He had three missed calls from Avery and two from Abraham. His phone had temporarily bugged out. In order to get off the base alive, he and Spencer had killed four of those crawlers and two asshole citizens trying to rob their base. Now he couldn’t get Avery or her brother to pick up their phones, and he was about to lose his mind.
Instead of trying again to reach her, he called Spencer, who was following in the L.T.’s truck behind him.
“I can’t get ahold of them,” he told his friend.
Spencer immediately said, “Me, neither. Something’s wrong.”
“My cell was out for a while.”
“Mine, too,” his friend answered, and their call cut off. He didn’t think this was just the usual call dropping from being on back country roads. This wasn’t as remote as Avery’s. He was on a state route. Even at her place, they could usually get a call to go through. She’d explained that her father had installed cell phone boosters on their property to help with reception.
Tristan pressed harder on the accelerator, not caring if anything flew out of the bed. Nothing mattered right now, not if she was in trouble. All he wanted was one word or text that she was okay. He wasn’t getting anything when he dialed again, just a busy signal, so he accelerated to seventy miles per hour.
Overhead, a helicopter flew low, not military, and not a news chopper. It looked like a private chopper that a businessman would use. Then two Chinooks went blasting by, their big twin engines vibrating the truck they were so low. He knew those were usually utilized to transport troops or artillery. Tristan also knew how to fly one, but it had been a while since he was in the driver’s seat. Wherever they were going, he was glad he wasn’t. And that was a change for him. Normally just the sound of those engines would get him fired up, his adrenaline pumping to go out and hunt down some dirtbag terrorist or third-world Commie wannabe leader. He was guessing those Chinooks were carrying troops and artillery. Lately, everywhere was like living on a military base. The big C-130s would fly over the cities all day. They even made passes over Avery’s house. Wright Patt Air Force Base in Dayton was busy running missions on a constant basis and was now dropping freight at different checkpoint locations in the tri-state area, something he learned from a memo he saw in the L.T.’s office when he gave him his resignation. They’d had a long talk, and his commanding officer was very understanding. He’d also let Tristan in on a lot of what he probably wasn’t supposed to tell anyone. Clearly, he trusted him enough not to run his mouth off and tell others.
One thing he found out from his lieutenant was that by November, only a few weeks away, the military was to have up and operational temporary evacuation sites. They didn’t expect the situation to get any better. Once Tristan found that out, he’d started full-scale collecting and scavenging for whatever he could get his hands on and by whatever means. If they expected people to have to evacuate cities, and that’s what he and his L.T. came to the conclusion of, then this hell they were all in was about to get worse. They were labeling these evacuation sites as ‘blue zones,’ or safe zones. Tristan had no intention whatsoever of going to those or taking Avery and the kids there. It was bound to be a cesspool of sickness- despite the promises of it not being. Plus, a heaping help of violence, theft, rape, and eventually murder. The government just couldn’t take care of that many people. Anyone who was already living off the government on welfare or in public housing or were reliant on them for taking care of their food supply and shelter were headed straight into those blue zones.
The second thing he learned was that the only way to kill the virus was to burn the body. They were planning on mass cremations. Tristan already figured that because of Avery’s mother and siblings. He’d asked about them as soon as Abraham told him what rooms they were in, and once they all four died, he was told by the hospital that they weren’t allowed to release the bodies. He thought maybe it was because he wasn’t family. That’s the way they’d explained it, in a roundabout way. That wasn’t the case, though. They weren’t releasing any dead bodies because they’d set up a huge crematorium site and were transporting them there to be burned in mass.
The last thing he learned was that cities that were overrun with the infected night crawlers were going to be burned. It would work two-fold. First, it would kill off the virus. And second, burning them alive would kill them. Literally. They had no way of curing them, despite the fact that they were still telling people to drop their sick loved ones off at medical sites the government was running. Tristan didn’t trust the government. He’d worked for them for almost eight years. They lied. They used people like tools until the tool broke and was no longer useful.
He slowed the truck so that he didn’t have to take the turn onto Renee’s road on two wheels. Her house wasn’t that far down the street, a little less than a mile now, but he felt something tighten in his chest when he saw smoke rising from a red pit of burning hell. That pit, as he drove closer, was her house. Tristan pulled off the side of the road and cut the engine. Spencer was at his door in a flash.
“What the hell, man?” his friend asked in a more panicked tone.
