Push Back: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller (The Disruption Series Book 2) (58 page)

“No good ones. If we can’t make it, we either abandon the Mule and proceed on foot or back down the mountain and try our luck on the Blue Ridge Parkway,” she said.

“Then let’s hope we make it,” Anderson said.

Cindy nodded, locked the differential, and put the Mule in four-wheel drive.

The trail got ever steeper and rockier as the Mule inched up the incline. Halfway up, they had a series of switchbacks, and the mule tipped and swayed precariously as they crawled through them. At one point, the UTV teetered at the very edge of overturning before settling back on its springs.

“Why don’t I drive while you and Jeremy go ahead and check out the trail?” Anderson said. “That will take some of the load off the Mule.”

Cindy shook her head. “Good idea. But I already know what’s ahead and I’m considerably lighter than either of you two, so y’all get out to lighten the load.”

Anderson hesitated.

“Go on and get out,” Cindy said, “because I’m not stopping. It’ll be a bitch to get this thing moving uphill again from a standing stop.”

Anderson shook his head and grabbed the overhead handhold to swing out of the slow-moving vehicle, with Jeremy close behind. The Mule was going so slow they passed it in a dozen long strenuous uphill strides, all of which Anderson felt in his knee. Once ahead of it, and unburdened by packs, they easily maintained their interval.

“It’s making a difference,” Cindy called. “She’s not laboring as bad, and the engine temp stopped rising.”

They reached the summit fifteen minutes later, and Anderson and Jeremy climbed back in to ride another mile and a half along the ridgeline to Saddle Gap. Cindy said the trail rose another four hundred feet to a second peak before starting an equally steep descent. They decided to stop for the night, both to allow the Mule to cool down and because, if something happened, they didn’t want to find themselves on the equally steep descent in the dark.

Saddle Gap

Appalachian Trail

Mile 1398.2 Southbound

Day 36, 8:50 p.m.

The ridge between the peaks was relatively narrow, but they managed to find a wide enough stretch of level ground to allow them to pull the Mule into the trees well off the trail. Anderson and Jeremy cut brush and low-hanging tree limbs to camouflage the Mule in the unlikely event of unexpected company. Cindy got evergreen boughs and piled them behind the Mule before covering them with the camouflage tarp to make a communal mattress.

They decided against a fire and had a dinner of MREs warmed by the chemical heaters included with the meals. Jeremy, as usual, had gone down with the sun, and Anderson and Cindy sat on the ground nearby, sipping MRE coffee as they leaned back against a large fallen log.

Anderson looked over to where Jeremy snored on the makeshift mattress and smiled as he shook his head in the dim light. “I envy him his ability—deep sleep in five minutes flat, every time.”

Cindy smiled. “The sleep of innocence. Some folks pity me, but every challenge has its silver lining. Jeremy is a truly good human being, and I doubt he’s had a mean or evil thought in his life. How many mothers can say that?”

“Very few, I expect. But I think it may be the sleep of the secure as well. Jeremy knows you’re in his corner. Not a lot of people have that either, especially these days.”

“Yeah, well, I’m afraid I’m not doing too well in that department lately. Which brings me to the elephant in the room; where the hell are we going, George?” Cindy asked.

Anderson sipped his coffee. “God, this is foul crap!”

“You’ll kill for it when there’s no coffee at all,” Cindy said. “But quit stalling. What are we gonna do?”

“Honestly? Not a clue,” he said. “All I really know is what we CAN’T do.”

“Which is?” she asked.

“Live out here in the woods, at least when it starts turning cold. It would’ve been a stretch even in the cave, and there we had a shelter with an even year-round temperature and a protected source of fresh water. All we really had to do there was make sure we got in an ample supply of firewood and that we smoked meat or made jerky from the game we trapped. Out here, we have no durable, weather-tight shelter unless we managed to stumble on an abandoned cabin, and I put that chance somewhere between slim and none.”

“I’ll take my chances out here before I go to one of those hellhole FEMA camps.” There was steel in her voice.

“Well, if you stick with me, that’s not an option anyway. I doubt I’d be welcome in a FEMA camp, for obvious reasons,” Anderson said.

