They set off and kept their silence for an hour after that. They both needed some space in which to try to process everything they had gone through, and McLean needed to think through exactly how they were going to get across fifteen miles of semi-populated foothills and then fifty more of rugged mountain wilderness.
They came to the crest of a rise that overlooked a small valley between hills, with a single cabin-style home in it. McLean stopped and took a bearing with his compass. He had scouted the whole area previously, but hadn’t actually hiked much of it on foot because the best routes cut through private property. Sighting a draw between two hills ahead that was as close to due west as he needed, he led Carrie down the hillside and across a field.
“So McLean, are you, like, a mountain man?” Carrie asked, finally breaking their silence. “I know you ranch and hunt. But that bag of tricks you’re carrying never ceases to produce exactly the gear we need. Compass, binoculars, guns. You seem ready for anything.”
McLean took a small sip of water from his camelbak before answering. “I’m just the kind of guy that likes to be prepared for anything. I lost all trust in worldly institutions several years back. Looking around at the way things were going, I decided no one was going to fix things, so I needed to get ready for hard times myself. I got back into hunting, started up my little ranch, and made some friends that think along the same lines. We’ve teamed up to put away supplies and equipment at my ranch, learn self-sufficiency skills, and plan for an uncertain future. That future’s here now, and so far I’m really glad I did all those things. This bug-out bag is part of that preparation.”
Carrie gave him a teasing look. “I get it. I’ve seen those shows with the doomsday people. You don’t have a bomb shelter and a stockpile of machine guns at your ranch, do you, McLean?”
He raised his eyebrows. “No, I don’t. But after what we’ve been through so far, I kind of wish I did. Don’t you?”
Carrie grimaced. “Yeah, maybe. Sorry, I shouldn’t criticize.”
“It’s okay. A little light-heartedness will actually help us get through this. That’s part of the reason I felt so good about bringing you along. I need someone to keep me from getting too gloomy.”
They smiled at each other, and then continued walking through the tall grass and scrub oak.
On the other side of a small hill there was a house. They were practically in its backyard, although it wasn’t fenced at all. McLean swore under his breath, wishing he’d scoped out the route in more detail on Google Earth beforehand. He didn’t see anybody, so they skirted the corner of the yard and got out to a long gravel driveway that connected the house to a cracked, weathered old road that wound out of the area and up another hill. Only then did the homeowner show himself.
“What are you two doing on my property?” a voice called out, and McLean turned to see a man in the front doorway of the home. His right arm was still inside the house, and McLean had to assume it was holding a weapon. He eased his shotgun barrel toward the ground and held up his other hand to show that he wasn’t threatening.
“Just passing through, on our way into the mountains,” he explained, keeping his eyes on the man’s face. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize there was even a house here, or we would have gone around. I promise we don’t mean any harm.”
“Then why are you carrying that gun?”
“This is just for self-defense,” McLean said, edging to his left slightly so he was in front of Carrie. “Some crazy things are going on in the city. A man’s got to be cautious.”
“Tell me about it,” the man said, relaxing his stance but remaining in his doorway. “Just before my phone went dead yesterday, I got a breaking news update about a terrorist attack on the east coast. Looks like they hit us here, too.”
McLean nodded. Whether or not it was accurate, the possibility that the country’s population and government centers in the east had been hit was an easy and plausible explanation.
“I saw a plane go down in the mountains north of here,” the man said. “I could still see smoke earlier this morning, but nobody seems to be investigating it. Maybe we should go check it out. Might be some survivors, or something we could salvage.”
This man, who had been challenging and hostile a moment before, was now making conversation and suggesting alliances. Stress and ignorance affected people strangely, McLean noted. Without his smartphone, this guy was completely in the dark, and he was grasping for control over his surroundings.
“No thanks,” he replied. “Nothing we can do to help an aircraft that fell from thirty thousand feet. We’re going to keep moving. And if you’ll take a suggestion, I’d stay inside from now on. Don’t answer the door. There’s going to be a whole line of refugees streaming out of the city soon, and they might come looking for assistance at houses like yours. You’ll have to decide for yourself who to help, but keep in mind that there’s looting going on in Denver, and disease will start spreading within a few days. Good luck.”
Beckoning to Carrie, he led the way across the gravel drive and up the road that climbed to the top of another hill. The man in the house didn’t say anything more. Perhaps he was put off by what McLean had said, or frightened, but McLean didn’t care. He had a feeling the guy would either be gone or dead by the end of the week. He’d bought himself an extra couple of days by living outside the city’s population center, but he wasn’t nearly far enough to avoid what was coming. McLean just hoped his own ranch was far enough out in the mountains.
As they left the road and wound up a deer trail through a more heavily forested patch in the hills, Carrie spoke up. “I didn’t even think of disease. It’s going to be bad down there, isn’t it? No electricity for the hospitals, the clinics, the pharmacies. What will people do?”
McLean shook his head. “No running water and no plumbing, that’s the worst part. That’s all powered by the electrical grid. The sewage and garbage will pile up in the streets, animals will start spreading infections, and food will start rotting, which will make people sicker and spread disease that much faster. But don’t worry, we’ll outrun it.”
