by AR Shaw
Jax shook his head as he headed out toward the building in hopes of finding viable shelter for the night. In an open space, picking them off one by one would be easy for a gunman. “Like leading a bunch of sheep to slaughter,” Jax said to himself, cursing as he broke through the deep snow and keeping his head on a swivel for any sign of danger. Once he reached the large wooden steps covered in snow, he looked back at the huddled group. To their credit, a few of them, men and women, stood armed and on guard, both in front and in back. “Argh…bunch of dummies,” Jax said under his breath. “Don’t even know why I’m bothering with this.”
Once he reached the door, he had to shift piles of snow before he could even open it enough to enter. An inch-wide view of the inside caused Jax to slam what progress he’d made.
“Grrr…” came a familiar sound, followed by several loud and ominous growls. Jax took off toward the buses, waving his arms wildly to get people’s attention. “Get back on the buses!” he shouted.
Seeing Austin look his way, he repeated the order while feeling the wolves gaining on him. He turned suddenly, pulled up his shotgun, and blasted the nearest wolf, causing a second wolf to startle, though Jax knew that only bought him a little time. The whole pack would be on him in no time. He turned and ran again, seeing that most of the people had indeed boarded the buses and the engines were running.
“Hurry, Jax!” one of the guards said, aiming past Jax and sending a shot that felled the next fanged attacker.
Jax was out of breath when he reached the bus, followed by the guard. He turned to see several more wolves coming in for the opportunity.
“Holy hell, that was close. Were they just inside the building?” Saul asked.
Jax struggled to catch his breath. “Yes, and they’d eaten something big in there. Whole place is a mess. They must have gotten in through the back. Good thing those boys didn’t go in there on their own. We’d be burying their pieces by tonight.”
Several hours later, they reached the outskirts of Wallace. The buses came to a stop. Jax got out and joined the other leads in front. Light was dim as they peered into the town. Not one sign of life shone in the blackened windows. No firelight detected. It seemed to be a frozen town with not a soul to call it home.
17 CASSIE
“In the interest of time, what exactly are we looking for here, Cassie?” asked Donovan.
Since Donovan was held in confinement and didn’t know all the details of the past week, Cassie started from the beginning.
“After Bishop took over, we sent Walt back and forth, flying children out of Coeur d’Alene and here to the silo. The plan was to take the weakest first, those most susceptible to the cold. The survival conditions there were not sustainable. We also let the residents of Deer Trail inside.”
“Wait, what?” Donovan interrupted. “My dad would never have negotiated with those pirates.”
Letting out a sigh, Cassie said, “They’re human beings, Donovan. They’re trying to survive, and this evacuated Trident missile silo, out hidden below the middle of a cattle farm, was in their backyard long before it was your father’s property. For generations, hell, since the sixties, high school-aged kids from Deer Trail snuck down here. They have information we can use. Then your father bought the place and renovated the whole thing. He hired security and conducted a little war here for the longest time. These folks…they’re just people with families dealing with the worst of conditions. They were down to around three hundred—fewer than that, actually. They’ve helped out a lot. We’ve needed them, and so far, we’ve not had any problems with them. Now we have buses, the remnants of Coeur d’Alene, trying to get here to their families and a lost aircraft with some of their children on board.”
Letting a pause linger, she then said, “We all just want to survive this thing. Bishop felt it was the right thing to do. We lost communication with the Osprey, and then the weather turned even worse one night, and they came to us. We couldn’t blame them. We saved their lives.”
“They’re terrorists. Mark my words. He’ll come to regret that decision. Those people, they’re nothing but takers. They’ll drain this place of all the supplies. You watch. My father knew that. You’ll see, too.”
Knowing the conversation was veering way off course, Cassie said, “Right now, let’s see if we can get into the aqua tracker’s website and at least get the last-known location of Yeager’s tracker.”
