Windburn

by Kenny Soward

  “A blood-typing kit, some IV bags, needles, and lines,” Carla said, matter-of-factly. “I put together a little bag for Todd before those roughnecks came down. You can take it with you.”

  “Thank you.”

  They entered the lobby of the urgent care facility and stepped through the bloody, broken glass to stand in the rain once more.

  Carla’s tone grew serious and firm, as if she was about to propose something to Sara that Sara might not like. “I heard you have a nurse up on the mountain. We sure could use her services down here.”

  Sara blinked as she mulled over the suggestion and answered carefully. “I can pass along the information to Natasha, but I can’t guarantee she’ll come. We’ve got a fairly defensible position where we are.”

  “Then maybe we can send some of our wounded your way,” Carla insisted. “Having a quiet place to recover would be good for them.”

  Sara shook her head, resentment rising inside her that she would insinuate such a thing. “No offense, Carla. We’re not part of whatever is happening here. I just want my family to be safe, and I want my husband to come home.”

  “And no offense to you, Sara,” the doctor countered, “but you’re part of this whether you like it or not. Our country is at war with itself, and we need people like you to help sort out the mess.” When Sara looked away with doubt, Carla continued. “You can hide up on the mountain all you want, but the chaos will eventually find you.”

  “It already has,” Sara replied, glumly.

  Carla nodded, and Sara saw genuine empathy in the woman’s eyes. While she was still doubtful about putting her family at risk by getting involved, Carla was right, and so was Todd. Everyone else seemed to have accepted the reality they all faced except for Sara. Relenting, she said, “There are several empty cabins up on Pine Bluff Road. We could probably set some folks up in them.”

  “That’s the spirit,” Carla said with a tentative smile. “We’ll keep you posted by radio when we’re bringing someone up.”

  Sara glanced over as Dion and Barbara brought Todd out of the urgent care facility and walked him slowly toward the Subaru. Then she stared up at the sky before her eyes finally settled on the Antler Bar and Grill. Something deep within her gut pulled her in that direction, so she started walking up the gravel driveway, angling toward the establishment she’d shot up a short time ago.

  “Where are you going?” Carla called after her.

  “I need to see what I did,” Sara replied as emotions warred inside her. Part of her didn’t want to know who she’d injured or killed trying to get her son back. And while she could justify her actions unapologetically, the payment for them was steep. “I need to recognize it and own it.”

  Without waiting for a response, Sara picked up her pace, unslinging her rifle as she moved around to the front of the Antler with trepidation picking at her brain. Someone had removed the branch barring the doors, and they hung open on broken hinges. A trail of blood led to the edge of the woods where one of the men who’d been drinking inside earlier lay dead.

  Sara turned toward the doors and stepped through the gap between them with the barrel of her weapon pointed ahead. The grungy tile floor was smeared red, and the coppery smell of blood and stale beer assaulted her nose. Sara stepped farther inside and gazed across the wider expanse of the room. There were three pool tables in the middle and several drinking tables along the outside edge, and the neon lights of beer signs were all dead.

  The gentle glow from an electric lantern drew her attention to the bar where one of the men sat quietly with his back toward her.

  Keeping her eyes on the man at the bar, she stepped over the body of a second man who’d been shot at least twice before attempting to get away from the doors Sara had been shooting through. His hand still clenched the gun he no doubt would have used on Sara if he’d gotten the chance. Farther inside the room, another man lay dead, his rifle flung to the ground nearby.

  As Sara stepped around the last body, she heard quiet sobs. She leaned over and peered beneath one of the pool tables where the woman who’d been drinking with the men sat with her knees pulled up to her chest, shivering in fear. The woman raised her shaking hands to show she was unarmed, and it took a moment for Sara to realize she was terrified of her.

  Wordlessly, Sara stood up and left the woman beneath the table, refocusing on the man at the bar. She approached slowly and placed the barrel of her AR-15 against his back.

