Ranger (The Bugging Out Series Book 5) (7 page)

Elaine’s hand gripped my left arm tight, shock rippling through her. And through me.

“They were on patrol moving from the woods toward the south checkpoint on the coast road when...”

I had a terrible feeling what he was about to tell us. It turned out I was right.

“There was confusion at the checkpoint with the patrol schedules,” Martin explained. “They thought that sector should be clear. When they saw movement, they thought enemy.”

“No,” Elaine said, and she turned to press her face against my shoulder.

“Friendly fire,” I said.

Martin nodded, looking up now, a skim of tears over his eyes.

“We should never, ever lose anyone like this,” he said. “Never. There’s been too much death already. If we have to lose people it can’t be for stupid things like this.”

“It’s an accident, Martin,” I said.

“I know.”

He did know that. And I knew that he accepted it. But, regardless of his position now, having stepped away from a leadership position in Bandon, he still felt responsible in some way. I was certain that in his head he was running over scenarios of things he might have done when he was in charge. Things which could have prepared those at the checkpoint, which could have prepared everyone, to better handle the uncertainties of such a situation.

That, though, was but a wish wrapped in a dream. He’d done a remarkable job keeping all of Bandon safe, and together. But he couldn’t work magic, or turn back time.

“I have to go,” Martin said. “The kid will be back in a few minutes if you need anything.”

He turned, the darkness he’d dragged into the space seeming to envelope him.

“Martin,” I said.

He stopped, but did not look back at me.

“This isn’t on you.”

Still he did not turn to face me, but the words he spoke were plain and painful.

“Everything’s on me,” he said.

Those were the words he left us with. For the moment I knew he believed them. In time, though, he would not. The realities and randomness and dangers of our world, and our current situation, would nudge him back toward some acceptance that his role in this tragedy was not even minimal—it was nonexistent.

“I thought we could just live again,” Elaine said, easing back from my shoulder and looking up to me. “Just live.”

I knew what she meant. What she wanted. It was all anyone in Bandon wanted. Just to be allowed to move forward, with the new hope we’d found, and fought for. That was it. A chance at some new, acceptable normal.

It seemed, though, that we weren’t done fighting for the future we wanted to make.

W
e were sprung from isolation two days after the terrible incident on the coast highway. Ninety-six hours of total quarantine for me, and a bit less for Elaine.

For nothing.

“It doesn’t make a lot of sense,” Genesee said from his position on the ‘safe’ side of the barrier. “I don’t know what to make of it.”

Neither did Schiavo, or Martin, or Doc Allen, all of whom had gathered to mark the end of the time period during which something had been expected to manifest. A sneeze. A sniffle. A rash. An ache. Fever.

But no symptoms arose. Not a one.

“I doubt we’re looking at something with a longer incubation period,” Genesee said.

“I agree,” Doc Allen concurred.

“What about smallpox?” Schiavo asked. “Or something similar? A weaponized agent?”

“You don’t need an implant to infect someone with anything like that,” Genesee said. “A simple injection would suffice.”

“One we might never have noticed,” Doc Allen said. “Just a prick in the skin.”

I looked to Elaine, puzzled. A mix of relief and confusion similar to mine formed her expression.

“We’re okay,” she said, though there might have been the slightest hint of a question in how she delivered the simple statement.

Martin stepped to the barrier and gripped the seal that held it in place, peeling it downward so the entire wall of plastic fell into a long, low heap on the floor.

“Welcome to Bandon,” Martin said, smiling.

I hesitated, glancing to the mound of plastic which had sealed us off from the rest of the town for four days. Days in which we’d talked, and slept, and held each other. And worried. About what would, what
could,
happen to us.

This was not what either of us had imagined.

“So what was it?” I asked, holding position on my side of the barrier. “What did they put in me?”

No one offered any answer. Because no one could.

“Come on,” Martin said, reaching out and taking me by the arm. “Time to get out of here.”

