“I don’t know, but let’s hurry up and get moving. This place is kind of creepy,” she answered, her voice low. “Maybe that’s reason enough.”

  The RV park was basically a parking lot with designated spaces. Not many trees, not much natural beauty. Even in the middle of nowhere, it was the park owner’s way of packing in as many RVs as possible and taking advantage of the beauty of the area. Austin guessed they were in the lower west corner of Wyoming now, but he couldn’t be sure. And had they been tracked? It was hard to tell, but he suspected that they had—whether that suspicion was made up more of paranoia or intelligence, he couldn’t be sure.

  Austin thought back to the months prior to the EMP, when he’d been living in the fifth-wheel with Savannah, traveling the country. They’d stayed in various campgrounds and parks of nearly all sorts, but this specimen of resting spot was the kind he’d avoided at all costs. There was no real privacy, and in the tenuous situation they were in now, there was no real cover. He and Amanda couldn’t help being exposed as they walked along the narrow paved road that led into the park.

  Scanning the grounds, Austin noted that there were only a handful of RVs remaining, and even so, the place looked junky and cramped. The EMP would have hit right at the beginning of the RV season, but occupants had disappeared fast. He imagined it had been an older crowd—people who full-time RV’d after retirement. They wouldn’t have stood much of a chance against the soldiers or the hordes of people fleeing the cities.

  “Let’s start with the motorhome there,” he said, pointing to the newer Class A with a slide-out and big sun shields placed in its front window. “I’ll stand guard while you go in, and then we’ll trade off on the next.”

  “Got it,” Amanda replied, pulling open the flimsy door as Austin stepped to the side.

  Almost as soon as she disappeared, he thought he saw movement near the picnic table parked under a single, lonely tree. He swung his gun up to point in the general direction, but whatever had moved was gone.

  “Drop your weapon!”

  Austin glanced over his shoulder, finding a man in his sixties standing on the one-way road behind him—bearded and thin, and pointing a hunting rifle at him.

  “Sorry, mister. Apologies,” Austin said, trying to keep his voice calm as he lowered his gun. He didn’t drop it, but he pointed it at the ground as he faced the man. “I didn’t know there was anyone around. Is this your place?”

  The man smirked, closer now. “You already know who lives here. We’ve told you before: Stay out of our camp, and we’ll stay out of yours!”

  Austin shook his head, willing the man to believe him as he answered. “I’ve never met you before. I don’t know who you think I am, but this is the first time I’ve ever been here. I didn’t know it was occupied.”

  He’d made a point of using ‘I’ instead of ‘we,’ hoping Amanda would stay out of sight. If this was the man’s place, they could figure out how to get her out once this guy lowered his hunting rifle.

  The gun wavered, but remained aimed at him as the man scowled.

  “We want to be left alone,” he said after a minute had passed. “We’re not causing you any trouble. There’s plenty of hunting and water for us all to live here in peace. If you keep coming over here, we’ll be forced to kill every one of you,” he added, sounding almost saddened by the idea.

  “Okay,” Austin said. “I’m sorry. I’ll go,” he agreed, no longer wanting to argue about who he was or wasn’t. The man seemed decent, and he clearly wasn’t NWO. If he wasn’t going to shoot his rifle, then Austin had no intention of killing him over what amounted, more than likely, to nothing more than a scrapyard of RVs that was all this man and his group had left.

  “Your lady friend needs to go with you,” the man said, jerking his head towards the RV.

  Austin nodded, and he kept the surprise out of his voice when he called for her to come out.

  She emerged with her hands up, still carrying the bag of things they’d picked up at the convenience store. The old man aimed the rifle at her now, silently telling her to leave what she’d found.

  “Sorry,” she said sheepishly. “I didn’t realize anyone was still living here; I was just on the other side of the door. I didn’t take anything. This is stuff I’ve been carrying around for a while,” she told him. “Take a look and you’ll see it came in with me.”