  The man turned slightly in her direction but showed no other sign of being afraid of her. “I was here drinking before they showed up. I had nothing to do with them shooting up the clinic, and I even told them not to, until they put a gun to my head and told me to shut up. Heck, I’ve known Doctor Smith for years. Carla is a good lady. Looks out for the folks around here. Is she…?”

  “She’s fine,” Sara said, removing the barrel of her rifle from the man’s back. “We retook the clinic.”

  “Good,” the man said before he lifted a shot of whiskey to his lips and tilted it back.

  Noticing something behind the bar, Sara shouldered her rifle and went around to the other side, stepping on broken glass and a sticky, beer-soaked floor until she stood in front of a rack of snacks. There were sour cream and onion chips, barbecue ones, Funyuns, Doritos, and a few others. Sara carefully selected one or two bags, then she snatched down another half-dozen of them until she could carry no more.

  She turned, noticing the man still watching her with a careful and curious expression.

  “For my daughter,” Sara explained.

  The man nodded in return and poured himself another shot.

  Sara stepped around the bar with her rifle and armful of snacks and exited the Antler Bar and Grill.

  Chapter 4

  Jake, Boston, Massachusetts | 9:14 a.m., Thursday

  The excavator shook and shimmied as Jake cleared the last two vehicles that barred their way and drove through the gap he’d made. It had taken a few more hours to punch through to the outskirts of Boston, and Jake looked forward to reaching I-95 where he was sure the road would be open and waiting for him.

  The wind buffeted the cab and sent debris tumbling through the sky, but nothing as terrible as the storms that had first ravaged the city.

  Washington Street was still cluttered with debris and side-slung vehicles. Even so, the worst appeared to be over. Jake could have shut down the excavator and climbed into the pickup truck with Marcy and the kids, only he didn’t want to stop until they reached I-95, not until the expressway was in plain sight.

  It was warm in the excavator’s cab with the defrost kicked up to high. Jake’s entire body rattled along with the machine as if he were a part of it. His headlights cut through the morning gloom, glinting off the drizzling rain and throwing an eerie effect down the street.

  Jake’s thoughts turned to home. His heart pounded with the possibility of clear and open roads all the way back to Tennessee. They were still something like fourteen hours away, a distance Jake had noted when planning his flight out of Boston to Knoxville. He’d briefly thought about driving the distance back to Tennessee in order to save money, though he knew he’d want to get to the mountains as soon as possible. At the time, fourteen hours had seemed like forever, but after his recent ordeal inside Boston, fourteen hours didn’t seem like a big deal at all.

  “Amazing how an open road can improve your prospects one hundred percent,” Jake mused to himself.

  Rumbling along a long curve in Washington Street, Jake noticed a counter-jiggle of light that struck the buildings higher than his excavator’s headlamps reached. It meant that someone was driving down Washington Street toward him, and his shoulders began to tighten as his confidence they’d escape Boston weakened.

  He pulled his feet off the excavator’s pedals, and the machine lurched to a halt. Taking his Ruger out of the cup holder, Jake opened the cab door and climbed down onto the track. He glanced back at the caravan of vehicles and waved. Marcy and several Westin
people, including Ashley, exited their vehicles and jogged up to join Jake with rifles in hand and stern looks on their faces.

  “What is it?” Marcy asked.

  “Headlights coming our way. Let’s use the excavator for cover.”

  The group piled in and around the big machine, using its bulk as cover in case it was marauders coming around the bend. Jake snuggled in beside the track, ready to leap into the cab if he needed to.

  “Wait for my signal!” Jake shouted as the headlights coming their way grew brighter and the sounds of other engines matched the still-running excavator’s. “If they aren’t friendly, we’re going to let them have it.”

  Marcy was on the inside track, her smaller form tucked beneath the cab of the excavator. She nodded at Jake and held her pistol straight out.

  Jake stared out into the rainy gloom, and a terrible feeling suddenly came over him. Every time they won a small victory, a new danger seemed to arrive. Would this be another, bigger danger? One that would put an end to their escape plans?

