The Signal (The Bugging Out Series Book 8)

by Noah Mann

  The passenger door swung open as the plane stopped and I saw the wheelchair whip forward from the bed of the truck. A few seconds later Elaine was in it, wheeling her way toward the aircraft, the falling rain be damned. I climbed out and jogged toward her, meeting her well past the end of the wingtip. I bent and she pulled me into a hug, then kissed me.

  “You’re not hurt,” she said, both asking and commenting as she eased back from our embrace.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “Knocked around a bit.”

  I’d tell her about the multiple explosions that had nearly killed me aboard the carrier later. Maybe.

  Just beyond the plane, Schiavo was helping Martin toward the Humvee, Lt. Lorenzen leaving the driver’s seat to assist her. In a minute they had him in the back seat. Before Schiavo joined him, she looked my way, eyeing me through the rain, the headlight beams raising sparkles off each falling drop. She smiled, a real smile. Not just one of relief, though that was an obvious reaction she would be experiencing. This was something more. Something deeper. An appreciation that we had come through yet another challenge. Together.

  Then, she brought her left hand up and tapped the ring finger.

  My finger...

  I’d completely forgotten about the injury I’d suffered when first rappelling down to the hangar deck. The digit had been broken, and the bandage job that Schiavo had done on it, unsurprisingly, was still intact. It was soaked, and a bit battered, but it had kept the injury from getting worse.

  Of course, now that it had been brought to my attention, it began to throb like an elephant was standing on it.

  Without a word or further gesture, Schiavo joined her husband in the Humvee. Elaine and I watched them drive off, and it was at that moment that an innocuous oddity struck me.

  “By the way,” I said, retrieving my mangled wedding ring from one of the cargo pockets in my pants. “We’re going to have to replace this.”

  Elaine eyed the cut band, taking it from me, then noticed my bandaged finger for the first time.

  “I thought you weren’t hurt,” she said, mildly scolding me.

  “It’s a finger,” I said. “Hardly worth mentioning.”

  She regarded me with some mild annoyance, but let it go, dropping the ring in her shirt pocket.

  “Who drove you here?”

  “Molly,” Elaine answered.

  Molly Anne Beck, Private, United States Army, was one of Schiavo’s newest recruits, nineteen years old, whip smart and tough as the day was long.

  “That was nice of her to chauffer you,” I said. “We can drop her off when we pick up Hope.”

  “We don’t have to pick Hope up,” Elaine said, then turned her wheelchair and rolled back toward the pickup’s open door.

  I followed, stopping in the light rain to peer inside, dome light revealing our little girl snuggled up against Molly, dead asleep next to the driver. I’d assumed that Grace was watching our daughter while Elaine came to meet me, but, instead, our child had woven her way into another’s heart.

  “She’s an angel,” Molly said, smiling.

  “She can be,” I said, hinting at the reality of parenting a two-year-old. “Slide over, I’ll drive.”

  Elaine climbed in, soaking wet, as was I, but neither of us cared. I stowed her wheelchair in the bed of the pickup and went around to the driver’s door as the trio of ladies, young and old, squished to one side.

  “Fletch...”

  I stopped with my hand on the driver’s door and turned to see Chris Beekman standing there, as drenched as I was. He had an odd little smile on his face. Odd for him, I thought, as he was one who rarely expressed any hint of joy openly. He was a hard man. A solitary soul, most of the time.

  “We’re both going to catch pneumonia,” I told him.

  “Ironic if that’s what finally lays us out,” he said.

  There was a moment of silence then. That awkward pause when nothing is said because there is too much to say.

  “I’m an ass sometimes,” Beekman said. “Full of myself. I know that.”

  “Everyone knows that, Chris,” I added with a smile.

  But he was serious. Some sort of self-reflection had set itself to spinning in his thoughts, and he was trying to express things that were difficult.

  “I thought I was going to die, Fletch.”

  I looked at him and the smile was gone. Fear and wonder had replaced it in his eyes.