  “Drop it. Now. Or I’ll drop it for you,” the man said, no sympathy in his voice.

  Austin widened his eyes at her, trying to tell her to let it go.

  Amanda put the bag on the step outside the motorhome as she stepped down. “Sorry. We looked around and didn’t see anybody. We didn’t realize you were living here.”

  “Well, we are!” a woman’s loud voice snapped from the other side of the park—near the RV by the tree where Austin had spotted movement earlier.

  “We’ll go. We’re sorry,” Amanda called out, her voice aimed toward the woman’s.

  “Go,” the man ordered them, using his head to gesture them out of the park.

  The man sidled out of their path to the road, and Austin slid his gun into his holster, not wanting to appear threatening in any way. It was nothing short of a miracle that they’d let him keep the gun, but he guessed this man didn’t want a fight any more than they did. Reaching the road, he reached for Amanda’s arm and kept his ears and eyes open as they headed away from the park, walking in silence until they passed the store and got headed back towards the two-lane highway they’d come in by.

  “That was close,” Amanda finally said.

  “Yes, it was. They don’t seem like bad people,” he added after a minute had passed. Now that there was no danger to be felt from the man’s rifle, sympathy was creeping in.

  “Who do you think they thought we were?” she asked.

  “Maybe part of the group that has the town we passed locked down, or people from that other campground we passed on the other side of the highway. There are clearly some very marked territories around here, and we stumbled right into the middle of them,” he said.

  She stopped in her tracks and he turned to face her, meeting her intelligent brown eyes with his—they were one of the few sights he’d enjoyed lately. “Why do you suppose none of them took over the hunting lodge?” she asked.

  “Luck?” he joked, but then he shook his head as she turned to keep walking and he fell into step beside her. “I don’t know. Maybe there was someone in there and they were run off by one of the other groups. Might not have been empty when they checked it out.”

  “So, do we keep looking or head back?”

  He sighed disgustedly. “We’re empty-handed.”

  “That tends to happen,” she replied with a small laugh.

  “You remember when needing milk or craving a candy bar meant running to the nearest store? I never realized how easy we had it before all this. I’ll never take overpriced convenience store food for granted again—assuming it ever returns,” he muttered.

  She gripped his shoulder in quick understanding. “Let’s head back. Maybe the others had better luck.”

  He nodded, knowing there was little else they could do. Hot and hungry, he felt more than ready to take off the boots that were making his feet feel like lead. They headed towards the lodge, the road making for a steady climb upwards. A trickling creek ran alongside it, almost nonexistent with the July heat drying everything out. Austin looked longingly at it as they walked, wishing he could dip his feet in for just a few minutes. Amanda drifted away from him, inspecting a car stopped dead in the middle of the left lane of the highway. He moved towards the creek instead, drawn to the crystal-clear water flowing downhill.

  And then the silence around them, filled with the gurgling sounds of the creek and the few birds braving the heat overhead, was interrupted by gunfire.

  The crack of a rifle, followed by what sounded like a semi-automatic and more rifle shots.

  Austin dropped and rolled toward the tree line not a second too soon; as he came up, he noticed where the tree bark had exploded just beyond the highway. His knee slammed into a rock as he backed behind a large boulder. This wasn’t anything new. They’d been chased out of towns and little makeshift settlements before.

  He waited until the shooting had stopped for several seconds before he popped his head up slightly, eyeing the area. “Amanda?” he whispered.

  “I’m good. Sounds like they cleared out.” Her soft voice had come from maybe twenty feet away, back behind the vehicle that hadn’t moved in several months.

  He got to his feet and looked up into the trees before motioning Amanda away from the car. She hurried his way, though there were no further gunshots—whoever had shot at them must have figured they’d gotten their message across.

  “They’re gone or they killed each other,” he muttered as Amanda reached him and they crossed the creek, stepping into the trees together.

  “This is getting old. We can’t stay here,” she said with a sigh. “We’ve risked our lives one too many times coming down here. It isn’t worth it.”