  Gripping his Ruger tighter, Jake stretched his arm and aimed toward the bend in the road, swearing to fight through anyone or anything that tried to stop him from getting past this point, reaching I-95, and going home.

  Two armored Humvees pulled slowly around the bend, the full volume of their prowling engines cutting through the weather’s noise as their headlights sliced the morning gloom. Jake noticed they weren’t shiny, new vehicles. Their armor was dented and scarred from what appeared to be small-arms fire. Soldiers sat at the gun turrets, manning a pair of menacing .50 caliber machine guns.

  The Westin folks raised their rifles, prepared to shoot at the vehicles. Then Jake saw something that dashed all his doubt and fear. The stars and stripes hung from long radio antennas at the back of the vehicles, the United States flag fluttering in the gusting winds.

  “Put your guns down,” Jake said with a sigh. He raised his hand and made lowering motions. “They’re our guys and gals. United States soldiers.”

  “Are you sure?” Marcy asked, doubt in her eyes behind her thick-rimmed glasses. “I wouldn’t put it past some X-Gangers to capture military vehicles and try to impersonate soldiers.”

  The barrels of the Westin folks didn’t lower immediately, and Jake stood and stepped forward into the street, raising his hand higher and waving at the oncoming soldiers. “You might be right,” he called back, “but it doesn’t really matter. We won’t be able to do much against that armor, and their guns would cut us in half.”

  When the soldiers saw Jake, the Humvees immediately came to a stop and the barrels of the .50 caliber guns trained on Jake’s chest.

  “Stop right there!” one of the soldiers in the turrets shouted, and Jake stopped cold, his insides curling as those barrels pointed at him. All it would take was one short burst from either one, and Jake would be a piece of mincemeat.

  “Don’t shoot!” Jake shouted back, raising his hands even higher. “We’re survivors of the storm, and we’ve been trapped in the city for a few weeks.” He let his loud tone taper into a friendly chuckle. “Boy, are we glad to see you guys.”

  One of the turret soldiers spoke down into the vehicle, and the soldier in the passenger side of the Humvee on Jake’s left put a radio to her head and spoke into it. Almost immediately, a group of a dozen soldiers jogged down Washington Street around the curve and edged in behind the Humvees. After receiving more orders, five soldiers came around the sides of the Humvees slowly with their rifles trained on the Westin people.

  “Think they’ve got us covered enough?” Marcy quipped.

  “For all they know, we could be dangerous,” Jake said in the soldiers’ defense, though he understood Marcy’s unease. Being chased by a gang was one type of fear, however, looking down the barrels of several high-powered rifles in the hands of trained military personnel was quite another.

  “Those are American flags on their uniforms,” Ashley said, her normally flat tone rising.

  “And they move like soldiers,” Jake said. “No one can impersonate that.”

  The soldiers stopped twenty yards away, and one of them shouted, “Drop your weapons.”

  Jake looked over his shoulder at the Westin folk. Several of them immediately dropped their weapons on the ground, although one or two held on to them.

  “Don’t be stupid,” he said to a woman clinging to her shotgun. She saw Jake’s warning look and immediately bent and laid down the weapon.

  Ashley and Marcy placed their pistols on the ground, although Jake left his hands up, unwilling to reach for his weapons.

  “I’ll let one of you fellows get mine.” Jake said, trying to give the soldiers a friendly smile. “It’s tucked into my waistband at my back hip.”

  The soldiers nodded and came forward, one of them with a nametag reading S. Riley stopping to lift Jake’s rain poncho and take his Ruger from his waistband with professional ease. The other soldiers slipped past and went to frisk the Westin folks before moving back to check the pickup truck and SUVs.

  “We’ve got kids and some wounded in the backs of those trucks,” Jake said.

  “How bad?” Riley asked, relaxing slightly by raising the barrel of his rifle to the sky.

  “Minor bullet wounds and some scrapes and bruises,” Jake confirmed.

