Buried Flames (6 page)

“Hand them over,” Brenna demanded as she confronted him. “I’m giving you what you want, Mason. I have no idea why you came back when you care for no one other than yourself, but all you did was waste what little precious time you keep going on and on about. You think I don’t understand how important it is to clear out of here? I do, but I wasn’t about to let my livestock suffer when I had the ability to give them a chance at some kind of relief. So guess what? We
can
go our own separate ways.”

“Get in the truck, Brenna.”

She must have heard him wrong, because she was telling him he could leave with no hard feelings. She studied his face, which showed absolutely no emotion at all. It was as if he’d flipped a switch and shut himself off from humanity. It was actually rather unnerving, but she still reached for her keys. He only held them up higher.

“How did you even know I was still here?”

There it was. A flicker of…something…in Mason’s dark eyes. It was gone as quick as it had appeared. Brenna regarded him warily, still not willing to just get in his truck and drive right into the wall of ash headed their way. They stood a better chance going east.

“I called Beau. He said you weren’t with them, so I’d assumed you had some kind of accident.”

It didn’t take a genius to figure out that Mason wasn’t happy that Brenna had stayed behind, but it did give her the opening she was hoping for.

“Have you decided to join us going east?” Brenna asked cautiously, watching Mason closely for any sign to the contrary. They could all make it farther with him traveling in the group. “Even the livestock know which direction we should go and now that you’re running behind—”

“Running behind?” The threatening undertone of Mason’s voice told Brenna all she needed to know. He was livid that he’d chosen to come back here for her…and yet he had. His actions spoke volumes, but his next words cancelled out any optimism she’d had that he’d take the safer route. “We are three hours closer to being buried in ash, Brenna. That’s not
running behind
, that’s downright asking for a slow death you brought up earlier. You have no idea what it’s like out there. The main roads are all but impassable right now. With all the cities and towns you need to pass through? Nothing but riots and chaos. The people you’ll encounter? They’re terrified. Do you know what desperate people do? They’re willing to do whatever it takes to survive. It’s everyone for themselves and you’ve gone and made yourself a target instead of doing what I told you to do, which was stay with the group. You’re coming with me, Brenna, because as little odds as we have in making it to Washington…you don’t stand a chance making it to the East Coast now.”

Brenna was relating to the terror everyone else was experiencing as her stomach lurched and her heart rate accelerated to the point her chest hurt with every rapid thud against her ribcage. The picture he painted was grim and was about to be thrust into the carnage described in the Bible at the end of times. There was no talking Mason into taking the easy route, but then again, there
wasn’t
a simple passage available anymore. She wasn’t ready to die…she wasn’t. And that left her no choice but to join him.

Brenna had to lick her lips a couple of times before she was able to whistle. The loud noise resonated in the air since no sound had been heard since the eruption. Her call was answered when her companion joined her by her side, giving her some sense of comfort. She wasn’t about to face the apocalypse on her own alone with Mason.

“Fine,” Brenna answered with more courage than she felt. “Help me get some of my supplies into your truck. I’ll come with you, but I’m not leaving Sam behind. You take me…you get him too.”

M
ason spun the
function dial on the PRC-104 HF radio until it clicked into the off position, the cab of the truck filling with heavy silence. He’d chosen a different route instead of the one he’d tried to take earlier, but they’d made little progress. It didn’t matter what roads they took now, it would be slow going until they reached the point where there were no survivors heading west northwest. Worst yet would be the roads headed north.

The last of the panicked, slow-moving groups would have fatalities among them and would pull off to bury their dead. It wasn’t something to look forward to, yet it would mean they were one step closer to their goal of heading northwest to the extreme northeastern corner of Washington State.

Mason cracked his window to relieve some of the tension and pull in the extended whip antenna they used for long haul communications. The dog Brenna insisted on bringing, Sam, immediately shifted to Mason’s side in the back to breathe in the new scents blowing in the open portal. Mason gritted his teeth to prevent himself from saying anything. They’d both already said things they couldn’t take back and the one defining statement Brenna had used kept ricocheting inside of his head—
I feel sorry for you
. If only she knew…

“I can’t get in touch with Beau.” Brenna’s soft voice cut through the air as she gently set her phone next to his in the cup holder. Both were plugged into his USB charger hanging out of the auxiliary power point in the dash. With the phone constantly searching for a stronger signal, they discharged their batteries pretty quick. “Do you think the lines are jammed or do you think communications are totally down?”

Mason didn’t answer right away, not wanting to be drawn into a long, technical conversation. It was bad enough he caved on letting Sam come along when it would have been smarter to let the dog navigate on his own, but now he had to take care of another person when he was about to endure a very tough journey that wasn’t a sure thing for anyone involved. He wasn’t about to give Brenna reassurances he couldn’t back up. He could still feel the weight of her stare, so he finally replied.

“Just look ahead of us, Brenna.”

They were currently headed due west on a gravel road on another attempt to duck traffic using blacktop lanes. Once free of the crowds, they’d catch another secondary road headed north. Mason didn’t want to get too close to Wyoming for fear of what would be in their path. The truck’s FM radio had initially been filled with advisories against heading west toward the blast zone. News anchors repeated stories about the state of Wyoming suffering catastrophic losses numbering in excess of a hundred thousand lives.

Mason considered himself a smart man, but he knew jack shit about volcanoes, let alone a supervolcano. That was Tank’s specialty and he wasn’t here to answer the
Mr. Scientist
questions—like how fast lava flowed or what were the odds of earthquakes or massive aftershocks after something of this magnitude. What Mason did know was that the vast sky in front of them was no longer blue.

“What do you see out there?”

