Under a Tell-Tale Sky: Disruption - Book 1 (41 page)

“Somebody’s got to stay here and feed the animals,” Anthony protested.

“I reckon rabbits and chickens can get by on their own a few days,” Vern Gibson said, “but even if they can’t, we can cover it.” He looked at Luke Kinsey. “You got ‘em fed for today, and we’ll likely overnight in Wilmington and head back up to our place tomorrow, so we’ll stop in and check on them. Then we’ll come down every day until y’all get back. How’s that?”

“You don’t have—”

“I know I don’t HAVE to do it, but it’s what neighbors do, and things bein’ like they are, we’re all gonna need good neighbors, Anthony.”

Anthony grew quiet, then nodded. “I expect I can’t argue with that. All right, have it your way. I’m all right, but I’ll go get checked out if it makes you feel better. I gotta tell Levi and the others what happened anyway and I don’t want to go into it over the radio. No tellin’ what that puke Singletary told those bangers. I don’t know how he found us to start with, but if they know we’re here, I expect this isn’t the end of our problems.”

Appalachian Trail

Mile 998.6 Northbound

Just South of Bear’s Den

Day 17, 8:45 a.m.

George Anderson gasped as he sprinted up the hill, back toward Bear’s Den, the gun belt on and the other items Tremble left in his pockets. He’d worked his way out of the paracord in less than ten minutes, but knew that was by design. He might be a country boy, but he knew a setup when he saw one, and he sure as hell didn’t intend to be Tremble’s diversion. Not that he didn’t intend to bolt—he had no doubt he was on borrowed time as far as FEMA was concerned, and hauling ass was his last chance. However, he also knew his chances of outrunning pursuit were somewhere between slim and none, and the first thing they’d do when he didn’t respond was deploy the chopper to check things out. They’d likely start with the known position of the car and work outward with IR scans. Ground teams were sure to follow, and quickly, but they’d take at least a half hour to get here, and the first priority was getting invisible to the chopper and fast.

He glanced at his watch as he broke into the clearing around Bear’s Den and dashed toward the hostel. Their car sat right where they’d left it, and he changed course slightly, ripping open the door to grab the two half-full bottles of lukewarm water from the cup holders, stuffing one in each pocket before slamming the door and racing for the hikers’ entrance at the back of the hostel. He moved inside, confident the thick stone walls of the building would mask his body heat, leaving only the task of finding a hiding place to wait out the ground search. Anderson liked his chances. The ground around the hostel and the various trails were now a confused welter of tracks, and four of the people making them were wearing standard-issue FEMA boots. With his partner’s body likely to draw the search to the AT, the building itself was the last place they’d look, so he started a search for a hiding place.

He found it quickly—a deep narrow storage closet off the hikers’ bunk area, almost empty. He grabbed a mattress off one of the bunks and maneuvered it through the closet door. Standing on end, it spanned the closet from side to side almost exactly. Perfect, he thought, and leaned the mattress out of the way against the long wall of the closet and went to the bathroom, hoping to drain a little water from the pipes to augment his meager supply. He was elated when water gushed from the faucet. Better and better, he thought, as he filled his bottles. He grabbed a small plastic trash can, in case nature called, and carried his amenities into the far end of the narrow closet and set them on the floor before returning for an armload of towels. The floor might get pretty hard over time and a little padding couldn’t hurt.

In final preparation, he pulled three more mattresses off the bunks, standing them on end and leaning them in a row along the inside wall of the deep closet. He then maneuvered the mattress nearest the door across the width of the closet as he backed deeper inside the closet dragging it behind him. When he got to the next mattress, he let the top of the one he was dragging lean toward him a bit, then tossed it away from him and quickly flipped the next mattress across the closet in front of it before the first fell back against it. He repeated the process with the remaining two mattresses, dragging each back a foot or so each time. The top of the last one came to rest against the back wall of the closet, forming a nice little triangular cave near the floor of the closet, his shelter from prying eyes. All anyone looking in would see was a haphazard stack of mattresses in storage, filling the closet.

