Alone, Book 3: The Journey (23 page)

     Doing so wouldn’t make any sense. At least not to Dave.

     But as Dave once asked Sarah, “Who knows why the government does anything it does?”

     According to his map, the border was just a couple of miles north of a hamlet called Burkburnett. Just past a big bend in the highway in which it suddenly turned east.

     Dave stopped the Explorer when he saw the bend ahead.

     He’d gotten complacent once, and driven right up on a checkpoint. If they had been paying attention, or had night vision or infrared heat-seeking technology, he’d have been caught south of Austin.

     Dave wasn’t very good at a lot of things.

     But he was pretty good at learning from his mistakes.

     He turned the vehicle off, placed the night vision goggles on the seat, and put the keys in his pocket.

     Dave no longer worried about being able to get it started up again. The doubts he’d initially had about Red being able to install the alternator were totally unfounded. She installed it well, and it worked perfectly. Dave could tell, even without the gauge on his dashboard to tell him. When he turned the key now, the engine sprang to life, like a horse out of the gate. It no longer hesitated like it once did.

     “Thanks, Red,” he mumbled.

     He hoped she was safe and making good progress.

     Dave’s plan was to hike across the bridge separating Texas from Oklahoma, a backpack thrown over his shoulder. Inside the backpack would be a couple of changes of clothes, a couple of bottles of water, some trail mix, his skillet and some fishing tackle.

     He’d leave his weapons behind, except for a filet knife.

     Nothing that might be seized by border guards if he was challenged.

     His story was simple. He’d say he was just a drifter, who’d worked his way up from south Texas by following the back roads, living off the land and an occasional kind stranger. He was working his way up to Oklahoma City, where he had relatives.

     “What’s that you say, officer? The border to Oklahoma is closed? No one in or out? I’m sorry, officer. I’ll go back where I came from. Sorry to bother you.”

     That was his Plan A.

     His backup plan, if they chased him, wouldn’t be quite so easy.

     He’d jump off the bridge into the Red River below. The river, he knew, generally swelled in the spring when snow packs to the north thawed. It generally ran with a swift current this time of year.

     If he couldn’t get the Explorer over the bridge, he’d freefall the forty feet from the bridge to the river, ride its current for a mile or two, then work his way back to his vehicle under cover of darkness.

     Then he’d try to find an alternate route.

     He’d try to make the crossing in daylight. He couldn’t afford to have the night vision goggles taken from him. He couldn’t see well enough at night without them.

     He ate some trail mix while he waited for the sun to come up an hour later.

     And he reflected.

     About a lot of things.

     He wondered about his Sarah. And whether she suspected that now that spring was here, he’d be coming for her.

     He wondered about his daughters. Whether they were driving their mother crazy by asking, “When is Dad coming?” twenty times a day.

     And the other Sarah. The young girl he could have helped. Could have saved. But didn’t.

     What had happened to her? Her clothes weren’t torn. He didn’t think she was assaulted. Surely she wouldn’t have dumped her belongings from her own backpack. And certainly not in the middle of the highway.

     He figured she was being chased. That would explain why she dropped the sleeping bag, to lighten her load.

     Perhaps someone tried to rob her at knifepoint.

     Perhaps she put up a fight.

     And the killer got angry, and used the knife to cut her throat.

     Perhaps he took her backpack and fled south. And after he was far enough away from her, he went through the backpack looking to see what treasures he’d found.

     Maybe there weren’t any treasures. Maybe there were just family photos, and a toothbrush, and maybe some makeup.

     Perhaps the killer was so incensed he dumped all the bag’s contents onto the pavement and retreated back into the woods to await his next victim.

     The world was indeed an incredibly violent and ugly place now.

     He, like Red, just wished the killing would stop.

     The sun was up now. He’d be setting out in a few minutes. But first, he pulled out the Rand McNally road atlas that had been his companion since San Antonio. And once again he took the Google Earth photograph he’d found in Sarah’s research material.

     The photograph that looked like a farm somewhere, but that he couldn’t identify.

     The photograph that looked vaguely familiar to him, but he couldn’t say exactly why.

     He was hoping the photograph was of his in-laws’ farm. That was where Sarah and the girls planned to stay while they were in Kansas City. If, as Red contended, they landed safely, then surely Sarah’s sister Karen and her husband were at the airport to greet them.

     If they were able to get back to their farm northwest of the city, that’s where his family would be.

     Dave had only been to the farm once, about three years before, on a fishing trip. And he didn’t pay very close attention to his surroundings. This photograph looked vaguely like somewhere he might have been before, or seen before.

     Or, his mind might be playing tricks on him.

     In any case, if this photo was indeed a satellite view of the farm, and he could find it on a map, it would make it infinitely easier to find his family.

     The only other option was to go door to door all over that part of the country, asking people if they knew where his relatives lived.

     All the while dodging suspicious residents with shotguns, guard dogs and escaped convicts.

