Endless Flames (Surviving Ashes, Book Four) (9 page)

“Two o’clock,” Berke muttered, drawing his pistol out of his shoulder holster. He wasn’t left-handed, but he could still shoot better than these fools. He aimed his two weapons in opposite directions. The man wearing the blue shirt raised his AR style rifle and fired it into the air once more, wasting more rounds in his magazine as if that would convince Berke to open his door. Not a chance in hell. “He won’t come too close and the other two are too busy loading up supplies from the other car. Make sure your aim is on target.”

“I was hoping you’d say it wouldn’t come to that,” Maxie whispered, although she hid her fear rather well. There wasn’t a tremor in her tone and she wasn’t hedging as far as he could tell. He could hear the slight scuffle between her and Jacob, but at least his cries had somewhat subsided. “I’m really not liking this end of the world shit as much as I thought.”

“Last warning! Get out!”

Berke didn’t blink as the man in blue came rushing toward the driver’s side door, trying to advance the situation. He kept a steady gaze as he timed raising the barrel of his Sig 1911 perfectly, so that there was no mistaking the message he’d just sent. He spoke before the man could lower his weapon and do something they’d both regret.

“This is how the next minute is going to go,” Berke advised, his voice carrying through the window. He kept his voice even so this son-of-a-bitch understood who was in charge. “You and your group are going to lay down your weapons and walk away as the people behind me go around the carnage you created up ahead. You’re going to return to wherever you came from and you aren’t going to look back or I’ll drop you where you stand. Is that clear?”

“What did you just say?” the leader asked as he let his weapon fall until the forehand grip rested in his left hand. There was a wild look in his eyes that Berke had seen quite a few times during his combat tours. Berke’s index finger pulled up the slack in the trigger, but he didn’t fire. “You have balls, man. But you won’t have them for long if you don’t get out of that truck.”

“You start shooting in this direction and we’ll all be blown sky high,” Berke advised, wondering if this idiot could decipher when someone was telling him the truth. “The supplies I have in the bed will light this place up like it’s the Fourth of July.”

“It sounds like I might be interested in what you’ve got, man,” the man called out, displaying even more stupidity. “Does it look like I’m playing around with you? Does it? You’ll end up on the side of the road just like that one over there if you don’t get out of that truck right now.”

“Well, we have the attention of the other two,” Maxie said softly as she leaned forward. Berke bit back a reply, needing her to sit back and not draw attention to herself. The woman on the side of the road was now running, weaving in and out of the abandoned vehicles not bothering to look back. “Shit. Trust me.”

Trust her? Berke had to have confidence that Maxie had things covered to the right of them, even though she was technically outnumbered. The other men wouldn’t do a thing without the authorization of the man currently focused on seeing what was in the bed of the truck. What was she talking about? Was there something he was missing?

“Let me make myself very clear,” Maxie called out in a very loud, precise tone, immediately setting Berke on edge. What the hell did she think she was doing? Fuck. She wasn’t following his lead and she was going to get them shot. “You no doubt know that martial law has been declared, so I’m going to give you one chance to walk away from this situation. My name is Officer Denikin and there are currently around two dozen National Guardsmen about to come over the hill in front of us. They will not hesitate to eliminate any threat to civilian life. You
are
that threat. If you doubt what I’m saying, you might want to look up and to your right—where you will soon see military helicopters.”

“What the hell are you doing?”

Berke spoke the words out the side of his mouth, doing his best not to shake his head at the absurdity of what she was doing. He’d heard from quite a few customers who hung out with the deputies that Maxie was lethal in a poker game, but that was for money. She was betting their lives that these idiots wouldn’t call her bluff, but she’d put them in a precarious situation where he couldn’t do one damn thing to prevent the inevitable.

“It’s working, isn’t it?” Maxie muttered back before raising her voice once more. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and—”

Berke caught sight of the men running in his peripheral vision, even though the leader hadn’t moved a muscle. He was still looking up to the sky in horror.

“Don’t you dare tell me there’s actually a helicopter coming this way,” Berke softly warned, waiting for any sign that this man wouldn’t follow his friends. The barrel of the AR lowered to the ground as he started to back up a few steps. There wasn’t a chance in hell that Maxie had knowledge of the military making an appearance, so what had made those other men run? “Maxie?”

“It’s worse,” Maxie whispered in horror, resting her non-shooting hand on his shoulder. It didn’t matter anymore, for the so-called leader had decided to turn tail and run, allowing Berke to finally see what had caused everyone to rethink their stances. “We’re out of time.”

The scene out the passenger side window was something straight out of the depths of hell. The dark cloud made of volcanic ash literally looked like a wall of cement as it spanned the entire horizon. It was more than menacing as it slowly traveled toward them with an unstoppable force—it was certain death for those who weren’t prepared. This was Mother Earth’s way of saying
welcome to my nightmare
.

“S
tay here,” Berke
barked, reaching for the Remington 870 Tactical shotgun that was lying across the gear packed behind the console on the floor of the cab toward the passenger seat side as he quickly opened his door and made his way to the man lying on the side of the road. He still had his pistol, but he might need something with a bit wider pattern and reach if the
Brothers Grimm
decided to return for their booty. Maxie exited the cab and stood just outside the open door as she scanned the area, even surveying the direction from which they had come to note that many vehicles behind them were trying their best to turn around. There were even some drivers abandoning their vehicles in a panic and running toward the mountains with anything and everything they could carry. “No pulse. He’s gone.”

