The Long Fall of Night: The Long Fall of Night Book 1 (45 page)

He moved to the small pond beside which they’d squatted, having taken care to make sure they weren’t on some whackjob’s land. There were no posted signs, and the water was small, with nothing in view from any direction, so they’d chanced it. They wouldn’t be there long enough to make an impression anyway, up and off again with the sun, as they’d done the last few days.

To his surprise, Ash followed him. Charlotte and Riley had turned in early, and Aaron, Jennifer, and Tim were staring into the fire, lost in thought. Elliot planned to bathe and sleep as soon as this task was finished.

“Still have that gun I gave you?” Ash asked, taking the second pan from him. They’d pooled three of the freeze-dried food pouches of beef stew and split them between everyone. It hadn’t been the heartiest of meals, but they were running low, and without much in the way of trees, they hadn’t seen a deer in days. Their meat supply was dangerously low, and while Riley set traps, nothing was tripping them. The only thing they didn’t want for was water. It had rained the last couple days, adding to their misery. On the horizon to the south, there were building clouds, and Elliot worried they’d get hit with another thunderstorm. The first one hadn’t been too bad, but he knew they were in the plains in May: anything could happen.

“Yes, I’m still ready to shoot his head off if he attacks me again,” Elliot grumbled. “I say we ditch him.”

Ash didn’t look at him while they washed the pans, which took no time, but neither were in a hurry to return to the others. “We could, but then you’d probably die of guilt.”

Elliot gritted his teeth. Of course he would. Tim was in pain. His best friend was dead by Tim’s hand, even if it had been inevitable due to the infection. It didn’t help to tell him they all did what they had to in survival situations. Tim had only gotten more sullen.

“I don’t want to be responsible for anyone else’s death, so no, we can’t ditch him. Just kind of sick of looking over my shoulder.” Ghost tiptoed to the water’s edge and sniffed, then delicately drank. Elliot had never seen such a big dog behave so daintily.

“You won’t be, but I don’t want you dead either. Keep that gun on you.”

“Yessir,” Elliot said wearily, then smiled to soften the sarcasm.

“Not my kink,” Ash said with a wink. “C’mon. Let’s get clean and turn in early. I wanna hold you.”

Shaking his head at the change in demeanor, he followed Ash back to camp, where they dumped the pans by the fire, gathered supplies for a quick, utilitarian bath in the pond, and went to bed. Another day down, another one ahead.

The crash of thunder overhead woke Elliot with a start and outside, Ghost whined. Careful not to disturb Ash, who surprisingly hadn’t stirred, Elliot crawled over to let the dog in before the rain started. Wet dog made everyone miserable.

“It’s okay, boy.” Before he zipped the door again, he peered at the incoming weather, watching lightning fork across bruised and swollen clouds as the warm wind kicked up and swayed the tall grasses that surrounded the little pond. Elliot knew nothing about how to tell if a storm was going to be bad, and especially not in the middle of the night. All he could do was shut it out, lie back down, and try to block out the flapping of the tents in the increased breeze.

A couple thunder rumbles later, Ash startled awake.

“I brought Ghost in. Flimsy shelter, but still shelter.”

“Thass fine.” Ash’s words were sleep-slurred. “Wet dog’s gross.”

Elliot chuckled and rolled into Ash’s side. They’d taken to zipping their sleeping bags together so there was one big one instead of two. Elliot thought back to all they’d been through, from leaving New York City and camping out on Charlotte’s floor, the inmate attack, losing the van, Russ’s death, and everything that had happened since meeting up with Aaron’s group. Two months ago, a thunderstorm bearing down on him in a tent would have scared him, made him run what-ifs in his mind until it passed.

Tonight, he didn’t have the energy to worry. Worry got him nowhere. Worry made him seize. Instead, he burrowed into Ash’s side, as close as he could get, listening to the sounds of the storm as it closed in. It was almost… erotic, in a way. The wind was like heavy breathing and the thunder the moans, while the lightning silently lit up the sky like nerves filled with pleasure. His dick began to plump, and he pressed himself into Ash’s side.

