Push Back: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller (The Disruption Series Book 2) (16 page)

The woman was nowhere to be seen. He took another step into the room.

“I’M A FRIEND—”

BLAM!
A two-inch-diameter section of the door jamb exploded at head height just behind him, driving splinters into the back of his neck as he dove for cover. He heard the racking sound of a pump shotgun.

“DON’T SHOOT! I’M A—”

BLAM!
The back of the recliner he was hiding behind exploded in a shower of Naugahyde fragments and furniture stuffing. A buckshot pellet stung the top of his right ear.

Well, this obviously wasn’t working. Anderson played his ace.

“LOOK, JEREMY’S HURT BADLY, AND WE CAN’T HELP HIM IF WE’RE SHOOTING AT ONE ANOTHER.”

Silence.

“H-he’s still alive?” Quieter now. “I figured …” She trailed off, unable to finish the question. It was replaced by another—a demand. “How do you know his name?”

“I … ah … I was watching you from the woods when these guys showed up. I heard you talking to him.”

“Well, that’s not too creepy, is it? Watching us why?”

He hesitated. “I’m starving, okay? I was gonna steal some chickens?”

More silence. The woman’s voice hardened. “I know that uniform. You’re FEMA, just like these other assholes. Why should I trust you?”

“I’m not. I mean I WAS with FEMA, but I was a cop. Never like these guys.” Or not quite anyway, Anderson thought. “Besides, you don’t exactly have a lot of options here, lady. Or much time.”

“So you just grew a conscience and decided to leave FEMA? Yeah, right.” He heard uncertainty in her voice despite the dismissive words.

“It’s a long story, but let’s just say I’m not very popular with FEMA these days. They’re doing their best to kill me.” He paused. “Look, how about this? We lower our weapons; then we both stand up nice and slow and try not to shoot each other.”

A long pause. “All right. You first.”

Anderson cursed under his breath. Why the hell hadn’t he just kept going? He sighed. In for a penny, in for a pound; if they didn’t get moving soon, he was likely dead anyway. He rose slowly, half-expecting a blast of double-ought buckshot to rip into his chest.

He stood there a long moment until the woman rose from behind a center island near the kitchen sink, her shotgun held tightly, but with the muzzle pointed toward the floor. She was stark naked, with the tight, sculpted body of a dancer. She seemed totally unselfconscious and in control, a far cry from the sobbing woman he’d seen dragged into the cabin. She saw him ogling her body and sneered.

“So much for ‘I’m not like the others.’ Go ahead, get an eyeful, pig,” she said.

“Ahh … sorry,” Anderson said. “Uhh … you wanna get some clothes on?”

“So you can get the drop on me while I do? No, thanks, I’m good,” the woman said. She walked backward as she spoke, feeling around on the floor with her feet. She found a pair of well-worn moccasins and slipped her feet into them, her eyes never leaving Anderson.

“I’m George.”

She sneered again. “Great. Nice to meet you. I’m none-of-your-damn-business. You can call me ‘none’ for short. Now grab that first-aid kit off the shelf behind you and let’s go look at Jeremy. You first.”

Anderson did as ordered and led the way outside and down the short steps. When the woman saw her son on the ground, concern overcame control and she rushed across the bare clearing. Dwyer had recovered somewhat and was sitting up, the boonie hat protruding from his mouth looking almost comical. His eyes widened at the sight of the naked woman. She ignored him to squat beside her son and place her left hand to his neck, keeping a firm grip on the shotgun with her right.

“I think he might have a concussion,” Anderson said as he walked up.

The woman bobbed her head in agreement, then looked momentarily pensive, as if making a decision. She laid down the shotgun and held out her hand.

“Give me the first-aid kit. I suppose if you meant to kill us, we’d already be dead,” she said.

He handed her the kit. “Yeah, well, thanks for the vote of trust, None.”

“It’s Cindy,” she said as she opened the kit and extracted a small bottle of alcohol and some sterile gauze pads.

Anderson nodded and then squatted beside her and watched silently as she gently but expertly cleaned the blood off her son. The boy groaned and stirred. The woman laid a hand on his cheek.

“Jeremy? Are you all right, honey?” she asked softly.

His eyes fluttered open and he immediately squeezed them shut. “My head hurts, and why is the light so bright?”

“You’ll be fine, honey. Just keep your eyes closed if it hurts. I’m going to bandage the cut on your head; then we’ll get you into bed. Okay?”

