All Fall Down: The Chronicles of Altor, page 6
The cabin—which wasn’t all that cabin-ish, really—had a nice-sized greenhouse to the side, so she would be able to get her plants started earlier in the year and get them in the ground as soon as she thought the last frost was past.
There were five of them living in this remote location high in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. The very remoteness of the location was the biggest part of its security from intruders. There were no roads within twenty-five miles of the cabin, so it would take quite a hike for anyone to even get there.
Nyx did not rely entirely on that distance as her defense. She had been trained since she was a teenager to anticipate danger and find responses to it before it happened.
Her first weeks at the cabin, she and her niece, Chaya, had spent endless hours crisscrossing the woods that surrounded the cabin. Nyx had carried her tablet and drew a detailed topographical map of the surrounding area, including animal trails, boulders, large trees, cliffs, and other landmarks.
The following week, she left Chaya behind and hiked miles away from the cabin, looking for the most obvious route a stranger might find their way there. On her map, she marked all the likely paths and trails they would take.
Nyx and Franklin, her brother-in-law, spent yet another week making some of those trails impassable, taking trees down and falling them into a tangle that could neither be crawled through nor easily climbed over.
She did all that not to stop people but to funnel them onto easier paths. Easier for an approaching stranger, and easier for her to booby trap.
Nyx knew that unless the stranger was well-trained themselves, if they were looking for her, they would be focusing on trying to locate the cabin and thinking more about the conflict that was ahead. That meant they would think less about how they were arriving there.
She spent some time wondering what type of person might seek her out. She knew it was possible that her location could be compromised through an official source, though the General had excellent security. If it was someone like that, they would be very good indeed.
It was also possible that it would just be someone flushed into the foothills by the Rage Wars. Hunters, perhaps, who had marked and remembered the place from an earlier hike. She knew she could handle them, but she wanted to give herself as much warning as possible.
Once all that work was done, Nyx took the two dozen automatic video cameras and climbed high up in the trees to place them. The cameras all ran on solar, so she wouldn’t have to worry about them running out of juice at an inopportune time.
Surveillance set up, she placed her booby traps. Buried mines and trip wires.
She still didn’t feel safe, but Nyx rarely did.
As Halloween approached, the snow flurries started to fall and she believed that if they hit their projected annual snowfall, that would provide yet another layer of security.
Considering the plight of most of those still alive, that put her in rarefied air.
The day she was pulling her brook trout out of the lake, it was sunny and crisp. The snowflakes had been banished for the day.
Nyx shook herself out of her reverie and took one last look at the placid water. Soon, there would be three to four feet of snow on the ground. They would all be mostly cabin-bound for long stretches. She took a long, deep breath of the fresh mountain air.
There was still so much to be done.
The General had left her with enough chopped wood to get her through the winter, but she was already planning for the following year. She wanted to build an identical lean-to beside the first one and fill it with the next winter’s wood so it could age and burn well. That meant not just building the lean-to but also chopping and splitting the wood.
Her younger sister, Adva, and Adva’s husband, Franklin, were both in their early thirties, still young and strong and more than capable of helping with projects like that. They both knew that without Nyx, they would have likely been dead or at least in imminent danger of starvation over the winter.
Instead, they were on an enforced permanent vacation in the foothills of Colorado. They knew they owed that all to Nyx and did not take their safety lightly.
She picked up the creel, watching the water drip from its underside. As she turned up the path to the house, she waved at Chaya, who was playing in the grass in front of the door.
Chaya was eight and would eventually long for more people than the four adults around her, but for now, she was happy. Adva had been a school teacher and was more than capable of seeing to Chaya’s education but hoped that there would be more social opportunities for her in the future.
That was a high-minded idea, though, and it came in far distant to food, water, and relative safety.
From over her shoulder, she heard the soft whooomp that marked an explosion some distance away. She automatically whirled toward it. As she did, her hand pulled the walkie-talkie off her belt.
“Get Chaya inside, now. Seal up until I tell you.”
A high-pitched squeal that may or may not have been human came from the direction of the explosion, then abruptly cut off.
The family had practiced this exercise a dozen times, so Nyx knew she didn’t have to worry about whether Adva or Franklin would do what they were supposed to do.
Nyx dropped the creel. It tipped over and spilled fish onto the grass.
She sprinted for the tall tree that offered the cabin shade on the warm summer days. Barely slowing, she curled around it and hit the boards that formed the ladder going up its trunk.
The treehouse had already been there when The General’s men had dropped her off, but she had made a few improvements to it since then. There were open windows on each side of the 10 X 10 room, but Nyx had built and installed sliding shutters on each of them.
In the middle of the floor were the remnants of one of Chaya’s recent tea parties. A floppy-eared elephant, an overstuffed unicorn, and a porpoise sat on small chairs at a table, a pink and blue tea set spread out in front of them.
