Tread Fearless: Survival & Awakening (The Gatekeeper Book 4) (42 page)

Brian started crying again and Mark sat quietly, trying to pick up a few words from Lauren’s distant conversation with the boys. When Brian stopped, Mark said, “Thanks for being truthful with me. I’m glad you came back for your boys; they need you. And I think they’re ready to go with you now,” said Mark as he stood. He really didn’t want to ask the next question, but he did despite himself. “So, what are your plans?”

Brian stood and began to brush dirt off his trousers. He straightened his rumpled suit coat and buried his hands deeply into his pants pockets. “I ran into some army soldiers about a mile into town. They said there’s a refugee camp at the high school off to the northeast. It’s about a mile from here. I think me and the boys will go there,” he said.

“A FEMA camp?” asked Mark. He saw Lauren approach. And when they made eye contact, she beckoned him over with a wave of her hand.

“Yeah, I think that’s what the soldier called it,” said Brian.

“Excuse me a minute,” said Mark. He walked over to Lauren and asked, “What’s up?”

“The boys want their father now. Is he ready?” she asked in a whisper.

“As ready as he’ll ever be. Did you hear what he said about a FEMA camp nearby?”

“I did. Are you going to help him get there?”

“I guess so. Is that what you want me to do?”

“I think it’s the right thing to do, don’t you?” asked Lauren.

John sighed heavily and said, “I need to think about it. Can you give me another minute?” Lauren nodded and they both turned and walked back to their groups.

When Mark joined Brian he asked, “So, you ran into an army checkpoint?”

“I don’t think it was a checkpoint,” said Brian, the term unfamiliar in his mouth. “They were just sort of standing around, directing traffic. But they did say I should turn around, that everything west of us was about to be contaminated with nuclear fallout.”

“Hmm,” said Mark. “Did they give you an address for the camp?”

“Nope. They just said I wouldn’t miss it if I headed northeast.” Brian’s face lit up and he asked, “Are you guys going there, too? You can come with us. I saw how my boys clung to your . . .” and he let the sentence trail off.

“Sister,” offered Mark.

‘’Yeah, your sister. We can stick together,” Brian offered enthusiastically.

Mark quickly ran through several possible replies, and after considering each one, he then began to consider all of Brian’s possible responses. The last thing he wanted was go near the FEMA camp with Brian, or anyone else for that matter. But it was the best possible option for him and his boys. In fact, anything was better than being stranded, hungry, and tired. “We can’t,” said Mark. “We’re heading west.”

“But it isn’t safe that way,” said Brian.

“I know the area, and the army. We’ll be fine. But I’ll take you to the camp before I leave. Hey, it looks like your boys are ready for you,” said Mark, when Lauren approached holding their hands.

Brian turned, quickly dropping to one knee, and he embraced the boys tightly as they ran into his arms. He began to cry again, apologizing, and telling them that he was sorry, and that everything would be okay.

Mark walked over to Lauren and said, “I have a plan.”

“I figured as much. What do you have in mind?” she asked, as she leaned up against him.

“I’ll get them to the camp . . . at least close enough for them to safely reach it. But first, I want to get you someplace safe.”

“And you’ll have them wait here?” asked Lauren, with a nod toward the family.

“Have to. Don’t need them talking about us at the camp. I’ll have them wait here by the fire until I return,” he answered.

“Do you have someplace particular in mind for me to wait?” she asked, turning to face him.

“I’m not sure yet, but we’ll find something close, no more than a mile away,” he whispered. “Are you okay with it?”

“I’ll have Sage with me. And I’m not completely helpless.”

“No, you’re not,” said Mark, as he draped an arm around her shoulder and hugged her close. “By the way, how’d you convince the boys to go to their father?”

“I told them you healed him.”

“Healed him?” replied Mark. “How did I do that?”

Lauren smiled and said, “I don’t know . . . but you did. I saw it for myself.”

Mark crouched behind an abandoned sedan sitting on the side of the road. The vehicle’s tires were flat, and all but one window was shattered. Broken glass crunched under his boots as he crouched low next to it, to hide from the approaching convoy. He was close to the high school, too close, really, on the west side, and trying to get a look into the yard. Actually, it wasn’t even a high school anymore, but rather a full-fledged, government-run refugee camp.

He waited for the white, full-sized SUV, and two white tractor-trailer rigs, to pass by. When the last of the headlights moved on, he peeked
around the car’s fender and watched as three sets of brake lights began to flash, one after the other, when the short convoy approached the camp’s guarded service entrance.

A soldier, armed with a tactical shotgun, and wearing a DCU soft-cap and matching uniform, approached the SUV on the driver’s side and held out his hand. He accepted a stack of documents from the driver, looked them over, and then handed them back after offering a casual salute.

Mark watched the activity through his compact binoculars and noted the relaxed and casual demeanor of the two gate guards. Apparently the threat level in the area was low enough to warrant a comfortable degree of complacency. They weren’t even wearing body armor. He briefly considered trying to gain entry through the service gates, perhaps by hitching a ride under one of the big trucks, or even on top of one of the trailers, but he quickly squashed the idea. Such moves were very risky, and only really worked in the movies. Besides, he was flying solo, and with no back-up it was suicide to enter the camp without support.

For the time being, his best bet was to continue moving around the outside of the compound, as Lauren had asked, and report back on what he had found. Unfortunately, observation wasn’t as easy as he had hoped it would be. The government covered the chain-link fence around the high school in some kind of white plastic sheeting. It reminded Mark of the protective shrink-wrap the military used to protect helicopters, and other sensitive equipment, when they shipped them overseas for deployments.

