The river was only twenty feet wide, and less than a foot deep. I got off, and Sue did the same. I kept the bike in first gear while steadying it and working the throttle to move ahead. Sue leaped to the other side and helped me balance it until we reached the other side, then we moved into the forest and along a trail barely wide enough to fit the big bike.
I turned the engine off, leaned the bike against an alder tree, and we faced each other. She grinned. I grinned back and sighed. My heart hadn’t slowed since Sue had raced from inside the garage clutching the maps.
As I said to her earlier, I’m a planner. I like to know what’s happening next. Shooting two men, followed by a gunfight with three more, stealing a motorcycle and riding it through a town controlled by Hells Angles, or whatever new motorcycle club it had been, was not my style. Yet, we’d already moved half the distance to our objective in an hour instead of five or ten days where every day meant increased lawlessness and more roving bands of desperately hungry people.
We’d also abandoned our food, sleeping bags, and everything else we owned in the mine tunnels. The river provided plenty of cold water to drink.
Some things were looking better. Others not.
CHAPTER SIX
“That was amazing,” Sue told me, her face flushed from excitement and windburn. She sounded like a cheerleader at a local high school after a football game. She punched my upper arm. “You were a stud!”
“Me?” I laughed with relief and humor. At the same time, the idea of a fourteen-year-old girl calling me a stud was not missed. I’d be careful to keep any personal feelings of romance between us shut down. But even that stray thought couldn’t interfere with my elation. “What about you? I saw three of the motorcycle gang after us and didn’t know what to do. But you were like a cowboy in an old-time western that spun around on his horse and began firing at the posse.”
“Did you see that first one dump his bike?” Her laughter tinkled like the sound of the water rushing past.
My question was more serious. “Did you see any evidence you hit him or his bike?”
“He reacted to being shot at, I think.”
I thought so, too. I undid the flap on the leather saddlebag nearest to me. We hadn’t had time to see what we had stolen. Inside were dirty tee-shirts, hats, scratched sunglasses, and three pairs of heavy gloves for riding motorcycles. The other saddle-bag held two bottles of red wine, a few rolled-up girlie magazines and a pair of heavy boots that wouldn’t fit either of us.
I tossed the boots aside. The wine looked good. There was no cork-remover and breaking the neck of the bottle and chugging was not my style. Instead, I decided to save it for later and said, “You still got the maps?”
Sue pulled them from inside her jacket, where she had stuffed them safely away. She hadn’t had time to examine them in her snatch-and-grab at the garage. The first was a highway map of Colorado. The next was a street map for Salt Lake City. The last was a recreational map for Washington State, showing all the campgrounds, boat launches, and fishing lakes. It also showed the cities and towns, and we quickly found approximately where we were.
My finger traced possible routes to reach Everett and I thought about the quickest ways to reach it. It didn’t look good, despite us having traveled about half the distance. Everett was on the coast of Puget Sound, but to get there from our location, we had two choices. One way was to travel across several miles of swampy land to the north, with only two roads. Any lookout posted would see us long before we reached him, and both roads were natural choke-points, sure to be watched.
Another way was to come from the east and cross the flat Snohomish River Valley and the wide river Sue had mentioned. That way presented much the same problem as the other routes to the north. Traveling off the main roads was possible until reaching the river. It was not a small one like the Sauk that we could wade across, but one that steamships had probably used in the old days. There was no way to get the motorcycle across except for using one of the few bridges, something local gangs would recognize instantly as a place to ambush travelers. All roads and bridges into the city were probably blockaded by now.
Traveling south of Everett to enter from that side took us into more densely populated areas, guaranteed to be at least as dangerous. I said, “Well, I can get us to the edge of the city, but still have no idea of how to get through it unless you have a pilot’s license and know where to get a plane.”
Her finger traced another possible route through the center of the city. “This way, we could use the bike to go a hundred miles an hour and be down to the docks in a few minutes.”
It was my turn to point. “If I was there and wanted to rob or block people, I’d set it up at the bridge here… and here.” My finger moved around the map. “Maybe overturn a semi to block it totally. Side to side. Put a few guards with rifles there.” My finger continued to slide over the map. “And here. And here. And on the main streets in the city roadblocks, snipers, and ambushes can be anywhere. Nobody is going to come to their neighborhoods and take their food and women—but they are also searching for easy access to weapons, women, and food.”
Her face was paler than normal. “Maybe we should just wait here until they fight some more and kill each other off.”
“In a month, there will probably a single victor or gang ruling over each area with hundreds of soldiers reporting to him or her, all armed with the best weapons they can find and ready to fight the neighboring armies. Only the most dangerous fighters will still be alive. Those less skilled or careless will die. It will be worse than the chaos there now because it will be organized chaos. I don’t think we want to meet that person or group.”
She carefully folded the map and placed it in the saddlebag where it would remain dry. A glanced at the sky told us rain was probable. She pulled the shirt, hats, and gloves from the saddlebags. “It’s going to be cold sleeping out here.”
It was late afternoon and while I felt we could continue and reach the suburbs of Everett today, I saw no way to get through it to reach the docks, even if we managed to enter the city. Sleeping on our indecision seemed the best idea. Maybe a solution would come in a dream.
A voice in the direction of the river softly called to us, “Hey, you in there on the motorcycle.”
I pulled my twenty-two, thinking that if there was only one person, a softer shot might prevent him from warning others in the nearby area of where we were. If he wanted to fight, I was ready for that too. With the gun in hand, I moved a few steps closer to the voice in the thick underbrush and answered with a growl that I hoped made me sound big and mean, “What do you want?”
“No trouble. I live across the river on the hillside. I saw you two come in here.”
“What do you want?” I repeated, lowering my voice even more while thinking that if he intended to do us harm, alerting us to him being close was not the best way.
He answered in a friendly sort of way, if a little cautious, “I fished the river this morning and caught a small salmon. I cooked it a while ago and am setting the pan out here with half the fish in it. It’s too much for me and no sense in letting it spoil.”
“Why?” I asked suspiciously.
“Too much murdering and killing going on. As if the flu wasn’t enough, it’s like everyone is intent on killing the few still healthy and alive. Just leave the pan and I’ll get it in the morning if you please.” The accent was faintly Norwegian or Swedish, like most of the people of the northwest. The voice also sounded old and opinionated.
Nobody had so much as offered me a crumb since the flu struck, but I’d had maybe ten guns pointed at me in the last two weeks, most in the last few days, so I understood his comment and agreed with it. There was too much killing happening. Even Sue had centered a rifle on my chest, and there may have been others I hadn’t even seen. Now, from nowhere, a man offered food and asked for nothing in return.