I felt Elaine grip my hand and watched her step past the fallen barrier before us. With her urging, and Martin’s, I made the crossing myself.

Our first journey outside was to the cemetery.

*  *  *

M
ike Riley and Sarah Fredericks were laid to rest in a quick and simple ceremony, their bodies encased in crude metal burial boxes which had come in on the most recent supply delivery by the
Rushmore
. Dirt was shoveled in by hand, and the few dozen who’d come to pay their respects strolled slowly out of the greening cemetery.

Eddie Lang was among them. Among us. He’d pulled the trigger, loosing a few bursts from his AR. Fifteen rounds it turned out, three of which had found Mike and Sarah. She was killed instantly. He lived a few minutes after the distraught crew from the checkpoint reached them. Since that moment, Eddie had been inconsolably silent. He’d shut down. Even here it took friends and neighbors to guide him to and from the burial site.

He was a tractor salesman. Not a soldier. Yet, thanks to the blight, he was neither anymore.

“I’m going to request some help for him when the
Rushmore
arrives,” Schiavo said as we reached the edge of the cemetery. “It might be possible to evacuate him to somewhere he can get real help.”

“Genesee can’t help him?” Elaine asked.

Schiavo shook her head.

“He’s as much a psychiatrist as you,” the captain said. “Or me.”

“He can’t leave,” Martin said. “He can’t. This is his home.”

“He needs better treatment than we can give him,” Schiavo told her husband.

“She might be right,” I told Martin.

But he was having none of it.

“Every person we lose is a failure,” he said. “No matter the reason. We don’t have people to spare. Every life matters here.”

For a moment we walked in silence, down the path from the cemetery and toward the road to town. There was grass everywhere. Trees had grown. Fruit hung from low limbs. In the near distance, without much effort, you could hear the calm mooing of cows, or the frantic crowing of penned chickens mixed amongst the crash of waves rolling in from the Pacific. If we could get past this new situation, whatever it was, we had a chance, a good chance, to reach a point where we could thrive again. Grow. Build the world back up from this one speck on the Oregon coast.

So I knew what Martin meant. Every single life did matter. This was a numbers game. The more we had, the more chance there was to grow. And not just in the question of procreation. There was work to be done. Every willing and able body would be needed to keep making progress.

A willing body, though, required a sound mind.

“Who’s going to make the decision?” I asked.

It was directed to no one in particular, but Schiavo was the logical choice to answer among the three fellow residents who were with me.

“I’ll talk to Commander Genesee, and if he thinks it would be prudent I’ll have a message sent in the next burst transmission to see if it’s even a possibility.”

We were still reliant on quick transmissions bounced off a satellite at very precise moments of the day for both outgoing and incoming communications. As the White Signal had ended, and the Red Signal before it, there was always that chance that the Ranger Signal would cease someday soon and free up the airwaves for more robust and frequent contact with the outside world.

What that would mean for the man who had recorded the current transmission, my friend, and for us, I had no idea.

E
laine and I settled back into the life that had been interrupted by my abduction and return. But that life, like the town, had changed.

A wariness had begun to build. In the first days after we’d been released from quarantine that uneasiness had been directed at us. Neighbors and friends who’d been warm and welcoming were hesitant to approach. Their fear, wholly understandable, soon faded when no sickness materialized, allowing all anxiousness to focus where it should be—on the unknown.

We were all in the dark. The perpetrators of my taking had to be out there. Somewhere. Men in black with some agenda none of us could yet fathom. That uncertainty had returned our recovering town to a posture of defense. All were involved. Everyone was affected.

The town’s school, opened in the weeks after our return from the tribulations in Skagway, was closed again out of an abundance of caution. Children met in small groups with either of Bandon’s teachers, in private homes so as not to have all together in the same place in case of an attack.

Fuel was being rationed, as the well which produced oil that was processed into diesel was beyond the town’s border and difficult, if not impossible, to protect. It still ran 24/7, but the reality was it could cease its flow at any moment, either through mechanical failure or outright sabotage.

