Push Back: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller (The Disruption Series Book 2) (14 page)

“We can slip right up in that shady spot. And what’s even better,” Bollinger said, swiveling his head to look behind him, “if it’s deep enough to pull up a bit, we’ll be completely out of sight from the main channel.”

“But then we can’t see the channel either.”

Bollinger shrugged. “I doubt anyone is going to sneak up on us in a canoe, especially since they won’t even know we’re here, and we can hear an outboard or engine a mile away. This looks like a winner to me, boss.”

Kinsey thought a minute. “Okay, but we have to get far enough behind the barge to hide the trailer, and I don’t want to pull in bow first with the trailer behind us. I want to be pointed out in case we have to leave in a hurry. Take us back out into the channel a bit. I’ll untie the trailer and you circle around and nose up to it. I’ll get in the bow and hold it and you push it up behind the barge. When it’s in place, we’ll back out, turn around and back into the gap. Then we can make up the tow again.”

“Roger that,” Bollinger said, and eased the boat back into the main channel.

Fifteen minutes later, the maneuver complete, Kinsey was reattaching the tow rope. Bollinger killed the outboards and stepped out of the oven-like little cabin just as a faint breeze stirred the tops of the nearby marsh grass and moved through their shady hiding spot.

“Feels better already … DAMN!” Bollinger slapped a mosquito on his forearm.

Kinsey laughed and dug the bottle of repellent from his pants pocket and tossed it to Bollinger. “I suggest a liberal application. Now that we’re stationary, I expect every mosquito in ten miles will be looking for a meal.”

Bollinger began rubbing the clear liquid over his exposed skin. “What now, boss?” he asked as he rubbed.

“We’ll be up all night, so let’s get some sleep. I’ll take first watch and wake you in a couple of hours.”

Bollinger nodded and tossed the bottle back to Kinsey, then stretched out full length on the deck in the narrow walkway beside the little cabin. Kinsey checked his watch and sat down on the deck forward of the cabin, his back against the side of the hull. Soon Bollinger was snoring softly and Kinsey rechecked his watch. Five minutes. Not bad.

The untroubled sleep of a man with only himself to worry about, Kinsey thought, with a transient flash of envy. Worry had been his constant companion since this whole mess started, first for his men and their families, the focus on that immediate problem masking the deeper concern for his own family. Worry came with the title of parent, no matter how old your kids were. A ‘good night’s sleep’ for Kinsey these days was two to three fitful hours, punctuated by the occasional period of five or six hours when exhaustion led him to the edge of collapse. Only on
Pecos Trader
at sea had he felt a temporary respite, and that was over a week ago.

He was running on adrenaline and, thanks to several cups of strong coffee on the
Judy Ann
, caffeine. He thought about the thermos Wellesley had pressed on them and considered having another cup now, then dismissed the idea. They’d be up all night; better to save it until he really needed it. Besides, if he chugged coffee now, he’d have no chance of even a catnap when it was his turn.

He knew he should probably stand and pace, but the cramped confines of the boat allowed little room for movement without disturbing Bollinger. So he sat, parsing the possible outcomes of the coming mission, but focused on the positive. Things were looking up, really. His son, Luke, was safe in North Carolina. With any luck, by tomorrow he’d be with his daughter, Kelly, and his extended family, preparing to return to
Pecos Trader
. He smiled as he imagined their reunion and let his thoughts drift to happier times.

***

Kinsey awoke with a start, heart pounding, confused and disoriented until he saw Bollinger snoring away. He silently cursed himself for falling asleep and checked his watch. An hour. But what woke him? He listened. No noise coming from the main channel. A voice above him chilled him to the bone.

“
Bonne après-midi
.”

He looked up into the barrel of a shotgun ten feet above him. Three shotguns, actually, in the hands of decidedly hostile-looking bearded men staring down from the deck of the tank barge.

“Now,” the man in the middle said, his Cajun accent distinct, “wake up your friend. I could do it, but he might react badly and we would have to shoot him. It would be a shame if a slug went through him and damaged the nice boat you have been so kind to bring us, eh?”

