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  “This is Sandbar.”

  “That’s the horse you met us on. Right?”

  The brown and white horse responded to the whistle and poked his head out of the stall. Joshua reached into a pouch hanging outside of the stall and pulled out two white sugar cubes.

  “Here, give one to Mickey,” he said, giving her the cube. He watched her flatten her hand and the horse take the cube. “You’re a natural,” he said, giving his cube to Sandbar.

  Grace patted the horse and then looked back at Joshua.

  “About that radio?”

  “Yeah, right,” he said, suddenly remembering why they were in the barn in the first place. He reached into the saddle pack hanging on a peg next to the stall and retrieved the radio. He handed it to her. “Going to try your Mom?”

  “Thanks,” she took the radio and flipped it on. It worked. “Yeah,” she said, changing the channel from 39 to 25.

  “It might work better outside,” Joshua said, and they both walked out of the stable.

  She listened for any traffic on the station as they walked out before keying the radio.

  “Momma B, this is Tardis Blue, are you there? Over.”

  She waited thirty seconds and was just about to repeat the phrase, when the voice of her mother came across the radio.

  “Tardis Blue, this is Mama B,” Leah felt choked up, but cleared her throat and continued. “Are you alright? Over.”

  “Momma B, yes. Well I am, AC has a broken nose and a pretty bashed in eye.” She wasn’t ready to talk about the fact that she had shot two people yesterday. “Momma B, are you okay? Over,” she said, turning the tables.

  “We’ve had some issues, but we’re managing. Over.” Like her daughter, Leah wasn’t ready to discuss what she had had to do as well.

  There was a pause as both women thought about their situations.

  “Where are you?” Leah asked, back on task. “Wait! Hold that response. Over,” Leah said, suddenly thinking about the security of the open channel and the fear of leading more Freakers to her daughter’s position.

  “She doesn’t want you to give away your position,” Joshua said quietly in the pause. “Your Mom’s pretty smart.”

  Grace nodded and added a little more respect onto her understanding of her mother and Joshua.

  “Yeah she is. So, how can we tell her where I am? I don’t even know where I am! I need to get home, Joshua!” She keyed the microphone. “Momma B, I’m not sure, but I’m with people that want to help. Let me talk with them and call you back. Over.”

  “Tardis Blue, roger that. I don’t want you coming back to base if you’re in a safe place. Over,” Leah shocked herself for saying what she had just said.

  “What the…” Grace didn’t understand. “Momma B, that’s not in the plan. Over.”

  “Josh!” Both Grace and Joshua turned to see his father calling for him from the front door of the house. “You both need to come in immediately,” he said, waiving his arms for them to hurry. “Run!”

  “Tardis Blue,” the radio squawked. “I’m changing the plan. I will call you in an hour. I repeat. I am changing the plan. Do you understand? Over.”

  Joshua and Grace reached the front porch of the house. She could hear a humming sound in the distance. It was not a familiar sound.

  “Damn you, Mom!” Grace said, under her breath.

  Mr. Tiller closed the door behind them and then opened another one leading them down to the basement. “In here now!” He directed them.

  “Momma B, I understand. We are changing the plan. Over.”

  Bob closed the metallic sounding door and locked it from the inside.

  “This is our bunker,” Joshua said.

  CHAPTER 9

  The hunting lodge was nothing more than an old Airstream trailer parked at the edge of a field along a river. There was a set of dirt tracks that led up to the trailer from a more formal dirt road, but from what Ian could tell, the trailer looked abandoned.

  Ian was familiar with the area. He had hunted deer at a camp that was on the other side of the river, which is where he wanted to be. But getting across the river was a bit of a problem. From the map that Dukes had provided, the closest crossing was the old hydroelectric dam that was a mile up the river, or there was a small two lane county bridge that was five miles down the river. He remembered one of the guys he hunted with talking about a suspension bridge close by, but that was a long shot. Anyway he decided to do it, it was going to be something that they were going to do tomorrow.

  After witnessing the drone attack on the town it didn’t take much convincing to get Mary to push on a little farther. He had been aiming to reach this point all along; it had just taken them longer than he had calculated.

  Mary had been beside herself after the drone attack, and talked nonstop in a nervous banter. Ian figured that the airplane crash and a bomb going off far away was one thing for the lady, but witnessing the annihilation of two men and a town by the drone had triggered something else entirely.

  “Please tell me this is the place you were thinking about?” She asked.

  “Not exactly.” He heard her sigh. “But it’s close enough.”

  “Thank God!” she said, quietly. “Is it safe?”

  “Safe is a relative term, Mary,” Ian responded smoothly.

  “Cut the crap, Ian! You know what I mean. Will a drone find us there?”

  “Drones can strike anything and anyone. Depending on the sophistication of the machine, it can deliver a payload through a window.”

  “Not an inspiring answer. Do you think it was one of ours?”

  She had asked the question a few times. The lawyer side of her wanted to cross-examine and ask the same question a thousand different ways.

  Ian was familiar with her line of questioning and knew that the nature of the cross-examination was to get the witness to trip up and give a different response. He wasn’t about to do that. His training was better than that.

