Eden Rising (9 page)

When they finally reached the strip of open land where the road met highway, Sims keyed his mic and told the pilot, “Set us down near the intersection.”

“Looks like it might be a little deep,” the pilot replied.

“I’ve seen you land in worse.”

“Doesn’t mean I like it.”

The pilot slowly lowered them over the road. By the time the skids came to rest, the top of the snow was only a few inches below the lip of the door.

“We won’t be long,” Sims said.

After exiting the aircraft, he and his men spread out to quickly cover more area.

“Sir!” Altman, one of Sims’s men, yelled.

Sims twisted around, and spotted Altman fifty feet down the smaller road that led back into the woods. By the time he reached him, Altman had crouched down and was pointing at the ground.

“Tire tracks, sir,” Altman said. “At least two sets.”

Sims moved in low next to him. Running down the road were several wide depressions. They hadn’t filled because of the partial tree cover.

“How old, do you think?” Sims asked.

Altman, Sims’s best tracker, studied the marks. “Twelve hours, give or take.”

Twelve hours. Depending on what the weather had been when the vehicles came through, they could be as much as six or seven hundred miles away. They probably hadn’t made it quite that far, but even three hundred would be a lot.

Altman rose to his feet, but stayed bent at the waist as he followed the tracks toward the highway. Sims walked right behind him. With each step the depressions became shallower and shallower, until Sims could no longer differentiate the tracks from the surrounding ground. Altman, though, was able to follow them nearly all the way to the intersection.

He finally stopped and straightened up. “It looks like they turned south.”

“You’re sure?” Sims asked.

“As sure as I can be.”

South
did
make the most sense. A turn to the north would have meant heading into the meat of the storm.

“Don’t think we’re going to find anything else here,” Sims said loudly enough for the other men to hear. “Everyone back on board.”

Back in the warmth of the aircraft’s cabin, he pulled up on his tablet a map of the state and studied it for a moment.

“South toward Butte,” he told the pilot. “Your destination’s the intersection of the I-90 and the I-15 a couple miles west of town. We’ll see if we can pick up another sign of them there.”

“Yes, sir,” the pilot said.

8

SHERIDAN, WYOMING

9:39 PM MST

C
HLOE’S EYES SHOT
open at the sound of the gunshot. She rolled off her bed and onto the floor, unsure where it was coming from. Once she realized none of the bullets were flying through her room, she scrambled across the floor and yanked on her boots.

“What the hell’s going on?” Matt’s voice boomed out of the radio in her jacket pocket.

As she grabbed the coat and pulled it on, Jared Lawrence, one of the men on watch, answered. “We’ve got at least two shooters. Think they’re on the lot just south of us.”

That would be the equipment rental place Chloe had seen next door. It was full of tractors and trucks and trailers parked around a large, central building.

“Do you have an exact position?” Matt asked.

“No, the snow’s too—” Jared cut himself off as another burst of bullets sailed over the motel.

“Jesus,” Matt said. “Everyone stay down. Jared, we need to silence those guns.”

Chloe clicked the talk button. “I’m on it.”

__________

B
RANDON DUCKED DOWN
next to the motel wall. The gunfire sounded like it was coming from somewhere beyond the parking area. Worried that he might still be in the line of fire, he darted over to the cover of one of the Humvees, and then raised his head high enough to peer through the windows of the vehicle. All he could see were darkness and snow.

Over the radio inside the Humvee, he heard Matt’s voice. “What the hell’s going on?”

The answer confirmed what Brandon had already figured out.

He ducked back down as more gunfire rang out.

When it stopped, he could hear Matt say, “Everyone stay down. Jared, we need to silence those guns.”

The response came almost immediately. “I’m on it.” Not Lawrence’s voice. Chloe’s.

I’m on it?
Was she going after the shooters alone? Even Brandon knew that wasn’t a good idea.