Donovan’s lips made two straight lines as he returned his focus to the laptop in front of him. Without breaking eye contact with the screen he said, “Do me a favor…after I get the information, please let do some maintenance, it’ll only take me a few hours. Without it the systems can go down. It’s my job to maintain them. We don’t want the lights to go out or the heat to fail.”
She smiled and nodded. For some reason, Cassie realized, he tolerated her more than he did anyone else. Donovan was a narcissist. He could hide it, but that was the selfish monster that lay underneath. She glimpsed the beast on occasion. And just then, right there…there it was. He was a selfish bastard. But she had to control him by any means necessary. They needed him and he needed to feel needed. Hackers didn’t exactly come by the dozens anymore. They’d mostly lived in their mothers’ basements in their heyday, which left them unprepared for what lay ahead. The real world, in all its harsh reality, did not care about experts on the Internet or those who cowardly stole from others behind a mask.
Donovan typed away, muttering every now and then. Cassie had not a clue what he was doing as she looked at the screen.
“We’re…almost in, I think,” he said with his eyes transfixed upon the screen.
And then, a few moments later, he said, “Here. Is this what you were looking for? Here’s the log of Yeager’s last pinged location. Most recent is this one, and if you extrapolate the date from the previous locations…that should put them between these two known points.” He pointed at the screen.
“Seriously? That’s the last pinged location? That’s where they are?” Cassie asked without regard to the emotion welling in her voice. She shot out of her chair. Tears sprang from her eyes. She wiped them away immediately. That’s when she caught Donovan looking at her curiously.
His eyes turned menacing then, his brow furrowed. “You’re in love with him, aren’t you?”
“Stop, Donovan. There were children aboard that craft. They may all have died on impact. There are parents on their way there, trying to find them, and risking their lives to do so. Don’t you understand? These are real lives.”
“I never told them to take that trip. Ill-advised, if you’d asked me.”
He had to yell that last bit, since Cassie had sprinted to the door of the small room and was running now, through the spiral corridor, with a reignited hope in her heart that she hadn’t felt for days.
18 WALT
Pulling his face mask back on, Yeager checked behind him to find Rebecca a few paces away. She’d annoyed the hell out of him since they’d left by humming these long, silly songs. Except that, he had to give it to her, she never faltered. She kept up with his long stride. “Do you need to stop?” he said, adjusting the ice-covered cloth covering his face to keep the relentless wind from freezing his exposed skin.
Over the howling, ice-cutting wind, she yelled, “I’m fine!” in a most misplaced, singsong voice.
But he knew otherwise. She was just saying what he wanted to hear. She had to be exhausted. Hell, he was tired and starting to sweat, which, in these conditions, was a sure sign to stop and find a place to rest for a few minutes.
The sky, gray as a squirrel’s fur, was pregnant with yet more snow. It looked as if it would start dumping it on top of them again after ceasing for a mere reprieve.
That’s when Rebecca yelled out, her words muffled by the face mask at first. She ripped it off and tried again. “What’s that?”
Not sure what she was up to now, he checked back and saw her pointing at something far to the left. Following her gaze, he saw
a wooden marker—something manmade, at long last. The brownish-black post barely stuck out of the ground.
It was difficult to tell how much compacted snow was beneath their feet as they trekked precariously up to the high point. They both carried long sticks to prod the ground as they ventured forward. At any moment, he knew, they might find themselves walking over a hidden, rushing river or crevasse and succumbing to the dangers below. No one would ever know what’d happened to them. Never before in his life as a soldier had he felt so vulnerable. His job was to protect men, his brothers. He’d never had to protect a group of young women and children before…not on his own. And not only that, but Cassie had become that one thing to him that he could not lose, not ever. She was as important to him as his left arm was.
Suddenly, Rebecca darted forward, and he had to put his arm out, nearly clotheslining her. “Wait!” he said. “Just hang on a damn minute.”
He replaced his own mask, and she did the same. With their sticks, they prodded their way over to the manmade article poking out of the ground like evidence of an archeological find. Finally, a discovery from times past—though, these days, that was only a few months ago.
