Windburn

by Kenny Soward

  “They’re not from around here, are they?” Jake murmured to Murray. “What is that, Chinese or North Korean?”

  “No clue,” Murray responded, looking at the terrorist with something like disgust. “There’s thousands of them running around and giving us grief. It was bad enough with the storms, but these jerks really make life hard.”

  “One disaster after another, piling up until the dam breaks…“ Jake’s words trailed off as it once again dawned on him that being rescued didn’t mean much, not until every one of the foreign forces could be expelled, and not until the storms died down. Not until law and order was the way of things, instead of the good people having to hole themselves up in tent cities to survive.

  Jake spotted Marcy and Ashley standing on the edge of the camp area, watching the soldiers carry the wounded past them. He gave them a wave, and they returned it.

  “Will they put the prisoners in a cell of some sort?” Jake asked, looking askance at Murray.

  “One or two might,” Murray responded, “if they’re cooperative. Though Captain Sanchez has no qualms about executing them. Did two of them last week.”

  “Executed?” Jake’s stomach sank for some mystifying reason. Just the word “execute” made his blood run cold.

  “That’s right,” Murray said.

  “Kind of barbaric, don’t you think?” Jake asked with a dark, questioning look.

  “A month ago, I would have said yes,” Murray said flatly. “Right now, I can’t imagine why we’d waste food and supplies on prisoners who would kill us the first chance they got. Hey, they started this, right?”

  Jake nodded, though he couldn’t shake the sense of darkness that lingered in his soul. “I guess so.”

  The two stood in awkward silence for a moment before Murray turned back toward the tarp. “I’m going to check on the SATCOM terminal. Hopefully, it still works.”

  Jake stifled a shiver as a sudden burst of wind broke through the camp, knocking him to the side a couple of steps. Once it had passed, he pulled his rain poncho tighter around him and went to see about Marcy, Ashley, and the kids.

  Chapter 15

  Sara, Gatlinburg, Tennessee | 8:03 a.m., Friday

  Sara sat at the kitchen table, looking longingly at the coffee maker as it dripped its precious dark juice into the carafe. The others would be getting up soon, so she’d done them a favor and started a pot brewing, but she didn’t know if she could drink any yet. She was still recovering from giving blood, an act that had left her feeling weak and tired at first. And while she’d regained her strength and felt much better, she thought it might be a good idea to check with Natasha.

  She was still wet and tired from walking the grounds. She’d moved slowly and deliberately to conserve her energy and keep from getting injured, and the going had been rough. The rain had beat down on her the entire time, and the wind had picked up, and that had made her curious about any upcoming storms. Though with Cosmic Link down, she had no way of getting any new information.

  Sara had spent the rest of the morning on the front porch running through some basic dog commands with Rex to see if he remembered anything he’d been taught. At first the German Shepherd had seemed too impatient to sit or stay, but she’d kept at it. Sara finally had him eating out of her hand, quite literally, by feeding him doggie treats whenever he did well.

  They’d worked on “sit,” “stay,” “heel,” “lie down,” and “quiet.” Though Sara had no idea if he remembered “attack,” because they didn’t have anyone to test it on. Rex had caught on quickly, seeming to recall his commands faster each time they ran through them. Even with their success, an hour of training had exhausted Sara and forced her inside.

  Sara heard shuffling upstairs and she glanced up to see Barbara exit Todd’s room and shut the door behind her quietly. She was dressed in the same jeans and black sweatshirt she’d been wearing when she’d arrived, although it appeared she’d run a comb through her hair where it hung long and loose around her shoulders.

  She watched Barbara come down the stairs, musing at the dogs’ confusion when they greeted her at the foot of the stairs. They had still not gotten used to her, and they held their tails low as they watched the girl curiously, their normal canine excitement significantly muted. While they seemed to understand that Barbara was a guest in their home, they couldn’t decide whether they liked her or not.

  “That makes three of us,” Sara muttered under her breath.

