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

by Dana Fraser

Petting the dog, Cash turned his back to the Jeep and looked up at the bridge. It was old and had been out of commission for a long time. Decades had passed since the last train had rattled over the rusting structure. Huge sections of wood beams were missing from rot or storms.

  “You didn’t mention it was so high up,” Cash grumbled as Ellis came to stand by him.

  “That a problem?” Ellis asked then jerked his thumb behind him. “We won’t be getting on where it’s high.”

  “It’s not the getting on, I’m concerned about. It’s the getting over,” Cash replied, his gaze on the big gaps where they would have to walk on rails no wider than balance beams.

  “At dusk,” he added.

  Going over in full daylight was too dangerous. So was going over by moonlight. What looked like a shadow at night could be a hole or at least a rotted out board that was one misplaced step away from becoming a hole.

  “Finished,” Hannah said as she opened up the back of the Jeep and pulled out her pack.

  Despite two days of high-speed chases broken by periods of no movement at all as they hid and waited out their pursuers, she released a small laugh and patted the side of the vehicle.

  “Do you remember when Dad wanted to get something amphibious or kit this one out?”

  Ellis nodded, his mouth a flat line once more. Cash wasn’t sure the grim expression was meant for his sister after all the scolding she had done or if he was thinking about his father again.

  Catching Cash’s gaze on him, Ellis lifted his shoulders. “Guess it’s too late for him to give Becca the old ‘I told you so’ line for being right about how useful it would turn out to be.”

  Wanting to shield Hannah from the shift in conversation, Cash didn’t reply. She’d been upset before when Ellis had indicated that the marriage between his father and her mother was on the rocks. She’d been even more upset by the kid’s assertion that Colonel Thomas Sand felt no compulsion to protect his family.

  “Are we going over now?” Hannah asked, shouldering her pack.

  Cash nodded. They could keep going in the Jeep, there was gas left, but the vehicle had attracted a dangerous amount of attention along the road. This one abandoned trestle bridge, no longer included on maps, was their best chance for getting over the river, short of abandoning their gear or stealing a boat.

  First they’d have to find a boat.

  “Can’t go over it at night,” Cash agreed, adjusting his pack and the AR-15 with its Lightning Link before taking over puppy duty.

  “I’ll carry Grub over,” Ellis said then did a little Frankenstein walk while jeering at Cash. “I can already tell that you’re afraid of heights. Don’t want you freaking out and dropping him.”

  “Kid,” Cash growled as he shrugged his pack on. “You’ve got no idea how much I want to cuff you upside the head.”

  Smirking, Ellis rolled his eyes. “Probably just a pinch more than I want to cuff you when you call me ‘kid,’ grandpa.”

  “Fair enough,” Cash laughed. “You get us across that skeleton of a structure with no lost gear and no one hurt, the mutt included, and I’ll stop saying it — out loud, at least.”

  Hannah brushed past them on her way to the tracks. “Let’s save the jousting for when we’re across the bridge, boys.”

  “I’ve got point,” Ellis softly called, overtaking his sister and being the first of their quartet to step onto the trestle.

  “We need to check the area first,” Cash warned. “I don’t exactly get the warm fuzzies thinking about someone opening fire while we’re in the middle of crossing.”

  He swatted his hand in front of his face, slapping at the ugly specter of the holes in the bridge that spanned its entire width.

  Carrying Cash’s Browning, Hannah looked through its scope, while Cash used the scope on the AR-15 and Ellis pulled out the binoculars, the night vision goggles perched atop his head.

  “From how far off do you think anyone will be able to see us?” she asked.

  Cash looked at the failing daylight and how far down stream he could see with the aid of the scope. “Less than a quarter mile.”

  Meeting Ellis’s gaze, he tipped his chin at him. “Your show.”

  Up the kid went, a bounce in his step. He jumped around from board to board, like he was playing some kind of giant floor piano. He kept doing it until Grub complained halfway up the incline.

  Nothing like a puppy to get a kid to behave.