“Actually, they’re not—obvious, I mean. But what IS obvious is that we ARE going to stick together. I think it’s time for you to tell me what you’re running from.”

“It’s like I told you, it’s better for you if you don’t—”

“Would you give me a frigging break? In the last week, I’ve shot five SRF thugs. I’m pretty sure that qualifies me for a place on FEMA’s hit list all by myself. And we’re traveling together, for God’s sake. Do you honestly think if we get caught, they’re going to believe I don’t know anything about whatever it is you did before we met? So since we’re at risk anyway, I’d at least like to know why.”

Anderson hesitated a long moment, then told her the whole story of how he ended up guarding Simon Tremble, Speaker of the House of Representatives, and how that duty caused him to be a wanted fugitive.

“But how did you end up in FEMA to start with? You’re not like those other assholes.”

Anderson shrugged. “Decent pay, health insurance, and benefits. Look, I went to work for them like five years ago, and it was just a pretty good law enforcement gig. It’s not like there were posters of Darth Vader saying things like, ‘Welcome to the Evil Empire.’ In fact, a lot of the FEMA people are decent folks, or were anyway. It was a job, that’s all, and I was pretty good at it. I got transferred to Mount Weather, which was a plum assignment.” He shook his head. “Then came the blackout and everything went to hell fast. I didn’t particularly like what was going on, but like a lot of people there, I figured I didn’t know the whole story, and I certainly didn’t want to quit and end up out in the chaos. Then I ended up guarding the Trembles, and I didn’t feel right about that at all, but what exactly was I supposed to do? In the end, the decision was made for me, and as tough as it’s been, I’d rather be here than there.”

Cindy reached over and squeezed his hand. “So they never caught the Trembles?”

“I’d say no, since the guys chasing me thought they were chasing him.” Anderson shook his head again and chuckled. “Simon’s a crafty bastard, I’ll give him that.” She heard the admiration in his voice.

“So you’re one of the few people who actually knows Tremble is still alive, and who is a firsthand witness to the President’s illegal actions?”

Anderson shrugged again. “I guess so. At least one of the few people that’s not actively involved with it. But so what? All that’s likely to get me is a bullet in the head and a shallow grave. Why? What’re you thinking?”

“Wilmington.”

“Delaware or North Carolina?”

“North Carolina. Just before those FEMA goons swooped in to confiscate radios, there was a lot of chatter on the ham networks, and Wilmington was the source. They have some defectors from the SRF who were putting out word about what FEMA was actually up to. It sounded like they were doing okay down there, all things considered, and beginning to offer an alternative to FEMA,” Cindy said.

“I still don’t see what that’s got to do with me, or us.”

“Don’t you think they’d like to have an eyewitness to illegal government actions? They’d probably welcome you with open arms,” Cindy said.

“I doubt it makes any difference, and you may not have noticed, but I’m not really hero material. I just want to find a place where everyone will leave me the hell alone, and I’ll do likewise. Is that too much to ask?”

Cindy studied him through the gloom. He could barely make out her face. “Yeah, George,” she said, “in this screwed-up world, it probably is. I mean, we tried that and it didn’t work out. People kept showing up trying to kill us. The way I look at it, our choices are to hide in the woods, hunting and scrounging food and becoming less human every day, or using what resources we have to get to Wilmington, where we can join people trying to make a difference.”

“Who you THINK are there trying to make a difference. We haven’t had any information in over a week,” Anderson said.

“Granted,” Cindy said. “Have a better option?”

Anderson shook his head. “So how do we get to Wilmington?”

“Not a clue,” Cindy said. “But we’re sure not going down I-95. We have to steal a map.”

Epilogue

1 Mile off the Appalachian Trail

Near Virginia-West Virginia Border

Five Days Earlier

Day 31, 8:25 a.m.

Congressman Simon Tremble (NC), Speaker of the House of Representatives, suppressed a grunt as he grabbed a sapling to pull himself up the steep slope. Fifty feet ahead of him, he watched his son, Keith, top the hill and turn to look back at him with a wide grin.

“Come on, old-timer, you’re almost there,” Keith taunted.

