Graham's Resolution Trilogy Bundle: Books 1-3 (53 page)

As daylight broke, Graham inched away from Tala on the single bed they’d somehow managed to share during the night. He gazed down at her sleeping peacefully, knowing the child she carried was their creation. He marveled at the mercies he had somehow managed to attain when so many had lost everything.

As he hobbled on his one good leg while buttoning his shirt for the day, he looked around at the growing residents of Graham’s camp. They were over capacity now, and he wanted to check on the two that were on his mind the most: Addy and Ennis.

After he made his way over to the living room and checked the child’s forehead for fever, he stood shaking his head. Her little lungs labored and it seemed she would only become closer to losing the battle as the day went on. Graham thought she might have two, maybe three days left. He couldn’t help but gauge these things after having cared for so many before and losing those he loved. Her one free hand lay open; even while she fought for breath, she looked like a small, accepting angel.

Sam, of course, held her other hand tucked in his larger one as he slept by her. His other hand held that of the little boy who had pulled her from an icy death, only to suffer the guilt of sealing her fate through his heroism.

The whole situation sucked, and Graham suspected that when the girl passed, Bang would need saving too. Graham rubbed the boy’s head lightly and went to see his old friend Ennis, who’d wandered into the living room and sat in his chair at some point during the night. Graham placed another log gingerly into the woodstove, like so many times before, to keep the old man warm. Ennis had an arrow lying in his lap, whittled down straight with his pocketknife in his hands, and his eyes were closed.

Two days later, Graham nudged Sam. “Sam. Sam. It’s my turn to watch over her. You go get some real sleep.” Sam had only left Addy’s side once between coffee refills.

“No, no. I’m not leaving her.”

“You’re exhausted. Please, go lie down on my bunk just for an hour or two. I swear I’ll wake you up if anything changes,” Graham promised.

“No.” Exhaustion slurred Sam’s words. “I’ll stay’n sleep ’side her. You . . . keep watch. Okay?”

Graham conceded, and brought him a pillow and blanket so Sam might at least fall asleep in a little more comfort. Graham eased himself into a nearby chair with the aid of a cane Ennis had fashioned from a sturdy branch.

Now they held vigil together over the dying child. It had been touch and go many times. They’d even put tubes down her throat to keep her airway open. Clarisse had been back and forth each day, with McCann escorting her on horseback. They’d brought one of the bunks into the living room for Addy, pushing furniture aside to make room.

Clarisse said that while Addy’s treacherous fever had begun to come down, she’d slipped into some kind of coma. As she tried to explain it to them, Addy’s body had been ravaged by the virus, and Clarisse theorized that the vaccine, and whatever immunity she might have inherited from Sam, could be waging a war inside her. It would take a toll, though in what form was anyone’s guess. At worst, Clarisse explained through tears, Addy might sustain severe brain damage. At best, she would have a very long recovery and, possibly, come through physically crippled. Only time would tell.

~ ~ ~

The night before, Graham had finally managed to get Clarisse to take a break, and McCann had taken her back to Dalton. She was so tired when they arrived, she hadn’t the energy to move. Dalton met McCann at the river bend and slid Clarisse’s nearly unconscious form into his own arms. Then, instead of taking her to her tent, he’d carried her into his new quarters where he laid her down on his own bed so he could at least keep her safe in her sleep. He’d lost interest in what the others in camp might think of the arrangement.

The prepper camp was back to functioning fully after Reuben and Rick had retrieved the contingency supply trucks and set everything up again. They buried their dead and, after the loss of their spring seedlings, were scrambling to start fresh as the snow finally began to melt and it was clear spring was setting in.

Somehow Graham had fallen asleep in his vigil during the night. Ennis sat in the opposite chair sleeping while he held the little girl’s hand. Graham grunted as he got up and went to the window, opening the curtains. The room was bathed in a spring sunrise, and it lessened the sense of doom they’d all been under for so long.

