Graham's Resolution Trilogy Bundle: Books 1-3 (57 page)

Tala heard every word from her position in the bunkroom. She had busied Bang with folding laundry in her room, and as she put away towels, she heard their hushed voices. She didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but she couldn’t help but hear the fear-laced words the men spoke.

She stopped in her tracks, contemplating what it all meant. When Graham rounded the corner and found her, he knew from the fright in her eyes that she had heard.

“Come on. It’s going to be fine,” he said as he held his arms open to embrace her. “I’ll talk to this guy. Maybe he just saw a large raiding group. Maybe he’s wrong.”

Tala pulled away and looked up at him. “If he’s right, we’re not safe here. Not the baby, not any of us. We should leave.”

Graham shook his head. “Don’t worry about this, Tala. It’s going to be okay. You’ll see. I won’t let anything happen to us.”

She tried to believe him, but she was too jaded from recent events. Graham retrieved his boots, touching her shoulder on his way out the door.

She watched him depart, his retreating back descending into the mist, until Bang arrived, bearing a teetering stack of awkwardly folded towels and seemingly very proud of himself for the effort.

“Thank you, Bang,” Tala praised, trying to hide her fear. “You’re such a big help!” Bang ran past her and out the front door into the rain to wave to Graham while Tala looked on, afraid for them all. The silver showers clouded with haze shone with two headlights backing out of the drive. She couldn’t help but feel this was the beginning of something dreadful, like remembering a bad dream. She shook herself out of it, and the baby kicked as though reminding her of its presence. She put the laundry down and ran her hands down both sides of her belly. “You’re fine, little one,” she murmured.

“Where are they going?” Macy asked from the doorway, surprising Tala.

Tala wasn’t certain what to say. She avoided making eye contact. “They’ve got some business to check out. We aren’t sure yet.”

“What are you not telling me?” Macy asked.

“Nothing, really; a guy made radio contact with Rick yesterday. They think the man at the campsite that Graham and the boys found last night might be him. They’re going off to speak to him now.”

“Why didn’t someone tell me?” Macy asked, sounding offended.

Tala considered Macy. At sixteen, she wasn’t a child anymore; she was just as capable as Mark and McCann at providing for the group, and Tala sympathized with her frustration of the double standard she often put up with from Graham.

“Macy, I don’t know. Things happen fast around here, but if you ask me, you should have been told. I don’t think Mark knows either, if that makes you feel any better. Where
are
Mark and your sister, anyway?”

Macy chuckled. “Who knows? It’s too wet to be in the fields. They’re probably wrapped up in one of the tree stands together.”

“Oh, don’t say that,” Tala said, but she knew it was a likely scenario.

“Well, it’s true. I don’t even know her anymore,” Macy confided, then walked out into the haze again.

Tala didn’t have any advice to give. She thought it was all part of growing up too fast in this survival environment. These days they’d all done a lot of barely surviving. She was now, for all intents and purposes, married to Graham and having his child despite the viral risk. And now this new threat; she prayed they’d all make it through this, too.

“They’re about another mile through the trees,” Graham said over the Jeep’s engine. The rain still poured, though it was not as fierce as before.

They drove as far as they could until the trail met the trees. There Rick cut the engine, and they set out on foot.

“I’m sure they know we’re here by now,” Graham said as he led the team. “It’s just through the trees here.” He couldn’t get over how fast the mushrooms came up this time of year. Stepping on a large one could send you slickly flying forward if you weren’t careful. The purple flower clusters of phlox blanketed treeless patches, and ferns grew green and bright, sending their little fingers out toward what meager light might be emitted through the treetops on a sunny day. This had to be his favorite time of year. As a boy he had rarely spent time at the cabin in the spring, so this was all new to him.

Typically, spring in nearby Seattle meant the bright garish reds, yellows, and blues of daffodils, tulips, and hyacinth planted in geometric shapes throughout the city. But this was spring through and through, in all its natural beauty. The moss underfoot wafted a musty smell through the forest path.

“Hey, I think we should post Rick and McCann as sentries while you and I walk in together—just in case we have any problems. Okay with you?” Dalton said.

Graham looked at McCann and he nodded, indicating that he would cover him. “Yeah, sure, but I hope it doesn’t come to that,” Graham said.

“You and me both, brother, but we can’t be too careful. Tala would kill me if something happened to you,” Dalton said to lighten the mood.

“She would—outright, even,” Graham agreed.