“Easy, dude,” Tristan said and picked up his phone again. It wasn’t even getting a signal. When he tried to dial her, it just sat on the dial screen before going black a few seconds later. The phone had a full charge. The cell companies were having problems. “Let’s roll.”
He grabbed the M4 on the seat, tucked a .45 he took from the armory into the front of his pants, and waited for his friend. Spencer came back with Kevlar vests. He didn’t always wear one, not caring much whether he lived or died. What did he have to come home to anyways? A storage locker with some wooden boxes full of silver coins? Now, he had people relying on him, so he shrugged out of his coat and into the vest. He dug an extra mag out of the ammo box on the backseat floor of the truck, locked it, and pocketed his keys. Once in Aswan, Egypt, his buddy left the keys in their car. It wasn’t there when they got back, and Tristan had to hotwire a piece of shit little white compact car that was probably from the 1970s and almost too small to fit them both inside just to get out of the equally shitty city before the local law enforcement figured out that they’d just killed someone who was causing the United States and Great Britain all sorts of trouble funneling millions of dollars to terrorist organizations.
“Let’s go,” he ordered.
Tristan jogged ahead, wishing he had some night-vision gear. They just didn’t keep that kind of stuff at their rinky little base. He’d just have to make do with the tiny amount of moonlight and the flames of Renee’s home lighting the way. It wasn’t too bad. There was plenty of cover with the brush and woods beside them. Once they came to where her yard started, though, Tristan took a knee and paused to assess the situation.
There were two dead men lying on the front lawn, another in the driveway. Her car was still there. The house was lit up like a roman candle on the Fourth of July. Men were walking around in the dark, creeping, some shouting to one another. A few were loitering near the tailgate of a pickup truck that he knew was not Renee’s. They looked like they were drinking.
Then he heard someone down the way in the dark yell, “There they are!”
Spencer touched his shoulder and nodded. He was thinking the same thing. The girls and Abraham made it out of the house and were trying to get away. He hoped he was right. Whoever that man was just talking about, he was in pursuit of someone.
Tristan rose and then froze a second later as he heard one of those things scream.
“Careful, brother,” Tristan warned. “Assholes aren’t the only enemy here tonight.”
“Got it.”
Somewhere behind the house, gunfire erupted. He saw the muzzle blast. Then he heard a man screaming in pain.
“That’s our queue. Let’s go,” he ordered and jogged down the road staying farthest to the left berm as he could to avoid being spotted. Spencer stuck right with him. Then they came to another house about a half mile away from Renee’s home, the direction of the spotter’s voice. He was right. The houses in this area were too close together.
The woods between the two properties opened up, thinned out, and became a yard that led to another home that was more of a two-story farmhouse style with an attached garage and wraparound porch. Three men were closing in on the front of it. Dogs were barking behind the house. One man opened fire through a glass sliding door on the deck. A woman screamed.
“Move,” he growled, sending Spencer in motion to flank from the left.
Tristan raised his M4 while running, took aim, and shot the man closest, which was probably about a thirty-yard target. He hit him in the middle of his back, startling the person and causing him to lurch forward and land face first. As he passed his prone body, Tristan fired again, this time into the back of the man’s skull. This wasn’t a leave-prisoners kind of situation. Nothing he ever got himself into was, so this was no different.
He kept moving at a fast click because the second man did a pivot at the sound of Tristan’s rifle and took off around the side of the house into the dark. Spencer fired and hit someone because they yelled out in pain. Tristan kept going.
Someone to his right near a small shed took a shot at him. It missed, and he raised his M4 and fired off four rounds to keep whoever it was at bay until he got to the cover of the house. On the other side of it, Spencer fired again. This time, the shot must not have been as clean as he wanted because it was followed up with a pause and then another round. His friend was using an old-style carbine.
Tristan spotted the one who’d run from him as he tried to climb a woven wire fence. He shot him in the ass. Then fired again into the man’s right side. Through the liver. He’d bleed out in minutes.
Then a barrage of gunfire came from his right, somewhere from the cover of those woods. He ran for the house. He needed his own bit of protection. Inside, a shot was fired. The man who’d shot through the glass door had run inside before he could get off a round. Now he was left to wonder if he was in there killing Avery. Or if she were even still alive.
He tried the doorknob for the garage and found it locked. With a hard kick, he was in. Squeezing around an older sedan, he went straight for the door that led inside. It was locked, too, so he also gave it a kick. It took three this time.