Nyx skirted around the toys and glanced at the three rifles leaning against the far wall. It did not bother her to have these weapons where Chaya played. Her niece understood what a weapon was, what a toy was, and what the difference was between the two. By the time Chaya was ten, Nyx was committed to having her shoot the eyes out of a mosquito at a hundred yards.
Nyx grabbed her all-purpose rifle and slid the shutter back a few inches. She looked in the direction she had heard the explosion come from and saw a puff of black smoke.
Nyx put the rifle’s scope to her eye and scanned the edge of the forest in that direction. She moved the scope from right to left, paused to look for any movement, then moved to another section. When she reached a set spot on the left, she repeated the gesture left to right.
There was no sign of anyone.
She unhooked her walkie and clicked it on. “Franklin, Adva, there’s an explosion that looks like it came from sector...” she counted in her head, “J. Sector J. What do you see?”
“One second,” her sister’s voice came back, as calm as if they were exchanging salsa recipes. “Oh, Zari. You need to see this.”
“Okay, I’ll be there,” Nyx answered, “but first, take a run through every camera out there. Is there any other movement anywhere?”
She waited, continuing her own scans of the perimeter.
After sixty seconds, the walkie crackled, then, “No sign. I don’t believe there’s anyone else out there. You really need to see this.”
“Roger,” Nyx said. She waited two more minutes and was just about to climb down when she heard a single gunshot come from the same direction.
“Adva? Do you have eyes on that?”
“I do,” Adva said. “Again, I don’t believe this is an organized threat. Come inside.”
Nyx frowned. It was obvious to her that this was at least some sort of threat. Someone had set off one of her booby traps and now there was a gunshot. This wasn’t just some bear or deer that had stepped on a mine or trip wire, unless the bears were also arming themselves.
Satisfied that at least there was no one coming toward the house, Nyx set the rifle back in its spot and dropped down the ladder. She drew her pistol but kept it pointed at the ground as she covered the fifty feet from the tree to the front door.
When she hit the front porch, the door swung open. She slipped through and saw Adva, Franklin, and her mother standing at the video monitors.
“What is it that I need to see?” She tried to keep the harshness out of her voice but knew there was still a little sting in her words.
Franklin brought up a scene on the biggest overhead monitor. The cameras all had microphones.
She saw three people moving quietly along the path she had purposefully funneled them onto. They walked casually, with about fifteen or twenty feet between them. They didn’t appear to be sneaking up on anything.
There was a man in the lead, a young girl in the middle, and a woman bringing up the rear. They all had full backpacks on. The little girl wasn’t really paying attention to where she was going but seemed to be having a conversation with a doll she was holding.
The picture flared out as the sound of the explosion hit it. The picture went all bright for two seconds, then three. When the camera refocused, the scene had changed. The man appeared to have disappeared, the little girl had dropped her doll and was screaming. The woman ran forward, her hand covering her mouth in horror. She picked up the little girl and moved a few feet off camera.
The cameras were designed to follow movement, so it panned right and showed the end of the drama. The man was horrifically injured. His right leg was missing below the knee. It was obvious to Nyx’s trained eye that his wounds were not survivable.
The woman was kneeling beside him, but not doing anything effective.
The microphones were still picking up plenty. Horrible, gut-wrenching moans, the small girl sobbing. Or perhaps it was the woman sobbing. It was impossible to tell.
Then, a conversation that they couldn’t hear clearly. An argument, perhaps.
The man looked down, saw the pistol in his belt and pulled it out. A voice—definitely the woman’s, and not the child’s—said, “No!”
The man put the gun under his chin and pulled the trigger.
Nyx drew a deep breath. It was always possible that someone might fake a setup like this. If this was a high-end operation, she would have considered this.
There was something so authentic about the way the scene had played out in front of her that she had no doubt what she had just witnessed. She didn’t know what had led this small family to the edge of her property. Being so far from any road should have meant they weren’t there.
But there they were.
“Switch to live.”
Adva pushed a button and the picture jumped momentarily. The woman and child had moved out of camera range, but the microphone could still pick them up. A low moaning, almost a keening could be heard.
Nyx stood and straightened her shoulders. She looked at Adva and Franklin. “I’m going out there. If I don’t come back, you know what to do.”
No one jumped up and said, “Oh no! Don’t go out there. It’s dangerous.” Everyone knew that it was dangerous and that being the case, she was the best person to send out.
Nyx slipped on her thin body armor vest, then put a camo jacket over that. She holstered her pistol, grabbed another rifle by the door, and headed out.
Her heart pounded. Under almost any circumstance, she was so calm, her heartbeat never changed. What she had just seen tore at her, though. As she walked, she took cleansing breaths. She knew she was walking into something that would test her in many ways.
She needed to be in control.
Chapter Nine
Smell the Coffee
As she walked, Nyx considered the possible scenarios that were ahead.
She didn’t like what had transpired but didn’t feel guilty. Nyx knew that if she had wanted to, she could have claimed a spot inside the dome city of Altor. She could have lived quietly and safely there. As the General had said, We can always use someone like you.
