Authors: Algor X. Dennison
Now she had the perfect shot. The six-point buck down below raised his regal head and sniffed the air, then dipped for another drink. The smaller doe by him nuzzled at some watercress growing along the stream’s edge.
“
Go for the buck,” McLean whispered in Carrie’s ear. “Right where I showed you, just behind the shoulder-blade.”
“
Are you going to shoot the other one?” she asked.
“
Nope. Too small. We’ll let her go for now.”
Carrie brought her rifle up, a Ruger borrowed from Gordo, and sighted on the buck, which hadn’t moved. She pushed down her excitement so she could concentrate. Checking that her safety was off and mentally running through the other steps they had talked about on the way out, she began to squeeze the trigger slowly and evenly.
A sudden reluctance assailed her. She’d killed several birds and rabbits, but this was the first time she had sighted on Bambi, and her resolve wavered for an instant as she imagined the blood and carnage she was about to wreak on the innocent animal. But she was hungry, and the thought of the venison that would come from it was too tempting to back down. She found the hard edge that had developed in her soul since the world came crashing down, turning a tender-hearted girl into a pistol-toting survivalist.
The shot echoed across the hills and reverberated back in the time it took the buck to leap crookedly and land its hooves back on the soft turf. The doe was off like a lightning bolt, disappearing quickly into the trees. The buck made it several yards away, then went down as its knees buckled under it. It got up and struggled forward, then collapsed again at the side of the stream.
“
I nailed it!” Carrie shouted in triumph. She safetied her rifle and put it down, then got to her knees to watch the deer in its death throes. “Did you see that, McLean?”
McLean was laughing, watching the excitement on her face and sharing in it. “Yeah, I saw it. That was a beautiful shot! Are you sure this is the first time you’ve hunted deer?”
“
Yep!” Carrie pumped her fist. “It went right down. We don’t even have to track it through the hills. I just nailed it, and it went right down!”
McLean high-fived her and then leaned in and kissed her on the lips. Carrie’s eyes flashed with the thrill of the moment, then grew suddenly thoughtful. “Hey, that was our first kiss,” she said, studying the face of the man in front of her.
“
Uh, yeah, it was,” McLean replied. “I guess I could have waited for a romantic sunset. But I’ve wanted to kiss you for a long time, Carrie, and you look so pretty when you’re excited. I hope you don’t mind.”
She looked at him for a moment, shaking her head. “Not one bit. I like hunting. And I like you.” She took McLean by the shoulders and kissed him back, this time longer and slower, with more heat behind it. After all the waiting, the time was finally right-- emergencies were past, they had plenty of breathing room, and they’d gotten to know each other very well over the past couple months. It felt good.
They broke off and gazed at each other again. Then McLean jumped up.
“
We’ve got a deer to field-dress, and it won’t wait! Come on, this is the funnest part. You’ll love it!”
Carrie grinned. She was not looking forward to the dirty job, but if she had to do it she’d rather McLean show her than anybody else in the world.
They returned to the ranchhouse an hour and a half later with enough venison for several good meals. The men all congratulated Carrie on her kill, and Gordo immediately began smoking large portions of the meat.
Later that week Rory announced to the group that he wanted to move on to Denver in search of his ex-wife. Maria advised him to stay on another week or two, but he said he couldn’t wait. So they planned an expedition to the northeast that would take them in the direction Rory wanted to go while also putting the others in a position to gain some intelligence on conditions in the region.
“
We’ll have to blindfold you again, I’m afraid,” Ron told him. He and Rory had become good friends, bonded by a love of martial arts and a knack for horrible puns. “Just for the first ten miles or so. It’s not that we don’t trust you, but if you don’t actually know the way here, you can’t be forced into revealing it. Old partisan trick.”
Rory submitted, and they were packing and making plans when a young woman arrived at the ranch. Stephanie was feeding the animals and missed her, but her father Jim was enjoying a cup of hot tea on the porch while he kept an eye on things, and spotted the new arrival coming up the road. He alerted the others, who ambled out to see for themselves.
No one was worried; it was just a lone girl, and they had arranged for the Hendricksons to fire a few shots in warning if they noticed anyone alarming in the area. But Ron grumbled anyway. “We need to get a dog up here,” he suggested.
“
Hey, wait. That’s Jamie Bailey!” Maria told the others, staring at the approaching girl.
“
You’re right,” her husband said. They both ran out to meet Jamie, the older daughter of the last family still missing from the group.
Jamie, a solidly built eighteen-year-old with dirty blonde hair, broke down when Maria greeted her with a hug. Bringing her into the house, the others gathered around and offered her the comfort she needed at the moment, but she needed several minutes before she would speak.
“
Where’s your family?” Maria asked her.
Jamie took a deep, ragged breath, and calmed herself. “I lost them,” she explained. “We left Denver six or seven weeks ago, I think. But we were too late. Right off the bat we got detained by soldiers because we were carrying guns and ammunition. They took dad away for that, even though he explained that it was just for self-protection. They also took the guns and most of our gear and never gave them back. Well, actually they did give one back-- there was this one solder that I think felt bad for us, and he gave Mom’s pistol back to her when no one else was looking.
“
So me and Mom and my little brother tried to keep going once they let us go, figuring we could get some help for dad once we got here. But then we had to hide from some jerks that were stopping people on the highway and robbing them, and we got lost in the woods. We found a trail and followed that for a while. Then we found a campsite where a bunch of people were staying, but instead of helping us they wanted me to go with some of them to another part of the camp. They got in our faces and Mom shot one of them and told me to run. So I ran, and I don’t know what happened to Mom or Cody, I haven’t seen them since, and I just finally ended up here because I recognized the turn-off and that one big mountain peak with the jagged edge on one side.”