  Barbara stopped at the foot of the stairs and took a moment to rub the dogs’ heads. That seemed to please them, because they raised their tails and wagged them with added enthusiasm. When she was done there, Barbara came over to the kitchen table and sat down across from Sara.

  Sara promptly stood up and went over to the coffee maker, taking out a cup from the cupboard. “Do you take cream and sugar?”

  “Black is fine,” Barbara said as she rubbed her arm and then yawned. “Thank you.”

  “No problem.” Sara brought the steaming cup over and placed it in front of the girl.

  “You’re not having any?”

  “I’m waiting for Natasha to give me the okay.”

  “Oh, I see. Because you gave blood yesterday.”

  “Yep.”

  “How’s Tex doing?”

  “Surprisingly well,” Sara said, glancing over at the master bedroom door. “He’s still not fully awake, but he drank a full cup of water overnight.”

  “Oh, that’s great.” Barbara nodded and took a sip of her coffee. “Tex is quite a character. The Good Folk call him the Old Man, and he eats it up.”

  “You know, we met him on the way into the city a few weeks ago, only then he was the manager of a boot shop. How did he find you guys?”

  “Same as most, I suspect.” Barbara’s dark eyes lifted for a moment before they slid off to the boarded-up window in the kitchen. “Escaping the chaos of Sevierville. Walking down a mountain road with everything he owned on his back. I imagine he was looking for someplace to do good.”

  “And the Good Folk do good?”

  Barbara shrugged. “Most of us do, anyway. We try to help the mountain folks when they need food, shelter, and protection. Of course, there are the militia types. They’ve been stewing for a fight for years now and are happy to have an enemy worth fighting.”

  “Ourselves?”

  “Ourselves, and the foreigners, now that we know they’re among us. They’ve become legendary at this point, crawling through the woods and causing trouble. Only problem is that we don’t know where they’re holed up, and most people who go looking for them never come back.”

  Sara’s eyes drifted to Barbara’s soiled sweatshirt, not holding back her prying eyes. “If you need an extra shirt, I’ve got a few.” Her eyes scanned the girl’s tall form before she added, “I’m not sure if they’ll fit you, but I do tend to get them a little over-sized for myself.”

  “Thanks, Sara. I’ll probably take you up on that. I’ve been in this old thing since I can remember.”

  Sara offered the girl a wan smile and then breached the subject she really wanted to talk about. “How’s my son?”

  “Todd is doing great.” Barbara shifted in her chair. “He should be ready to get up and move around a bit today as long as he takes it easy.”

  “That’s good to know. Has he complained much?”

  “He’s in some pain, although he hides it well.”

  “Has he asked you to wait on him hand and foot? Or play card games with him?”

  “Not really, no. We mostly just talk.”

  Sara’s brow furrowed. That wasn’t the injured Todd she knew. Over the years, whenever the boy had been sick or suffered so much as a sprained ankle, he’d made sure everyone around him knew it, working hard to get favors in a good-natured but annoying sort of way. “Well, he must like you then.”

  “What do you mean?” Barbara’s eyebrows wrinkled.

  Sara realized she’d probably said too much already, yet she was too tire
d to hold back. “Todd would never hide his pain unless he was trying to impress you. Well, it’s actually hard to tell with Todd lately,” Sara wanted more than ever to have a talk with her son about what had happened over the past few days, and she promised herself to do that soon.

  Barbara’s lips pursed tight, though she didn’t reply. She likely sensed Sara’s lingering resentment and didn’t want to tangle with a mother when it came to her feelings about her oldest son. Smart girl.

  A shuffling from upstairs got Sara’s attention, and she looked up to see Natasha exit Zoe’s room and come down with the same soft steps Barbara had used a few minutes ago. They’d decided that Natasha could sleep with Zoe through the night, and Sara would take the bed by day. Dion was relegated to the couch until they could make better arrangements.

  “Hi, ladies,” Natasha called softly as she walked past the women and went to the coffee maker.

  “Hey, Tash,” Sara said.

  Barbara added, “Morning.”

