We hiked five more miles in silence, the midday sun beating down from overhead. It had been frigid in the shadow of the mountains in the early morning, but now, without shade in the thin high-altitude air, I began to regret wearing so many layers. Just as I was about to voice my concerns, Tyrel turned and suggested we slow down. The last thing we wanted in this weather was to break a sweat. He heard no argument.
The next community we passed through was Green Mountain Falls, little more than a sparse collection of structures paralleling the highway. The Army had not made it this far out, but the buildings were not in much better repair than Cascade. It struck me once again how quickly manmade things deteriorated when there was no one left to look after them. Maybe it was my imagination, but I could not shake the feeling that once the intent of human minds was absent, all the things once upheld by that intent went into an advanced, accelerated state of decay. Law and order not the least among them.
It was roughly five more miles to the outskirts of Woodland Park. My thighs burned and my breath was ragged from the effort of the climb. Walking in snowshoes was better than stomping through snow taller than my head, but it held its own difficulties. When the buildings were in visual range, Tyrel stopped, lifted a pair of binoculars, and studied what lay ahead. A few long, silent minutes passed, and then he said, “Let’s move off the highway.”
Rojas and I exchanged a glance, but did not argue. When we were under the shelter of pines north of the road, I asked, “What did you see, Ty?”
“Can’t say for sure,” he replied. “But it looks like somebody got here ahead of us.”
I looked at Rojas again. His dark eyes were narrow and cloudy.
“What makes you say that?” I asked.
“Furrows in the snow, for starters. Not random like what the walkers leave, but neat, like people walking single file. I looked close at some doors on an apartment building, and the ones on the upper floors looked like they’d been forced open.”
Rojas thought about it, finger tapping against the side of his jaw. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”
Tyrel looked at him. “First time for what?”
“Back in the early days, before the Army commissioned the militias, we used to have trouble with other groups out looking for salvage. That was why they started the whole program in the first place, to stop the fighting. Once there was a system in place that only allowed registered militias to trade in town, the fighting stopped. AORs, and all that.”
By ‘AOR’ he meant areas of responsibility. LaGrange’s militia, by merit of him being a former Army officer, had been assigned the lucrative territory north of the Springs. The lines were clearly delineated, and the other militias knew to stay within their sandbox. Woodland Park, however, was not included in that division of spoils, making it fair game. I had thought the three of us were the only idiots crazy enough to come out here looking for salvage, but it looked like I was wrong.
I said, “So what do you want to do about it?”
Muscles twitched in Tyrel’s jaw as he stared toward town, eyes flitting from one side to the other. He picked up a handful of powdery snow and let it run through his gloved fingers. “You bring your ghillie suit, Caleb?”
I nodded. “I always do.”
“Rojas?”
“I ain’t no sniper, homes. Don’t own one.”
“All right. We’ll figure it out. Caleb, you’re with me. Rojas, I’ll set you up under cover until we can put things in motion.”
Rojas said, “What’s the plan?”
“Recon,” Tyrel replied. “See what we’re up against. That’ll determine how this goes down. If we’re outnumbered, we’ll sneak around whoever’s out there. If not … I don’t know. Maybe we can negotiate.”
The Mexican laughed. “Out here, there’s only one kind of negotiation, homes.” He tapped his rifle.
I felt my lips pull away from my teeth.
FIFTY-FIVE
With Rojas ensconced and camouflaged on a mountainside overlooking town with orders to wait for us to give him clearance to proceed, Tyrel and I put on our winter-pattern ghillie suits and entered Woodland Park from the east. We left our gear behind except for weapons, ammo, radios, vests, a pair of bolt cutters, crowbar, and a couple of empty duffel bags.
Houses lined the streets west and south of us, while a school building lay to the north. It would provide the best vantage point to observe the immediate area, so we headed in that direction. I stayed low behind Tyrel, the two of us literally crawling on our bellies across the snow. We set an agonizingly slow pace, a necessity when trying to avoid detection. Tendrils of my camouflage dangled in my vision, allowing me only a narrow sliver of obscured sight. The cold seeped upward through my clothes, seeming to radiate into my very bones. My scarf kept my breath from fogging in the air, but a crust of ice had formed over my mouth.
The sun had moved far to the west by the time we reached the open space between the end of the neighborhood to our right and the school ahead. A wind picked up from the north, sending streamers of white powder scuttling across the flat valley floor. Despite the wind chill, I was glad for it; the extra concealment would work in our favor. Anyone looking in our direction would have a hard time making out our shapes.
I risked lifting my face to gauge how far ahead Tyrel was. At first, I could not see him at all, then the wind shifted and I picked out a barely discernable lump about twenty meters ahead. Good, I thought. That meant I was keeping pace.
We crossed the clearing and met on the eastern side of the school, sheltered from the wind by a high wall. The snow was so deep the only part of the building accessible was from the second floor up. I rose to my feet and went to stand beside Tyrel as he peeked around the corner farthest from us. I was tempted to ask him what he saw, but I knew better. Best to remain silent and wait. Finally, he turned toward me and motioned me close.
“I don’t see any service ladders,” he said. “But we can go in through one of these windows and use the stairs.”
“Won’t that be loud?”
He dug into a pocket of his vest and produced a roll of cloth tape. “Caleb, you know me better than that.”
I followed him around the back of the building and waited while he applied the tape to the smallest window he could find. It was enough to cover it, but just barely. When he finished, I handed him the crowbar.
He used the hooked end to tap the window left to right, top to bottom. Gently at first, then with more force as he gauged the strength of the glass. The tape muffled the noise, but did not eliminate it. I glanced around, worried as much about attracting walkers as about alerting other living people to our presence. I was not sure which one was the bigger threat.
At last, the window collapsed. Tyrel caught it with the crowbar and dragged the glass aside. I watched his back, rifle at the low ready as he crawled through. When he was clear, I followed.
I stood up in a dusty classroom, desks lined up in straight rows, the scents of cold and dust heavy in the air. Pale light filtered in through the windows, illuminating yellow squares on the white tile floor. Floating dust motes swirled through the geometric beams, disturbed by our entrance. Tyrel pointed behind me and said, “Pull that glass back in here.”
He handed me the crowbar and I did as he asked, hooking the cloth and drawing it through the opening. When I had it inside, I dropped it behind the length of cinder-block wall between windows. The tinkling and scraping of shards on concrete was shockingly loud in the frigid silence.