  “I don’t think so,” was the best answer he was willing to give until he had more data. Dukes had given him reports of drone attacks up and down the Mississippi valley and the western Gulf of Mexico. The attack that they had witnessed was the most eastern of all reports.

  Ian panned his binoculars to look up the river one more time, before they committed to the trailer. Even though it was dark, he could see the dam by the light of the moon. The dam was small, as far as dams go. Built by the federal government during the Great Depression, the earth and concrete structure held back one of Alabama’s many small lakes. The lake was used more for recreational, and to Ian’s memory, there were very few, if any houses along the shores.

  Ian had fished the lake before and knew where to find the bass along the 15 miles of shoreline. He had also been close to the dam before, but never on it. He couldn’t see if there was anyone around the dam; that recon would have to wait until morning.

  “Let’s go to the trailer.”

  “That’s the best thing you have said in hours,” Mary fell in line behind him as they descended down the hill and to the dirt road.

  Ian drew his pistol from his shoulder holster as they got closer to the trailer. With each step closer to the river, the sound of the water falling over the spillway grew in volume.

  “Wait here,” he said to Mary, taking her shoulder and directing her to stand behind a tree along the dirt road. They were about 50 yards from the trailer.

  “Why?”

  “Please just do it.” He reached around her and brought the small rifle up for her to hold. “If anything bad happens, flip this off, and do what I taught you. Okay?”

  Mary looked at him, and then down at the rifle.

  “Point this end at the bad guy and pull that trigger,” he said with a half smile, and then turned back towards the trailer.

  Mary watched him move along the tree line. He was hard to follow, even though she knew he was there. “Point this end at the bad guy and pull that trigger,” she mocked quietly. “Like that
’s going to happen!”

  Ian circled the trailer and put his back against the side of the aircraft grade aluminum of the Airstream. He then peeked inside. It looked quiet. He could see all of the beds and the trailer looked abandoned. He then went around to the door and gently turned the knob while standing with his back to the side of the camper. The door opened and his right arm and pistol went into the crack first.

  Mary watched him disappear into the camper and then reemerged a few seconds later. He waved for her to come to the cabin. She started moving and wondered if she should walk down the path, or sneak along the tree line like Ian had done. She walked along the path.

  “Nice place,” she said, sticking her head in. “A little musty. Not the Hilton, but it will do.”

  “Thanks for agreeing with me. There are two beds and it looks like there’s a few cans of beans and chicken. The stove is propane and it works. This is about as good as it gets for now,” Ian said, letting his guard down a little.

  20 minutes later, they were eating warm beans and canned chicken. Ian found six airplane bottles of whiskey and decided to keep those for later.

  “Why don’t you get some sleep, I’ll take first watch,” he said, splashing some of the camper water on his face.

  “You don’t have to tell me twice,” she said, throwing her paper plate in a trashcan and collapsing on one of the two beds.

  Ian refilled his water bottle and looked for any other items he could take from the trailer. He then got their gear ready to go, in case they had to leave in a hurry. Fifteen minutes passes, and he settled down

  “You don’t really work for a gun manufacturer, do you?” Ian heard Mary ask from the darker side of the camper.

  “I thought you were asleep.”

  “I think sleep is going to be a hard thing to find in the near future,” she answered. “Now, what about my question?”

  Ian thought about that for a second before answering. America was under attack. There were very few people alive that he knew that he could trust. Keeping the lie up with Mary would only hurt whatever trust he had built with her.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Yes? Yes, what?”

  “Yes, I actually do work for a gun manufacturer. But, it’s a front company owned by the government so that I can have credibility when doing surveillance work over seas.”

  There was no response from Mary.

  “Mary? Did you hear me?”

  “Shh.” Came the response from the other side.

  That response put Ian on alert and he leaned forward trying to hear what Mary heard. All he could hear was the spill over from the dam up the river.

  “There,” she said, like he was supposed to listen to that point in time.

  “Put your shoes back on and grab your rifle and pack. I still don’t hear it, but be ready for anything.”

  “There, it’s the same as before. It’s the drone!”

  Ian looked at his watch it was 9:45PM. He grabbed his two-way, breaking protocol with Dukes.

  “Dukes, Ian. Over.”

  “Code word? Over.” He answered quickly.

  “The. Over.”

  “Dukes, is there anything else unusual happening with the drones? Rapid response needed. Over.” He spoke quickly and with purpose.

  Dukes responded quickly with bits of information.

  “Getting scattered reports of them taking out infrastructure, power plants, rail crossings, bridges and dams. Why? Over.”

  “Dams! Ian, we’ve got to get out of here!” Mary said, panic filling her voice.

  “Below a dam now. Drone is on station. Talk later. Over.”

  Dukes clicked his radio twice, acknowledging that he received and understood the transmission.

  “We’ve got to go!” Mary was ready to push the door open.

  “Hold on,” Ian said, grabbing her arm before she could open the door.

  “What are you doing? That thing’s going to blow up the dam. Ian, we’re below the dam! We’ve got to go!”

