“Someone found us in the forest,” I breathed. Someone had come for us. Or rather… someone had managed to happen across us. I had no idea how that might have happened.
But if they’d brought me to this house, it meant that Angie was here somewhere as well. At least I hoped it did. And though I might have failed her in the woods, I wasn’t going to fail her now that we were in some stranger’s house.
I pushed myself to start moving again, pressing my back up and sliding along the wall toward the next room. A quick check of my pockets told me that I had been disarmed. Disclothed, in fact, considering I was now wearing what seemed to be pajama pants and… I glanced down at myself, frowning. A flannel shirt? Definitely not mine.
I never wore plaid.
Another quick check of my body, and I realized that I’d also been bandaged. The wound from the bear attack didn’t sting anymore, and I ran my fingers delicately over the spot, cataloging the ridges that meant I’d been taped up.
Right. So someone had found us in the forest, saved us, and brought us back here to doctor us and give us fresh clothes. We were either incredibly, freakishly lucky… or in a whole lot of trouble.
Because I didn’t think anyone did those things out of the goodness of their hearts. Or rather… Well, I might have thought that once. When I was a child. Not after I spent so long in the military—and certainly not after our experience with Randall and his cousins.
I started creeping along through the hallway again, my breath coming short and quick. Maybe we weren’t in the wilds anymore at all. Maybe we were in a town of some sort. I couldn’t imagine anyone building a cabin in the forest and then decorating it like this.
Then again, maybe someone who would do something like that was the same sort of person who found people stranded in the forest and saved them. I frowned at that, trying to twist my brain around the idea that those sorts of people existed, but that was going to be a losing battle. Exist, they might. But I’d never met any of them—and that made it awfully hard to believe that one was going to show up right when I needed them most.
When the next doorway opened up behind me, I actually fell into it. I’d stopped paying attention as I tried to figure out what was going on, and the sudden space behind me had me hurtling backward, stumbling along as I tried to get my feet back under me.
I finally got my balance and jerked around, eyes roving quickly through the room. This one was different than the one I’d been in, but it was decorated in much the same way. Overly colorful. Mexican-style decor, with a Mexican blanket draped across the wall and colorful curtains on the window. The window. At that, I frowned. It was bright white outside, so it was mid-day or so, if I was reading the situation correctly. We’d left the cabin just after the morning meal, and we must have been walking for at least an hour.
That meant that either an entire day had passed and I’d been asleep the whole time, or whoever this stranger was, they’d found us almost immediately. And lived somewhere close to where they’d picked us up.
Then more of my memory came rushing back, and I remembered the reason we were out there in the snow. The EMP—or what I’d taken to be an EMP. Those men in the cabin. The violence.
The shots.
The man I hadn’t outright killed. The idea that they would almost certainly be coming after us.
I started turning in a circle again, crouched down and defensive against the enemy that I’d suddenly remembered. But then I shook myself firmly. I needed to get myself under control, or this was going to go badly very quickly. One step at a time, I told myself firmly. No use panicking when I didn’t know what was going on. First objective: Figure out what the situation is.
The EMP. Had that been real, or just a dream?
A quick glance up at the ceiling showed me that the lights were out. All the light was streaming in from the window, amplified by the white of the snow outside. But that was nothing new; when it snowed, you didn’t need light bulbs until the sun started going down. Until then, the snow itself acted like some sort of insane flashlight.
I moved toward the switch on the wall, narrowing my eyes, and flipped it up and down once. Then again. Then again.
No reaction. No lights coming on. And though that could have been for a number of reasons—including that there weren’t actually light bulbs in those lights in the ceiling—I was willing to give it at least a fifty percent chance that the electricity was actually out.
I’d have to check other rooms. Get confirmation. But if none of the lights worked, it increased the chances that there had in fact been an EMP event, especially since our cells phones and truck hadn’t worked either. It should have made me feel worse. It was a horrible complication, and there were a number of possible repercussions.
But that one clue that I’d been right about something made the world start moving again.
Second objective: Find Angie. I was bandaged, warm, and had on clean clothes. Or pajamas. But where the hell was my wife?
Another more focused scan of the room told me that she wasn’t in here—though there was a neatly made bed and a dresser with enough stuff spread across the top that I thought someone probably lived in here. I moved to the dresser and started pushing the stuff around, looking for clues as to where we were—and who we were with.
A compass. A watch that appeared to also measure things like distance and depth. Several different versions of Swiss Army knives—which was weird, I thought. I mean how many versions of those did one person actually need? And—I did a double take, and then reached out a finger to poke at the last thing on the dresser. A stethoscope. I’d never been part of any medical group in the military, so I didn’t know much about medical practices, but I was certain that normal people didn’t go around storing stethoscopes in their own personal rooms.
Had we somehow been… rescued by a doctor?
My mind rebelled at the thought, though, as it was both too fortuitous and too convenient. Way more likely we’d been rescued by some crazy survivalists who happened to have stethoscopes for some unknown reason. We were in the middle of the wilderness in Michigan.
This wasn’t a place where doctors tended to hang around.
Though it would explain the wrapping across my body and the fact that those bear wounds didn’t hurt anymore.
I jerked the shirt I was wearing up and stared down at the bandaging, my mind reaching back to the wounds I’d received in Afghanistan and the dressing the doctor had done. Three full seconds of staring at the bandage and a quick finger running over the seams, and I’d confirmed that whoever had done this seemed to be a professional. The wrap was tight—but not so tight that it was cutting off my air or my circulation—and done with extremely even strokes, the tape reaching across my chest and belly in even, consistent movements. I knew from having asked the medics in Afghanistan why they did that.
Better coverage, they’d told me. Better stability in case of broken ribs. Better chance of the tape sticking rather than getting caught on something and pulling apart. Less chance of dirt or bacteria or anything else getting under it and into the wound that was trying to heal.
So whoever had done this had training. Terrific. Now I just had to hope that they were going to use that training for us rather than against us.
I turned back to the doorway and ducked through it and into the hall again. Now that I was paying more attention, I saw that this hall was some sort of central hall in the house. There were rooms on both sides of it—but windows at either end, to let in the light. No lights on here, either, and when I came to a switch and flipped it up and down, nothing happened.