  Hannah moved much more slowly, her eyes studying the length and color of each board before she placed her foot on it. Cash repeated the inspection knowing that, between his body and the extra weight in the pack, he had a good hundred pounds on her. Boards that supported Hannah’s weight might not support his.

  Reaching the top of the incline, Ellis waited for them, his hands busy with some task or entertainment. When Cash got close, he saw Ellis was fashioning three tie offs with paracord and D-rings. The loops of nylon rope were long enough that they could go around the side rail of the trestle when crossing a particularly challenging area — like where there was nothing but a big hole and a plunge into cold October waters.

  Reaching the siblings, Cash watched as Ellis instructed Hannah how to hook herself to the rail.

  “Can’t we just stay hooked to it?” she asked, her voice overflowing with hope.

  Ellis looked to Cash, who shook his head.

  “You’d have to hook and unhook every six feet, bridge is about twenty-six hundred feet, that’s more than four hundred times you’ll need hook on, and four hundred times you’ll have to unhook.”

  “But it’s safer,” she pointed out, an unflagging optimism stretching her face wide.

  Cash looked at the light already purpling and gave another negative shake of his head. “It’s the opposite of safe. You’ll be hooking in the dark by the time we’re at the halfway point, and anyone training a gun on us will know when we’re pausing, not to mention you’d have to unhook before you could so much as lay down on the ground for cover.”

  “Let’s just start without it,” Ellis coaxed, his hand squeezing warmly at Hannah’s arm as Cash brought up the rear.

  As Cash had cautioned earlier on the trip, they kept a distance between one another of about six feet so that a shot missing one of them as the intended target would likely miss all of them.

  It took ten minutes for them to reach the first gaping hole. Ellis didn’t hook on, just traipsed across, his arm holding Grub tight so that a shift in the dog’s weight wouldn’t send them both into the water.

  Hannah followed. She hooked her rail loop on, tested the knots then started across the gap that lasted for two six-foot sections. Cash watched her go, hand over hand despite the loop, apprehension twisting on her face like a snake living beneath her fair skin.

  He waited for her to clear the gap then he hooked on to the side rail. His feet were bigger, making the foot rail feel unreasonably narrow. The flaking rust combining with his weight made his feet slide a few times, one section of the bottom rail dissolving as he stepped down.

  “Almost there,” Hannah urged from her side of the gap, an encouraging smile on her face.

  The setting sun turned her hair shades of orange and a dusky purple. The eyes no longer had a glow to them. Instead they glittered at him.

  Taking a deep breath, he chastised himself for thinking about how she looked instead of where his foot was landing.

  “You want to open the distance up,” he reminded her as he reached the end of the hole through the bridge’s floor.

  She moved six feet away, still facing him and smiling as he unhooked from the rail.

  A three-round burst from the east sent bullets ricocheting off the iron supports of the trestle. Hannah swung and looked in the direction of the shots instead of taking cover.

  Cash tackled her, knocking her to the ground with a fervent prayer on his lips that the wood wasn’t rotten as close as they were to the huge gap.

  He hit the ground next to her, his pack shielding
his back and his whole body shielding Hannah’s. He looked further up the bridge to see the kid two-thirds on his stomach as he tried to take cover with the puppy strapped to his chest.

  “Take off the sling,” Cash barked.

  Ellis ignored him. Reaching into the sling, he pulled out the high-tech night vision goggles he had taken from his father’s collection, the twilight sky just dark enough for the enhanced optics to be more useful than the scope on Cash’s rifle.

  “Stay down,” Cash rasped at Hannah as he pulled his monocle from a pocket in his cargo pants. With a glance at Ellis, he saw the kid signal a direction from where the shots had come.

  Looking through the monocle, Cash saw two shooters. They were on the same side of the river where the Jeep was parked but further downstream.

  Shooting at the bridge didn’t make any sense as the men seemed to have spotted the vehicle and were closing in on it.

