Edge of Collapse

by Alex Gunwick

  As she swerved around the rock wall, a thick, seemingly natural grove of trees came into view. Beyond the trees, they’d cleared a twenty-five foot radius around the cabin both for fire protection, and for visibility. No one could sneak up on them if they had someone on watch.

  They’d built the cabin on a patch of higher ground for security purposes, and also to avoid any possible flooding. Although the stream didn’t change much through the seasons, all it would take was one good rain to make it overflow its shallow banks.

  The cabin didn’t come into view until she’d driven through the grove. It was highly unlikely anyone had ever found the cabin, but she wasn’t taking any chances.

  “Stay in the car while I check on the house,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “I want to make sure it’s clear.”

  “You’re so paranoid, Mom. You said no one but us knows about it.”

  “I know, but I want to check it out anyway,” she said.

  “Don’t shoot Dad or Sierra by accident.”

  “I won’t. Stay here.”

  “I’m hungry.”

  “We’ll eat after we unload.”

  “Well hurry up so we can unload this crap.”

  “Kyle!”

  “Stuff.”

  “That’s better.”

  She flicked off the overhead light switch so that it wouldn’t turn on when she opened the car door. Not that it would matter much. If anyone was inside, they’d hear her coming. If it was Luke or Sierra, they’d know to signal her. But if it was someone else, she would be an open target until she could clear the cabin.

  In a crouched position, gun in hand, she hurried up the steps and stepped to the left side of the front door. She knocked, then listened for any hint of movement. A squatter wouldn’t answer the door, but he would make some kind of sound when he came to investigate.

  She waited a full minute. The silent canyon made it easy to hear anything that might be out of place. When she didn’t hear anyone, she carefully pulled the key to the cabin from her pocket. She used her non-dominant hand to unlock the door. She held the gun close to her side, ready to begin the sweep.

  As she pushed open the door, the muscles in her arms flexed. She flicked on the small flashlight mounted to the gun and pointed it inside. In a slow arc across the door, she swept from right to left. She didn’t take another step until she’d thoroughly cleared the first section. Using this process, she was able to clear the main room and the kitchen, leaving the downstairs bedroom and loft.

  She slid along the wall as she approached the open bedroom door. After repeating the sweeping process, she cleared the room, under the bed, and the closet. She climbed the stairs to the loft and found it empty. Nothing seemed out of place.

  After holstering her gun, she headed out to the truck. Kyle opened the door.

  “Find any serial killers?” he joked.

  “Nope. All clear.”

  “Any sign of Dad or Sierra?”

  “No,” she said softly, not wanting to think about possible implications.

  “Can we eat now?”

  “Unload first. I want to hide the truck in the shed.”

  Kyle frowned, but didn’t complain. Instead, he opened the back door and let Justice out. The dog had slept through most of the ride, including the stop at the roadblock. So much for an attentive guard dog.

  A single pocket flashlight glowed on its lowest setting, giving them just enough light to see the steps. She and Kyle worked quickly to unload all the gear. Ten minutes later, she set the last bag full of guns down next to the rest of the arsenal in the living room.

  “I’m going to move the truck. Don’t turn the lights on.”

  “Then can we eat?”

  “Yes. Go look in the cupboard and find some chili.”

  “Yum!”

  She moved the truck into a large shed they’d constructed behind the cabin. From the outside it didn’t look like much, but inside, they had everything they needed to stay out here for months. She’d never thought they’d have to use the cabin as a bunker, but now she was grateful they’d had a plan.

  The incessant chirp of a million crickets kept Sierra awake. She tossed and turned on the hard ground, wishing she was back in her bed at the apartment. For the first time since she’d started her journey, she couldn’t stop wondering what she’d find when she reached the cabin. If she got there and her family wasn’t there, then what?

  She sighed and rolled onto her back. At least the Santa Ana winds were keeping her warm. If she’d been stuck out here in December or January, she’d be freezing her butt off.

