Long Haul Home Collection (A Post-Apocalyptic Dystopian Thriller): Series Books 1-3

by Dana Fraser

  Her head dropped a little more to the side as her brows came together, her fingertips dancing against the forward prominence of her hips.

  “It’s a bucket of cat litter.”

  His nostrils flared, the corners of his mouth turning down as he tried to squash his mirth. His throat bobbed but he couldn’t reply, not yet. Not with his eyes watering up.

  “Kid comes with me,” Cash said after a few more seconds. “I need to collect my pack. He can get the water at the same time.”

  Her hands dropped to her sides. She looked at her brother then at Cash.

  “You won’t hurt him…”

  Was she asking him or telling him, Cash wondered. All the irritation from him suggesting she perch her butt over a bucket of cat litter had been wiped clean from her expression.

  It could have been the disappearing light, but her face darkened and the eyes took on a pleading cast.

  “He’ll be fine as long as he doesn’t do something stupid.”

  The answer didn’t satisfy Hannah. She shook her head and took a step toward Cash. Instinctively, he raised the rifle up. She halted immediately.

  He cursed his reaction internally. He didn’t want to frighten the woman or get her kid brother riled up.

  “He can stay while I get the water,” she said. “As you already observed, his ribs are in bad shape.”

  Okay, Cash mused. Maybe he did need to scare her, just a little, just enough for her to realize she was in no position to dictate terms.

  “No,” Ellis interrupted the standoff. “I’ll go.”

  It was the first time the kid had spoken since surrendering. And even though it was just a few short syllables, he could hear the accusation in the young man’s voice.

  He didn’t trust Cash to be alone with Hannah.

  Cash smiled and moved to the side, gesturing with the barrel of his rifle for the kid to move out first.

  “Not that it’s a democracy,” he said to Hannah as he turned to follow Ellis. “But you’ve been outvoted.”

  With the kid’s ribs hurting him, it took close to half an hour to get the water and Cash’s pack. When they got back to the trailer, it was pitch black.

  Hannah had a bandana over a flashlight, the glow too insubstantial to see from outside the trailer and just enough inside to see that she had laid out some food.

  She had even found some tins of cat food and had them stacked next to a small bowl.

  Taking Grub from the sling, Cash placed him on the floor, poured some water and opened one of the tins.

  He gestured at the canned beans and corn on paper plates. “This from the boxes?”

  Finishing a sip from the water her brother had brought, she nodded.

  “We haven’t found much that’s useful,” she confessed. “Unless it’s your life’s ambition to own thirty seven ceramic elephants of various size and hues. Thirty eight if you consider Ganesh as qualifying as an elephant.”

  Cash shrugged. He didn’t know who or what a Ganesh was, but he liked listening to the woman talk. On its surface, her voice was as delicate as she was. But the precise way she had of delivering her words added an edge to them, and he suspected the same edge was waiting, camouflaged, in the fragile lines of her body.

  Grunting, he shoved a forkful of beans into his mouth. He wasn’t there to make friends. Strangers, good or ill, were anchors weighing him down.

  Hannah stroked at Grub’s fur, one finger smoothing down to inspect the bandage. Cash had gotten rid of the splints now that Grub was more mobile, but he had kept the area wrapped for support.

  “What happened to his paw?”

  “Got kicked, I imagine,” Cash answered between bites.

  Not wanting to look at the woman, the covered penlight giving a soft glow to her face, he looked at her brother.

  The kid hadn’t said anything on the walk to the creek and back. Cash wasn’t sure what to make of him.

  “You weren’t there when it happened?” she asked before reaching the right conclusion. “You picked him up after the lights went out.”

  Images from the playpen clogged Cash’s head, keeping him from talking. Seeing that the puppy had finished eating and drinking, he pulled Grub too him then moved to a spot near the trailer’s opening.

  Without another word to his temporary companions, he drifted with fits and turns into a troubled sleep.

