THE COLLAPSE: Seeking Refuge

by Frank Kaminski

  Ox identified Fish’s giant truck approaching and ran to it as Tarra stopped the Alexander party parallel to the Oxnard’s. Ox yelled up to Tarra and Stephen through Tarra’s open driver-side window, “Cripes! ‘Bout damn time you got here! I was starting to wonder…”

  “Sorry about that, we ran into some trouble,” Tarra explained.

  Ox nodded as if he understood, then said, “Let’s get out of here. Don’t forget, we need to stop at the main gate so I can talk to Hal before we leave.”

  Tarra looked at Stephen, because she knew nothing about the stop. Stephen just nodded at her and gave her a thumbs-up, so she passed the thumbs-up to Ox and then put Fish’s truck into gear.

  “Oh, I almost forgot,” Ox said, digging into his jacket pocket. He withdrew a small transceiver radio and handed it up to Tarra and cheerfully said with a grin, “Don’t say I never gave you anything. Stay on channel two. Claudine has her people on channel one.”

  Tarra handed the walkie to Stephen as Ox ran back to his own truck and climbed inside.

  The convoy was finally ready to roll.

  *****

  At the main gate, the Alexander party could see that Hal had his son with him. He must not have been able to find anyone to watch him. Either that, or he had anticipated trouble after the quake and didn’t trust anyone enough to protect the boy. There was only one man standing with Hal, which was abnormal. He usually had a team of at least five, six or even seven men guarding the gate with him at all times.

  “Loyal ol’ Hal, faithfully serving The Park all the way up to the very end,” Stephen thought. The poor guy had no clue that Claudine and her crew were about to abandon him and his boy.

  Stephen began to open the door to Fish’s truck but Tarra clutched his shoulder and asked, “What are you doing?”

  “I want to speak with Hal also,” Stephen replied as he carefully climbed out of the huge truck only using his right hand, which wasn’t easy.

  Ox and Stephen met Hal between Carrie’s trailer and Ox’s truck. Hal stared at them both, baffled. He asked in a confused-sounding tone, “Are you guys leaving?”

  “We are,” Ox reluctantly replied. “But first, I have some things to tell you, brother.”

  Ox told Hal about Claudine’s plan to form a “new survivors’ group” – which didn’t include Hal or his son. Hal’s face morphed from confusion to severe disappointment as Jason Oxnard spoke.

  To make Hal feel better, Stephen added, “I wasn’t invited either. Apparently my daughters are too much of a ‘liability’ to be part of the cool kids’ club.”

  Ox then explained the possibility of a super-quake in the near future. After his explanation, he asked if Hal wanted to join the Alexander and Oxnard party.

  Stephen thought to himself, “Ahh, that’s the real reason that Ox wanted to stop out here to speak with Hal. He didn’t tell me about it earlier, because now it would be too late for me to object. Smart guy!”

  But surprisingly, Hal declined the offer, citing that he’d take his chances with the super quake instead of running away. He also noted that he was born on Whidbey Island, and would die on Whidbey Island.

  Ox argued, “Think about your son, brother.”

  Stephen added with a sly grin, “Hal, we could definitely use a man who knows how to build things.”

  But Hal continued to decline. Then, Carrie approached the three men. She spoke directly and solemnly to Hal, “I need to tell you something, honey…and this is going to be hard to hear…but it was Alexis Tillman that killed your wife.”

  Hal’s face went pale. He shook his head in disbelief, then asked, “How do you know that? There’s no way! She’s a cop, for Christ’s sakes! She stood by my side at the meeting while we waited for Jimmy Banks to be exposed!”

  Carrie pulled down her jacket, exposing the red and bruised skin around her neck. She then told Hal, “She tried to do the exact same thing to me.”

  Fish must have overheard the conversation, because he shouted from the bed of his truck, “Yeah, Hal, she’s right. Alexis did it right in front of me. She had me locked up in her stupid jail. She’s a total turd!”