  “Not yet. This is an Airstream camper. It’s covered in aluminum. Like with the Mylar blanket we got under before. The drone can’t see our heat signature because it’s being reflected back into the camper. If we run, we might as well shine a spotlight at it! So, wait till the right time.”

  She couldn’t believe what she was hearing from him.

  “Trust me, Mary. Please,” he said, releasing her arm.

  She stepped back from the door.

  He then pulled a chair to the middle of the trailer and stood on the chair. He popped the air vent and could instantly hear the drone clearly over the spillway. It was circling the area at a frightening low altitude. He pulled his binoculars out and tried to acquire the drone visually. He wanted to know who’s it was.

  “Why doesn’t it take the shot?” he asked no one in particular. He still scanned the sky looking for the dot against the night sky.

  “Sometimes in a courtroom, we don’t take a person down because we think they can lead us to a more important person,” Mary offered.

  “Like, there’s always a bigger fish,” he responded, still searching the sky.

  “Exactly!”

  “So if there’s a bigger fish than blowing up the dam, what would that be?”

  “Us?”

  “I don’t think so. Got another one?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “When it comes to the law, it is about timing. You know, calling the right witness to make the most impact.”

  “That’s it, Mary! That’s it!” He looked down from the chair and pointed at her. “This is not a random attack, it’s coordinated. It’s not if they are going to blow up the dam, it’s’ when are they going to blow the dam up.”

  “Okay, so what are they waiting for?”

  He hopped off of the chair and looked out the window for their best escape route, and that is when he heard another noise.

  “What’s that?” Mary asked, she crouched down in the trailer.

  “It’s a bird,” he said, a new layer of concern entering the equations process in his head.

  “A bird?”

  “A helicopter! A helo! A bird! Same thing!” He needed a way out of this situation.

  “What does that mean? A helicopter and a drone…what does that mean? Are they on the same side? I thought helicopters couldn’t fly anymore?” Mary fired off the questions at a rapid pace, he mouth not filtering anything her mind was thinking.

  Ian had a number of answers for her, but they would have to wait. He was busy formulating a plan that he knew Mary was not going to like. He looked out the window one more time. The hill they had been on was nearly 200 yards away. It would be certain death if they tried to make the hill if the dam broke. And if they survived that, the drone would take them out. He turned away from the window; he had a new plan.

  “Okay,” Ian said. “You were right about the timing thing, and I think that the time is now.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  Ian put both of his hands on her shoulders before speaking.

  “We are going to stay here.”

  “What? Are you out of your f…”

  The helicopter flew almost directly overhead of the trailer at a low altitude. The light of the four missiles launching from the helicopter’s ordinance racks lit up the area around the trailer and froze Ian and Mary to their spots.

  “We’re going to die,” Mary said.

  CHAPTER 10

  Daisy patrolled the house; her claws tic’ tacked along the hardwood floor as she made her rounds. The extra people in the house and the unusual noises that they made seemed to take her out of her routine.

  Leah lifted one eyelid as she heard the dog come into her bedroom. She then used the same eye and looked at the analog watch on her wrist. 5:37AM. She had successfully slept through most of the night and actually felt some relief. She hadn’t been tormented in her dreams like she thought she would.

  I guess those will come later.

  She watched Daisy cir
cle her bed, looking to see if Ian was in the bed, and then she came back to Leah’s side and lay down as close to the head of the bed as she could muster. Good dog.

  Leah rubbed her eyes and her mind started ramping up with what she needed to do, what had happened the day before, and worry for Grace and Ian. Where are you? Are you even alive? Stop it Leah! Don’t think that way!

  Leah threw the covers off of her bed, reached for the gun on her nightstand and went to the bathroom. I’m taking a gun to the freaking bathroom! This new world sucks! Leah was not a morning person.

  20 minutes later, Leah had brewed a pot of tea on the outdoor grill and was sipping her first cup of the day as the sun came up. She smirked to herself thinking that on a ‘normal’ day, she would have been checking Facebook and her email. She would have been scrolling through timeline pictures of her friend’s kids playing soccer or having birthdays or of the shrimp cocktails that they enjoyed the night before. Life was different now. She was different now.

  “Hey, do mind if I join you?” Amy asked, appearing on her deck.

  “Of course not. How did you sleep?”

  Amy and the kids had spent the night with Leah. Leah had insisted on it, and would not take ‘no’ for an answer.

  “Fitful but, I got enough. I’ve just been so worried about where Rob is, and what happened yesterday.”

  Leah knew that feeling. This was the second night that she didn’t have Grace home and it had been nearly 40 hours since she had spoken to her husband. Amy was dealing with a similar situation, now knowing that an airplane had impacted and possibly destroyed downtown…where her husband worked.

  “Do you want some tea?” Leah asked, moving to get another cup.

  “Yes, please.”

  Leah quickly retrieved a new cup and poured some of the steaming liquid to share with her friend.

  “The kids are still asleep?” Leah asked, handing her the cup of tea.

  “Yeah, I think they will be out for awhile. They hardly moved last night. Yesterday was crazy for them.”

  “It was crazy for all of us,” Leah confirmed.