by Nathan Jones
What the blazes was he doing out on a wild goose chase when she needed him here?
Any hope he'd had that Skyler was already back was dashed by the way her hopeful look faded to bleak despair when she realized he'd returned alone. He pushed to his feet with a weary groan to wrap an arm around her, still holding Molly tight.
“Anything?” Kristy said in a tiny voice. “Any news at all?”
Tom buried his face in her hair, slow to answer. “Not a trace so far,” he finally said reluctantly. “Anyone here have anything?”
She pulled back enough to look up at his face, expression twisting. “I haven't checked in with them today yet. But Brady seems to think he's got something, based on stuff Gray's people have overheard on the radio from the bloodies. You should talk to him.”
Tom wondered at her obvious reluctance and distaste; what exactly had they overheard? It couldn't be anything bad that had happened to their son, judging by her expression.
But he put that aside for the moment, resting a hand on his wife's belly. “How are you?” he asked quietly. “How's the baby?”
“Fine,” she said absently, all her focus obviously still on Skyler. “Haven't even had any false labor pains, like with Molly.” She patted his hand. “No rush with this baby, thank God.”
He wasn't sure how much of a comfort that was. “But you're due any day now, right?” he persisted. “Maybe I should stay until you have the baby . . . I don't want to leave you like this.”
Her blue eyes sharpened on his. “Don't you dare. I can have this baby without you if I have to, but for Skyler you being there might literally be a matter of life and death.”
Tom wanted to argue that it might be a matter of life and death for her and Molly and the baby, too, if Sangue found the valley. But he decided he'd check in with Gray and Brady first, see if they had anything for him.
That would give him time to prepare a better argument for staying, when Kristy obviously needed him. He just wished he wasn't being torn in half by his need to find his son and be here for the rest of his family at the same time.
He leaned down and kissed her gently, before shifting Molly into her arms. “I'll go check in with Camptown,” he said quietly.
She nodded, looking forlorn, as if she was having trouble dredging up much hope. “I'll have dinner by the time you get back.” She paused to look him over. “And you should have a good night's rest before you go out again. You look terrible.” Her nose wrinkled, a hint of playfulness entering her tone. “Actually, before you go maybe I'll heat up some water for you to wash up, since you also stink.”
“'Tinky,” Molly agreed solemnly. Tom heard one of the women back at the table snicker.
He felt his face heating. Well, he had spent the last couple weeks living rough, and hygiene had been the last thing on his mind. Which was unusual for him, since even while trekking out in the mountains he usually did his best to wash up regularly and clean his clothes. But he supposed it wasn't too surprising, given the pressure he'd been under.
“Yeah, I should wash up first,” he agreed sheepishly.
* * * * *
Half an hour later Tom was bathed and dressed in clean clothes. Kristy had also pushed a thick slice of slightly stale bread liberally spread with butter and mug of steaming herb tea into his hands as she ushered him out the door towards Camptown, as well as promising she'd have a steak for him when he returned for dinner.
That wasn't enough to fully rejuvenate him after the exhausting weeks of nearly nonstop travel he'd endured, but it was a good start. And the promise of a good night's sleep in his own bed with his wife in his arms kept him going as he sought out someone in the steadily flourishing town who had news about his son.
Word of his arrival must've gone ahead of him, because as Tom was returning his borrowed horse to the town's stables, Mitchells appeared from the direction of the center of town to greet him.
The sheriff looked as if he'd aged a decade in the last few weeks, face drawn and lined with worry and movements carrying the jerky hitch of pure exhaustion kept at bay by sheer stubbornness. “Don't suppose you're here to get back to work, Trapper?” he asked with a wan smile, offering his hand.
“I'd like to stick around, help out with the baby's birth,” Tom replied, returning the grip and noticing with concern that the man's hand had a slight tremor to it. “The wife has other ideas.”
