After the EMP- The Chaos Trilogy

by Harley Tate

Colt and Larkin stood up at the same time. “Figure out the best way to get rid of the evidence.”

  Dani scrunched her eyebrows. “I don’t understand.”

  Larkin filled her in. “Someone right now is wondering where the hell their guns are at. That man wasn’t driving an arsenal at a hundred miles an hour because he needed to get some fresh air.”

  “He was meeting someone.”

  Colt nodded. “And now he’s late.”

  The implication washed over Dani’s face and she paled. “They’ll be looking for him.”

  “Exactly. If we don’t hide the car, we’ll be sitting ducks.”

  “We should just pack up and go. We can cram everything in the Humvee and hit the road.”

  “Harvey can’t travel.”

  Dani’s eyes went wide. “We can’t stay here! If someone is coming to find this guy, we’ll be right in their path.”

  Colt rubbed the back of his neck. “We’ve got plenty of defenses, now. We’ll be all right.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “About what?” Doug stopped next to Dani. He almost jumped when he spotted the duffel of guns at their feet. “What the hell is that?”

  Larkin motioned at the crashed car. “The asshole’s payload.”

  Doug glanced at the Camaro and back at Larkin. “He was a weapons smuggler?”

  “Transporter, at least.”

  Doug’s gaze bounced back and forth between the guns and Colt and Larkin. “We need to leave. Whoever wants those weapons will be coming.”

  “What about Harvey?”

  Doug whipped his head toward his sister and Harvey’s unconscious form. “If we move him, he’ll die.”

  It was as bad as Colt feared. If they stayed they would be sitting ducks. If they left, they would be condemning Harvey to death. He focused on Doug’s face as he asked the only important question. “Does Harvey have any chance of pulling through?”

  Doug didn’t hesitate. “Yes. He does.”

  The answer surprised him. If there was a chance… Colt made up his mind. “I’ll stay here with Harvey. The rest of you pack up and move out.”

  “No way.” Dani crossed her arms. “I’m staying, too.”

  Larkin chimed in. “The kid’s right. I’m not leaving you here to get yourself killed.”

  “We can’t leave. If whoever wants those guns does show up, you’re a sitting duck. Instead of saving Harvey, you’ll be killing both of you.” Doug’s lips thinned. “We all stay until Harvey is safe enough to travel.”

  Colt exhaled. He didn’t like the idea one bit. “We’ll need shelter. A lean-to big enough for at least Harvey and one other person. There might be a tarp from the truck or branches we can use.”

  “We can move the Humvee into the trees. Add some branches to camouflage it.”

  “What about the car?” Dani chewed on her lip as she waited for Colt’s answer. So young, but so capable.

  He ran a hand down his face. “Can you unload it?”

  She nodded.

  “Good. Get everything out and we’ll push it down the road. I’ve got an idea.” Colt didn’t like staying. It was setting them up for an ambush. He hoped his plan would put whoever came looking off their trail, but he didn’t have a lot of faith.

  If it didn’t work, they’d be forced to run or take a stand.

  Day Thirty-Three

  Chapter Nineteen

  MELODY

  Highway 58

  Northwest California

  2:00 a.m.

  Her teeth banged together in a relentless chatter and Melody hugged her sweater tighter against the chill. Harvey hadn’t so much as groaned despite the temperature dropping at least twenty degrees in the night. Melody didn’t know what to do.

  She checked Harvey’s pulse every five minutes and confirmed his lungs still filled with air, but that was it. Without any drugs, she couldn’t alleviate his discomfort or ward off infection or even reduce the swelling. His right ankle looked like a grapefruit and she couldn’t even ice it.

  A sob slipped out between her chattering teeth and Melody shoved her fist against her mouth. What a naive fool I’ve been.

  She brushed her fingertips across Harvey’s forehead. Still hot. At some point in the night, his body gave in to a fever and now he radiated more heat than an electric blanket. It wasn’t enough to keep her warm, but the cold air wasn’t hurting him.

