The issues that hadn’t come up but needed to were her pregnancy, the status of her husband, David, and son, Eric, and his fiancée. He hadn’t talked about her much, but she felt he had to be consumed with her condition. She had decided that today would be the day they’d begin to hash out these issues and begin to make a plan to figure them out.
One of the reasons she had been successful professionally was she wouldn’t let things lie. If something had to be taken care of, she’d set to doing it. The past weeks had been a nice vacation from reality, but they couldn’t sit there forever, and if her baby were to be given a chance to survive, she needed the vaccine, R-59.
As the sun was meeting the horizon, ending another day, she decided they would have the talk.
“I’m so tired,” Travis said as he plowed into the large plate of pasta she had prepared him.
She sat across from him at the small round dining table centered in the large open kitchen and just played with her food. She was nervous about discussing the topics but knew it had to happen. Lori had a way about her that sometimes could create drama when there was no drama. She was fully aware of this trait, so she thought long and hard about how to address the sensitive issues.
“Um, Travis, I think we need to talk,” Lori said as she swirled pasta around her fork.
The yellowish orange glow from the candles created bouncing shadows, and many would have found the scene almost romantic in its nostalgia, but for Lori it was disturbing in an odd way.
She watched as the shadows grew and subsided along with the flames’ movements.
Travis heard her and murmured, “About what?” his mouth full of food.
“I didn’t want to talk about these things while you were busy getting the house ready and setting us up, but we need to discuss what might be some touchy things.”
He looked up from his plate for the first time and said, “I’m a big boy; go ahead.”
With an awkward smile, she said, “First, my husband and son. I’m obviously concerned for them. Have you thought about what we can do to help them?”
He wiped his mouth off with the paper napkin, took a large drink of water, and said, “I have thought about it, and the reason I haven’t wanted to talk about it was because I don’t think there’s much you can do for them.”
“Nothing?”
“No, think about it. Everything you told me about the chancellor makes me think he has either killed them or is holding them close, hoping he can use them if you ever return. That’s what I would do. He has no leverage against you except your family. There’s no advantage for him to kill them, but that’s not to say he hasn’t because…”
“Because why?”
“Because you pissed him off.”
Lori exhaled deeply. “I had no choice. I had to run. I couldn’t just wait around to get them. It’s all my fault if anything bad happens to them. I didn’t mean for this to happen, it just did. How was I supposed to know?”
“Lori, don’t beat yourself up. Of course you didn’t mean for this to happen; it just happened. You have an obligation to protect your unborn child.”
“Do I? I mean, sometimes I think I’m taking a huge risk here. What if, what if I have a miscarriage? Then this whole thing is for what? Nothing.” She began to cry and then realized that she was trying to upset him, but she was the one who was.
“You had your reasons; you made the decision. You can’t go back and try to make the decision again. The only thing we can do now is find a way to make it all work. I’m glad we’re talking about this stuff. To be honest, I was thinking about a good time to bring it up. I just didn’t want to upset you, but it looks like I already did.”
“No, no, it’s not you, it’s me. I’m hormonal.”
“Oh, I thought that was just being a woman,” he responded in an attempt to lighten the mood.
“Ha, ha, funny guy,” she said, a slight smile on her tear-covered face.
“There she is, I like your smile.”
“I’m so frustrated; I don’t like not having a plan. I hate feeling helpless. I want to do something for David and Eric.”
“At the moment I don’t see what you can do that wouldn’t risk the baby.”
“Okay, let’s talk about the baby. I need that drug. I need to get my hands on the R-59. How are we going to do that?”
“Of course, me and my infinite wisdom have come up with a possible plan for that,” he said, leaning back and showing a bit of bravado in his arm movements.
“You’re being corny.”
“You see, that’s one of the differences between military and civilians. You civvies get so worked up over stuff. We’re so used to sphincter-clenching situations that we can make fun and laugh them off. In fact, us warfighters love action; hence why we join.”
Ignoring his little diatribe, she asked, “What’s your plan?”
He leaned in, placed his elbows on the table, and said, “There is one thing Marines pride themselves on and that is the love of their brother Marine. When we fight, we fight for the man next to us. I just need to get to one of my good friends and I can get the vaccine.”
He paused and grinned.
She waited for him to continue, but he didn’t. “That’s it?”
“In a nutshell.”
“That’s not a plan, that’s a concept.”
“Oh, you want operational details?”
“Yes!”
“You don’t need them; in fact, I’d rather have you not be in the know.”
“Don’t be stupid. I don’t want you risking your life if you don’t have a plan, so please indulge me.”
“Since you insist,” Travis said and began to detail his plan. He told her about a good friend, another captain he went to officer candidate school with, who was part of a unit that provided physical security assistance to the DHS’s FEMA camps in Region VIII.
Hearing this, she asked, “How do you know where he is specifically, and how do you know he has R-59?”