  The soldier turned back to the Humvees and shouted, “Medic. We need a medic.” Then he turned back to Jake, his expression still hard. “Where were you when the storms hit?”

  “We were at the Westin, right by the bay.” Jake recalled the moment when all this started. The windows of his hotel room blowing in. Meeting a nearly blind Marcy in the hallway. “The tornado blew right through. Took out half the building while I stood on the second floor. I could have reached out and touched it…” Jake’s voice choked off as the sound of that terrible, nightmarish freight train came back to him.

  “Jeesh, man.” Riley shook his head, and his hard expression turned sympathetic. “Sounds like you folks have been through hell.”

  “It feels like it.” Jake glanced back to see Marcy watching the soldiers, who were asking people to get out of their vehicles, before he turned back to the soldier. “Is this it, man? Are we rescued?”

  “If you want to call it that,” Riley shrugged. “We’re part of a patrol force guarding the FEMA tent cities of Worcester and Providence.”

  “Is that where you’ll be taking us? Worcester?”

  “No, sir. That one is full, so we’ll be sending you folks to the camp in Providence.”

  “Any place but Boston sounds great to me,” Jake said, then he turned back to Marcy. “You hear that? We’ve finally been rescued.”

  “It’s not the noisemakers and party hats I was hoping for.” Marcy allowed herself a hesitant grin as her dark eyes lit up with hope behind her cracked lenses. “But I’ll take it.”

  Chapter 5

  Jake, Boston, Massachusetts | 9:41 a.m., Thursday

  Soldiers guided those who could walk past the lead Humvees and down Washington Street, where more armored vehicles awaited them along with two white vans. Jake’s eyes widened as he got a look at the bullet holes peppering the sides of the vans.

  “We come under small-arms fire every now and again,” Riley explained.

  “From who?” Jake asked in surprise as he stepped around to the back of the van and looked inside. Two benches ran along the sides of the van, and Jake was pretty sure he’d rather be lying down in the middle of the floor and away from the flimsy sides. The soldiers didn’t seem especially worried, and there weren’t any bloodstains on the floor, so Jake reluctantly took a seat up near the front.

  “I’m not sure what you’d call them,” Riley said. “Terrorists.”

  “Traitors,” another soldier added.

  “Gang members and foreign forces,” Riley continued as he helped Ashley and Marcy into the back of the van along with a handful of Westin folks. Jake presumed the rest of them were being loaded into the other van.

  “How
do you know they’re foreign?” Ashley asked as she found her own seat opposite Jake, along with Marcy.

  “We caught a couple of them placing explosives on one of our supply trucks. They fought like tigers. Took five of us to finally capture them. We asked them plenty of questions, but they couldn’t speak a lick of English. They were European, or something.”

  Jake nodded, mind reeling with the possibilities of what that meant.

  “I’ll be riding with you back to Providence,” Riley announced as he started to climb in and shut the doors behind him.

  “Hey!” Jake caught the doors before they could slam shut.

  “What is it?”

  “We’ve got some kids in the caravan. They’re with us.”

  “You’re all going to the same place,” Riley explained. “You can meet up with them there.”

  The soldiers standing outside the tent grew tense, and Jake didn’t want to press his luck, and he also didn’t want to let the kids out of his sight for too long.

  “Do me a favor, buddy,” Jake said in a plaintive yet firm tone. “Run back there and grab a couple of kids named Alice and Timothy.” He caught Riley’s look of annoyance and apprehension, and Jake thought the man might turn him down immediately. Instead, he told the others to hold up, and he exited the back of the van and hoofed it toward the Humvees.

  A few minutes later, Alice and Timothy’s shining faces appeared, and as soon as they saw Jake, Marcy, and Ashley, they cried out in joy and practically leaped into the back of the van, Timothy being extra careful with his injured arm. They both ran to Jake and collapsed onto him, giving him hugs and giggles.

  “Come on now,” Jake chuckled. “Ashley and Marcy need some of those hugs, too.”

  The kids immediately turned and went to the two ladies across from him and gave them big hugs as well.