Once they could see the clearing through the trees, Dalton stopped and pointed to two points of cover for the sentries, who peeled off from the path while Graham and Dalton continued.

As they got closer Graham could see that the wagon and truck remained parked where they had been the night before. The young woman sat between the two vehicles, her red hair a bright contrast to the gray around them. The fire had been out long ago by the rain, and a blue tarp was rigged to provide the young woman with dry shelter as she appeared to be cooking something over a portable stove.

“Do you see the guy? Or the dogs?” Dalton asked.

Graham looked around. “No, I don’t.”

“Let’s go in. Maybe she’ll tell us something. Keep your hands out in the open, and if I yell
down
, dive,” Dalton warned him.

“Will do,” Graham said.

As they walked into the clearing they both made sure to harden their steps in an attempt to alert their host. She looked up at Graham and then Dalton, her untrusting green eyes assessing them.

“Hi,” Graham said lifting his hand.

“Hello,” Liza answered. She appeared mildly frightened, but who wouldn’t be in this new world when meeting a stranger?

“We heard you guys come in last night. We live close by. Do you need anything?”

“No. I don’t think so,” she said.

“My name is Graham, and this is Dalton.” Graham took a few more steps toward her.

“Stay right there, please,” she said shakily and both Dalton and Graham noticed a shotgun’s barrel poking out from underneath her fur cloak. Dalton suddenly had one hand full of the back of Graham’s jacket, steadily yanking him backward.

“We mean you no harm, lady,” Dalton said. “We’re only checking on things.”

Graham had his hands up in his best no-offense mode as her eyes darted to the trees, passing left and right of them. She was getting more nervous, and that wasn’t a good sign.

“How many are in your group?” Graham asked, trying to distract her.
She’s looking for someone
.
Where’s that guy and those dogs?

“Just two,” she said with a nervous smile.

“Are you guys just passing through?” Dalton asked, still holding onto the back of Graham’s jacket.

“I dunno,” she said, staring pointedly past them into the forest.

They both followed her line of sight and spotted Rick, who was looking none too pleased with a gag in his mouth and his hands tied behind his back as he was shoved forward by his assailant, who had a pistol aimed at his side.

“Hey!” Graham shouted, but Dalton had already drawn his weapon and pulled Graham behind him.

“We mean no harm, you asshole!” Dalton yelled.

“This is just for insurance; just like the lookouts you put up,” the stranger said calmly.

“All right, you’ve made your point. Let him go now,” Graham said.

“Let’s get some answers first,” Dutch said.

“Okay. What do you want to know?” Graham asked.

“You guys turned off the transmissions?”

“So, you’re Dutch?” Dalton asked.

“Yes.”

“Then yes, we’ve turned them off,” Dalton answered.

“Let him go now,” Graham said.

“Not so fast. How many people do you have here?” Dutch asked.

“You have a lousy way of making friends, you know that?” Dalton said.

“I’m not here to make friends.”

“How about we all lower our weapons?” Graham said.

“How about you answer the question?” Dutch shot back.

“About thirty,” Dalton said.

“And about half of those are children,” Graham added.

“Are you guys immune to the virus?” Dutch asked.

“Yes,” Graham answered, thinking it wasn’t the time to elaborate on technicalities.

Dutch pulled out his pocketknife, showing Dalton and Graham he meant to cut loose Rick’s ties. “Okay, I didn’t mean to scare you guys. You can’t be too careful these days.”

Rick pulled down his gag as soon as he was able to and turned to face his attacker. Graham thought he was going to hear a stream of profanity, since Rick was quite talented in that area. Catching Dutch off guard, Rick shoved him backward by the shoulders instead.

Both men went sprawling onto the ground and, luckily, Rick had sent Dutch’s gun spiraling out of reach. Graham remembered that Dutch wore a prosthesis and contemplated jumping in his defense, but Rick’s arms were swinging and Dutch was doing his best to deflect each punch. Finally Dalton reached down, grabbed Rick, and dragged him up off Dutch. “That’s enough!” he yelled.

Then the girl screamed as if someone had just committed murder, and Graham could tell that she wasn’t well. He looked at Dutch for answers, but he lay on the ground wiping away blood from his lip and appeared to realize his young companion was in distress.

Graham walked toward her. “Hey, lady. Everything’s fine. He’s okay.”

“Don’t, Graham,” Dalton warned but was too far away to yank him back again.

That’s when the blast went off.