“Mmmm,” Ash murmured, lazily stroking Elliot’s back with the arm on which he’d pillowed his head. “Hello, there.”

“Hi,” Elliot breathed into the crook of Ash’s neck, lifting his chin to capture Ash’s earlobe between his lips. “Too tired for this?”

“Uh-uh,” Ash mumbled in the negative. He rolled to his side and twined their legs, bringing Elliot’s erection in contact with the one beginning to tent his boxer briefs. Elliot grabbed Ash’s thigh and hiked his leg over his hip, rubbing against him with a shallow moan. Outside, the thunder rumbled almost constantly, and the lightning flashed against their tent walls like they were in front of a dozen cameras. The idea turned Elliot’s blood hot, as though there were people out there oblivious to what they were doing, and they were on the verge of being caught. Having gotten good at being quiet so as not to disturb their fellow campers, this felt different. Sharper. More immediate and hungrier.

“Ash,” Elliot whispered. “Fuck me.”

Ash didn’t say anything, just rolled Elliot to his back and peeled off both their underwear. The lube was never far away since the tent was cramped. From his corner, Ghost didn’t even bother to watch them, keeping his eyes on the tent ceiling as if he were waiting for the apocalypse to crack open over his head.

The apocalypse had already happened, and Elliot was determined to make the most of these stolen moments with Ash, when they were unguarded and thrilled by each other’s contact. Somehow, they managed to express what they couldn’t say in front of the others through kissing and stroking and coming. Elliot opened to Ash more often, offering himself for pleasure and oblivion as well as comfort in the touch of another human. It had come to mean more, knowing any day could bring the whole group screeching to a halt.

Ash’s probing fingers were gentle, and Elliot arched into him, panting in the humid air building in their nest of sleeping bags and heat. Fat raindrops struck the tent and began to drum around them, adding to the crescendo of need as Ash breached Elliot and began to move, his hot, sticky breath bathing Elliot’s face.

It was as though the storm tattooed a beat on the earth, driving their rhythm and punctuating their lovemaking, and no matter how desperate it was, how frenzied or rough, that’s what it was. Elliot wouldn’t say it aloud for fear of scaring Ash off, but he felt it keenly every time he let himself be taken, gave himself over. And Mother Nature wasn’t fooled, echoing her encouragement through the steady applause of rain.

The storm raged on, both outside and within, and it was during a particularly ground-shaking peal of thunder when Ash filled Elliot with his climax, panting his pleasure into the stifling air. Elliot shook with the depth of it, the comfort it brought, the absolute certainty he was right where he needed to be. Damn everything else to Hell, he wouldn’t choose the safety of a camp or a hospital or his parents’ condo if Ash wasn’t with him. He could endure far more than a few threats from a grieving man with this to fortify his strength.

He writhed on Ash’s quickly softening dick, whimpering that it wasn’t enough, that it was over too soon. The storm seemed to agree, the wind outside howling its displeasure. But Ash didn’t disappoint, throwing off the cover and bending to take Elliot’s steely length into his mouth. He slid his fingers behind Elliot’s balls and shoved two into his still stretched hole, come slicking the way.

Another crash of thunder covered Elliot’s cry as he came, his ass spasming wetly around Ash’s fingers. Ash swallowed everything he gave and licked him clean. When he was too sensitive, he scrabbled at Ash’s shoulders to pull him up, shivering. Around them, the tent whipped in the wind, slapping and pulling as if to give them a standing ovation for so thoroughly embracing the moment and laying themselves bare for each other. Ash hovered over him, panting and staring into his eyes. Something passed between them, an understanding that they were on the same page but weren’t able to put it in words. Ash’s mouth on his plundered, demanded, full of promise and passion, and Elliot let himself be swept away by it, tangling his hands in Ash’s curls and holding him captive.

As they settled, lying entwined and once more inside the sleeping bag, they didn’t immediately sleep. They listened to the march of the storm as it slowly faded down the plains, as if their completion had given it permission to move on, to stir someone else into seizing the moment and giving everything they had.

