Reclamation (Best Laid Plans Book 4) (12 page)

Pulling the handcarts and wagons, there was no word to describe their pace other than agonizing.

In every sense of the word. Trev had been afraid they'd overloaded themselves from the start, putting a burden on everyone so there was no chance to rotate people out to rest and make the trip easier. Instead for all of them, especially his parents and aunt and uncle who increasingly felt their age, each and every step they took required them to bring an endless burden along with them.

Rotating their positions on the carts and wagons only did so much to ease the constant burning strain on their muscles, and the first few days they rested almost as much as they walked. They decided to camp early the first day after Newtown when Aunt Eva abruptly dropped the handle of the wagon she'd been wrestling with all day and slumped down to the ground, breaking into tears of exhaustion and despair as she miserably apologized to everyone.

In truth none of them were in much better shape at that point, and she wasn't the only one who cried after pushing their bodies to the limit and beyond to put distance behind them. Trev felt bad thinking it, but it was impossible not to draw the comparison to when he and Lewis, stronger and in better shape, had been able to handle a trip like this. It wasn't that he'd overestimated his family's determination, more that he hadn't set a realistic expectation for what they could manage.

Although to be fair even he was giving more than he had available to pick up the slack.

Even on smooth, clear roads each mile was a battle. Making twenty miles a day was a pipe dream, and even fifteen miles taxed them beyond their limits. Trev hoped that with time everyone would get used to the exertion and their muscles would build up, and tried not to entertain the very real fear that exhaustion might lead to injuries that would further slow their current crawl.

Until then, all they could do was take each mile as it came and give it their all.

The third day after Newtown Lucas seriously broached the idea of leaving behind at least the wagons. Surprisingly it was his wife who vetoed him. “That's enough food to last all of us a month,” she insisted. “That could be the difference between life and death down the line. And we've already carried it so far.”

“We actually haven't carried it all that far,” Linda muttered. She looked almost as worn down as her aunt. “And it won't be the difference between anything if we can't haul it. Besides, I wouldn't mind having less wheat to choke down for a future meal.”

Trev made a face. He wasn't sure he agreed with leaving behind food, but he was definitely getting sick of wheat. Their family had been boiling enough for three meals every evening when they camped, then dousing it with vegetable oil and spicing it as best they could. More than one of them had complained that the mess made them feel queasy after they choked it down. And they constantly had to get on Jim to finish his portion every meal.

Trev thought miserably about the candy bars he'd found, confiscated with all his other stuff by the Gold Bloc soldiers who'd captured him. They might not've been the healthiest thing to eat, but that simple treat would've done miracles to lift their spirits. Although truth be told, with the constant strain on their muscles he should've been wishing for some of Lewis's protein powder and homemade jerky, if anything.

With that in mind he kept his eyes open for anything he could bring down with his AK-47 to add a bit of meat to the nightly pot. He hadn't found any yet, but he kept up hope. They also searched for any plants worth foraging, using some of their precious energy during breaks to gather anything they found.

That was mostly dandelions and other weeds growing along the roadside. But even those represented something his family could shove in their mouths as they took one painful step after another, and hopefully would provide them with some of the nutrients they weren't getting.

On the fifth day it rained. Not a drizzle or a shower, but one of those infrequent thunderstorms that tore across the plains in a fury of sheet lightning and rain approaching like a gray curtain. They saw it coming for over an hour from the northwest and plodded in that general direction, trying to make the most of the time they had before they'd have to seek cover.

There was no way they could continue in that weather, no matter how determined they were. And deep down they were all a bit grateful at the chance to rest for some excuse other than because they didn't have the strength to continue.

The deceptively slow approach of the storm caught them by surprise when it finally came sweeping in, with barely a flurry before they were caught in the drenching downpour. With few other options they crawled under the low bottoms of the handcarts, grateful for the tarps that protected their possessions.