Jamie broke down again after that, and Maria took her to a bedroom to lie down. The others looked at each other with drawn faces.
“
We have to go find them,” Brad said. “We gotta go and find Marge, and little Cody, and Darren too.”
“
For sure,” JD agreed. “Marge and Cody are just a matter of searching, and maybe kicking down some doors and taking names. If they’re alive, we’ll get them back. But if Darren’s in some kind of military holding camp… how are we going to get him out?”
Ron cleared his throat. “They were setting something like that up by Chatfield Lake when I was on my way out of town. It wasn’t very well staffed, although that could have changed by now. Even if we can get in there, though, I don’t think we want to go up against anybody military. That could put us in a very bad position. Politically, I mean. It could make us the badguys.”
“
But if they’re holding Darren,” Brad objected, “we have to get him out. They have no right to imprison somebody like that.”
“
We’d have to sneak in there and get out again without it coming to blows,” DJ suggested.
“
We don’t actually know anything yet,” McLean pointed out. “Only that Darren, Marge, and Cody are missing. Let’s not make battle plans until we have some idea where they are. It’s just a search attempt at this point, not a rescue operation. One thing’s for sure, though. Brad’s right, we have to go and we have to go now.
“
We were leaving anyway, so let’s continue as planned but detour to wherever Jamie last saw her mother and brother. We’ll start there and we’ll work our way toward Denver. That gets Rory where he needs to go, gets us the intelligence we need, and puts us closer to finding out what happened to Darren.”
After getting more details from Jamie and the approximate locations from her story plotted out on a map, they set out on horseback. McLean, Carrie, Ron, Gordo, Brad, and Rory were the expedition members, each with a full pack and all the equipment they would need for an extended journey. Four rode while two walked, and they took turns with the horses so that no animal or person got prematurely exhausted.
The group of six took two days to cross the mountain range immediately to the east of the ranch and wind their way down through the hills and into the valleys along which Jamie had traveled. There was no sign of the Bailey family there, and the few people they encountered had seen a variety of refugees but no one that matched the description given.
This country was much more easily traveled than the hard wilderness route Carrie and the others had taken to get to the ranch. They could cover more ground with less energy expended, and the horses made great time. But the gentleness of the terrain made the route more heavily frequented by other travelers. Thankfully no one bothered the heavily-armed group, not even a band of young men that were sporting hunting rifles. No one they spoke to had seen the Baileys.
The searchers split up for twenty miles in the hope that by spreading out they’d have a better chance of coming across the Baileys or someone that had seen them. The first group, Carrie and Gordo and Brad, stopped by the town of Buena Vista, where DJ had a radio contact. They spoke with the contact, but he only reiterated his previous response to DJ’s inquiries. The Baileys had not come through. Meanwhile several miles to the south, McLean and Ron and Rory ran into a few scattered groups of refugees, but no one that knew of the Baileys. They finally joined back together in the foothills of the Pike National Forest, thirty-five miles from Denver.
At the tail end of the fourth day, as the group was looking for an out-of-the-way place to camp for the night, Brad spotted something. He was on point, and called back from a rise he’d reached. “A woman and a boy, on the trail ahead!” There was excitement in his voice.
But when the rest of the group reached him and scanned the trail in front of them, there was no one to be seen.
Chapter 8 : Parting Ways
“
I swear, a second ago there was a middle-aged woman and a young boy by that clump of scrub oak,” Brad insisted. “I am not hallucinating! She had a blue sweater, and the kid was wearing a baseball cap.”
“
Yeah, yeah! Cody always wore a cap,” Ron added. “Maybe it was them! Where’d they go?”
“
Marge Bailey!” they all shouted together. “Cody! Mrs. Bailey! We’re friends!” But no one emerged.
They followed the trail to the point where Brad thought he’d seen the pair and searched the trees, still calling out. They found nothing, and the shadows were only lengthening.
“
It had to be them,” Brad repeated, shaking his head in bewilderment. “Why did they run?”
“
It’s probably too much to hope for a coincidence like that,” McLean said. “Let’s set up camp here and get the horses taken care of. We’ll do a thorough search of the area in the morning, but really it could have been anybody you saw in this fading light.”
Soon they had a campfire going in a clearing off the trail, and lookouts posted at opposite ends of their campsite. The stars came out and those that weren’t on watch lay down to get some sleep.
Carrie got up and went off into the trees a way to relieve herself. She was on her way back when a small figure leaned out from behind a rock. In the meager starlight, it looked like a young boy. His voice startled her so badly she reached for her gun in spite of herself.
“
Excuse me. Do you have any food you could spare?” the boy asked in a polite, tentative tone. He kept most of his body behind the rock and seemed poised to run.
Carrie calmed her breathing and reached out a hand. “Hey, it’s okay. It’s okay. Are you alone, or is there someone with you?”
The boy didn’t say anything. Carrie quickly continued. “I do have some food for you. I can help you, and I promise you won’t be hurt. Do you want to come over by the fire, or would you rather I brought something here for you?”
“
Bring it here. Please,” the boy said.
“
Okay. I will. Don’t worry about a thing. I’ll be right back with some food, and I won’t bring anyone else with me. Okay?” The boy nodded, his face obscured by the night shadows. Carrie saw that he was holding a baseball cap in one hand. “Don’t go away,” she said, and hurried back to the campsite, mentally marking the rock and making sure the boy was still there.
On her way into camp she passed Gordo, on watch, and told him she’d seen a young boy but to stay put and not do anything to scare the kid off. She retrieved an apple and a bag of dried venison, and told the others to stand by. Then she hurried back to the rock.