He stared out the open window as the birds chirped and sang their songs while flitting between the trees. He glanced behind him at Addy, whose labored breathing he didn’t hear any longer.

“Oh, no,” he whispered with sudden dread. He went to her side, afraid to touch her again. He reached out his hand once and stopped, then decided he had to know. He touched her neck and felt warmth. She fluttered her eyes open, and the sweetest thing Graham had ever witnessed happened before him. She smiled.

“Sam! Sam, wake up!” Graham bumped his sleeping form but refused to take his eyes off Addy.

“What?” Sam said, jerking up, eyes wide with apprehension.

Graham nodded his head toward the child. “Someone wants to see you.”

Sam leapt to her side. “Addy? Baby?” Sam whispered hoarsely.

“Daddy!” Addy said.

Sam dissolved into tearful gratitude.

Soon laughter and cheers rang throughout the cabin. Tala and the others ran into the living room to finally witness some small victory over the China Pandemic.

While jubilation held everyone in its joyful thrall, Graham noticed an odd stillness in Ennis’s body. He made his way around Addy’s bed and lowered himself beside the old man’s chair. “Ennis,” he said. “Oh, Ennis.”

Macy noticed. She gasped, “Oh no!” and joined him.

Graham didn’t have to check Ennis’s pulse. He knew the peaceful look of death, but he picked up Ennis’s wrist to be sure. “Damn, Ennis, you didn’t even say good-bye.” Graham cried and held the old man’s body to him. Graham couldn’t hold back the sob rising high in his chest, emerging on a harsh utterance of the old man’s name.

Macy moaned, “No! Not yet!”

One month later, spring bloomed in full. The welcome sun shone and wildflowers blossomed. Though it was still cold enough for jackets, the members of Graham’s camp shed their winter coats to make the journey across the new footbridge built over the Skagit River into prepper territory.

Dalton and Clarisse, who no longer wore their biohazard suits, greeted them. “Hey, I never thought this would happen. Did you?” Graham asked as he shook Dalton’s bare hand. “You’re sure it’s okay?”

“Yes, yes,” Clarisse responded to the question. “I’ve tested everyone twice. We’re no longer susceptible to the virus.” She held out her arms when she saw Addy coming across the bridge.

Addy broke into a run when she caught sight of her. Clarisse hugged her tightly and, when she pulled away, finally she smiled at the girl and held up her hand to sign,
i love you
, then touched the top of Addy’s nose, making her smile. Addy signed the sentiment back, her little fingers forming the words. She’d survived the virus, but without her hearing, which everyone thought a small price to pay for her life. Clarisse had given them some hope that the hearing might return someday, but they had all begun to learn sign language anyway.

Tala presented the wagon full of vegetable starts that Bang had pulled the long distance for them. It was their gift to the preppers who had lost their starts in the fire, along with precious lives.

“Thank you,” Dalton said.

Mark made his way through the crowd to greet his cousin. Dalton hugged him for the first time since before the China Pandemic had hit. Mark was nearly as tall, and he was filling in fast and would pass Dalton up soon.

Bang hung back, shyly, and Graham pulled him along using the excuse he needed assistance with his cane. Macy pulled McCann along, because he still wasn’t terribly trusting of these new people and wanted to have a running start and enough time to get Macy out of there fast if the need arose.

The whole group stood and talked with Dalton and Clarisse for a few minutes before Dalton began to lead the way to their camp where an enticing aroma awaited them. Sam held a backpack over his shoulder because this would be a one-way trip for him and Addy, though they were always welcome at Graham’s camp. Sam wanted Addy to be able to visit with Clarisse whenever she wanted to; their relationship had become one of mother and daughter, and Sam was grateful for that. He would never deny his daughter a chance at a second mother, especially one who had risked her own life to save Addy’s.

Once they reached the inner compound, they were greeted by the entire prepper community. Rick held out his arms and yelled, “Twin Two!”

