The night was moonless, but with no manmade lights around they could see quite well by the light of the stars. The temperature was dropping, though, and they kept moving to keep from freezing. Finally it reached the point where they felt light-headed and couldn’t concentrate or focus their eyes. Carl saw a short straight line and headed for it. It turned out to be an old barn, collapsing but still shelter.
The barn was empty except for scattered broken boards and bits of dry grass. They hunkered in a corner, out of the breeze and somewhat sheltered from the cold air. They put on every piece of clothing they had in their daypacks and wrapped the crude scarves around their heads. Carl pulled Darlene close to him and tried to shelter her with his body, and they used the daypacks as covers over their legs.
Neither slept as the hours passed, and Darlene began to shiver. Finally Carl got up and gathered boards and made a pile on the dirt right outside the doorway. He used dry grass and a scrap of paper from his pack and started a fire. He stacked the extra boards on their sides behind the fire to reflect more heat into the barn. Darlene came over and sat near him, watching him feed the fire.
After a while the only boards left were the ones behind the fire. Carl got up and went to the far side where a window and part of the roof had collapsed. He yanked and pulled until a few boards came loose. They were long, so he put one end of each in the fire, and as they burned he shoved them farther into the fire. Once a flame licked it’s way along the board, away from the fire, and Carl snuffed it out.
They shared a bag of airline peanuts, and talked a little, but most of the time they sat quietly and waited, watching the sky for even a glimmer of approaching dawn.
“Darlene! Wake up!” She sat up and looked around. Carl was asleep, leaning against her. The sky was gray and the fire was out. No one was around, and she was sure someone had called to her. Her body felt numb and stiff as she straightened her legs. Carl moaned next to her and sat up.
“I’m sorry. I fell asleep. I’ll get the fire going again,” he said, getting up to find more boards.
“No!” Darlene said, pulling on his sleeve. “We need to get going. I mean, at least it’ll get our blood circulating, right?” She had a weird feeling but didn’t want to tell Carl.
“Okay. You’re probably right. Just let me step around the side and water something,” he said, starting along the wall.
“No! Let’s just go, let’s wait until we’re over that hill there. Let’s go now!” She insisted.
Carl came back and stood by her. He studied her face and asked if she was okay. She nodded and turned to pick up her pack. Without stopping she shrugged it on. Carl picked up his pack and followed her. Darlene walked quickly and Carl decided she was just trying to get warm.
At the top of the long, low hill Darlene turned back and looked. Men on horses were coming through a gully, and when they came around the next curve they’d be in sight of the old barn. The old trail they were following led right alongside the building.
“How did you know?” Carl asked as they lowered themselves behind a clump of brush.
“I didn’t. I just felt…I don’t know. Weird.” She turned and they edged over the far side of the hill and down the slope. The path the horsemen were on led to the southeast, and she and Carl were heading southwest.
Each time they approached the top of a hill they stopped and peeked over and studied the terrain ahead of them. They were caught off-guard when a horse and rider came out of a side-gully with a rifle trained on them.
“Not again!” Darlene moaned quietly, stopping on the spot.
“Mister, we don’t have anything of value,” Carl said to him.
“Didn’t say you did. Didn’t say I wanted it if you did,” he said, sitting on the horse looking them over. “You’re trespassing.”
Darlene broke into tears. “In the last week we’ve been in a plane crash, on a ship that was taken by pirates and then almost sunk…” her voice trailed off. Then she said, “I want to go home!”
“We’re just trying to get down to the Amtrak line and get on the train so we can get home to Montana,” said Carl. “We’ll get off your property as fast as we can. We don’t want any trouble.”
“We don’t want any trouble either, but it keeps finding us. Getting tired of finding things gone, and having horses disappear,” he said. “Why are you out here on foot anyway?”
“Our car broke down. Listen, we’ve got money. We could pay you if you’d drive us down to Devil’s Lake to the train station!” Carl offered.
“Roads aren’t safe. I’m not going to take the chance with my truck OR with myself,” he said. “But…”
Carl and Darlene waited quietly to see what he’d say. A sentence that began with “but” held promise!
“Montana, eh? Done much riding?” He didn’t have to specify riding what. If they rode, they’d know what he meant.
“Oh yeah!” Darlene and Carl both answered, and Darlene continued, “We’ve both been on horses pretty much since we were out of diapers!”
“Would you sell us a couple horses?” Carl asked.
“Jeez, what do I look like? A livery stable?” he said indignantly. He chewed on the edge of his mustache for a minute. “I reckon if a person paid a man an average day’s wages they might be willing to saddle up a couple horses and ride to town with you, then lead the horses back.”
“I reckon they might,” Carl said seriously. He pondered that a while. Right now he would have given the man everything he owned, if it meant they got home. But one step at a time. Getting to the train was only the next step. They still had to pay for the train tickets.