Once they reached the post, they found that it was a trailhead marker. It was sticking out of the ice by only a few feet, which meant they were standing on what Yeager guessed was over three feet of ice and compacted snow. How she had spotted it was by luck alone. The evergreens nearby were weighed down with snow and ice, their boughs heavy and deformed forever.
“Does it say anything?” Rebecca asked in a tone of hope.
Yeager had to rub hard to brush away the accumulated ice. This was an older marker with words, written with a router, giving directions. The words were not easily discernible and as soon as he removed a layer of ice, blowing ice crystals threatened to overtake it again.
“I can’t really tell.” He stopped for a minute and looked east to west, hoping a visible trail through the trees might present itself. However, with the harsh wind and ice, he had no such luck.
“Maybe there’s more,” Rebecca said. She shielded her eyes from the snow onslaught and began to wander away while Yeager refocused his attention on deciphering the post.
“Don’t go far!” he yelled over his shoulder while scrubbing the wooden plaque with his sleeve, pressing harder with his forearm. “What the hell does this thing say?”
“Here’s another one!”
Not wanting to give up on his accomplishment, Yeager squinted at the ice-filled markings. “Numbers?” Yet, over the howl of the wind, a metallic clang and a bang came from the direction in which Rebecca had gone.
“Yeager!” she yelled.
“Just a minute!” he yelled back without looking directly at her. He glanced right and then left again, while trying to make sense of the wooden post’s directives.
“But just look!”
He was starting to regret bringing her with him. Yeager jerked his head in her direction angrily. “What?”
She stood and waved her hand with a flourish, “Voila.”
Another post lay bare with a directional map upon its surface. The outer edges were still encrusted with ice. “Mmm, just a minute.” His face was a blank as he made his way over to Rebecca and her new discovery. He was going to kill her. He imagined dropping her off the nearest ledge, if this turned out to be nothing.
A few seconds later, he said, “Shittt.”
Below a diagram on the metal sign were the words Lower Falls, Yellowstone National Park.
In years to come, as she retold the story to Yeager’s chagrin, Rebecca would recall that his words were more empathic.
Yeager often repeated the same word only putting a little drawl on the enunciation every once in a while.
Though at that moment, Yeager was simply dumbfounded. Blinking the snow crystals from his eyes, he turned around to get a 360-degree view. Never did it cross his mind that he was in the same place he’d visited several summers before. The landscape was so frozen over that he didn’t recognize it. But now…now he knew exactly where they were, and he also knew where the nearest shelter was.
19 JAX
The town of Wallace, Idaho, was somewhat of an enigma. Seemingly frozen in time, the town had never exited the Old West era. There was even a famous whorehouse frozen in time, exactly the way it looked when the last ladies of the night left in a hurry in 1987. Hairbrushes left on the vanity remained forever stationary, and mirrors reflected eternity. The static state was partly due to the fact that the highway to the mountain pass curved around the city in the valley. Few road runners had reason to venture into town. Sure, there was commerce there, though it lessened over time. By 2030, even the old holdouts had scooted out of town or faded from existence. Not even the lure of an eternal whorehouse brought tourists in.
Even though the town itself seemed utterly dead, lost to the past, the general idea, when one passed a town, was that there must be a few citizens lurking in the buildings that stood up against the onslaught of frozen wind. Jax braced against the cold in the dim light, stared down into the ghost town, the bus headlights casting his shadow in the snowy road.
“What do you think?” Austin yelled over the engine and the blaring wind. His breath hung in the air in frozen puffs.
“I think we ought to watch our backs,” Jax yelled.
A silence fell until Austin felt like putting out the effort to yell back, “Looks deserted to me.”
Jax looked at Austin as though he were dense. “You’d think that.” Then he noticed a white splotch on Austin’s ear. Pointing up the highway as it curved around a bend into the forest, he said, “We go further up. Another hour.”