“Macy!” she huffed, and walked over to him to shake his hand, but he would not have it. He hugged her instead, and she shook her head with an embarrassed grin. Tala had made a cake, a rare treat for the twins’ sixteenth birthday.

After their celebratory meal of barbecue turkey and dressing made with wild green onions and canned yams, sans the marshmallows, they sang “Happy Birthday” to the twins and toasted their many achievements, which were great, and paid homage to their lost ones, those they would always remember.

Together, the twins cut the cake into over thirty tiny portions.

It was the best cake any of them could ever remember.

~ ~ ~

~ ~ ~

Dutch felt eyes upon them and could almost smell the mares’ fear; the wild dogs had tracked them through the night. After the long march across the state to silently escape from the invaders, to be exposed now by dogs seemed cruel, even for fate.

He raised his hand slowly to signal the driver of the truck behind him to stop, then clenched his fist to have her cut the engine. While he held the reins a whisper’s breath away from the hide of the mares pulling the wagon, Dutch slid his Remington 870 shotgun across his lap with slow stealth. In anticipation of the wild beasts, he had loaded it earlier with a combo load of two number 1 buckshot, followed by two double-ought and then two slugs, for a total of six shots. Practice taught him that loading his weapon in this way allowed extra insurance in case something just kept coming at him. If that did not work, he had other options at his disposal and within reach.

Intent on hearing even the faintest of danger signs, he leaned forward on the bench seat of the wagon and tilted his head to the best angle. Shutting his eyes in concentration furthered the conscious effort. He had ridden without care before the dark descended; the wild dogs’ howling had already warned him of their carnivorous intentions come nightfall. Their glowing eyes shone through the darkening forest at regular intervals as the day lengthened into dusk.

The time to start a fire and make camp had passed, and the steady cadence of the five-ton US Army truck and trailer, loaded down with provisions, rang out as it trailed the little convoy to the outskirts of Cascade. The provisions were intended for a new homestead, Dutch’s mission now. He led in a wagon burdened much like the truck. Two lineback horses who were acutely aware of the present danger pulled the wagon.

The young woman driving the truck behind him had come in handy, but if it had not been for the need to drive both vehicles, Dutch would have kicked her out near the Coulee Dam on State Route 20. He was not only afraid of being tracked by the invaders but also grew worried that he was beginning to feel responsible for the safety of the woman who was a mere child in age compared to him. In his mind, the liability she posed could mean the death of both of them, and he wanted no charges now or ever again.

He planned to send her away at his earliest convenience.
She’ll have to take care of herself
, Dutch kept telling the nagging voice deep within his mind. At almost fifty years of age, she appeared to be in her early twenties and needed no protector, especially not someone like him who was nearly fifty. Babysitting a whiny twenty-something—particularly in a survival situation—held not a shred of appeal to him.

Not that she was whiny, really; on the contrary, she irritated him because she did not talk. Hell, from the moment they’d met around Saint Maries, south of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, four days earlier, she’d nearly driven him mad with her silence. Unfortunately, he had little choice but to let her tag along, since he had not run across another living soul all the way here. She was a good worker, he’d give her that. He would allow her to stick around for a few more days until she got her bearings, and he hoped that the current residents of Cascade would take her in after he warned them of the coming danger. He intended to fill a backpack for her, give her one of the mares tied to the back of the wagon for payment, and send her on her way.

The real reason he had dared take her along at all was that he knew the reality if he’d left her behind: she would have succumbed to the invaders. Since they had already entered the country, he suspected they would, by now, be hunting along Interstate 90 and taking inventory of their newly conquered land.

The invaders had simple rules, really—either join their ranks or die. They didn’t bother wasting ammunition; they did the deed with brutal sincerity, using their bare hands or the blade of hatchet, knife, or sword. To kill this way was their animalistic preference. It was the same way they handled things in their own countries. Ammo they saved for hunting; slaughtering by blade was their choice for infidels and nonbelievers. They were the boots on the ground . . . only this time, it was American soil they tread upon.