Anderson settled in to wait and thought about Tremble. Two can play this game, Congressman, and I’m not gonna be your damned decoy. In fact, maybe you’ll be mine.

Appalachian Trail

Mile 1002.3 Northbound

Virginia/West Virginia Border

Day 17, 9:35 a.m.

Tremble’s arms and shoulders burned as he grasped his end of the stretcher and struggled up the steep hill behind Wiggins, straining to keep up with a man two decades his junior. Then he heard the distant thump of chopper blades to the south.

“TEX!” he called ahead. “I HEAR A CHOPPER. FIND US A SPOT OFF THE TRAIL AND GET THE SHELTER RIGGED FAST. WE DON’T HAVE MUCH TIME.”

Tex raised her arm in acknowledgment and darted off the trail to her right. Without urging, Wiggins picked up the pace until he reached the point Tex left the trail and followed her path. They found her a hundred feet off the trail where the steep hillside shelved a bit, tightening a length of paracord between two trees. She finished as they set the stretcher down, and began throwing one of their two ‘space blankets’ over the taut cord.

She tossed some small plastic tent stakes in Wiggins’ direction.

“We’ve only got enough stakes to do the corners. Find a rock and help me pound these in,” she said, then turned to Simon. “It will probably be easier if you help Keith crawl under while we set it up. We’re going to have to lay on top of each other to fit anyway.”

Simon nodded and helped Keith hobble over to crawl under one side of the emerging pup tent before it was staked down.

“I’ll stack all our other gear on the stretcher and spread the other blanket over it to shield any residual body heat,” Tremble said, and the others only nodded as they worked feverishly, driven by the increasing volume of the approaching chopper.

Tremble finished and crawled into the end of the makeshift tent next to Keith as Tex and Wiggins finished pounding in the stakes.

“Remember to bring those rocks in with you. They may have residual heat from your hands,” Tremble called and got grunts of affirmation moments before Tremble was grunting himself as Wiggins crawled through the opening to lie on top of him.

“Damn, Wiggins, you’re a heavy bastard, and watch where you put your hands.” Keith stifled a laugh in spite of the circumstances and then grunted himself as Tex crawled on top of him.

“I think I got the better deal, Dad,” Keith said.

“Yeah, well, don’t get excited, Romeo, or you’ll find my knee in your balls,” Tex said.

They lay sweating under the thermal blanket as the chopper drew nearer.

“You really think this is gonna work, Simon?” Tex asked.

“No clue,” Tremble said, “but it was the only thing I could think of. The foliage is too thick for them to get a visual and it’s pretty hot out, so there shouldn’t be much of a temperature differential. With the blanket masking most of our thermal signature, I think we at least have a shot.”

They fell silent as they willed the chopper to pass, and heaved a collective sigh as it continued north without slowing. They lay there another twenty minutes as the chopper reached the northernmost limit of its search pattern and flew back south, some distance away. Only when the thump of the blades had completely faded did they crawl from their improvised shelter.

“That bought us a little more time, at least,” Tremble said as they folded their shelter. “But when they come back, they’ll be searching on foot as well, and we can’t hope to outrun them. We need to open up the lead and find a place well off the trail to hide a while.”

“Why didn’t we hear anything on the radio?” Tex asked.

Tremble shook his head. “We didn’t hear anything on ours either after they realized we likely had one, so they must have changed frequencies. That’s pretty much standard procedure if comms are compromised. And they probably suspected something after George’s last transmission. At this point the radio’s dead weight. I’ll bury it here before we leave.”

“You said hide ‘a while.’ How long is a while? I need to get home to my family,” Wiggins said.

“Which won’t happen if these guys find you,” Tremble said. “We have to lay low several days at least.”

“How long do you think we have to find a place to hole up?” Tex asked.

“I’d say that depends on whether our friend George is able to lead them on a merry chase in the opposite direction,” Tremble said.

Presidential Quarters

Camp David, Maryland

Day 17, 9:40 a.m.

Gleason saw the number on the caller ID and snatched up the buzzing phone.