His friend's smile turned wry. “I'll take that as a no, then.” All too true, unfortunately; Kristy wasn't one to back down once she'd dug her heels in. Mitchells shook his head and sighed. “That's a shame. Gray knows his business better than any man I've ever met, but he doesn't know this area. With you and Gerry both gone, and your kid in the wind, he's had to go on what our scouts have learned while we've been living here.”
Tom felt bad about that, but he wasn't sure what he could do about it. “I don't suppose, for both our sakes, you have news to help me end my search a bit quicker?”
Mitchells hesitated. “We've got something. Brady seems sure it's relevant, but I've got my doubts.”
He didn't know if that was enough to stir up hope. “About Skyler?”
Camptown's leader shrugged. “Well no. Or at least, maybe.” At Tom's frown the man hastily added. “As you know, we've been passively monitoring Sangue's radio chatter in the area, which has been a huge help when it comes to defending the bowl valley.” He clapped him on the shoulder, starting to urge him deeper into town. “But we've also been hearing plenty of their talk about skirmishers. Maybe stuff that could help you find your boy.”
He followed his friend to the command building, where Brady Everett and his wife, Betty, along with a few other people, were hard at work: poring over maps, reading old wrinkled papers full of cramped writing, and writing things down on other sheets of paper. As if organizing every scrap of information they had that might be relevant to the fight.
In one corner, a Hispanic man wearing the patch from Gray's original Grand Junction militia was quietly going over papers with a young woman, reading to her while she hastily scribbled notes.
Brady immediately made his way over to him. “Trapper!” he said warmly, offering him a firm handshake. “Good to see you still kicking.”
“You too,” he replied, not in the mood for pleasantries. “I hear you might've heard something about Skyler?”
“Think so.” The trader turned towards the corner. “Hey, Diaz! Come meet Lobo.”
Tom frowned in confusion as the militia fighter immediately straightened, eyes brightening, and murmured a hasty “excuse me” to the young woman before hurrying over. “So this is the man, the myth, the boogyman,” he said.
“Lobo?” Tom asked.
“That's what our quartermaster seems to think,” Diaz replied with a grin, clapping Brady on the shoulder. “I hear the name frequently on the radio in connection to the skirmishers . . . the only person out there who hits the bloodies on his own, instead of in groups of at least two like the Sheriff's people do, or Gerry's did. Hence the name . . . Lobo, sometimes Lobo Solitario.”
Lone Wolf. Well, Tom had been hitting them where he could.
“Diaz is one of the radio operators, in case you haven't guessed,” Brady added. “I asked him to keep his ear to the ground about any Sangue chatter that might mention your boy. When he started hearing about Lobo striking in multiple places at once, too far away to reasonably have traveled between them for the attacks, I thought we might be hearing about you and Skyler both.”
“Although the bloodies seem sure it's just one person with some sort of supernatural powers, since the attacks are so eerily similar and the person making them is impossible to track, like a ghost,” Diaz said cheerfully. He chuckled. “And let me tell you, they really hate you.”
Tom's mind raced. Considering everything he'd taught Skyler, it stood to reason that they'd operate in almost identical ways. Which meant if the radio operator had been recording the reported locations of attacks by the “Lone Wolf”, Tom co
uld look at any he hadn't been involved with and know those were his son. He could even look at the most recent one to find out what area the kid was working in at the moment, which would seriously improve his chances of finding him.
Assuming the information didn't reveal that all the recent attacks were his, which meant something bad had happened to Skyler out there. Although the fact that the bloodies were still searching for Lobo meant they couldn't have caught him yet, could it?
Diaz misinterpreted his deepening frown at those unpleasant thoughts and hastened to continue. “Sangue estimates there's about three squads worth of skirmishers, usually split up into fireteams, who keep hitting them. They call them Fantasmas.”
Ghosts. Tom wondered with amusement if the bloodies were going by their squad size of twenty or the twelve the bowl valley's fighters used. If the latter, their prediction was surprisingly accurate, but it was probably the former, which meant Gray's squads were doing so well the enemy thought there was twice as many of them.
