“You like shooting at things that can’t fire back?” Nate shouted. “That’s our wolf you’re trying to kill. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll holster those pea-shooters and head home because the only ones in danger out here are you.”
Nate could see the rage building behind their glassy eyes. Could see these men wanted nothing more than to raise their pistols and gun both of them down. And yet the only thing stopping them was the high-powered rifle in Nate’s hand. He suspected that even sober, sound judgment wasn’t their strongest trait, which didn’t bode well for the present moment, nor, as a matter of fact, for the country’s rather uncertain future. But if Nate could make it to the end of the day without killing another human being, he would fall asleep a happy man.
Both groups stood less than twenty yards apart, holding weapons, glaring at one another. The man next to Puffy Jacket wore a grey hoodie, the edges of his face lost in shadow. “You don’t know who you’re messing with, old man. I should shoot you and make your daughter my new girlfriend. What do you think of that?”
These were two punky white guys who were desperately trying to be gangsters. It made them laughable, but their eagerness to prove themselves also made them incredibly dangerous. The guy in the hoodie bobbed his head and raised his free hand, shaking it at them. It looked to Nate like he was posturing in an effort to save face. But Nate would never know for sure because just then three shots rang out from Dakota’s pistol. Two of the three rounds found their mark and Hoodie collapsed into a cloud of powdery snow.
Puffy Jacket’s eyes flared to whites as he watched his friend die. He fumbled with his weapon to shoot back. This time it was Nate who put him down.
“Dammit!” Nate shouted, after the second man fell. He went over to them, eyeing both figures, now lying one on top of the other. He turned to her. “Why on earth did you pull the trigger? Couldn’t you see they were about to disengage?”
Dakota’s hands were shaking. “They were shooting at Shadow and when I saw his hand come up…” Her voice trailed off.
These weren’t good people. Nate knew that. Knew that in a society devoid of law and order, idiots like this would be free to mix two things that didn’t go well together: alcohol and firearms. It was a sure-fire way for innocent people to get hurt. Maybe it was his background in law enforcement that accentuated the sting. Regardless, every encounter, no matter how tense or charged with emotion, held the possibility of a peaceful resolution.
“He threatened to kill you and to take me,” Dakota said, still processing what had transpired.
Around the campfire on the way to Rockford, she had hesitated to act. Then later with Five Dakota had overcome that fear. And proud as he was, Nate was starting to wonder if she hadn’t overcome it a little too much. When to put someone down and when to let them walk away with a modicum of their pride intact was a difficult balance to learn. He glanced down and saw the turmoil on her face. Nate pulled her into a hug.
Maybe the girl was less to blame than he thought. The moment the lights had gone out, had the world not changed in ways both dramatic and frightening? The shift in American society had been sudden and in many ways violent, sure, but the optimist in him didn’t think it would last forever.
Still, the old rules of engagement had been drawn up for life in a civilized society, a world buttressed by the rule of law where folks went to work and mostly paid their taxes. But it was looking more and more as though the old familiar America was giving way to a new America, one where might made right and those with the most powerful weapons and greatest numbers dictated the terms. Had those thugs been wielding rifles rather than pistols, would they have hesitated to pull the trigger? Nate didn’t think so.
Maybe Dakota’s seemingly impulsive act wasn’t the problem at all. Maybe it was the solution. The new norm. The criminal court’s ability to deliver justice in any meaningful way had been shattered. And the consequences of that were becoming increasingly clear. It meant now that everyone with a firearm had suddenly become judge, jury and executioner. He’d been raised to believe that all lives were sacrosanct, worthy of preservation and salvation. Except the mechanism for punishing the guilty and enforcing the nation’s laws currently lay dormant. Would it ever wake? That was a question for which Nate still didn’t have an answer.
He led a rather somber Dakota back to Wayne and helped her climb onto the horse, feeling a little more certain he had as much to learn from this young girl as she did from him. He also knew they weren’t the only ones struggling to adjust. Out there across the state and maybe even the entire country were clusters of frightened people, fighting for survival. Fighting to make sense of a world with a new set of rules, both harsh and unforgiving.
Chapter 3
Chicago O’Hare International Airport
Some seventy-five miles away, ‘harsh’ and ‘unforgiving’ were two words also on the mind of Holly Andrews as she waited in a never-ending line to use the women’s washroom. Her blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail, Holly was an attractive woman in her mid-thirties with dazzling coral-blue eyes and a pleasant voice. She scratched at the tiny scar on her forehead, a nearly imperceptible blemish which, for reasons unknown, always started to itch when she was annoyed. And annoyance was in no short supply at present. Especially after spending nearly a week trapped at the airport in a rapidly deteriorating situation. In that time, it had become clear that their only chance of survival rested with escaping this hellhole as soon as humanly possible.
Six days earlier, she and her twelve-year-old son, Dillon, had landed in the middle of the night only to find the rental car they had booked a week earlier had been given away to someone else. There would be a replacement in the morning, she’d been assured by the cold and rather uninterested woman behind the desk at the Budget Rent-a-Car kiosk. They would even offer her an upgrade from a compact to a midsize for her trouble. That might have helped in tackling the snow already on the ground. But the worsening weather had thwarted their attempts to find a room in any of the nearby hotels. She must have called a dozen places and gotten the same answer each and every time.
Taking one on the chin was Holly’s strong suit, and she didn’t mean that figuratively. Just ask her soon-to-be ex-husband, Travis. His slow descent into physical abuse had been one of the driving reasons she and Dillon had fled Seattle in the first place.
The other had been something completely different. She’d come to Illinois to find a man named Nate Bauer.
Snowed in, that first night they had opted to set themselves each a place on a row of bench seats inside the airport. The debacle with the car rental had already brought them out of airport security, barring them from returning to gates where spots to lie down were plentiful. She and Dillon had no sooner found a decent place to lay their heads than the lights had gone out, plunging the airport into darkness. At once, the emergency lights had come on, bathing the structure’s cavernous ticketing area with an eerie glow. But it had been the growing cacophony of nervous voices that had pulled Holly from her long and much-needed sleep.
Back in the present, still in line for the washroom, Holly shifted uncomfortably from one leg to another, recalling those early days with something approaching incredulity. How naïve she had been, watching the snow piling up against the large airport windows, wondering how long it would be before things once again returned to normal. That first night, no one had known what was going on. The lights were bound to flicker back on at any moment—eavesdrop on any of the hushed conversations going on around them and that was precisely the prediction you might have overheard.