Under a Tell-Tale Sky: Disruption - Book 1 (47 page)

Sure enough, the men in the two cars spoke through their open windows; then the car being relieved started up and drove down Highway 50 to turn on to Blue Ridge Mountain Road, no doubt headed back to Mount Weather. This was not good, and Anderson considered his alternatives. There were one or two places nearby where streams ran under the highway, but he couldn’t recall exactly where they were. That had never been important when he drove the road, and distances at sixty miles an hour and on foot were two completely different things.

He sighed. It was what it was. He’d have to stay in the woods north of the highway and head west until he found a stream, then follow it south and wade through the culvert beneath the highway. Once across, he’d find his way back to the trail. More importantly, in getting to the culvert he’d have to stay well back from the farmhouses along the highway and hope he didn’t have to cross too many open fields. He cursed under his breath and faded back into the trees before he shouldered his pack to pick his way west through the dense undergrowth.

That’s when he heard the dogs in the far distance, baying wildly as they came down the Appalachian Trail.

Chapter Nineteen

1 Mile off the Appalachian Trail

Near Virginia/West Virginia Border

Day 20, 5:35 a.m.

Bill Wiggins and Simon Tremble made their way toward the plaintive squeals, moving carefully in the predawn light. Wiggins grimaced as they reached the source of the sound. The rabbit had almost escaped the snare; rather than breaking its neck as intended, the loop had caught a hind leg and the sapling jerked the animal skyward, to twist and squeal. Wiggins moved quickly, snapping the animal’s neck before removing it from the snare and adding the now lifeless body to the plastic grocery bag they were using as a game sack.

“I hate when we don’t get a clean kill,” Wiggins said. “He could’ve been hanging here for hours. And it’s not like it’s always quiet. Shooting him might have made less commotion and been a lot more humane.”

Tremble shook his head. “He’d have been squealing if he was being killed by a wolf or a fox, but a gunshot’s an unnatural sound. Even that little popgun of yours has a sound signature that’ll carry a ways. We all need some protein and we can’t eat up what little jerky you and Tex have; you’ll need it going north, and besides, it wouldn’t last long anyway.”

Wiggins sighed and inclined his head toward the snare. “Yeah, I know. Should I reset it?”

Tremble shook his head. “Between the rabbit and the squirrels we took out of the deadfalls, we have enough for today. We’re not burning many calories hunkered down, and the meat won’t keep anyway, so no point taking more than we can use. Let’s step off into the woods a ways and skin and gut these. I want to keep the offal away from the cave; no point in drawing up predators.”

They made short work of dressing their game, then started back through the woods toward their hideaway. They stepped over a small stream and set their guns and game on nearby rocks before turning back to the flowing water. Wiggins fished a small plastic bottle of soap from his pocket, another resource provided by Levi, and squeezed a dab into his palm before passing the bottle to Tremble. Both men lathered the blood off their hands, then squatted to rinse them.

“We haven’t seen anybody since we dodged the chopper and search team the first day,” Wiggins said. “You think they gave up? I mean, it’s been three days, and I figured they’d be all over us like a blanket.”

Tremble snorted. “They may not be looking here, but I can guarantee they’re looking somewhere. Maybe Anderson drew them off, or they’ve just set up a perimeter and are waiting for us to cross it, but no, they haven’t given up. Gleason won’t want anyone to know his intentions, so Keith and I are probably now Public Enemies Number One and Two.”

Wiggins stood up straight and slung water off his hands before patting them dry on his pants. He stood unmoving a moment and Tremble cocked an eye at him from where he still squatted at the stream. Then the older man rose and smiled, shaking the water from his own hands.

“You look like a man trying very hard to say something but unsure where to start, Bill,” Tremble said. “Try the beginning.”

“It’s just … well, Tex and I’ve been talking, and we really appreciate the things you’ve taught us in the last couple of days, I mean the snares and deadfalls, and the Dakota fire hole and all that other survival stuff …” He trailed off.

Tremble smiled again. “Your tax dollars at work, and here I thought the army’s attempt to kill me during SERE training was just an exercise. Now I’m using it to escape the government. Go figure.”

“Well, that’s kind of it. I mean, we wish you well, but I don’t really know what we can do and …”

Tremble held up a hand. “And if y’all get caught with us, it won’t go well for you, and your families need you. I understand. This is my problem, not yours and Tex’s. I get that, and you have absolutely nothing to feel bad about. We’re toxic, and in your position I’d stay as far away as possible. It’s me that’s sorry I dragged y’all into this and I’m grateful for your help. If you hadn’t come along when you did, Keith and I would likely be dead by now. We owe you, not the other way around.” He paused. “When you taking off?”