This was what the last three days had led up to and Maxie was downright afraid, not only for themselves, but the other people around them. She glanced over at Jacob, who had finally gotten the headphones off and was studying them as if they were the only thing that existed in the entire world. His innocence weighed heavily on her and she now understood that there were some things out of her control. It was very humbling, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t try her best to see to it that they made it to safety. Death was literally lying twenty feet away and yet their very existence was sitting right next to her.

Maxie had seen her fair share of lifeless bodies, but the way this man was discarded went against everything she believed in. He looked to be in his forties and anything but peaceful. His body had become so much debris in the way of those trying to escape the inevitable. The ragged bloody hole in his red-soaked shirt indicated he’d been shot in the chest, but the streak of the dark colored liquid that had run out of the corner of his mouth implied he’d probably drowned as his lungs filled with his own blood. She was sure it had taken him a while to expire, most likely lying there kicking in the dirt on the side of the highway ramp. He’d tried to protect what was his. That was all.

“If we had the time, I would see to it that he was properly buried,” Berke said softly as he came back around to his side of the truck.

They both got into their respective seats and rolled up the windows. Berke must have seen the confusion written across her features and Maxie tried to pull herself together. He was right. They were running against the clock. She wiped away a tear she hadn’t even known escaped, running her wet fingers against the denim of her jeans. Once dry, she de-cocked her weapon and slid it back into the holster.

“That’s quite the gamble you took,” Berke said grimly, pulling her attention back to him as he climbed into his seat and slammed his door shut. He’d easily changed the subject and she should be grateful, but her gaze still gravitated toward the dead man lying on the side of the road. Berke put the truck in drive and then maneuvered around the abandoned and pillaged vehicles on either side, even going so far as to use his bumper to move a smaller car out of the way to clear the path. And as simple as that, Maxie no longer could see the sight of death. “You could have gotten us all killed.”

“I didn’t, now did I?” Maxie met his penetrating stare across the cab after having taken a deep breath to cleanse her emotions. Berke’s brown eyes were regarding her with something she’d never seen and it made her uneasy. She was known to be brutally honest and she saw no reason not to be so now. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I don’t know if I should be angry with you for that stunt or admire your intestinal fortitude.” Berke didn’t say anything more on the subject as he concentrated on getting the truck clear, but Maxie could sense he’d left something out. She pulled herself across the console and gave Jacob a kiss on the forehead, allowing him to keep the headphones, seeing as they were keeping his attention. She settled back over the console into her seat and stared out the passenger window at what was still coming their way. “I need you to look for a homestead or something similar. I don’t want to continue driving, only to get caught up in that shit. I can’t tell how fast that cloud of ash is coming toward us and I don’t want to be overtaken without the proper protection.”

“We’re in California in the suburbs of a fairly large city,” Maxie pointed out, wincing when Jacob started to yell. He must not have liked that she’d left his sight. She reached a hand around and tried to soothe him, but it didn’t help at all. “Jacob, shhh. It’s okay. I’m right here. Berke, we’re nowhere near something like a farm.”

“You’d be surprised.” Berke finally managed to get clear from the disarray and was able to pick up speed. The one benefit of a roadblock was that the road ahead was somewhat clear. “This truck wouldn’t last two hours in the ash-filled environment that’s heading our way.”

“So what are you thinking of? Horses?” Maxie asked with disbelief, wondering how in the hell Berke expected the three of them to travel without the truck. Jacob might find it fun for ten minutes before he’d want down. He’d be hard to hold for an extended period of time and his cries would definitely attract attention they didn’t need nor want. Thoughts whirled in her head on how they could make such transportation work. “Maybe we could rig something to the back where it could be pulled and—”

“Horses won’t cut it.” Berke made a right onto a smaller road, if that were even possible. A few mailboxes that led to two-story homes were passed by and another mile under their belt before he explained his reasoning. “I have reloading equipment in the back of the truck that we’re going to need up at the lodge. I can’t leave it behind.”

“Reloading equipment? You mean gunpowder?” Maxie put a hand to her forehead, thinking of what would have happened had their truck been riddled with bullets back there on the main road. It was no secret that Berke made his own ammo, but to be carrying around a large amount of gunpowder wasn’t the safest way to travel in a war for survival. She also thought about the weight of the equipment. “What are we going to drive that could carry the weight of casings, reloading presses, bullets, primers, and powder without the engine seizing up in the ash?”

“That’s a good question,” Berke responded somewhat distractedly as he pointed through the windshield at something other than what she was looking for. They happened to be facing the advancing angry, solid wall of grey destruction. Just the sight of it made Maxie’s stomach ache and roll with nausea, but it was like a luring magnet. She couldn’t look away even as Berke tried to capture her attention by shaking his hand and pointing. “Is that a pole building? It’s big enough to park the truck while we figure out what we’re going to do.”

They weren’t supposed to be in this predicament. It shouldn’t have taken this long to reach Northern California, but there wasn’t anything they could do about it now. They were directly in the blowback path of the expanding ash cloud. The prevailing winds would carry the majority of the ash east from the volcano’s plumb. However, there would be a circular area nearly equal in diameter that would spread outward from the initial explosion and collapse toward earth. They were now being overtaken by that outer edge. A new plan had to be instituted and she shook her head when Berke went to turn the steering wheel without her confirming his initial suspicions.

“Don’t. We need to turn around,” Maxie directed, cringing when Jacob’s whimpers turned into a full-blown cry. “There was a car lot back in town. Maybe they have auto parts that we can rig together to get us to Washington.”