Authors: Algor X. Dennison
Inside the house, Carrie found DJ messing with some cables. “The antenna’s up,” she said. “Let’s connect the radio and see if we can get anything now.”
“
Okay,” he said, getting to his feet and hobbling to the kitchen with one crutch. “Can you feed the wire in through that hole we drilled?”
“
Already did,” Carrie replied. Together they connected the radio to the new antenna, and scanned through the frequencies they’d heard noise on earlier.
After ten minutes, DJ gave up. “We’ve got to get those additional antennas up on the ridges,” he said. “We’re just not getting out of this valley. I wish Darren were here. He’s our real comms expert. I’m just going off of what I learned from him, and from the internet back when it still existed. I got my ham license, but I don’t know a ton about how to track down other people that aren’t readily showing up on the freqs we expect.” He sat back and whacked the wall with his crutch in frustration. “It worked when I was up here a couple years ago, but I guess conditions have changed. Or else...”
Carrie looked at him. “Or else what?”
“
Or, nobody’s out there to answer. Nobody with a working radio for a thousand miles.”
“
That’s impossible. There has to be somebody. You told me there were hundreds of thousands of ham radio guys.”
“
Yeah. There were.”
“
I’m going to keep trying. There has to be somebody that had their equipment protected besides us.”
DJ left her to it and went back to his cabling, preparing the other antennas that would boost their reach.
On top of the radio project, Carrie had been spending her free time exploring the area with Stephanie, scouting the mountains and neighboring valleys for signs of other people and animals. They had been on several long walks together, which had the benefits of turning them into good friends and learning the terrain around their ranch.
The deer population seemed healthy enough, and there were plenty of fish in the streams and lakes. They had enjoyed a meal the previous night of fresh-caught trout. A bear or cougar had wandered down to investigate the horses until Gordo went out and scared it off.
There were a few neighbors within a day’s walk besides the Hendricksons. One was a bit of a mountain man himself and had a trap line up a nearby creek. Another had been a pastor before retiring to his cabin with his elderly wife, and when they spoke with him he expressed an interest in getting a small group together on Sundays for worship services. Another couple lived with their teenage son and daughter ten miles away. Stephanie was glad to know she wasn’t the only youngster in the region.
Today she had gone on a “scout patrol” by herself, since Carrie was working on the radio. When she returned just before dinner, she was hanging onto the back of a dune buggy, driven by two men.
The others heard the noise of an engine coming several minutes before it arrived. McLean, JD, and Gordo took up rifle positions while the others secured the house. Through his binoculars, McLean identified the drivers of the dune buggy, and told the others to stand down. Stephanie was bringing two more members of their group, Ron Hodges and Brad Edersheim.
The dune buggy pulled up in front of the house in a cloud of dust, and Ron killed its engine. It was a large, rugged contraption with roll bars over the top and a pile of cargo strapped to the rear. Stephanie leaped off and danced around, thrilled to have found a vehicle that still ran. Her father had been tinkering with McLean’s tractor, but needed replacement parts to get it going.
“
Hey, guys!” Ron bellowed. He was a lean man with a perpetual beard-ballcap-sunglasses ensemble, and had been a military man for most of his life. The dune buggy was his. “So the place hasn’t burned down yet, huh?”
McLean shook his hand, and JD patted him on the back. “Everything’s been quiet here, Ron. Good to see you, Brad. We can put
you
to work right away!”
Brad was a hefty man who wore tan coveralls. He grinned and pointed to a large toolbag in the back of the vehicle. “Just point me to whatever needs fixing.” Brad was a mechanic with a variety of useful skills who had joined the group relatively recently.
“
What took you guys so long?” DJ asked after everybody had greeted the newcomers and introduced them to Carrie.
Ron shrugged. “Well, I got into a little fight. And then I got involved with some National Guard guys that were trying to go toe to toe with the terrorists. They got into a pissing match and ended up retreating to the highway and just cordoning off the valley. So after a couple weeks of that I finally decided to load up and get out. Halfway here I found this dude hiking along the road.”
Brad nodded. “I actually left the day after it all went down, but I decided to go by my brother’s place in Parker to see how he and his family were faring. I stayed with them for several days and then lit out for the forest, but alone and on foot it was slow going. I had to circle wide around the city to avoid the army, and I actually had to backtrack for three miles at one point to avoid a roadblock on the highway. Finally Ron found me and I was grateful for the ride, let me tell ya.”
Ron got a sober look on his face. “Things are ugly down there, you guys. I don’t know how long you all have been up here, but this is way worse than we ever planned for. The city’s still in chaos, and the army was at a dead standstill when we left.
“
I don’t know where those badguys came from or what they think they’re going to accomplish. Seems like nobody knows. But with the grid down and the government cut off, there’s no telling when the military is going to be able to get into the city. It’s like the terrorists have recruited every thug and lowlife in Denver. The civilians are living in fear, and it only takes one of those guys in black with a rifle to come by and everybody cowers. They just shoot anybody that stands up to them, and even the biggest neighborhood groups are falling apart now that water and ammunition are running low.”
He walked over to the back of the dune buggy and opened up a large wooden chest. “Tell you what, though. If they come our way, we’ll be all right. Check this out.”
The others gathered around and peered into the chest. It was full of 5.56mm ammunition boxes, and two bundles of M-16 rifles were wrapped in canvas near it. There was even a small case of hand grenades.
“
Whoa. Where did this come from?” JD asked.
“
The armory. What was left of it when I got there, anyway.”
McLean whistled. “These aren’t going to be traced back to us, are they?”
