Authors: Arthur Bradley
“They hurt a friend of mine. And that’s something I don’t ever let slide.”
“Why’d they do that?”
“Like most people, they took her for less than she was—a stripper, maybe a little more when money was tight.”
“And the two guys? Who were they?”
“A couple of Army grunts out for a little weekend fun. The kind of men I normally cut a little slack, on account of what they do for our country.”
“But not this time.”
“No. Not this time.”
Samantha’s eyes were fixed on Tanner.
“What, uh..., what did they do to her?”
He swallowed hard. “They thought it would be fun to tie her to the bumper of their car and have her run along behind it for a while.”
She cringed. “Why would anyone do something like that?”
“They were lit—maybe jacked up on a little something. Who knows?”
“Did she die?”
“No.”
“But she got hurt.”
He sighed. “Yeah, she got hurt. Let’s just say she wasn’t going to be dancer anymore.”
“So, you killed them for it? Right then and there?”
Tanner shook his head. “I caught up with them behind a bar a couple of nights later.”
“And then what?”
“They laughed and joked, and acted like the whole thing was some big party game.”
“I’m guessing that was a mistake.”
He nodded. “You might not have noticed, but sometimes I lose my temper. That was one of those times.”
“You’ve killed a lot of people since we’ve been together. But none of them were good people.” She shrugged. “Maybe it’s okay if you lose your temper with really bad people.”
He grunted. “The authorities didn’t agree.”
After a moment, she asked, “Do you think they’ll try to put you back in jail someday?”
“Nah.”
“Why not?”
“For one thing, there aren’t any jails left. And even if there were, they have worse problems than me running around. Who knows? Someday, people might even say I was one of the good guys.”
She looked at him with doubt in her eyes.
“I’m pretty sure they won’t.”
Tanner laughed. “No, I guess not.”
He came over and sat in the chair beside her. They sat for several minutes, rocking quietly, listening to the sounds of the forest all around them.
Samantha eventually broke the silence.
“How long are we going to stay here?”
He looked over at her. Samantha was clean and well rested—a far cry better than when they had arrived at the cabin two days earlier.
“You ready to leave already?”
She shrugged.
“You must be missing your mom something awful.”
She shrugged again. “I guess. But I’ve always been kind of a loner.”
“What is it then? You worried about her?”
“Not much. My mom has lots of people protecting her. What about you? Aren’t you worried about your son?”
He shook his head. “Now that I know Mason made it through the pandemic, I’m sure he’ll be fine.”
“How can you be sure? We’ve seen so many awful things.”
Tanner rubbed the stubble on his chin and smiled.
“I haven’t told you much about Mason.”
“No,” she said, searching his face. “Just that he was a marshal. And a good man. Better than you, you said.”
“That part’s true. What I didn’t tell you is that he’s incredibly good at two things.”
“What’re those?”
“The first is that he can pull and shoot a pistol better than any man I’ve ever seen. Maybe better than any man left alive, things being as they are.”
“I once saw a cowboy shoot a silver dollar flipping through the air. Think he could do that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. But I doubt he’d see much point in it. Mason has a different set of skills. He’s the kind of man who can keep his nerve when staring into another man’s eyes, knowing that one of them is about to die.”
“That must come in handy, him being a marshal and all. What’s the second thing?”
“He’s what the military called a brilliant tactician. He got some big fancy medals for it too.”
“My teacher was a tactician.”
“Really?” Tanner said, surprised.
“Yep. He could do algebra without ever taking out his calculator.”
Tanner smiled. “I see. Well, my son was a different kind of tactician.” He thought for a moment. “Let me give you an example. Let’s say you and I came across three men who wanted to eat us for dinner.”
“That’s nasty,” she said with a disgusted look.
“What do you think I’d do?”
She furrowed her brow.
“Is this some kind of trick question? You’d smash their heads in, and probably take their wallets too.”
“Oh, you know me so well,” he said, grinning. “Mason would handle it differently. He’d probably lure one man away to an ambush, instigate a fight between the other two, and then shoot the lone survivor. When it was all said and done, they’d all be just as dead, but he would have been able to fight each one on his own terms.”
“Ah, I see,” she said, nodding. “So, he’s smarter than you too.”
He growled softly.
She giggled, and Tanner couldn’t help but chuckle too.
“You sure you’re ready to go back out there?” he asked. “You’ve seen how ugly it is.”
“I think we need to.”
“Why? Don’t tell me you’re getting tired of my charming company.”
She gave him a little smile.
“It’s not that.”
“What then?”
“I want to ask you for a favor.”
“What kind of favor?” he said, squinting with suspicion.
She reached under the blanket and brought out a small slip of folded paper. It looked like it had been folded and unfolded dozens of times. Tanner recognized it immediately as the note that Booker Hill had left behind. In it, Booker had asked that whoever found the note pass along one final message of love to his young daughter living in Salamanca, New York.
“Salamanca is hundreds of miles away,” he pointed out.
“Six hundred, but they’re not all out of our way.”
“And how exactly would you know that?”
“I looked at one of your maps in the cabin before going to bed last night.”
“Ah,” he said, turning back to look out at the trees. “You’ve given this some thought.”
“My mom will have more important things to worry about than this note. If we don’t deliver it ourselves, his daughter’s never going to see it. Not ever.”
“It would mean not getting back to your mom for a while longer.”
“I know,” she said, staring at him. “But what’s a few more days either way?”
