It would be a long walk, yes, but presumably Marlon knew how to get there in the easiest manner possible. And the place had seemed gigantic. The house alone had been far too big for one single man, with room after room prepared for guests. I had seen his barn, and it had looked just as well-built as the house itself. If he said he had other outbuildings… Well, I knew enough about Marlon to believe him. And he’d had generators, because he’d had electricity running when we were there, even after the EMP.
He’d had heat.
And food, and I assumed plenty of weapons. Hell, he even had an operating theater.
“We’ll need more weapons if we’re going to retake the town,” I said.
“I’ve got more weapons than you could dream of,” he answered quickly.
Of course he did. Because that was what you needed sitting around in the countryside in Northern Michigan: a full weapons store.
Still.
“Done,” I said. It was the best plan we had, and the best shot at getting these people to safety. Away from Randall.
Marlon nodded once. “We’ll tell the others when we get back to camp.”
We spent the next two hours staring at the town without speaking, and though I didn’t know about Marlon, I thought he was probably doing the same thing I was: running through the logistics of moving our people and trying to figure out how early we could start the march.
“We leave at daybreak,” I told Bob.
We were back at the barn, and it was just as cold in there as I’d remembered. Colder, perhaps, since I was now standing still rather than slogging through the snow in the forest. At least there I’d been working up a sweat. Here, the constant, steady fall of snow had already started wreaking havoc on the tiny encampments, courtesy of the lack of a proper roof. Yes, the snow had been light, but it had still been falling since we’d arrived, and I could see that some of the tents had collapsed with it, while others were leaning precariously—and definitely not safe for people to be inside of. Some of the residents had built up fires big enough for many people to huddle around them, and people were gathering there instead of staying inside their tents, their hands out and faces turned toward the warmth as they tried to make it through the night.
Most of the people, I saw, were also wearing several different layers of clothing. Some of the younger kids couldn’t put their arms down at all, they were so bundled up.
And they were all still freezing. All still getting as close to the fires as they possibly could.
“Hell, I don’t even know if we can wait that long,” I added. “Bob, are we doing everything we can to keep them warm?”
“The fires are the best we can do, unfortunately, and we’ve gathered as much firewood from the immediate area as we can,” he said, jumping right to business as he always did. “We don’t want to send people out too much further into the wilderness. Too risky.”
“Wolves,” I agreed quickly. “And Randall.”
I wouldn’t want to run into either of them on a dark night in the forest. Up to each man to decide which of them was actually worse.
“Can they hang on until daybreak?” I asked.
It didn’t look like it to me. Hell, I was bouncing on my toes already, anxious to go find Angie and Sarah to see how they were holding up. And the second that was done, I was tempted to get people into line and marching through the forest toward a safer location. At least that way they’d be walking. Working up a sweat.
“It’s not safe to move so many people at night,” Marlon said firmly. “Even worse when there are kids involved. We’re going to have one hell of a time keeping our eyes on all of them during the day. Can you imagine trying to do it at night?”
“And I don’t think we can keep them moving quickly enough to fight the cold,” Bob agreed. “At least in here, they’ve got blocks up against the wind.”
Both very good points—which I hadn’t bothered to think about because I was too busy panicking about the state of my family.
I gave myself a good shake. I had to get that under control. I couldn’t be falling apart the moment Angie or Sarah was involved.
Do that, and I’d never get them out of this alive.
18
We had the townspeople up and ready to march far before daybreak the next morning—partially because none of us had been able to sleep a wink. I’d spent the entire night huddling as close to a fire as I could get with Angie and Sarah tucked under my arms. I was sufficiently bigger than them that I could at least protect them, and I had done everything I could to share my warmth with them—helped in large part by the blanket we’d had wrapped around us the entire time.
Some of the people we knew hadn’t been so lucky. We hadn’t lost anyone, but some of the singles who hadn’t had family to keep them warm had come out of the night distinctly blue around the edges, and I wondered to myself whether we were going to have to deal with frostbite when we got to Marlon’s estate—and his medical supplies.
I didn’t say it out loud because I didn’t want to frighten anyone. But getting these people on the move and warmed up was one of my first priorities this morning. Yes, it was going to be a dangerous march. We were going to have to keep our wits about us, and our eyes on the horizons—for wolves, for bears, and for Randall—but we definitely didn’t have a choice. I’d known it last night, when we first got the people set up, and I’d spent the entire night thinking about it at least once every five minutes.
Now, looking at them huddled and shivering in the pre-dawn freeze, I was dead positive of it.
“Let’s get them moving,” I muttered to Marlon. “The sooner they’re moving, the sooner they’ll start to warm up.”
“And the sooner we’ll leave Randall’s immediate range,” he agreed. “I’m with you, John. I don’t want to stay here any longer than we have to.”
“People!” I said, not bothering to answer Marlon. “We’re going to be making our way to a safer, more secure, and definitely warmer location. Not that that’s saying much.” There was some scattered laughter at that, and it warmed my heart a little bit.
If they were still capable of laughing at an extremely obvious joke, then they were going to be okay.
I continued, “We’re going to be walking for about ten miles, so it’s going to be quite a trek, and we’re going to need to do it as quickly as we can. We don’t want the guy who invaded town to come after us. And if he does, we don’t want him to catch us. I’m going to need a few things from you. Stay close together. Don’t wander off the track. Don’t take a break unless we’re all taking a break. Don’t straggle behind, and please don’t complain the entire time, because someone might actually shoot you.”
Another laugh from the crowd.
“And help those who need help. We have some elderly folks around, and we have a lot of kids. If you can carry them, do it. If you can lend a shoulder, do it. We’re all in this together, and that means that if one of us falters, we all falter. Right?”
There was a brief pause, but then the crowd rallied. “Right!” they said, their voices firm.
These people might not be military trained, but they were people hardy and brave enough to live in a very tiny town in Northern Michigan. They knew the rules. No man left behind.
I counted on them to stick to that and, turning, started toward the river. The sooner we got across that—and to the forest on the other side—the harder it was going to be for Randall to catch us, and the happier I’d be.
We were only about a mile from the river, and we made pretty quick work of that mile, as soon as people started to warm up and get looser. Though we’d started out in the pitch black, we’d also had pretty easy going, and the sun was just barely kissing the horizon when we arrived at the river.