Bitter Cold Apocalypse 2 (A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller) Read online

  Night wasn’t far away. Which meant those people were going into the woods at a time when any rational person was looking for shelter. He hoped they were ready.

  And he hoped that he and the other men could keep Randall and his goons off their backs.

  “How many men do we have?” he asked once they reached the group at the front of the room.

  “Thirty,” someone answered. “All armed. All good shots. All young and strong.”

  “All willing to do whatever it takes to protect the families going into the woods?” he asked.

  He heard a shout of affirmation coming from what he assumed to be thirty throats, and that was good enough for him.

  “Then let’s go,” he said, walking forward and counting on those men to follow him.

  Within five minutes, the thirty men—plus he, Sean, Joe, and Bob—were grouped together in the front room of Town Hall, listening to the shouts of the men outside. They were getting closer—but they weren’t there yet.

  They were just making one hell of a racket about arriving.

  “What are they shouting about?” Joe asked, his voice hushed.

  “They’re not shouting about anything,” Marlon said. “They’re shouting to make themselves sound bigger. Scarier. They’re shouting for the same reason men shout when they’re going into war. They do it to get themselves worked up, and to scare the people on the other side of the line. Anyone here scared?”

  Many voices told him that they weren’t, not even a little bit, and he nodded.

  “Good. I want a man at every window and every door. Wherever you can get the muzzle of the gun out into the open, and protect yourselves. Stay behind the walls. Shoot whatever moves out there. Watch for men trying to sneak around the building, and shout if you see them. Randall knows the weapons will be in this building, and that’s what he’s after. He’s going to hit it with everything he’s got. Our job is to hit back, hard as we can, and then get the hell out of here with our lives.”

  It wasn’t a sophisticated plan. Hell, he didn’t even know if it was a good one. They would have no idea whether it was working or not until later, when—if—they made it into the forest and found the rest of the townspeople. Their goal was simple: shoot it out with Randall and his men. Keep them busy while the families escaped into the woods. And then get the hell out of there before the militia outside figured out that they were running, too.

  Yes, it meant leaving important things behind. Things that he knew they would have to come back for. Things that he would have to come back for. Almost immediately. But this was their best option for now.

  Really, it was their only option.

  Without another word, the men around him started to fan out, each finding a window for themselves and variously crouching down or standing to the side of it. Some of them broke out the glass in the windows. Others started familiarizing themselves with their weapons.

  They all wore the stiff, tense expressions of men who were about to put their lives on the line.

  With luck, none of them would have to give those lives up.

  Marlon ducked toward a window himself, holding his gun by his side, and glanced through the glass, narrowing his eyes. Beyond the building, he could see the large square that served as the gathering place for the town. And beyond that, building after building, none of them more than two stories, none of them standing too close together. Plenty of places for men to hide. Plenty of places for them to duck into alleys and shoot from cover.

  He didn’t think Randall would be smart enough to tell his men to look for cover. No, given what he knew of Randall, he thought it far more likely that they would come walking right up the main street, their chests puffed out in their arrogance, certain that they were absolutely invincible.

  So he wasn’t surprised when he saw the group turn the corner, about ten blocks down, and start walking right toward them.

  15

  JOHN

  We heard the shooting start the moment our feet touched the snowbanks on the other side of the river, and without even thinking about it, I increased my pace until I felt as though I was actually flying. All I could think about was that my wife and daughter were there, in that town, and that Randall was in there, too, trying to take what wasn’t his. Trying to hurt my family—and the rest of the town that I cared about.

  I couldn’t stand the thought, and my body seemed to understand that, pushing itself to greater and greater lengths as I raced up the embankment and through the first buildings on the outskirts of town.

  Ahead of me, I could hear the roar of gunfire, and men, and the random explosions of glass shattering, which meant that someone was firing on a building—and hitting the windows. I didn’t know what the hell that meant, since I couldn’t see a damn thing, but I increased my pace again, flat out desperate to get there in time to do something. I was guessing that Randall and his men were attacking Town Hall, which meant, I supposed, that the townspeople had gotten it secured against them, but the amount of gunfire I was hearing seemed like it was far too much to be one-sided. It sounded…

  It sounded like the townspeople were actually firing back. Like they were actively defending the building. And that seemed completely insane, to me. Why would they be bothering? Why would they put their lives at risk to defend a building when Randall was so intent on getting into it?

  My feet flew over the pavement, taking me quickly through the outskirts of the town and into the more densely populated area, as my mind flew through the problem at hand, trying to find a solution. What was going on up there? And what was I going to do about it when I arrived?

  I yanked my gun out of its holster and fitted it into my hand as I ran. I knew it wouldn’t do much damage. It was just a handgun, in what seemed to be an all-out battle up ahead. But it was all that I had, and dammit, I was going to make good use of it. I wasn’t willing to be left out of this thing. Not when I had so much at stake.

