Trackers 2: The Hunted (A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Thriller)

by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

  Ty wasn’t sure why Tommy wanted to help him, but maybe it was because of what Ty had suspected earlier‌—‌that Tommy was a good guy caught up with some bad people, just like his mom told him could happen if Ty wasn’t careful.

  Instead of taking a right, Dr. Rollins took a left into the hallway while Carson herded Micah and Emma to the right toward their room and the room where the other kids were being held.

  “Where are we going?” Ty asked, twisting in his chair.

  “Remember what I told you earlier,” Dr. Rollins whispered. “Just do as they say.”

  Ty gripped the armrests and peered around the next corner. They came upon a wider passage with thin metal train tracks on the floor. The doctor kept to the right of the rails.

  Wood supply crates marked Danger: Explosive were stacked along the rocky walls. At the next junction, Dr. Rollins took a right into an even wider hallway. More of the wood boxes were stacked to the ceiling. Orange rain barrels and metal crates were positioned along the tracks. Overhead, Ty saw a ventilation shaft with boards blocking the entrance. Ty tried to keep all of it straight in his head in case he needed to come back this way again.

  A chain of lights hung from the ceiling, several of the bulbs flickering. Ty couldn’t see the other end. The ground sloped down as they made their way deeper into the shaft. Everything here was damp from the water running down the walls. They passed several small rooms with cots, some of them occupied by sleeping soldiers.

  Finally, Dr. Rollins slowed and directed Ty’s chair toward an open door. Four metal tables were set up inside, guns and beer cans littering their surfaces. Six men were studying the maps draped over the surface of the closest table. In the center of the group stood General Fenix. He looked up, a toothy grin spreading across his face.

  “Little Mr. Montgomery,” he said. “It’s so great of you to join us.”

  Fenix nodded at Dr. Rollins and the doctor walked away, his footsteps echoing down the hallway. With him gone and Tommy in the medical ward, Ty was on his own. The other men took seats on a leather couch at the other end of the room. They turned away, seemingly uninterested in the meeting.

  The General moved behind Ty and said, “Don’t be scared, kid.”

  The wheelchair was moving a moment later. Fenix pushed Ty up to the nearest table and then walked over to a wooden cabinet that was stocked with beer, liquor bottles, and cans of pop. He grabbed a can of Sprite, popped the lid, and set it down in front of Ty.

  “It’s warm, but it’s still good. Go ahead, take a drink. You know you want to.”

  Ty looked at the can. He was thirsty, but he shook his head.

  “No?” Fenix said. He scooped the can up and slowly brought it to his lips, watching Ty. “Last chance.”

  Ty shook his head again. With a shrug, Fenix chugged the can down.

  “Ahhhhh,” he said, wiping off his mouth. “Refreshing. If you change your mind, I have more.”

  He tossed the can aside and then grabbed a laptop sitting on the table. He swiveled the screen to face Ty.

  “Okay, let’s get to it,” Fenix said. He leaned over and hit one of the keys. Ty suddenly saw a face on screen‌—‌his own. He hardly recognized himself in the video feed. His dark hair was disheveled, and his green eyes were swollen from crying. He had lost some weight, too, and he’d already been skinny to begin with.

  “I’d like you to do something very simple. I’d like you to say hi to your mom.” Fenix sat at the table next to Ty.

  Ty tore his gaze away from the video and looked at Fenix. “You’re trying to trick me.”

  “Kid, I’m going to ask you this one more time before I’m apt to get cross. And I don’t think you want to make me mad, do you?”

  Ty remembered what Dr. Rollins had told him. “No, sir,” he mumbled.

  “Good,” Fenix said, satisfied. He leaned across the table, pushed a key on the laptop, and moved out of the way.

  Ty stared at the screen for a moment, shivering in his chair. “Mom...?”

  Fenix nodded several times and gestured for him to continue.