  “When I came back to the carrier, and landed the second time, I had to approach from the stern because the wind had shifted.”

  For some reason, likely the hectic nature of our departure, I hadn’t noticed that, in contrast to our initial arrival on the Vinson, which had been a straight in landing down the bow, our final departure from the sinking vessel had been facing the aft end of the carrier.

  “It was dark,” Beekman, said as we stood in the rain. “No lights on the carrier like when I took off. And the squalls were just, intense. I couldn’t even see the deck until the last seconds.”

  Schiavo, Martin, and I hadn’t witnessed what Beekman was describing. We were already below deck, searching for some way to stop the vessel from moving.

  “You did an amazing job, Chris,” I told him.

  But to that he shook his head.

  “It was luck,” he said. “Nothing but luck on that last landing. There was no way I should have been able to put the plane down in one piece. None. Zero. My skillset was so far from what was required that it’s laughable.”

  “But still you made it happen.”

  “I’m one percent of the reason it worked,” he countered. “What I’m trying to say is...I think...I think this was all meant to be. I’m not some sappy guy who believes in destiny, but...”

  He couldn’t finish. He’d been overwhelmed by the events, and his part in them.

  “Chris,” I began, “sometimes luck is enough. But it’s never enough unless someone’s there to give it a chance to happen. That’s what we all did. And at the end of the day, I’ll take all the luck there is if it brings me home.”

  Beekman thought on that for a moment, then nodded. He reached out, offering his hand. I shook it as the rain began to pound, the storm building.

  “Thank you,” Beekman said.

  He stepped back and raised a hand, giving a small wave to Elaine and Molly in the truck. Then he left us and made his way off toward the hangar. I let the rain wash over me for a moment, then I slid behind the wheel of the pickup.

  “That didn’t look like Beekman was being very Beekman,” Elaine said past our sleeping daughter and Molly.

  “He wasn’t,” I said.

  Elaine nodded. She understood. She and I, and Martin, and Schiavo, and dozens more in our town, had faced death. Real, true, inevitable death, only to see the light of day again. There was no clear sunrise to greet Chris Beekman. That would come another day, when skies were clear. But he had most certainly faced his own moment of demise and come through it. He was changed.

  We all were.

  Thirty Two

  I put the idling pickup into drive and made a wide turn around the parked Cessna, steering us to the airport driveway. A minute later we were on the road. In five we’d dropped Molly at the garrison headquarters where she was scheduled to ‘stand watch’ until noon, which would entail calling on Lt. Lorenzen should any situation develop that she couldn’t handle.

  “So?”

  I looked to Elaine. She’d shifted our daughter onto a blanket to protect her from the water we were both shedding.

  “So...” I repeated, prodding her to be more specific.

  “You still feel the same after what you just did?” she asked.

  On our flight back to town, after a few moments decompressing, Schiavo had gotten on the radio to brief her second in command on what had transpired. He had shared the information with Elaine, Bandon’s mayor, as a matter of necessity. She was, in our little corner of the world, the highest elected authority we had access to. And she was pressing me
on the fears I’d shared, and the way past those fears I’d outlined.

  “More than ever,” I said.

  She was not surprised by my confidence. She was also not unaware of what it pointed to. If acted upon, all that we’d come to know, and to depend upon, would change. In irreversible ways.

  “Wagon train,” Elaine said as I drove.

  “Come again?”

  She cradled our bundled daughter and stared out the window, seized by some thought.

  “It’s really no different than pioneers setting out in wagons for new lands,” my wife said. “We’re just the new pioneers.”

  It was an apt comparison, with some small caveats. We’d be reclaiming land, and homes, from those who’d been lost to the blight and its aftermath. The landscape would not be unknown. And, hopefully, we’d not find ourselves in conflict with a native population.

  Even with any hindrances and potential dangers, I knew we had to enter this new phase of survival. If we did not, another carrier, or another rogue army, or a government gone crazed with power, could finish us off. One and all.