Kinsey looked over to see Bollinger on his side, still snoring with his hands folded beneath his head. His snoring eased and he began restless movements indicating he was on the edge of wakefulness. Kinsey’s eyes darted to his own M4. The man above him spoke again.

“And do not move anything but your lips,” he said, “because if you try for that gun beside you, you will soon have a large hole in your chest, even if it means damaging my new boat.
Comprenez vous
?”

Kinsey nodded. “BOLLINGER! BOLLINGER, WAKE UP,” he called.

Bollinger’s eyes fluttered open and he lay unmoving for a moment before raising his head and giving Kinsey a sheepish grin. “I was having a dynamite dream—”

“Don’t move, Bollinger. We’ve got company and they have the drop on us.”

Bollinger followed Kinsey’s gaze to the three men standing above them.

“Motherfucker,” Bollinger said.

The spokesman shrugged. “It is possible. Did your mother hang around the honky-tonks in Lafayette thirty or thirty-five years ago?”

The other two men chuckled, but when their leader spoke again, his voice was hard. “Now both of you turn—”

“You’re making a big mistake here, friend,” Kinsey said. “We’re US Coast Guard and we’re—”

“First, I am not your
ami
, and a blind man could tell you are Coast Guard, or at least pretending to be Coast Guard.” He shrugged. “For me it makes no difference. And the mistake was not mine, but yours.”

“Look, we mean you no harm. We’re just—”

“Let me guess, eh? You’re from the government and you’re here to help? And how do you intend to help, eh? Perhaps by shooting my son, raping my daughter-in-law and killing my wife? Well, you are too late, as we already got that ‘help’ from your government friends.
Mais
, it is nice of you to come back. I thought I would have to leave the bayou to start killing you bastards.” He smiled, but there was no humor in it. “But now me and the boys gonna pass a good time, eh?”

Kinsey’s blood ran cold. “Look, I don’t know who you think we are, but shooting us won’t—”

“Shoot you? Only if you make me.
Mais
, I think in a few days you gonna be begging me to put a bullet in your head.”

Appalachian Trail

Mile 1379.9 Southbound

10 miles east of Buena Vista, Virginia

Day 29, 11:20 p.m.

Anderson staggered the last few steps up to the crest of Bald Knob and stared out over the sea of green spread before him in all directions. A few miles away, a break in the treetops formed a line roughly north to south, indicating a road through the woodland—Lexington Turnpike according to his battered trail guide. Another highway to cross, another chance to be killed or captured.

He was almost beyond caring, a hunted animal driven by survival instinct. His initial goal of making thirty-five miles a day proved far too ambitious, but the effort had been sufficient, barely. He made over a hundred miles in four days and had just passed Loft Mountain Campground when he’d heard the choppers. Terror mounted as they set down at the campground three miles behind him to the north, followed by a relief bordering on elation as the sounds faded. They were searching back to the north. He’d cleared their cordon and bought more time, but how much?

He lived on adrenaline the next five days, using every moment of daylight to force himself over rugged terrain. He made another twenty-five miles the first day after escaping the cordon, then twenty-two the next, but rapidly reached the limits of his endurance as fatigue and hunger took their toll.

His stale protein bars gone, he stopped before dark on the third day to hunt. Supper was a handful of darting minnows chased through a shallow creek and flipped out on the bank with one of the plastic bags from his makeshift pack. Two crawfish supplemented his catch, and afraid to start a fire, he wolfed it all down raw then filled his still-near-empty stomach with water from a nearby spring. His bleach was long gone, used to kill his scent, and he hoped like hell the water didn’t give him the runs.

He was burning through calories at an insane rate, and the fourth day ‘post-cordon’ he made barely fifteen miles as his malnourished body rebelled. He stopped early again near another spring, where he managed to kill a fat squirrel with his homemade slingshot. Unable to stomach it raw, he risked a small fire. He seasoned the animal with the salt and pepper he’d scrounged from Bear’s Den, then smeared it with the contents of his last two ketchup packets. It was charred on the outside and semi-cooked on the inside. It was delicious.

But that was yesterday, and hunger pains once again competed with blistered feet and his left knee, now swollen to almost twice normal size. The injury from the spill in the creek hadn’t benefited from nine days of pounding, and Anderson knew he couldn’t go on. He needed food, real food, and a place to rest for at least a day or two.