Once in, the house felt too quiet for all that was going on outside and around it. He weighed his options.
“Avery!” he called out after a second’s hesitation.
“Tristan?” she cried back.
“Yeah, it’s me,” he said, moving steadily forward. Behind him, someone breached the garage door.
“Just me,” Spencer quickly said and propped a piece of two by four under the handle. Then he joined him in the utility room and followed close behind Tristan.
“Tristan?” she called out again and appeared in the doorway. When she spotted him, Avery rushed over and threw herself against his chest weeping. “I-I thought you were dead. I tried to call…”
Four heavy rounds fired at the house startled her in his arms.
“Stay here. Where’s your brother and…”
As he was asking, Abraham and Renee came through the door. Spencer greeted her the same way Avery had him. Tristan didn’t have time for this. He wanted to finish the job. There would be time for greetings and high-fives and hugs or whatever later. He wasn’t used to this hugging shit in the middle of a battle and didn’t want to lose his edge.
“How many?” he asked her, stepping back.
“I don’t know. There were night crawlers out there, too.”
“We know.”
“We-we shot a few of those men,” Abraham said. “Avery and I.”
“Good,” he said and took Abraham’s gun. He released the magazine and jammed a few more rounds into it.
“I’m out of bullets,” she told him, to which he nodded.
“We need to move.” He looked at Spencer and mandated, “Avery and Renee stay between us at all times.”
“Got it,” Spencer acknowledged.
There was no time to talk now. They could explain everything later if they survived.
Tristan led the way with Avery behind him and her brother behind her followed by Renee and then Spencer as they went through the kitchen, into the dining room, and finally stopped in the living room. He didn’t pause when they came to a dead woman in the kitchen and a man who was probably her husband also dead close by.
Outside, he could hear men shouting. Off in the distance, he heard one of those crawlers scream. Avery said they were out there tonight. Either man or former man would be given no exemption if they were here with the intent to harm her.
He easily found the stairs leading up to the second floor and went first. When they all four reached the top floor, Tristan instructed Spencer with a hand signal to continue on.
“Where are…” Avery whispered.
“We’re taking a high position,” he explained and led her and Abraham to a bedroom. “Abraham, think you can keep this section of the yard clear if you shoot them from the window?”
“Yes, sir,” her little brother answered with conviction.
“Good,” he told him. “I’m taking Avery and going down the hall. We’ll hold our positions on this floor until we can’t. I’ll try to take the first shot. If you see them, shoot them. Assume whatever or whoever it is, they aren’t here to be your friend, man. Snipe them. It’s us or them, Abraham. After you shoot, duck fast. Once they see your muzzle flash, they’ll know your position. Don’t shoot at anyone until you have a clear shot. Make each one count. They start shooting back, get down and away from the windows, got me? Spence and I will keep them off you so you can get back up.”
“Yes, sir.”
Tristan gave her brother a firm squeeze on the shoulder. He was just a kid, but he also wasn’t one like he used to be, either. Then he led Avery to the corner bedroom that was separated from Abraham’s by a bathroom and closets.
“I don’t think…” she began protesting.
“I’ve got this,” he said. “Mostly, I’m just hoping Abraham fires off a few rounds to keep them from coming into the house. That’s why I put him over the front door.”
“Oh,” she whispered.
“Avery, stay over here, okay?” he said and took her to the other side of the room where he was sure she wouldn’t catch a bullet coming through the wall when he began this. “Stay down. If I get shot, take my rifle. Get the others and try to make a stand before getting outta’ here. Spencer will know how to provide cover fire to make sure you can take the others and get out.”
She shook her head. Tristan reached out and took her chin firmly in his hand to stop her.
“Don’t argue,” he said a bit too harshly, so he pressed a quick kiss to her forehead before crossing the room and easing up the window.
Without night-vision gear, this was going to be difficult. At least the front porch lights and the security lamp on the electric pole were helping. He quietly eased the window up.
He could hear them out there trying to whisper to one another as they approached the house again.
“I told you,” one said. “I swear I saw two dudes.”
“It’s just a kid and two women, you pussy,” another said, someone with authority in his tone. “I want those women. Get rid of the fuckin’ kid and go get ‘em!”
“Alright, man, alright,” the other said. “C’mon.”
He must have been talking to someone else or a small cluster of men because Tristan caught movement to their right of the front yard in a small grove of trees that was just thick enough to hide in. He hoped Abraham didn’t get edgy and start blasting away.