  “Mom, it’s me. I miss you. Where are you? Why haven’t you come for me? I’m not hurt, but these men are holding me captive in a place called the Castle and‌—‌”

  Fenix swiveled the laptop so it was facing him. His smile was gone now, replaced by an icy stare. “Madame Secretary,” he said in his smooth, deep voice. “My name is General Dan Fenix, and I’m the leader of the Sons of Liberty. We’ve taken it upon ourselves to restore order in these parts. Our mission is to take back our country from those that would have us enslaved.”

  “That’s right!” one of the men on the couch called out.

  “We have your son, Secretary Montgomery, and for the right price, you can have him back. I’ll need ten million in gold bars and a list of weapons to be delivered at a place of my choosing. This is not a negotiation. If you don’t deliver the gold and weapons within twenty-four hours, you’ll be getting your son back significantly more damaged than he is now. And if you fail to comply with my requests…well, let’s just say you won’t be getting him back at all.”

  Fenix shut the laptop with a loud, definite click.

  Charlize Montgomery sat in the cockpit of her F-15 Strike Eagle. She knew she was dreaming, but like most of her dreams, she did not feel in control of her actions. She was just a spectator to an event that had occurred over a decade ago.

  The fighter jet tore through the air, but the horizon remained unchanged, like she was hardly moving at all. The harder she fought to wake, the more powerful the grip of the dream became.

  She curved west toward a highway snaking through the terrain. There wasn’t a moving car in sight, but she could see a cluster of idle vehicles. At first she thought this was the highway in Florida clogged with the refugees fleeing Orlando, but the landscape was different. Instead of grass and wetlands, there was sand.

  Smoke rose in the distance, thinning as it spread higher into the sky from the burning oil fields to the east. Charlize realized then she wasn’t even in the United States. She was back in Iraq.

  More plumes drifted away from a city. The sight wasn’t unusual for the warzone. Often times the retreating army would set the fields ablaze to cover their escape or burn the resource to prevent it from falling into enemy hands.

  The F-15 roared and dipped down to 3,200 feet AGL. She was low enough to see the charred vehicles on the road. The sight reminded her this wasn’t a dream‌—‌it was a nightmare. The memory was from a reconnaissance mission that occurred over a decade ago in Iraq.

  She dipped down to one thousand feet, just like she remembered it, close enough that she could see the cooked bodies in the vehicles, but also close enough that any enemy forces in the area would have a great opportunity to put her in the sand.

  At least she wasn’t alone. Five other F-15s were out there, combing the area for potential enemy combatants. Her mission now was to capture yet another human rights violation of the local population and pass it up the food chain to brass. The politicians and diplomats would cry about the war crimes, and she would return to drop bombs on the bastards responsible.

  As she came in for another run, she saw more remains of the refugees in what was likely an attack by Al-Qaeda forces. The sight that day had invoked another memory of the images she had seen of the Highway of Death during the first Gulf War. Hundreds of Iraqi Regular Forces and their fleet of vehicles were bombed by American forces during the night while fleeing Kuwait.

  The people in the dream weren’t soldiers though‌—‌they were civilians. Men, women, children, and even the body of a dog caught in the crosshairs littered the road. Some of them remained in their vehicles; others had tried to flee the artillery shelling and machine gun fire.

  She relayed the information to her wingman, voice catching when she described the scene. On her third pass, she swooped down to five hundred AGL to take photos with the pod cameras. The jet ripped over the graveyard, snapping pictures of th
e massacre.

  She pulled up, and the jet curved away for a fourth and final run. The engines screamed as she gave the bird some extra juice. Every warning sensor suddenly went off, chirping and flashing in the cockpit. A surface-to-air missile streaked toward her jet from one of the burned vehicles.

  Even though she was dreaming the nerves in her body all tightened at once. Normally losing the missile would have been easy in the thirty-million-dollar aircraft, but she was so low to the ground that she only had a second to release flares and tear away from the projectile.

  The g’s lashed at her body as the F-15 jerked upward. The flares did their job, but the blast from the missile was so close it jolted the aircraft from behind, peppering the right wing with shrapnel. The nose of the jet continued tearing toward the clouds.

  She was still in business.

  Now she had some unfinished business of her own. Whoever had just taken the pot shot at her was about to get toasted.