China was merely the provider of the weapon, and double-crossing China wasn’t difficult for them. The Chinese had the weaponized version of the virus under coolant in their labs already, so it was merely a matter of money and information to complete the exchange. What China didn’t take into consideration was the need to deflect blame. Purposely exposing the Chinese for developing the virus was only fitting; it ensured that the world saw them as the only possible culprit in the death of hundreds of thousands.

Invasion was phase 3 in an elaborate five-step world domination plan for jihad. First they implemented the H5N1 virus by weaponizing it via several self-sacrificing subjects; once virulent with the deadly strain, they boarded airplanes with circulating air systems, thus making each passenger also contagious. The unsuspecting couriers then returned to their colonies to die and, in doing so, achieved genocide by spreading the virus exponentially.

Second, they waited and let the hand of death take its toll. While manipulating their own statistics to reflect a higher mortality rate than they suffered was the easiest of deceptions, the sacrifice of thousands of their own for jihad prevailed as imperative. However they committed the deed, it was essential that they use hate in any form to wipe out most of humankind—no offense was too vile, no taboo ruled out, nothing considered sacred.

Since the infiltration took place early on, Europe fell easily and was destroyed from within. Now, all that remained of the United States would soon be dominated as well. Jihad was a long-term plan. With the first steps implemented, they were gleeful with the results so far—America, as it had been, was no more.

Dutch had been on his second tour in Iraq when an improvised explosive device took out his lower left leg, right below the knee. That was it for him. Throughout his recovery and remarkable transition to prosthetic use, he had tried to convince his supervisor that he was in even better shape than before. Rules were rules, however, and section 313 of the army regulations had clearly put him in the discharge column. After a long recovery, he’d packed up his gear and headed back to the States.

After making his way to his father’s abandoned ranch south of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, he threw himself into farming and ranching with every shred of intensity he had used in war. He had no other real options. He’d never married, and his parents had passed only one year before his injury. He was happy it had happened this way; he wasn’t sure if his mother could have taken it. His father, on the other hand, would have expected him to stand until the end.

His brother Clive lived in California. He’d called Dutch twice when the pandemic hit hard. The first call was to say that his wife had the virus, and the next call brought the news that their daughter had passed right after her. Dutch was not surprised to hear him say he was going to take his own life right after he hung up the phone, and he did not try to stop Clive. He couldn’t blame him. What was there left to live for? He said only, “I love you, brother,” before the call ended.

Dutch had heard this same sad story all over the country, and he waited to catch the inevitable virus. He welcomed its presence; he even went out to a couple of local bars—after nearly killing himself working on the ranch—in anticipation of contracting the damned thing, but it just never took hold in him. He woke up with the sniffles once and thought,
Okay, here it comes
, but in a few days they cleared up. In time he found himself, well . . . disappointed.

Dutch helped his neighbors and took care of their livestock when he could. Then they began to die off, one by one, until one day he realized he was the only one driving through town. He went around to the deceased farmers’ spreads and let loose their livestock: cattle, horses, donkeys, pigs, sheep, goats, and chickens. He just opened the gates and watched them roam away, tentative at first but free to graze along with the mule deer and roaming elk herds. No one else was coming to care for them, so he figured it was his duty to let them go rather than to let them starve in their stables; at least they stood a chance at adapting to the wild side of life, rather than die outright of starvation.

Then he started listening in on radio transmissions for any traffic coming or going. He hadn’t heard much until a few months ago. The first intelligent noise he heard was a Morse code transmission on the high-frequency band coming from the northeastern area of Washington state. At first he thought it was an automatic repeater beacon someone had never taken the time to turn off. Dutch was a bit rusty on translation, and it took him a while, but when he finally figured out the dits and dahs, it came as a shock to find there were more survivors out there.