“It’s about damn time, Crawford. You were supposed to call me hours ago, so you better have good news.”

Crawford’s hesitation told him all that needed saying.

“DON’T FRIGGIN’ TELL ME HE GOT AWAY!”

“It … it’s only a temporary setback, Mr. President. We have teams on them and—”

“You had a team on them at the butt crack of dawn! What the hell happened?”

“The first team did apprehend them and were bringing them in. With them in custody, we stood down the rest of the search, figuring it was best to try to keep the operation as low key as possible—”

“So how did we get from ‘in custody’ to ‘we don’t have them’?”

“I’m afraid the Trembles are proving more … resourceful than we’d anticipated. They managed to kill one of the team members and the other is missing—”

“Missing? What the hell do you mean missing? So Tremble is a friggin’ magician now?”

“I mean neither he nor his body are anywhere to be found. We’re beginning to suspect he may be in league with Tremble and—”

Gleason erupted, heaping obscenities and abuse on Crawford for a full minute, only stopping when he ran out of bile and began to repeat himself. The silence grew until Gleason himself broke it, calmer now.

“All right, what are you doing to recapture them?”

“We have a chopper up with infrared telemetry, searching likely areas, as well as search teams working both north and south on the Appalachian Trail. They don’t have a vehicle—”

“That you know of,” Gleason said.

“That’s correct, Mr. President, but there are few roads in the area and less vehicle traffic due to the fuel shortage. I’m confident they’re still afoot, and if they break the cover of the woods, we’ll be on them in a heartbeat. We’ve already contained them by putting up roadblocks on the few roads into and out of the search area. It is a bit of a needle in a haystack, but they most assuredly are trapped in the haystack.”

“All right, that’s something anyway. Tremble can wander around the woods like Moses in the damned wilderness for all I care, as long as he doesn’t get a chance to communicate what he knows. Thank God he hasn’t been in contact with anyone else.”

Silence.

“He HASN’T been in contact with anyone else HAS he?”

“There is … some evidence he may have been in contact with an unidentified hiker—”

“Christ on a crutch, Crawford—”

“But we’re handling it, Mr. President. We’re treating anyone we find in or exiting the search area as a potential witness.”

Gleason sighed. “All right. That sounds like all we can do at the moment, but prioritize the search. Keep your roadblocks and containment efforts in place until we recapture or terminate them, but focus your search to the south. They’ll be trying to get home to North Carolina, where Tremble has family and a network of personal contacts. And he may not be a spring chicken, but he has had all that snake-eater evasion and escape training, so his best shot is probably staying in the woods anyway. I want you covering the trails south like a blanket, is that understood?”

“Yes, Mr. President. I won’t fail you.”

“You’ve already failed me, Crawford, and if you do it again, you’re going to get to enjoy the ‘fugee camp experience, up close and personal. We might even let your new neighbors know you’re the architect of their lavish lifestyle.”

Gleason hung up before Crawford could respond.

Hughes’ Residence

Pecan Grove

Oleander, Texas

Day 17, 1:00 p.m.

Laura Hughes sat at the dining room table, struggling to deal with the flood of emotions washing over her as she clutched her husband’s hand: relief, unbridled joy—and anger. He sat beside her, dealing with emotions of his own, as their twin daughters crowded round, standing at each shoulder with the whole family touching as if to assure themselves they were indeed, all together and safe once again.

“Jordan Hughes, whatever were you thinking, roaring up through the pasture like that? I almost killed you.” She could hear the tremor in her own voice and knew she was near an emotional breakdown.

Jordan reached over and pulled her to him in a fierce hug. “But you didn’t and that’s all that matters. And I was thinking we needed to stay off the roads, but in hindsight we should have stopped well out and sounded the horn and gotten out. I’m sorry, sweetheart, but I was so concerned about getting home to you and the girls I never gave a thought to how roaring up unannounced and unexpected would look from your side.” He flashed the lopsided grin she loved. “Besides, I’m still learning the finer points of this ‘end of the world’ stuff.”