  Hal was dumbfounded. He looked woozy for a moment, then quietly asked, “Why did they have Fish in jail? I thought he was their golden boy…”

  Ox put his hand on Hal’s shoulder and consoled, “Nothing is what it seems with the Probsts. I wanted to tell you this a long time ago, but I was too afraid of what might have happened to me or my family. I’m so sorry, brother.”

  Just then, as if she knew that they were talking about her, Claudine’s enormous RV turned the corner from the road to the gate. Several trucks, SUV’s and other RV’s trailed behind her.

  Hal snapped out of his doubtfulness and put on an angry face, saying, “Go, now! I’ll keep them busy as long as I can. I have some unfinished business to take care of.”

  Ox begged, “Hal, please…come with us.”

  Hal bellowed back, “GO!” and pushed Ox towards his truck. There wasn’t any time left to argue about it or convince Hal to join them. It was his own choice, after all. If he wanted to stay on the Island, then so be it.

  Stephen, Carrie and Ox all dashed back to their vehicles. Tarra had already seen the nose of the mighty Probst RV approaching, and as soon as Stephen was safely onboard she slammed the gas.

  The two-trailer convoy turned left onto Highway 20. Stephen and his family were once again traveling through uncontested territory.

  As they neared the bridge over Deception Pass, Stephen and Tarra noticed that the bridge team was completely absent. Not a soul was guarding the bridge!

  Stephen used the walkie and said, “Ox, there’s nobody on the bridge. I mean…nobody!”

  “I know. Some of the guys went with the Probsts. The ones that didn’t, I told to go be with their families and not to worry about the damn bridge.”

  Stephen acknowledged with, “Roger that.”

  *****

  There was only one exit road out of Deception Pass State Park, and Hal was standing in the middle of it as the Probsts’ RV rolled toward him. There was no way around Hal, since there were trees on one side and the campground’s toll booth/info center on the other. William thought about gunning the engine and driving over the guy, but Hal had pulled out his handgun and was pointing it the windshield. The Probsts were forced to stop.

  The first thought that ran through Claudine’s head was that the troublemakers (Stephen and Ox) had told Hal about his non-invitation to join the new survivors’ group. If that was the case, then Claudine would sweet talk the man and invite him along. Of course, Hal would decline the offer and they’d be on their way.

  Unfortunately for Claudine, however, Hal did not give one iota of a flying fuck about the invitation at that particular moment. Before the Probsts had pulled up, he had asked the loyal man that was guarding the gate with him to take Dakota into the park ranger’s toll booth and stay on the floor with the boy until the coast was clear. There was no telling if Hal would survive the impending encounter or not.

  Hal kept his pistol trained on Claudine as he moved to her side of the RV. She slid the window open to ask why he was stopping them.

  Hal demanded, “Where’s Alexis?” He tried to peek past Claudine, and then plainly stated, “I know she’s in there, somewhere.”

  “She’s in another vehicle, Hal,” Claudine responded.

  “Bullshit!” Hal laughed. “I’m not stupid. She’s always with you two manipulators. Now, give her up or I’ll blow your fuckin’ head off right now.”

  Claudine, for once, actually appeared frightened. She figured that Hal must have found out who actually killed his wife, and he was on a vengeance spree. It was that damn Fish and his troublemaking nurse that told him! She thought back to when Fish was locked up in the PODS container, and regretted not killing that tall bastard when they had the chance.

  “Hal,” Claudine began, “I know why you are looking for Alexis, and I believe that you were provided with some inac
curate information. The truth is that –“

  “Shut up!” Hal shouted. He was becoming more and more furious and erratic. BOTH of the Probsts were afraid now. Hal reinforced his grip on his pistol and frustratingly said, “I’m tired of all your lies! Last chance, it’s either you or her!”

  Claudine was so terrified that she almost passed out. She was normally in control of every situation! She was still waiting for Alexis to do something. She was in the rear of the RV with William’s pistol. What was she waiting for?