He wanted to make contact, but didn’t trust anyone out there just yet. He waited, leaving the option open for later. Then Dutch began overhearing transmissions of a different kind, and that set his mind reeling. He wasn’t as thrilled about this new discovery. It was a voice transmission in a language he’d only run into in faraway war-torn lands where bombs lay hidden and even women and children were suspect because they, too, might kill you.

After a few days of increased activity Dutch’s mind began connecting the dots. Could this whole thing have been a planned attack? There were no other inferences to make. The conspiracy theorists had been right all along. At first it had been only a suspicion that the virus was weaponized; now he was sure those suspicions were founded on truth.

Dutch rarely spoke aloud in his lone residence unless it was to his two dogs. When the reality sunk in about what the overheard transmissions meant, he said to the empty room, “You couldn’t fight us man to man . . . you goddamn cowards.”

After monitoring the Morse-encrypted transmissions for a few more weeks, Dutch realized that the worst of his fears had come true: an invasion of the United States was in progress. They had already sent several teams ahead to secure major cities. Hell, they were already here during the virus phase, just lying in wait and hiding in the shadows. Dutch knew they must have had some kind of vaccine available to them, or they wouldn’t take the risk.

Then, after a few more weeks, the enemy moved north of him by dark of night. They were traveling the interstate highways in long, raucous convoys and clearing communities of survivors. He mounted a reconnaissance strategy to scope them out on horseback before making plans to bypass them and warn the northerners. He couldn’t risk them intercepting a radio transmission from him that would expose his own location. Traveling by horseback wouldn’t be too daunting; he only had to go from Saint Maries to Coeur d’Alene.

During a reconnaissance outing on a dark, cold, spring night, Dutch had heard the ramping up of hostile chatter and then witnessed the death blow as a survivor—another one who couldn’t live with the intruders’ ways—begged for his life; eventually the man put down his weapon and submitted to his own demise by a brutal beating not fit for even the worst of criminals.

That was the same night that Dutch had encountered the redheaded girl dressed in a black burka. She fled through the darkened forest toward him like a scared deer, nearly revealing their position; when he caught her she fought bitterly. He saw the terror and the bruising, and contemplated breaking her neck without delay to put her out of her misery; doing so would have been merciful. Instead, when she became limp in his grasp and opened her frightened light-green eyes to the horrific scene, as if trying to wake from a nightmare, he pulled her backward. Using the night to blanket their retreat, he kept her from uttering a sound until they were miles away.

When he removed his hand from her mouth, she didn’t speak—not even when he asked her name. She only held onto his torso with clenched fists, gradually becoming limper as he guided her away under the cover of darkness.

Dutch didn’t sleep that evening; instead, he packed up his campsite. He loaded his belongings, and then the girl—as though she were one of his possessions. Then, on horseback, they made their way back to his ranch in Saint Maries. She was asleep when they arrived at his cabin just before dawn.

He had pulled her limp, frail body down from Gus, the same lineback horse who was now in the lead of those pulling the wagon. After laying her down in the cabin, the dogs Elsa and Frank began to investigate the stranger; they nudged their wet noses into the flaming red hair that fell over her sleeping face until Dutch gave the hand signal that never failed to correct the well-trained, ex-military Belgian shepherds. Instead of investigating, they guarded her while Dutch took care of the outside chores.

Shortly after dawn the girl had opened her eyes through the sleepy veil and immediately retreated up and away from the canines until her back met the wall. She was terrified of the pair’s gleaming eyes, even though their tongues lolled out of their mouths, forming ridiculous smiles for such supposedly fearsome creatures.

Dutch couldn’t help himself, and he chuckled as both dogs eyed her curious behavior. As she spun in his direction, he caught her wild look —one that meant to murder him in cold blood if possible.

“Hey now,” Dutch said in reproach while he signaled with one hand for the shepherds to lie down. As they moved away, so did the girl’s deadly stare, and Dutch watched as her attention fought to seek which was the greater threat in her view.

“No one’s going to hurt you.” He paused, and then added, “Unless you try to kill me; then, forget it.”