  Chapter Nine

 

  Cash spent the next day and another night in the trailer, the woman slowly drawing small bits of information from him about where he was headed and why. He left things vague, but answering her questions was the only way to get her to shut up for a few seconds.

  He didn’t linger on her behalf or for her injured, tight lipped brother. He wanted to go through the boxes they hadn’t opened yet.

  By the time he had, the total count on the ceramic elephants was fifty-two, including the freaky looking one with a human body and four arms, but an elephant’s ears and long trunk.

  Except for a few more cans of food that Cash parceled among the three of them, the delay had been pointless for him.

  The kid needed more time to heal up, but Cash didn’t care about that. He wasn’t walking with them, even if there was no reason for their paths to diverge for the first ten miles.

  The siblings were headed east into Indiana after that.

  On the second morning, as the sky began to purple with approaching daylight, Cash rearranged the weight in his pack.

  Seeing Hannah start the process with her own bag, he gritted his teeth. The gritting turned to grinding as she moved on to her brother’s pack.

  “You’re not traveling with me,” he warned, rushing through the last of his preparations and settling Grub into the sling.

  Hannah didn’t miss a beat in transferring some of the weight in Ellis’s pack to her own. “You’re going south for a ways, so are we. You suddenly own the road?”

  At a loss for words, Cash repeated himself. “You’re not traveling with me.”

  Shouldering her pack, she got straight up in Cash’s space. “Why would that be such a bad thing?”

  He jerked a thumb at Ellis, who was still sitting on his ass next to his pack.

  “He doesn’t have any distance in him with those ribs.” His gaze dropped to Hannah’s hips and slow walked down to her toes. “And you’ve got no speed. Oompa Loompas have longer legs.”

  “Whatever,” she sniped, striding past him. She plopped her bottom onto the floor of the trailer then slid gracefully to the ground.

  With a resigned sigh, Ellis grabbed his pack and followed, sparing a glance at Grub before he disappeared after his sister.

  Cash opened the cap on his water bladder, took a long pull, then another. He shook his head, reminding his better nature just how much they really would slow him down. They would also add to the noise. One person moved more quietly than three, especially when two of them had no special training.

  The shuffle of shoes along the pebbly asphalt had Cash dropping the Browning to an at arms position.

  Ellis popped his head around the corner of the door, his attitude unphazed by the rifle pointed at him.

  “The way you move,” he started, then stopped for a long pause.

  Cash stared at the kid. A full day and a half around Hannah and Ellis and the teen had uttered only a couple dozen words.

  Ellis’s mouth quirked to the side and then he scowled. “Is that from prison or the military?”

  The question was a punch to the gut. If Cash were a criminal, they wouldn’t be breathing. If he were a criminal, his hands wouldn’t have given Hannah a cursory pat down during the weapon’s check. He would have lingered over the appealing feminine lines, would have pulled back the fall of blond hair for a glimpse of the long neck as it curved from head to shoulder.

  “Army,” he answered, tamping down on the urge to jump down from the trailer and cuff the kid.

  “So a soldier,” the kid said, a sneer forming on the right side of f
ace. “Sworn to protect.”

  He started to pull away then offered a slow lift of his shoulders.

  “I guess that was a long time ago.”

  Swearing inside his head, Cash fell in line behind Ellis and his sister. Hannah’s short legs were pumping hard and so were the kid’s lungs. If she didn’t slow down, the two of them would be wilting before they finished the first mile.

  Lengthening his stride, Cash pulled ahead of her then adjusted his lead to a slower pace.

  “It’s not a sprint,” he cautioned.

  “I wasn’t the one who suggested it was,” Hannah muttered under her breath.

  He let the sharp reply go and studied the road ahead of them. Trees and fields boxed them in but the road had left behind the sharp turns and gentler curves. They had a clear line of sight, but so did anyone coming up on them.

  “We need to stick to the trees,” he said, heading toward the run-off ditch. The ditch’s slides sloped toward one another and there had to be at least two feet of stagnant water at its bottom.