T
rue friendship can afford
true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance.

—Henry David Thoreau

“
D
ID
YOU HEAR ABOUT THAT group Team Delta brought off the mountain yesterday?” one of the guys from Team Charlie asked as Shockwave checked over their gear in preparation for their deployment back into the wild country. Sergeant Williams was the guy’s name, the NCOIC of Charlie.

“No, what about them?” Ness asked, making sure her canteen was full and the cap twisted tight.

“Carrying tactical gear, a sniper rifle, several grenades, and landmines.” He looked at them all significantly.

“What the hell?” Roger asked, stashing an extra magazine for his M16A4. “What were they planning to do, attack a compound and steal their power or something?”

“Or something,” Sergeant Williams said significantly. “You didn’t hear this from me, but rumor has it, the president’s ‘undisclosed location’ is nearby. Team Delta and their ranger mirror team intercepted this group of wannabe assassins not three miles from the entrance or some shit.”

“Oh please,” Chris chimed in, sitting on his rack to tie his boots. “Like we’d be given enough intel to figure out where the president is.”

Williams shrugged. “All I know is these prisoners were logged in and charged with illegal arms possession with the intention to carry out acts of terrorism, treason, and threats to the President of the United States. They’re being transported to more secure facilities down in Colorado Springs to await court martial.” The list of charges stopped the members of Shockwave in their tracks, and they all stared at Williams.

“How many people in the group?” Donnie asked.

“Eight. That’s how they got caught. Too many of them made too much noise, and they bumbled right into the rangers’ territory.” Williams laughed. “Got the scare of their lives when the ghillie suits swarmed them, guns drawn. Apparently they were up on Stormy Peaks, north of Estes Park, and Delta bunked at a hiker’s lodge with some ‘strange amenities,’” he said, making air quotes.

“Like what?” Matt asked, leaning on the support beam at the foot of his rack.

“Helipad. A shed big enough for a couple large SUVs—of the bulletproof glass variety.” Williams looked at them all significantly. “Hey, it makes sense. The lodge isn’t on any official state park maps, and we checked. The undisclosed location could be some sort of intermountain bunker, and no one would be the wiser. Low enough down, and it would be fortified from aerial attack. Hasn’t that been the rumor for decades anyway?”

Ness scoffed and wrote Williams’s story off as gossip. Not that she didn’t believe his team had arrested a large group of wingnuts intent on some kind of destruction, and the charges were certainly enough to give pause. She simply didn’t buy the presidential angle. Maybe there was something recovered from their equipment to indicate they had a hand in the blackout. Who knew?

“Rumor and conjecture are exactly how the president’s undisclosed location remains undisclosed,” Roger said.

Ness, however, had no more time for stories and urban legends. “Load up, boys. Time to go.”

With nary a grumble, her men hefted their gear and humped it out to the chopper. Following them as last man in, she put a hand on Donnie’s shoulder. “Gonna make it without a puke bag?”

He smiled grimly. “If I can sit in the middle and not have to look out the doors, absolutely.”

She shuffled him over so she was on the outside and gave him a sympathetic pat on the leg. For once, however, her biggest concern about him wasn’t what would splash on her boots but what was going on with him and Chris. They’d been at each other’s throats for a couple weeks, and while it appeared they’d figured it out since she’d seen them leaving together with a group of CSU students on the first night of their three-day pass—a small infraction for which she still had to weigh in with punishment—whatever was going on had flared up again, because they’d spent the last few days avoiding each other. When Echo’s days off the mountain had been extended by a few because they were going to a new area and needed to sync up with their mirror rangers, the two men had spent the majority of their time at opposite ends of base camp. Wholly unlike them, and she would be watching whether their difficulties sullied the team dynamic. If they behaved and did their jobs, she’d keep her nose out of it.

Sort of like me and Roger.

But she wasn’t thinking about that.

