by K. M. Fawkes
He prepared the rifle, made sure the safety was on, and pushed it ahead of him while he belly-scooted inside. It was noticeably warmer away from the wind, but also quite dark.
“We’ll eat, then sort out the blanket,” he said, using his free hand to figure out the boundaries of the space.
“I’m passing you water and a bar,” she said by way of answer.
Pete waved his hand around until it bumped into Marie’s and took the food from her.
“I’m going to choke if I eat lying on my back,” she said.
This being in the dark with another person was very strange. “I’m on my stomach, resting on my elbows,” he replied.
Marie rustled around, changing position, and then, tired and hungry, they ate without chatting. When they were finished, Marie moved rustled around some more, then grew quiet.
“Did you pull the blanket over you?” he said.
“I did now.”
Pete snuggled up behind her, drawing his side of the blanket up and over his body.
“Here’s hoping we’re alive come morning,” Marie said.
It wasn’t as warm as being inside with a fire, but the longer they stayed inside, the warmer the space became, and before long, he was actually starting to feel drowsy. No, it wasn’t completely secure, but it was as good as they were going to get right now—and it was a whole lot better than being out in the open.
He noticed immediately when Marie’s breathing changed, which told him she’d fallen asleep. He wasn’t far behind.
Some time later, he awoke to Marie poking at him.
“There’s something outside,” she whispered.
Pete was instantly alert and listening. A moment later he heard the unmistakable sound of snow being crushed underfoot, and the heavy breathing of an animal.
Shit. He’d known they weren’t well hidden, but he’d hoped for more time before something found them. Whatever that was, he couldn’t let it get too curious. If it came too far toward the igloo, they’d be completely trapped.
“Cover your ears,” he whispered.
In the dark, he felt for the rifle, flicked the safety off, and pointed the muzzle toward the opening of their shelter.
He fired one round. It left his ears ringing, courtesy of the small space, but he still picked up the sound of footfalls moving away.
“What was it?” Marie said.
“I’m not sure,” Pete answered. “Something big, though.”
“There’s no way I’m going to fall back to sleep,” Marie said.
“It’s still dark outside. We can’t leave now.” Especially not with animals out there just dying to eat them.
“Let’s at least flip onto our other sides. My neck is killing me.”
They shifted positions, this time with Marie tucking herself in behind Pete, and they got the blanket sorted.
Though Pete wouldn’t have believed it was possible, they both eventually fell asleep again, cuddled up in their tiny room and warm, if not comfortable.
He woke to light streaming in through the chinks of the shelter and looked around, surprised.
“Marie,” he said.
She woke up instantly, as if she’d just been waiting for it.
“Time to go,” he said and scooted feet-first out of the shelter, bringing the rifle with him.
Marie pushed the packs out through the opening, then slid herself out. “For crying out loud,” she said, looking up and around. “It’s still snowing.”
Pete pulled the blanket out of the shelter, folded it, and jammed it back into his pack. Since they were down a couple of water bottles, there was a bit more room and he managed to zip it closed. He secured the axe through one of the loops on the backpack.
Marie doled out a ration bar each and they ate quietly. When she was done, she handed the last third of hers to Pete.
“You’re bigger than me. You need more calories.”
He wasn’t going to argue. He felt hungry enough to plow through their supply of food single-handedly. Which would have been completely suicidal. Yes, they had a gun for hunting. That didn’t mean they had the time or tools to work through anything they killed.
They were going to have to survive on ration bars between here and Anchorage. It wasn’t going to be pretty, but it was their only real option.
Packs on their backs and snowshoes strapped to their feet, they got going. Visibility was poor in the snow, but Pete felt certain he had a bead on their direction, helped by the compass on his watch. It wasn’t as cold, which was a nice change, and while he was still fatigued, at least he wasn’t freezing.
On and on they traveled, one foot in front of the other. They stopped to eat and drink but otherwise kept moving. The snow continued to fall. Occasionally, it thinned out, and Pete thought it was finally going to stop, but then it would pick up again, crushing his hopes.
Eventually, after an eternity of walking, he realized that they were at the end of another day. Another day with no sign of getting closer to Anchorage.
He was just about to say that they should stop and look for a place to build another shelter when Marie said, “Is this a road?”
Pete looked around and, sure enough, the wind had blown the snow into piles and revealed random patches of asphalt. His mind flew through the implications. The trip to the prison. The fact that they were out in the middle of nowhere with nothing to tell them how much farther they had to go.
The single road in the area. The idea that there hadn’t been any other way out.
“This has to be the road we took to get to Mueller,” he said, voice trickling off at the end of the sentence. Mueller had cost him every man in his unit. When would he stop feeling the weight of it?
“I’m sorry about your men, Pete,” Marie said. “I can’t even imagine what you’re feeling. But you aren’t to blame for the things that happened.”
“Thanks,” he said, biting his tongue so he wouldn’t bring up the idea that she hadn’t done any of the men any favors in that prison.