  Two dots raced across the skyline at two o’ clock. The cavalry was on the way, but she ignored their warnings to retreat. This son of a bitch was all hers. She just had to get him before he could fire another missile.

  As she circled, she prepared to fire a missile of her own. The target clicked on her display when she lined the sights up on the old pickup truck, but she decided to use her M61 Vulcan six-barrel mini-gun instead. There would be less damage to the site, which they needed to preserve for evidence of the war crimes.

  At the last second, she saw the man she was about to kill. She pulled the trigger after a slight hesitation, realizing the man wasn’t a man at all. There were two boys, trying to operate the missile launcher together. They vanished in the 20mm round spray, and Charlize’s heart caught in her throat at what she had just done.

  Warning sensors chirped in her cockpit as her jet ripped through the sky. The blue sky faded to white, and she felt the tug of reality pulling on her. The chirping and beeping continued, but they weren’t the warning sensors from her cockpit. These were the sounds of a hospital.

  Muffled voices echoed in the distance.

  “Madame Secretary, can you hear me?”

  She moved her lips, but she couldn’t seem to summon her voice.

  Cracking an eyelid open, she saw two thin figures hovering under a light. The faces came into focus, an African American man and woman, both of them unfamiliar to her. The chirping of the machines faded to a steady beep.

  “I’m Doctor Francis and this is Doctor Parish,” the woman said. “Can you follow this pen for me?” She held up a pen and waved it in front of Charlize’s face.

  Charlize did as instructed and mumbled, “Where am I?”

  “You’re safe at Constellation, ma’am,” replied Doctor Parish.

  The bunker under the sea where President Diego had moved U.S. Northern Command, Charlize recalled, her brain slowly catching up with reality.

  “How long have I been out?” she asked.

  “A day, ma’am,” Parish said.

  “Have you heard anything about my son and brother?”

  Francis and Parish exchanged a look.

  “Ma’am, I think you should wait for‌—‌” Francis began to say.

  “Tell me, and tell me right now,” Charlize said firmly. Her head was pounding so hard it blinded her right eye. She reached up to grab her aching skull.

  “Give me a second,” Parish said. He stepped out of the room and into the hallway.

  Doctor Francis remained at her side.

  “Where’s Albert?” Charlize asked. She tried to sit up, and Francis held up a hand.

  “You need to relax, Secretary Montgomery. Albert is just outside.”

  Charlize rested her head back on the pillow.

  A few minutes later the door opened and Parish stepped back into the room. Albert joined them and offered a brusque nod to Charlize.

  “I’m sorry for not listening to you earlier, Big Al,” she said.

  His smile said he forgave her as he crossed over to stand by her bedside.

  “General Thor is on his way,” Parish said.

  They waited another ten minutes for a knock on the door. General Thor walked inside with a man in a suit. Charlize sat up when she saw it was President Diego.

  “Relax, Charlize,” Diego said. “You’re going to want to hear this sitting down.”

  “What? What’s going on?” She pushed at the bed until she was sitting up straight with her back to the plastic headboard. Albert walked over to stand by her bedside.

  “The USS John Stennis strike group was attacked by a North Korean submarine last night,” Diego said. “The aircraft carrier was destroyed, and Captain Dietz and Lieutenant Marco perished in the blast.”

  “How?” Charlize asked. Her breath caught in her chest. “How did the submarine get through the ring of protection around the carrier?”

  Thor shook his head. “They didn’t precisely ‘fire’ on the USS John Stennis, ma’am.”

  Charlize exhaled the breath she was holding in. “Kamikazes?”

  “Yes,” Thor said with a nod. “The North Korean submarine snuck past the defenses and self-detonated before Captain Dietz could detect the diesel sub. The North Koreans must have thought President Diego was still on board to pull a move like that.”

  Charlize couldn’t believe it.

  “There’s still one more submarine out there,” Thor added. “We’re working on finding it.”

  Diego fiddled with his red tie and said, “There’s something else... we received a video of your son.”

  “CHIEF, THE STANLEY’S on fire!” shouted Margaret.

