Fight to Be Free

by Dave Bowman

  He shut his eyes and clenched his jaws. Sucking in air through his teeth, he nodded. “Just don’t let me see the needle.”

  “Okay, then turn your head away,” she said.

  She spread out her supplies on a clean bandage on the dashboard, then sterilized the needle with a lighter. Using the curved needle, she drove it in his skin.

  He cried out in agony.

  She took the needle out and sterilized it again. “Sorry, I think I went too deep.”

  Anne took a couple of deep breaths. She had to get her hands to stop shaking. Blowing a breath out through her lips, she tried again. She stayed closer to the surface this time, and pulled the line through.

  Daniel was gripping the steering wheel and turning his knuckles white.

  “I’m sorry, sweetie. I know this must be excruciating.”

  She went on to sew him up with five stitches, tying the line off after each suture. When she was finished, she examined her work. The sutures were holding the skin together, and it looked fairly neat and uniform. Maybe it would work.

  Anne looked at his face. His eyes were clamped shut.

  “Are you all right, Daniel?”

  “Is it over?” he asked.

  Anne nodded. “Yes. I just need to patch up this wound on your chest.”

  The entrance wound was smaller and didn’t need stitches. She dressed both wounds and he exhaled in relief.

  “Let’s go,” she said, gathering up her supplies and slipping a clean shirt over Daniel’s head. “I’m driving.”

  Daniel slid out of the driver’s seat and his forehead crinkled in pain.

  “Wait!” Anne said. “Let me make you a sling.”

  She looked in her suitcase and grabbed a thick wool shawl, tying it around his arm and securing it behind his head.

  “This will keep your shoulder from moving so much. It will heal faster this way.”

  He felt cool. She wrapped a blanket around him to keep him warm, and helped him sit on the passenger side. Anne started the truck quickly and took off without any time wasted.

  The flurry of activity had exhausted Anne, but she didn’t want her son driving with a bullet wound. She pushed herself to stay strong and press on.

  As she sped down the road, she reached over to brush Daniel’s hair out of his eyes.

  “I’m sorry we had to stop in that town,” she said. “If only I hadn’t gotten sick, this never would have happened.”

  “It’s not your fault, Mom,” he said between pained breaths. “But you should at least admit I was right.”

  “About what?”

  “That there were no spirits. It was just those crazy people the whole time.”

  Anne smiled. “What do you think made them crazy?”

  Daniel chuckled. “Ouch. It hurts to laugh.”

  Anne looked over at her son as he watched the scenery blur by.

  I hope it’s enough.

  The bullet wound could have been much worse. A few inches down and to the side, and it would have been deadly. He seemed to be doing fairly well for having just been shot, and the stitches had at least prevented any traumatic loss of blood.

  But Anne’s worries were far from over. There could be arterial damage, nerve injury . . . she didn’t even know what more could go wrong. Not to mention that he would need antibiotics. Once the ibuprofen ran out, she could give him willow bark for the pain. But she didn’t know of any plants that would be strong enough to fight infection in this kind of injury.

  She knew the regional medicinal plants well, but in cases like Daniel’s injury, she had always been grateful for trained medical practitioners. She felt confident her brother would be able to look at Daniel’s shoulder and recommend the best course of action.

  The only problem was that Anne herself was still ill, and she couldn’t risk the lives of her family and village by coming into contact with them.

  Why am I sick?

  It was a question she had asked herself over and over. It didn’t make sense. She had always been in good health, seemingly immune to the colds and flus when they swept through the village. So why was she now stuck with this flu-like illness?

  Could it really be the Hosta virus?

  It was unthinkable. That would mean the end of everything – her life, her family, her village. And she would be the one to contaminate them all.

  But it couldn’t be the Hosta virus. She didn’t present with the textbook symptoms of gray skin and bulging eyes. The news reports had said it usually took less than three days to develop those symptoms, and she had been sick for longer than that.