The government also topped the fence with a single strand of concertina wire. Mark knew that such an effort was little more than a deterrent, but it did make the fence look more formidable. The entire compound was also well powered. Several large capacity military generators were running loudly in the background. Mark recognized them by their sound, it was very distinct and familiar. That, added with the guards, and the smell of diesel exhaust, reminded Mark way too much of operations in the Middle East.

To illuminate the area, more than a dozen, powerful floodlights were set up to blast the interior with a bright, cold, white light. Several were also pointing out from strategic positions within the fence, creating a track of light some twenty feet wide along its length. The combination of interior and exterior lighting made the white plastic sheets glow.

Occasionally, a passing shadow would send a dark smudge across the surface, reminding Mark of the shadow puppets he used to make with his brother when they were kids. His brother, he remembered, could make some really scary dinosaurs with his fingers contorted this way and that. Yet despite the familiarity of the white screen around the camp, Mark couldn’t help but feel something strangely ominous about the place. One minute it seemed safe and clean, holy even, and the next it was entirely creepy and foreboding.

Mark jogged along the road in order to try and catch an unobstructed view into the yard. When he was aligned with the trucks, he dropped to the ground and raised the binoculars to his eyes. He quickly scanned the area beyond the gate, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. He held his position until the last truck pulled in and the guards closed the gate.

With nothing more to see, Mark turned his attention to the gate guards. They resumed talking, as if there wasn’t a care in the world, and turned to face each other while leaning against the gate. In serious times, entering the compound would be a piece of cake. But there were many degrees of serious, and he wasn’t on a mission to infiltrate the compound. In fact, Lauren even told him not to try and enter it. Still, the special ops side of him, the part that really enjoyed covert operations, longed to slip in and have a look around.

When he was comfortable with the gate guards’ routine, Mark got up and walked casually through the shadows to resume his reconnaissance around the schoolyard. He knew, from experience, that people looking out from a lighted area could see nothing in the darkness. In fact, he knew he could even do jumping-jacks and not worry about being seen by the guards, even if they were looking directly toward him. It’s
one of the things he loved about working at night, the ability to move around unobserved.

He wasn’t the only one who knew the rules of the night, but he knew them better than most. His only danger for being seen was if the guards were equipped with night-vision or thermal optics. Then it wouldn’t matter how stealthy he tried to be in the dark. But for him, the balance between nighttime observation, and stealth, was a delicate thing.

He knew ways to spoof most observation systems, thanks to his training, but there was always something new popping up, some new observation technology. Fortunately, it usually always took an alert person to utilize the system. From Mark’s experience, the easiest was to spoof a system was to fool the man watching it, not the machine. He once spoofed two Apache attack helicopters, and their high-speed, high-resolution, thermal imagery, by ducking under his army issue sleeping bag when they flew over.

He didn’t believe FEMA had any such assets. And if they did, they wouldn’t be using full-up perimeter-lighting, so Mark relaxed and continued walking casually around the outer edge of the camp, in a counterclockwise direction, just far enough out to not reflect any light.

His next target was the refugee entry point on the far side of the camp. He wanted to see how the FEMA folks were handling their responsibility. But so far, he hadn’t seen a single civilian or government civil servant. The camp looked more like a military compound than a FEMA one, and he wondered about that too.

Mark spotted a two-man patrol coming his way along the fence. Unlike the gate guards, the two soldiers looked serious and focused, and alert for any sign of trouble. They studied the surrounding area as they walked, shoulder to shoulder, under the arc of white light, without talking.

When they reached halfway down the length of the fence, the guy closest to it stopped. He pointed to something near the ground, and then walked up to the fence and knelt. Mark watched as he waved his partner over, and then he too knelt down to examine whatever it was that bothered the first guard.

Mark decided that their actions deserved his attention, so he went prone and waited in the dark. After discussing whatever interested them at the fence, the second guard stood up and used his radio. Less than a minute later, a tan, military Humvee, complete with an unmanned, ring-mounted M240 machine gun, pulled up next to the waiting guards.

Two other soldiers, also armed, climbed out to talk with the patrol leader with the radio. Mark was too far away to hear their conversation, but he could see by their body language that they didn’t seem overly concerned about what they found near the base of the fence. And from the direction of the Humvee’s arrival, Mark assumed it responded from the personnel gate. That meant refugee in-processing operations were either running smoothly, or a vehicle was dedicated to perimeter security.

Eight minutes later, after the foot patrol and Humvee moved off, Mark dashed the fifty open yards to the fence and stooped to see what caught the guards’ interest. At the base of the fence there was a three-inch cut in the white plastic film. He dropped down, spread the cut plastic with his fingertips, and peered into the busy compound.

Beyond, more than a dozen shipping containers were lined up in what was once the teacher’s parking lot. The big-rigs that arrived earlier, were in the process of being off-loaded by soldiers and a forklift operator, who was also a soldier. Pallets of cardboard boxes, stacked high and bound tight with a clear cellophane wrapping, were being placed on the ground in front of random shipping containers. In places, soldiers formed a human chain to load select shipping containers with loose boxes.

Mark knew that every minute he lay at the fence, he risked being caught, so he got up and quickly ran back into the darkness. When well beyond the edge of light, he dropped to the ground and lay prone and willed his heartrate to return to normal. It wasn’t that he was winded from the short sprint. What he saw beyond the fence bothered him greatly, so he rolled over onto his back and looked up at the sky.

The lights from the camp made it impossible to see the stars, but then he reminded himself that regardless, atmospheric activity made
seeing the stars a rare occurrence. Still, he preferred the stars to the blatantly irresponsible use of so much electrical power. All that lighting was hardly necessary, not for a refugee camp, anyway.