  A branch snapped.

  She bolted up. Heart-pounding fear stole her breath.

  What was that? An animal? Another human? Maybe it was Derek.

  She crawled to the edge of the tent and peeked out into the darkness. Her eyes had adjusted to the lack of light hours ago, so she could see across to Derek’s tent. His feet poked out of the end of the tent, but he wasn’t moving. If he hadn’t caused the noise, then who had?

  Another crack fractured the stillness of the night. She flinched.

  Her father had warned her over and over never to go hiking in the mountains alone. Mountain lions stalked and killed bicyclists. Attacks were very rare, but on foot, she wouldn’t stand a chance. Was it a mountain lion? She strained to listen for the sound.

  A branch snapped about twenty feet from the tent. She was a sitting duck. The tent wouldn’t provide any protection. In fact, it might hinder her escape if the mountain lion leapt onto the tarp, tangling her up in it.

  “Derek,” she whispered.

  He didn’t move.

  “Derek…are you awake?”

  When he didn’t respond, she slowly unzipped her backpack. She fished around until she found a multi-tool. She opened the knife and held it close to her chest with the blade pointing away. If the mountain lion attacked, she’d do what she could to protect herself. It might not work, but what choice did she have?

  She sat in terrified silence for the next ten minutes.

  When the crickets stopped chirping, her bottom lip trembled.

  The slow crack of another branch sent chills down her spine. Was that a footstep? Maybe it wasn’t an animal, maybe it was another person. They weren’t that far from the road. She should have tried to walk farther into the mountains. They would have been safer.

  “Sierra?” Derek whispered.

  “Yeah.” Relief poured through her.

  “I thought I heard something,” he said.

  “Me too.”

  “A branch cracking?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have a weapon?” he asked.

  “A knife. But it’s not very big.”

  “Better than nothing.”

  “Definitely,” she said.

  “Stay in the tent. I’ll go check it out.”

  “No way. I’m going with you.”

  “Okay, but do everything I say as soon as I say it. Clear?”

  “Yes.”

  He crawled out of the tent. A glint of light bounced off the steel of his gun. She let out a shaky breath. At least they had some protection.

  “Stay behind me,” he whispered.

  She moved to stand directly behind him. Any closer and they’d be touching.

  As he moved out from underneath the giant oak, she turned to check behind them. The faint glow of light from the city created twisted shadows. She squinted and strained, searching for movement.

  She matched him step for step. After searching the immediate area, they continued out another thirty feet. He stopped so abruptly that she smacked into his back.

  “Sorry.”

  “Shh.”

  Thirty seconds passed.

  “Hear anything?” he whispered.

  “No.”

  “Me either. I’m going to turn on my flashlight.”

  “But if it’s another person they’ll see us.”

  “If someone else is out ther
e, they already know our location. They would have attacked by now.”

  “What if it’s a mountain lion?”

  “It would have pounced while we were sleeping,” he said.

  “I wasn’t sleeping.”

  “Me either.”

  “Yes you were,” she said. “I tried to wake you up, but you didn’t respond.”

  “Maybe I slept a few minutes, but not much longer.”

  He flicked on the flashlight attached to the bottom of his gun. As the light swept over the area, she tensed, ready to run at the first sign of danger.

  “There,” he said, directing the light to a fresh pile of animal droppings. “Either coyote or mountain lion.”

  “Do you think it’s going to come back?”

  “If it’s a coyote, probably not. They usually hunt in packs and I only see evidence of one.”

  “And if it’s a mountain lion?” she asked.

  “We should sleep in shifts. I’ll take first shift.”

  “I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep.”

  “You need to get some rest. We’ve got a ten-mile hike ahead of us tomorrow. You won’t be able to do it if you don’t sleep,” he said.

  “I’ll try.”

  When they returned to their campsite, she crawled back into the tent. She lay on her side, curled into a ball. He sat in the space between the tents. She closed her eyes. Every sound seemed amplified, as if she were listening through a stethoscope.