  Hal had almost pulled the trigger on Claudine when out of his peripheral vision he saw one of the windows on the side of the RV start to slowly slide open. It had to be Alexis! Hal pretended as if he didn’t notice the movement, and kept his eyes and gun trained on Claudine. He wanted to wait until the window was far enough open for him to discern that Alexis was about to take her shot at him. He would need a headshot in order to kill the bitch, since her torso wouldn’t be exposed enough through the window.

  Claudine’s eyes were so wide that Hal had almost laughed. Hal refocused his weapon on her and shifted his weight as if he was about to take a shot, and she cried out, “Bill!?”

  But her husband couldn’t help her. How pathetic.

  Hal calculated that the window was finally open wide enough, and spun to take his shot. Alexis and Hal had fired their weapons at nearly the same time, but Hal’s bullet found Alexis’ forehead, and her bullet had only found his shoulder.

  Alexis was killed instantly.

  The force of the blast to Hal’s shoulder blew him backwards and he dropped his handgun.

  “Floor it!” Hal heard Claudine yell to her husband. Hal scrambled into the forest to avoid any possible gunfire from the remaining vehicles in Claudine’s convoy as they passed by.

  Hal would survive.

  *****

  Claudine didn’t even bother to walk back into the RV to check on Alexis. If she was alive, she would have said something or cried out by now. She had to be dead. Claudine was thankful that Meghan had insisted on riding in another vehicle with one of her girlfriends and their parents, because witnessing Alexis’ being shot down like that would have scarred the poor girl for life. The ex-cop had been like a big sister to Meghan. The Probsts always did their best to protect their daughter from the atrocities of The Collapse, but some things were unavoidable.

  Claudine changed her mindset to keep her head clear. She forced herself to view Alexis’ death as the loss of an asset, rather than the loss of a good friend. It was cold, but it kept Claudine from making irrational decisions.

  As William turned left onto the highway, a voice came over the radio, “Ox, they just pulled out onto Highway 20. They’re not far behind you, brother.”

  It was Hal. He had assumed that Ox was still on the “normal” channel – channel 1. He didn’t know that Stephen and Ox had switched to channel 2.

  Claudine knew that Ox was too smart to operate on channel 1 like everyone else in her crew, so she changed the channel to 1 and pressed the button, asking, “Going somewhere, fellas?”

  A voice came over the radio and said, “Oh, hi Claudine! How is Alexis doing these days?”

  It was Stephen Alexander. Apparently he had a radio, too.

  Claudine frowned before replying, “How insensitive of you, Stephen. Where are you headed?”

  “We’re headed to Nunya, Washington,” Stephen replied.

  “That’s wonderful! I’ve heard that Nunya is really nice this time of year. That monstrous truck of yours ought to plow the road nicely for us.”

  “Not in a million years, lady,” Stephen laughed.

  “What are you going to do about it?” Claudine threatened. “Are you and your little Fishy going to take on my entire survivors’ group yourselves? You can’t beat us, you might as well just join us.”

  “Hmmm, not today,” Stephen answered, confidently. Claudine didn’t like his tone, it was too calm, too collected. They were up to something, she just knew it.

  When the Probst group drove onto the first bridge (Deception Pass is two long bridges with one small island of land in between them), Claudine told William to speed up.

  “We need to get off this bridge as soon as possible. Something is wrong,” she said.

  And she was right.

  After they crossed the land portion and could see the second bridge, The Probsts saw an SUV and a car that had been pushed into the middle of the road near the end of the bridge, forming a roadblock.

  Claudine laughed and said to William, “Wow, that’s it? That’s nothing.”

  William laughed too. He shook his head and said, “We could probably push right through that, but I don’t want to mess up our baby.” He had patted the steering wheel of the RV when he said “baby”.

  Beyond the two vehicles on the bridge, the Alexanders, Fish, Carrie, and the Oxnards were all standing on the road, almost as if they were waiting for the convoy to approach. It wasn’t an ambush formation, they were all just standing there, watching.

  Claudine felt uneasy about the way they looked and shouted, “Stop!”

  William slowed the RV to a stop on the bridge about seventy or eighty yards from the roadblock. Then Stephen’s voice came over the radio again, “Hey, Claudine?”