“We figure maybe tomorrow, if we don’t see any more activity today.”

“Are you up to it? How about your feet? We pushed pretty hard to get here, and you were in rough shape to start with,” Tremble said.

Wiggins nodded. “It’s a problem, and that’s a fact, but mine are much better since I took that guy’s boots, and Tex’s feet weren’t as bad as mine. She’s had a couple of days off of them to rest up, but we still have to find her some better footwear—gotta be near some sort of population center to do that, though.”

Tremble shook his head. “I don’t know, maybe we should just separate and hide a while longer, just in different places. I can’t help but think they’ll be watching road crossings and such—”

“But not for a man and woman traveling together,” Wiggins said.

“I think they’ll be looking hard at ANYONE off this section of the trail that might have had contact with me or Keith. They might just take you out on the CHANCE you’ve come in contact with us.”

Wiggins shook his head. “I know things are crazy, but for all that, I have difficulty believing the federal government has reached the point they’re murdering people on the off chance they MIGHT have talked to you. And even if they are, we have our families to think about and we have to give it a shot. We can’t just sit here forever.”

“Your call,” Tremble said as he walked over to pick up his gun and part of the game, “and I understand your urgency, because the most important member of my family is here with me, but I wish you’d wait a few more days.”

Wiggins said nothing but fell in beside Tremble as they moved up the hill toward the cave.

***

Two hours later, Tremble sat on a rock under a tree thirty feet downhill from the cave, watching Tex grill the meat and listening for the sound of approaching choppers while keeping a sharp eye on the minimal smoke given off by the Dakota fire hole. It was a simple but effective arrangement, two holes about eight inches in diameter and a foot deep, dug a foot apart with the bottoms of each dug out so they connected underground.

A fire at the bottom of one hole drew oxygen from the second with the heat from the underground blaze in the ‘fire hole’ concentrated upward, where it cooked the meat on a grill of green sticks laid across the hole. The fire showed no light unless one peered directly into the hole, and burned hot and efficiently, so it could be fired with twigs and sticks broken by hand. Efficient combustion produced minimal smoke, and positioning the arrangement near a tall tree meant any smoke produced wafted upward along the tree trunk to be dissipated in the thick foliage overhead. An adjacent pile of excavated earth could be pushed in to smother the fire in less than two seconds and large flat rocks on the opposite side of the arrangement but far enough away from the fire to maintain their ambient temperature would cap both the holes a second after that.

The rocks would heat up in time, but it would take a while and look nothing like a human to the IR telemetry during a quick flyover. Detection was unlikely if they covered the fire and fled to the cave at the distant first sound of a chopper. Besides, not only did he not want to deplete Bill and Tex’s stores, he got sick of jerky pretty quickly, and Bill and Tex’s ultralight hiking stove was okay to boil water and pasta, but the fuel was limited, and it was a nonstarter for cooking much else. His mouth watered at the smell of the roasting meat.

“Damn! That smells good,” he heard, and looked up to see Keith coming down the incline from the cave, picking his way carefully and supporting his weight on a crutch improvised from a tree limb.

“I made that crutch so you could get back and forth to do your business with a little privacy,” Tremble said, “not so you could hobble around camp for the hell of it. You need to stay off that ankle if you expect it to heal.”

“Hey, lighten up, Dad,” Keith responded. “It sucks lying around in that cave all day, and I’m not helping at all. I thought I might come down and see if I could at least help with the cooking.”

Tex looked up. “Got it covered, Romeo. All done. So sit your butt on that rock and give me your knife and I’ll bring you some.”

Tremble suppressed a smile as Keith flushed. Tex had nicknamed Keith ‘Romeo’ ever since the chopper scare and continued to tease him. Tremble sensed his son was more than a little smitten. Well, why not? Tex was likely only six or seven years older than his son, obviously smart and competent, and pretty in a very natural, no-makeup-required sort of way. He suspected she was also more than capable of taking care of herself.

“Uhh … thanks,” Keith mumbled and unfolded the knife he’d found in the pocket of the uniform and handed it to Tex.

Tex accepted the knife and returned to the fire to spear a piece of meat and brought it to Keith. “Okay, you two,” she said over her shoulder, “I’m only serving guys on crutches, so you’re on your own. And that big piece of rabbit I put over to the side is mine.”