When he just listened patiently, the radio operator took that as a sign to continue. “They've been surprisingly accurate at tracking what attacks are the Fantasmas, which ones are by groups we know are squads of our fighters, and which are Lobo, going by how many people are involved. With Lobo they never hear more than one gun, which is their main clue. As are the impossibly accurate long range shots.”
Tom spoke up impatiently. “How many Lobo attacks have you heard reports about? Do they say in what areas they're made?”
Diaz nodded, remaining amiable in spite of his tone. “Brady asked me to track it all as best I could. I don't recognize the descriptions of some of the locations, since I don't know this area, but from what I hear you're the man who can help me with that.” He motioned to the young woman he'd been working with. “Could you give us a hand, Lin?”
She'd been doing her best to unobtrusively listen in, idly toying with a lock of hair as she stared at the radio operator with more than just professional interest. When he suddenly spoke to her she jumped, blushing slightly, then hastily shuffled some papers on her desk until she found the ones she was looking for, joining them near the main map of the area sitting on the table in the center of the room.
The two got to work, using pins to mark locations they were confident of. As Tom had expected, many of the Lobo attacks were located to the west of Camptown, working their way north and then east along Highway 29 on the path he'd taken.
As they worked, a map on the wall showing northern Utah caught Tom's eye, and he frowned as he tried to figure out what the markings on it meant. Brady noticed, and motioned him over to take a closer look at it.
“There's another group out there Sangue is fighting,” the trader told him. “Like a real group, no offense to us . . . they're actually holding the bloodies back from expanding into the northwestern States, and have been operating a bit just to the north of us, organizing pockets of resistance in the mountains east of Utah and Salt Lake Valleys. The bloodies we've been listening to on the radio talk about them a lot, call them Estadounidenses.”
Tom gave him a blank look. “People from the United States? That's all of us.”
The quartermaster shifted impatiently. “Yeah, but they talk about these guys like they're an actual group. Someone who's not just giving Sangue a run for their money, but have actually kicked in the teeth of the army the bloodies serve as a vanguard for.”
That made him whistle, impressed. Grand Junction, a city of tens of thousands with thousands of fighters in their militia, had pretty much been wiped out the moment the invaders' main army had finally stepped in and conducted a real attack. If this group up north was challenging the army itself, they were a real force to be reckoned with.
“That's something to be hopeful about, huh?” he mused. “But if there's an actual group up there capable of trading punches with an empire that's conquered South, Central, and a healthy chunk of North America, why haven't we ever heard of them before?”
Brady made a noncommittal noise, obviously not overly excited about anything that cast doubt on their potential source of salvation. For his part Tom wasn't all that impressed; sure, the idea that someone out there could beat Sangue was a nice one, farfetched as it seemed. But those people weren't here in their mountains, and the bloodies didn't seem to be easing up on their search for Camptown one bit because of any resistance they might be encountering up north.
Before he could learn any more about events of the wider world, Diaz and Lin called him back to the table. They needed his help with some of the other locations, which from his best guess were clustered around Joes Valley Reservoir.
So that was where Skyler had been operating. Tom could've kept going after running into Brandon and possibly run into his son.
Or not.
As they worked through some of the most recent attacks, all of which had been carried out by Skyler in the last few days while Tom was pushing hard south to Camptown, he realized that their two paths had almost converged near where Brandon had taken out Highway 29 again. In fact, while just reading the map made exact guesses difficult, Tom would've bet money on the fact that Skyler had chosen to trail Jonas and Benny and cover their retreat south, and either hadn't known about Brandon's group or had decided to steer clear of them.
Son of a . . . he'd been within hours of running into his son at one point, and might have if he'd made different decisions. He might even have run into him if Skyler had kept trailing Jonas and Benny, since apparently Tom had arrived back in camp only hours after the two fighters.
