It didn’t take long for them to reach the road.
In more normal times, Lee had walked these woods for pleasure and exercise. He’d always found his way back to the road by the sound of cars passing by, like the sound of a river. Now the road was empty and silent and Lee almost stepped out onto the asphalt before he realized he was there.
The party stopped just inside the wood line. Past the trees, the shoulder of the road rose slightly to the asphalt. Jack offered to check it out, and Lee deferred. He knelt down, Angela and Abby hovering close behind him, while Jack low-crawled up to the road to survey in both directions.
“How far is your house, mister?” Abby whispered.
Lee looked both directions down the road, but being in the woods had disoriented him to what section of the road this was. He could be a mile from his house or ten. Luckily, he’d been keeping steady track of the amount of time they’d been walking, and he ran some quick numbers in his head.
“Rough guesstimate… maybe two miles?”
Abby didn’t answer. The kid was being a trooper hanging in there, but when a kid didn’t complain, you had to wonder what was wrong. Lee’s best guess was that she was so tired and dehydrated that she didn’t have the energy to complain. Her body and her mind were in survival mode.
He turned and looked at the mother and daughter.
Both of them looked rough, to say the least. The few bottles of water he’d been able to give them would have barely hydrated them in the state they were when they came off the roof, and certainly not now after a day of hiking. He noticed that Angela was massaging her thigh and he suspected muscle cramps.
He needed to get IVs in both of them. They couldn’t go on like this forever. He was pretty sure they could make it to the house, though. And then he could rehydrate them and get them back into working shape.
A quiet whistle drew his attention back to the road.
Jack was still on his belly on the shoulder of the road. He looked back at Lee and gave a thumbs-up.
Lee turned back to Angela “You guys ready? We’re almost there.”
She and her daughter both stood slowly and Lee motioned them forward. Angela jogged with her little girl across the road and disappeared into the woods on the other side. Lee waited until they were safe, then crossed quickly, Jack following closely behind. They continued into the woods until they could just barely make out the blacktop, and then turned due east, heading once again in the direction of Lee’s house.
As they walked, Lee noticed that the acrid smell of burning materials had grown slightly stronger. There was a haze hanging in the forest, but he could not tell if it was light smoke or the last bit of dew burning off in the warming sun. He kept his observations to himself, as he did not believe they would serve any purpose but to worry the others. They had hiked approximately another two hundred yards when Lee heard what he initially thought was someone shouting, but then immediately recognized as barking. Specifically, Tango’s barking.
“Whoa.” He held up a hand and everyone stopped walking. They all stood in the middle of the forest, straining eyes and ears for any signs of danger. “That’s my dog.”
“How can you tell?” Angela asked.
“I know Tango’s bark.”
“Thought he was in your bunker.” Jack spoke almost under his breath, as though he was pointing something out that would anger or embarrass Lee.
“He was.” Lee nodded. “If he’s out, the kid’s out.”
No one spoke. Tango barked three more times, and Lee realized he was getting closer. They were upwind and Tango had sniffed out his master. That was all well and good, but why the fuck was he outside to begin with?
The dog burst through a tangle of thick brush and came running full speed for Lee, tail circling wildly behind him like a propeller. Lee was glad to see Tango unharmed but he couldn’t help having a greasy feeling of dread. Where was Sam? And what had happened?
He held up a hand and bent down to one knee as Tango approached, slowing to a trot, then coming to a halt before his master, tail sweeping an arc of leaves from the forest floor behind him. Just happy to see Lee.
Lee gave him a quick scratch on the head and then looked up to the woods. He didn’t have to wait for long before he saw a small, skinny figure running toward the group in that awkward prepubescent manner. Sam saw them, waved once, but then kept looking behind him, as though he were being pursued.
“Fuck…” Lee held his rifle at a low-ready. “Something’s wrong.”
“Yep.” Apparently Jack had come to the same conclusion.
Lee didn’t know what to expect from Sam, but the kid ran up and latched onto Lee, clinging around his waist, and it broke Lee’s heart. He wasn’t this kid’s father. He couldn’t be that person for him, and he didn’t have the time even if he wanted to. This was survival, not a Social Services visit.
“Sam, what happened?” Lee asked sternly.
The kid was out of breath. He kept glancing back into the woods. He spoke between gulps of air. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. We thought you were dead.” Sam’s voice broke as he said the last part.
Dammit… Lee was trying not to be angry. “Why aren’t you in the bunker?”
“I took Tango outside so he could go to the bathroom. Then some army men came. I was scared. They didn’t look nice. We hid in the woods, and they went into your house. They took everything out. Then they set it on fire.”
Lee stared down at this pathetic kid clinging to him like a life raft.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Lee mumbled without thinking.
“Captain!” Angela hissed behind him.
Tears sprang into Sam’s eyes and Lee immediately regretted letting the words slip out of his mouth.
“I said I was sorry.”
There were other choice words that Lee wanted to say—not directed at Sam in particular, but at the situation that he now found himself. But for the sake of the kid, he kept it to himself this time. He removed Sam from his leg—perhaps a little roughly—and pushed him into Angela’s arms. “Watch him for me?”
She nodded once.
He looked at Jack. “You’re with me.”
Then Jack and Lee took off at a run.
