by T. W. Connor
It was heartening to see. And I knew it was also going to get a lot tougher as this day went on. Because we were going to go from sitting around, or moving in short bursts, to a move that extended for many hours, and across many miles. It was going to be hard on anyone with any health concerns—including the many elderly town members—and on anyone with young children, or a lot to carry.
It was why we’d decided to break for breakfast, first. Because everyone was going to need all the calories they could take in right now, if they were going to survive this march.
We got started on the march half an hour later. I had gone out myself to find the men who had been standing watch, and by the time we got back to the main group, Marlon had made sure everyone was packed up again and ready to go.
I looked around the group, making a mental catalogue of who and what we had, and made a few decisions.
“Men, you’re on the outer fringes of the group,” I said immediately. “We move in single file, because the trees are going to make that a necessity, at least until we get to more open land. But we stay together. No breaking off into smaller groups. No walking by yourself. Men, place yourselves around the women, children, and elderly, and keep yourselves between them and the forest. Keep your guns out and your eyes on the horizon. Pick up anyone who falls, and that goes for everyone. We can’t afford to slow down, but we’re also not going to leave anyone behind. If you see anyone struggling, help them.”
I looked around, meeting people’s gazes and giving them the most serious look I could manage. This was important. I needed them to pay attention and keep their wits about them.
“Remember, no breaking off from the group. If you need to stop for any reason, you let one of us know so that we can stop the whole group. No one goes off by themselves, and I mean no one. Going off by yourself means you might die, you got it?”
I was met by many, many shocked—and frightened—looks, and I couldn’t blame them. Not really. Yeah, these were people who lived out in the wilderness of Northern Michigan. But they were also people who lived in a town, not in the woods. They were people who were used to civilization. Roads. Markets. Hot coffee.
They weren’t used to hearing things like that they might die if they stepped out of line.
But they had to understand that, or chances of us losing someone were very, very good. Because we were going to need to move fast, here, if we were going to avoid Randall—and the night, which would come too quickly. I wasn’t going to have time to keep an eye on everyone.
I wasn’t going to know if someone was missing from the group.
This was going to be specifically important among the middle of the group, because I knew that those people—the women, the children, the elderly—were the most likely to drop out. To get tired and slow down, or to swerve off course, thinking that they were just going to take a bit of a rest. It was exactly what I couldn’t have happening. Exactly the thing that would lead them directly to their deaths.
Which was why I’d tasked my best lieutenant for the job. The one person I knew I could count on over and above anyone else. The one person I knew would have my back no matter what.
Angie.
Though she was wounded and would be walking with difficulty, she had insisted that she would walk on her own rather than using the litter I’d prepared for her. I wasn’t pleased with the idea, but honestly, I wasn’t surprised. The woman was more stubborn than anyone I’d ever met, and now that she was theoretically mended by the doctor, it had become impossible to tell her that she couldn’t do anything on her own.
When she’d told me that she was going to be walking under her own power, I’d tried to argue with her. I’d lost. Quickly.
So I’d moved to my Plan B: having her supervise the march from where she would be walking. She and Sarah would be with the women and kids, so Angie would be able to keep an eye on that particular group. Keep them moving. Keep them together. And if she was there, under the watchful eyes of the men supervising that group of people…
It meant I could make sure we weren’t being followed. It meant I didn’t have to worry as much about those two, and could worry about Randall, and the wolves that I was afraid would be coming after us. I hadn’t forgotten that the animals were acting crazy since the weather/EMP situation. I hadn’t forgotten how that bear came after us. And the biggest drawback of going into the forest, as far as I was concerned, was that we might run into more carnivores acting insane.
Still, it was our only real shot. Whatever happened, I’d deal with it. Not having to worry about what the people around me were doing would help me focus on that.
Finally, a few people started muttering in the crowd, and then I could see people nodding their understanding. A few turned into many, and before long the entire group was nodding that they understood what I was saying.
I wasn’t sure they truly did. But I also knew that I’d done all I could do in that regard. And delaying further was just going to put us in more danger.
“Let’s go,” I said. “Marlon, you know the route to your house best. You’re in the lead. Joe, you’re with him. Henry and Bob, you’re with me in the back. I need eyes on the trail behind us, to make sure we’re not being followed.”
The people reacted with that sort of shuffling, fluid situation that was so characteristic of a group getting ready to move, and I watched as Marlon moved to the head of the group, giving people orders as he went, and the men of the town moved to surround and integrate with the rest of the group. Women and children grouped together—not safe if we were being attacked by any large force, which might go straight for the most vulnerable, but in this situation, the best we could do was to keep them all together and make sure they were safe—and the elderly shuffled in with them.