“I don’t know exactly where he is, but I know he operates from a forward operating base south of Rapid City, South Dakota. As the camps grew, they pulled assets from the military to provide support. His light armored unit was tasked with providing additional security.”
“Do you know exactly where this base is?”
“I have a good idea.”
“How do you know you can make it?”
“I don’t.”
“How do you know he’ll help you?”
“I don’t, but do we, do you have a choice? I have to go and get that vaccine for the baby. Fortunately for us, we have time, but I need to leave soon.”
She raised her eyebrows.
“As you know, I have a fiancée out there somewhere. Now that I’m retired, I need to go find her, but I feel obligated to you as well.”
Lori reached across the table and took his hand. “Travis, I’ve been thinking, and I just don’t feel right that I’m here with you while the love of your life is somewhere out there.”
“I don’t like it either, but these are the sacrifices we military types make when we join. I gave an oath to defend the country, and now that country is gone. Next thing I know, I’m here with you. I have an obligation to make sure you and the baby are safe.”
“I should go with you.”
“No, it’s not safe out there.”
“But how? I can’t stay here by myself.”
“Lori, I’m almost done making this place run on its own. I won’t be gone that long. Once I return with the vaccine, maybe then we can talk about you joining me as I look for Tess, but I don’t feel right having you come with me now.”
He placed his other hand on top of hers and squeezed it. He enjoyed her company and found her attractive, but his endearment for her had changed from a simple attraction to one of responsibility for her care and well-being. He would never tell her, but he didn’t look at her as a woman he should attempt to covet, but one he needed to protect.
Lori bit her tongue
; she was so use to getting her way and arguing her point of view ad nauseam till she got it. He had been so helpful and gracious; how could she argue with his plan? And she thought he was right; staying there was the best option for her baby.
The clunk of a car door closing startled them.
Travis whipped his head in the direction of the noise and listened intently.
“Did you—” she started to ask.
“Sshh,” he snapped, and then blew out the candles.
Several more car doors slamming echoed from outside.
He bolted from the table, grabbed a pistol and her arm.
“Huh?”
“To the safe room!”
She just let him take charge.
They ran down the hallway and darted into the first door on the left, an office. He slid open the closet door, shoved the hanging clothes aside, and pushed against the paneling. A four-by-four-foot piece popped out from the force of his push; it was being held by a magnetic hinge.
“Get in!” he ordered.
She did just as he commanded and crawled through the opening. The safe room was a small three-foot-wide by seven-foot-long space. He had created it by taking space from the office closet and the adjacent bedroom’s closet. He had built faux walls using materials he had found in the barn. Once inside, a person could hide relatively comfortably. In the floor of the space there was a trap door that led to the crawl space beneath the house; there he had created a route to escape. Both the room and the crawl space had food, water, firearms, flashlights, blankets, extra clothing and toiletries—specifically an item that Travis was all too aware was often overlooked in the field, toilet paper and a bucket to go in.
“Everything you’ll need is in here for up to a week. I’ll come get you when it’s all clear,” he said, placing the paneling back up.
“Hold on,” she said urgently.
He stopped and looked at her cuddled up inside. “What?”
“Be safe.”
“I always am,” he answered, gave her a wink, and sealed her in.
She put her head between her knees and began to pray.
Travis put everything back to make it look like a closet and went to the main living room window to look out. Once there, he saw two pickup trucks near the barn in the dim light of the rising moon but no sign of anyone. His heart was racing, and his instincts told him it was a matter of moments before he encountered someone. He knew the best way to survive this type of situation was to lie in wait. His Marine Corps training had taught him that the odds for a defender were nine times better than someone on the offense. With this knowledge, he took up a position in the far bedroom. As he sat in the darkness, he longed for a pair of night-vision goggles, but he used his other senses and listened intently.
His ears perked when he heard unintelligible talking down near the barn. He imagined they were just scavengers and probably didn’t want a fight, but if it were to come to it, he was determined to win.
As he patiently waited for them to come to the main house, he thought about Lori and their discussion earlier; soon his thoughts turned to Tess. Not a day had gone by that she didn’t cross his mind. He missed her and in some ways wished he hadn’t gotten entangled with Lori, but he just went with his gut. Like he told Lori earlier, he put it out of his mind, because you can’t relive the past, you can only learn from it.
Unaware of how much time had elapsed, the moment he knew would come came, and it came with a crash. The front door burst open in an explosion of force. The sounds of broken glass and wood reverberated down the hall. He steadied his breathing and positioned the shotgun across the footboard of the bed. The Remington 870 pump-action shotgun had a twenty-inch barrel with an extended tube. He was ready for whatever they could bring, and was confident he’d be successful.
The voices of the people echoed off the walls and down the hall.
Lori sat shaking in her safe room. When she heard the door explode, she quickly scrambled and grabbed the revolver that she had seen sitting on a box. The small room was so dark she couldn’t see anything, and the sensation of being immersed in darkness added to her fear. She focused on steadying her breathing and remaining calm.