  Melody wiped at her face. Gloria and Will were dead. Doug and Larkin moved their bodies to a restful spot among the trees, but they weren’t buried. Their lifeless forms just lay on the ground, open for birds and squirrels and mice to run all over.

  She closed her eyes and the accident replayed in her mind. So fast and deadly. And now they were trapped a hundred feet off the road in a makeshift camp while Harvey struggled to keep breathing.

  They would never make it somewhere safe. They would never be comfortable again. Hunger roiled her belly, but Melody shoved it down. She couldn’t think about food while Harvey died a slow and agonizing death before her eyes.

  The cut tree branches beside her rustled and Lottie rushed in. The little dog jumped into Melody’s arms as Larkin eased into the makeshift first aid tent. “Thought you could use some company.”

  Melody tried to smile. “Thanks.”

  He held out a cup full of steam. “Pine needle tea. It won’t fill you up, but it’ll curb your appetite.”

  She took it with a nod and wrapped her fingers around the mug. “Where’d you find this?”

  Larkin shrugged. “I’ve been scouring the forest for our gear. One box of dishes wasn’t a complete loss. And I found a jug of water still half full. The mud slowed the leak.” He squeezed into the space between Melody and the wall. “The potatoes weren’t so lucky.”

  Melody snorted. “You should get some sleep.”

  “Can’t. Colt snores like a beached walrus.”

  “You’re familiar with their sound?”

  “Tons of them on the beach when I was stationed in Alaska. Real pains in the ass, too. Always complaining and barking orders.” He smiled. “Not that different from the army, now that I think about it.”

  Melody scowled. “How can you make jokes? Gloria and Will are dead, Harvey’s barely hanging on. We’ve lost all our food, the Humvee is about to give up, and we’re lost in the middle of nowhere.”

  “Don’t forget, we’re hiding from a bunch of bad guys, too.”

  Melody punched Larkin in the arm. “I’m serious.”

  “I am, too. Whoever ordered those guns isn’t going to let a missing shipment go. They’ll be coming.”

  Melody forced the question out. “What do we do?”

  “As soon as Harvey can move, we leave.”

  “You mean as soon as he’s dead.”

  Larkin glanced at her, an unreadable expression on his face. “How long does he have?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then we need to make the most of it.” He stretched his legs out in front of him and leaned back against a tree trunk. “Tell me your favorite memory of Harvey and Gloria.”

  Melody blinked. “Why?”

  Larkin reached out and gave her arm a squeeze. “Because Harvey’s not dead yet and maybe hearing about his life will help the man find his way home.”

  Melody glanced at Harvey. The man had been her neighbor for as long as she could remember. But a favorite memory? She thought in silence before it came to her. A small, sad smile tilted the corners of her mouth. “One year when I was a teenager, Harvey asked if we could help him pick out a Christmas tree.”

  Larkin urged her to continue.

  “He had this tradition of traipsing up into the mountains around Eugene and cutting off the top of a Douglas fir.” Melody smiled. “He’d shimmy up that tree like a bear after honey. It was scary and funny and completely insane all at the same time.”

  “Where do you come in?”

  “One year Harvey hurt his back. Slipped a disc or something. So he asked Doug to help.�
� She sipped some tea and shook her head. “So there’s my city brother, eighteen years old, with a saw and some brand-new boots, traipsing through the December snow.”

  Larkin grinned. “Doug wasn’t much for roughing it back then?”

  “Still isn’t.” She smiled and continued. “Harvey picked some tree that had to be forty feet tall. Doug took one look at it and his eyes went all wide and he turned to me.”

  “Did you talk him out of it?”

  Melody stifled a quiet laugh. “I told him to get on with it. So he climbed the tree with the saw, got all the way up to ten feet from the top and hacked at it until the top came crashing down.”

  “What’s so funny about that?”

  “Doug couldn’t get down. He was like a treed cat up there, clinging to the trunk and howling. Harvey shook the tree and scared him so bad he shimmied down. Poor Doug pulled pine splinters out of his hands for a week.”