He looked through the window again, this time searching the inside of the vehicle. Lying across the floor in the back were two M16 rifles. Careful and quiet, he opened the rear door and grabbed one. After checking that the mag was full, he eased the door closed. Because of his location, he was sure he’d have heard Chloe run by if she’d decided to approach the other property from the front, but there had been no footsteps in that direction, so she must’ve been heading around back.

He reached the rear of the motel only seconds before a shadowy form passed through the falling snow. He hesitated only long enough to convince himself it was indeed Chloe before he stepped off the walkway and disappeared into the storm.

__________

“G
ET ON THE
floor!”

Josie’s eyelids fluttered open as she pulled herself out of a deep sleep.

“Josie! Down!” her father yelled.

Before she could move, she heard the smack-smack-smack of several items hitting the roof of the motel.

Bullets.

As she started to roll off her bed, she saw her father struggling to detangle himself from his covers. She stepped across the gap that divided their beds and yanked off the blanket.

“Don’t worry about me!” her dad yelled. “Get down!”

Ignoring him, she grabbed his hand and helped him scoot off the mattress onto the floor.

“Are you okay?” Josie asked once they were lying side by side. “Did you get hit?”

“I’m fine,” her dad said. He raised his head and looked toward the area beyond the beds. “Brandon, are you all right?”

No response.

“Brandon?” Josie asked. “Are you okay?”

Still no answer.

“Brandon!” her father yelled.

He started to push himself up, but Josie put a hand on his arm.

“I’ll check,” she said.

As she crawled to the end of the beds, she prayed she wouldn’t find her brother lying in a pool of blood. No blood, but no Brandon, either. Only the blankets he’d been using for a mattress.

“Brandon, where are you?” she asked.

She moved out from between the beds so she could check the rest of the room.

“Is he there?” her dad asked.

“No. He’s not in the room.”

“What about the bathroom?” her father asked.

The bathroom. Why hadn’t she thought of that?
He’s probably hiding in the tub.

Getting to her feet but staying low, she sprinted across the room.

“Brandon?” she said as she reached the open door.

He wasn’t there, either.

“Did you find him?” her dad asked.

“No, Dad, he’s not here.”

More bullets flew over the building. Josie dropped to the carpet with a scream.

“Are you hit? Josie, are you okay?”

“I’m okay. It just startled me, that’s all.”

“Come back over here.”

When she reached him, she said, “Where could he have gone?”

“He’ll be fine,” her father said. “Brandon knows how to take care of himself.”

That may have been true, but Josie sensed her father was as worried as she was.

__________

C
HLOE WORKED HER
way west, onto the property directly behind the motel, before turning south. Her plan was to circle around to the other side of the equipment lot, and come at the shooters from behind. With the dark and the snow, they would likely not know she was there until too late.

As she moved parallel to the back of the equipment-business property, she was able to use the sounds of the shots to determine that the gunmen were on the roof of the big building at the center of the lot. She was also pretty sure there were only two shooters, or maybe one person firing two different rifles. Didn’t mean there wouldn’t be others around, however.

She reached the far side of the property, and moved down the chain-link fence until she was approximately halfway back to the main street. Up and over she went, her landing cushioned by a waist-high drift of snow.

The building was about a hundred feet wide, street side to back, and a hundred and fifty from Chloe’s end to the side closest to the motel. Two floodlights were mounted on poles out front, lighting up the parking area. One was positioned wide enough to spill a bit of light on the south side, where she approached the building.

The roof peaked at the center, with the low end hanging off the side she’d approached. About thirty feet back from the front was a utility room built against the wall, maybe four feet square. All she needed to do was get on top of that, and she could easily reach the eaves and pull herself all the way up.

A noise behind her, faint, but sounding very much like something falling into the snow.

She whirled around, her rifle instantly off her shoulder, pointing into the storm. But whatever had made the noise was out of her limited range of visibility.

Sticking to the tracks she’d already made, she retraced her route back to the fence. Her fear was that the shooters up top had a friend down here, but she made it all the way to the drift she’d landed in without seeing anything.

