“So? She’s got Ferris to bail her out.”
Lewis stared thoughtfully back at the town. “For as long as it suits him. I’ve got a feeling those two are birds of a feather. Either way all Mandy has are her lies and manipulation, and once those stop working for her she’ll be up to her neck in it.”
“I’m not sure I’ll be any better off,” Trev muttered. “You’ve spent all your time learning what you needed to know to survive, but more and more I feel like I was just playing around with getting prepared and now it’s too late. At best I got the bare minimum supplies and equipment to survive without ever learning the skills.”
Lewis clapped him on the shoulder. “That’s the nice thing about knowledge, you can pass it on to other people. I’ll teach you what I know and together we’ll figure out the rest. But you shouldn’t be so quick to pile on yourself… you’re not as hopeless as you think.”
Trev felt a little better after that, which made slogging through the darkness blindly following his cousin a bit more bearable. And for the first time since learning about Mandy and then losing all their stuff to FETF he even felt cautiously optimistic about the future.
At least until they reached the canyon road and had followed it a few hundred yards, when they rounded a switchback and saw the glow of a campfire in a clearing between the trees off the road ahead.
Lewis immediately pulled his wagon out of sight to the side of the road and motioned for Trev to follow him. Once there he motioned again for Trev to stay with their stuff and started forward alone, rifle held ready across his chest as he crept ahead with his night vision goggles. Just before Lewis passed out of sight around the bend Trev saw a slight glint atop his cousin’s head and realized Lewis must have taken the goggles off so he wouldn’t be blinded by the light of the fire.
After a few minutes his cousin returned, leaning close to whisper. “Three men, pretty roughly dressed. One’s got a machete and another a baseball bat. Couldn’t tell if the third was armed. I waited and looked around carefully but I didn’t see or hear anyone else.”
“Think they’re Razor’s thugs?” Trev whispered back.
“Probably.” His cousin hesitated. “What do you think?”
“I think they’re a problem to anyone they meet, and we’re better armed and have the element of surprise,” Trev replied. “Besides, if we can’t find a way past them we’ll have to take the Highway 31 route, and we’ll probably run into people trying to rob us a dozen times before we reach the hideout.”
Lewis didn’t sound happy when he finally replied. “I guess you’re right, it’s now or never. Come on.” He started forward and Trev followed, leaving their wagons behind. Choosing his foot placement carefully in the dark was a bit unnerving for him, knowing the slightest misstep could give away his presence, but they’d only gone about ten feet before his cousin paused. “Hey, stay a bit behind and try to keep to cover. I’ve got the body armor so I’ll go ahead and do the talking.”
Trev didn’t like that, but his cousin had a point so he nodded. They started forward again, moving slower and slower the closer they got to the campfire and trying to keep to the edge of the road where the scrub oak and grasses as well as a few trees gave them some cover.
Before too long they got close enough to hear the three men talking. Or at least the man with the machete talking, constant complaining from the sounds of it, while the others did their best to ignore him. “This is a waste of time,” he growled, swinging the heavy blade against the log he was sitting on. “Nobody’s coming this way even during the day. We’re freezing out here when I could be back in camp in my nice warm blankets with one of Razor’s nice warm girls for the cost of a bag of potato chips.”
“So go complain to Razor,” the apparently unarmed companion snapped. “He’s always looking for someone to cut. Otherwise shut up. We’re supposed to be watching for people and I can’t hear a thing over the sound of your constant pissing and moaning.”
Trev stiffened and made his way next to Lewis, leaning in to whisper right in his ear. “That third guy who just spoke. He was one of the ones who robbed us with Razor this morning. He’s got a large caliber pistol. Also that’s my backpack.” He pointed at the pack leaning against the log the gunman’s buddy was haphazardly swinging his machete at.
Lewis nodded. “We’ll shoot him first if things go sideways. Come on, their talking is giving us a good opening to get close and they’re all backlit by the fire.”
Trev nodded back and followed behind as Lewis increased his pace slightly, raising his gun to a firing position to be ready in case they were discovered. Trev followed suit, doing his best to focus his wavering sights on the gunman as he felt his way along the road with slow, careful steps.
In the end they weren’t discovered, and it was Lewis himself who revealed them when they were within spitting distance of the camp. “Everybody on your knees and hands in the air!” he shouted so loudly that Trev jumped nearly a foot.
If he was surprised then the thugs around the fire soiled themselves. They exploded into motion, cursing and scattering, but before any of them had more than started to move Lewis fired a shot. All three men froze.
“You, the big guy near the backpack. I know you have a gun, so take it out very slowly and toss it over. If your finger gets within an inch of the trigger my next shot hits you dead center in the chest.”
“Who’re you?” the man growled, carefully pulling a big handgun out from where it had been tucked at the small of his back. It wasn’t a 1911, but from the size of the bore Trev thought it was a .45 of some sort. The thug carefully tossed it over, and it thumped lightly into the grass at the roadside.
“Grab that,” his cousin told him, stepping aside to keep his line of fire. Trev nodded and slung his rifle, hurrying over to pick up the pistol then backing away again as he tucked it into his belt and brought his rifle back up into firing position.
“I said who are you?” the man demanded. “Do you have any idea who you’re messing with? You don’t want to cross Razor.”
“The backpack next,” Lewis answered calmly. “And while you’re at it your two buddies can toss their weapons over. Nice and slowly.”
After a somewhat resentful hesitation the bandits complied. Trev quickly checked his backpack and saw to his relief that although his food was gone his clothes, tent, sleeping pad, sleeping bag, water purifier were still in there. And aside from his ammo being missing a lot of the stuff he’d picked up from where he’d deposited it a mile past his car along Highway 6 were also inside, along with a lot of the firestarting and other sundries in the pockets. He also saw a skinning knife even though he’d lost his at the roadblock, and guessed it must be the thug’s. He stuffed the machete and bat into the pack and slung it over his shoulders, then retrieved his rifle and backed away again.
“All right,” Lewis said, sounding satisfied. “Now here comes the awkward part.” He fumbled in the pouch at his waist and pulled out an unopened package of zip ties, tossing it to the one who’d had the gun. “Tie up your friends.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” the man growled.
“Would you rather I shoot you?” Lewis took a step forward, raising his aim from the man’s chest to his head. “And do a good job. I’m watching.”
The thug grudgingly complied, cursing the entire time, and under Lewis’s direction the other two men lay down on their stomachs and had their hands zip-tied behind their backs, then their ankles. Once the other two men were secured Lewis had the thug also lay down on his stomach with his hands behind his head, and with his cousin covering him Trev hurried over to tie him up. It took a bit longer than he would’ve liked, fumbling to get the end of the zip tie through the hole, but he finally got the large man’s wrists and ankles bound.