Feral Nation - Convergence (Feral Nation Series Book 6) Read online

  “Who in the hell are those bastards?” Jonathan fumed when Vicky told him what she’d seen. If they are soldiers, they have no business taking stuff that doesn’t belong to them and burning down private property! And they had no reason to take Shauna! What could they possibly accuse her of?”

  “Having all those weapons, for one thing. That would be hard to explain. I’m sure she tried, but it must have been no use. But she didn’t tell them about us being with her, or else they wouldn’t have all left. That tells me she didn’t trust them and couldn’t convince them of the truth, so they probably aren’t soldiers. I’m terrified of what they will do to her, Jonathan!”

  “We’ve got to follow them! We can’t let them take Shauna away without knowing where they went, even if there are way too many of them to do anything about it. If we can find out where they’re taking her, maybe we can come up with a plan then. Dammit! Maybe Shauna was right! Eric shouldn’t have left us here. This wouldn’t have happened if we’d all gone with him.”

  “Now when he comes back, he’s going to find us all gone and Bob’s place burned to the ground. He’ll think we’re all dead, even if we aren’t!”

  “We can’t worry about that right now, Vicky. The important thing now is to follow those men. We’ve got to get going before we lose the trail. There won’t be much snow, if any, the farther down that creek they go.”

  “We can both ride Tucker!” Vicky said. “He won’t have any problem carrying the two of us. Come on, I’ll help you back up into the saddle and then I’ll climb on behind you.”

  “Maybe for a short distance, but once we pick up their trail, it would probably be best if you walk and lead him by the reins. It’ll be easier to move quietly that way, and if they spot us, we’ll have a chance to split up and run for it.”

  Vicky agreed, and once Jonathan was situated in the saddle, she pulled herself up behind him and held on. She knew Jonathan was feeling frustrated and worthless with his bad leg, but with the horse, he had his mobility back, and she was determined to stick with him no matter what. He was a good guy, and he’d come all this way to help people he didn’t even know just because Megan’s father had befriended him after their chance meeting in Florida. Now Jonathan needed help, and she was all he had. She knew she needed him too, because without him, she would be alone out here again like she was when Eric found her, and that wasn’t something Vicky wanted to contemplate even for a moment, so she pushed it out of her mind and reached her arms around Jonathan to take the reins. Jonathan was learning how to handle him, but she and Tucker were old friends and it was best if she were in control now.

  Since Vicky had seen the men heading back down the creek when they left the cabin, it seemed probable that they were going back to wherever they came from by the same route that brought them there. She and Jonathan followed the little side creek until they came to the place where it joined the main one, and after a careful pause to look and listen to make sure no one was still in the area, they proceeded on until they found evidence in a patch of snow that the raiding party had indeed passed that way.

  “We’ve got to be careful from here on,” Jonathan said. “They could stop almost anywhere, and we could run into them before we realize it.”

  “You’re right. I’ll walk from here.”

  “I’m sorry I can’t take a turn at it.”

  “You’re fine, Jonathan. You’ll have a better view from up there. Just keep a lookout and keep that rifle handy.”

  Jonathan did, and Vicky still stopped often to listen, to make sure they weren’t following too closely. They didn’t see or hear a thing though, but knew they were still on the right trail by the boot prints here and there, many of them pointing downstream, so she pressed on, leading Tucker until the creek came to a place where a gravel road crossed it on a small wooden bridge. There was no snow there, but a quick scan of the sand and mud along the shoulder of the road revealed more tracks, including the hoof prints of horses.

  “It looks like they turned right onto this road,” Jonathan said.

  “If we follow it, we’ll be out in the open. I don’t like that at all.”

  “Me either, but I don’t see another option. It’s the way they went.”

  The road was indeed the only option, as there was a steep drop-off on one side of it and impenetrable thickets of dense spruce on the other. It would be impossible to follow parallel to it while keeping out of sight, so if they wanted to go the way Shauna had been taken, they had to take the risk of being caught out in the open.

  “Let’s do it then,” Vicky said. “But they may not have stayed on this road for long. We should look for any sign that they turned off again.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking too. They probably have a camp set up somewhere nearby since they came to the cabin on foot.”

  This theory seemed to prove true when they came to a narrow two-track leading off the main road a couple miles to the north. They found tracks indicating that the men had turned that way, but there was something else too.

  “Somebody’s been driving in and out of here.”

  “Their camp must be down there for sure then,” Jonathan said. “There could be even more of them than the ones we saw.”

  “There’s only one way to find out, but I’m not leading you and Tucker down there.”

  “It’s crazy to go down there at all, Vicky. We know where they are now. We’d better get out of here while we can and try to find Eric.”

