Ranger (The Bugging Out Series Book 5) (13 page)

“Elaine,” I called out quietly, waiting for her to reply from the kitchen, or the bedroom, or the bathroom.

But silence was all I heard.

I looked down the hallway. A soft light spilled out from the bedroom.

“Elaine...”

Again I heard nothing. I might have been worried, even frightened that something had happened in the few moments we’d been apart since returning home. I flashed back to the morning I entered Neil’s house and found it empty, abandoned, he and his family gone.

This was not that.

“Hey,” I said as I reached the bedroom door.

Elaine stood inside the room, between me and our bed, wearing a sheer half robe and nothing else, the thin garment leaving little to the imagination of what it only vaguely concealed.

“I don’t want to think about anything out there,” she said. “Not tonight. I just want to think about you, about us. I want everything else to stop for a while.”

She stepped toward me then, peeling the robe back and letting it slip to the floor. Her hands reached to my shirt and began undoing the buttons, slowly, one at a time. She leaned forward and planted a soft kiss on my exposed chest, then looked up, into my eyes.

“Make love to me and don’t stop,” she said.

I reached around her waist and lifted, kissing her as she wrapped her legs around me. I carried her to the bed and eased our bodies down upon it, together.

N
o!

Eric, wake up...

Stop!

Eric...

Don’t!

“Eric!”

My eyes snapped open, Elaine hovering over me. Around her, around us, was familiarity. Curtains. Furniture. Wallpaper.

Our bedroom.

“You were having a nightmare,” she said to me.

Sweat drenched me. Soaking the sheet beneath me. Beading cold on my face.

“You’re okay,” she assured me.

I pulled myself up so that was sitting against our headboard. Elaine put her cool palm against my head and brushed the damp hair from my brow.

“What were you dreaming about?”

There was no trouble recalling the imagery that had tormented me as I slept.

“Neil,” I said.

How was it that he had invaded my dreams? This night? After the wondrous time I’d spent with my wife, holding her and knowing her as I’d known no one in my entire life. So close we’d become during our time of passion that I’d truly, ignoring any cliché attached to such an impossibility, felt as though we were one body. One soul.

And yet, after that, after the beauty and the love and the intense physical and emotional connection we’d shared, it was my absent friend who’d come to me in my sleep.

“He was running away from me, toward a cliff,” I said, recalling the vivid imagery of my friend, my oldest friend, sprinting toward his death, willingly and with some impossible joy. “And he was smiling. He kept getting closer and I kept screaming for him to stop. But he wouldn’t.”

Elaine said nothing, her hand softly stroking the side of my face.

“And he ran off the edge of the cliff,” I said. “And he was still smiling as he fell.”

I fell back against my soaked pillow.

“You can’t choose your dreams,” Elaine said. “Not the ones while you sleep, at least.”

Her words, simple as they were, soothed me, entirely because she was the living embodiment of the statement she’d just made.

“I should be dreaming about you,” I said, not embracing her words of wisdom just yet.

“You don’t have to,” she told me. “I’m right here.”

She eased in and kissed me, soft and quick. But time was no determining factor in the effect she had on me. A look. An innocent touch. A calming kiss. All made me want her. I reached out to pull her closer once again.

That was when we heard it.

“Another flyover,” she said.

Yes, another one, but this time it was different.

“That’s a lot lower,” I commented.

We got out of our bed together, slipping into clothes and making our way to the yard behind our house. A fog had rolled in from the Pacific as we slept. Above us and all around us, the thick, cool mist obscured everything, from the unseen craft above to the house we’d exited, just a few yards away.

“It’s flying west to east,” I said.

Elaine nodded as we tracked the aircraft’s progress, heading inland from the ocean. It did sound different than the one we’d been alerted to by Corporal Enderson. At a reduced altitude, yes, but the engine propelling it had a higher timbre. Almost a whine.

This was a jet.

“They have more than one plane,” Elaine said, picking up on precisely what I was.

“Yeah,” I said.

