This sent a tremor of anxiety through the group, everyone suddenly aware of what such a development could mean.
“As a result of this new knowledge,” he went on, “we are now in contact with the Hawaiian Islands, where they seem to be making a hell of a lot of progress toward building a future.”
A wave of enthusiasm swept over them, hesitant smiles on their faces.
“In another odd twist of fate,” he continued, “Marty happens to be a personal acquaintance of Hawaii’s new leader. And, as luck would have it, this leader of theirs seems to value Marty’s life enough that she has agreed to send a ship to rescue us.”
The women let out a collective cheer and there was general pandemonium.
“Hey! Ho!” he said, after a sharp whistle. “Allow me to finish before you get too carried away.”
The women settled quickly, smiles still plastered to their faces.
“They’re sending a ship,” he said, “not a convoy of trucks, which means it’s up to us to get ourselves to the California coast by the first of the year. This gives us just over two weeks. And we have no idea what kind of obstacles lie between here and there. The trucks we have will drive through some pretty deep snow, but there’s no telling how much snow has fallen in the mountain passes. It could be ten feet deep for all we know. We’ve got two months worth of MREs to take with us, but they won’t do us much good if we get snowbound and miss our window for extraction.
“So here’s the deal. The only personal items you may bring with you are what you can put in the pockets of your coats. Everything else stays, no exceptions. With all the food and fuel and ammo we’ll be hauling, there won’t be room for anything else. As it is, we are going to be sitting quite literally on top of one another in the vehicles.”
“When are we leaving?” Andie asked.
“The men are prepping and loading the vehicles as we speak.”
“Jesus, that fast?” said Maria two.
Everyone began talking at once.
“Shut up!” Joann shouted, throwing the room back into a startled silence.
Forrest chuckled, thanking her. “Okay. There’s no need to go scrambling around the complex like cats on fire. No one’s going to be left behind, so everybody stay calm, take your time and be careful. We’ve come too far for somebody to get hurt now. Make sure the children are bundled up in their winter clothes because we’re only taking one blanket per person. There won’t be room for many sleeping bags.”
The group broke up, and Melissa caught Forrest in the corridor. “What about my computer?” she asked.
“Well, I’ve always been a little bit superstitious,” he said with a smile. “Suppose we left it here as a sacrifice to the gods of war? It might help guarantee us a victory.”
“I love my computer.”
“I know you do, sweetheart, but you’re going to have your hands full helping with the children and helping me to look after Laddie. And I think maybe it’s served its purpose.”
Sixty-Four
Traveling west in a pair of Army M35, six-by-six trucks, it took the group almost forty-eight hours to travel 180 miles through two and half and sometimes as much as three feet of snow to the city of Denver. Even with snow chains on all of the tires, it was slow going, with one truck occasionally bogging down and being pulled free by the other. Kane and Forrest drove the lead truck; Sullivan, Emory, and Marty were in the second; and Ulrich and Danzig followed in their tracks due to the Humvee’s lower ground clearance.
“We’ve got what, about three hours before dark?” Forrest said, standing on the hood of his truck watching the ruined city through a pair of binoculars. “Maybe we should wait until then before we try to get through. Our night vision should give us an advantage over anyone we happen to come up against.”
“Why not wait until morning?” Ulrich suggested. “This snow’s getting deeper, and Denver may be the best chance we get to switch the trucks out for some snowcats.”
“Good point,” Forrest said. “Switching vehicles in the dark would be a pain in the ass. But we’ve still got a thousand miles to go, and I hate to waste even an hour sitting still.”
“I hear you.”
“Let’s get in there before dark and try to find the address for a local snowcat dealer. Any objections?”
“None.”
They stopped at the first gas station they came to and found a phone book behind the counter. The station looked like it hadn’t been open in fifty years, its windows shattered, trash and filth and a few hundred dollars of now useless currency swirling around in the wind. There was not a single morsel of anything edible to be found. Not so much as a stick of gum or a bottle of water.
Ulrich found an address then snatched a map from the rack near the busted register and looked up the street, tracing his finger from where they were at the corner of Tucker and Cisco to Chester Avenue on the other side of town. “Looks like the dealership’s about eight miles up the road.”
He dropped the phone book on the floor and went out through the broken storefront window.
It was getting dark by the time they made it to Vann’s RV dealership, where they found a pair of used red Bombardier GT300 twelve-passenger snowcats in the back lot alongside a new orange fifteen-passenger Tucker 1600. The vehicles were behind the building and out of sight of the road, and thus had not been tampered with.
Forrest told Sullivan, Emory, and Marty to take up positions on the roof of the dealership, then asked Kane for an assessment on getting the trucks up and running.
“Shouldn’t take long,” Kane replied. “Unless the batteries are dead, which is possible. Wayne and Linus are in the garage gathering some tools.”
“Let’s make it happen,” Forrest said, starting back to the trucks to inform West and Price of their find.
Trudging through the hip-deep snowdrifts behind the dealership, he heard the women and children suddenly begin screaming, and he bolted toward the corner, knees high and his weapon at port arms. There were rifle shots, and the screaming reached a crescendo as his legs churned through the snow. Marty bashed his way through a locked glass door to join him at the run.
They rounded the corner to see a cluster of the women gathered near the back of a truck, all of them pointing into the dimness at two men scurrying away in tattered parkas where the snow was only knee-deep. Joann and West were giving chase, but the interlopers were outpacing them, and one carried a screaming child gripped in his arms.
Forrest stopped and sighted on the man lagging behind, who was trying to shield the abductor from West’s rifle. He fired and hit the man in the small of the back. The abductor, however, was too far off to risk hitting the child, so Forrest continued running for the truck, knowing he’d never catch the man before he disappeared into the night.
Marty fired at the interloper’s legs and missed.
“Marty, no! It’s too far!”
“But if he gets to those houses, we’ll never catch him before he kills her!”
Forrest could see two dead men in the snow near the trucks now, where Price was staggering to his feet, holding his head.
“The dog!” Forrest screamed. “Price, the dog!”
Price whirled drunkenly around and scrabbled onto the running board of the truck where Laddie was barking savagely to get out. He pulled the handle to open the door and fell away as the dog leapt from the cab and went tearing off through the snow, quickly overtaking Joann and West as he gave chase into the shadowy neighborhood.