Gone to Ground (21 page)

“We must be getting near Kingman, Arizona,” said Christina as she noted other growing signs of human habitation. “It’s starting to get light. We need to find somewhere to hide before the sun comes up.”

The boys stood close together, quieter than Christina had ever seen them.

Alysa nodded toward the house and barn she’d first indicated. “We should go there. Check it out. There won’t be anyone living there. Not this close to an APZ, so we should be able to stay there for the day.”

“Are you sure,” Christina asked dubiously. “Aren’t we too close to the APZ. Surely they’ll check all the places nearest to the city first.”

Alysa looked over at Christina and the boys. “They probably haven’t even realized we’re gone yet, and even if they have they’ll check out the abandoned buildings in the city first; especially since we were able to duck the seekers last night. We can’t be out in the day, though. It will be harder to fool the daytime cameras than the infrared and night vision ones.” Alysa gave Christina a tired grin, pushing her heavy black hair back from her face with a grubby hand. “Face it, they’re not going to want to believe that four kids could fool all of them and escape. We need to go to that ranch. We need to get dry, clean, get some sleep and above all, we need horses.”

Christina pondered Alysa’s statement for a moment then sighed. “You’re right. Let’s go. We need to get out of sight of the highway as quickly as possible.”

The four children climbed down the embankment, Alysa and Christina assisting the two younger boys who seemed to be nearly at the end of their reserves, then headed across the open desert land toward the winding dirt road that led to the ranch house. The sunlight gradually became stronger and they picked up their pace, aware that the light exposed them more and more as every minute passed.

It wasn’t long before the road wound down into the small valley, through a large stone gateway and into the yard between a stone ranch house and a red painted barn. The windmill in the pasture rose into the sky where it was silhouetted against a brilliant orange sunrise.

The children paused in the yard for a moment, then Christina turned and headed for the house. There were several trucks in front of the building, but no sign of anyone living there. Christina walked up to the front door and banged loudly. No one answered. She turned back and looked at her companions. The boys continued to huddle together, shivering. Alysa stood next to them looking up at Christina.

“If anyone was living here, they’d have been up already, feeding the animals.” Alysa gestured back toward the barn where loose chickens scratched around in the dirt. Behind the barn stretched two huge green pastures, apparently irrigated by the windmill. Several horses and cows grazed in the deep grass, apparently surviving quite nicely in spite of the absence of their owners.

The sight of a few partially stripped carcasses in smaller pens on the north side of the barn spoke of other livestock that hadn’t been quite so lucky. These animals had either run out of food, water, or both, and hadn’t been able to escape to the green abundance on the other side of the fence. Dry weather and scavengers had turned their dead bodies into partially mummified monuments to the devastation of the disease and human stupidity.

Christina tried the door and found it locked. Feeling guilty, even though she knew that the owners were probably gone for good, she went back down the steps to the walkway which was lined with smooth river stones. Picking a large, dark red one, she returned to the front door and used the rock to smash a pane of glass in a side window. She pulled her sweatshirt sleeve over her hand and used it to push the glass out of the frame, then reached through to unlock the door.

“Come on guys,” she turned and beckoned to the other three. They followed her into the house, moving quietly and cautiously. Stopping just inside the door way Christina couldn’t shake the feeling that they were trespassing. She looked around at the large front room, decorated in ranch and cowboy memorabilia. A cup sat on the coffee table, a magazine lay open next to it. The leaves of dead plants littered the sill of the large bay window. The entire house had an unsettling air, both of abandonment, and of owners simply away for a few moments about to return.

The children wandered throughout the dusty house noting the signs of habitation long gone. Christina tried the switches in several rooms without success. Apparently the power had been shut off at some time in the past months. Likewise there was no water when they turned the taps in the kitchen and bathrooms.

So much for a hot shower,
Christina thought regretfully, looking at her dirty hands and feeling the prickle of drying mud in her hair. She realized that the water in the house must rely on an electric pump, while the water for the animals, at least those grazing in the pasture, must rely on the windmill they saw in the distance. There must be water out there or the livestock wouldn’t be alive, but she decided that she was too tired to go looking for it right now.

Afraid to leave each other’s sight for very long, the children gravitated back to the large, open living room of the ranch house. Exhaustion finally had its way as the four sprawled out on the overstuffed furniture and quickly fell deeply asleep.

The sun was beginning to sink toward the western horizon when Christina finally stirred, shifting on the brown suede couch which had been her bed for the day. A ray of the lowering sun slanted in through the window, splashing light across her face. Briefly she raised her arm, laying it across her eyes to block the light, but she was awake now, and sleep could not be recaptured.

Sitting up, she looked around the room. Her brothers were still asleep, curled together in a large leather recliner. Nick murmured in his dreams, answered by an equally indecipherable sound from Ryan. Then, as if in a choreographed dance, both boys shifted in their sleep and then subsided into new positions; deep breathing unchanged.

Christina had often envied the twins’ closeness and the effortless communication they shared. They always seemed to know what each other was thinking, and where the other one was. As Christina sat and watched her brothers sleeping she wondered once again what it would be like to have someone know her as well as they knew each other.

Sighing, she finally pushed herself up off the couch and went in search of Alysa.

Alysa was found sitting on the back porch of the house, looking out to the east. She was so intent that she didn’t even look around as Christina pushed open the screen door and walked out to join her.

“What’s up?” Christina asked as she moved over to stand next to Alysa.

Alysa answered Christina’s question with one of her own. Gesturing with her chin she said, “What do you think’s going on over there?”