  Sara’s eyes shifted to the carafe of fresh, dark coffee as Natasha poured herself a cup. “Can I have coffee today, Tash?”

  Natasha placed her cup on the counter, turned, and approached Sara with purpose. She took Sara’s wrist in her hand and lifted her arm. Then she pressed her finger against the flesh of Sara’s forearm for a few seconds. Lifting her finger, she watched the indentation a moment before concluding. “You’re good. Drink coffee to your heart’s content.”

  “What was that all about?” Sara rubbed her arm as she got up from the chair and headed to the counter.

  “If you were dehydrated, the indentation my finger made would have lingered. Your skin popped back quickly, so that means you’re hydrated. Therefore, I think you’re fine to have some of this glorious Folgers.” Natasha said the last part with a flourish and a chuckle, making Sara feel only slightly embarrassed at how fast she rushed to the coffee maker and poured herself a cup.

  Sara stood at the counter and sipped slowly as she started to warm to the morning. Finally, she approached the table and retook her seat, addressing Barb. “Okay. Now that my brain is slowly coming online, did you and Todd work up any plans for the gate we talked about?”

  “Yes, we did.” Barbara spoke with pointed enthusiasm as she pulled a piece of paper out of her pocket and placed it on the table, smoothing out the edges to flatten it.

  Sara leaned forward and looked at what appeared to be two poles sticking out of the ground to a height of about three feet, one on each side of what she presumed was a road. A longer pole stretched across the road and rested on top of the shorter poles that stuck out of the ground.

  “What am I looking at?”

  “It’s a basic roundwood gate,” Barbara said. “My brother and I built one a few years ago to keep people from coming up to our favorite fishing hole and dumping garbage into it.”

  “You and your brother built one of these on your own? That’s pretty impressive.”

  “My dad helped,” Barbara admitted, “but me and Mark did most of the planning and work. It took us a few days to do; we should be able to get it done much faster with all of us here.”

  “Sounds good. Tell me about it.”

  Barbara leaned closer to the paper and pointed at the structure. “We’ll need to go hunting for some logs and dig a hole on either side of the road. Should be plenty of trees already blown over from the storms, so we won’t have to cut anything down. However, we will need to cut them to size, strip them down, and use the Subaru to drag them down to the site.”

  “Sounds easy enough.”

  “It would be if you had a chainsaw,” Barbara said. “Todd said you don’t have one.”

  “That would be correct.” Sara was disappointed to find another chink in her prepper armor, although she wouldn’t let that stop them from getting the job done. “We have some axes.”

  “I’m sure those will work fine,” Barbara said, “but you also might want to consider doing some scavenging.”

  “Scavenging?”

  “Yes. There are hundreds and thousands of abandoned homes all through the Tennessee Valley. Probably several dozen within a three-mile radius of the cabin. The Good Folk coordinated teams to do it—”

  “It makes sense,” Sara said, shaking her head, “although it sounds like we would be putting ourselves in unnecessary danger. And we don’t own any of those things. It would be stealing.”

  “Look, Sara.” Barbara folded her hands on the table and gave Sara a hard stare. “I’ve been out there for three weeks, ever since…” Barbara’s face went blank for a moment before she regained her train of thought. “Let’s just say there are a lot of things out there going to waste right now. Food, vehicles, and, yes, tools you might need to survive in the future. The people who owned them before aren’t going to miss them now. A lot of them are dead. So, if you don’t go take those things, someone else will.”

  The two stared at each other, dark eyes against green, neither wavering as they sought a common ground. Finally, Barbara got up from the table and gently pushed her chair back in. “You’d be a fool not to, Sara.”

  Sara wordlessly watched the girl pour a glass of water for her son, step through the living room, and go quietly up the stairs, her socks soft on the hardwood.

  “She’s got a point,” Natasha said, and Sara glanced over to see the woman intently sipping her coffee.

  “I’ll think about the scavenging,” Sara gave in, then she smirked playfully at Natasha. “You don’t even make a face when you drink coffee anymore.”