  Not when my people sounded like they needed me.

  “Get your rifle ready!” I shouted over my shoulder. “Whatever’s going on up there, we’re going to be running right into the middle of it, and I want us prepared!”

  I heard a muttered response, but I wasn’t paying much attention to it. I was trying to figure out how we could get to Town Hall fastest from here. Trying to figure out the most direct route—and the best way to do it without getting shot when we went shooting out into the square.

  And with that thought came the realization that we were probably going to come up right behind Randall and his men. Because yeah, they’d come up to the town a different way than us. But this town didn’t have more than three streets that led toward the square. Randall knew that. He would have found Main Street and taken it, as the most direct route to the building that was presumably holding his precious hoard of weapons.

  He would have taken the exact same street that we were now on. And if he’d done what I assumed he’d done, then he’d walked right up the center of the street, gotten to the square, and started shooting.

  Which meant that we were going to come up behind them. And they weren’t going to have any idea we were there.

  Henry and I only had two guns between us, and a finite number of bullets, but if we could take Randall’s attention off Town Hall long enough for the people inside to escape, then it would be worth it to make as much ruckus as we could.

  I didn’t bother to discuss the idea with Henry. It didn’t matter what he thought of it, and I knew he’d want to argue about it. Instead, I charged forward, my mind made up, my adrenaline high as a kite.

  And then, just as we were about to cross the street that would have put us a mere block from the square, and just as I started to make out the figures of men in the dusky dimness of the afternoon, someone stepped out of the alleyway right in front of me and hit me with something, sending me into complete darkness.

  16

  When I finally came back around—I couldn’t tell how long it had taken me—I was…in the forest. I
could see the trees reaching up toward the dark sky above me, the stars speckling the darkness beyond that. I could feel the ice coldness of the snow beneath me, though I could also feel that there was some layer between me and the snow. Something keeping me dry, if not warm.

  And by the time my brain got there, my body was starting to catch up. I exploded from off the ground, my hand reaching for my holster and finding that my gun was missing. I sank into a defensive position, my hands going up in front of me in the stance that would give me the best protection if it came to a fight.

  Because there was no reason for me to be in the forest, on my back. There had been no reason for anyone to step out of that alley and knock me out. No reason except that they were enemies. Which meant I had just woken up to a fight.

  But when I finally got my eyes to focus on my surroundings again, I saw…Marlon.

  Marlon?

  “What the hell are you doing here? Where are we? Why are we here? What happened? Who was shooting?” I asked in an explosion of questions.

  “I’m saving your life, from the sounds of it. We’re in the forest about a mile from town. We’re here because we decided it would be safer than trying to hold town. Randall and his men attacked, and we were able to hold them off for long enough to get the people to safety. And as to who was shooting…” He shrugged. “Everyone.”

  I took a deep breath, trying to get my head around this quick transference of information, and finally came up with the one I hadn’t asked yet.

  “Who the hell hit me?” Because I had several words for that person.

  Now Marlon cracked a bit of a smile. “One of my scouts,” he answered casually. “Let’s go. I’ll tell you more about it on the way to camp.”

  He turned and started walking, leaving me little choice in the matter, and I paused for only long enough to throw a confused glance at Henry, who had come to stand right next to me, looking equally dazed. Then I strode after Marlon, Henry at my back.

  “Why did your scout hit me?” I asked, telling myself that it wasn’t going to do me any good to get upset about it until I actually knew the reasoning for it.

  “One, you were sprinting right into the heart of a battle. With a handgun and no armor,” Marlon said bluntly. “You were going to get yourself killed. You would have given us a good distraction, perhaps, but you would never have come out of it alive. And I need you alive. More than you know. Two, we needed to get you out of town to meet with the rest of our group, and that was never going to happen if you were involved in a shoot-out in the town square. Or dead.”

  I gritted my teeth. He was right. That didn’t mean I liked it.

  “So you sent someone out specifically to hit me in the head with a bat?” I asked.

  I finally took the time to look around, and realized that I knew where we were. We were in a clearing now, which led to the old Forrester estate. The Forresters were long gone, but their structures were still here. Mostly.

  And, I realized, they would make for terrific cover for a large group of people turned suddenly out into the forest.

  “I didn’t send them to hit you with a bat,” Marlon clarified. “I sent runners out to watch for you. I didn’t know where you’d gone or what shape you were in. I didn’t even know if you were still alive. But if you were, I knew you’d be coming to town at a run—and that you’d be gunning for Randall. I knew what our plan was, and that it would mean a lot of shooting was going on. And I knew that if you got into the middle of that, you’d be in trouble. I sent men out to…waylay you.” He said the last words with a touch of sarcasm. “I sent them out to make sure you didn’t go running right into trouble. Alan said you were moving so fast that he didn’t know how to stop you, other than to lay you right out.”

  “Got me, too,” Henry said suddenly.