  By the time she finished the story, tears of laughter leaked from Melody’s eyes. She smiled at Harvey’s still body where he lay on the hood of the Camaro.

  “Did he ever ask Doug to help him again?”

  “Not a chance.” She reached forward and rested her hand on Harvey’s shoulder. After a minute, she found her voice. “Harvey’s a good man. He deserves better than this.”

  Larkin nodded. “None of us expected to be here, Melody. We’ve done the best we could.”

  “Have we?” She turned on him, tone more accusatory than she meant. “Is that really true?” She broke eye contact and focused again on Harvey. “When the power first went out, we did nothing. Just sat back and waited for help to arrive like it always did before. Then when Jarvis took over…”

  Larkin shifted beside her. “You could have kept your head down, stayed with the militia. Maybe that would have been better.”

  “And let them round me up to do God knows what down the road?” She shook her head. “The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced we should have left first thing. I’ve got friends in Washington state. We could have driven up there and hiked into Canada.”

  “What makes you think it’s better there than it is here?”

  “The whole world can’t be powerless. Someone somewhere has electricity.”

  “Stop second-guessing yourself. What’s done is done. You can’t change the past.”

  Melody drained the rest of the tea. “I can still be bitter about it.”

  “Or you can think about the future.” Larkin took the empty mug and set it by the tree-branch wall. “The world before the power went out is gone. We need to stop hoping for it to come back and start living now. This right here is what we have.”

  She snorted. “A crappy lean-to, a dying man, and no food?”

  He smiled. “I was thinking more a beautiful woman who has more strength and courage than she gives herself credit for.”

  Melody stilled. Larkin stared at her with an intensity she’d forgotten existed, and Melody wished they were anywhere else. “You think I’m strong?”

  He nodded. “And brave. Stop beating yourself up over what might have been and focus on what you can do now.”

  “It’s not that easy.”

  “Yes, it is.” Larkin reached out and trailed his fingers over Melody’s cheek.

  She shuddered. He leaned forward.

  Melody’s breath caught in her lungs like a bird in a net, wings unfurled, going nowhere. “I don’t think—”

  “You’re right. Don’t think at all. Just act.” Larkin’s lips hovered an inch away and Melody’s eyes slid shut.

  She waited, frozen in place as he closed the distance between them.

  A low, guttural growl broke the spell and Melody jerked back. Lottie sat on her lap, ears pricked toward the road. Melody glanced up at Larkin in alarm.

  He held a finger in front of the lips she almost kissed.

  Lottie growled again and Larkin rose onto his feet. “Don’t move.” He checked the safety on the pistol he carried and ducked out from beneath the makeshift shelter.

  Melody stared at the empty space he left behind and shivered.

  Chapter Twenty

  DANI

  Highway 58

  Northwest California

  3:00 a.m.

  “Dani, wake up!”

  “Go away.” Dani swatted at the hand shaking her shoulder. It couldn’t be morning already. A gust of cold air made her squirm.

  “Wake up. We need to move. There’s someone coming.”

  Dani’s eyes flew open. Larkin stood beside the open door to the Humvee, letting in cold air and panic. Reality stole her breath. The car crash. Gloria and Will and Harvey. The guns. She smacked her dry lips together. “Where?”

  “Same road as the Camaro, opposite direction.”

  “How far?”

  “Minutes.” Larkin glanced behind him. “We need better cover.”

  She sat up in the seat and rubbed the last bit of sleep from her eyes.

  Larkin handed her a rifle. “Find a tree and hide behind it.” He pointed at the road. “They’re coming from the west. If they spot the Camaro, they’ll come at us from this direction.”

  “When do we engage?”

  “Not until we’ve been spotted. If we’re lucky, they’ll drive right by us.”

  Dani didn’t feel lucky. She clambered out of the Humvee and hit the ground with both feet. “Where’s Colt?”

  “Scouting. Doug and Melody are pulling Harvey into some brush. I need you as another shooter. Can you handle it?”

  The faint hum of a motor pricked her ear. “Yeah.”