Instead, the kid had peeled Sangue pursuers on horseback off towards the east, then disappeared a day or so ago.
On the plus side, frustrated as Tom was by that news, at least it gave him a clear area to work with. One that wasn't far away, and a trail that wasn't that old. If he hurried he could grab Horse and be well on his way to closing the distance before sundown.
Might even get to Skyler's last known location soon enough to pick up the trail before it faded.
Although Tom didn't know Diaz from Adam, he still couldn't help but hug the man at the news his son was still alive, at least as of a day ago. “Thanks,” he blurted, heading for the door. “I need to let Kristy know!”
Brady called after him, sounding almost put out. “Don't you want to hear the rest of what we've found out?”
“No time!”
He was barely out the door when he nearly ran into Gray, who was quietly conferring with an exhausted looking Jonas. The leader of Camptown's fighters narrowed his eyes when he saw Tom, giving his lieutenant a quiet word before sending him on his way with a clap on the back.
Then he came over, shoulders slumped. “Something tells me you're not back for good, Trapper.”
“Maybe soon,” Tom hedged. “I've got a lead on my son's location. I could have him back as soon as a week from now.”
Gray nodded disinterestedly. He honestly looked dead on his feet, face a mask of hopeless exhaustion. “I hope we're still around when you do.”
He stared at the old sheriff in shock. He hadn't gotten this sort of hopelessness from any of the others, even though they'd all been tense and worried. “Is our situation that bad?”
“They will be before long, the way things are going.” Gray slumped against the wall beside the door, as if it was the only thing keeping him up. “We're getting hit hard. Constantly, from all sides. We've lost over sixty people, used up all the grenades for our RPGs and most of our heavy machine gun ammo. Running low on lemon grenades and explosives, too.”
Tom swore quietly. Not the news he wanted to hear, for any of their sakes.
The militia leader continued heavily. “Sangue's pushing us farther and farther in before we manage to turn them back, almost to the lower valley just northeast of us at one point . . . it's a miracle they haven't found Camptown by now.” He shook his head. “To be honest, that's one of the only reasons I agreed to Gerry's insane plan.” He hesitated, giving him a close look. “Which you p
robably have no idea about, do you?”
“Actually, I ran into him not long after he took out Highway 29. He asked me to stick around and help out with it.”
“Well, you would've given him a slightly higher chance of succeeding,” Gray said dourly. “Not that it would've helped much, most like . . . his plan's probably suicide and will end up getting a lot of innocent freed slaves killed.” He let out a heavy breath, sagging even harder against the wall. “But it has just the remotest chance of a big win. And we need something like that right now.”
“If you're trying to guilt me into abandoning my search for my son . . .” Tom began.
The older man waved him off, jaw tightening. “You have to do what you have to do for your family, no point trying to say otherwise. I'm just afraid we might not still be here the next time you check in.”
Tom thought of Kristy and Molly and the baby, due just about any day now. They were depending on him every bit as much as Skyler was, and he'd sooner die than leave them defenseless in the face of the situation he'd just had described to him.
It was tearing him in two, and he knew exactly which way he wanted to lean. But he knew just as well that Kristy wouldn't go for him staying behind, especially now that he finally had news about Skyler. She'd insist he go, even if bloodies were swarming down on Camptown from the two peaks overlooking the valley right that very moment.
His wife could out-stubborn him any day of the week, and he was pretty sure if he insisted on staying here to protect her, she'd head right out into the mountains herself, nine months pregnant and all, to find their son without him.
“I've been picking off the enemy where I find them,” he offered, not much conviction in his voice.
Gray sighed, visibly forcing himself to straighten. “Thanks for checking in, Trapper. If you could carry some messages to the sentries and skirmishers on your way back out, whichever direction you're heading, I'd appreciate that. Betty Everett can point you in the right direction and tell you what they need to know.”