  “I know. I was hoping to find something, though—anything. And it’s not like we have a destination in mind at this point.”

  She dusted off her pants, taking in a deep breath. “Everything’s a risk at this point,” she reminded him.

  “We need food, supplies, everything,” he said, glancing back at the highway. What else were they supposed to do but scavenge?

  “Maybe the others will have had better luck on their raid to the outskirts of town,” she offered.

  “I hope so,” he replied as they started moving back up the mountain towards the hunting lodge they’d commandeered.

  “They’re going to figure out where we’re living,” Amanda said as they walked.

  “I know, but I wouldn’t call it living,” he retorted.

  “The lodge is perfect for us, Austin. It’s got eight rooms, two huge living rooms, the commercial kitchen, and the trees for cover…. I mean, really, it doesn’t get any better than that,” she said, her tone wistful.

  “We just need supplies,” he answered simply, and she didn’t argue.

  He wiped sweat from his brow, but didn’t suggest stopping. The hunting lodge was tucked into the trees a couple miles up the mountain. They’d moved to the lodge after heading west from the small cabin where they’d finally rested for a few days after leaving the prepper house. After the cabin and days spent in the woods, the lodge had seemed like paradise, and it had made sense to stop. The first week had been great, too, but as they’d begun to make scavenging runs into the small town and the outlying campgrounds, they’d realized there was some kind of a civil war brewing between the campgrounds.

  But there were benefits to the location. They had enough water with the number of streams in the area, and there were plenty of greens to forage, especially without any so-called weed control in the parks and yards of the homes dotting the area. And while Austin worried that the NWO had tracked them, on some level he knew that they hadn’t been covering easy ground. Heading west had made sense, but it had made for rough travel. That in itself offered some measure of safety—or, at least, he thought it did.

  Unfortunately, they were in sore need of a steady source of protein. Hunting had fallen off, and while they were surviving, by no means were they thriving. Ennis had managed to harvest a couple of wild turkeys from the forest, but there just wasn’t much else to hunt where they were—not with so many people trying to survive off of what they could catch and scavenge from the forests.

  Austin breathed easier as they got further from the highway, traveling up the deserted two-lane road that was overgrown on both sides with tall, dry grass that made a rustling sound in the breeze. The lodge they’d taken over was down a gravel road with a gate blocking vehicle entrance. There was even a small barn for the horses. It really was an ideal home for their large group… but the location was wrong.

  “He’s still out there,” Austin said, cutting through the silence. With Amanda, he knew he didn’t have to explain who he was talking about.

  She was his other half. She knew what he was thinking most of the time, and vice versa. They were so much more than housemates, though he hadn’t quite figured out how to deal with what that meant. For now, he was content to keep his relationship with her in a neat little box to be dealt with later. Survival came before romance.

  “I know,” she replied.

  “We don’t know if or when Zander is going to show up. I don’t believe for a second he’s going to give up, Amanda. And as much as I’d like to think we lost him, I can’t. With our large group, there’s no way we hid our tracks all that well. They’re probably not all that far behind us even now,” he stated. “If not Zander, his people, ready to report back to him.”

  It was the same thing they’d been saying every day for the last several weeks, ever since they’d lost Nash and the house—everything had changed that day. They’d been on the move, crossing the land toward the upper part of Utah and the lower part of Wyoming, heading loosely toward Oregon on what Tonya had joked was their own version of the Oregon Trail. They’d done their best to stick to the mountain areas, preferring to stay out of the small towns that had dotted their way west.

  “Are we supposed to keep running?” Amanda asked.

  “I think we have to,” he said, knowing it wasn’t a permanent solution.

  It took a moment for her to speak, and he almost didn’t hear her when she did.

  “I can’t,” she whispered.

  He swallowed down arguments, knowing just how badly she wanted to remain at the lodge—and how badly he felt the need to keep going. “Sarah is working on those files,” he reminded her. “That’s what we’re working toward. There’s a chance we can end all this; we just have to be patient and stay alive long enough to make it happen.” Beside him, she’d come to a stop and leaned on a tree, all but demanding he stop and listen. He did.