  One arm cradling Grub’s sling, Cash jumped across.

  Ellis followed after him, a grimace on his face when he landed. He turned and watched Hannah as she hesitated on the opposite bank. She looked up and down the ditch as far as the eye could see. The gap was a uniform width and the stagnant water every bit as deep for the visible length.

  Seeing the kid was about to straddle the ditch, Cash pulled on his arm.

  “Hold him,” he growled, taking Grub’s sling off and handing the puppy to Ellis.

  Straddling the ditch, he held one hand out to Hannah. Her mouth puckered into a pout like she didn’t want to admit she couldn’t make the jump. She wrapped her hands around the straps of her pack and started to remove it.

  What was she thinking? That if she threw the pack across and shed its weight, she could make the jump?

  “Stop wasting my time, Princess.”

  Grabbing her around the waist, Cash hefted Hannah over to the opposite bank of the ditch then extended his hand.

  “Now help me balance.”

  She wrapped both her hands around his wrist and dug her heels in. As soon as he was on solid ground, she jerked her hands free and headed into the trees. Cash turned to retrieve Grub.

  “I can carry him a while,” Ellis offered.

  “No, kid, you can’t.”

  Watching Ellis stalk off into the tree line, Cash mused that brother and sister were equally pissed off at him.

  Good, they’d be that much more eager to split from him when the time came.

  After the first three miles, Cash called a halt. Ellis sank to the ground almost immediately. Hannah helped the teen out of his pack.

  “Lift up your shirt,” she ordered quietly.

  Ellis hesitated a few seconds but ultimately obeyed. A short, dismayed cry left Hannah.

  “This is fresh bruising,” she said, her fingers lightly touching the skin. She looked over her shoulder to where Cash stood. “Do you know anything about this? Medically I mean. What the new bruising might mean and if there’s anything we can do?”

  “Wrapping will only help with the pain,” Cash answered, putting his pack and Grub on the ground. “But wrapping makes pneumonia more likely, especially under current conditions.”

  Opening a pill bottle, he shook out two ibuprofen and handed them to Ellis. Next he put his hand over the bruise then to the opposite side where there was no discoloration.

  “How’d this happen anyway?”

  Ellis offered a feeble smirk as his only reply.

  “I hit him with my car,” Hannah whispered.

  Cash glanced in her direction. Her face had gone pale, her gaze fixed on the ground.

  “To keep someone from burying a knife in my heart,” Ellis clarified. “It’s okay, Sis.”

  Reaching into his bag, Cash pulled out an instant cold pack. He gave it a squeeze, activating the chemicals inside, then handed it to Ellis.

  “You don’t want to stay still too long, but you don’t want to push too long, either. We’ll set a pace for ninety minutes walking followed by an hour’s rest…at least until we get to Norr.”

  His tongue tripped over the town’s name. It was where his path was bound to diverge from theirs. The siblings were heading east to Evansville. He was continuing south.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Ellis said, leaning against his bag, his outstretched arm tapping at the ground as he tried to coax Grub over to him. “Hannah said something about the guards at her work maybe knowing this was all going to go down.”

  Cash looked at the woman. She shrugged.

  “There isn’t supposed to be a basement level at the company,” she explained. “But there’s a room with only an elevator in it. And I saw some heavy brass going in once before. The weekend guard tried to keep me from leaving when the lights went out.”

  “She crawled through the ceiling of the ladies room and out through the head of security’s office window,” Ellis added, pride ringing in his voice. “Get this — the guard also said everything fell apart quicker than they planned.”

  “Quicker than expected,” Hannah corrected.

  Cash mulled over the information. “Where did you work?”

  “At a research company for green energy — solar, hydro, wind and geothermal, plus anything else, really.”

  She pushed a thick lock of the pale blond hair over her shoulder before blushing. “I’m not sure the guy wasn’t just creeping on me.”