  Not that the gas in the Jeep would do them any good. The kid had tucked the wires back in place and pocketed the spare key he had used to steal the vehicle.

  “Keep moving,” Cash whispered tersely, his hand landing on Hannah’s bottom to give her a nudge before he got in position to lay down cover fire on the shooters.

  Really, why the hell had they even announced their position and with such lousy aim?

  Hannah low crawled along the wooden planks, passing Ellis where he waited to provide cover. Cash moved forward, reaching Ellis then sending him on ahead to the next point for him to cover Hannah again.

  A fresh shot bounced off the iron rail two feet from Cash, his ears ringing. Seeing the muzzle flash, he immediately swung his rifle into position and pulled the trigger on the AR-15, the Lightning Link spitting out six rounds before he could ease off the trigger.

  “Target down,” Ellis confirmed before slamming Cash with a fresh jolt of bad news as he adjusted his goggles. “Third target — armed.”

  Reaching the second of the two large gaps, Ellis attached his loop, switching the side to which it was hooked, and walked backwards, the M16 held at firing position.

  Cash hated to admit it, but as hard as traveling with the brother and sister made it difficult to be invisible, the kid had skills Cash hadn’t seen on some of his team members even after three years in the desert.

  Hannah, however, was still a work in progress.

  Reaching the second gap, she hooked on, a grimace on her face as she gripped the rail with both hands and shuffled quickly toward where her brother covered her.

  Fear lurched inside Cash’s gut as he watched her move. Something bad was about to happen. She hadn’t moved at an angle like the kid, which left her torso fully exposed to gunfire. Her legs shook from the effort of balancing on the rail at that speed.

  Her sharp cry twisted through Cash’s chest. Her feet slipped, the hard jerk against the loop making her hands fly off the rail. Feet dangling, she tried to reclaim her grip on the rail, her body stationary far longer than was necessary for one of the shooters to draw a bead on her.

  Jumping up, Cash unleashed round after round in the direction of the shooters as Hannah regained her footing and shimmied the rest of the way across the hole.

  Cash followed after, his loop unsecured and banging at his hip as he quickly heel-toe-heeled his way along the narrow beam.

  With the two major hazards on the bridge conquered, they covered the remaining distance quickly, Ellis and Cash covering Hannah, Ellis covering Cash and Cash covering Ellis, everyone moving like a well-practiced team that had been working together for years.

  Crashing through to the tree line on the other side, they dropped low to the ground and looked for any sign that they were being pursued.

  Nothing moved on the opposite bank of the river, but somewhere above them, Cash heard the familiar whine of a drone.

  Chapter Two

 

  Soaking wet clothes clinging to her body, Tonya Anders glanced over her shoulder to make sure her mother and little brother weren’t falling too far behind. All of them, Tonya included, were cold, wet and miserable.

  They were also weaponless, the rapids that had formed while they swam across the Cumberland River playing tug-of-war with their clothes and trying to drag and hold them underneath the water. The handgun had been the first to go, sliding out of Samson’s belt. Then the strap on the assault rifle caught on a log and tried to choke Tonya at the same time the river tried to drown her.

  Mother nature kept pissing on them even after they cleared the river, the same storm that had riled up the river dogging their footsteps through the woods.

  “Are we sure we’re headed in the right direction?” Genevieve asked as Tonya stopped and they all drew into a huddle, their bodies shivering violently.

  Tonya pressed her lips together. Her mother had asked the question at least four times a day for, what? The last six days? Was that how long it had been since they were yanked out of their vehicle and led off to be slaughtered?

  “Honey?” Genevieve prodded.

  Tonya frowned, not at the constant repetition of the question but at her inability to provide a definite answer. Over the course of a little more than a year, the land around the homestead had changed drastically. The river seemed wider — faster, too.

  Samson thought the changes might be because of the dams further upstream, something about them maybe not working if the power was out. Since the water flowed south to north on that stretch of the Cumberland River, Lake Barkley would be swelling if the dam didn’t let water out downstream.