Moments later, Marlon started forward, his strides long and confident, and the people behind him followed, each of them plowing through the snow with determination on their faces. I had to hand it to them. They’d been through hell and back in the last twenty-four hours—more than that, if I included the EMP situation—and I hadn’t heard a single complaint. Even now, when they’d been forced out of their town and into the wilderness, they were working together as best they could and following our instructions. They weren’t crying. They weren’t complaining about how hard life had suddenly become.
And they weren’t giving up.
I just hoped they would keep that attitude over the next ten or so hours.
20
We were five hours into the march before we took a break, and though the people were still going strong, I could see—and feel—them starting to crumble.
“How much further do you think we have to go?” Bob asked when Marlon made his way back toward our small group for lunch.
Marlon glanced down at the compass he always seemed to have in his pocket and sighed. “At least five more hours, give or take,” he said. “We’re making pretty good time but this is still an awful lot of distance. And the people are going to start moving more slowly as they get tired.”
I glanced up at the slice of sky I could see above us, through the bare branches of the trees, and tried to measure how much longer I thought we had when it came to daylight. Our early start meant that we’d been on the road, so to speak, well before the day truly started, and right now the sun was still close to its apex. High noon or just past it. I glanced at my watch to confirm, but knew that the time wasn’t the important thing here.
The position of the sun was what would dictate whether we got to Marlon’s estate before it got dark and the temperature dropped. From what I was seeing, we were probably going to make it. But it was going to be awfully tight.
“We’re not going to have any time for side trips,” I noted, my eyes on Marlon. “We’re going to be cutting it tight as it is. I want to get these people inside and into some heat before the sun is gone and the temp starts dropping.”
He gave me a quick nod. “I’m keeping the trail as direct as I can. As long as we don’t
run into any…difficulties, we should be okay.”
That was the key, I knew. That possibility of running into difficulties. We hadn’t, so far. We hadn’t seen any wild animals in the forest, hadn’t come across any places where huge snow drifts had put us off course. The forest had been a virtual ghost town, honestly, when it came to other life. And though Bob, Henry, and I had kept our eyes on the trail behind us almost as often as we were looking forward, we hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Randall or any of his men.
It didn’t mean they weren’t back there, somewhere, following us. It didn’t mean they wouldn’t come after us. But so far, it looked like our escape had gone unnoticed—or that they’d decided to leave chasing us for another day.
I didn’t much care which one it was, if I was being honest. The fact that we didn’t have to deal with them right now was all I cared about. Because right now, we were in the midst of the forest with a bunch of women, children, and old people, and though we had a good amount of weapons and a good number of men—and women—to shoot them, right now was not the ideal time to find ourselves in a battle.
If someone came at us right now, shooting, we’d be too likely to lose a whole lot of people before we were able to scare them off. If we were able to scare them off.
But we’d been lucky, so far. No one had pulled up sick or hurt, and no one had complained much. Hell, even Angie had been able to keep up with the rest of the group, despite her injuries, and though I was still having one of the other men pull the litter I’d built for her, I was becoming more and more hopeful that we wouldn’t have to use it.
“How much longer are we going to give them?” Bob asked suddenly, gesturing out to the people sitting in front of us, in groups of five as they ate what had to account for lunch at this moment.
“Another half hour or so,” I said. “I want to give them enough time to rest, but not enough time to get tired or lazy. No naps or closing eyes or anything like that. If they get groggy, we’ll have a bear of a time getting them back on their feet and back into motion, and it might slow us down.”
I cast another look at the sky, measuring the sun’s position, and nodded.
“I think we’ve still got at least five hours of sunlight, and maybe half an hour of dusk. It should give us the time we need to get them into a structure of some sort at Marlon’s house. But we can’t afford to take longer than that. I don’t want them exposed to another night out here. It’s too dangerous.”
Bob gave me a nod and stood, then walked toward the first group of people and said something to them. He was telling them about the timeline, I thought. Preparing them to get up and get moving again soon. I could see him gesturing, taking some questions, and then nodding and replying, and a moment later he was moving on to the next group.
It made sense for him to be the one handling it, I thought. All the people knew that Marlon and I were the ones calling the shots, here. Hell, maybe they even knew that Marlon and I were going to be the ones to save their lives if anything went wrong. But Bob was the one they trusted, at the end of the day. He was the one who had been named head of their town—and he was the one they were going to listen to when it came to getting back on the road and giving everything they had for the next five hours. He was the one who was going to convince them to keep walking when they were already exhausted.
Five more hours, I thought. Five more hours and we should have them in a secure position. And then we’d decide what the hell we were going to do next.
I was just relaxing at that thought, at the idea that I could put that next step off for a bit longer, when the screaming started.
And shortly thereafter, the snarling and yapping.
I was on my feet in less than a second and sprinting toward where the noise was coming from, pulling my gun out, not bothering with the concealed knife I had in a sheath strapped to my calf. I could hear Marlon and Joe behind me, both of them moving almost as quickly as I was, and in the background, I heard Sean and Bob shouting for more reinforcements and for the people to stay where the hell they were.