Ron shook his head. “Nobody left to trace ‘em. And for another thing, the entire building they were in burned down. Not my doing; I just rescued ‘em before they got cooked. There was a lot of other good stuff in there that I didn’t have time to get. But no, nobody’s going to trace them. They’re ours now.”
The two recent arrivals were welcomed inside to rest while the others put away the dune buggy and gear they had brought. Ron assured everyone that they hadn’t been followed. A few people had tried to stop him en route, but he’d blown past them in the dune buggy without any pursuers. Nevertheless, he wanted to get right to work setting up a sturdier perimeter with observation posts and concentric rings of defenses around the ranch.
The group’s ranks were finally filling out, and their capabilities increased to the levels needed to support long-term survival in the mountains. With ten people and a skillset that ranged from medical to farming to machinery and tactics, they were now a force to be reckoned with. The morale of the group began to rise with their prospects, and their thoughts began to turn outward toward the people and places they’d left behind.
Chapter 3 : Taking Off
The men were all hard at work on the house extension, the garden (which was now more of a tiny farm, with multiple fields spanning an acre and a half), and the security features Ron had master-minded. DJ, now off his crutches but still in a splint-stiffened boot, was helping Ron with some barbed wire. Maria was weeding, Stephanie was spraying the goats for flies.
Carrie finished a few chores around the house and yard, helped Maria for a while, and stood around looking for a way to be useful in the construction work. But after a while she got impatient.
She knew by experience that if she wasn’t busy when lunchtime rolled around, someone would ask her to fix the meal for the group. Not because she was good at it (she wasn’t) or because she was expected to be everyone’s mom (the men took turns too), but it just made more sense for those that were hard at work on important projects to keep going. Carrie didn’t mind at first, but after several weeks of picking up the slack here and there, she was starting to feel like a cabin boy. She knew she was welcome, of course, and well-liked. But she wasn’t part of their pre-arranged plans and roles, and it was frustrating to watch the others happily going about their business when she didn’t have any real business she could own.
So she went inside and dressed in a heavier pair of pants, a jacket, and buckled on her Beretta. She put water and dried fruit in a backpack along with some matches, some extra clothing, a large pocket knife, and one of the hand-held radios. She spent a few minutes studying a map of the area and then stuffed it in the pack as well. Then she went back out to the construction site on the side of the house.
“
I’m going to Crested Butte,” she remarked loudly. DJ was the only one who heard her over the noise of JD’s hammering and singing, so she shouted it louder. “I’m going to Crested Butte. I’ll be back by nightfall.”
That got everyone’s attention, and the singing stopped. McLean stared back at her, saw in hand. “Why? What do you need to go there for?”
“
We still haven’t been able to raise a soul on the radio,” Carrie said. “I want to know what other people are doing. DJ and I have been planning ways to get some information, and Crested Butte is the nearest place where news might have spread. Even if nobody there knows anything, it will still be important for us to find out who’s living there and what they’re up to. In case we need to trade or help each other out.”
McLean put down his saw and stepped over a pile of lumber. “That’s true. But it could be dangerous, you can’t just go traipsing into town. We aren’t ready--”
“
I’m ready,” Carrie explained, “and I’ve thought it through. I’ll stick to the back woods until I get near, then crawl up to a lookout point where I can hide and observe the town for a while. If all’s clear and there are no overt threats, I’ll pick out an outlying home or business where I can talk to somebody one-on-one and get the lowdown. Then I’ll come back, and we can decide to go down as a group later on to trade or talk.”
“
Okay, that’s a pretty good plan,” McLean admitted, “but any number of things could go wrong and you’d have no backup. We’ve got to get this add-on built before snow comes, and--”
“
I’m not asking for backup. I don’t need a babysitter. I’ve done this a couple times, and I’ll be fine.”
“
Not as far as Crested Butte,” McLean pointed out. “Not into a populated area.”
“
I’m not scared of people. And we can’t go on in total ignorance of what’s going on outside this valley.”
Carrie was putting her foot down, and McLean could see the determination in her eyes. No one else was dissenting, and he didn’t want to be the authoritarian. He put up his hands. “Look, you’re a free woman. Free to take risks. But there’s strength in numbers, which you won’t have if you run into trouble. It might be better to wait until a group of us can go.”
Carrie shook her head. “A group would be slower and easier to spot. I marked a route on my map that doesn’t go near any other cabins or roads until just outside of Crested Butte. I’ll be unseen until I choose to talk to someone, and I’ll make sure I’m not followed back.”
McLean shrugged. “Okay. Copy the route onto the map on the kitchen wall, will you? So we know where to come looking for you?”
Carrie nodded. “Sure thing. But I promise you won’t have to.”
When Carrie got back from marking the other map, the others were all back at work. McLean came over and hefted her pack.
“
You have everything you need?” he asked.
“
Yes, I do. Like I said, I’ll be back before nightfall. Or not long after.”
“
Unless you break a leg.”
“
I’m not going to be rock-climbing,” Carrie complained. “Remember, it was me that got DJ patched up when he sprained his ankle. I can take care of myself, McLean.”
McLean hugged her fiercely, and Carrie hugged him back after getting over her surprise.
“
I know you can,” he said. “I just… I want you to come back safe. Promise me you’ll turn back if you see any danger.”
Carrie looked up at the tall man, now sporting the cowboy hat he always wore around the ranch. “If there’s anything
I can’t handle
, I will,” she said, making it clear in her tone that she couldn’t imagine anything of the kind.
“
Carrie!” McLean warned, raising his eyebrows. “Listen to me. This is not a recreational day-hike. There are dangerous people out there, and there aren’t any forest rangers or helicopters any more. If you get lost, injured, attacked--”