Tremble laughed and took out his own knife to spear half of one of the squirrels. He saw Wiggins hesitate before doing the same. If you plan to make it all the way to Maine, my friend, you’re probably going to have to eat things a lot worse than squirrel, he thought.

They ate in companionable silence, holding the hot meat on their knives to nibble while it cooled, then attacking in earnest when they could handle it, grease running down their chins. They ate until it was gone, leaving it to Tex to parcel the meat out fairly. When they’d dumped the bones in the fire hole and killed the fire, each was feeling pleasantly full. Tremble broke the silence.

“First light?”

Wiggins looked at Tex and nodded.

“Want to take one of the M4s?” Tremble asked.

“Negative,” Tex said quickly. “Those are military-issue full auto. We could never explain them if we got caught, and they’d tie us right back to those FEMA guys. Besides, there’s not much ammo anyway. Thanks for the offer, Simon, but it’s not worth it.”

Wiggins was nodding. “Tex is right, but we’ll take one of those Sigs, though, and a little of the ammo. They’re fairly common, so it shouldn’t necessarily raise any questions if we’re detained, and it’s a nine millimeter like Tex’s Glock so we can share ammo. That’ll give us both a pistol along with the survival rifle. If we need more than that, we’re probably screwed anyway. Our best defense is staying out of sight.” He paused. “But what about you? We don’t want to leave you with nothing. We’ll split what we have.”

It was Tremble’s turn to decline. “You’ve got a long way to go, and y’all will need every bit of the food you’ve got and more. Dividing the food won’t make much difference and there’s plenty of game, so Keith and I can live off the land. But if you could spare a bit off that spool of wire I saw, some paracord for snares and such, and maybe a couple of those heavy garbage bags to carry stuff in, that would be great.”

Wiggins looked at Tex, and she nodded. “Done,” he said. “And I’ll throw in a lighter. Levi gave us a half dozen and I didn’t dump ‘em ‘cause they’re light. But what about water? You got nothing to carry it in, nor anything to boil it in to sterilize it either.”

Tremble shrugged. “There’s a lot of water around, and as long as we can catch a spring where it surfaces and the water hasn’t been contaminated with animal droppings, we should be all right. As far as carrying water goes, it is what it is, and we’ll make do. I’m pretty sure if we hit one of the access points with a parking lot, we can slip down at night and raid a trash can for plastic water bottles.”

Tex got a strange look on her face. “Just a minute,” she said, and scrambled uphill toward the cave. She returned a moment later and handed two small packages to Keith and then stepped over and tossed two more in Tremble’s lap. Keith was blushing, and Tex burst out laughing.

“Don’t get any ideas, Romeo,” she said, and Tremble looked down at the condoms in his hand.

“I found those in the side pocket of the pack and was starting to feel a bit negative toward Levi until I just figured out what they’re for, besides the obvious, I mean. You can use ‘em to carry water, and we can put a little of the bleach we’re carrying in one of them as well, that way you can sterilize water if you have to,” she said.

“So that’s what those are for,” Wiggins said. “I have some too, but we left Levi’s place in a bit of a rush, and we didn’t cover possible uses for those. When I found them, I was just a bit embarrassed to bring it up. We can let you have a few more, if you think you can use them.” He laughed and shook his head. “That Levi’s pretty resourceful.”

Tremble looked at the condoms. “I think I’d like to meet this guy someday.”

***

The four stood in the dim morning light, the leave-taking difficult despite their short friendship.

“Well, I guess this is it,” Wiggins said, extending his hand.

Tremble nodded and grasped the outstretched hand, but didn’t release it immediately. “You two take care of yourselves,” he said, “and when you get home, if you have access to a radio, please spread the news about what’s really going on to those folks in Wilmington and everywhere else you can. Whether we make it out or not, I feel better knowing that at least there’s a chance Gleason’s plans can be made public.”

“You can count on it, Simon,” Wiggins said, giving Simon’s hand a firm squeeze before releasing it to offer his hand to Keith.

As Keith and Wiggins shook hands, Tremble turned to Tex and offered his hand. Even in the dim light he saw her eyes glisten with moisture, and she knocked his hand aside to wrap him in a hug.

“You take care, Simon,” she whispered in his ear as he squeezed her back.

Tremble released her and she turned to hug Keith as well, quickly and fiercely before stepping back and wiping her eyes with the back of her hand and forcing a grin. “And you watch out for the old-timer, Romeo, and watch where you’re stepping.”

Keith merely bobbed his head in acknowledgment, as if not trusting his voice.