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  We’re laughing and stuffing our packs with riches, with life itself, and then bullets are snapping all around us.

  Melanie is closest, and I pull her to the ground. We get right down on the broken glass and try to push ourselves into the cracks between the tiles. All of us but Scotty. He’s standing with his new, proud posture and shooting his rifle at the ambushers. Jerry runs and tackles him and pulls him back from the front of the store. Bullets take pieces of things with them as they pass. Melanie is screaming. I wrap myself around her. Bottles of wine are breaking red and white, and the floor is slick with wine and glass.

  I check Melanie but she hasn’t been shot. Her screams aren’t screams of pain, but anger. People aren’t supposed to be like this. People are like this. I push the shotgun out around a rack of greeting cards and fire a blast into the parking lot.

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2010 by Terry DeHart

  Excerpt from page 301 copyright © 2010 by Terry DeHart

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Orbit

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com.

  www.twitter.com/orbitbooks.

  First eBook Edition: July 2010

  Orbit is an imprint of Hachette Book Group. The Orbit name and logo are trademarks of Little, Brown Book Group Limited.

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  ISBN: 978-0-316-17681-1

  Contents

  Copyright

  Jerry

  Susan

  Melanie

  Scott

  Bill Junior

  Jerry

  Susan

  Melanie

  Scott

  Bill Junior

  Jerry

  Susan

  Melanie

  Scotty

  Bill Junior

  Jerry

  Susan

  Melanie

  Scott

  Bill Junior

  Jerry

  Susan

  Melanie

  Scott

  Bill Junior

  Jerry

  Susan

  Melanie

  Scott

  Bill Junior

  Jerry

  Bill Senior

  Susan

  Melanie

  Scott

  Bill Junior

  Jerry

  Susan

  Melanie

  Scott

  Bill Junior

  Bill Senior

  Jerry

  Susan

  Melanie

  Scott

  Bill Junior

  Susan

  Melanie

  Scott

  Bill Junior

  Jerry

  Susan

  Melanie

  Scott

  Bill Junior

  Jerry

  Susan

  Melanie

  Scott

  Bill Junior

  Jerry

  Susan

  Melanie

  Scott

  Bill Junior

  Jerry

  Susan

  Melanie

  Scott

  Donnie

  Jerry

  Susan

  Donnie

  Scott

  Jerry

  Susan

  Acknowledgments

  Extras

  Meet the Author

  Interview

  A Preview of The Sharpes’ Story

  For Sabra

  Jerry

  It’s been two weeks since the cars died, and we’re walking out. The bombs have shorted out every electrical circuit in North America, as far as we know. Yellow-brown clouds blot out the sun, and I’ve never been so cold. My family is here with me in the Sierra Nevada, Susan and our newly adult children, and I don’t know if it’s a blessing or a curse.

  It goes without saying that I’m not expecting anything good to happen, so it doesn’t make me happy when I hear a light airplane approaching. We’re walking a deer trail that parallels the interstate. The plane is on us very quickly, and I motion for Susan and the kids to get under cover. We run into the pines. We press ourselves against the trees and look up. It’s been two weeks since we’ve heard anything in the sky except the occasional bomber, but this little bird is hanging from its prop and flaps, just above stall speed at tree-scraping altitude. It doesn’t fly directly overhead, but I catch a glimpse of painted aluminum above the pines. The plane makes a shallow turn and flies parallel to the interstate. I feel the pressure of searching eyes. When the pilot adds power to hold a sharper turn, we run uphill for better cover.

  We get into a thicker stand of trees and form our four-person perimeter. It’s a sloppy diamond formation but it allows us to cover the highway with three guns. Susan gives me a flat look. Her lips are moving, and at first I think she’s trying to tell me something, but then I see that she’s praying, and I wonder if she knows it.

  Our son, Scotty, is prone with his scoped .22. God help him, the boy looks like he can’t wait to shoot somebody. Our eldest, Melanie, is farthest from the interstate. She refuses to carry a weapon but I’m grateful that she still more or less follows my orders, no matter how it must gall her.

  The Cessna drags itself over the freeway. The hum of its engine grows more businesslike, more attentive, and it rises and circles like a carrion bird. The pilot drops something. I watch the lumpy gleam of a bubble-wrapped package falling from the sky. There can’t be anything half-assed about it. It’s either something very good or something very bad. I watch its flawed shape pass through the trees and into God’s nature like a gift or a curse. I’m a naturally pessimistic bastard, and my pessimism has stood me well as of late, so I motion for Susan and the kids to put their heads down. The ground is matted with moldy pine needles. I listen to the buffeting sound of my breath pushing against the offal of trees. Time passes and there isn’t an explosion. It isn’t an improvised bomb at all and I hear people cheering, the voices of men, women, and children.

  Another group is traveling the interstate. They’re on foot, and we’ve been trailing them for most of the day. It’s a group of a dozen armed adults and seven children. I’ve been watching them through my binoculars, choosing safe vantage points and trying to figure them out. The kids in the group are elementary school–aged, and the adults are well beyond their middle years. I think they’re grandparents walking with their grandchildren because it’s the way of the world, in hostile places, to thin out the connecting population of young adults.