For the next few hours Trev huddled with his siblings and parents in the crowded space, soaked by the constant stream of chilly water that flowed along the road beneath him. Beyond the bottom of the handcart the sky was dark as twilight, lit almost continuously by flashes of lightning. They'd stopped along a part of the road where it dipped down lower than the surrounding area, and a stand of trees grew along a ditch with a stream not far away, but he was still worried about the cart being struck by one of those bolts.

With water flowing on the ground beneath them a strike would be extremely dangerous, but when Trev looked out at the fury of the storm he couldn't bring himself to go out in it to find a better solution. It was probably a bad judgment call, but he didn't remember ever seeing or hearing about lightning striking a car, and anyway he was so exhausted even that danger seemed distant. Nobody else brought it up, either.

He was tired enough that even in the awful conditions he ended up falling asleep a few times, usually woken by a particularly close crack of thunder. In the end he actually slept right through the tail end of the storm, as the front continued on to the southeast with its sheets of rain a gray fog in the distance lit by lightning arcing through the clouds overhead.

His mom shook him awake, and with a soft groan Trev pulled himself out from under the cart and helped the rest of his family slide out as well. Then they continued on, wet, chilled, bone weary, and thoroughly miserable. They camped early that night, when they reached a fairly dense stand of trees where they could scrounge for mostly dry deadfall.

The fire they lit was small and well concealed, but they all clustered around it gratefully to dry their clothes and warm themselves up. Then, depressed by the weather and the lack of progress they'd made, they crawled miserably into crude shelters built with tarps hung over twine stretching between tree trunks to sleep.

On the sixth day after leaving Newtown they heard the noise of approaching engines.

* * * * *

At first Trev didn't recognize the sound as mechanical.

Absorbed in the grim task of pulling his cart with Linda beside him and Jim pushing from behind, his thoughts were on the lunch break an hour or an eternity away, depending on perspective. He wasn't sure if he looked forward to the same unpalatable meal or not.

He gradually became aware of the noise as a low, angry rumble in the distance to the east, and thought it was a last rolling wave of thunder from the storm that had hit them yesterday. The sound was too big to be a single engine, which was what threw him off.

As the rumble continued, far beyond even an extended wave of thunderclaps and far too constant, Trev finally focused on it completely. Only then did he pick up the slight mechanical tone in the rumble, and he felt himself stiffening.

It was the familiar noise of the interstate back when cars had still driven on it. The sound of dozens, perhaps hundreds, of approaching vehicles.

He stopped dead, holding up a hand. “Listen!”

His dad must've recognized it at about the same time, because rather than stopping he motioned sharply to Lucas and Mary and began pulling the wagon off the side of the road towards the only nearby source of cover. It was barely more than a low swell of hill overlooking the highway about twenty yards away, but it would have to do. Looking a bit confused, his mom and aunt began pulling their wagons that way too.

Trev quickly started again, throwing his weight against the ponderous load of the handcart to get it moving before he could begin turning it to follow the others. “What is it?” Jim asked from behind. Trev couldn't see his face but his brother sounded frightened.

“Engines,” Lucas answered grimly. He'd finally recognized it as well. “Lots and lots of engines.” He didn't say the obvious, but from the silence that fell over the group and the urgency they all showed in pulling the carts and wagons over the bumpy terrain everyone must've reached the same conclusion.

That many vehicles coming from the east could only mean Gold Bloc troops.

Trev felt like a snail racing a cheetah as he heaved on the cart with all his might, his back to the rumble of engines growing louder with every second. For a frantic moment the left wheel got stuck on a half-buried rock, and it felt like minutes rather than seconds that it took to shove the cart back and turn it enough to go around the obstruction.

Up ahead the other cart made it behind the hill and out of sight in a small hollow, and moments later his dad and uncle came charging back to help with their cart. Meanwhile Mary ran to help her mom pull her wagon, while Jim left everyone else with the cart to help their mom with the other one.