  I breathed out slowly through my nose, my steps beginning to return to a normal pace as my temper ebbed. No, I didn’t like being knocked unconscious and effectively kidnapped.

  But it had been the right move. I had been on my way right into the middle of that gunfight. And it would absolutely—well, probably—have gotten me killed.

  “Smart,” I finally admitted. “But I’m getting awfully tired of waking up in strange places and finding out you’re behind it, Marlon.”

  He grabbed my shoulder and squeezed. “And I’m getting awfully tired of having to move you around when you’re passed out,” he replied. “It takes away from your usefulness. I vote we make that the last time we have to go through it.”

  “Seconded,” I agreed.

  Around us, the trees were closing in again, and I racked my brain, trying to remember the exact layout of this property. The main house wasn’t in the trees. It was back in the clearing.

  “You don’t have the people in the house?” I asked, looking over my shoulder and searching for it, trying to remember if it was even still standing.

  “Not big enough for this many people,” Marlon noted. “We could maybe have fit some of them in there, but not all of them. We didn’t want to separate the group. And the house felt a whole lot like the obvious option. Like the first place Randall would search, when he got here. If he decided to follow us.”

  Right, there was a lot to unpack there, but I put it to the side for the moment.

  “So where’d you put them?” I asked.

  We came through the small bit of forest into another clearing, and I saw before me the ramshackle, half-fallen-down remains of what had been the Forresters’ hay barn.

  “The barn,” Marlon said quietly.

  “It’ll never do for anything long-term,” I noted as we walked through the front door of the barn and came to a stop.

  In front of me, I could see that the place was already completely full. There were a little over two hundred people in town, and though this barn was a large one—once large enough to house the hay for an entire ranching organization—it was packed with the tents and supplies of the townspeople. There was barely enough room to move in here, and it would never work for more than one night. People would start to kill each other, packed this closely.

  And that didn’t even start to address the bigger problem, which was that half the roof had fallen in, making the place less-than weatherproof. There were gaps between some of the boards in the walls, and I could feel the draft from the weather blowing against me.

  “This place isn’t going to keep us warm enough for the night, even,” I continued. “Those tents don’t come with insulation, Marlon.”

  “Don’t I know it,” he replied grimly. “But it was the best we could come up with on such short notice.”

  “Randall moved a whole lot faster than we had expected,” I said.

  “You’re telling me,” Marlon replied wryly. “Damn glad I’d come up with a plan with Bob before I went off to give you cover, or we wouldn’t have gotten out of there alive.”

  I looked at him, remembering now the other things he’d said. “What exactly did you guys do?”

  He gave me a modest shrug. “Gathered the women and children and got some of the older men to get them out into the forest while the younger guys—along with myself, of course—laid down fire at the front of the building to keep Randall and his men busy.”

  Right, well in the future, I definitely wasn’t going to question Marlon’s ability to coordinate missions. Or escapes. That was another damn good plan.

  “Lose anyone in the fight?” I asked, already afraid of the answer.

  “Not a one,” Marlon replied. I could hear the pride in his voice, and I understood that. It was one thing to come out of a fight, yourself. It was a whole other thing to bring your men with you.

  Whatever his history was—and I was absolutely planning to ask about that soon—he’d had very good training when it came to taking care of his people.

  Then, as I was gazing out across the room, I saw the flash of red that could only belong to one person, and before I knew it, my feet were flying over the debris of the barn’s floor and taking me
toward one of the few people in the entire world that I truly wanted to see. I caught her up in my arms the moment I got to her, handling her as gently as I could, and held her to me, almost sobbing with relief.

  “You’re okay,” I muttered into her hair.

  Angie drew back and gave me a lopsided grin. “Well, in the last few days I’ve been attacked by a bear, gone sledding down a river, gone into the water and almost drowned, and then been operated on without anesthesia. If you think that makes me okay, I’d say you have a very strange idea of the word.”

  I laughed and held her to me again, relieved beyond measure to see her safe and whole—and making jokes. And right there, in that moment, everything else faded away, and I let myself be nothing but relieved that Angie and I had somehow made it this far, and arrived here to hold each other once again.

  The moment was short-lived, though, because Marlon arrived shortly after me and gave me a look that told me we had things to talk about—and they couldn’t wait.

  “Off to work already, I see,” Angie said with a bit of snark.

  “I’m afraid so,” Marlon said. “I don’t think it’s hard to see that we can’t stay here, and we need his brain if we’re going to figure out what to do.”

  She gave a firm nod, then squeezed my hand. “Go save the day, John. Sarah and I are going to be here digging through our things to find our heaviest clothes and seeing what we can do about a fire.”

  She gave me a quick grin and a peck on the cheek, and then turned and hobbled back toward her supplies, her bad leg slowing her down but still not enough to stop her. I watched her go for a moment, made sure she got back to her supplies safely, and then turned to Marlon.