  They’re herding a handful of cattle and a half dozen sheep. The adults dote on the children, giving them rides on their stiff shoulders and carting them in the wheelbarrows they use to carry their supplies, but I can’t trust them yet. No matter how badly I want to place my family into the relative safety of a larger group, we’ve only been following and watching to see what they’re all about.

  I don’t admit it to Susan, but I’m also using the group to clear the road ahead of us. If there’s any heat to be taken, it will fall on them. They’re down below us now. I can’t see them, but I imagine they’re waving and dancing at the prospect of salvation, or at least a meal. For a few seconds I think maybe I’ve gotten it wrong. Maybe they’re really not in somebody’s crosshairs. Maybe the bad feeling I have now is the result of my weakness for melodrama, or something I ate, or a lifetime spent looking through a ha
lf-empty glass. Maybe the airplane is actually a Civil Air Patrol bird, out trying to help people. Maybe Good Samaritans are still active in the world and maybe they’re doing their good works in this very time and place, and soon they’ll be dropping fresh steaks and cold beer and apple pie and linen napkins to everyone they see.

  Yeah. And when the shooting starts, it’s the loud popcorn sound of rapid fire from multiple weapons. I flinch and try to sink into the earth, then I turn to check Susan and the kids. They’re okay; the rounds aren’t being directed at us, and I let my breath out. I’m relieved that we aren’t targets. I’m almost happy, but it has to be a slaughter down there, and my relief dissolves into the chamber of guilt that’s been burning in my guts since this fun-time began.

  The ambushers are armed with 5.56 rifles. I know the sound well, from my Marine Corps days. Most of the rifles are firing three-round bursts, and that means they’re probably modern M-16s or M-4s. And the fighting seems far too one-sided. The people on the road are slow to respond. It’s an impossibly long five seconds before they open up with their shotguns, and they only get off a few rounds before their return fire falls silent.

  We wriggle and burrow into matted pine needles. Echoes of gunfire roll past us and into the fingers and stubs of mountain canyons. My bladder feels impossibly full, though I haven’t had anything to drink since first light. I can’t see any movement, but my thumb reaches out to unsafe my rifle. My breath condenses around my head, and the ground steals my body heat. Exposed patches of earth are red with iron oxide, and wailing voices rise behind the gunshots, and my family is here with me, all of us on the brink of a mass murder, and I want to scream.

  The firing winds down as the ambushers reload. A child calls twice for its mother, the last call a question, and a fusillade of fresh shots is the reply. Our peacenik daughter, Melanie, has to be eating her guts out. She keeps her head down and lets it happen, but she curses into the musty earth, and it’s as good a thing to do as any.

  High misses and ricochets snap and crack into the pines on the opposite ridgeline. Twigs and cones and showers of needles fall in their wakes. We hug the ground and wait. I keep my head turned, cheek to dirt, so I can watch the children. I force myself to look into their eyes. I watch to see what the sounds of slaughter are doing to them. I hate myself for it, but I watch to see if the message is getting through: Don’t walk the road. Trust no one. Be ready, always, to dive into cover. Be ready to put rounds on target, RIGHT AWAY, and for the love of Christ listen to your old man.

  Susan has always been a good mother, and she pushes her riot gun in the general direction of the killing. She watches the world over a brass sighting bead. I have no idea what this is doing to her.

  Not ten feet away, Scotty holds himself tightly. He moves like a hunting reptile, every movement deliberate and barely perceptible, scanning in the direction of the killing zone through his 4-power scope. I don’t think he can see anything through the trees. His Ruger .22 is a short-range weapon, at best, but he’s locked onto the sounds of killing. His hands are rock steady, and I’m proud and sad, both. His sister, Melanie, is still cursing without sound. She curls into a ball and grinds the back of her head against the bark of a pine, and if I thought it would do any good, I’d join her.

  The firing slows but it doesn’t stop. I can’t keep my hands under control. I squeeze the forearm of my AR-15 hard enough to make the fiberglass creak beneath my fingers. I have to force myself to relax. I quit smoking twenty years ago, but I get a craving for a Marlboro red. I want to pull smoke into my lungs to calm myself and to occupy my hands, if not my mind, but there’s more to it than that. I want to somehow show my solidarity for the people not a quarter-mile away who walked into an ambush. I want to wish them well but I also want to let them know that, nothing personal, we’re sitting this one out.

  It’s a stupid thing to be thinking. I’ve had no shortage of stupid thoughts since this started. I hold tightly to the ground as the cries turn to moans behind the gunfire. Then a woman’s scream rises above the others. Her scream contains grief and outrage and hatred and I know she’s fighting back. Every person in the history of the world who ever made a sound like that was fighting back. A shotgun speaks up, and I can’t tell the good cries from the bad, but I wish the woman well. I wish her wild success in her wild pain, but I’m selfish, too, because my family is here, and I hope she takes a dozen of the goons with her.

