Last Stand: Patriots (Book 2) (2 page)

An eternity seemed to pass as the Blazer roared through the valley toward the burning cabins. Brandon continued to monitor the trails of smoke rising into the air.

John’s heart hammered in his chest with fear and uncertainty. His mind was locked on the simple mission of getting there as soon as possible, although even as he did, another part of his mind, the one sharpened from years of military service, began to assess possible threats.

Had the fire begun accidentally? Out in the mountains with no access to a fire department, it was a constant danger. All eight of them had drilled on how to respond. John had even risked heading into Oneida to search for fire extinguishers before turning back when he saw a handful of armed men milling about. During their drills, he’d estimated there simply wasn’t enough time to pump water up from the thousand-gallon storage tank buried underground before a growing fire would consume both cabins and everything inside them.

Of course, there was another possibility coursing through the darker alleyways of John’s mind. This scenario involved the camp coming under attack. If that were the case, there would be a definite loss of life
, a thought even he found too hard to bear.

Rocketing down
Buffalo Road, John was coming on so fast he nearly overshot the turnoff. Gregory, Emma and Natalie had reset the false treeline camouflaging the entrance as John and Brandon had left. But something had since knocked it over again. The heavy pit of fear in John’s belly was turning to dread. It was beginning to look like his worst fear had come true.

John thundered the Blazer up the path and through the
hidden detour around the fallen tree. Already he could see yellow gouts of flame licking up through the forest as he approached. He pulled to a stop when he reached the clearing and grabbed his AR as he jumped from the truck.

“Go around back,” he shouted to
Brandon, “and check to see if anyone made it out.”

The heat was intense. Both cabins were towering infernos, flames dancing out from windows likely shattered from the intense heat. Items were strewn on the ground, but John’s focus was on searching for survivors. Also on his mind was the
possibility of an ambush. In Iraq, insurgents would often wait around after an explosion in order to pick off the first responders. A quick survey of the area quelled those fears. Either way, he would need to risk walking into an ambush if it meant saving his family.

As he circled
the burning cabins, it wasn’t long before John’s hope sank into despair. If anyone was still inside, there was no chance they were still alive.

That was when he saw the body lying face down
by the forest’s edge. He hadn’t noticed it at first because of the US woodland camo pattern it was wearing. Even before he approached, he knew perfectly well who he was looking at.

Tim Appleby.

Brandon was still behind the cabin and out of visual range. John turned Tim’s body over and felt for a pulse. The move was purely automatic since four high-caliber rounds had torn through his body. No one could survive that. Tim’s lips were bloody, a common reaction when people were shot in the chest. Then John noticed that the whistle Tim kept around his neck also had blood around the tip and it all became clear. Tim had died signaling an intruder.

John was closing his friend
’s stiffening eyelids when he caught sight of footprints around camp. The heavy tread came up from the path and spread out in all directions. John stood, trying to make sense of the story they were telling him. Other footprints, these ones smaller, led from the cabin and from around back.

They’d been ca
ught off guard. Diane and Kay had likely been around back tending to the garden while the kids had worked on chores out front. In a strange twist of good fortune, they hadn’t had time to head inside to the perceived safety of the cabins, a move that would have cost them their lives.

They
had been taken.

That was the thought rushing through John’s mind a
s he called Brandon’s name. Jumping to his feet, John found the boy circling back in his direction. Already the fires were beginning to weaken as John pulled out his S&W, handed it to the boy and told him to walk a hundred paces into the woods and conceal himself there until John returned. There was a chance that whoever did this might not have gotten too far, and John was damned if he was going to risk Brandon’s life on a dangerous rescue attempt.

But this wasn’t like the old days where you could call the local sheriff or maybe the FBI. If a man wasn’t willing to step up and fight to keep the people he loved safe, then he had no business living in this new world.

The Blazer hit Sugar Grove with squealing tires, a cloud of acrid white smoke trailing behind it. Impressions in the gravel told John whoever did this had turned right.