     He thought it would be an easy task, matching up the photograph to a map. But it was proving to be no walk in the park. The photo was several times larger than the detail on the map. And it had no words on it which might help Dave indicate which side of the photo pointed to the north.

     So it was a matter of looking for landmarks and unique characteristics.

     In the photo, behind what appeared to be the main farmhouse, there was a good sized creek that meandered through the property.

     At one point, not far from the house, it changed direction dramatically, as though it were going around something. That gave the creek what Dave came to refer to as its “camelback.”

     Perhaps thirty yards or so farther away from the house, the same creek executed a perfect ninety degree turn.

     It was those two features, and their relationship to nearby roads, that would help Dave identify the exact spot where the farm was located.

     If, that was, if the photo depicted the place he was searching for, as opposed to somewhere else on God’s big earth.

     And if, that was, he could find the camelback and perfect turn on the Rand McNally map.

     That in itself was proving to be a chore.

     Dave had been hoping, perhaps unrealistically, for a map that was general in nature. Say, for example, one that showed only roads, rivers and smaller waterways.

     What he got instead was a map of the area northwest of Kansas City that was so full of information it was like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

     It listed not only roads, paths and trails, but also elevations, mile markers, key sites like restaurants and gas stations, parks and schools.

     Sure, it was a wealth of information to most people.

     But to Dave, it was just clutter.

     For the last couple of days, one at a time, he would find a faint blue line, indicating a creek or stream that meandered its way through the map. He would use a pencil to trace its lines, looking desperately for his camelback and perfect turn.

     If that particular creek or stream didn’t work out, he’d find another one.

     Tracing each one in pencil meant he wouldn’t waste his time examining the same creeks twice.

     It sounded like an easy process, in theory.

     The problem was there were hundreds of such streams and creeks between Kansas City and Fort Leavenworth.

     It would be a long process.

     After an hour, he started to get a headache and put the map aside. He got up from beneath the tree where he’d been sitting, looked around in all directions, and then placed the atlas and photograph into the cab of an abandoned truck a hundred yards behind his SUV.

     This was where he’d spend most of the day sleeping, provided he wasn’t forced to jump into the Red River and make his way back after nightfall.

     And he hoped he wouldn’t have to do that.

     Although he hadn’t washed up in more than a week and certainly could have used a bath, he didn’t relish the idea of riding the currents in an icy cold river for what probably would be a mile or two.

     He also didn’t want the force of him hitting the water to reopen the wounds on his body that were starting to heal.

     Or, for the dirty river water to infect those same wounds.

     He looked upward and said a silent prayer as he walked toward the bridge and the state of Oklahoma.

     And his prayer was answered, for an hour and a half later, after having walked on Oklahoma ground, he crawled back into the abandoned truck and collapsed on a moldy and smelly bunk.

     He hadn’t seen a roadblock, or any other living human being, for that matter.

     His luck seemed to be holding.

Chapter 50

     Dave had always loved driving across the United States. As a child, his family took a vacation each summer to visit all the best the country had to offer.

     He remembered his father grumbling that the longest part of the trip was getting out of Texas. When they went to California one summer, it took two full days just to make it out of the Lone Star State.

     Once they made it out of Texas, they could make at least two, and sometimes three states in a day.

     Dave wasn’t making such good time now, of course, driving slowly in the dark.

     But he was still happy to make it all the way through Oklahoma in a single night.

     When he saw a sign that said the border to Kansas was three miles ahead, he wanted to floor it.

     But no. He’d come too far to be sloppy and do something stupid now.

     He couldn’t help but chuckle.

     If Red were still with him and he’d made that comment out loud, she surely would have had a smart aleck comment of her own.

     “You mean something
else
stupid, don’t you?”

     He liked Red. He hoped she was doing well.

     He also hoped that they had the opportunity to meet again sometime. That Red could meet the whole family. Dave was convinced that Red and Sarah would get along famously, and be the best of friends.

     They already had one thing in common.

     They both enjoyed giving Dave a hard time and pointing out all his dumb mistakes.

     He thought Red would be another great role model for his girls, also. To show them a woman could be tough as nails and still be a woman.

     After all the ugliness in the world finally came to an end, he hoped that Red would become a permanent family friend.

     And he was, indeed, taking her advice to heart. He pulled the SUV in front of a big blue Kenworth half an hour before sunrise, quickly threw some things into his backpack, and walked back to check out his accommodations for the day.

     The truck had its company logo emblazoned on the driver’s side door:

                      JACKRABBIT MOVING

                 We get it done faster than rabbits

     The logo depicted two rabbits, one wearing a pink ribbon and one wearing a blue ribbon. The girl rabbit, adorned with ridiculously long eyelashes, was winking at the male. 

     For the first time in days he thought of the bunnies he left back home. And it dawned on him that he hadn’t thought of his dream since the night he left. Lindsey hadn’t visited him in his sleep to warn him to take care of the bunnies.