  “Maybe he was,” Ellis agreed, “but it got me thinking. Power going out everywhere isn’t just about not being able to watch television or pump gas. Energy is needed at chemical plants. A lot of that kind of shit gets above a certain temperature and you’ve got massive explosions, poisonous gas wiping out entire towns, killing off wildlife and vegetation. Then there are the nuclear power plants. They need energy to keep the water cooling down the reactors.”

  “But they generate energy—” Cash started.

  “Doesn’t matter, they still operate on power from outside sources, with a very limited battery backup. There are over a hundred reactors in the U.S., some as old as Fukushima, and the government only has plans to deal with short blackouts, not something as long as several days and definitely not for weeks.”

  Getting agitated, Ellis sat up too quickly as he tried to face Cash and look him in the eye.

  “Settle down,” Cash said, pushing at the teen’s shoulder as Ellis suddenly went ghost white. “So you’re saying you think this is some conspiracy and the government is in on it.”

  Ellis nodded, his gaze darting to Hannah. The woman’s pale green eyes seemed wider than humanly possible.

  “Why would the government do that, kid? Why would it implode its own infrastructure, kill its own people by starting wars between factions and leave the entire country vulnerable to its enemies?”

  “Simple,” Ellis answered. “Domino effect. The U.S. sneezes and the rest of the world gets pneumonia. Groups in other countries that were reluctant to pull the same trigger are left with no other option because the U.S. no longer exists to save them. Everyone at the top is off somewhere safe while we all die like bugs. The elite don’t need us anymore — at least not seven billion of us spreading around the planet like locusts.”

  Cash shook his head. “I got news for you, conspiracies don’t get that big, too many people in on the secret.”

  Ellis chuckled then lapsed into a coughing fit. When he finished, he wiped at his mouth. “Six thousand soldiers in Turkey thought they were being deployed to stop terrorism. What’s to say some upgrade to the grid wasn’t made a few years ago, thousands of technicians deployed to install some switch to make things better, or so they were told. Same thing was told to anyone at the manufacturing plant making the switches. One person gave one order and the switches were made and installed by thousands at facilities that provided power to hundreds of millions.”

  “No one asks questions anymore,” Hannah agreed, arms wrapped around her c
hest in a tight hug.

  Turning to his pack, Cash pulled out a tin of cat food and three MREs. “We don’t need to talk about this. All you’re doing is hurting your ribs getting all excited and upsetting your sister.”

  The kid wrapped a hand around Cash’s wrist, stopping him from opening the first of the meal packets. “Yeah, we do need to talk. Because seven miles from now, you plan on heading south while we head east. But if my dad made it home, he has connections, expertise…things that can help you protect your family.”

  “If your dad is there,” Cash repeated, easing his hand from the kid’s grip to slice open the MRE.

  Chapter Ten

 

  As they walked, Ellis hammered Cash with reasons why he should detour to Evansville. Not the least of the reasons he offered was the promise of some choice firearms that, even if the house had been ransacked, likely would remain undiscovered.

  For every reason Ellis tossed out, Cash countered him, the task easy because every last one of Ellis’s arguments depended on his father having arrived or the absence of scavengers squatting at the residence, or the less than minor consideration of surviving a trip through a city with over a hundred thousand residents.

  They made camp at the split where Cash would continue south down U.S. 45 while Hannah and Ellis would turn east along country roads. Fog crept over the ground, turning the landscape gloomy and changing the kid’s mood as he made one last pitch that Cash come with them.

  Cash didn’t bother countering the argument, just gave the kid a long, probing look.

  Ellis’s face twisted, the mouth contorting from determined to crestfallen. Hannah reached across and covered his hand, lightly squeezing at it.

  “Your dad is still making his way to us. That’s why we have to get home and wait. He’ll check there first then move on to your school.”

  “There was a voicemail on my phone…I deleted it without listening.” Shaking his head, Ellis withdrew his hand. “Who am I kidding? If the government is behind this, Colonel Thomas Sand is in on it ‘for the good of the country.’”