One
branch of Sugar Grove led down to the interstate, the other through a series of back roads. John needed to decide fast. Head toward the interstate or navigate along a series of winding country roads?

He opted for the interstate and made a sharp left
-hand turn. When he got there, he found rows of rusted hulks, some pushed off to the shoulder where people fleeing the city had set up temporary dwellings. A few of the cars had open doors with tarps flung over them, tied down with yellow rope. These were the few meager resources the refugees had managed to scrape together as they fled the chaos and the hunger. But their real enemy was a lack of food and proper drinking water. John knew from his experiences in Kenya and other parts of Africa that unsafe drinking water could turn a camp into a breeding ground for disease and death in no time.

Not surprisingly, dead bodies littered the shoulder
, but every time he passed this way, there seemed to be more of them.

A drainage ditch that ran along the interstate was at least partially to blame. Weary and exhausted, many
passerbys probably assumed that it was drinkable rainwater. Sometimes the greatest dangers were the ones you couldn’t see.

After another few minutes without a sign of the men who had taken his family, John
turned around. He decided to try the back roads, keeping an eye out for ambushes. The sun was shining down on what should have been a glorious day, but all John felt was rage. It wasn’t often that he left the cabin. Sometimes Tim and his wife had gone fishing. Surely one couldn’t be expected to stand guard twenty-four seven. Even in the old homesteading days, the man would head into town to gather fresh supplies.

Stop beating yourself up and focus
, that little voice told him. Whenever he wavered or criticized a decision he’d made, that was when the voice would creep in and call him back. It was his training. What he didn’t know was why it sounded so much like his father.

Follow your chain of command. Perhaps it was that simple.

Foliage from the canopy overhead whipped by, along with occasional flashes of blinding sunlight.

For a moment his vision washed out and
when it returned he hit the brakes at once. Up ahead, maybe three hundred yards, was a checkpoint. Two older pickup trucks were parked across the road, forming a barrier. The men standing there seemed startled by his presence. They had weapons drawn, that much was clear, and with no sign of the people who’d kidnapped his family and friends, he wasn’t going to risk a confrontation. There was a difference between bravery and stupidity. Forgetting where that line lay often led men to their deaths.

A st
ocky man at the roadblock took aim as John threw the truck into reverse, backed up and then spun himself around. A split second later he’d kicked it back into drive and floored it. If a shot had been fired in his direction, he hadn’t heard it.

John’s mind was still racing when he made it back to what was left of the cabins. The fire continued to burn, although both roofs had collapsed and part of the structure had fallen over. There wasn’t much left.

Brandon
had done as he was told and stayed put. That was good, not just because he had obeyed and kept himself safe, but because he hadn’t discovered his father’s body before John had a chance to return.

John took
Brandon by the shoulders. “I have some bad news.”

“You found them, didn’t you?”

The implication was that he’d found them dead somewhere.

“The trail was cold, but that isn’t what I’m talking about. Your father didn’t make it.”

John led him over to his father’s body and Brandon broke free of John’s grasp and collapsed near Tim’s body, sobbing.

“I’m so sorry,
Brandon. I know it might not mean much to you right now, but he died raising the alarm. It was quick and painless. The truth is, they were probably outside tending to things around camp and were caught completely off guard.”

Brandon
wasn’t saying anything. One of his hands was resting on his father’s chest.

“We’ll bury him, son, and say a prayer together. It’s the least we can do. After that, we need to put this behind us. The tracks leading around camp tell me
they loaded everyone else into trucks and carted them off. That means they might still be alive, but we won’t be doing them any good if we can’t think straight.”

Brandon
nodded, although John wasn’t sure how much of what he’d said managed to penetrate the boy’s searing grief.

After Tim was buried, the two said a quiet prayer. John understood the boy would need some more time and sometimes talk didn’t do
a whole lot other than bring the tears to the surface.