  It must just be the flu.

  She looked over at Daniel again. Hosta or not, she had to get him help.

  She couldn’t lose her son.

  23

  The crew of four in the light green Chevrolet continued heading north, but hadn’t seen anything, not even a back road forking off the highway, in a long time.

  Things were looking worse and worse. The sun was starting to get lower in the sky, everyone’s tensions were high due to hunger and stress, and they still hadn’t found so much as an abandoned cabin.

  “We better think about turning around soon,” Nick said. “I don’t like leaving the others back there for too long.”

  “Well, we can’t turn back now,” Liz said. “We haven’t even found anything. Where will we spend the night if we have to turn around now?”

  Nick rubbed his jaw. It was starting to get late, and his hope for making it out of the mountains that day was running out. Bethany couldn’t continue to push herself at this relentless pace. She needed food and rest. Otherwise, it would put the baby at risk.

  The others, too, needed to sleep and eat. There was danger all around them – with one moment’s inattention or one sloppy move of the steering wheel, their vehicle could tumble down the sheer drop off the cliffs that the road curved around.

  Not to mention the possibility of running into more gang members. Hell, at this point it had become more a question of when rather than if they would see more of the BSC. They needed to be alert to even have a chance of coming out of a confrontation alive.

  If they couldn’t find an empty home or other building to sleep in, they’d be spending the night in the woods where they had left Bethany and Mia resting. There wasn’t nearly enough camping gear for everyone – just the tent, sleeping pad and sleeping bag that Mia and Bethany were using. That meant that everyone else would be without gear.

  The nights were too cold to sleep on the forest floor without any blankets or sleeping bags. The last couple of nights were below freezing. Their empty stomachs made their internal body temperatures lower. How would they keep warm? With the gas tanks dipping lower, they couldn’t run the engine to stay warm. Sleeping in the trucks would not only be uncomfortable but possibly dangerous. Even wearing all the clothes they had, it still might not be enough. They would be at risk of hypothermia unless they found shelter.

  “You’re right, Liz,” Nick said. “We’ll keep looking for a few more miles.”

  Their situation seemed impossible.

  As they drove through the road’s mountain switchbacks, Nick’s previous life seemed so far away. Just one month ago, he was living in Texas with his wife and son. He’d had a job and a daily routine. He worked hard, then spent evenings and weekends with his family and friends. He missed his extended family, but he saw them on holidays and vacations. His biggest worries had been about money, but even then, nothing was dire was about their financial situation.

  He’d never worried about finding food. In fact, food had been all around him, and he had to try not to eat so much to keep his belly at bay after entering his mid-thirties. Kaitlyn had joked about his beer belly. Since leaving Texas, he had leaned out, and now his stomach felt so empty it hurt.

  He had lived in comfort. Sure, he had done physical work on the job and on projects at home. He had always been pretty active. But there had been so much convenience that he hadn’t even really noticed until
it was gone.

  The taps with potable water, the refrigerators and microwaves that provided him with quick meals when even cooking a quick meal on the stove seemed like too much effort. The technology that kept him connected to loved ones and informed about the world. The gas stations that dispensed fuel to take him wherever he needed. The doctors and pharmacies that were always there to keep sickness at bay – at least up until Hosta.

  It had all gone up in smoke.

  It was mind-boggling how fast it had all disappeared, how quickly and totally the system had fallen apart. He and Kaitlyn and his brother Tim had all speculated for years what a breakdown in the system would look like. They had done their best to prepare for the worst. But nothing had prepared him for the real thing.

  “Hey, isn’t that a road up there?”

  His nephew’s voice roused him from his thoughts. Nick looked ahead and sure enough, off to the left was a small gravel road.

  “Yes! Finally something,” Jessa said from the back seat. “There’s gotta be some little cabin down here. It looks like a private road.”

  Nick turned onto the road, and felt his neck muscles relax a bit. Driving on the state road put him on edge, as if he were just waiting for the gang to start shooting at them.