He did some rough figuring of how much cash they still carried. The man on the horse narrowed his eyes and said, “No checks or credit cards!”
“Of course not!” Carl was indignant the man thought he’s try something like that. He almost convinced himself that he hadn’t thought of it fleetingly! “How much would that average man’s wages be?”
“Make an offer,” he growled. “Try and surprise me by being fair.”
“$250. For the two of us,” Carl said. He figured the man would dicker with him and expected to go about another $100 higher.
“Done. Head that-a-way and I’ll go start saddling them up. Take you about half an hour to get there.” He pointed straight west, then clicked his teeth at the horse and pulled it around. With a tap of his heels he nudged the horse into a lope and disappeared.
“Well! Let’s get walking. Wow! Things keep changing direction so fast my head is whirling!” Darlene said. Carl agreed and they walked side by side over the tracks left by the horse.
In less than half an hour they were walking into the midst of a yard, with a house and several outbuildings. Cowboys were busy with a horse in a round pen, and others walked across the yard going about their work. Some nodded their heads as they went by. Next to a long, low red building three horses were saddled and tied, waiting. A minute later the cowboy they’d spoken to came out the back door of the house carrying a small leather bag with a drawstring. He tied it behind the saddle on one of the horses.
“Mount up,” he said. They untied the horses, pulled the reins over the horses’ heads, and mounted. As they rode though the yard a couple of the guys hollered “See ya, boss!”
‘Wow!’ thought Carl, ‘the boss?’ He called to the boss cowboy, “Hey! Do you think we could use your phone quick before we go? To call home? We can pay you for the call!”
The man turned in his saddle but didn’t slow his horse. “Ain’t no calls being allowed. Government’s got it all shut down. They’re the only ones can make calls. No cell phones, no internet, even the TV stations are censored.” He turned back around forward.
They rode west along a fence for half a mile, then turned south on a trail alongside a creek. The boss man kicked his horse into a canter and they all followed. It was a fairly easy pace for a working horse, sort of like an easy jog for someone who ran regularly. They kept up the pace for quite a w
hile, then slowed to a walk to rest the horses. They stopped a couple times to let them drink. Carl and Darlene were so thirsty they almost climbed down and drank with the horses.
“How did this all start?” Carl asked the cowboy as they rode along. The man was quiet for so long that Carl thought he wasn’t going to answer.
“I don’t rightly understand it all myself. It happened pretty fast,” he finally said. “There was something called Austerity, and right after that the Euro collapsed. Banks closed, first there, then here. People tried to get their money, and they were buying up stuff and stores were being mobbed. A couple days into this thing, suddenly there’s no TV. No internet. No phones. Just nothing.
“Now there’s military scattered in the far reaches of insanity, and folks are scared out of their minds. People are doing some mighty strange things. Good folks, hungry and scared, just trying to get by. Some mean ones, too, though. So you have to watch out,” he said. They were silent after that, and Carl rolled all of that around in his mind.
It was a two and a half hour ride to Devil’s Lake. They rode straight into town, the horses’ hooves clop-clopping on the street. They saw several other people on horses and an unusual number of bicycles for December. They rode right up to the train station, crossing the lawn and dismounting at the porch railing near the door.
The boss cowboy untied the leather bag and tossed it to Carl, reached for the reins of their two horses, and turned with a “good luck” and a nod of his head. They watched him stop at the edge of the parking lot and clip lead ropes on the horses, then all three horses trotted onto the street and out of sight.
Carl and Darlene were speechless. Just like that, *poof*, they were at the train station and the cowboy was gone, without a decent thank you. It was then that Carl remembered the $250 was still in his pocket. He started to call after the man, but it was fruitless. He was out of sight.
He looked down at the bag in his hands and pulled the drawstring open. It looked like one of those goody bags kids used to get when they visited Santa Claus. There was candy, cookies, nuts, apples, and oranges. Carl shook his head and showed it to Darlene. She spotted a piece of paper sticking out from under the food. She pulled it out and unfolded it, reading it to Carl:
“Pass good deeds on to others. Good luck, God Bless, and Merry Christmas!” It was signed “Me”, and as though an afterthought he had added “And my wife”.
Carl swallowed a lump in his throat. Maybe the rest of their trip wouldn’t be so bad. “God bless that man. And God bless America!”
They went inside and asked about tickets. The prices were greatly inflated, from what used to be under $100 earlier in the year, to $215, from Devil’s Lake, North Dakota, to Whitefish, Montana. Carl wanted to yell “Montana! Montana! Montana!” over and over. It was like long-lost family, just saying the word.
They had almost an hour to wait. “You’re lucky the train is running 3 hours late, you know. There’s only one train a day!” the ticket lady told them. “All those security checks. Slows down the whole works!” she sputtered.