Tristan eased his finger onto the trigger and pushed the butt of his rifle more firmly into his shoulder. He knew what was coming. This wasn’t his first game of cat and mouse. The mice just didn’t know what was in store for them yet.
Four men fanned out across the front yard and closed in. There could be more coming at them from the back, but this was what needed to be dealt with first. He took a calming breath and pressed his cheek into the stock.
Twenty yards, fifteen, inside the front yard’s mowed down portion, ten, breathe, squeeze. He took out the one in the middle with a headshot, which did exactly what he’d hoped. It sent the others running further out. In the next room over, Abraham fired his pistol and so did Spencer almost simultaneously. They both hit. Tristan watched the one closest to his side of the house panic and turn around to retreat. No retreats. He pulled the trigger in two rapid succession shots and hit him in the back. Then he swung back and scanned the front yard again. Abraham hadn’t killed his man. He was crawling away. Tristan finished the job with a single squeeze of the trigger. That was shit only a hardened veteran could handle doing to someone.
In a turn that only served to piss him off, someone inside the wood line shot out the porch light and then the security light on the electric pole. It caused a muzzle flash, so Tristan took a risk and pulled the trigger. A second later, a man cried out in pain. Lucky shot. He’d take those any day of the week over skill. Many times, that’s all he had to go on anyway, even with the best-laid plans and years of training.
He could hear them talking again, but the conversation was too low to pick up. It was irritating. He was not a patient man. So, he fired off three rounds into their general direction in the woods that sent them scattering. He caught sight of shadows scurrying across the yard until they hit the road. Spencer fired twice, hitting one. Tristan fired and missed because the asshole dove down into a ditch. Or maybe he did hit him, and that’s why he went down so fast.
Spencer came running down the hall, “We…”
“On it. Stay here with your brother, Ave.”
He followed his friend immediately down the stairs and out the front door to pursue them. They couldn’t let them get away. The jog wasn’t hard; it was just hard seeing. Once they came onto the road, it was easier to see where the hell they were going because Renee’s house was still burning bright hot. He spotted one and sprinted until he closed the gap. Spencer beat him to it and shot the asshole with a headshot. Impressive. Someone had been doing their cardio.
They were just coming around the corner where her house stood when a truck flew out of her driveway. Tristan raised his rifle and fast-like fired six rounds as Spencer helped. They took out the tires and the driver. It wrecked into the drainage ditch and smashed into the hill beside it with a jolting stop. They both approached cautiously.
A man was lying in the road moaning, obviously ejected from the bed of the truck. Spencer shot him in the face. The passenger wasn’t dead, but Tristan ensured his entry into Valhalla a few seconds later.
“Let’s check out the place,” he told Spencer and jogged to her property.
“I’ll look around the barn,” Spencer offered.
Tristan nodded. “I’ll check out the other one.”
The building was dark and filled with equipment like tractors, those four-wheelers they’d ridden, and fence posts. Mostly just farm stuff littered the building. No signs of any more looters.
He shut the man door again and circled the building to make sure nobody got left behind and was hiding from them until it was clear to make their escape. No escapes. Not tonight. Not after trying to hurt or take her.
The security lamp on Renee’s electric pole was still lit, and he caught sight of Spencer approaching him from the horse barn. Then someone slammed into him from the shadows and took the guy down. Tristan ran over and butt stroked the man to the back of his head, which caused him to slump and keel over.
Spencer yelled out as if disgusted and shoved the body off of him. It was a woman. She was filthy, pale, and sweaty, even in her clearly dead state. Her eyes were wide open, completely dilated without a touch of color left, and the whites bloodshot. Crawler. She had blood on her mouth and chin. That wasn’t from him hitting her. It was old and dried up. She’d eaten something recently, raw, maybe even still alive at the time.
“We need to get the hell outta’ here,” he ordered and jogged away with Spencer right behind.
They gathered their trucks down the street and went back to Renee’s neighbors’ house where they picked up the others and sped off.
“What about the animals?” Renee asked when they exited the trucks back home safely in Avery’s driveway. The front door opened and Kaia came out with Ephraim to greet them.
“We’ll have to go back in the morning and hope for the best,” Tristan told her. “That was a hot spot, and not because of the fire. Those flames were gonna draw in a lot more of those things.”
Renee frowned and sucked her lower lip into her mouth with worry. Spencer led her away.