It wasn’t hard for Macy to follow the Jeep’s tracks through the mud. She had saddled up McCann’s mare, knowing that taking his favorite horse would bug him, but that didn’t matter to her. She wanted to annoy him in the way he annoyed her—the way he was taking her place because she was a girl, the way he decided she would be his without her permission.

He had tried to conquer her in his silent way. She didn’t want to be owned, and she didn’t want to own anyone else. Your heart hurts terribly when you lose someone you’re apt to claim possession of, and she never wanted to go through that again. Not ever.

Macy followed the Jeep tracks through the rain, wearing a dove-colored Stetson hat to shield her from the shower. The earth smelled clean and new, and she thought that shouldn’t be the case; it should cease to smell fresh after all of the deaths, and it should cease to nurture tender green sprouts. The sky should never turn blue, yet she could already see a clearing in the clouds, and she thought it a betrayal to all she’d loved and lost.

Sheriff appeared out of nowhere and trotted alongside Macy, as he often did. One minute he wasn’t there and the next he was. He was her companion, but she didn’t own him; Sheriff owned himself, and everyone knew it. She figured he just liked her best of all his humans, or perhaps he knew she was doing something she shouldn’t, and he wanted to go along to watch over her. In any event, she was thankful for his presence. He looked up at her occasionally, with his tongue lolling out; the smell of his damp fur wafted up to her nose.

“You smell, my friend,” she said, and Sheriff seemed offended. He cut his eyes away from her as though knowing exactly what her words meant.

Macy led the horse through the new growth of a meadow toward the farthest tree line, where she spotted the Jeep she’d been stalking.

When they reached the empty vehicle, Sheriff sniffed at the boot prints and the telling mark of Graham’s cane that led into the forest.

“That’s almost too easy to follow,” Macy whispered as she ducked under low-hanging branches. Sheriff ran up ahead to lead the way as he followed their scent. He stopped suddenly, and Macy watched as a sense of confusion crossed him. He looked first north, then west and east, and then he turned to look at her astride the horse, as if needing her counsel for their next course of action.

“What do you think, Sheriff? Where’d they go?”

He sat on his haunches, waiting for a cue from Macy.

“Hmmm,” Macy said, not certain of what this meant.

Then Sheriff’s ears perked toward the east, and his muzzle followed. He stood and sniffed, then shot her a look before he began an easterly trot in tentative exploration. Something was up; Macy could tell by his actions.

It wasn’t long before they came upon a scene she never thought she would witness.

Sheriff’s ominous growl unnerved her as he lowered himself to his haunches, waiting to attack. The two other dogs did the same before their prey. McCann sat bound and gagged against a pine trunk with pale attack dogs guarding their prisoner.

“What the heck happened to you?” Macy said, instinctively knowing to keep her voice low. McCann’s eyes implored her to leave as he jerked his head to the right. Macy surveyed her surroundings for the others, her hand on the pistol grip of her .45 as she dismounted the mare. One of the dogs turned to her despite Sheriff’s warnings, and McCann shook his head, causing the other dog to turn on him and bark a warning an inch from his face.

“Git!” Macy yelled and then she heard the shrill scream of a woman in distress, followed by a massive explosion. Instantly Macy sunk to a crouch against the pine-needled blanket and raised her pistol. When she looked back, both guard dogs were gone and McCann looked at her with terrified concern. She ran to him and crouched at his side. With her unsheathed knife she tore through the bindings around his wrists, and while she went to work on his ankle bindings, he ripped down the gag and yelled at her, “Get out of here! Go, Macy—
now!
”

“Shut up,” she said as she continued to cut at the binding.

He reached and took her weapon from her. “I mean it, Macy; get the hell out of here!”

“No,” she said. “Where’s Graham?”

He shook his head and blew an exasperated breath at her. “You—” he cut himself off and turned toward the right while pulling her behind him and using the next tree as a shield. They inched their way toward what Macy guessed was the location of the others.

The familiar click of Macy’s .45 told her McCann had pulled back the hammer of her pistol, getting ready to fire. He still held onto her shirt by her waist with a tight grip, holding her close to his back. She shoved his hand away, knowing he’d get hurt if was he partially impaired by her presence. Why did he have to worry about her? She could take care of herself.

“Stop it,” she said, slapping his hand away.

“Stay right behind me, Macy. I mean it, or I’ll tie you up,” he warned.

She huffed, “Like hell.”

“Shhh,” he said.