  “Good.” Larkin clapped her on the back and set off toward the crossroad.

  Dani loped into the trees. The night air clutched at her bare neck and she shivered. Leaves and branches smacked her face and clawed her jeans as she traipsed into a thicket of dense foliage. The forest smelled of damp earth and decaying logs and she fought the urge to sneeze.

  With a full canopy of new leaves, the forest blocked most of the moon. Pale shafts of light filtered through the breaks in the forest, but Dani couldn’t make out more than a few feet in any direction. She wouldn’t be able to shoot anyone until they were almost on top of her.

  Not good.

  The low rumble of the car engine grew louder and Dani strained to see the road. There! A flash of car headlights through the trees. She eased closer, heading in the direction of the lights. They came in and out of focus like a strobe as the car drove down the crossroad.

  The lights hugged the road, low and wide. Not a Humvee or even a truck. Maybe it was a friendly, innocent sedan. An unrelated driver, oblivious to the accident and the cache of guns in the Camaro. Maybe it wouldn’t even slow down when it reached the state highway.

  Dani ducked behind a large tree trunk and waited twenty feet off the side of the crossroad. The glow from the headlights steadily increased. The twin lights bounced and weaved as they approached the intersection. Dani let herself hope.

  Keep going. Keep going.

  The headlights wavered and slowed.

  She cursed beneath her breath. The car stopped, its lights illuminating the intersection and the scene of the accident. Colt and Larkin had pushed the Camaro into the ditch, but they couldn’t do anything to cover it up or hide the pickup. Colt had hoped it wouldn’t be seen from the road and any driver would cruise on by. Guess he was wrong.

  A low, throaty grumble spread through the forest from the car’s idling engine as Dani waited.

  The driver’s door opened with a squeal and slammed a moment later. A silhouette, stocky and solid, parted the beams of light. Dani shifted in her crouch. They could take on one man, even with Harvey injured and the light working against them.

  Another door opened. Another figure cut in front of a headlight. Bigger. Wider. Dani swallowed. It will be okay.

  She raised the rifle to her eye and took in the size and shape of the two men in the lights. Killing them now would be easy. Two shots a piece, and they would fall like leaves to co
ld asphalt. Her finger eased around the trigger, but she didn’t pull.

  What if they were innocent? What if they were merely stopping to find a place to relieve themselves or checking the wreck for survivors? What if the two men standing in the light could help them? Food. Water. A place to sleep.

  She frowned. Would her first instinct now always be to shoot first and not bother with questions? Was that her life?

  Dani thought about her mother and her life before. When her mother was on a tear or a dealer was after her, Dani never stood up for herself. Instead of fighting back and taking charge, she ran and hid like a coward. She didn’t have the strength to fight.

  Was shooting these men any different? It was still cowardice. Still fear. She eased her finger off the trigger. With Colt and Larkin in the woods, they could survive even if the men on the street were out for vengeance.

  As she leaned back in her crouch, the driver stepped out of the headlights. Dani watched the beams of light until bam! They disappeared.

  The forest plunged into darkness, inky thick and impossible to navigate. She stared at those stupid headlights for so long that without them, she was blind. Dani cursed herself again. Stupid girl. She’d been so consumed with doing the right thing and all the what-ifs, she didn’t stop to think about what would happen next.

  The night closed in around her, every sound amplified a million times. A cricket in the leaves at her feet. An owl half a mile away. A crunch of a twig way too close to ignore.

  Dani froze.

  She couldn’t run. She couldn’t shoot. There was nothing to do but stay still and hope they couldn’t see her. They could still be friendly. They could still be good people.

  Fear spiked her heart. It pounded loud enough to drown out the cricket and the owl and a million other sounds. But not the crunching leaves. Not the snapping twigs. Someone was out there and headed straight for her.

  What if they caught her? She couldn’t let that happen. Dani closed her eyes and breathed in the forest. Dank decay, fresh new leaves. Grease and dirt. A person. She opened her eyes and focused on the smell and the sound. She wouldn’t let them catch her. She would take them out even if she couldn’t see.