He must not have schooled his tone as well as he should have, though, because she shot him a look. He didn’t have the energy to fight, and pointing the finger at her or anyone else was bullshit. It would make him feel momentarily better, but all too soon, he’d get over it and be right back where he started.
So he glanced around, and saw a man-made shape among the soft, irregular lines of the natural world.
“Is that a sign?” he asked, then hustled over to where a green rectangle was occasionally visible through the heavily falling snow.
“There’s a small town down the mountain from Mueller,” Marie said, her voice suddenly tinged with excitement. “I only just thought of it. We should have been heading here all along.”
“We wouldn’t have made it there yesterday,” Pete said. “But now this just might save our butts.”
He brushed the snow off the surface of the sign. Clearview, Population 75. He was surprised a town that small even warranted a sign. Sure, he’d seen signs where the population was only several thousand, but seventy-five?
Marie began to shiver, and Pete knew he wasn’t far behind.
It didn’t matter how small that town was. It was going to be their best bet at surviving this particular journey.
“We better hurry,” he said. “Soon we won’t be able to see our hands in front of our faces, let alone any hint of the road.”
They hustled forward, raising their knees high to keep the snowshoes on the surface of the snowdrifts.
The wind picked up, driving the snowflakes into their eyes, which was both annoying and painful, but Pete could already feel himself looking forward to the town ahead. Even if the people were all gone, there would be houses—and fireplaces.
“Just a heads up,” Marie said, teeth chattering. “Some of the guards at Mueller were weird about Clearview.”
“Great,” Pete said. “Care to clarify?”
“They never said anything specific. It was more like meaningful glances and rol
ling eyes. That kind of stuff.”
Pete groaned. “Whatever it is, it can’t be worse than freezing to death out here.”
Chapter 11
Shivering from head to toe, Pete and Marie lumbered on. The cold stripped away their willpower and set Pete’s fingertips and toes to aching.
“How far away is this damn town?” Marie said.
“I’m beginning to wonder if we missed a turn or wandered off the road.”
“I don’t see how.” Marie pointed. “Look. That’s a patch of road right there.”
She was right. But they’d been walking for at least twenty minutes already. Surely by now they would have seen something to indicate a town was ahead. A gas station. A rural farmstead. Anything. Maybe the sign had been bullshit.
If it were, this might be their last night on earth. Because they’d managed to make it through last night, but Pete wasn’t sure whether they could do it again.
“When we get to Clearview,” Pete said, using the qualifier to convince himself as much as Marie, “it might be better not to talk about Mueller. The last thing we need is for the people there to think I’m an escaped convict and you’re my accomplice.”
“There were no women in that prison, so how could I be your accomplice?” she asked. “It’s easier to get good stories from people if they don’t know I’m a journalist, though. The minute you say you’re a journalist, the lips zip closed.”
“Right, so no prison and no journalism.” They were going to have to go with something totally made up, then. “We can tell them we were on a road trip and got stranded when the car stopped running.”
“That’s plausible enough,” Marie said. “How do we explain the military rations?”
“We came across the ranger station,” Pete responded. “They’ve got to know it’s there, though not what it’s been used for lately.”
“Hopefully,” Marie answered. “Can you imagine if a whole town was in on it?”
“No. And I don’t want to,” Pete said. “The best plan is to say as little as possible. If someone asks why the rations are fresh, we tell them we’re as puzzled as they are.”
They walked another couple of minutes before Pete came to a stop, his eyes on something in front of them. Something that looked like… “Does that look like a fence to you, or did I dream it into being?”
“With barbed wire on top?”
The dark shapes of buildings beyond the chain-link fence were barely visible through the murky whiteness of the densely falling snow—but they were definitely there.
“Stop right there,” a voice said abruptly.
A man. Somewhere in front of them.
Pete grabbed Marie and pushed her behind him, then reached for the shoulder strap of the rifle.
“I wouldn’t, if I were you,” said the same voice.
“We don’t want any trouble,” Pete said, wondering how well the guy could see them, and if he dared to get the rifle.
“We’re looking for shelter,” Marie added.
Pete hoped that the guy could hear the way her teeth were chattering. It definitely sold their story. And he knew for a fact that she wasn’t faking. They needed to find heat, fast.
“If you’re not looking for trouble, leave the rifle on your shoulder,” the guy said, obviously speaking to Pete.
Pete held his hands open and away from his body while he peered through the falling snow, looking for the man who could obviously see them better than they could see him.
A blot in the low light took on a man-sized shape as he came closer. He was wearing a winter camouflage jumpsuit and night-vision goggles, which explained how he was able to see so well in such poor conditions. Except it didn’t explain it, because night-vision goggles should have been full of electronics.
“You folks must be crazy to be out in this weather,” the guy said. He flipped the goggles off and up and turned on a flashlight, which he aimed slightly downward so as not to blind them.