Tremble laughed and closed the distance with ease, though it took more of his reserves than he’d ever let on. Things had started getting a bit more challenging after he hit fifty, but he was too stubborn to acknowledge it.

He grinned at his son. “Just hanging back in case I had to carry you.”

“Hah! That’ll be the day. So did I pass?”

Tremble frowned. “I’m sorry, I can only give you fifty percent.”

Keith’s face fell.

“You don’t get the other fifty until you get back to the bottom without reinjuring that ankle,” Tremble said.

“You’re on,” Keith said, starting down the steep slope.

***

Tremble stood in front of the cave, inspecting their gear. He’d lashed together pack frames from pliable green limbs, essentially wicker baskets to hold the black garbage bags they’d mooched from Wiggins and Tex. The pants of their FEMA uniforms were now secured with paracord drawstrings, and the web belts had become pack straps. Their homemade packs each held a supply of squirrel and rabbit jerky, wild onions, and dried mushrooms. Bulging water bladders improvised from a double thickness of condoms rode in the wicker packs but outside the garbage bag liners, in case the condoms burst or leaked.

The one thing that wasn’t improvised was their weaponry. They both carried M4s taken from the FEMA cops, and each had a 9 millimeter Sig and ammo for both in their packs.

“How long will it take us, Dad?” Keith asked.

“How long, I can’t say, only how far. Wiggins and Tex picked up the AT at Black Horse Gap, but they were paralleling it in a car. By the trail that’s a little over two hundred and fifty miles. Then they used the Blue Ridge Parkway and rural roads from this guy Levi’s house, they said about five hundred miles, all told. I don’t know quite how far his house is outside of Wilmington, but evidently he has a place on the Black River. I’m thinking if we can find a way to get to the Black, we might be able to float down into friendly territory and right into Wilmington.”

Keith shook his head. “That’s gotta be like twice as far than if we just stayed off the interstates and just took back roads! I still think we should go as direct as possible.”

Tremble nodded. “We might not have a choice. They ran into problems northbound at Front Royal, and I doubt things have improved. We’ll just have to play it by ear. But that won’t be a choice we have to make for a few days yet.”

Tremble reached down and shouldered his pack, and Keith did the same.

“Ready?” Tremble asked.

“I’ve been ready,” Keith said. “I just keep thinking about the look on that bastard Gleason’s face when we get to Wilmington and you start broadcasting the truth.”

Tremble nodded and smiled as they set off up the hill, though he felt far from confident. His mood improved as they plodded up the hill back to the Appalachian Trail. Perhaps Keith’s youthful optimism was contagious, or maybe it was just the effect of setting out with a purpose at last, surrounded by the beauty of nature.

That sense of purpose grew with each step, and as they reached the ridgeline and moved onto the trail, Tremble felt the doubts and fears slip away, replaced by grim determination.
I’m coming you bastards. I’m coming at last
. And at that moment, the Honorable Simon J. Tremble of North Carolina, Speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States of America, promised himself as long as there was breath in his body, he’d never stop fighting to put things right—or at least as right as he could make them.

There was a new spring in his step, and Keith looked over and grinned as he matched his father’s faster pace. “You gonna run all the way to Wilmington, Dad?”

Tremble grinned back. “I just might at that, so try to keep up. We have promises to keep.”

Author’s Notes

I guess I’ll start with the question I’m most often asked, “When will the next book be available?”

Rather than overpromise like I did on
Push Back
, I think I’ll be smarter this time and just say sometime next year (2017). Because the simple truth is I really don’t know. I have an outline and I’ve made a start, but this story seems to have a mind all its own, and I’m pretty sure my outline will be useless before I’m halfway through
Promises to Keep
, the third and final book of the series.

That said, I’m going to do my dead-level best to publish it early in the year.

Part of my problem is structure—I don’t have any. Some writers can develop an outline and follow it religiously to produce a book within a certain time window. My method (if I may charitably call it that) is a bit more chaotic. Oh, I try to develop an outline every time and start with the best of intentions, but around about page three, I have a ‘better idea,’ and I’m off and running. The ‘better idea’ is often a new plot point or sometimes a new character. I have a lot of ‘better ideas,’ probably far too many.