Macy heard whimpering and turned to see that Sheriff had followed the two at a crouch. She reached back and held his collar, pulling him to her side to keep him out of McCann’s way. She noticed the horse had backed up several yards from her previous position. Everything had happened so fast that Macy hadn’t thought about how lucky it was that McCann’s mare hadn’t tried to flee and trample her in the process.

There were angry voices, though neither McCann nor Macy could hear specifically what they were saying.

“Macy, please stay right here,” McCann said, his brown eyes pleading with her to obey him. The vibration of his racing heartbeat trembled his shirt collar.

“No,” she whispered, a quiet defiance this time.

He looked away from her. “Stay close, then.”

She followed as they scurried another ten feet closer to the angry voices to get a look at the chaotic scene.

“Oh, son of a bitch!” Rick’s voice yelled in agony. Macy leaned around McCann to see who was hurt. Her pulse raced and her heart thundered inside her chest.

She saw a stranger sitting up to the left of Dalton and Rick. Rick was holding his shin, and blood was spreading over his hands. She looked farther and saw Graham lying prone, face down on the ground. McCann must have seen him, too, and he began to step forward, but Macy pulled him back when she noticed the stranger holding his hand up to someone farther away. A woman with flaming red hair stood up, screaming, between a truck and a horse wagon. A shotgun fell to the ground, and the young woman turned and fled. The unknown man chased after her, shouting, “Liza!”

Macy then pushed McCann from behind and they both entered the clearing with Sheriff by their side. “Graham?” Macy called and ran to him. She barely noticed all the blood in her peripheral vision as she passed Rick, where Dalton was trying to stem the crimson flow from his leg.

“Graham!” she yelled again as she skidded to her knees before him, ruining newly sprouted spring growth beneath her. McCann’s boots appeared beside her. Although no blood puddled around Graham, she was afraid to touch him. Almost crying, she grabbed his shoulder; McCann reached down and helped her turn him to his side.

“Graham?” she asked again and saw where the rock had hit him—or, rather, where his forehead had landed on the rock. McCann checked for breathing. He pushed Macy out of the way and opened the front of Graham’s jacket, then leaned down to his face, turning his head and listening.

“Is he okay? Is he hit?” Dalton asked.

“Oh, Jesus!” Rick yelled.

“Is he breathing?” Macy asked, waiting for the answer. McCann’s brown eyes looked toward Graham’s chest as he listened.

It was torture, this waiting.

“Yes,” he said finally.

McCann pulled away, sat back, and pushed Graham’s hair from his forehead, his hand coming away damp with blood. He further parted Graham’s hair and peered down at the minor split in his scalp. “I think he’s just knocked out. We should get him to Clarisse. He could have swelling.”

McCann pushed Macy back again as he looked for any other signs of injury that Graham might have. He’d been through the ringer already last winter, and now this.

Dalton was busy putting pressure on Rick’s wounds. Most of the shot had been absorbed by the ground, but Rick had caught a partial scatter to the lower leg above his boot line.

“Is Graham okay?” Dalton’s insistent voice beckoned.

“He’s got a head injury; it’s hard to say. He’s breathing, but we need to get him to Clarisse. How’s Rick?” McCann asked.

Before Dalton could answer, McCann placed his fingers in his mouth and whistled a loud looping sound toward the forest, and his mare obediently appeared.

“Rick will be okay; it’s a flesh wound. We can take the Jeep,” Dalton offered.

“I’m getting him out of here before that guy gets back here. Macy, climb up,” he demanded, holding out his entwined hands for a step hold onto the horse.

She glanced at Rick and Dalton and back to McCann. She didn’t want to obey, but knew McCann was right. She placed her right hand on McCann’s shoulder, his jacket damp from the rain but strong and unyielding. With her muddy right boot placed in his outstretched hands, she sprung up into the air and looped her left leg over the back end of the mare. Dalton came over and, together, the two men lifted Graham’s unconscious form up and over the center saddle, Macy holding him level.

“Rick’s gotta come, too!” she said. “Look at all the blood.”

“McCann will help him hike through the woods to the Jeep,” Dalton said. “I’ll stay and have a word with our new neighbor. That girl has some issues, and he needs to explain why. Macy, go now. I’ll be right behind you. Go straight to Clarisse. Tala doesn’t need to know for now.”

Macy nodded, and the rain began again as the mare ambled forward with its load. She held the reins, but the horse seemed to know where she was going and trotted gently toward the preppers’ camp with McCann’s orders; Macy was a mere passenger. She blew out a frustrated breath because—again—McCann was owning her.