  “We don’t really know until one of us sees if there’s a camp. Look, it’s not as steep here, so I won’t use their road. Sneaking down there on foot, I can find a way through the woods. But you and Tucker need to wait over there in those trees and stay out of sight.”

  “Dammit Vicky, I don’t like this one bit!” Jonathan whispered. “If this is the entrance to their camp, they’ve probably got a guard posted, watching this road and all of their perimeter. They may have already seen us, for all we know.”

  “Then it’s too late to worry about it, isn’t it? Look, we’ve got to know where they’ve taken Shauna, so we can tell Eric if we find him. Just trust me, Jonathan. I’ll be all right.”

  Jonathan wasn’t convinced but agreed to wait when she made it clear that she wasn’t going to change her mind. Vicky then picked her way through the woods off to one side of the rutted two-track. She didn’t have to go far though to discover that it came to an abrupt dead-end. There was no camp, no vehicles and none of the men she’d seen taking Shauna away. But she knew for sure that they’d been here, because the horses they’d taken were all lying dead in the grassy turnabout. Vicky was both heartbroken and furious as she made her way over to them. The animals had all been shot in the head, no doubt simply because those bastards that took them had no more use for them once they got here. The story told by all the tracks in the road was clear now. The men had left their vehicles hidden here when they raided the cabin, and after bringing Shauna and the things they’d taken back with them, they had loaded up and driven away. Vicky knew even as she understood what had happened here that there was no way she and Jonathan could ever hope to find Shauna now. There was no telling how far they would take her, and now that they were in vehicles and on the road, it was impossible to follow their trail. Seeing what they were capable of right here before her eyes, in the senseless slaughter of those innocent animals, Vicky could only fear the worst for Megan’s mom. She turned away from the disgusting scene and walked back to where she’d left Jonathan and Tucker.

  “That’s some sick shit right there, Vicky. It really is! They had no reason to kill those horses. Why didn’t they just leave them there and let them fend for themselves if they didn’t need them anymore?”

  “I don’t know, Jonathan. The same reason they burned the cabin and barn, I guess. I don’t think those men are soldiers, but I may be wrong. Whoever they are, it doesn’t look good for Shauna. What are we going to do, Jonathan? There’s no way we’ll be able to find her.”

  “N
o, you’re probably right about that. It sucks, but I don’t see how we can help her. We’d better focus on finding Eric, because at least we know where he was headed. If we can find him and tell him what happened, maybe he’ll have an idea of what to do. We need to try, because there’s no sense in him coming all the way back here only to find the cabin gone, especially if he really does find Megan and has her with him.”

  “What are we going to do about food and shelter though, Jonathan? How are we going to travel that far with only one horse and nothing to eat, not to mention blankets or sleeping bags or anything to help us survive the cold?”

  “We’ll figure it out, Vicky. While I was waiting on you down there, I just remembered something Bob mentioned one time when he was still at the cabin with me and Shauna. I was in a lot of pain at the time, and probably forgot half of what he said, but he was talking about all his mountain man stuff and how those old-timers used to live up here back in the day. One thing I do remember was that he said something about keeping a cache nearby.”

  “A cache? Like what?”

  “Just a small cache of supplies. He didn’t say for sure, but I got the impression he was talking about food. He said the mountain men and prospectors and other folks sometimes did that if they were worried about having to take off in a hurry because of Indian attacks or something.”

  “Oh wow! That could be good! Do you know where it is?”

  “No. At that time I couldn’t think about walking or even riding a horse. Bob said he would show me later, when I was able. That’s all he said about it, other than that it was at the base of a cliff nearby. He didn’t say, but I got the impression it might be in a small cave or something. Don’t count on it, Vicky, because it may have just been another one of his stories he made up. The old guy actually thought he was a mountain man, I think.”

  “Well, it’s worth looking for anyway.”

  “Yeah, but first we should go back up to his place and see if there’s anything we can salvage from the fire. Maybe everything didn’t burn. If we hurry, we can get there before dark. At least we have Tucker, so you won’t have to carry me all the way up there on your back,” Jonathan grinned.

  Returning to the site of the cabin was the place to start, even if this cache Bob had spoken of was a product of his imagination. They might find nothing left there, but at least they’d be back on familiar ground, and it was probably safer there than anywhere else, as it was unlikely those men would return after completing what they came for.

  “I’ll ride with you on Tucker again if you don’t mind being crowded. We won’t have to worry as much about being quiet now.”

  “Sure, I don’t mind at all, and I doubt if Tucker does. He’s a big, strong horse,” Jonathan said.

  “Yes, he is, and I am so glad we brought him with us this morning! If we hadn’t, he’d be dead like those other poor babies. That just makes me so sad. Why are people so mean?”

  “Because they can be, Vicky. They don’t think they’ll have to answer for it now, so they do whatever they want. Killing innocent animals for no reason is about as low as it gets, I guess, and I reckon if they’ll do that, they’ll do anything.”