  As confusing as the landscape had become, they had encountered familiar place names the day before the river crossing. If it wasn’t so damn important to avoid anyone and everyone, Tonya could have easily navigated them across the water taking the U.S. 79 overpass. That would have placed them a only a few miles from the road that lead to Cash and Marie’s homestead.

  Only, avoiding people, especially whites, wasn’t an option if they wanted to live. That meant a mile was never a mile. It was a mile and a half or two, sometimes three, just to get a little past a house with a farmer holding a shotgun or rough looking males riding around, six of them to a pick-up truck, all of them — even the driver, holding a rifle up.

  “If we passed the homestead without realizing it, we’ll hit Happy Hollow,” Tonya answered at last, her stomach growling. “We can follow that to their turn-off.”

  “Another night in the woods?” Samson asked, extending the bottom of his shirt towards her with its treasure of gathered blackberries.

  Tonya waved away the offering of food. They’d been eating only berries the last two days and her stomach was in turmoil. If the weather had been nicer and they had been further from the homestead, she would have tried to catch another fish or two.

  Catching fish meant cooking fish, though, and the last two nights they had spent too much of each day avoiding people to feel safe lighting a fire. After crossing the river, she doubted the Bic she had in her pocket would even work.

  A coughing fit gripped Samson. Tonya grabbed the edge of his shirt to keep the berries from spilling while Genevieve slapped at his back.

  If they didn’t get someplace warm and dry, Tonya thought, Samson would get full blown pneumonia.

  Rage washed through her, tightening her jaw and peeling her lips away from her teeth in an ugly grimace.

  Why had their car been stolen? It was their car! And the men who had taken it were supposed to be the good guys — cops. They had intended to take every last thing from her family then kill them like they were stepping on bugs.

  “We should rest,” Genevieve started but Samson cut her off.

  “We’re close, mama.”

  “We have to get out of the clearing, at least,” Tonya said, turning away from them and taking point.

  They moved into the next thick stand of trees, the clouds and the overhead canopy throwing the area they walked through into a premature dusk.

  Freezing, Tonya threw up her hand, signaling for th
e rest of her family to stop.

  A crack, a snap — one person walking if the last five or six days had sharpened her senses as much as she believed.

  Stealth walking to where a heavy branch had fallen alongside a tree trunk, Tonya picked it up and signaled for Samson and Genevieve to take cover behind one of the fat tree trunks that surrounded them.

  Please don’t have a gun!

  Arms shaking from its weight, she lifted the branch as the snap and crackle grew closer. The barrel of a rifle crossed into her line of sight.

  Tonya jumped forward, slashing downward with the branch.

  Something solid and heavy collided against her back, taking her hard to the forest floor. When she rolled to the side, she saw Samson next to her, his face filled with guilt. When she looked up, she found the rifle loosely pointed at her chest.

  A dark haired woman stared blankly at her for a moment.

  “Tonya?” the woman whispered. “Tonya Anders?”

  “Mrs. Lodge!” Genevieve yelled, bursting from behind another tree.

  Marie Lodge swung wildly in Genevieve’s direction, the front of the rifle leading the way. Tonya reached up and jerked the barrel toward the ground.

  “You wanna watch where you’re pointing that damn thing?” Tonya growled. One way or another, all the white people seemed intent on killing her family, either from malice or incompetence.

  “Mind yourself,” her mother hissed before casting an apologetic glance at Marie. “You’re right, it’s us. Tonya, Samson and, me—”

  “Genevieve,” Marie supplied then quickly shouldered the gun and threw her arms around the startled black woman.

  Marie turned, one hand briefly touching Tonya then Samson before she looked at all of them and blurted the unimaginable.

  “I need your help!”

  Wet, stomachs growling, another harsh, repeating cough building in Samson’s chest, the Anders family looked at Marie Lodge as if she’d grown a second head.

  “It’s my daughter. She left the house…ran out screaming that she was going to find Cash.”

  “Find him?” the family asked in unison.