Good old
-fashioned hard work would help and there was plenty of that left to do. By now the fires had died down, leaving smoldering ash in its place. Although it was still too hot to sift through, nevertheless they could peer into what remained, searching first for any hints of human remains.

That was when he spotted something glinting in the sun
at his feet. John bent down and scooped it up. It was Diane’s silver necklace, the one with the sapphire heart he’d bought her to match her beautiful eyes. It had been a gift for their sixteenth anniversary, a night not long before the whole world had collapsed in on itself. The setting had been a swank restaurant in downtown Knoxville. First an amazing meal, followed by live music, dancing and finally home to the kids. His neighbour Al from Willow Creek had never been shy about telling John to keep the romance alive.

John gripped the sapphire silver necklace tightly in his fist, fighting back the tears building behind his eyes.

He distracted himself by sifting through the rest of the ashes so he could be sure no one had died in the fires. After he found nothing, John’s heart lightened. If they were alive, they could be found. And that also went for the men who had taken them.

The few remaining possessions that hadn’t burned up in the fires lay scattered around them. Whoever had done this had ransack
ed their possessions, taking whatever they felt was useful. A few cans of beans and corn as well as a trail of brown rice had likely been left as one of the raiders slung the bag over his shoulder and carried it off.

Long before the fire, the food stores had been divided equally between the two cabins. The thinking was
that if one was ever destroyed, the other would still be there. John knew from experience that keeping all your food in one location was a bad idea. Now he was coming to realize he’d overlooked the possibility of losing both cabins.

The assumption
had been that if their camp came under attack and both cabins burned, it would likely mean they’d all been killed. Grim, yes, but that sort of thinking was inevitable now that the thin veil of civilization had been stripped away. What John hadn’t counted on was that some of them might be left behind. In the future, he would need to bury a cache away from the main camp as an additional backup should the worst happen.

Rigid thinking. That was really what it came down to.
It was the sort that got people killed and John filed the lesson away, promising to never make that same mistake again.

After a quick look around, i
t appeared even the vegetables from the garden and greenhouse out back were taken. No doubt the rest of the weapons and ammo were also gone. That meant all they had left to defend themselves was John’s AR and his S&W M&P .40 Pro along with four thirty-round polymer magazines.

He glanced down at the nearly ten
-inch Ka-Bar Becker BK9 on his left hip. With no shelter besides Betsy and very little food, John knew this knife would soon become his best friend.

“Let’s gather up what we can,” he told Brandon
, who stared at his father’s grave as though he still couldn’t believe it was him under all that dirt. “Brandon.”

The boy looked over and nodded. Already, John could see the first glimmers of manhood
—a wide-set jaw and determined glare. He would be a force to be reckoned with some day. If he lived that long.

In the end, they filled the truck with a few canned goods, a tarp, and a length of paracord, as well as a half-dozen three-gallon jugs filled with drinking water. They’d needed to use the hand pump in order to call the water up from the storage tank underground. There was plenty more down there and John knew he couldn’t take it all with him. It would mean heading back every few days to get resupplied.

Either way, staying here wasn’t an option anymore. The property’s location
had been compromised and he feared rebuilding would only invite further attacks. No, he and Brandon would find a secure spot in the woods on the other side of the road. Somewhere they could hide the truck, but close enough so that if any family members managed to escape, John and Brandon would see them coming.

The two got into the Blazer and headed down the path to
ward the road. The goose in the back was still kicking up a racket and John wondered if they’d be eating bird tonight.

“Where are we heading?
” Brandon asked, a dull film of sadness still coating his eyes.

“I know just the place,” John repli
ed. Scoping out a secondary bug-out location wasn’t all that common, but this was where his military training had once again kicked in. Sometimes it was smart to have a contingency for your backup plan. As they said in the services, two was one and one was none—a motto which underlined the importance of redundancy when it came to preps.