  Vicky knew Jonathan was right, and it sickened her to think of Shauna’s fate in the hands of men of that ilk. She and Jonathan would be right there with her if not for the simple fact that he’d wanted to get out of the cabin that morning and work on rehabilitating his leg. But because the two of them had escaped capture, Shauna had one small glimmer of hope, and it was what Jonathan had suggested. They needed to find Eric Branson, and fast, and tell him what happened. From what Jonathan had told her of the man, if anyone could do the impossible, it was Megan’s father. He’d been gone far too long for them to ever catch him, but at least they knew where he was headed, and going there to look for him was the only logical thing to do.

  It took the rest of the afternoon to make it back to the site of the destruction at Bob Barham’s place, and by the time they arrived the sun was going down and the wind was already starting to get chilly. Smoke still rose from both structures, but the flames had mostly burned down, allowing them to approach quite close. The all-wood cabin with its cedar shake roof had been consumed quickly, but there was a pile of rubble remaining that Jonathan said would be worth going through once it had cooled down sufficiently.

  “We may be able to salvage some of Bob’s tools,” Jonathan said. “Maybe an axe head or something useful like that. No chance of any blankets or extra clothing though. It’s going to get really cold out here tonight, Vicky. I hope we don’t freeze to death!”

  Vicky knew Jonathan had little experience with cold weather, especially the extreme cold of high elevations in the Rockies. He was right that it was going to get cold fast, but at this point, it was still survivable, and at least the weather was clear, so they didn’t have to worry about a blizzard. “We need to find a place to shelter from the wind, behind a big boulder or something, and then we’ll pile up some rocks opposite of it and build a fire. It will reflect some of the heat and make the fire more effective. We can pile up some spruce boughs around us and under us for insulation.

  They did all that and it was far better than being out in the open, but whenever they tried to sleep, they soon found themselves shivering each time the fire burned down, and keeping it punched up was going to keep them awake all night.

  “We need to get closer,” Vicky said.

  “If we get any closer to the fire than we already are, we’re going to start roasting.”

  “I don’t mean to the fire, Jonathan. I mean to each other. It’s a survival technique to prevent hypothermia. Sharing body heat. It’s more effective without clothing between the bodies though.”

  “For real?” Jonathan looked at her with an expression of disbelief.

  “Yes, for real! Unless you’d rather sit up all night shivering and putting wood on the fire.”

  Seven

  BEFORE THEY STRIPPED DOWN to their underwear, Vicky made it clear to Jonathan that this was strictly about sharing body heat for the purpose of survival, and that she wasn’t interested in fooling around. Jonathan couldn’t deny his own interest, but he did his best not to let it show and said nothing, enjoying the close contact with her for what it was, and thankful that she had thought of it. She was certainly right about the effectiveness of the technique. The skin-on-skin contact while wrapped together in their outer garments to keep the warmth in made an amazing difference, maybe even the difference in life and death as the temperatures plummeted during the night. Despite all they’d lost today, they still had each other, and Jonathan felt especially lucky to be stranded there with someone as caring, smart and beautiful as Vicky Singleton. He was learning new things from her every day, and he knew without her help now, he wouldn’t survive out here.

  Jonathan was warm enough snuggled there with Vicky, but he still had a hard time falling asleep, even after she dozed off. He couldn’t stop thinking about what Shauna might be going through that night and it was agonizing knowing he was powerless to help her. Jonathan had developed a lot of respect for that woman over the past several weeks, especially after the two of them had to make their way out here alone when Eric didn’t return from his mission for Lieutenant Holton. It sucked that she hadn’t been able to evade those men today like he and Vicky had, and Jonathan felt terrible that he hadn’t been there with her to try and intervene when it happened. Shauna was a fighter and had already saved his butt when they were attacked on the way into Boulder while riding the bicycles. It made him feel like crap that he couldn’t do the same for her and thinking about all that kept him awake for hours. He and Vicky would go and find Eric, but Jonathan didn’t have a lot of hope that it would do Shauna much good. A lot of time could pass before Eric found her, if he ever did.

  Jonathan finally fell asleep sometime in the early morning hours, but it seemed like only minutes before he woke up shivering again. When he opened his eyes, he saw why. Vicky was no longer close against him, bu
t was up and gathering more wood for the fire that she’d already punched up from last night’s coals. It was daylight, but the sun hadn’t cleared the ridge to the east of them yet and wouldn’t for another hour. Jonathan pulled his clothes and jacket back on and warmed his hands near the fire.

  “Did you finally get some sleep?” Vicky asked.

  “Yeah, not much, but some. I’m sorry if I kept you awake.”

  “You didn’t. I had a hard time sleeping too, but at least we didn’t freeze to death.”