“Are you sure?” Austin asked.
Jax looked at the younger man again. Frozen snot was crusted to his grayed mustache. Snow was accumulating on his eyelashes. “Get on the bus, Austin. And have Cook look at that frostbite on your ear.” He turned to walk back to his own vehicle.
Austin slapped his hand over the side of his face and yelled at Jax’s back, “Jax, we need to agree on things!”
Without missing stride, Jax said, “No, we don’t.”
Nothing more was said. The buses started again in unison, the drivers communicating by radio. As Jax sat down, his driver accepted the directions.
“Another hour? All right. This place gives me the creeps anyway. Let’s roll.”
At least the kid wasn’t defying him too much. He knew that Austin would question his direction. That was fine. Good, even. What he wouldn’t put up with was reckless endangerment, and right now, that was a full-time prevention job. His driver was right. Trust your instincts. Something down there gave him the creeps, too. Even if he couldn’t see the danger, that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. Trusting those feelings had helped humanity to survive as long as it had, and he did not intend to ignore those instincts now—or ever.
20 BISHOP
“And this is accurate? Are you sure?” Bishop asked Cassie again. His eyes were wide with disbelief. Maybe Donovan, the derelict, was just trying to get him to leave so he could pull something.
“I know what you’re thinking. But it makes sense. The data is all there. At least we have an approximate location now.” Her voice rose with excitement and anticipation.
Bishop reached for Cassie and held her shoulders. “Calm down, Cassie. What we have now is a crash site, most likely. We don’t know what we’ll find when we get there.” He let go of her. “Go get Alyssa, Maeve, and Morrow. We need to have a meeting, but tell no one else for now.”
Nodding, she sprinted off.
“And don’t run!” he called after her, thinking that the last thing they needed now was for someone to fall and become injured.
Calling down into the guardroom, Bishop said, “Hey, we need a mobilization team ready to go in an hour.”
Then, with the pounding of running boots, Alyssa was inside the office asking, “You found him?” Her eyes were round with wonder and unanswered questions.
Holding up his hands to stave off her questions, he said, “Alyssa, we found a last pinged location. We’re still in search-and-rescue or recovery mode at this point. Please, and I mean please, do not get your hopes up. You know, we may find nothing. We might find a hell of a crash site. Or we may find only a few lucky survivors. In any case, we’re going. We’ll see what we can find.”
“When are we leaving? I’ll gear up.”
That’s when Maeve and Cassie entered the room.
“I didn’t say you were going, Alyssa. I’m just letting you know what’s going on.”
“You have to let me go, Bishop!”
Taking a deep breath, Bishop stood up from his chair, using the moment to think very carefully. “Alyssa, you’re needed here. Maeve is needed here. I’ll take Cassie.”
But Alyssa was having none of that. “No, you listen to me now! I’m going. Like you said, there may be survivors, and you don’t have emergency medical personnel on your team. I’m the only one. I’m going.”
Checking his tone before he spoke, Bishop noticed that Maeve and Cassie stood perfectly still. This was a showdown. “There are babies down that hallway who need you here, Alyssa,” he said, pointing toward the nursery.
“Those babies,” Alyssa said, “are all on a schedule with multiple caregivers and directives. There’s really nothing more I can do for them now. You need someone to care for frostbite, burn wounds, and exposure. That’s my specialty. I’m going. We can wait here and waste time, but I’m still going. I’ll follow you on my own if I have to.”
She made a good point, and he knew damn well that she’d follow through on her threat to follow them. He knew that. Nodding, he looked over Alyssa’s head to Maeve. Her soft eyes told him to take care. She knew that he was leaving and she was staying. There was no question there.
“Cassie, I’ll need you to stay here, then.”
As if a physical jolt had hit her, Cassie had to take a step back. She looked down to the floor and then up again, meeting Bishop’s eyes. She nodded, knowing that it was true and beyond that, knowing that it was an order.