  “What?” she barked into the radio. Then everybody at the end of the bridge began waving to her all at once.

  “Have a nice day,” Stephen cheerfully said as the roadblock suddenly burst into flames. Not only the vehicles, but the pavement all around and in front of the roadblock as well.

  Claudine suddenly remembered that Ox had fuel, and plenty of it. She silently cursed herself for allowing that grinning joker to be in charge of it in the first place. She angrily threw the radio to the floorboard and crossed her arms in disgust. They couldn’t waste a single precious drop of water to extinguish the fire, they could only sit there and wait while it burned itself out.

  Behind the wall of fire, the Alexander and Oxnard parties returned to their vehicles and drove away.

  Ox had switched his radio to channel 1 and said into it, “Hal, you see that smoke?”

  “Yeah, bud. I see it. What happened?”

  “That’s for you, brother,” Ox stated.

  “Why for me?” Hal asked.

  “Because we have the Probsts trapped on the bridge with a giant firewall. And guess what? All that smoke is going to attract attention. Especially from ‘you-know-who’ on the other side of the pond…”

  “The Bowmen!” Hal laughed into the radio.

  “Yeah, it’ll be like Custer’s last stand for the poor ol’ Probsts. Only the Pacific Northwest version of it,” Ox joked into his radio.

  Hal laughed and laughed over the airwaves until the Alexanders and the Oxnards exceeded the radio’s maximum effective range. It wasn’t long before Hal’s infectious, booming laugh faded away into nothing more than static.

  THE FINAL CHAPTER

  Burlington wasn’t anything like it was the first time the Alexanders had attempted to cross under I-5 into the city. Once they were through town, it was a long, slow crawl along the North Cascades Highway to Marble Mount, Washington where they would exit the highway and take the back roads to the Rudehouse property on the Skagit River.

  Ox’s fuel had come in rather handy, as the slow, stop-and-go journey had sucked many gallons of the explosive stuff through both of the trucks’ electronic ignitions.

  People were stuck on the sides of the road literally everywhere. Some had set up camps along the river or in fields near ponds or tree lines. From the looks of it, many of those folks had been camped out for quite some time.

  Many of the travelers along the sides of the road had begged relentlessly for the Alexanders or the Oxnards to pick them up or throw them some food, but Fish and Carrie had kept the people from getting too close to the vehicles. None of the pleading survivors were hurt or killed in the process, it was almost as if the highway had its own set of rules that naturally prevented people from being too heartl
ess to the needy.

  Thievery and robbery would have been dealt with quickly and severely, so most were afraid to even try. Other than putting up with the many beggars along the highway, the trip was rather uneventful indeed.

  After a while, the back roads turned into dirt roads. Then the dirt roads turned into unimproved, muddy pathways. The closer they got to the Rudehouse property, the shittier the roads became. The trailers behind the trucks bounced and wobbled through the potholes and puddles that plagued the pathways.

  Tarra stopped the truck at the rusty metal gate that separated the Rudehouses’ long driveway from the little muddy roads that lead around the Skagit backwoods area. The gate had been piled high with pine boughs, branches, and debris.

  Stephen exclaimed, “Geez, look at all that!”

  Tarra pointed at a crude, hand-painted sign above the roadblock that simply read:

  ROAD CLOSED.

  KEEP GOING AND

  U WILL B SHOT.

  “Yup,” Stephen laughed, “that is definitely one of Mac Rudehouse’s masterpieces.”

  Tarra asked, “What should we do now?”

  Stephen ignored her and spoke into the radio instead, saying, “Ox, we have a roadblock here.”

  “Can we clear it?” Ox asked.

  “I think we can, if we all work together. Should take about half an hour. We need to get moving, I think there is only an hour of daylight left.”

  “Roger that,” Ox replied.

  Fish and Carrie had already climbed out of the bed of the truck and were examining the enormous pile.

  Fish laughed, “I hope Mac didn’t booby trap the road.”

  Even though Fish had laughed, it wasn’t a joke. The comment made Stephen think. Mac was the type of prepper that actually would booby trap the long driveway leading to his property.