Christina looked in the direction Alysa indicated, shading her eyes with her hand. In the distance she saw towering columns of smoke. According to the map that she’d liberated from Captain Rickards’ office, the only thing in that direction was Kingman, Arizona. From the amount of smoke billowing into the sky, it appeared that the entire town was on fire.

Christina turned to look at Alysa. “O’Reilly said that there were teams out destroying buildings that were no longer going to be used. Recycling things that could be recycled, but eliminating everything else. He said that they were concentrating on towns first, moving out in concentric circles from the APZs.” She considered their position so close to the town.

“They must not have wanted to bother with small places like this until they had the towns taken care of, I guess. We shouldn’t stay here long, though.”

Alysa nodded. “We need to get out of here tonight. We should get the boys up, get food, gather anything else we might need. There are six horses out there. We ride four and use the other two to carry food, water, and anything else we can use.”

“We can’t ride at night can we?” asked Christina, appalled. She had accepted that in order to make it to the canyon O’Reilly had spoken of, they would have to use horses, but she’d never thought they’d have to ride in the dark.

“We’re too close to the town. There will be Enforcers. Seekers.” Alysa said, calmly. Even if we head south, we’re too close for it to be safe to move in the daylight. Once we’re well past Kingman, we can start riding in the daytime, but for now we need to move at night.

Christina tried to find fault with Alysa’s reasoning, but couldn’t. “I’ll get the boys,” she said resignedly, turning and heading back for the house. “We’ll start gathering the things we want to take. Then when the sun is a bit lower we can go out to that big water trough next to the windmill and clean up. We’ll leave as soon as the sun goes down.”

Alysa nodded, turning for a final look at the smoke as it rose to join the monsoon clouds building over the mountains, brown eyes worried.

The remainder of the late afternoon was spent ransacking the house for anything they could take that would help them on their journey. The pantry offered up a bounty of foods such as rice and flour that stored easily, kept for long periods of time and were easy to prepare. Christina fought down some qualms as she considered how naive she’d been when planning their escape. Granola bars and cheese sticks. How long would they have survived on those alone?

Christina was raised in a world where you simply ran down to the store if you ran out of something. While in the APZ, she’d been fully focused on escaping and hadn’t allowed herself to wonder how they’d survive out in the wilderness. Last night, in the chaos of the storm and escape, she’d been too absorbed in the moment to consider the difficulties ahead of them. Here in the ranch house, however, she began to wonder whether she’d made a huge mistake and whether they’d be able to learn fast enough to keep themselves alive.

Looking over the books on the shelves, she found several wilderness survival guides, and carried them to the kitchen where they were making a pile of the provisions they wanted to take.
If I don’t know it, I can certainly learn it
, she thought with determination.
We will make this work. We have to.

The storms seemed to be holding off for the day, apparently having spent much of their energy in yesterday’s downpours. Clouds were building over the high country, but they lacked the authority of the evening before and Christina held tight to the hope that they’d have this night to make good their escape without the complication of rain. Riding the horses at night would be bad enough, but having to do it in the rain would be beyond imagining.

After examining the skies for seekers, the children hurried out to the green pasture, where they quickly stripped down to their underwear and  bathed in the large water tank, Christina only cringing slightly at the wispy green algae growing along the sides and the water bugs skittering across the surface. Ryan and Nick treated the whole episode as an adventure, teasing Christina mercilessly when she shrieked as a salamander brushed past her bare leg.

While the four children were busy bathing, the six horses residing in the pasture came wandering up, apparently curious to see who was causing such a commotion in their drinking water. Christina paused to watch the animals approach, realizing with misgiving that in a few short hours she would be sitting on one of their backs and be entirely at its mercy.

Christina had enjoyed watching horses when she was younger, and had even begged her father to get her a pony for years, just like nearly every other young girl. For a long time she’d dreamed of herself racing across the desert, swift as the wind, on her bright golden palomino stallion.

Then reality struck one summer at Girl Scout Camp, when she’d gotten up close and personal with Fred.

Fred was an older gelding who’d recently been donated to the camp, and unfortunately who didn’t have much use for kids in spite of what his previous owners had said when they signed over the papers. At the start of camp, Christina drew Fred’s name, and for the next two weeks it was her job to care for him, and it was on him that she took riding lessons. During those days at camp, Christina had quickly come to the realization that horses were much different than the pretty pictures in the movies. Fred bit, kicked, stepped on her feet when she wasn’t paying attention, and the day he deposited her into the middle of a cactus, Christina swore off horses forever.

As the pasture residents milled around the water tank, Christina studied them intently, trying to determine if they were of the kid eating variety, but with no luck. The horses’ ears were pricked as they watched the four children splashing around in livestock’s drinking water,
probably trying to figure out if we’re the horse eating variety,
Christina thought sourly.

There were two red horses, a darker red brown horse, that if Christina remembered correctly was called a bay, a gray horse, a yellow horse with a black mane and tail, and a black and white spotted horse that she was pretty sure was called a paint. If it wasn’t, she thought, it should be since it looked as though someone had thrown buckets of black and white paint at the horse, letting it run down the sides.

Baths over, the kids pulled themselves out of the water and redressed, pulling jeans on over sticky wet skin, and slipping into their sneakers. Alysa had been poking around in the barn and brought six halters with her when the children headed out for their bath. She used these to quickly capture the horses. Handing a lead rope to each of the other children, and taking three herself, they led their new mounts back toward the barn where Alysa had saddles waiting.

As the sun started dropping behind the western horizon Alysa saddled four of the six horses, putting pack saddles on the other two. They brought their treasure trove out from the kitchen and Alysa directed the distribution of the goods. Darkness was falling as the small group headed out of the ranch yard, heading southeast into the Hulalapai Mountains.