  The firing becomes sporadic, high-velocity bullets smacking into soft targets, passing through and whacking the road. There isn’t any more outgoing fire from the victims, nor so much as a hope for it. And then the firing goes on for far too long, and there’s no doubt in my mind that it’s unnecessary shooting. It’s target practice now, a ballistic maiming of the dead.

  I want to signal my family, tell them to hold very still, but I’d have to move to do it. The ambushers are hot to kill, and they’ll be looking to shoot anything that moves. I try to tune out the shooting and pay attention to our close-in perimeter. I hear footsteps. Someone creeps out of the woods and moves downhill toward the fight. I get a glimpse of a man working his way through the trees. I put my rifle on him, but he passes out of my field of fire. I’m guessing it’s one of the killers. Their top cover. Their sniper or ground spotter.

  I take a breath and lift my head. I don’t think he saw us. My heartbeat seems to be bouncing me off the ground. I try to get my breathing under control. I hear a floundering sound behind me. I turn to face it, the front sight of my rifle coming around slowly, too slowly, and it takes me a full second to realize there isn’t an immediate threat. I take another breath and let it dribble back out of my new, old-man lungs. The shooting tapers off. A few random finishing shots and then it’s over, but for the whooping and looting.

  I stifle a cough. I’d sell my soul for a drink, but we don’t have any booze. The pine needles beneath us are damp and rotted. We’re stretched out on our bellies in perfect insect habitat. I hear whispered curses from Scott and Melanie, and a muted smacking as they slap at their clothes. They roll and writhe on the forest floor. Back before the world went mean, I might’ve found words to distract them from the revulsion of feeling vermin on skin.

  The airplane straightens from its orbit and climbs and flies due south until I can hear only an occasional throb from its engine. I stand and lead us farther uphill. I find a place where half-buried boulders line the forest floor. It’s not a bad place to set up for a defensive fight, if it comes to it.

  Susan’s face is set and pale, but her eyes are green fire. She’s very angry. I want to touch her hand. I want to hold her, but she moves away and tells the kids to strip off their packs and clothes. Her voice is as tight as her expression. I want to whisper something private and married into her ear. I want to push her untended hair from her face and kiss her, but I watch while she uses her ragged fingernails to flick and pull insects from the skin of our daughter and son. Fat, red-brown ticks are gorging themselves on the blood of our children.

  Melanie turned nineteen this year. Scott is eighteen. I trace the new streaks of gray in my wife’s hair, then I turn to face the road. I tell myself that someone has to stand watch, but then I go to them because I’d rather be a good father than anything else.

  Scotty has ticks on his back. They stand out like fattening tumors on his pale skin. I turn him around so he’s facing downhill. I hand him my rifle.

  “Keep an eye out.”

  “Yeah, huh?”

  “The safety’s off.”

  “Good.”

  I lean close and pull the biting jaws and burrowing mouthparts away from my son’s skin. Thin lines of blood run down his back. He shivers in the mountain air, but he holds himself steady while I tend to him. These days, even the smallest injury or infection is a serious threat. These days there isn’t any place for hesitation or embarrassment.

  Susan checks and clears Melanie’s skin. It takes time. I use the back of my hand to knock the last of the ants from Scotty’s legs.
He’s thin, too thin, but my knuckles are bouncing against solid muscle, too, and it makes me proud. It gives me hope.

  We shake out their shirts and pants and coats and they get dressed. Susan asks me to strip and I know I should say something to break the stress, but I can’t think of anything that might do the trick. She waits for me to say something. When I don’t, she helps me out of my clothes. She delouses me and I delouse her and we dress in the mountain air, old lovers cooled by time and fear.

  I’m anxious to get us moving again, but I grind through a long stack of minutes to make sure we’re not the next course on the menu. A single gunshot takes me by surprise. The boom of a pistol. We slip behind our chosen boulders and listen and wait, but there aren’t any more shots. I hear raised voices but I can’t make out the words, then a vehicle approaches on the road. It sounds like a diesel, and then we hear more. I think they have three trucks, in all.

  The ambushers load up their plunder and the vehicles head south. I expect them to move quickly away, but they travel at a slow walking speed. At first I think they might be road hunting. Hunting for targets of opportunity. Hunting for us. But then I remember that the dead people had cattle and sheep, and some of the animals must’ve survived. The ambushers must be taking the beasts with them, probably haltered to the bumpers of their vehicles, fresh meat for the barbecue.

  They move onto a plain and I watch them through my binoculars. I guess their number at two dozen. They stop and manage to drag the animals aboard their vehicles, a Brinks armored car and two military five-ton trucks. They pick up speed. I watch until they disappear into the road’s mirage. I wait until I’m as sure as I can be, and then we’re back to walking, taking our general direction from the freeway, but not walking directly on it. Our course is a series of zigzags as we angle from one area of potential cover and concealment to the next.

  I can feel the pressure of Susan and the kids looking at me, but I have no idea what they’re thinking. Maybe they’re grateful to be walking an easy pace. I’m more paranoid than usual because the goons might’ve left someone to watch their back trail, but we don’t run into anyone good or bad, and my adrenal glands start to calm down. I’m tired and they’re tired, but we need to cover a few more miles.