It was probably something blowing out of a tree, she guessed.

Several more shots rang out.

She whipped back around, focused once more on her mission, and hurried back to the building.

__________

B
RANDON LAY IN
a deep hole in
the snow, holding his breath.

Following Chloe had been a simple matter of stepping in her boot prints. When he had reached the fence where she’d climbed over, he scaled the chain-link as quietly as possible. What he didn’t anticipate was slipping off the top rail and falling into the deep patch of snow on the other side.

At first he was too stunned to move, then he heard Chloe heading his way and realized his fall had made enough noise to alert her. While he knew he should probably stand up and let her know he was there, a part of him worried she’d shoot him if he did. Another part, a more vocal one, was concerned she’d send him back to the motel. That was the last thing he wanted to happen. He wasn’t a kid anymore. He was a soldier like the others, like his dad. His place was here whether she wanted him around or not.

The sound of her boots stopped only a few feet away. If she came any closer, she would see him for sure.

Two rifle shots boomed from the roof of the building. As the echo subsided, Brandon realized Chloe had moved away. That’s when he finally allowed himself to breathe again. As soon as he felt sure she wouldn’t be able to see him, he rose and started to follow her again.

__________

T
HE UTILITY SHED
was easily scaled. When she stood on top, the eaves of the main roof came all the way down to her chest, making it even easier than she’d anticipated to pull herself all the way up.

As gunfire erupted again, she used the noise as a mask, and sprinted up the roof toward the peak. Five feet short of the top, she lowered herself to her belly and slithered the rest of the way up.

As she’d suspected, there were only two shooters. They were set up about two thirds of the way down from the peak, each sitting upright, with the barrels of their rifles resting on large sacks of grain. Both were bundled up tight in dark winter gear, the only difference between them was that the one on the left was smaller than the one on the right.

A man and a woman?

Didn’t really matter. What did were the guns they were using to shoot at Chloe’s friends.

Both of them had their eyes to scopes mounted on their weapons, looking toward the motel. She hadn’t expected that. If they had scopes, that meant they could have zeroed in and hit pretty much anything. Instead, their shots, at least when she had still been inside, had flown harmlessly over the top of the motel.

No time to figure out the why, though. Climbing to her feet, she raised her rifle and started walking down the other side. The first sign that one of the shooters knew something was wrong was a tilt of the smaller one’s head, as if she or he were trying to listen for something.

Chloe, only fifteen feet behind them now, took another step forward.

This time the small one twisted all the way around. “Rick!” A girl’s voice.

Her companion grunted and pulled back from his scope.

“Rick!”

“What?”

The girl nodded toward Chloe, and her friend turned to see what was up.

“Oh, shit!” he said, grabbing for his gun.

“Don’t,” Chloe commanded, her voice calm and even.

Rick didn’t seem to hear her. He wrapped his hands around the stock of the rifle and started to lift it off the milk crates.

“Drop it,” Chloe said. “I
will
shoot you.”

“Rick, put it down,” the girl said.

“Don’t tell me what to do!” Rick said.

“Please, Rick! Please!” The girl turned to Chloe. “Please don’t shoot him. We weren’t trying to hurt anyone. We were just trying to scare you off.”

“Put the rifle down,” Chloe said.

She could see Rick’s chest rise and fall with a deep breath.

“Rick, put it down!” the girl said again.

A tense second later, Rick swore under his breath and dropped the gun.

“Now stand up. Both of you,” Chloe said.

The girl complied right away, while Rick took a moment to do the same.

Now that Chloe was able to get a better look at them, she saw her suspicions were right. They were both kids, the big one probably a teenager, but the girl no older than Brandon.

“We’re sorry, ma’am,” the girl said. “You’re the first new people we’ve seen in a while. We were afraid you were going to make us sick. We don’t want to be sick.”

“Shut up, Ginny,” Rick said.

Chloe jerked in surprise. “What did you call her?”