Within another minute they got the cart concealed beside the first one, and everyone hunkered down behind them. Trev noticed that, even though it was ludicrous to think the approaching vehicles had any chance of hearing them, most of his family were still doing their best to quiet their breathing. All except Mary, who he could hear humming a brave tune with a quavering voice over the sounds of the engines getting closer.

Not that he blamed the others: his last sight before ducking behind cover had been of a seemingly endless line of specks coming along the road in the distance. Even from that far away he could tell by the shape and coloring of the vehicles that it was a military convoy, with dozens of olive green or camouflaged trucks and humvees escorting two dozen or so semis in the middle. He wasn't sure, but almost back beyond sight some of the last specks in line might've been tanks. All in all he guessed there were a hundred or more vehicles in the convoy.

Together they waited for what seemed like an eternity as the rumbling engines got louder and louder, until they could feel the vibration of so many wheels on pavement in the ground beneath them and the noise was loud enough to make their teeth rattle. Due to the shape of the hollow they were in they could see down the road to the west while being concealed from the east. Because of that they saw when the first vehicles passed them and continued on down the highway without slowing.

Lucas stiffened. “Those are ours!”

Trev nodded. He'd hoped as much with that brief glimpse, even from a distance, but now it was clear: the convoy was definitely US military. He didn't see any sign of FETF markings stenciled on any of the vehicles, which suggested that the purpose of the convoy was combat, not relief efforts. Although the six semis hauling boxy trailers and the twenty or so hauling fuel tank trailers suggested their purpose might be resupply.

“They could've been captured by Gold Bloc forces,” his dad argued.

Trev shook his head. A few of the troop transport trucks had folded back the canvas tarps normally covering the back, giving him a view of soldiers wearing the familiar standard issue uniforms riding inside. “They look US.”

“Which doesn't change much,” his uncle said. “Either way we keep hidden.”

That was something Trev could agree with. They had no reason to distrust the US military, and it was even possible they might receive some help. But at the same time they'd already lost so much and were barely hanging on with what they had. Not to mention they'd had bad outcomes before with people they otherwise should've been able to trust. Why risk that on the chance they might get a friendly wave from some passing soldiers?

It turned out the choice was taken out of their hands. From the other side of the rise they heard the crunch of tires on gravel as one of the vehicles pulled off the road, followed by a voice shouting orders at a volume raised over the noise of the vehicles continuing to pass them by.

Trev risked ducking around the cart and scrambling the few feet up the rise to peek over, and felt a sick feeling of dread in his gut when he saw one of the troop transport trucks parked there. The soldiers in the back had hopped down and were fanning out towards where he and his family were hiding, weapons at the ready.

“Come on out!” the noncom officer at point position bellowed. “We saw you bolt for cover, we know you're there!”

Trev ducked back down, biting back a curse. With no other obvious options available he unslung his AK-47 and set it aside. Then, motioning to his family to stay still, he reluctantly stood with his hands raised high.

A dozen weapons immediately turned his way, and Trev swallowed hard and did his best to keep his voice steady as he shouted over the racket of vehicles passing on the road. “We aren't looking for trouble. We're just trying to get home.”

He thought a few of the soldiers might have lowered their weapons slightly, looking relieved, but the officer's tone stayed sharp. “I need to ask everyone in your group to come out where we can see you, so we know you're not a threat. Don't worry, none of us want to hurt American citizens. This is just protocol . . . can't be too careful these days.”

The rest of his family began popping up, starting with Mary and followed soon after by Jim. Linda followed her brother up, looking exasperated at his recklessness, and Trev's parents and aunt and uncle quickly stood as well, after his dad and Lucas had taken a moment to set aside their own rifles.

At the sight of women and children the soldiers relaxed further, and all lowered their weapons. The officer finally lost a bit of his hard edge, nodding slightly at the group in general and ambling towards them so he wouldn't have to shout so loud. “All right, how about we chat until the convoy's well past?” To punctuate his words he gestured curtly, and a soldier behind him talked into some sort of radio headset to report in.