He looked out over the green canopy again and spotted the faintest wisp of smoke rising above the trees in a place where no road or habitation should be, well off the beaten track. Would they be hospitable? Yeah, right. Who was hospitable these days? He laid his hand on the Glock.
Well, like it or not, folks, you’re about to have a houseguest
.

Anderson started the steep descent down Bald Knob, pain shooting through his left knee at every jarring step.

***

He sat on the slope behind a large oak, well back in the trees as he watched the house in the little clearing. He’d left the trail a quarter mile from the Lexington Turnpike crossing and made his way carefully down the steep wooded slope, clinging to saplings to keep his balance. He’d have missed the old logging road if he hadn’t been looking for it. It was an overgrown slash through the trees, probably originating down on the turnpike and disappearing north into the thick woods to his right. He followed it deeper into the woods in the direction he’d seen the wisp of smoke.

The house was over a mile up the rough track, set on a level shelf about a half-acre wide at the base of Bald Knob. As soon as he’d spotted it, he moved back in the woods and circled around, struggling back up the steep slope with difficulty to his current vantage point. It was more a glorified garden shed than a house, like the largest models of the kit-built storage buildings found at Lowe’s or Home Depot. For all that, it was neatly built. No smoke came from the metal stovepipe now; he’d probably spotted them cooking a meal.

A white PVC pipe led down the slope beside him and disappeared into the house; from a spring, he figured. There were both front and back doors and windows on both sides of the house, and a lean-to-like back porch with a small generator, silent at the moment. There was what appeared to be a side-by-side UTV under a black cover in the front of the house and a small structure in the rear; a chicken coop, he realized, as he spotted a few rust-colored birds pecking at the ground in the shade under the house. He salivated at a sudden vision of golden fried chicken.

A wire stretched from under the eaves of the house just below the center ridge of the roof and up through the branches of a large oak tree nearby. A friggin’ antenna, probably for a HAM set. So much for being isolated. Maybe he should move on.

He was cursing his luck when the back door opened. A man moved across the small porch and down into the dirt patch that served as a backyard. He was short, with close-cropped dark hair, and appeared to be solidly built. He wore jeans and a white tee shirt and he had a tin can in his hand.

“Here, chick! Here, chick, chick, chick!” the man called, spreading the contents of the can on the ground. A dozen chickens exploded from under the house to peck the ground furiously at the man’s feet. Thoughts of a chicken dinner rose unbidden once again, and Anderson contemplated taking a couple of those chickens with him, even if he did move on. They’d roost for the night in the chicken coop. If he waited until the people in the house were asleep, he could grab a couple and take off. He could likely make it down the old logging road and across Lexington Turnpike with his small flashlight. It was only a couple of miles, maybe three miles tops, and it would be better to cross the road under cover of darkness anyway.

He was laying his plans when the back screen door opened again and a woman stepped out, also in jeans and a tee shirt, though she filled it out considerably more attractively. She was petite, a bit over five feet, he guessed, and looked to be in her thirties. She had dark hair like the man’s, but hers was pulled back in a ponytail.

“Jeremy, please bring in some wood when you finish there, and then get on your homework. This is the third time I’ve reminded you and I’m not going to do it again. Just because things aren’t normal doesn’t mean you get to ditch your lessons. No homework, no dessert tonight.”

“What does it matter now, Mom? I know everything I need to know to keep up the place. Ain’t nobody else going to school anyway.”

“No one else is going to school,” she corrected, “not ‘ain’t nobody.’ And it matters to me. You’ve got a year of home schooling left and you’re gonna finish it, even if I have to stand over you eight hours a day. Is that clear?”

“Yes, ma’am,” the man answered with a put-upon sigh as old as the concept of homework itself.

Anderson reevaluated. The man-boy’s age was indeterminate. Though physically mature, perhaps in his late teens or early twenties, his deference to his mother and mannerisms seemed much younger. His round face was animated and expressive, but seemed somehow innocent. Down syndrome. Anderson shook his head; this brave new world was tough enough without being handed that challenge. He sighed. Maybe he wouldn’t steal their chickens.