The boy groaned and nodded. Cindy looked over at Anderson, the hard set of her features replaced by a mother’s concern. “We need to get him into the house. I’ll have to watch him for at least—”

“Negative,” Anderson said. “We can’t stay here. We’re bound to have company sooner or later. Probably sooner.”

“He needs to rest!”

“Agreed,” he said, “but not here.”

“Then where? If these assholes are coming after us, we sure as hell can’t outrun them.”

WE can’t, but I sure as hell can
, Anderson thought.
I’ve been doing it for nine days now
. He looked wistfully at the logging road, and the woman followed his gaze. Her face hardened.

“Go ahead and take off,” she said. “Thanks for your help, but I got this now.”

Anderson looked back at the pair on the ground, shook his head and sighed. In for a penny, in for a pound. “It’s too late for that now. I’m in this up to my neck whether I want to be or not. I’ve given them the slip twice, but if they pick up my trail again, I won’t escape them a third time. And if they catch y’all, they’ll figure out—”

“We won’t give you up, if that’s what you’re thinking—”

He laughed mirthlessly. “Oh yeah you will, regardless of what you think now. When they start cutting pieces off Jeremy here, you’ll sing like a bird. That’s just the way it is, and we both know it.” Anderson nodded toward Dwyer. “And then there’s Mr. Loose End over there.”

She looked at Dwyer and narrowed her eyes. “That the asshole that hit Jeremy?”

Anderson nodded and she stared at the man. He was ogling her naked body despite his circumstances. She broke eye contact with Dwyer and turned back to Anderson.

“All right. I know a place that might work. I’ll finish dressing Jeremy’s wound while you pull their vehicle over here to give him some shade. We’ll make him as comfortable as possible while we work things out. Then maybe you can have a little chat with our friend over there to see if you can figure out how much time we have, while I go put some clothes on.”

Anderson nodded. “I have to admit the view is a bit distracting.”

“Yeah well, that was the idea. I figured if you were watching my ass, it would be a lot easier to get the drop on you.”

***

“He says they were supposed to hit two more places and return to their base, which is in Buena Vista,” Anderson said. “And I’d say their radio protocol is pretty lax, else someone would have been calling on the Hummer radio by now.”

“You trust him?” Cindy asked, now fully clothed in jeans and a tee shirt.

“Hell no,” Anderson said, “but that concurs with what I overheard him and the other one say when they didn’t know I was listening, so I think he’s telling the truth. We may have two or three hours. Maybe more if we can create a diversion. How far did you say this cave was?”

“Six or seven miles, but rough miles. We can follow a creek bed maybe five miles in the UTV, but the last leg is too steep for the vehicle. I’m worried about bouncing Jeremy around on the ride up, so we need to go slow, and I have no clue how long it will take us to get him up to the cave. We’ll need all the time we can get.”

Anderson looked down at the boy. He’d started opening his eyes for short periods and made a halfhearted attempt to sit up a bit earlier, but his mother chided him and pushed him back down gently but firmly.

“Looks like he may be feeling a bit better,” Anderson said.

“I hope so, but we still need that time. What’s your diversion?”

“This Hummer will have a GPS tracking device on it. I don’t know if the satellites are still working, but if they are and FEMA pings the Hummer, they’ll know it’s sitting right here. I doubt they will as long as these guys don’t call in any problems. However, I’m sure they check in at least sporadically, and if someone at their base can’t raise them, they’ll start pinging the tracker to locate the Hummer. When they do, we don’t want them to send the cavalry here. Is there a gorge or steep drop-off near here on the turnpike?”

“Take your pick,” she said. “There are a dozen places on the turnpike within a mile in either direction.”

Anderson nodded. “The nearest one to the south then, since that’s the direction of the assholes’ next stop.”

She shot him a questioning look and he told her his plan.

***

Anderson had just finished stripping the Humvee when Cindy drove up in the UTV. She looked at the pile and the two five-gallon fuel cans sitting beside it.

“That’s diesel, right? What good will it do us?”

“We’ll need a couple of cans here, for … you know.”

Cindy sighed. “You sure we have to?”

He nodded. “Yeah. I’m sure. That seems to be their standard operating procedure. Otherwise they may start searching for us.”

“All right.” She glanced at the bound Dwyer and let out a slow, ragged breath. “I … I’ll take care of him then help you load the bodies.”

