Snow gave way under Ash’s feet, tumbling downward in a mini avalanche. He threw his arms out to stabilize himself and then moved cautiously across the steep slope, grabbing a tree wherever he could until he reached a gentler incline. From there it was only a matter of moments before he reached the shoulder at the side of the highway.
The road was covered by over a foot of undisturbed snow. No vehicles had come this way since before the last storm, and he couldn’t hear any in the distance. So where were these trucks Bobby had seen?
Ahead, the highway dipped out of sight, so he hiked over to check if he could see anything from there. A gap between trees marked where the highway ran through the long valley below. Slowly, he moved his gaze along the road, searching for movement or anything that looked out of place.
There.
About half a mile ahead. A line of dark shapes at the side of the road.
Trucks. And not just any kind of trucks. At least two looked like they could be snowplows. As he watched, a pinpoint of light flicked on inside one of them.
Ash clicked on his mic. “Ash for Blake.”
“Go for Blake.”
“What’s your location?”
“On the highway, just outside the city limits. Haven’t seen our visitors yet, though.”
“That’s because it looks like they stopped about a mile from your position.” He described what he’d found, then said, “My guess is, they’re planning on cutting across the hill and then coming at the entrance from the north end of the meadow. Hook up with Sealy and take everyone that way. I’ll join you in a bit.”
“Copy that,” Blake said.
Ash held his position, watching in case the vehicles started moving in his direction. It wasn’t long before more pinpricks of light flicked on then off again.
People getting out of the trucks.
His instincts had been correct. The vehicles weren’t going anywhere.
Reni jumped when she heard the loud, scratchy voice come out of the radio. She frantically searched for the volume control and turned it way down. Holding the device to her ear, she listened to the conversation. When they signed off, she smiled.
Help was here. Only a mile out of town, which meant even closer to her position.
What the new arrivals didn’t know was that the invaders had spotted them and were planning on cutting them off.
She had to get to them and warn them.
Then they could take back Dream Sky.
18
Riley Weber scanned the hotel through her binoculars. It had been over an hour since she’d last seen any movement. She had counted nine people — six men and three women, all of them larger than she was. And then there was the matter of the weapons they seemed to always have close at hand — pistols for most, while one of the men carried a sawed-off shotgun wherever he went.
There was no question that four of them were the same people she and Craig had seen looting the grocery store in Cambria the previous afternoon. Even from this distance, she recognized the bald guy with the scraggly goatee.
She and Craig had been chased by them out of town, but had been able to lose them and return to Cambria to reunite with Noreen. To play it safe, the three friends had headed south to Morro Bay, where they broke into a motel room overlooking the water.
It had been Riley’s turn to round up dinner, so she had left the other two in the room. Finding anything decent to eat was becoming harder and harder. Any food that required refrigeration had gone bad by now, leaving only canned and dry goods.
When she got to the grocery store, she tied a scarf around her face to cut down on the odor of decaying food before going in. Animals emboldened by the sudden disappearance of man had discovered the delights of cereal and cake mix and boxed juices, leaving the aisles littered with cardboard and broken glass.
A trio of squirrels screeched at her and then ran off as she stepped into their aisle. Pre-outbreak Riley would have been freaked out by that, but to the new Riley it was just another day.
When she found several bottles of spaghetti sauce with expiration dates still a few weeks away, she decided to do something special. She located a gallon of bottled water and two large bags of elbow macaroni. Both bags had been gnawed open but were still mostly full, and she thought if she boiled the pasta she could get rid of whatever germs it might have. Now all she needed was a pot and something to cook everything on.
On their earlier drive through town, they’d passed a campground near the golf course, half full of abandoned camps. Noreen had called it creepy. Riley had grunted in agreement but she wasn’t sure anything could be called creepy anymore.
Confident she would find a camp stove and pot there, she headed out of the store with her supplies in her backpack. She had barely taken two steps through the doorway, however, when she heard the roar of motorcycles.
The engines had a deep rumble and didn’t sound like those in the bikes Noreen and Craig had been using.
She hurried over to her own motorbike, intending to move it behind the grocery store so it wouldn’t be seen if the unknown bikers rode by, but as she started to wheel it across the small lot, the noise faded and she realized the bikes were driving away.
She waited until the noise had almost disappeared, then kicked her bike to life and raced back to the motel. Morro Bay was no safer than Cambria had been. They needed to get out of there right now, maybe even go as far south as Santa Barbara.
Parking her bike next to those of her friends, she raced up the outside stairs, but as she turned toward their room, she stutter stepped in surprise. Their door was open wide, the blinds hanging crooked in the window.
Racing into the room, she called, “Noreen? Craig?”
The beds were askew, the linens a mess.
She ran over to the bathroom. “Noreen! Craig!”
There was blood on the wall, not a lot, but more than one would get from a simple cut. She looked into the room again and realized Noreen’s and Craig’s bags were gone.
Without thinking twice, she headed back to the parking lot and got on her bike.
She caught sight of the others for the first time on the road between Cayucos and Harmony. They were about a half mile ahead, three motorcycles and that damn blue pickup truck. They were the same jackasses, all right.
The motorcycles had only solo drivers, so she guessed Noreen and Craig were in the truck.
The sun was passing below the hills to the west as she topped the ridge above Harmony. Below her, the road stretched straight across a valley before climbing another slope into Cambria, the town where this nightmare had begun. The others were nearing the midpoint, their headlights on now to cut through the growing shadows.
Riley left her lights off, praying that the road remained clear, and followed the group past Cambria and San Simeon. Beyond the turnoff for Hearst Castle, the road paralleled the ocean for several miles before rising up the side of a mountain until it was a couple hundred feet above the beach. She was only able to catch glimpses of the bikes now and then as the road twisted and turned its way up the slope.
A few minutes later, if not for the glow of lights ahead, she would have been discovered. She hadn’t seen a sight like it since the first few days the world had begun to die, so it was more than enough motivation for her to pull to the side of the road and kill her engine.
Around the curve ahead, she could hear the other bikes idling, and realized that they, too, had stopped. Within seconds, each engine was shut down.