Brenna finally tore her eyes from Mason and glanced out the windshield. The hiss of her quick inhalation said it all. She’d been paying more attention to her phone and trying to reach her friends than she had to her surroundings as they traveled.

“How soon…”

“I don’t know.” Mason finally saw the small four-way stop he’d been looking for. “We’re going to head north for a while, so I figure we have maybe another three hours on our side before we start to see any ash falling. It will start as an occasional flake and become thicker from that point on until we are unable to see out the windshield. The ash will scratch the glass if we over use the wipers and they will only last so long. The radiator will clog with deposits and the truck will eventually overheat or the intake manifold will fill with the stuff and the engine will die when the injectors foul the plugs. Either way, we’ll go as far as this truck can take us.”

Mason continued to drive horizontal to the darkness, where Brenna focused all of her concentration looking west toward the coming front. Another fifteen minutes passed before he saw signs up ahead to indicate that a small Montana town was up ahead. Mason slowed his speed. He wasn’t sure what to expect, but he wasn’t too worried about marauders at this point. His trusty Colt 1911A1 was currently fastened inside his shoulder holster, counterbalanced by two spare clips on his right side. His go-bag on the floor behind his seat had his backup Colt and enough spare magazines to drop an army.

Across the top of Mason’s bag was his M-4 with an EOTech EXPS Holographic Sight with a flap-up G33 3X Magnifier rig for longer-ranged sights. Brenna’s old Winchester .45-70 would only be good for short distance slow fire, but the benefit of that type of rifle was that it carried a large enough round to drop a man-sized target with a single hit anywhere in the torso. It was currently leaning up against the dash by her door.

Brenna’s father’s Blackhawk pistol was strapped to her waist in an old style cowboy holster. Mason wondered if she’d be able to fire a second round out of that monster considering the recoil from the first round would make her entire arm numb.

“We have gasmasks for us to use, but what about the horses?” Brenna’s question caught Mason off guard, especially since he was scanning the area for trouble. “They would have to travel over hundreds of miles in the same ash. Their lungs wouldn’t—”

“I have it covered,” Mason said distractedly, noting the damaged storefronts and the people who were still hanging around and taking items off the ravaged shelves—water, food, clothes, and anything else that wasn’t bolted to the floors. A few men stood on the corner with various items in their hands, their eyes zeroing in on the truck and the hitched horse trailer. Mason pressed on the gas pedal, already going twice the speed limit. “On the floor behind me is a black bag. Inside is a brown holster with a spare Colt .45 that will clip to your belt. Put it on and pocket a few extra magazines.”

“I have my—”

“Don’t argue with me,” Mason cut in, casting a frustrated sideways glance Brenna’s way. “The closer we get to our destination, the more impulsive and dangerous people will become. All it would have taken to stop this truck back there was a few shots to the tires. This truck can’t carry the weight of the trailer behind us on nothing but rims. We both need to be equipped to handle what is thrown our way. Your daddy’s pistol will drive bullets through an engine block, but it will also make you reluctant to shoot again because your arm will be hurting. Use it as a backup or if you need to shoot somebody hiding behind a car or a wall. The Colt is designed to shoot people as many times as you might need to with a devastating effect. It’s a weapon of war and that’s what we’re in right now—a war of survival.”

Mason didn’t need Brenna to say he was being a hard ass. Her blue eyes shining with anger said it all, but at least she did as he asked. She stuffed her cowboy holster under her seat within easy reach. He refused to feel guilty for keeping her safe, so therefore didn’t even look her way as he navigated out of the small town and into the backwoods country of eastern Montana.

They had to cross the entire state of Montana on its northern border, or as close as they could get. Most of the state south of 94 would be impassable or destroyed by the initial blast. He wasn’t going to sugarcoat this for her just because she was a woman. Besides, he was pretty sure she’d resent him if he did.

“This has to stop.” Brenna was back in her seat and clipping the smaller semi-automatic rig to her belt. Mason was grateful for her experience around firearms, not that he would say that aloud. She’d make some smartass remark and they’d start arguing all over again, like she was about to do now. All that mattered was that she’d been around weapons all of her life and that alone might give her a slight edge over someone who hadn’t. “I’m not an inanimate object you don’t have to talk to or one of your horses who listens to every command you rattle off. You brought me along—and don’t you dare say you didn’t have a choice—so start treating me with a little bit of respect like you would one of your teammates.”

Mason reached between them and pulled out the container of toothpicks he always had stashed in the center console. It gave him something to chew on rather than gritting his teeth down and grinding them to stubs in irritation. He recognized he was angrier with himself than he was with her over his decision to return to Harpersfield. It wasn’t as if he had a protagonist complex, so then why the hell had he returned for her anyway? Another mile was under their belt before he spoke.

“I brought a few empty feedbags,” Mason offered, his voice still coming out a little hoarse. It wasn’t as if he talked a lot, but it appeared that was going to change. She was nothing more than a companion though, and he would do well to remember that. “I’ll fill it with wool. I’ll then cut some holes into the end of them, lining it with cheesecloth. It’ll attach to the modified horses’ blinder harnesses, which I fitted with the lens from some old ski goggles I had at the house. It should help the horses to breathe and see in the ash storm without limiting their air intake or vision too much. We’ll have to find cover to feed them, but they should be able to wear the makeshift harnesses for a couple of hours before they need to be cleaned out of accumulated ash.”

“And you brought those items with you?” Brenna asked, her left eyebrow higher than the other. Mason refrained from snapping back a smartass remark. Of course he brought the stuff with him. She’d basically said he had the training needed to survive something like this and then she had the balls to question his preparation. He bit harder into the toothpick. “Don’t do that.”