  We’d come too far to risk that.

  * * *

  We returned home and put our daughter to bed.

  “You need sleep,” Elaine said as she sat on our bed, pulling a fresh sweatshirt over her head after drying off.

  I’d toweled down and changed, too. But with the sun rising beyond the storm, I felt nothing approaching tiredness. Physical exhaustion was plain in every muscle, and in the crispness of my thoughts. Still, for some reason, I did not want to lie down. Did not want to let dreams take me yet.

  “You catch a few hours,” I told Elaine. “Hope’s going to be up in like an hour, so I’ll deal with that. You can spell me later.”

  Elaine knew that I was not simply making an altruistic offer so she could sleep. She also knew me well enough to realize that some things I had to work out for myself.

  “Okay,” she said.

  She reached down and moved her legs under the comforter, then lay back against the pillows. I walked to her and kissed her forehead, and then her lips.

  “Sleep,” I said.

  She smiled and rolled onto her side. I turned the bedroom light off and pulled the door softly shut.

  * * *

  It was early enough that the town still slumbered as I went to the kitchen and poured a glass of water, dumping a package of dehydrated orange juice concentrate into it. I stirred the powder in the liquid until it was fully dissolved, then I lifted the glass and sipped. And swallowed.

  It tasted like orange juice, but it was not. I set the glass on the counter and took the empty foil-lined pouch in hand. Some processing facility, likely on Hawaii, had filled it. Just as some ranch there had raised the cows and cattle which gave us milk and steak and leather goods. Pigs that rolled in muddy pens in the north fields had begun their lives at piglets on the island chain.

  Now, that was all gone. Or enough of it to make the supply line we’d known, and depended upon, useless. If anyone was left in Hawaii, they were most certainly focused on their own survival in the face of a nuclear nightmare. In some ways, I wished that none would have to suffer through that. Maybe the blast the Eisenhower had delivered had been merciful. Maybe there were no scarred survivors.

  Maybe.

  We were still here, more alone than ever now. The Rushmore was gone with its base. There would be no more monthly deliveries to aid in our recovery. Bandon, for better or worse, was on its own.

  Yes, I thought, there could be a better in the terrible situation. We would be forced to become fully self-sufficient, and to face the realities of that going forward.

  “We’re alone,” Elaine said.

  I turned to see her sitting in her chair in the doorway to the hall.

  “That’s what you’re worried about,” she added.

  “It’s only slightly freaky how well you know me,” I said.

  She wheeled herself to the counter and took my glass of orange juice, enjoying a sip for herself.

  “Enjoy it while it lasts,” I said.

  The area surrounding Bandon was not optimal for growing citrus. If we wanted more of what Elaine and I were drinking, we would have to connect with some colony much farther south than we were. It was like that with many of the products we’d grown used to being provided. From this point on, it would be on us to make those things available.

  “Maybe we can start a settlement in Florida,” I said, holding the empty package up.

  Elaine set the glass back on the counter.

  “You know, Eric, for the first time in a long time, I’m...”

  She hesitated, searching for the right words, I thought.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “For the first time in a really long time, I’m worried about us.”

  I slid a chair from the table and sat, taking her hands in mine.

  “I am, too,” I said.

  “What will Hope have when she gets older?” Elaine wondered aloud. “We have to make a future for her.”

  “We are,” I assured her. “We will. This is a setback, but that’s all. Everyone will just have to work harder, and smarter. But it will be worth it. Being truly self-sufficient will open up possibilities we can’t even imagine now.”

  Elaine nodded, not disputing that, but somehow saddened by what it all would mean. For us. For everyone.

  “We just won’t be making that future here,” she said.

  “No,” I said. “We won’t.”

  Part Five

  Spider And Fly

  Thirty Three

  I’d thought Elaine would wait. That she would let the events of the previous days fade from our immediate memory before acting.

  She didn’t.