  The gravel road cut through more forest. After a half mile, he heard Liz sigh.

  “It looks like just another road to nothing,” she complained. “Just more woods.”

  Nick didn’t reply. He watched intensely as they continued for another couple of miles. The road worsened the farther they traveled, with deep potholes that had never been repaired from previous winters. He drove slowly.

  Finally, the forest abruptly ended on the right side of the road and opened up into a meadow. Nick slowed, scanning the tree line.

  “This would be a good place for a cabin,” Nick said. “But I don’t see anything.”

  He passed the meadow and the forest closed in on them again. Five hundred feet farther, Jessa pointed to the side.

  “Looks like a driveway.”

  A small road, grown over with weeds, led into the thick, dark forest. They couldn’t see what the road led to.

  Nick took a breath. “I don’t think we should drive down there.”

  “What? And miss the only chance we’ve had to find a cabin?” Jessa asked doubtfully.

  “I didn’t say I wanted to pass it up,” Nick replied, pulling the truck over to the side of the road. “I just don’t think we should drive sight unseen. What if there are hostile people down there? We can’t let them know we’re coming with the truck engine. Y’all wait here. I’m going to check it out on foot.”

  “Like hell you are,” Jessa said stubbornly. “I’m going with you.”

  Before Nick could respond, Jessa had already climbed out of the truck and was setting off down the track with her rifle.

  Nick looked at Liz and Matt, who jumped out of the truck and stood with their guns.

  “Wait here. We won’t take long,” Nick said to them.

  He walked with Jessa beside the narrow track. They stuck to the shadows of the tree line and moved cautiously. After reaching the top of a hill, Jessa pointed.

  “A cabin!” she exclaimed in hushed tones. “Look!”

  Nick turned his head and squinted in the direction Jessa was pointing. At first he saw nothing, but then his eyes fell on it: an old log cabin at the far corner of a small clearing, partially hidden among a stand of trees.

  Jessa grinned. “We finally found something! This is great.”

  But Nick was a little more hesitant to celebrate.

  “Not so fast,” he said. “We have to make sure it’s empty first.”

  They crept closer to the log cabin until they had reached the clearing. A short driveway led to the structure.

  “No cars,” Jessa observed. “So far, so good.”

  Nick silently motioned for her to follow him as they approached the cabin. It had only two or three windows, and the log walls were dark with age and lack of maintenance. He stepped onto the porch and listened.

  “Anybody home?” he called.

  When there was no answer, he tried the door.

  Locked.

  Nick looked at the windows, planning to break one to climb in.

  “I’ve got a surprise,” Jessa said. “I found a lock pick set at Chris’s place.”

  She produced a wallet-sized kit from her back pocket that contained a tension wrench and several lock picks.

  “It’ll be a lot warmer in there without a broken window,” she said.

  “Do you know how to use that?” Nick asked.

  She gave him a smile, but didn’t answer. He watched as she inserted the tension tool, then inserted a pick and raked it back and forth to unlock the door.

  “Yet another skill Chris taught me that has come in handy,” Jessa said as she put the tools away and stepped inside.

  “Too bad you didn’t have that kit in the truck stop the other day,” Nick said as he followed her.

  Nick stepped in the cabin and looked around. It was dusty. The sound of something scurrying around was heard.

  “Probably mice,” Nick said.

  He walked around, looking through the living room, kitchen, and the bedroom. No one was there.

  “It’s all clear,” he said.

  Jessa went straight to the kitchen cabinets.

  “You’ve gotta be kidding me,” she said, flinging them open one by one. “Not a single thing to eat?”

  All the shelves were bare, except for a few candles and some matches.

  “This must have been someone’s hunting cabin or summer home,” Nick said, watching with disappointment as Jessa revealed all the cabinets to be empty. “But they didn’t keep any food here.”

