Max kept going, the leaves crunching under his boots. I was looking around for ginseng. Actually finding any was about as likely as winning the lottery was a few years ago. It would be nice if I found some. Night could send it into the Zone to her clan contacts. They loved it.
I was thinking about what kind of gun to get the baby when Max held up his hand for HALT. We had only been walking about twenty minutes, all of it steadily uphill, yet we could have been a hundred miles from civilization. I never understood how people could get lost and die a mile or two from civilization until I started doing this. Hell, left on my own, I wasn't sure I would do much better.
“Okay, G.” Max dropped his pack and dug the map out. Sometimes I wondered about Max's pack. It was almost magical how much stuff came out of it. Sometimes I imagined peeking into it and seeing a black vortex. I would be sucked into it and deposited on the floor of an army surplus store in Oregon. Scary stuff.
He shook out the map and picked up a twig to use as a pointer. “This is where we are. This is Bruxton. We are getting into Appalachia here. Whatever we are supposed to see is probably tied into the coal mines. A lot of shafts were sunk around here. You ever been in a coal mine?”
“No.”
“Neither have I. I'm not sure what we are looking for.”
“Yeah. I keep picturing the gates into NORAD or Mordor.”
“Well, my guess is it will be a little more subtle than that. This is the route I want to take. It will put us up high
enough to look down on the town without going into it. Plus, it's an approach from the back. They may have motion sensors and sentry posts with thermal imaging on the main approaches. Hopefully this way we can avoid all that shit.”
I looked at the map more closely. The little squiggly lines were awfully close together. I knew what that meant: serious sweating despite the chill in the air.
“How long do you estimate to get to your observation point?”
“Maybe a day and half up, a day back. We are going to push hard going in until we get within three klicks of where I want to be. Then we'll take our time.”
“These little black squares are houses, aren't they?”
“Yeah. We'll stay away from them. Could be bunkers. Or it could be Jed Clampett, Junior, and his crew of inbred meth-shiners. Whatever. I don't want to jack around. This is a pure recon mission. We go, we look, we go home. Any more questions before we button up?”
“Yeah, Max. Why are you here with me?”
He looked at me quizzically and then grinned. “Because this is what I do. Because you're an idiot. Because I have been sitting around on my ass in meetings while you have been out gathering the garlands of a hero. But mostly because I know you get lost just going to take a piss in the woods.”
I stared at him. “You know what?”
“What?”
“Try to keep up.”
“Right.”
We started walking. About two hours later I began to feel it. By that afternoon I was definitely feeling it. It hadn't
been that long since I had done some distance with a load, but all uphill felt like I was using an entirely different set of muscles. Also, the thigh muscles on my bad side were starting to talk to me. So much for being 100 percent rehabbed.
There were breaks in the tree cover, either logged areas or a lot of gray rock breaking through the surface. We never walked through them, always around them. When we stopped for the night, we cold camped. No conversation. It was all hand signs. I got the midwatch, which I spent with my sleeping bag wrapped around me. It was quiet, very quiet, out here. I didn't wear night-vision goggles. I had not even bothered to bring them.
As usual Max woke me up right before dawn. I pissed, snacked, and packed. By midday we approached what he had thought would be a good observation point. It wasn't, but we found one about thirty minutes later that satisfied him. We set up on the side of the mountain, very near the top, in a rocky outcropping.
The place was not too uncomfortable. We wedged ourselves into a space that was more of a crack than a cave.
Once we had settled in, Max pulled out a camo space blanket, yet another accessory that had been customized by spray paint, and draped it over us. I was almost comfy. He handed me the binoculars, gave me the TWO sign, rolled over, and went to sleep.
Â
I had done some research on Bruxton and coal mining after receiving the note. As best as I could tell, there were two ways to mine coal. The old way was to tunnel into the side of a mountain and follow the coal seam wherever
it went. The new way was to cut the top off the mountain and dump anything that wasn't coal down the side.
Bruxton had made a living off the old way a long time ago. It even had a railroad spur that ran directly into the mine back in the fifties. But the town gradually died off. I wasn't sure why. Maybe the coal ran out, or perhaps the need for high-sulfur coal disappeared because it burned so nasty.
In the eighties, the town made a bit of a comeback. They even began taking off the top of the mountain they had burrowed into. But that must have never been very successful, as most of the mountain was still there. Then about fifteen years ago, the town had slipped back into its coma.
Information on it had been scanty on the Internet. My casual questioning had not turned up much more. Then again, I got the impression there was nothing to talk about. It was just another little town that time passed by.
The town had never gotten very big. The older part of it was built right up to a large metal building that covered the entrance to the mine, where the railroad tracks led to the mountain. The mine entrance was at the point of a
V
, with the town filling the space. Surrounding it were other mountains. Across the widest part of the
V
, the road went by on its way to somewhere else. There were fireplaces burning down there, so someone was at home.
It wasn't Currier and Ives, but it wasn't the gates of Mordor, either. Then again, there had to be something here. I dug into one of my pockets and pulled out my notepad and pencil.
That was one thing I had liked right away about military dress. You got lots of pockets to put stuff inâmaybe
too many. If I didn't always put the same thing in the same pocket, I could never remember what I did with it.
I swept the area twice before I caught the first anomaly. Doing this reminded me of looking at two supposedly identical photos and finding the differences between them. The old mine area entrance was fenced off. No big deal. You don't want people wandering in there looking for free charcoal for their grills. Yet the entrance had a very nice gate and guard shack with two guards. The railroad tracks were shiny too, which meant they were being used. I got excited about that one. Then I noticed that an SUV I saw driving through town never parked or came to a stop.