  “Your wife just dropped a bomb on the Town Council,” Martin said through the screen door.

  He stood on the porch, shifting his weight off and onto the leg he’d banged falling through the hole in the Vinson’s hangar deck. It was just after noon, two days since he, and Schiavo, and I had returned aboard Chris Beekman’s Cessna to a town that no one imagined would cease to exist. But that possibility, that suggestion, was precisely what Martin, in many ways the godfather of Bandon in the paternal sense, was referencing.

  “I’ll come out,” I said.

  Hope lay sleeping in her big girl bed, which had replaced the crib she’d known only a month earlier. She’d adjusted to napping without rails, though I found myself lining the edge of the mattress and the floor below with every spare pillow I could scrounge from other rooms. If, for some reason, she fussed, or woke and climbed out of bed, I would be able to hear from the porch.

  I chose the chair nearest the door, and Martin the one next to it. At one time that had been where Elaine had sat, but, as my wife put it, she now came with her own seating.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “I happened to be at the Town Hall while they were meeting,” Martin said.

  He was no longer part of the body that made decisions as to Bandon’s governance. Neither was I. But each of us had spouses who were intimately involved in the running and protection of the town and its people.

  “They took a break,” Martin continued. “Angela came out and told me what Elaine had proposed. In essence, abandoning Bandon.”

  Martin might have expected some reaction right then. I offered none.

  “It’s an interesting idea of yours, Fletch.”

  I drew a breath and glanced back through the screen door, listening for Hope. It also gave me a moment to not react to my friend’s very spot-on accusation.

  “Fletch, Elaine didn’t dream this up. She might have signed on, but this is you talking.”

  “What if it is?” I asked, looking back to Martin.

  He smiled at my flourish of defensiveness.

  “You didn’t know she was going to bring it up, did you?”

  I drew a breath and let the charged moment pass before shaking my head.

  “That’s a
bit more than coming home to hear ‘honey, I bought a couch’,” Martin joked.

  He let out a light chuckle, as did I.

  “I knew she’d embraced the whole thing pretty deeply,” I said. “She took to the logic of it quickly, but...”

  “You’re not wrong,” Martin said. “And neither is she.”

  For a moment we said nothing. We simply sat on the porch and gazed out at the neighborhood. A few people were out. Some strolling. Other tending to gardens.

  Gardens...

  “We have come a long way, Martin.”

  He was watching the same thing I was. The same activity that, for some time following the blight, none of us had expected to ever see again. Something so ordinary. Even mundane. Now, it was a scene of beauty. Of survival. Of defiance.

  “Do you ever think that maybe all this, all of us being here, was meant to be?” I asked my friend.

  “Some sort of destiny?” he asked, then shook his head. “We made this what it is. With sweat, and tears, and blood.”

  That we had. We’d all sacrificed, and we’d all lost so much. What Martin was expressing, I thought, was that whatever we’d all given up, it was a down payment on the future we all now had waiting for us.

  If we did what was necessary to move toward that.

  “Victim of our own success?” Martin posed the possibility to me.

  “Not everyone who hears the rumors of a place called Bandon, a place where people live like this,” I said, gesturing to my neighbor across the street picking berries from a bush in her front yard, “not all those people will see us as a place to join.”

  “A place to rule,” Martin said, referencing the Unified Government’s attempts to subjugate our town and its people.

  “Or to destroy,” I added.

  Martin nodded and looked to me.

  “If you were in there, Fletch, what would you be saying?”

  I thought for a moment. It might have been just a curiosity he was expressing, or he might very well see whatever I had to say as some back-channel advice to his wife.

  “Dividing up the population was Elaine’s contribution to the idea,” I said. “I have to agree with her, so I’d be proposing that we split up into at least ten new settlements. Eighty plus per settlement. Divide up the supplies, the seeds, everything, and get moving. We’d have to identify suitable towns to inhabit first, and none of them should be any closer than forty miles to the nearest neighbor. Maybe fifty.”