One positive, though, had been spawned by recent events. A bit of the old world’s technology, silenced since soon after the blight struck, had been brought back into operation. The ringing phone in the living room reminded me of that.

“I’ll get it,” I said, rising from where I’d planted myself on the couch and crossing the small room to where the phone sat on a side table. “Hello?”

There was no interconnected exchange linked to an outside source which the Ranger Signal could interfere with, as the Red Signal had while the world was crumbling. A pair of former telecom engineers had scrounged enough material from Bandon and nearby abandoned communities over several months, working feverishly in recent days to complete a rudimentary direct wire system with simple phone numbers. Elaine and I were the impossible to forget ninety-nine.

“Fletch, what are you doing?”

It was Enderson, third in terms of rank in the six-person garrison assigned to Bandon.

“Elaine and I have a shift on the north perimeter in a while,” I told him. “She’s changing.”

“I’m changed,” she said from the hallway, overhearing my half of the conversation.

“What’s up, Mo?” I asked, the ‘never Morris, only Mo’ directive having taken hold long ago where the young man’s name preference was concerned.

“Can you two step outside and...just listen?” Enderson requested.

I took a few steps toward the front door, lifting the phone and dragging its long cord with me. The Ranger Signal could still overpower and interfere with a simple cordless handset, so going old school was the order of the day when needing to converse at any distance from where the phone was wired in.

“What are we listening for?”

“Just listen and tell me if you hear anything.”

“Okay,” I agreed, looking to Elaine. “He wants to know if we hear anything outside.”

Elaine didn’t ask for any clarification on the request. She moved to the door and past me as she pushed it open. I followed and a moment later was standing with her in the front yard, stars twinkling above and a hush thick upon our street, and our town.

“Put the phone down and just listen,” Enderson told me.

I lowered the phone handset without a word, holding it and the unit’s base low near my waist. Then, as he’d asked, I listened. And listened.

“Do you hear that?” Elaine asked.

I didn’t. Glancing at her I saw her gaze cast up into the night sky. My hearing had never been as acute as my eyesight, but Elaine could detect footsteps in a darkened forest, or mumbles of mine from a room down the hall. If she was sensing something where we stood, I knew there had to be something there.

“What is it?”

She shushed me with a shake of her head and kept listening. I tried to tune in to whatever had caught her attention, focusing on the vast heavens above. Letting all other sounds fade until there was just that looming nothingness.

That was when I heard it, too.

“An engine,” I said.

“Aircraft,” Elaine added. “Small and at altitude.”

She was right. The distant, steady whine could have been a small plane akin to the one that Neil, Grace, Krista, and I had arrived in so long ago. That could mean that there were more survivors inbound.

Or it could indicate something very, very different.

“Mo, we hear an aircraft,” I said, bringing the handset back up.

“So I’m not crazy,” Enderson said. “I was coming on watch at HQ and the sound just was there. It would come and go.”

“I still hear it,” Elaine said. “It’s moving south to north.”

“Elaine—”

“South to north,” Enderson said, prompting that he’d heard what had been reported. “That’s what I hear.”

“Is there any way we can get eyes on what kind of aircraft?” I asked.

“I could break out the night vision binoculars, but I doubt we’d be able to zero in on a target,” Enderson said. “It sounds awful high to me.”

“It has to see us,” Elain said. “Whoever’s on it.”

She was right. There were enough lights burning in town, including a good number of streetlights which had been put back into use after an additional hydro generator was installed in the Coquille River. The town, for now, had enough power from hydro, solar, and diesel generators to power almost anything it needed.

But all the power we had couldn’t give us what we needed at this very moment—a good look at what was up there.

“If they see us, they have to know we have an airstrip,” Elaine said. “It’s on every map and chart of the area. They wouldn’t be flying that blind.”

“No, they wouldn’t,” I agreed.

On the other end of the call, Enderson was thinking the same thing, and coming to a similar conclusion that I and, I suspected, Elaine was as well.