She also knew that she would not have been able to either bring her family there or protect them in any way. The population control inside the dome was so strict that she doubted she would have been able to bring along a single family member, let alone four.
Who would she have brought? Her gray-haired mother, leaving her sister’s family to fend for themselves? She knew she couldn’t have tried to bring just her sister or niece in with her. Adva would never have gone for that.
She had chosen Option B, then—as safe a place as the General could arrange for her. She had only minimal expectations of what that would entail, but he had come through for her in a way that was above and beyond. Eventually, she gathered enough clues from the way that the cabin was set up to know that it was the General’s own place.
It had been his place in peace time, though. That meant that it had the potential to be made secure, but that wasn’t in place yet.
She had believed that if anyone found their stronghold, it would be with bad intentions. She had set things up so that those people would not surprise her.
She never thought her visitors might be a young family who looked like they were out for a Sunday morning hike.
It was easy to approach the site of the explosion without the woman and child knowing she was coming. Nyx could move silently almost anywhere. In the forest that surrounded her own backyard, she was a ghost.
As she drew closer, she stopped and listened every few feet. Soon, she could hear movement and their voices. The small, childish voice was asking questions, the woman’s voice was trying desperately not to answer them.
When she was still twenty-five feet away, she put the thick trunk of a tree between them. She pitched her voice so that it would carry.
“I need you to put your weapon down.”
Nyx didn’t need to see the woman to know what she would do. She would go full-alert, raise the weapon and start sweeping it back and forth.
Although Nyx knew she was more than a match for this woman, she also knew that experienced operatives were often killed by the most unlikely people.
“I know what happened,” Nyx said, her voice pitched to soothe. “You wandered onto our property, which we have boobytrapped to keep bad actors out. We have the whole incident on video, and we are aware that you do not have bad intentions toward us. I’m sorry for the way this has turned out, but I need you to lower your weapon. Put it on the ground, and I will step out and talk to you.”
Nyx paused, listening carefully. She could feel the woman’s understandable hesitation.
“If I had wanted to kill or harm you, I would have done so from cover. I would not start a conversation. For your own safety, I need you to place your weapon on the ground.”
“For my own safety?” the woman’s voice verged on the hysterical. A tiny, rippling laugh.
“You stumbled on one of our traps. It is not the only one in the area. If you move about, you may very well trip another one. You, or your little girl. I don’t want that to happen. I will guide you safely out.”
“Oh my God,” the woman said. “I don’t know what to do.”
“I know you don’t. That’s why I’m here to help you. Put the gun down now.”
A moment later, the woman said, “Okay.”
Nyx waited a heartbeat, lowered her pistol so it pointed at the ground, and moved her head around the tree. If the woman was lying, she wanted to give her the smallest possible target to shoot at.
The woman was telling the truth. The pistol was at her feet and her arms were raised to half-mast.
The woman was young, perhaps in her late twenties. She had long blonde hair tied back in a ponytail and pulled through a Colorado Rockies baseball cap. She was thin and wore camouflage pants and a jacket that was not really warm enough for Colorado this late in the fall. The girl beside her looked to be six or seven. She had the same blonde hair and waifish appearance as the woman.
“I’m Zari,” Nyx said.
“Sorry?” the woman asked.
Nyx shook her head, looking closely at the woman. She could see that her adrenaline was fading and shock was setting in. “No, Zari, with a Z. It’s a family name.”
“I’m Rose, and this is Millie.”
“I’m going to step forward and pick up your pistol. I will not harm you. I’ll need you to follow my directions exactly, and I’ll get you somewhere safe.”
Millie edged toward Rose, burying her face against her leg.
Nyx knelt in front of her. “Just hold your mom’s hand, and we’ll go somewhere good.” She glanced up at Rose to see if she would correct her about being the child’s mother, but she only received a nod in return.
Nyx could not walk directly in front of the pair. Her training would never allow her to turn her back on an unknown person. But she did walk slightly ahead of the two, turned somewhat sideways, so she could see both the path ahead and the people behind.
Nyx knew that there were no more booby traps on this trail but would not tell Rose that.
Five minutes later, they stepped out of the forest and the lodge stood directly in front of them. Nyx lifted her left hand as a signal to Adva and Franklin that all was well.
Both Rose and Millie stopped and gaped at what spread out before them—the log cabin, the outbuildings, the small lake. If Nyx had harbored any doubts about whether the trio had known what they were approaching, they dissipated.
“We had no idea...” Rose said.
“I know,” Nyx answered quietly.
When they stepped up on the porch, Nyx turned to Rose and said, “Before I take you inside, do you have any other weapons on you?”
“No. We had two guns. You have the pistol and the rifle is still back with...with...Jay.”
Nyx nodded. “I’ll go back and retrieve it. It’s not safe for you two to walk around the woods unescorted.” She knew she could have frisked her, but there was no need.
Millie stepped forward and said, “I do.”