  “I guess they didn’t want to give the mice any more reason to stay.” Jessa closed the cabinets and looked around at the layers of dirt on the floor.

  “Looks like no one’s been here in a few years,” Nick said.

  “I’ll say,” Jessa said, coughing from all the dust she had stirred up in the kitchen.

  “It’ll work for tonight,” Nick said. “With that wood stove, we can make it warm in here.”

  “Yeah, at least we won’t be sleeping in the woods. But we’re all starving. We’ll have to hunt for food tonight.”

  “Right.”

  Nick crossed to the door. “Let’s go back for everyone else. We’ve got a lot to do before it gets dark.”

  “Don’t you think one of us should stay here and get to work? I could cut some firewood while you guys are gone.”

  Jessa looked at the empty box near the woodstove where the previous owners must have kept firewood.

  Nick was tempted to take her up on her offer, but he thought better of it.

  “I’d rather not split us up any more. It’s too dangerous that way.”

  “Okay.” Jessa nodded. She knew he was worried about more surprises from the BSC. He was right – they should stay together when possible. “The firewood can wait.”

  Jessa followed him out the door and they returned to the truck quickly to find Matt and Liz waiting. They told them about the cabin as they drove back out to the state road.

  It was about an hour drive back to the spot where they had left the four others and the Dodge, and they passed it in silence.

  Nick saw the Dodge at the end of the small side road where they had left it. The lime green tent sat in its place under the trees.

  He heard Liz’s breath catch in her throat, then he saw it too.

  Charlie was lying slumped over on the ground. Trina was nowhere in sight.

  Liz jumped out of the truck and ran to Charlie’s side to check his pulse. Nick went straight for the tent. The door flap was open and blew in the breeze.

  “They’re gone,” he said.

  24

  Bobby couldn’t get them out of his mind.

  “Are you going somewhere, baby?”

  Bobby looked at Gabrielle as she stood before him
in the room. He couldn’t keep her out of the loop any longer. After she had knocked for the third time at his door, he finally let her in.

  “Yeah, I’m headed out into the mountains for the day,” he said, packing his guns and ammo.

  Gabrielle crossed her arms in front of her. “It’s for those people from New Mexico, isn’t it? You’re going chasing after them?”

  Bobby glanced at her, then looked away. He sighed as he snapped the suitcase shut. He had dreaded telling Gabrielle the news. In fact, he had made all the arrangements on the radio so that she wouldn’t have much of a chance to stop him.

  “I can’t let the sons of bitches get away with it, Gaby,” Bobby said.

  “Just let them go, baby,” she said after he told her his plans. “Don’t run off into the mountains to fight those losers. They’re not even worth your time.”

  “They took out BSC members,” Bobby said, staring at her. “Not just once, but several times now, they have defeated my men. You think I can just let them go when they’ve humiliated the whole organization? When they’ve taken out good soldiers?”

  Gabrielle took a step closer to him. “Where did Travis say they were?”

  “On State Highway 311, north of 276.”

  Bobby pointed to the map.

  “So they’re trying to get out of the mountains, right?”

  “Yeah, and if I leave now, they’ll never make it out alive.”

  Bobby folded the map and tossed it on the bed.

  “But they don’t pose any more threat, do they?” Gabrielle asked, her brow furrowed in concern. “They’re probably going to head south as soon as they get out of the hills. They won’t show their faces in Denver again.”

  Bobby turned on Gabrielle with a scowl. “Whose side are you on, Gaby? Are you actually worried about these assholes?”

  She took his hands. “Of course not. I don’t give a damn about them. But I worry about you, Bobby. I don’t want you chasing them down into that mountain range. It could be dangerous. You remember what happened in Idaho Springs.”

  He wrenched his hands out of hers in disgust. “I know damn well what happened in Idaho Springs. That’s exactly why I want to find these sons-of-bitches. They’re riding too high, and it’s about time someone takes them down.”