Tanner studied her for a minute. Young Samantha was becoming a very different person than the awkward eleven-year-old he had met just a few weeks earlier. Things like courage, strength, and purpose were becoming more than just spelling words.
“All right then,” he said. “We’ll go to Salamanca.”
“Just like that?”
“You’d rather I throw a big fuss? Maybe stomp my feet and shout like an ogre?”
“You do look a bit like an ogre,” she said, laughing.
“You trying to butter me up?”
“It’s just that I thought you’d say no. You didn’t want to go before.”
“True.”
“So, what changed your mind?”
“I don’t know. I’m rested. My belly is full of food. And my wounds are healing.” He touched the two-inch gash on his forehead that had been stitched with fishing line. “Being back at nearly a hundred percent has improved my already sunny demeanor.”
“Now that you mention it, you do seem like a happy ogre,” she said, grinning.
“Besides,” he added, “if it’s important to you to deliver Booker’s message, who am I to say otherwise? You’re half of this team, right?”
She nodded. “I am.”
“But I do have one condition,” he said, holding up an enormous finger between them.
“What’s that?”
“After we hand over the note, we head straight to Virginia to see your mom.”
She raised her hand as if making a solemn pledge.
“Deal.”
By noon, they were almost ready to leave. The Escalade they had taken from a house in northern Atlanta was loaded with freeze-dried food from the pantry, as well as six gallon-sized jugs of water. Given their previous challenge of finding drinking water, Tanner would have taken even more, had he been able to find suitable containers. He also transferred fuel from the red Hummer parked in front of the cabin over to the Escalade. According the digital fuel gauge on the dash, they could travel nearly five hundred miles on what was now a full tank of gas. Unfortunately, that wouldn’t be quite enough to make it to Salamanca, which meant they would have to either refuel along the way or, more likely, swap to another abandoned vehicle.
Tanner set the Smith and Wesson Model 29, .44 Magnum on the dashboard. He had yet to fire the weapon since taking it from a backwoods kidnapper hiding in an old military bunker. It was fully loaded, but after those six rounds were spent, he suspected the weapon would become about as useful as a brick. Finding ammunition for such a rare caliber would be difficult, if not impossible. Fortunately, his trusty Remington 870 Police Magnum shotgun, loaded with triple-aught buckshot, sat on the floorboard beneath his legs, and more than forty unfired shells were stuffed in his backpack.
Samantha leaned her Savage .22 Varmint rifle against the inside of the SUV door. She only had a couple of dozen rounds for the rifle, but Tanner assured her that, by the time those ran out, they would have found another box or two. With billions of .22LR rounds having been sold every year for decades, the existing supply would probably outlast mankind.
Tanner unfolded a large map and studied it one final time. The drive from his cabin to Salamanca, New York, was almost exactly six hundred miles. His planned route would take them north along Highway 221 as far as Wytheville, Virginia. From there they would veer onto I-77 and eventually onto I-79, the latter of which would take them all the way over to Morgantown, West Virginia. At that point, they would detour around Pittsburgh, which was likely to be as hellish as Atlanta had been. The final couple of hundred miles would be traveled along two-lane highways as they snaked their way across the entire state of Pennsylvania and up into New York State.
Unfortunately, much of the trip had to be made by interstate, thoroughfares that were not only blocked by millions of vehicles but also frequented by every imaginable danger. While he didn’t like the risk that the journey posed, Tanner accepted that the decision to go had already been made. Whether they were traveling to Virginia to take Samantha to her mother, or to New York to deliver a note to a girl who anxiously awaited her father’s return, they would have to face the world in which they lived. Danger was a part of life, now more than ever before.
He started the Escalade and listened to the engine.
“You hear that?”
Samantha rolled down her window and listened.
“I don’t hear anything.”
“That, darlin’, is the sound of another adventure about to begin.”
CHAPTER
3
President Glass stared at the phone as if was waiting for news on whether a loved one had survived a lifesaving surgery. The Secretary of Defense, General Kent Carr, had assured her that he would find Samantha. But for the past forty-eight hours, his special task force had turned up nothing. What was supposed to have taken only a few hours had now stretched into days. Somehow, Samantha had disappeared. And while President Glass drew a modicum of comfort that her daughter had been spotted alive, she couldn’t shake the dreadful worry.
Finally, she could wait no longer. She snatched up the phone and dialed General Carr’s closed-circuit number.
He answered on the second ring.
“No news yet, Madam President.”
“You said it would only take a few hours.”
“We’re doing all we can. She’s apparently left the Atlanta area.”
“But how? Why? Why would she run like this?”
“My guess is she’s afraid.”
“Of what? Our soldiers?”
“Perhaps.”
“What do you mean perhaps?”
General Carr hesitated. When he spoke, his voice was barely above a whisper.
“Ma’am, I think we should meet in person.”
“Why? What’s going on?”
“Not over the phone. Let’s talk in private.”
“In private?”
“Somewhere out of the way. Not in the main conference areas.”
“There’s not another pandemic, I hope,” she said, forcing a nervous laugh.
“No, ma’am. It’s something else.”
“Is it serious?”
He paused. “Yes, ma’am, I’m afraid it is.”
A single overhead fluorescent light lit the small, nondescript conference room. There were only six chairs, and one of them tilted to the side because of a missing set of casters. The room was located in the far northwest corner of the Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center, an area that President Glass rarely visited. She wouldn’t even have known about the room, had it not been for her Chief of Staff, Yumi Tanaka, who had assured her that it was the most secluded meeting spot in the entire center.