They looked like they were in the middle of a warzone.
It was a military guy’s wet dream. And Pete had never seen anything more terrifying. Because things like this weren’t supposed to exist on civilian soil. They definitely weren’t supposed to be tromping all over the gardens in Anchorage’s City Hall campus.
A second later, Sam—or whatever his real name was—came to a skidding halt in what had once been a handicapped parking spot and got onto his radio.
“So what now, oh fearless leader?” Marie muttered out of the side of her mouth, taking advantage of Sam being sidetracked by whoever he was talking to. “Because I’m pretty sure that ‘finding our way into a city controlled by the military’ wasn’t high on our list of things to do.”
“It would have been, if I’d thought of it,” Pete replied, his voice also low. “Only I would have made sure the military controlling our city wasn’t high on their own power. And acting out their own wet dream.”
Marie’s large eyes rolled to the side, where she watched a military parade passing by for a moment. “They certainly are impressed with themselves, aren’t they?” Then her eyes turned to him. “But that doesn’t answer the question of what we’re going to do. I don’t know about you, but I
’m not in the mood to get thrown in prison again. And I have a bad feeling that’s exactly where we’re going.”
At that, though, Pete felt his National Guard pride come up. These might be soldiers without a real commander, and they might be feeling rather too impressed with their own guns, so to speak. That didn’t mean they were going to act without honor.
At least, he was hoping it didn’t.
“They’re still the military, and they’ll still have specific commands they have to follow,” he said quickly. “Commands that came as part of their agreement with the government. If we can get to their commander and talk to him—”
“And tell him what?” she gasped. “That we know it doesn’t look too good, us showing up in the middle of the snow and ice with a stolen Hummer and a ridiculous story about a prison taken over by convicts—which we definitely aren’t, thanks so much—but that we’re completely innocent, we swear? And you think they’ll actually believe us?”
My God, he thought, this woman never stopped. One minute she was keeping her mouth shut the way she was supposed to, and the next she was coming up with conspiracy theories so insane that they could only come from a fucking writer.
He ignored the part of his brain that was telling him she was right, and focused on the part that was annoyed by her laying it out there so clearly.
“They’re not going to arrest us just because we showed up at their gates,” he hissed back. “In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re in the middle of a major historic event. They would expect people to come to Anchorage to get help.”
“And I bet any normal person would have seen that military checkpoint, turned around, and run the other way,” she retorted. “You don’t seem to understand how much normal people don’t like or trust the military.”
“That’s because I’m one of them,” he answered coldly. “Are you saying I’m not trustworthy?”
Stone Cold Fear | Book 3 | Ice Burn Page 8