But that realization only held a paramount place in our thoughts for a moment as the same baffling question arose.

“Why are they flying in this?” Elaine asked, the whitish weather shrouding everything above—and below. “They can’t see anything down here.”

“The plane could have sensors,” I said.

“Maybe,” she said. “Maybe.”

She wasn’t convinced of my suggestion. Neither was I.

“There’s nothing we can do, is there?”

I shook my head and stared up toward the aircraft as its sound receded, growing faint as it cruised toward the hills east of town.

“Not right now,” I said.

The enemy could fly over us with impunity, it seemed. We weren’t protected by any anti-aircraft weaponry. That simply hadn’t been a worry. And, even if the garrison had come so equipped, shooting down one of the Unified Government’s aircraft might do nothing more than ignite a conflict that was being held in abeyance for the moment.

“That was low.”

The voice, clear and familiar, came from behind us. We both turned to see Martin standing at the end of the narrow walkway that ran down the east side of our house.

“Martin, what time is it?” I asked.

The man looked at his watch.

“Three thirty,” he said.

Sunrise was several hours off, yet the town’s former leader had found it necessary to seek us out. Something was up.

“There was another one,” he said. “Another message. The Ranger Signal went down for thirty seconds at the same time as the night before, and in that quiet was a compressed Morse transmission.”

“We need to get Westin to decode it,” I said.

“Already did,” Martin said, holding a small slip of paper out to us. “Micah had books on Morse code, and I watched Westin decompress the message yesterday, so I did it.”

Elaine looked to me, then reached out and took the slip of paper.

“Confirm psyops delivery. No supply ship. Defenses scattered.”

“Pysops?” Martin wondered aloud after Elaine had finished reciting the decoded report.

“I think I know what that refers to,” I said, telling him about the propaganda leaflets found just hours earlier, items that could easily fit within the definition of psychological operations.

“This person inside is important to them,” Elaine said.

“They have eyes above us,” Martin said, the skies fully quiet again. “And eyes on our very backs.”

“Do you have any ideas on who the traitor is?” I asked.

Schiavo had de facto blessed her husband’s hunt for the turncoat working with the Unified Government forces beyond the town. I sensed that Martin Jay was taking that role he’d adopted as serious as anything since I’d known him.

“Some,” he said.

“You care to share?” I asked.

He shook his head, eyeing both of us with an appraisal that was not born of suspicion, but caution.

“No,” he said, then turned and made his way back through the fog.

“Do you have any idea?” Elaine asked me when Martin was gone.

I nodded, the chill of the misty night clinging to my sweaty skin.

“Who’s new here and wants to be anywhere else? Who came in on the Navy ship which has disappeared? Who has the medical expertise to manage an epidemic so that we stay sick?”

There was no doubt that I was talking about Commander Clay Genesee, United States Navy.

“That’s one hell of an accusation,” Elaine said.

“So you disagree?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

In the distance, the sound of another aircraft, prop driven, began to rise, coming in low like its just departed, speedier cousin, this time from the south. Our thoughts shifted from Genesee as a suspect to the thing cruising north toward us.

“I just wanted one night,” Elaine said, her mood souring by a few degrees. “One night with you and none of this.”

I pulled her into a loose hug, understanding what she meant. Her night, our night, had been defiled by the reality of the enemy we faced. Mine, also, by my friend’s invasion of my dreams.

“We’re okay,” I told her.

“I know,” she said.

We both felt that. Both knew it. Both believed it.

For now.

T
he Defense Council visited the animals on the northeast edge of town. Private Sheryl Quincy had been drafted to join us, providing additional firepower to what we carried with us. Only Mayor Allen was unarmed.

“This is too exposed,” Schiavo said.

She was right. Cows and goats and various other livestock wandered about the fenced field, smaller animals in more contained pens. In quickly constructed buildings on the far side of the field, chickens spent their days laying eggs, unafraid of foxes or coyotes who would have preyed upon them in the time before the blight. The only predators of note were those on two legs in the woods just beyond the fields.