“I got the bodies. I’m already covered with blood anyway.” He paused. “You sure you don’t want me to take care of this asshole?”

She shook her head. “It was Jeremy and me he was going to murder. If we had a trial, I have no doubt how it would turn out. It’s just quicker now is all. Besides, you said it yourself, leaving him alive guarantees they’ll be on us. He has to die. You did your share taking out the other two. This one’s on me.”

Anderson nodded, then changed the subject. “What about Jeremy?”

“I think he’ll be okay here. We shouldn’t be gone over twenty minutes tops, and I’d just as soon bounce him around as little as possible.”

Anderson nodded, then reached down to lift Carr’s body and wrestle it into the Hummer. He finished and drove the short distance to the house and dragged the sergeant’s naked body off the back porch. He noticed the man was his size and had conveniently left his uniform in the house. He filed that for future notice. He’d just heaved the body into the Hummer when he heard the Glock bark twice. He looked back toward the logging road and saw Cindy standing over Dwyer’s body, the gun in her hand.
That’s one tough woman
, he thought.

***

Fifteen minutes later, the Humvee was burning at the bottom of a steep embankment half a mile south of the logging road intersection with Lexington Turnpike. They drove the UTV back to the cabin to find Jeremy as they left him, no better, but no worse. Anderson went into the cabin and stripped off his bloody clothes to put on the dead sergeant’s uniform, but the rank stench of his own unwashed body overwhelmed him. He looked longingly toward the small bathroom. Screw it! He finished stripping and stepped into the small bathroom to wash.

He emerged from the cabin feeling ill at ease in the SPF uniform, but almost human after cleaning up. The woman was loading the UTV.

“Sorry, I took some time to clean up,” he said.

She nodded. “And we’re all glad you did. No offense, but you smelled like a dead skunk rotting in the sun. I wasn’t looking forward to being cooped up in a cave with you.”

“Hey, it wasn’t that bad.”

“Oh yeah, it was.” She sniffed the air. “But it’s much better now.”

Anderson looked at the rig. It was a Kawasaki Mule, the big crew cab model. She had the rear seat folded down to extend the bed, and a small trailer attached behind.

“Where did the trailer come from?” he asked.

“Behind the chicken coop. I’m not sure it will make it, but if we have to ditch it, we’ll at least have a cache closer to the cave.”

He looked skeptically at the piles of gear beside the Mule. “Are you leaving ANYTHING here?”

“Not if I can help it. If it won’t all fit, we’ll toss it back in the house and torch it, but I can’t see leaving it for those assholes. And like I said, if we can’t get it to the cave, we’ll cache it somewhere in the woods.”

He nodded. “Point taken. How can I help?”

“I want to check on Jeremy. You keep loading.”

Anderson nodded and set to work as Cindy moved to where Jeremy still lay on the ground, a pillow from the cabin under his head. He focused on the task at hand and looked up twenty minutes later when Cindy returned leading a slow-moving and still befuddled Jeremy by the arm. She guided her son gently to a seat on the front steps of the cabin and turned to Anderson.

“Wow. That’s progress,” she said, looking at the Mule and trailer.

“I think we’ll be able to load it all,” he said. “Assuming you don’t have another pile somewhere.”

“Just the chickens.”

“Seriously? How the hell we gonna carry chickens?”

“We tie them in pairs by their feet and throw them over the crossbar above the seats. And you’ll be happy to have them if we have to hole up in that cave. Chickens and eggs are protein we don’t have to hunt.”

Anderson shook his head and looked at his watch. “All right, but we’ve burned almost an hour of our grace period. We have to get out of here soon.”

***

Thirty minutes later, Cindy pulled the fully loaded and chicken-festooned Mule well away from the cabin. She left Jeremy resting comfortably on top of a pile of softer items in the bed of the UTV and walked back to where Anderson stood in front of the cabin. He looked up as she approached.

“I spread the diesel from the Humvee all over the place inside and spread piles of easily flammable stuff like curtains and books around. It should go up fairly quickly.”

Tears glistened in Cindy’s eyes. She nodded.

“You okay?” Anderson asked.

“Yeah. It’s just hard. Jeremy and I built this place ourselves from one of those kits, then insulated it and turned it into a real little house. It might not look like much to you, but we were happy here. It … it’s just hard, that’s all.”