  As the wind picked up, leaves fluttered against the tarp. In the distance, a coyote howled. When his pack joined the howl, the hair on the back of her neck prickled. Derek had said they’d be safe unless the coyotes were in a pack. They sounded far away, but she didn’t have any experience judging distance. And how fast could they run? Maybe distance didn’t matter.

  “Do you hear them?” she asked.

  “Yeah. They’re not close. At least a mile or two away.”

  “My dad used to take me hiking out here when I was little,” she said. “We saw coyotes in the distance, never up close.”

  “You’re not sleeping,” he said dryly.

  “I’m trying.”

  “Talking isn’t going to help.”

  “It will help me be less freaked out,” she said. “Do you do a lot of camping?”

  “My parents used to take me car camping at O’Neil Park,” he said. “We’d go on holiday weekends and for a few days here and there during the summer. It’s been a long time since our last trip. Probably a decade.”

  “Why so long?”

  “Work. Life. Things get busy and you forget to maintain your most important relationships,” he said.

  “Don’t you talk to them?” she asked.

  “We used to talk a lot more, but life got in the way. Now I wish I’d made more time for them. I hope to God they’re okay.”

  “I’m sorry I slowed us down.”

  “Don’t be. It’s actually kind of nice to have a traveling companion. I spend so much time alone that sometimes I forget what it’s like to interact with another person. Maybe I’m turning feral.” He laughed softly.

  “What do you do for work?” she asked.

  “I’m a firefighter.”

  “Seriously?”

  She raked her gaze across his broad shoulders. No wonder he was ripped. He could pull off a hot “Men of Firefighting” calendar. Her cheeks burned. Thank God he probably couldn’t see her well enough to catch it.

  “Yep,” he said.

  “Why? It’s a dangerous job.”

  “When I was in the Marines overseas, my best friend’s house burned down. Electrical fire. He was out of town on business. It killed his whole family.” He paused as his voice gave out. “I was just drifting through life trying to figure out what to do after my tour was over. As soon as I heard the news, I knew. I didn’t want anyone else to go through that kind of pain. Even though it wasn’t his fault, he never forgave himself. Two years ago, he shot himself. He couldn’t let go of the guilt.”

  “But it wasn’t his fault.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “He’d convinced himself that he would have been able to save them if he’d been home. I doubt it. I saw the investigation reports. It started with a faulty heater. They’d died from carbon monoxide poisoning before the fire started.”

  “That’s terrible,” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  Several minutes passed in silence. She couldn’t imagine the hell his friend had been through. But was anything worth taking your own life?

  She shook her head. No way.

  “If you’re not going to sleep,” he said, “do you mind taking over while I do?”

  “Sure.”

  As the night dragged on, she couldn’t stop thinking about his friend and the fire. No matter how bad things got, she’d never kill herself. She couldn’t imagine the pain it would cause her family. The world seemed to be falling apart, but she wouldn’t let it destroy her. She wasn’t a victim, she was a survivor. Now all she had to do was figure out how to survive a ten-mile hike after a sleepless night.

  16

  Luke slammed his foot onto the gas pedal and blasted past the prisoner in the orange jumpsuit. He glanced in the rearview mirror for a split second, and when he returned his attention forward, a gunshot blasted through the front window. It punched through the passenger seat’s headrest before whizzing through the back window.

  Four men in orange jumpsuits stood across the center of the road. They each leveled an AR-15 at him. Luke skidded onto the dirt shoulder, kicking up a barrage of gravel. He clipped the man on the far right, sending him flying into a field. The other three turned their weapons on him. They unleashed a firestorm of bullets, puncturing the tailgate and destroying what was left of the rear window.

  Head down, breath heaving, Luke tried to feel the road under the tires. He couldn’t risk looking up. One good shot would kill him. He’d never see his family again. But he’d walk through hell before he let that happen.