I watched for another hour but didn't see anything else. I woke up Max, handed him my notes, and went to sleep quite pleased with myself.
When I woke up he handed me his notes. He had written, “You missed the dishes and antennas on the roof by the mine shaft entrance. Also the cell tower by the trailer. It isn't one. We leave in five minutes.”
I nodded that I understood and I got up to stretch the muscles in my legs. At least it would be downhill on the way back. I knew Max never went back the same way he came in, but damn, we would have to go downhill eventually.
I was puzzled by something, though: Why had we been sent here? A drone could have seen the same thing. Hell, a man in Big Daddy's position could have sent a real recon team here to do this. Oh well. It was better than digging post holes or going to meetings.
I was right about our route back. Max went further away, rather than in the direction we needed to go. It was
only after a couple of hours that I felt we had begun to curve back toward the truck. By then it was getting dark. We made another cold camp. The next day, if we pushed hard, we would make it home by nightfall.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
I woke the next morning without Max having to be my alarm clock. He was already up, alert and scanning the woods around us. He looked at me and nodded. I didn't move. Something had changed. I just breathed deeply and waited.
Sometimes, especially when I had the watch, I would imagine sending a part of me out to look around, a piece of me that would drift slowly like smoke and scout while I remained seated. Sometimes I was sure I was seeing things I would not have normally been able to see. Other times I thought that maybe I had slipped a gear.
I wasn't seeing or hearing anything now. I did feel a profound sense of urgency. We had to go.
Now
. I did the BAD STUFF hand sign followed by GO and FAST. He looked at me. He felt it too, but he was asking
Where?
I didn't know. I just knew it was time to go.
It took us less than three minutes to get ready. I looked at Max. He shrugged again, so I took the lead. I started heading back to the truck. That didn't feel right. I stopped,
breathed deeply, and waited. Nothing but the
Go!
feeling. I started back toward Bruxton. No, that was wrong.
Shit
. Of courseâuphill. I should have known. I looked back at Max. He nodded. I was already getting twinges of pain in my thigh. I disregarded it, telling myself,
Come on, body. Why bother? We know what pain is. This is not pain. The pain that can hurt me does not exist.
We moved fast and we moved like ghosts. We were in the zone. The last time I had felt like this was the day of the food distribution shoot-out at the shelter. Whatever was waiting at the end of this was in for a surprise.
I went cold as we approached another rock outcropping. I froze in place. Max did too. That is when I heard the sound of male laughter from the other side.
I looked at Max and quietly dumped my pack and the M-14 I was carrying. I didn't need it. I didn't want it. Max hit the snap release on his pack. He had left the Barrett at home and brought an M-16 instead.
He nodded and I went. I hit the side of the rock and went up without hesitation. There might as well have been stairs carved in the side. I felt good.
Damn good
. This is what I was born to do and I loved doing it.
I hit the top of the rocks, cleared a knee-high chunk that was sticking out and in my way, and went over the edge into the light, soaring like a bird. I didn't even look down at what was waiting. I didn't care. I was also sure, sure as a man could be, that it was going to be alright.
Instead, I looked into the sun and screamed with pure fucking joy.
I hit the ground, rolled, and sprang to my feet. In front of me were six guys in full gear, including black plastic rifles. They stood in a semicircle around a blonde-haired,
blue-eyed girl who looked to be about twelve. She had a fresh bruise on her cheek and a bolt-action wooden stock rifle about four feet from her. A large black male was standing off to one side in front of her. He had just finished saying, “. . . sick shit.”
She looked up at him calmly. The paleness of her face made her blue eyes really stand out. She had on a yellow dress. They wore helmets.
“Hey there.” It's always polite to introduce yourself when you drop in on folks unexpectedly. They had heard the thump of my landing. They had seen the black guy's eyes widen.
I heard the voice that runs my world at times like this tell me,
Don't stand off. Move into their personal space
. At the same time, I registered that Max had come around the other side and had the M-16 up and ready.
“What the fuck?” one of them said. “What the hell?” screamed another. They had turned toward me. Not all of them in full body profile, but at least now I had singleshot targets.
I drew on the two in front of me and shot them in the face. I kept moving toward them and didn't stop. I had both guns drawn. I wasn't even aiming. It was as if I had 360-degree Panavision. I just pointed and pulled the triggers again. That was four.
The guy standing by the girl didn't move a muscle. I looked at him. I looked into his eyes. I saw resignation in them as Max shot him through the neck a microsecond after shooting the man to my right. He didn't go down. He just jetted blood like a fountain from the bullet entrance. I shot him between the eyes. It was over.
“Hey, kid. Anyone else we should know about?”
She shook her head no.
Max had come up. He was looking at her, “You okay?”
“Yes.”
“What's your name?”
“Freya.”
She was staring at me intently. “You are what I thought.” She turned to Max. “As you are also.”
“That's nice, Freya. Where are your parents? And your house? We need to get out of here now.”
“I know. I was coming to meet you. My parents are dead and I am alone.”
For the first time I noticed a small camo daypack at the foot of the tree behind her. “Okay. What do you think, Max?”
“Outside of this being some seriously weird shit, I say we move. These guys are probably body-monitored and a whole bunch of screens just flat-lined.”
“Freya, you are going to have to keep up.”
“No problem. I will wait while you get your packs.”
Max looked at the dress. “You got any pants in that pack? You're going to need them.”
“No, I am fine.” She smiled at us.
“Okay.” Max and I went to get our packs. We were not touching these guys. I had no desire to get near them now, let alone claim anything.
When we turned the corner of the rock outcropping Max told me, “We don't even have to talk about this, do we?”
“Nope.” I knew that fact with as much certainty as I knew that I'd be okay when I jumped off that rock into the sky.