“Whose truck is that?” Abraham asked.
“It was our lieutenant’s,” he answered honestly, not wanting to hide things he’d just have to explain later. “He didn’t make it. We had the same problem out there. Night crawlers and looters.”
“We tried calling you,” Avery said. She hadn’t spoken the whole ride home.
“I know. I tried calling you guys, too. Cells are failing.”
“Why?” Abraham asked.
He shook his head. “Not sure. Lines may be either jammed up from so many people trying to use them at the same time or else the phone companies are collapsing.”
Tristan inspected the load from the base and was surprised that it was all still there. “We need to get this all unloaded tonight in case it rains.”
“Or snows,” Avery added.
He backed the truck up to the garage, sent Avery inside with Renee and the kids, and began stacking their stolen loot in the garage with most of the other stuff he’d brought home. They worked until four a.m. to get both trucks unloaded. Then Spencer went to the apartment above the garage with Renee.
Tristan took a shower in the guest bedroom and did a perimeter check one more time. The kids were dead asleep. He went up to Avery’s new room, her parents’ former bedroom, and found her asleep, too. However, he stepped on a squeaky board trying to make his exit and woke her.
“Hey, come here,” she instantly said in a groggy, sexy voice. Then she pulled the covers back and patted the empty space in front of her.
Tristan joined her, lying down and pulling her into him.
“You okay?” he asked quietly. A nightlight in the bathroom allowed him to see her. Either that or he was becoming a creature of the night like those crawlers.
“Yeah,” she said and rested her hand against his smoothly shaven cheek. “I think so.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there tonight. That won’t happen again.”
Her fingertips traced his brow bone. “I want you to teach me and the kids how to better defend ourselves. There are going to be times when you won’t be able to be there for us, Tristan.”
He nodded but frowned. He didn’t want that to be true.
“Promise?”
“Yeah, I promise,” he vowed and meant it. Tristan knew there might be more times like tonight when chance, fate, or circumstance might separate them, and as much as it caused a constriction in his chest just considering it, he had to admit that she was right. They needed training to better take care of themselves. “Are you okay? I know you had to shoot someone tonight. That’s not easy. Especially the first time.”
She nodded. “I’m not going to think about it. All I care is keeping the kids safe, feeding them, and being with you.”
“Compartmentalizing the hard stuff definitely makes it easier to get through something like this,” he said, commending her on such fast strides in wartime behavior and gut survival instincts. Of course, her mother had been a shrink.
“I just want this to last,” she said and stroked her fingers through his hair. “As long as it can, Tristan.”
She nuzzled into his neck and kissed him there, and although it made parts of his tired body twitch to life, he kissed her forehead. Tristan knew what she meant, though. He wanted the same thing. Just one more day, one more week, maybe if they were lucky, some years together.
“You shaved,” she commented and touched his chin with her lips.
“Yeah, didn’t want to scratch your chin.”
“What makes you think I’ll let you kiss me again?”
He grinned and pulled her closer, his hand sliding over her hip and around to cup her bottom. She hiked her leg up over his own hip, which brought them infinitely closer. Then she pressed into him seductively.
“I think you might want me to,” he teased and slipped his tongue past her lips. Her hand slid between them. Tristan snatched it. “Not tonight, Avery. Yesterday morning was your first time. I don’t want to hurt you.”
She pushed him over onto his back and straddled him, only because he allowed it. Then Avery Andersson, sexy homeschool minx, ground herself down against him as she swiftly pulled her satin nightie off and tossed it aside. Her tiny lace panties were all that was left. In the sunlight yesterday morning, she’d been like a blonde beach babe, all sexy and tan. In the moonlight, she was like a silvery, pale goddess astride him.
“We don’t know how much time we’re going to get in this, Tristan,” she said, kissing his mouth, then his chin and his chest. “I’m not going to die tomorrow wishing I’d been with you again. We can’t afford that.”
Her words rang true, but at the same time hurt something deep inside his chest. Tristan didn’t want to think about losing her. That made him swiftly but gently swing her in his arms until she was on her back and he was over her. This time, he took his time like he’d wanted to in the morning. He was more in control, the way it should be, and he lingered over her for an infinite amount of time before actually joining their two bodies to become one.
A long time later as she fell asleep in his arms, Avery Andersson whispered, “I love you too.”
Tristan’s heart opened up to receive her love and give it in return. She felt so good in his arms, so right. He was never going to let anything separate them.