* * *
The haze in the trees was thickening and above the forest canopy Lee could see a dark column of smoke rising into the sky. The smoke was dark tendrils and light-gray mixing together like cloudy boiling water. Strange memories from old science classrooms: black smoke from petroleum products, white smoke from plant products.
“Captain…” Jack slapped him on the shoulder to get his attention.
Lee slowed and stopped behind a cluster of trees. “What?”
Jack wiped sweat from his eyebrows. “What if they’re still there?”
Lee considered the odds. “If we take them by surprise and hit them hard, we can probably take out about six or seven.”
Jack didn’t look convinced.
“If you can get a good hide, I can start taking out any heavy weapons or vehicles they have.” Lee indicated his 40mm grenades, of which he had three left. “Attention’s on me; you take out the survivors.”
“If your house is burned down, there’s no point in attacking them. It’s all risk and no reward.”
Lee knew Jack was right. “Fine. I’m comfortable saying we can take out five. If there’s more than five, we’ll leave it.”
Jack seemed to chew it over. “Alright. But give me some time to scout it out.”
“Agreed.”
They started moving again, this time slower, watching their footsteps and gliding through the woods nearly without noise. When they had drawn closer to the house and the smoke was palpable, Jack motioned Lee to remain while he crept quietly forward. Lee took cover behind a large tree and settled down at the base of its trunk, watching Jack move forward like a big cat prowling.
The skeletal man slid easily through the woods, nearly to the point that Lee could not see him. Lee could tell that the woods opened up just ahead of Jack’s location, and at certain angles Lee thought he could see his house.
He watched Jack stand very still for several moments, then settled slowly to the earth, propping his rifle on a fallen log and scanning the area through his scope. Jack made four very careful, very slow arcs across Lee’s field of view. Lee watched impatiently, wondering how long the sniper was going to take.
After what was probably close to five minutes of complete silence, watching Jack reconnoiter the area, the sniper looked back in Lee’s direction and motioned very slowly with his hand to move forward, then patted the air just above the ground, indicating Lee should move stealthily.
Lee moved out of his cover smoothly and made his way toward Jack at a steady glide. When he got within about ten feet of Jack, he lowered his body to the ground and low-crawled up shoulder-to-shoulder with Jack. From his new vantage point, much closer to the edge of the woods, Lee could see his house.
Or what was left of it.
It was still on fire, although it was beginning to smolder. It had obviously been lit on fire several hours ago, as the fire had completely eaten the structure and the upstairs had completely collapsed in on itself. What little remained of the house jutted up out of the ground—burned and uneven walls sagging and torn down. Like the rib cage of a recently gutted animal.
For a moment, Lee couldn’t speak. It wasn’t the house that he was attached to. In fact, it wasn’t anything that he was attached to. It was purely the worry of survival that he now felt like a vise grip being ratcheted down on his stomach. His house was superfluous, but now his bunker was covered in what looked like five feet of burning rubble, and it could take days before that much burning material cooled enough for him to get through. Inside were supplies that meant the difference between life and death. Desperately needed food and water were now inaccessible, if they were even still down there. In all likelihood, whatever raiding party had come along and burned his house had cleaned it out of anything useful prior to lighting the match. The guns and ammo would be gone, without a doubt. Some of the more sensitive equipment they may have left alone—not knowing what it was or how it could help them just meant it was extra weight.
The second immediate concern was the medical supplies. He hadn’t truly concerned himself with the condition that Angela and Abby were in. The truth was, while he’d stabilized their malnutrition and dehydration as best he could with the supplies he’d had in his go-to-hell pack, they were both still in a bad state and getting worse by the hour. He had been relying on the ability to get them to his bunker and stick them both with IVs to rehydrate and stuff them with MREs for a few days to get their strength back up. Without that possibility, their chances looked bleaker by the minute.
And Lee didn’t have any food or water left in his pack. Without those essential supplies, he had to put a timeline on each of their lives. Lee and Jack were both fairly well fed and hydrated as of yesterday, which meant they could probably go without water for the next two days, given the heat and their stress levels. He gave Angela and Abby until the following night.
Without a word, Lee dropped his pack and knelt down on one knee. He unzipped one of the front pockets and thrust his hand in, rooting around for a second before withdrawing the GPS device. He knew it was in there, knew it was safe and still in his possession, but in that moment he needed to look at it and touch it. It was hope made tangible.
“What’s that?” Jack asked.
Lee just breathed a sigh of momentary relief and shoved the device back in the pack. “Let’s just say it’s an insurance policy.”
Lee hauled the pack onto his shoulders again. Focus. Compartmentalize. The bunker was no longer an option for shelter, but he had to get Angela, Abby, and Sam into some sort of safe place. In order to accomplish this, he needed to know what, if anything, Jack had seen.
In a tone as calm as he could muster, Lee spoke. “You see anyone?”
“Not a soul.” Jack looked at Lee. “I’m pretty sure they burned the house just to fuck with you. They must’ve gotten your address from your truck.”
“My registration,” Lee nodded. The general two-man consensus was that the rogue army unit had done this. “I need to check out my neighbor’s house. We’re going to need to get our group indoors. Hopefully they didn’t burn that house down, too.”
Jack just shook his head. “Hoping is a bad habit these days.”