Once they were airborne, she spoke into her helmet mic. “Our drop zone is in Medicine Bow National Forest in southern Wyoming. Specifically, our range of patrol falls between Sugarloaf Mountain, Medicine Bow Peak, and Brown’s Peak. The first four days will be peak to peak, and then the next eight, we’ll move steadily north to Rock Creek Ridge.” She pulled out her map and pointed as they leaned forward to follow. “We’re trying a different patrol tactic, where instead of remaining stationary, we patrol the line, and a team comes along behind us to follow at a measured distance. We cover more ground, and the next team fills in the gap. They have a team on their six and another team behind them and so on. When we reach the northern point of the forest, we’ll rendezvous with the helo for a ride back to camp, and a longer leave. More time on, more time off. We’ll have a better chance of catching people trying to sneak through this way if we cover some ground instead of watching a fixed point and relying on greater numbers in less area. If we find this method doesn’t work as well, we report to Lieutenant O’Neil and go back to measured patrol of a fixed point. This method is supposed to mimic the sweeps we performed in Denver, working the area in a grid. Any questions?”

The team had nothing to add, though she knew if concerns arose, they’d voice opinions. Her guys were nothing if not vocal.

“Long as I don’t have to share a tent with Casanova, I’m fine,” Chris grumbled just loud enough for the team to hear through their headgear. Donnie glared at him.

Burgess turned to Ness, ignoring the uneasy vibe in the chopper. “Radio comm will work through the forest cover? Last time, it got a little spotty.”

“Engineers have been taking equipment up the mountain range and shoring up the dead spots.” She tucked her map away once more and kept talking. “There’s an engineer on Sugarloaf right now. I want you to shadow him, find out about the infrastructure they’re putting in and get familiar with its functionality. Moving around in the mountains means more opportunity for run-ins with wildlife, more climbing, more chance for injury even if we don’t run into idiots with landmines. I want to know we can reach medical evac at any point along our patrol, whether for us or for people trying to cross the border.

“Guys, we haven’t seen much, and these border patrols have been relatively calm, but don’t expect it to stay that way. We could be facing waves of people attempting a crossing, and these mountains are dangerous for experienced hikers, let alone the desperate and unprepared. Escort teams are stationed at various Forest Service shelters so anyone we find can be handed off for transport to Fort Collins. The camps being built from Canada to Mexico along the East-West dividing line are bigger, meant to hold more people, and are more heavily staffed despite our short numbers in the theater farther east. We’re not camping here, fellas. Even if we had enough food and water and fuel for the eastern part of the country, the lack of power will send many our way. It’s easy now, but won’t be three days from now, or next week, or next month. Stay alert. They’re coming.”

She looked each of them in the eye, lingering on Chris and Donnie to drive home the point that they were expected to do their jobs, and she would knock their heads together if she had to babysit.

“What’s the topography?” Donnie asked. “Hiking difficulty? People won’t be coming through like mindless zombie hordes in a swarm, so the easier trails will probably see more attempts to breach.”

“Sugarloaf seems fairly tame, and there’s a saddle between it and Medicine Bow Peak,” Roger chimed in, having been briefed already as Ness’s second. “Easily a day hike. There’s snow on the mountain even in July, so we could run into people expecting summer and getting late winter-early spring weather and being unprepared. We’re not to look on border crossers as hostile unless they give us reason to. They’re scared Americans, and we treat them as refugees until otherwise engaged. But fear makes people do stupid shit. Don’t forget that.”

“Yes, sir,” came the chorus.

“This is going to be our area for a while, gentlemen, Sugarloaf to the northern edge of Medicine Bow National Forest. We’ll get comfortable with the area and learn her secrets and hiding places.” Ness leaned her head back and closed her eyes, intent on spending the rest of the ride focused on the hum of the chopper and the Zen she normally felt steal over her when they reached their assignment area. The mountains were certainly not the worst place she’d crawled around in, and the views were breathtaking.

Burgess immediately went off with the radio engineer, as ordered, when they arrived near the closed campgrounds of Lewis Lake. Roger moved off to greet their ranger mirrors, and before Ness went to do the same, she pointed to Donnie and Chris.