If the guy didn’t like the way the interview went, Pete had no doubt the light would be aimed right at their eyes, and then who knew what would follow. Finding people and a town should have been a good thing, but instead, they were up against an armed man with night-vision goggles, and none of it screamed welcome. It screamed planning and organization.
Although to what end, he had no idea.
“We sure didn’t know it was going to be like this when we left,” Marie said, a dose of snark in her tone. “We’re not idiots.”
“Where’d you come from?” the guy asked.
“Our car broke down in the middle of nowhere,” Pete said, gesturing vaguely toward Mueller.
“We’ve been trying to get back to Anchorage for days,” Marie added. “I thought we’d die out here. Do you know what’s going on? Why isn’t anything working? Have we been invaded or something?”
Pete squeezed Marie’s arm. She was doing well, but it would be wise not to overplay it.
The guy’s eyes narrowed as he ran the beam of the flashlight across the gun slung over Pete’s shoulder. “How’d you come by a military rifle?”
“We found a ranger station not too far from here,” Pete said, taking care to present the calm demeanor of a man with nothing to hide. “It’s where we got the snowshoes and the rifle.”
“What was that kind of firearm doing in an abandoned ranger station?” another voice asked from somewhere beyond the flashlight beam.
Pete spoke in the direction the voice had come from. “No idea. There were some supplies and the rifle, but no sign of people.”
The guy with the flashlight turned slightly and spoke over his shoulder. “What do you think, Jack? In or out?”
“In,” Jack said. “Though it’s not up to me.”
There was a world of nuance in Jack’s statement, and Pete filed it away for later. Chain of command or pecking order, whatever you wanted to call it, he knew enough to know when someone was following orders. Another sign that this town was organized for… something.
“Thank you,” Pete said. “We wouldn’t have lasted much longer. We’re both so damned cold—”
“I always thought I hated to be too hot,” Marie said. “But I’ve changed my mind. Cold is much worse.”
The man who’d confronted them introduced himself as Merle, and then Merle and Jack led them to a gate in the fence—but not before asking Pete to hand over the rifle.
Merle greeted the woman who was in charge of the gate, and she rolled it open only wide enough to let them through, walking single file.
Pete stared at her through the corner of his eye as he walked through. What the hell was this? Was the whole town enclosed by the fence? And why was there a fence at all? The solar flare and the EMP had only just occurred. This amount of fortification could not be a response to what had happened, which meant it had been here before.
Pete wished he hadn’t had to hand over his only weapon, though he recognized he’d had no choice. Merle and Jack were well armed, and who knew how many others were out in the dark, equally armed and equipped with night-vision goggles? Plus, insisting on keeping the rifle wouldn’t jibe with their cover story. The fact that the town had posted lookouts was worrisome, especially in this weather, when only an idiot would be out and about—or considering invading a local town.
Then again, they were close enough to Mueller that he and Marie had been able to walk there. Maybe they were used to living on high alert, just in case something happened at the prison.
But it just didn’t sit well with Pete. They were more prepared than any small town should have been. Military gear, really?
On one hand, it was a good thing, for the townies and possibly for Pete and Marie, if they decided to let them stay. But on the other hand, it was at the very least odd, and at the worst, sinister.
Decided to let them stay was what was hanging Pete up. This was still America, wasn’t it? And they were all citizens, which meant freedom of movement, unless the government had decreed otherwise. And yet he and Marie
had been compelled to present their case, to earn the right to stay in Clearview so they could survive the night. It was definitely… well, wrong.
He glanced at Marie, and the look she gave him set his mind at ease. It was full of speculation and questions, which meant she felt as suspicious as he did. Suspicious people were cautious, and cautious people survived.
“What’s going on here?” Marie asked, keeping her tone pleasant. “Why are you armed? Pete took that rifle from the ranger station because we were worried about wolves, not people. All we want is a room in a hotel for a night and then we’ll be on our way.”
“There aren’t any hotels in Clearview,” Jack said.
“I’m not the man in charge,” Merle said. “He’ll be the one asking the questions.”
Marie raised her eyebrows at Pete, but kept her mouth shut after that.
Merle and Jack led them up the short stretch of what had to be Clearview’s main street, which wasn’t even a full city block in length. In the low light and poor weather conditions, it was hard for Pete to tell if he was seeing things correctly, but it looked like the main street was relatively long and comprised wholly of buildings made from cargo containers stacked two and three containers high.
Because of the way the buildings were constructed, it was impossible to know whether they were homes or businesses. They all looked utilitarian and sturdy, and they’d all been sprayed with a layer of one of the high-tech insulating substances. None of them had more than one small front window. Light shone behind the curtains and shutters, but it had the yellow-tinted glow of flame, either from candles or gaslights, as opposed to the sharper white light that came from bulbs and electricity.
It was possible that a little town like Clearview lost power regularly during the winter months, which would mean that they’d be uniquely prepared for a more permanent outage. So the candles and flames, those were expected.