They walked to a grocery store and bought a loaf of bread for $4.75 and a small jar of peanut butter for $4.59. They bought a gallon jug of water for $2.99 and drank half of it with the sandwiches they made. They put the rest away to eat on the train. It was a long way to western Montana, no matter how much closer they felt now.
The train was surprisingly full, and there was an armed guard at each end of the passenger cars. They heard others talking about this, that the highways were so dangerous that more people were riding the train, and there had been attempts made to rob the trains, so Amtrak had to hire guards. There weren’t enough US Marshals to go around, now that nearly every government building in the nation had Marshals at the doors and throughout the buildings.
As the train pulled out of Devil’s Lake Darlene caught Carl’s arm and pointed out the window. Where the main street became Highway 2 heading east and west across the top part of the nation, a military truck was parked, and soldiers talked to vehicles as they left town. They hadn’t heard anything about that!
The rest of the day, every town they went through, there was at least one military vehicle. Some small towns had only one, on one end of the town.
They crossed into Montana around 2:30 in the afternoon. All was going well, so far. They made more sandwiches and ate them. They munched on the cookies and candy in the bag from the cowboy. A woman across the aisle tried to keep two young children entertained, and after a while Carl held up some cookies and three apples, out of sight of the children, and made motions asking the woman if he could give it to them. She nodded and smiled gratefully. The children became bashful and said “Thanks”. They sat quietly for hours after that, occasionally staring at Carl. He turned toward Darlene and the window.
While the train was stopped in Havre, Montana a commotion started at the other end of the car. Carl leaned out into the aisle and tried to see what was going on. US Marshals and Border Patrol personnel were walking down the aisle asking everyone a question. As they came closer Carl could hear “Are you a U.S. citizen?” That seemed to be all they were asking.
Carl and Darlene leaned together and wondered what that was all about. Suddenly the Marshalls were at their row. One of them stared into Darlene’s eyes and barked the question.
“Yes! Yes, of course I am!” she said firmly, but quivered inside. Their eyes snapped to Carl.
“Are you a U.S. citizen?” he was asked. Carl pondered this. What in the heck?
“Damn right,” he thundered. He started to stand, to look at their smug faces eye-to-eye, but Darlene grabbed his arm. They glanced at her, then dismissively at Carl, and went on their way.
“We’re almost home, don’t stir up anything!” she pleaded. He grumbled but agreed. But someone was going to hear about this. Later. After they were home and he figured some things out.
No longer were people allowed to just get up and roam the train. When they wanted to use the rest room, they had to inform the guard of where they were going. They never went to the snack lounge, but saw others having to ask permission to go there. Carl and Darlene pretty much just stayed glued to their seats and tried to be invisible.
It was dark when they got to the Rocky Mountains. The train traveled over the pass along the south boundary of Glacier National Park, and they held their faces against the windows, hands cupped around their eyes, trying to catch glimpses of this scenic beauty that was the backdrop of their home. Darlene’s heart pounded with joy.
The train descended Marias Pass into the Flathead Valley, passed through Columbia Falls without stopping, and a few miles later pulled into the train station at Whitefish, a station they had come and gone from many times. Darlene was wiping tears as they stepped off the train. As they walked past the people waiting to greet others coming on the train, a woman covered her mouth and nose with a gloved hand.
“Ugh. Homeless types. Why do they have to come here!” she said to her companion, who also turned up her nose at them.
Carl and Darlene hurried on past, then started laughing. It was so ludicrous, after all they’d been through! “I suppose we ARE pretty rank by now!” Darlene said. She hadn’t even given a thought to how many days they’d had the same clothes on. When life and limb are in danger, some things aren’t important!
“Now what?” Carl said, as they stood in the park across from the train station. “It’s still 50 miles.”
“What about your Uncle Horace? Does he still have his car?” Darlene asked. Carl’s Uncle was in his 80s and had had some notorious incidents with driving somewhere and forgetting where he was and why he went there! The family had been trying to get his car keys away from him for months.
“I don’t know. I haven’t heard of any mishaps in a while. It’s pretty late, but we could walk over there and see if they’re up,” Carl said. They began walking through town and through the neighborhoods of darkened homes, most people tucked in their beds, warm and safe. They climbed th
e hill to the houses on the outlying edge of town and walked up the driveway of his Aunt and Uncle‘s house.
“This way,” Carl said as he led the way around back. “If Uncle Horace is awake this late, he’s usually back in the family room.”
Sure enough, a light shone dimly through the curtain. They climbed up the back steps and Carl knocked on the door. He rapped lightly at first, then a little louder, hoping to not startle his elderly uncle. After a few minutes he knocked again, and was about to suggest the go knock on the window when they heard a voice.
“Yep, hold yer horses, I’m coming!” a wavery voice said. The porch light came on and a face peered at them though the little window high on the door. “Well, by cracky! Carl! And Darlene!” The door unlocked and opened, and the man stepped back to allow them to come in.
Prepper Fiction Collection: Four Books in One Page 22