  Colton looked up from the map of Estes Park on the conference room table. He was in the middle of briefing everyone on the plan to place sentries at multiple places across the town. All around him, staff, officers, volunteers, and recruits turned toward the department’s dispatcher. Margaret stood a head shorter than everyone in the room, but she had a hell of a commanding voice.

  “Did you hear me?” she yelled. “I said the Stanley is burning!”

  Colton moved for the hallway and bolted toward the front doors. Footfalls pounded the floor as he was followed outside. He pushed open the doors and stumbled into the cool afternoon. In the distance, plumes of smoke rose toward the clouds.

  This couldn’t be happening.

  It took him ten precious seconds to snap out of his initial shock, and then he started barking orders.

  “Officer Matthew, get the truck! Officer Hines, grab the gear. Margaret, get the word out to every officer and tell them to head to the Stanley!”

  Colton pulled up his duty belt. It was looser around his waist. Had he already lost that much weight since the attack?

  Two minutes later, the Chevy rattled up around the side of town hall. Colton took the passenger side, and Hines jumped into the back carrying several packs of gear and heavy turncoats. Several other volunteers climbed in with him. At Colton’s nod, Matthew peeled away from town hall.

  The Chevy chugged up MacGregor Avenue, and Colton used the time to put on one of the heavy coats. Gray and brown hills rose in the distance, speckled with evergreens. The beauty was once again overshadowed by a disaster as he slipped on a pair of gloves.

  Matthew pulled right onto Wonderview Avenue, and Colton cursed when the small gold cap on top of the Stanley came into view. Flames licked the left section of the white neo-colonial hotel. They hadn’t spread to the central or the right wing, but it was only a matter of time.

  “Can’t this thing go any faster?” Matthew asked, looking at the gauges.

  Colton would have told him not to push it too hard‌—‌Jake had rebuilt the truck from old parts on the weekends, and he wasn’t a hundred percent confident in his friend’s skills as a mechanic‌—‌but he was too busy staring in horror at the burning building. Flames flickered out the windows and over the roof. At the bottom of the structure, a line of people were passing buckets of water.

  It wasn’t going to do a damn bit of good. />
  Storm clouds rolled across the horizon, but they were heading east, away from the park. Rain wasn’t going to save the Stanley. Neither were a few buckets of well water. Without pressurized fire hoses, it was like spitting on a bonfire.

  The last seconds of the drive seemed like an eternity. If they lost the Stanley, the stranded tourists and townsfolk sheltered there would be homeless.

  Hundreds of people had gathered on the terrace out front. Smoke rolled across the scene, shifting in the afternoon wind and blowing into the white tents set up on the lawn behind the hedge maze, gardens and fountains. Colton had to get them away from the building.

  “Get back!” he shouted out the window.

  Jim Meyers, the manager of the hotel, was on his knees praying.

  How about trying to put the fire out? Colton thought. He opened the door before Matthew brought the vehicle to a stop and jumped out.

  Motion from the front entrance to the hotel caught his eye. An elderly couple staggered out of the front door, coughing. The man helped his wife across the front veranda, but fell as he reached the steps, barely catching himself on the railing. Four American flags hung over white pillars holding up the balcony above them. The symbols of freedom whipped in the smoky wind as the fires closed in.

  “Hines, help those people!” Colton shouted. “Matthew, get the crowd back.” He turned to look for Jim. He was standing now, running his hands through his thin hair.

  “Jim, is anyone else inside?” Colton yelled.

  “I...I don’t know.”

  “Well, find out!” Colton looked back to the volunteers who’d joined him. A few were helping direct people away from the burning building, but too many were standing and staring, mouths agape.

  “Somebody throw me a gas mask!” Colton shouted. Hines dug through a pack and tossed over a mask. Colton snatched it from the air and stuffed it into his pocket while running toward the left wing.

  “Chief, you forgot your helmet!” Hines shouted.

  Colton turned and caught the helmet like a football and then continued toward the building. There were at least twenty people in the bucket brigade, and at the front of the line stood Lindsey, the collar of her shirt pulled up over her nose. He approached with a hand shielding his face, the heat of the flames already tingling across his exposed skin.