I looked down at my hands, the calloused palms, the new scars, the dark brown skin from too much time in the sun. They were not the hands of a child. They were the hands of a grown man.
It was about time I started acting like one.
FORTY-THREE
“We need to find a place to hole up,” Mike said, stating the obvious.
Sunrise crested the horizon on the outskirts of Springfield Colorado, brightening the ink-black night with the iridescent colors of dawn. Through the windows, the shapes of tall grass and solitary trees moved slowly past, lonely shadows against the charcoal gray of early morning.
“Just keep following these trails,” I said. “There’s bound to be a house around here somewhere.”
“I hope so,” Sophia said from the back seat, stifling a yawn. “I’m exhausted.”
I glanced over my shoulder, seeing only a dim outline of her face in the Humvee’s gloomy cab. “Worst case scenario,” I said, “we’ll park in a hollow and hide out until nightfall.”
“I’d rather sleep in a bed.”
Mike said, “We’ll take what we can get, Sophia.”
She rolled her eyes but didn’t argue.
I turned back around and stared through the front windshield, the hazy outlines of wrecked and abandoned vehicles drifting by like ships passing in a thick fog. Mike drove slowly, navigating via the Humvee’s blackout lights and a pair of NVGs, maneuvering deftly around the increasingly frequent obstacles on Highway 287. We had left the farmhouse just before midnight, Mike and I having decided it would be best to travel under cover of darkness. We knew by then the infected were more active at night, and figured anyone we might encounter who had survived thus far would be aware of that fact as well. Ergo, it made sense that if we wanted to avoid other people as much as possible, we should use the danger posed by the infected to our advantage.
Sophia had not been crazy about the idea, but after I explained that traveling during the day would make us an easy target for marauders, deserters, or just plain desperate people, she saw the wisdom of our plan.
The route we chose was roughly 265 miles, a distance we hoped to cross before daybreak. But the slow speeds we’d had to maintain to ensure safe travel on the increasingly choked highway, not to mention all the times we had to drive off road to make any progress at all, had seen us cover barely more than fifty miles.
For the last two hours, we had skirted the edges of Springfield, sticking to back roads and dirt trails across empty farmland and keeping our distance from the small town. Boise City had taught us a harsh lesson—wilderness good, towns bad—and instilled within us a healthy dose of paranoia. But despite our caution, I kept expecting to hear the thwap of bullets striking the Humvee, or the popping of tires over hidden booby traps, or vehicles to surround us with glaring headlights and bristling weapons. Thankfully, none of that happened.
The dirt trail we followed curved eastward across the highway and led us to a narrow strip of woodland running north to south. We went off-road and turned northward, keeping the thin treeline between us and the road. After a mile or so, the trees disappeared revealing a collection of squat buildings, a few livestock trailers, and acres of empty barbed-wire corral. Mike removed his NVGs, the day having brightened enough to see without them, and backed the Humvee down a shallow embankment until the buildings were out of sight.
“What do you think?” he asked, staring out the windshield. “Small-time ranch operation?”
“Looks like it,” I said. “See any movement?”
“No. But it’s early. If someone is there, they might still be asleep.”
“Ghillie suits?”
“Ghillie suits.”
“What about me?” Sophia asked.
“Stay here,” Mike said. “Stay out of sight and keep your rifle handy. If you spot trouble, drive out of here as fast as you can. If possible, pick us up along the way. If not, just run.”
Sophia laughed. “Yeah, sure, that’s what I’ll do. Just leave you here. Great thinking, Dad. Except hell no, that’s not gonna happen.”
He scowled in her direction, then climbed out of the vehicle. I followed him to the back of the Humvee and waited while he opened the hatch. Inside was the majority of the ammo, weapons, and medical supplies we had taken with us upon leaving the convoy. There were also two five-gallon gerry cans of fuel, one of fresh water, and a few days’ worth of food. More if we rationed.
Behind the cases of ammunition and cardboard boxes lay three ghillie suits, neatly rolled and tied, one for me, one for Mike, and one for my father. Blake’s had been in his Jeep.
I had kept my father, as well as Lauren and Blake, out of mind as much as possible over the last few of weeks. But seeing Dad’s old camouflage caused a bolt of grief to lance through me, twisting my stomach and cutting with renewed pain. Mike didn’t notice and reached inside to retrieve the suits, making me grateful for the sullen, ambient grayness of the morning.
“That field over there is tall enough to hide us,” Mike said. “We’ll go straight at it, then turn west and work our way back to the Humvee.”
I cleared my throat. “Works for me.”
“You okay?”
“Not really, but let’s do this anyway.”
Mike studied me a few seconds, then handed me my ghillie suit without a word. We both attached suppressors to our rifles, grabbed a couple of grenades each, and swapped out our red-dot sights for VCOG scopes. Once outfitted, we made our way up the hill in a crouch, going to our bellies near the summit. From there it was a question of moving slowly, not allowing ourselves to rush, and being careful not to disturb the grass around us. A few minutes in, a strong wind picked up from the east allowing us to move more quickly.
Just as the sun cleared the horizon, we stopped behind a thicket of vines covering an old, slowly rotting wooden fence. I made my way to Mike’s position and spoke to him in whispers. “Now what?”
“We move in,” he said. “The sun is at our backs; it’ll make us harder to see. Stay low and follow my lead.”
The two of us crawled to the edge of the field where we came to a dirt-and-rock-strewn clearing patched with clusters of short brown grass. Although it was still early morning, the sun seared down from a cloudless sky, raising sweat on my back and warming my rifle under my hands.
Tin roofs of low buildings shimmered in the near distance, waves of undulating heat rising and dissipating, the pop and creak of expanding metal on plywood audible from where I lay. The two of us peered through our scopes, scanning. Minutes ticked by, but we saw no movement, no indication of occupants.
“I think it’s safe to approach,” Mike said. “But keep your eyes open.”
We stood up and moved swiftly across the clearing, intent on the nearest building. Once there, we put our backs against the bricks and moved to opposite corners. Peeking around, I saw low walls with empty space above them, four-by-four columns supporting a slanted roof, and narrow doors permitting entry into wide, dirt-floored stalls. The entrances were too small for horses. Sheep maybe?
To the north, barbed wire fence surrounded about ten acres of corral. Beyond where I stood were five more mini-barns of identical construction, a shack the size of a small camper, and two open-air sheds with rusted tools dangling from wall hooks. Past these were a few livestock trailers.
Looking more closely, I saw the tires on the trailers were inflated and showed no signs of dry rot. The wire comprising the corral was well tended, and the water trough by the gate was full but not scummy. By all appearances, the ranch had been, until recently, an active operation. Whoever owned this place had not abandoned it very long ago.