By the voices, Travis identified the people as men and their number being around four at the minimum.
They bantered back and forth, laughing and crashing through the living room. When they reached the kitchen, they became quiet.
Travis could see their flashlights bouncing off the walls, floors and ceiling and didn’t have to guess the reason for their silence. They had reached the kitchen and seen the plates of fresh warm food there.
“Is someone here?” a man asked, hollering down the hall.
Lori tensed when she heard the man call out. She again prayed, but this time her prayer was exclusively for Travis’s safety.
Travis could hear the men talking among themselves quietly; he figured they were deciding what to do.
“Hey, we know you’re here. We see the warm food. Come on out. We don’t mean harm. We’re neighbors of the Bransons, the owners of the place,” the man called out.
Travis didn’t believe the story.
“There’s two of you and five of us. Come on out!” the man cried out.
Lori pressed her lips together and gripped the pistol tightly.
“I’ll tell you what. We’re gonna just leave you guys, we don’t want trouble, but we’ll be back tomorrow to say hello,” the man said.
More unintelligible back and forth chatter between the men was followed by the shuffle of feet. A moment later Travis heard the trucks’ engines roar to life.
Unsure if they had actually left, Travis stayed put.
Hours had gone by since Travis had heard the trucks leave. Feeling he could explore, he slowly stood and carefully exited the room. With controlled effort he took one step after another down the carpeted hallway. At the edge of the hall and living room, the moon’s light provided enough illumination for him to see the room was empty. He pulled a flashlight out and turned it on; the light splashed across the room and verified that he was alone. He examined the damaged front door and the ransacked living room. An image of Lori sitting alone and terrified in the darkness of the safe room flashed in his mind. He rushed to the office, cleared the closet, and began to open the panel when she screamed out.
“Travis?”
“It’s me. Sorry, I should have warned you.” He popped the panel and reached in for her.
She breathed a long sigh of relief and grabbed his arm. When she went to stand, she realized her legs were asleep. The painful pins and needles made it difficult for her to exit the small space.
“You all right?” Travis asked.
“No, I’m not all right.”
He helped her clear the tight opening and carried her to the back bedroom and placed her on the bed.
“Sorry you had to stay in there so long. I just didn’t know if they had left when I heard the trucks leave.”
“It’s okay. I figured you were being careful.”
He got her some water, and while she rested, they talked about the events of the evening, and the specific point that the men would return in the morning came up.
“What should we do?” she asked.
“We have two options. Stay and confront them; they could be harmless or they may not. Second, we flee, to where, I don’t know.”
“Why didn’t they come looking for us?”
“Because they’re smart. They suspected we were lying in wait for them. I wouldn’t go looking for someone I didn’t need to.”
“How can we hold off five men? What if they come back with more?”
“Or they may not come back at all,” Travis proposed. “That might have been a blanket threat; they may never come back for fear of their own lives. We do have an advantage here.”
“I think we should leave.”
Travis sat on the edge of the bed and looked at Lori; the tea-light candle shined on her smooth face and glimmered in her eyes.
At that moment he felt a weakness and wanted to kiss her. He resisted the urge, but wondered why he had that feeling suddenly hit him. Was it because she was vulnerable? Was he really drawn to her? What about Tess? He stood up suddenly and said, “Let’s discuss this in the morning. Get some sleep,” and he left.
Lori was shocked by his abrupt exit and lay there wondering what was wrong. Too wired and scared to sleep, she got up and went to find him. She found him sitting in the large armchair in the living room with only the moon’s light to see.
“Is everything okay?” she asked.
“Fine, just thought you could use some sleep.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” he answered, then promptly shifted the topic. “I moved the heavy baker’s rack in front of the front door. I’ll also sleep out here, just in case.”
She placed her hand on his shoulder and said, “I know I’ve said this before, but I don’t think I can say it enough, thank you. You saved my life, and you continue to save it. I don’t know what we would do without you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I don’t know how to repay you.”
“Stop, there’s no need to repay anyone. But seriously you need to get some rest.”
“Travis, I’m not a child. I know when I need to rest.”
“So I was thinking.”
“Isn’t that a difficult task for Marines?” she joked.
Ignoring her, he continued, “I think we leave tomorrow morning, take the old minivan parked out back, and go.”
She sat on the coffee table and stared at him.
“Are you fine with that plan?” he asked.
“Yes, I say we leave and go find your friend together, and from there we go find Tess.”
He leaned forward and placed his head in his hands and sighed. “But when I say we leave, I then think that it’s more risky on the road than here. I’m confusing myself.”
“Don’t confuse yourself. We leave tomorrow, first thing. Pack what we can and go.”
He faced her and said, “Then that’s the plan. We leave and head towards Rapid City.”
She again touched his arm and in a soft tone said, “We’re in this together. We’ll find your friend, get the vaccine, and then find your fiancée.”
The Death Trilogy (Book 2): The Death: Eradicate Page 4