  “I suppose it’s growing on me,” Natasha shrugged. “I take it Tex is still alive?”

  “Last time I checked.” Sara sighed.

  “Well, fill me in.” Natasha came over and slid into her chair, braids rattling as she tucked one leg beneath her.

  Reaching out to pull the diagram of the roundwood gate closer, Sara stared at it. It was good, and doable with the tools they had, though a chainsaw would significantly increase their efficiency, not just for the gate but for a lot of other projects, too.

  Sara looked up at Natasha with a raised eyebrow. “Tex drank a whole cup of water last night.”

  “Hooray for small victories,” Natasha clapped her hands lightly and grinned across the table. “Now, let’s talk about this scavenging idea of Barbara’s.”

  Chapter 16

  Yi, White Pine, Tennessee

  Yi stared ahead at the two red SUVs as Chen followed them with their Ford up the gravel driveway through the woods. The tall trees wavered in the bruising wind, and dead leaves were blowing everywhere to mark the coming of fall. The downpour had slackened overall, though there were occasional bursts of hail and stinging rain.

  Ivan seemed to enjoy the briskness of the approaching season, but the chilly winds had dampened Yi’s spirits. He suspected it was more than just the weather.

  “You don’t look well, my friend,” Chen said, his eyes pinned to the red Toyota 4Runner ahead of them.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Pardon my disrespect, comrade,” Ivan said from the back seat. It looks like—how do they say in America?—someone relieved themselves into your Wheaties.”

  Yi was vaguely aware that Wheaties were some kind of American breakfast food, and he got the gist of Ivan’s remark. And while he seldom let his true emotions be known, or showed any sign of weakness, he felt it was important for his warriors to understand exactly what had been bothering him since they’d left the lodge, even if it meant disclosing traitorous thoughts.

  “It is Katrya and her people,” Yi said. “They disgust me.”

  “How so?” Chen asked in a quiet tone.

  “They are full of pride, certain that they cannot lose. And I’m not happy about what they did to that family back at the lodge.” Yi dismissed the fact that Ivan had gladly joined them for a short time, although Chen and his other soldiers had turned away.

  Ivan scoffed, and his gray eyes shifted to Yi as if the man had just dishonored him in not so many words. �
��Allow me to point out that we have been doing very horrible things since we landed in this wretched land almost one month ago. We’ve murdered women and children by the hundreds.”

  “It was always with the plan in mind,” Yi countered. “It was always with a purpose. Killing is one thing, but torture is quite another. Katrya and her people torture for the sheer thrill of it. It sends no message to the enemy.”

  “I think you are just angry that we needed reinforcements.” Ivan offered a knowing smile. “It has nothing to do with Katrya’s honor, or lack of it.”

  “On the contrary,” Yi said. “I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished. I never dreamed we would survive this long in this country, and neither did any of you.” Yi’s grip on his rifle tightened, and his eyes narrowed at the trucks in front of him. “Something is not right about them.”

  “I do not like the way they speak to us,” Chen said, his voice hesitant with disapproval, and Yi nodded with the understanding that such words were difficult for the man.

  Their SUV rocked in a sudden gust of wind, though it died down as quickly as it had risen. They rode in silence, approaching a large equipment barn and pulling their vehicles inside. Amongst the tractors and other farm equipment, they got out of their vehicles and formed up in the center of the facility as the wind rattled the metal roof over their heads.

  Katrya stepped from the lead vehicle in her form-fitting tactical suit with a high-powered semi-automatic rifle cradled in her arms. She’d pinned her hair straight back and wore a smooth-looking communications helmet on her head. They’d all received the new communications gear, and Yi slipped his on, along with his remaining few warriors—Chen, Ivan, and three low-ranking fighters. Katrya had ten people in total, including Victoro and Jacques, and she’d left her communications officer and doctor back at the lodge. Yi had left Jiao behind, since she was still too weak to walk or fight.

  The Red Blade put her finger to her helmet and pressed a switch to turn it on, and the rest of the men and women followed suit.