“Okay, okay, okay…” Lang said loudly, but calmly, bringing his hands up to show that he was unarmed. As he did this, Peter, and then Natasha, looked up and saw the man with the gun, and the woman behind him. Natasha instinctively dropped to the ground as if she were on fire. She brought her hands up as best she could into the air, though her face remained buried in the snow.
The quick motion spooked the gunman, and with a terrified squeal more than a shout he hollered for the trio to “freeze!” which they all did instantly. Natasha steeled her nerves and pulled her face out of the snow, straining to look up into the gunman’s eyes. Peter raised his hands slowly, and Lang tried to clear his thoughts and take in a fuller picture of what was going on.
The man is not going to shoot, Lang thought. Not on purpose, and not unless he is provoked. The young man with the gun was scared, and Lang determined that he wasn’t a killer. Judging from the look in his eye and the uncertainty with which he held them through the scope, he wasn’t going to murder them in cold blood. He might kill one of us on accident, though.
“Easy there,” Lang said, firmly. “Easy with the gun. We’re unarmed. Just take your finger off the trigger for a second, and let’s talk. We don’t want anyone getting hurt because a muscle twitches in all this excitement.”
It was not true that they were completely unarmed. Peter still had the Ruger 9mm pistol in the pocket of his coat, but the man with the rifle didn’t know that.
The man obediently took his finger off the trigger, actually moving his head from behind the scope and looking at the trigger guard to see if his gloved finger was clear. He wasn’t planning on shooting anyone; this Lang knew, and the knowledge allowed him to relax his body slightly.
“Easy there, and thank you for not shooting us.” Lang didn’t move, and made no motion as if he were going to approach. No need to be foolish. However certain he was that the man was harmless, at least in his intentions, Lang wasn’t taking anything for granted.
Lang concentrated and put on the best New England accent he could muster, though it wasn’t great. “Okay, pal. We’re just moving through, here. We’re just trying to get home, and we’re unarmed and we’re not going to hurt anybody. We’re not even going to approach you. Do you understand me?”
Peter looked at Lang and communicated wordlessly that it would be a simple thing to rush the man, to pull him down from the branch and disarm him, but Lang slowly closed his eyes, silently saying “No.” The two men agreed without saying a word.
The gunman nodded, and the woman next to him huddled closer behind him, as if she were a little less sure of the group’s lack of harmful intent. “Just keep moving!” he shouted. “Don’t make me shoot anyone!” He tried to make the words sound ominous and threatening, but Lang could hear the desperate uncertainty in his voice.
“We don’t want you to shoot anyone either, bro,” Lang said, calmly. “We’re just going to walk on. You’re welcome to come with us, if you want. We’re heading towards Pennsylvania.”
“Yeah?” the man said, with a voice that suddenly betrayed a hint of a sneer. “Well, you can have that!” He looked at them as if they would understand, but they didn’t. “I wouldn’t go anywhere near the highway if I were you. It’s a bloodbath over there.” This seemed to be all he was willing to give them as far as explanation, as if his reasons were too painful to discuss. He rattled his gun again. “You guys keep walking or I’ll shoot, I swear!” There was a little more certainty this time, seen in the steadying of the gun.
“Okay, man,” Lang said, nodding his head as he reached down to help Natasha lift herself out of the snow. He pulled on her with one hand and she was able to rise up. She dusted the snow off her coat and shook her legs as she did. Lang kept his other hand up, and he whispered to Natasha to quit dusting herself and raise her hands. She did so and then the trio backed slowly away. As soon as they were thirty feet or so past the shooter, they began moving faster, and soon they were over the next rise.
“How did you know he was harmless?” Natasha asked, after they had walked for a moment.
“He didn’t know what he was doing with that gun. Probably never shot it before. I’m not even sure it was loaded. He just wanted to scare us off. He was scared out of his mind. Probably peed himself.”
“I almost did too,” Natasha said. “I’m glad he just wanted to frighten us, but I don’t understand people. I’ve never been so afraid in my life… except… maybe when Mikail shot Todd Karagin.” Her hands shook as she wiped the melted snow from her face.
“Let’s try not to make that mistake again,” Peter said, exhaling deeply. He peered ahead into their path with a little more intention.
“You’re right, Peter,” Lang replied. “But we may not always have warning—and we may not always meet people who don’t know which end of the rifle to hold. It’ll get tougher when we cross 17 and get into farm country.”
“Don’t scare me any more than I am already, Lang,” Natasha said in protest.
If one listened closely, in that protest could be heard the faintest beginnings of strength.
After several more uneventful hours of walking, Peter called them to a stop with a motion of his hand, and they gathered near a rocky outcropping, and took some time once again to look at the map and compare it with the compass.
“We look to be right in this area,” Peter said, circling a section on the map with his finger. “We’ll be to Highway 17 in two to three hours if all goes well and the conditions hold up.” He turned and looked towards the sun, which was already past its apex, and he held his open hand with the top of his index finger just under the sun facing westward, and then moved his hand downwards four fingers width. He did this several times, then, adding a finger and a half for the hilly terrain, he turned to the others and told them that it seemed to him to be after 1 p.m. “Maybe 1:30,” he added.
“Well,” Lang said, “I guess we’re making good time?”
“Good enough,” Peter answered. “When we get near the highway—anywhere within a mile or so—we’re going to want to go very slowly and use all of our senses. Like the gunman in the trees said, the highway might be really rough, and we don’t want to get caught up in anything.”
The three pulled off their packs, and Peter let out a deep sigh when he dropped his to the ground. Of the three, he carried the heaviest load since his pack had the ammo can with the electronic equipment in it. In his mind he lamented his poor physical shape and was kicking himself for not getting more exercise. He felt the cramping in his muscles and reckoned that he would be sore and miserable for at least the first week of their journey.
They opened the ammo can and pulled out the radio. Peter put in the batteries and tried to tune in anything… anything at all… but all he heard was a vacant and incessant buzzing, the vacuous chorus from all the ambient electricity in the universe.
The three pulled out some of their food, and ate quickly, and Peter ate while standing guard. They all took deep breaths while stomping occasionally to ward off the cold. The three travelers were grateful for the rest, but the cold and the light in the sky gave them reasons to keep moving.
By around 4:30 p.m., they were within a half-mile of the highway and they occasionally heard the random blast or sharp staccato of gunfire. Their current location, because of the thickness of the forest, didn’t seem to be a regular path of ingress or egress to the highway, though they had crossed a few places where it had become obvious that masses of people had diverted from the highway as they set off into the forest. Peter told them that he wanted them to stay away from any areas that had become cattle paths for escaping humans.