Carrie looked at McLean with an expression he couldn’t quite read, somewhere between admiration and suspicion. “You’ve thought all this through, haven’t you? Every detail.”
He nodded. “It’s been kind of a hobby of mine. Kind of an all-consuming hobby. Maybe even a way of life, I guess.”
“And now you’re vindicated.”
“Well, yes.”
“I hope you feel satisfied with yourself!”
McLean stopped, shocked at the animosity in Carrie’s tone. She stopped too, breathing heavily from the climb, and glared at him.
“I didn’t want this to happen any more than you did,” he told her. “I just foresaw it.”
“But you’re not even bothered! People are dying down there, my friends are dying down there. Our country’s under some kind of attack, and all you want to do is run and hide at your getaway place. Some of us are losing everything, McLean! Watching our whole lives go down the drain. And it hurts.” She started to cry, and they both stood there for a horrible minute as tears streamed down her cheeks.
The hill they had summited was high enough to provide a glimpse of Denver through a gap in the trees. A haze of smoke hung over the valley, and they could see the interstate, scattered with stalled cars. McLean scratched his chin, wondering if he’d done something wrong, and what he could say now.
Then Carrie dropped her water bottle and hugged him, burying her face in his chest as she sobbed. He gingerly put his arms around her. That seemed to be the right move, because she gradually calmed down. McLean steered her over to a boulder nearby and they sat together.
Finally Carrie pulled away from him and wiped her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s a lot to deal with. All those people down there, hurting and afraid and in trouble.”
“It’s a terrible thing,” McLean agreed. “Not to mention your apartment, your job, everything you’v
e worked for. It’s got to be hard for you.”
“No, I don’t care about any of that,” Carrie said. “Things don’t matter. But people… what about my parents? Is this happening in Washington, too?”
McLean put a hand on her shoulder. “Your parents are probably just fine. We have no reason to suspect anything bad is happening to them, so let’s not add those fears and worries to the ones we already have.”
Carrie shuddered, letting the last of her stress-induced outburst leave her body. “You’re right. I’m sorry I grouched at you. We can keep going.”
McLean stood up and handed Carrie her water bottle. “There’s nothing to apologize about, Carrie. You make a good point. I wish I could be a hero and stop all this, or turn it back. I feel horrible about the whole situation. But I’ve spent a lot of time thinking it through, and in the end I just feel helpless every time. So I’ve tried my best to at least make sure that I and the people I care about will be safe and secure.”
Carrie gave him another hug and then led the way over the hilltop and into the next low valley.
Throughout the afternoon they hiked, leaving the mountain communities behind and cutting through wilderness toward the horse ranch McLean’s friend owned. They encountered an old railroad track from the early twentieth century which hadn’t been used for fifty years, a landmark McLean had been looking for, and they traveled on it for the rest of the day, making good time. It kept them away from the roads, followed a fairly straight line through the mountains to the west, and stayed on easy terrain by design. Wherever a train could go, a person could go much easier than scrambling up and down rocks and hills and bushwhacking through the trees. It also avoided most of the houses and cabin communities that peppered the hills above Denver.
They followed the tracks for several hours without stopping. The railroad grade kept fairly level, and they were both in good shape. They sipped water and ate dried fruit, jerky, and Clif bars from McLean’s pack as they walked, to keep their energy up. They were silent for long periods, steadying themselves mentally.
It helped that they were walking through some very beautiful areas. The serenity of the pines towering on either side of the track was comforting, and the scent of sun-warmed earth and leaves relieved some of the morning’s trauma.
At one point Carrie asked more about the EMP, and McLean shared what he knew. “It may have been an airburst from a nuclear weapon,” he said. “If one was detonated in the stratosphere, its effects could spread over a large part of the country.”
“Does that mean we’ve been exposed to radiation?” Carrie asked.
“The radioactive fallout that happens in a nuclear strike is the result of many tons of dirt and debris being thrown up into the air by the massive explosion. In a very high altitude airburst, there would be no debris, and the heat and force of the detonation obviously didn’t extend down to the ground in any noticeable way. I think we’re okay.”
“That’s good,” she replied. “You’d think if someone had access to a nuclear missile, though, they’d just hit the city with it and destroy everything. Why kill the power but leave everything intact? Do you think someone’s going to invade?”
“I doubt it. I don’t know of any countries with a real motivation to launch a land invasion of America. Take us down a notch, sure.”
“Well, how long does it take to fix this stuff? Can all those cars be repaired, have their batteries replaced or something?”
“No. The EMP literally fried all the circuitry. A lot of brand-new electronics will have to be built and distributed, and I can’t see how that’s going to happen when the factories are silent and the trucks can’t get it all to market anyway. No, I think the world changed today, at least here in Denver. And it’s not going to be the same again for a very long time. Maybe never, if this is global.”
They came out of the trees into a valley crisscrossed by roads, but no one was visible and they couldn’t hear any vehicles running. They stuck to the tracks as they cut through the less-populated side of the valley, keeping their distance from the homes they saw. Up ahead they could see a good-sized mountain peak, which was about to block out the lowering sun.