I didn’t listen to anything else they had to say. My eyes were on the forest in front of me, trying to see through the trees and through the glare of the snow as I searched for the source of those sounds. The screaming was still going on, and I tried to cut through my gut reaction to the sound itself and try to filter it through the signs I’d learned as a younger man in the military.
And once I did that, I started to think again, my mind flying almost as quickly as my feet, my logic giving me the pieces I needed.
Those screams weren’t the screams of someone who was in mortal danger. They weren’t the screams of someone who was getting ripped apart. Not yet. They were screams of fear. Screams meant to bring help—and perhaps scare away whatever the person thought was attacking them.
They were also the screams of a young person. It was impossible to tell whether it was a girl or a boy, but whoever it was, they were definitely under fifteen. The clearness of their voice told me that they hadn’t been in this world for long enough to wear it down.
I jerked around a tree in my path, stumbled a bit at the deeper snow, cursed, and then swerved back onto the path I’d been following, telling my brain to give me more damn information. Something I could use. Something that would prepare me for what I was going to see before I got there.
The growling was easy to pinpoint. It was a pack of wolves, though they hadn’t started actually hunting the person. They’d come across them by accident, I thought—or by design, more likely, but without any big chase. They hadn’t had to communicate with each other. They hadn’t had to run after their quarry.
Which meant they weren’t tired. They were fresh. And they would be difficult to fight.
I jumped a log in my path, and then another, and went down to my knees on the landing, unprepared for the hard dirt I found on the other side. I was on my feet a moment later and tearing forward again. The clear spot didn’t belong here—this entire place was covered with snow, and there was no good reason for that one spot to be so clear of the stuff—but that didn’t matter.
Nothing mattered but getting to whoever was screaming. Before the wolves got them cornered and went after whoever it was.
The snarling and snapping was getting closer, now—as was the screaming—and I could hear that the wolves were still…well, playing with their prey, for lack of a better word. They were working the person into a corner, probably, snapping and snarling at them as they drove him or her back. They hadn’t jumped on the person yet.
When they did that, the whole tone of the battle would change. I was praying that wouldn’t happen before I got there.
I came suddenly into a clearing in the forest, about two hundred yards square, and then I was seeing the scene I’d been imagining in real life—and in all too real color.
There were five wolves, I saw, taking a quick count, and even that number came with an asterisk, because two of them were very young. Maybe six months old, if that. Young enough that they were still running with the pack they’d been born into—which meant their mother was one of the wolves attacking the person. Potentially even their father.
Which could come in handy.
“Small pack,” I said to myself, thinking out loud to give my brain something to hold onto. “Small family unit. Two young ones, potential hostages. Three adults. Not terrific odds, but—”
Then I saw who they had cornered.
Zoe. The girl that lived right next to us in town. She wasn’t Sarah’s best friend, and she wasn’t even particularly close to Sarah, but she was a kid I knew well. A kid I’d seen every single day for the last year or so. A kid I’d helped to shovel her parents’ walkway, a kid I’d pulled on a sled through the woods.
Hell, she was one of a group of kids I’d babysat—under duress—when their parents needed a night off.
My heart flew right up into my throat, and I thought I was actually going to throw up for three full seconds before I got myself under
control and started thinking again.
She was backed up against a stark wall of stone that rose right up out of the forest, her face as pale as the snow around her, tears streaming down her cheeks. In her hand, I saw what was left of a bouquet of wildflowers—the kind that were hardy enough to stand the first couple months of snow. She must have found a patch of them in some sheltered location and decided to pick them.
That didn’t explain what she was doing out here by herself. It didn’t even start to explain how she’d managed to get away from the group without anyone else noticing her, when I had given at least ten people specific instructions to watch out for all the kids in the group and make sure they didn’t have a chance to wander off and get lost.
But none of that mattered right now. Because the wolves had taken one look at me and, as a group, decided that my presence was some sort of inciting factor when it came to attacking her.
The three adults all crouched for a split second, and then sprang right at the little girl that I’d come to think of as one of my responsibilities.
21
I was moving before I had any real idea of what I meant to do about the whole thing, which meant that as I sprinted forward, my instincts kicked in—with my brain running a distant second. I knew I had a gun in my hand, and on some level I knew that if I shot it, there was a good chance that I’d be able to scare the wolves away.
But I’d also seen wolves with their prey before. I’d seen how possessive they got—and how stubborn. And I knew that now, in the cold of winter, they were even more desperate. Even more intent on getting food for themselves. And since these particular wolves also had young ones to feed—and, if I was right, pregnant females to take care of—they would be even more set on keeping their prey than the normal summertime wolves.