  She leaned back, and glanced up toward the lodge before she spoke. “Austin, look what we have here. At some point, we have to stop, and there’s no guarantee Sarah’s going to come up with anything. We have to be realistic. I can’t imagine the entire NWO operation can be taken down with a single USB stick. I mean, look what they’ve managed to accomplish thus far! They aren’t going to be easy to beat, and I don’t see how our little group is going to save the world. What are we going to do, blackmail them? We have nothing. And I know you think they’re following us, but we can’t be sure of that.”

  Her face looked pained, and he knew she was speaking reason, but it just didn’t ring true. “We have the key, I just know it,” he answered. “You can’t give up on that yet.”

  She let out a long sigh. “I’m willing to try, but we have to figure something out. I don’t want to keep running.”

  “Amanda, we don’t have any other options!”

  He stared at her for full seconds, willing himself not to give in. She was tired, yeah; they all were. But his gut told him that the NWO were following. And he couldn’t do this without her. Finally, she pushed off the tree and gave him a quick nod—of acquiescence if not agreement—and they began walking again.

  They made it up to the lodge and found that everyone else was already back. As Austin stepped into the main living area with the huge brick fireplace as its focal point, he automatically looked around for Savannah. He didn’t see her, though. Lately, she’d been doing a very good job of keeping herself separated from the rest of the group.

  “Did you get anything?” Wendell demanded, leaning forward from a chair pushed up against the wall dividing the kitchen and living space.

  Austin just looked at him, still not all that pleased to have him along. Even though the guy’s alcohol withdrawal was long gone, there was no denying that Wendell was generally unpleasant to be around. He was separated from the others, moody as always, and doing what he did best—nothing but watching and eavesdropping.

  “I guess not,” the man muttered, as if he would have done better.

  “What happened?” Ennis asked casually.

  Austin shrugged, but let out a sigh and sat beside his brother to take his boots off. “Same thing that always happens. What about you guys?” he asked Malachi and Jordan, who were sitting at the table with a chess set.

  “We got chased out almost immediately,” Malachi replied, grimacing.

  Jordan nodded. “Got confronted about half a mile from the campground on the east side of town. Guys were convinced we were from the other campground. We decided it was best to walk away.”

  “You walked away? No fighting?” Tonya Loveridge asked, entering the room as she wiped her hands on a dish towel, kissing her son on his head before she moved to sit down.

  Malachi looked down at the chess board. “Basically,” he replied after she’d turned away.

  Tonya shook her head, but didn’t look surprised. Malachi had managed to convince her to let him go on the run with the agreement that it wouldn’t be dangerous. There was no way any of them could have guaranteed that demand, though, and she knew it.

  “Did you have to use the gun?” she asked.

  Malachi put the chess piece he’d been holding down and finally met her eyes. “Nope. We talked our way out of it.” After a moment, his mother nodded, but Austin didn’t miss the fact that her eyes were more concerned than they’d been earlier. Doubtful, even.

  “Same with us,” Amanda broke in. “I don’t think any of them are all that violent, Tonya. They’re all just trying to survive. Honestly, I say we leave them alone,” she added, earning a nod from Gretchen, who was sitting on one of the overstuffed sofas knitting with some yarn she’d found in one of the rooms. Drew echoed the sentiment as he continued using a knife to whittle a frog gig.

  Tonya finally smiled and reached out to pat Amanda’s arm as if in thanks for the reassurance. Austin knew how she felt, though. As Malachi’s mother, she wouldn’t stop worrying about her son any more than he could stop worrying about his daughter. It didn’t matter whether or not these kids wanted to be treated as adults—they weren’t there yet. He knew where his daughter was, too—she’d be in her room upstairs or out on the back porch, one or the other. The doctor, on the other hand…

 

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