“The grass is growing out here,” Mayor Allen said. “And the processor needs water from the creek to make the supplemental food for them. Particularly the cows.”

He pointed to a small shed standing next to the perpetual creek that spilt off from the Coquille River upstream, before rejoining it nearer the northern bridge. Within, powered by an array of solar panels, was the pulp processor which had come in on the
Rushmore
’s first visit to Bandon. Fed by an endless supply of dead wood, harvested from the grey forests that bordered the town, the processor combined the almost chalky remnants of what the blight had wrought with moisture to form, through heat and pressure, edible loaves which the animals could subsist upon until the meadows and fields beyond town became self-sustaining. It was a marvel of technology developed by unknown engineers in a far off place, and it was vital to our continued survival.

It also could not be moved.

“We’re secured out here pretty well, captain,” Private Quincy told her commander. “I’ve made sure we have six sentries backing up when the ranchers are on site.”

Ranchers...

Two men and one woman from town who’d had experience with livestock. They were wholly responsible for the health and care of every beast, winged or hooved, that we’d been provided with. Along with the ‘Farmers’, they were key to our ability to provide for ourselves.

We just had to get past this threat for that to matter.

“I check the coops on the far side of the field myself every afternoon while we’re out here,” Quincy told her commander.

The coop was the closest structure we had to the presumed enemy lines. Having personnel traverse the open terrain to inspect and tend to the chattering mass of fowl could be seen as inviting some response by our unseen adversary.

“Is there any way to at least move the chickens closer to town?” Mayor Allen asked.

“I can ask the ranching crew,” Quincy said.

“Do that,” Schiavo told the newest member of her unit.

“Will do, ma’am,” Quincy said.

Martin walked along the fence, stopping and surveying the herd of cattle. We had thirteen now, plus fourteen milking cows. Thirty goats. Twenty-five pigs. The chickens numbered in the hundreds.

“Maybe we should strengthen this area,” Martin suggested. “Put a strongpoint here.”

“That might just draw more attention,” I said.

“It would be one more fighting position to supply if bullets start flying,” Elaine said.

Schiavo nodded at her observation. We’d run into this issue before, when errant movement reports came in. Invariably those residents drafted into service would respond with members of the garrison, bringing their personal weapons and ammunition, the latter of which had raised questions about effective distribution during any prolonged engagement.

“We need to do something about our ammo issue,” Schiavo said.

“We have a good supply, ma’am,” Quincy told her.

“We do,” Schiavo agreed. “But what doesn’t belong to the garrison is scattered all over town in a couple hundred houses. People respond ready to fight, but only with what they can carry. Their reserves remain at their houses.”

Her concern was valid. Resupplying any force would mean multiple trips to dozens of houses to retrieve individual ammo caches. That would take too many people out of the fight.

“We need to centralize,” Elaine said.

“No one’s going to like having their ammunition seized,” I told the captain.

“Not seized,” Schiavo said. “Temporarily repositioned. And not all of it. Only half. We just need to make sure there’s a central store of ammo. One collection point, one distribution point.”

It made sense. But I knew of several residents who would resist anything that even appeared like an infringement of their rights.

“Some won’t go for that,” I said. “At all.”

“We’re not going to confiscate anything,” Schiavo said.

“Voluntary?” Mayor Allen checked.

“Recommended,” Schiavo clarified.

As long as there was no threat of forcibly taking ammunition, the action might only send a ripple through the community. But ripples, down the road, could build to crushing waves, I feared.

“Ma’am, the garrison armory is jam packed,” Quincy told her commander. “There’s no room.”

The storage room in the town hall, which had once been used to keep banners and decorations for the kind of community events which were common before the blight, could hold no more of the ammunition which had been stuffed in its confines. Schiavo, I knew, had been leery about keeping the supply of armaments and small explosives there in the first place. Too many people came and went. The town hall was the administrative hub of the town. To have so much potentially volatile material there was not wise, in her mind.