“That’s Bear Mountain,” McLean announced, tucking the map back into his pocket. “Highway seventy-three joins up with seventy-four on the other side of it, in another little valley where a friend of mine runs a little horse ranch in the town of Evergreen. We’ll stop there tomorrow to resupply, maybe get some horses if he’s feeling generous. That would make the rest of our journey a lot easier, because we still have at least fifty miles to go.”
The sun slipped down behind the hills and they began looking for a secluded place to camp. They found a culvert where a creek ran under the railroad track, and set up a little camp at its mouth, sheltered from the elements and hidden from view. The only gear they had was what McLean had packed in his bag, but it was sufficient. There was no tent or sleeping bag, but he had a small tarpaulin and some paper-thin folded emergency blankets that would keep them warm enough even if it got very cold during the night.
“I can’t offer you a very comfortable night,” he told Carrie, “but will ‘survivable’ do?”
“It’s better than the alternative,” she said. “And anyway, I think I’m tired enough to sleep through a…” She trailed off, deciding not to mention whatever disaster had been on the tip of her tongue. The irony would be chilling, not humorous. The only things they hadn’t actually been through in the past two days were too awful, and too plausible, to mention.
As the daylight faded to black a breeze began to blow over the mountains, rustling in the pines that towered over their camp in the culvert. Carrie got goosebumps, partly from the cold and partly from the realization that she was truly out in the woods, with no car and no retreat to civilization.
McLean built a small fire to warm them and raise their spirits. No one would be able to see the flames since it was down in a depression where the culvert emptied into a small stream. McLean reasoned that no one was likely to be out and about this night to see or smell the smoke anyway. They were still well ahead of any exodus from the city.
Huddled by the fire with their emergency blankets wrapped around their backs, they ate a couple of MRE’s from McLean’s bag and filtered some water from the creek to drink. It was a beautiful night, and in other circumstances it would have made a perfect camping experience. They purposely avoided depressing topics about the events of the past few days, and instead focused on the future.
“What’s your ranch like, McLean?” Carrie asked. “How long will we be able to stay there without going back to the city to resupply?”
“Good question,” he replied. “The idea is ‘as long as we need to’, although it remains to be seen how things actually play out. I’ve been living off my garden almost entirely since last Spring, but we’ll have a lot more people to feed now so we’re going to need to plant more right away. I’ve got a good well, a secure house with enough firewood for a whole winter, and I’ve been working on some sources of alternative power, although it remains to be seen what kind of shape they’re in after that EMP blast. I’ve even got some livestock, assuming they haven’t run off or died on me. I have an agreement with the neighbors to keep an eye on them when I’m away.”
“You have neighbors?” Carrie asked, stretching out her body along the ground and propping her head in her hand. “I thought your place was pretty isolated.”
“Oh, there are three or four other ranches and cabins in the area. Good people, all of them. I’ve spent some time with each and I trust them. One of the most important things about a home is its neighbors.” McLean poked another stick into the fire and sat back against his bag. “It’s funny, I’ve only lived there full-time for two years. But it really feels like home to me, more than any place I’ve been since I was a kid.”
“Where did you grow up?” Carrie asked. “Here in Colorado?”
“No, Seattle, actually. And moved around more and more the ol
der I got. But a few years ago I decided it was time to settle down and build something worthwhile. How about you?”
“I was born in Grand Junction. Moved to Boulder when I was in high school, and then to the city after several years at UCLA.”
“Ugh. How did you like Los Angeles? Talk about a big city.”
“There were good and bad parts. I’ll admit, I’m glad I’m not there anymore. It wouldn’t be a nice place during a disaster like this one.” Carrie shifted around so her mylar blanket wasn’t so exposed to the fire, and her movement brought her a little closer to McLean. He briefly thought how nice it would be if she’d cuddle right up to him, but it still wasn’t the time for such things. Both of their eyelids were starting to droop.
“Tomorrow I’ll introduce you to a couple of friends of mine, if they made it out here,” he said. “Fun guys, part of a group that will eventually converge on my ranch if all goes according to plan. We’ll travel together, and they’ll come in very handy for protection and work when we get to the ranch. We’ll have a lot to do to get everything ready for the arrival of the rest.”
“How many are there?”
“Ten of us, plus a few additional family members that may or may not show. Most I know quite well, and the others have been vouched for. They’re on their own to make it to the ranch, but once we’re there we’ll all work together to meet the group’s needs. One lady’s a doctor, and there’s an engineer and a guy with a lot of farming experience. We should be in pretty good shape.”
“Sounds like I lucked out,” Carrie said. A troubled look crossed her face. “It makes me feel a little guilty, in fact.”
McLean shook his head. “Survivor guilt. Don’t let it get you down. You don’t owe anything to anybody. Whatever you choose to do from here on out is up to you. I’m sure you’ll choose wisely and fairly, but don’t let others’ decisions weigh you down.”
Carrie nodded, but the frown didn’t leave her face even when her eyes closed and she slumped, overtaken by exhaustion.
Get Out of Denver (Denver Burning Book 1) Page 8