“Do a quick perimeter check of the campground for Lewis and Libby Lakes.” She tossed them her map. “Do not split up.”

“Yes, ma’am,” they grumbled.

She did not like their tone. “Figure it out, gentlemen. Or I’ll see to it you’re glued to each other the entire twelve days.”

Chris and Donnie exchanged withering glances and went to carry out her orders. Sighing, she followed Roger to the structure where they’d be sleeping until they set out for Rock Creek Ridge. She hated it when her guys behaved like children, and Chris and Donnie were the two who butted heads most often.

Entering the Department of Agriculture Forest Services’s more permanent cabin, she found the ranger team ringing the small dining table that separated the kitchen nook from the living space. They studied a map, pointing out features to Roger to indicate current hiking conditions. As she eased into the chair next to Roger, she made sure to keep her distance.

Chris and Donnie weren’t the only ones practicing evasive maneuvers with a team member; ever since Roger had admitted his feelings for her went beyond friends with benefits, and he was looking for more, she’d steered as clear as she could. Roger was handsome, honorable, and someone she would be proud to have by her side in everything, but that just wasn’t where she was in her life. She trusted him with her life quite literally, but handing over more of herself than she’d given anyone was not in her cards. She was married to her career, and that staff sergeant stripe had all but been pinned to her uniform when the power went out. Nothing would get in the way of that. As a woman in the military, not to mention in command of a testosterone-laden team of smart, stubborn men, she’d worked hard to get where she was, and the last thing she needed was perspective of her capabilities to shift. If it became clear to others she was anything but focused on the mission at hand, they’d suddenly think of her as a girl and not as their NCOIC, someone to be protected instead of capable of her own protection.

Give men a relationship, the perception of them shifted to include sensitivity and an extra layer to their sense of duty. Give women a relationship, it took away ambition, capability, and made them someone to be looked after.

Then there was the blatant inappropriateness of her sleeping with someone directly under her leadership. That right there was grounds for serious reprimand. Scratch an itch? Sure, and keep it quiet. Fall for someone directly beneath her? Not on her life, not only for her own preservation, but for Roger’s.

Focus, Ness.
See? This was the problem with matters of the heart. Better to have a machine in her chest than a beating organ capable of love and pain. Redirecting her attention, they spent several minutes going over most of what she already knew from her lieutenant, marking off territory for each of the teams to cover and not get in the other’s way, and setting up individual training sessions. The more her men learned from the spec ops guys, the easier the border patrols would become. Plus, it looked good on a résumé when one put in for more specialized training. Currently, the first co-ed class for Ranger School was cycling through, and if the pilot program was a success, Ness wanted her name on the next student roster.

Matt returned first, sitting on the arm of the couch and listening as they discussed the week ahead. Chris and Donnie followed, looking mutinous but staying quiet as they too took up attentive positions. Far away from each other, she noticed.

All this relationship shit was doing her head in.

But that couldn’t be right. Her relationship, sure, but Chris and Donnie in a relationship? That… suddenly made everything clear. She would be a bad leader if she didn’t know what was going on with her team at all times, and while Matt had quietly begun dating the girl with the shaved head and was trying to keep it from being noticed and getting a reprimand for fraternization, Ness wasn’t just a casual observer. She knew and left it alone while it wasn’t a detriment to the team or Matt’s career.

But Donnie was very blatantly sleeping with the redhead college girl. Or he had been. It seemed she’d been hanging around the uniforms more and more in the common areas where civilians were allowed in camp, but Donnie hadn’t been there. While he wasn’t off with Chris like he normally would have been, he’d been keeping to himself in whatever location either Chris or the redhead weren’t. No wonder Donnie was irritable. Having to watch your surroundings like that even during time off sucked.

Suddenly, Chris’s problem looked a lot like jealousy, and the more she considered it, the more the timing worked out. She’d been at that basketball game when Donnie had met the redhead. It hadn’t escaped her attention how quickly the situation had resolved itself with Donnie and the girl going off for some privacy. Shortly after that, Chris and Donnie couldn’t stand to be in the same vicinity.