  He flew down the road toward a large sign that read Pleasant Valley State Prison. A riot of orange jumpsuits blocked the road ahead. There was too many of them. The five men behind him ran toward him. The mob of escapees closed in from the front.

  Move! Now!

  As he fishtailed into a U-turn, the rear tire caught on the lip of the pavement. When it released, the truck lurched forward. His chest slammed against the steering wheel. Half-expecting an airbag to the face, he instinctively brought his hand up.

  Pop-pop-pop-pop-pop.

  Bullets blasted across the hood. He lifted his pistol and shot through the broken window. He took down two of the five men before driving straight into a third. The prisoner flew over the hood. He got caught on the jagged edges of the front window. His torso hung over the dashboard; his face landed on the passenger seat. Blood dripped down the glass onto the dashboard.

  Luke shot him in the head. If the guy wasn’t dead before, he sure as hell was now.

  An AR-15 hung from the guy’s shoulder. Luke shoved him to the side and yanked at the rifle. The man’s body pinned the gun against the seat. Luke cursed and gave up on trying to get it.

  After skidding onto the turnoff to Highway 33, Luke blew past another gaggle of prisoners. He had no idea what had happened at the prison, but it must have been due to the power outage. He didn’t care and didn’t have time to contemplate it. If he didn’t get as far away from the prison as possible, he’d be toast. He’d already used up eight of his nine lives in the gunfight, so he wasn’t about to tempt fate.

  He didn’t take a full breath for fifteen miles. The putrid scent of the prisoner’s now-empty bowels mixed with the metallic scent of blood. He gagged and pulled over to the side of the road. As he stumbled into the empty dirt field, his stomach heaved, expelling its contents in an arc of mottled orange.

  The retching continued for a full minute until his stomach cramped in protest. He spit and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth.

  When he turned aro
und, the dead man’s vacant stare locked with his. A fresh wave of nausea consumed him. He bent forward, dry-heaving until blood pounded through his ears.

  He forced himself to picture his kid’s faces. They gave him the strength to fight like hell. He hadn’t survived an impossible situation because he was a SEAL. He’d survived because he was a father.

  The prisoner weighed a good two hundred and fifty pounds of solid muscle. It was like trying to move a water buffalo. But he couldn’t keep driving around with a corpse. He considered getting his knife out and hacking away at the man’s limbs to make him easier to move, but the gruesomeness of the task gave him pause.

  He grabbed the man’s legs and pulled. With the help of gravity, he was able to get the man to move a few inches. But the body was snagging on something.

  Luke used the step rail on the side of the truck as leverage to push the man’s torso up and over the glass shards in the window. Apparently he’d been caught on some of the intact pieces.

  Once free from the window, the man slid down the side of the hood and crumpled to the ground like a broken marionette.

  Satisfied, Luke yanked one of the man’s tennis shoes off and used it to clear the glass out of the passenger side. He pounded the remaining glass out of the window seal. He couldn’t risk having it fall and slice him up while he was driving. A chunk of glass to the face wouldn’t do him any favors.

  Blood spatter covered the interior. It soaked into the ragged upholstery, creating crimson stains. More blood seeped along the seams to pool on the floorboard.

  He couldn’t drive a homicide scene into Buttonwillow. The locals would have a shit-fit. After tearing a piece of the man’s jumpsuit off, Luke did his best to clear off some of the blood. It smeared and spread with each wipe. He cursed and grabbed a small bottle of water from his food supply. He tore off more jumpsuit and used it along with the water to mop up the rest of the blood. It wasn’t perfect, but it looked a lot better than it had ten minutes ago.

  He also couldn’t afford to have people asking questions. As far as he knew, he’d killed at least three prisoners. Maybe more. He’d been defending himself against eminent danger, but it would be a hard sell without witnesses. The truck looked like it had hit a deer. He could have used that as a cover story if there were deer in this part of California. Unfortunately, there weren’t.