Fight to Be Free Read online

  “You kids are wasting my time. Get out of here if you know what’s good for you.”

  Angie’s eyes narrowed as she stared Nick down. She was seething with rage at being denied what they wanted.

  “You heard the man,” Jessa said steadily.

  Patrick looked at her rifle, then back at Nick, before kicking at a rock on the ground. “Fine, let’s go, babe. Some people are just so selfish they can’t help anybody else out.”

  He opened the car door and hopped in, slamming his door. Angie did the same.

  The quiet one, Josh, looked at Nick.

  “Can – can I get those directions?”

  Nick nodded. “Got a pen?”

  Josh opened the sliding door and rifled through a bag in the backseat of the minivan. Out of the corner of his eye, Nick saw Trina slip inside the front door of the hotel quietly.

  Josh found a pen, but no paper. He wrote the directions Nick gave him on his arm.

  “Thanks, man,” he said before climbing in the backseat. Nick nodded and met the driver’s steely gaze before he started the engine up.

  The front door of the hotel flew open and Trina ran out.

  “Wait!” she shouted, running up to Angie’s open window.

  Trina held out a few items of clothing toward the young woman. “Something to keep you from freezing.”

  Angie’s eyes met Trina’s for a second. Then she looked down at the clothes and muttered a quiet thank you.

  Nick watched as the minivan drove through the parking lot and turned to the south on the gravel road. Once it was out of sight, Matt retreated from his watch station and crossed the distance to join the rest of the group. By then, Mia and Liz had emerged from the hotel and were getting caught up on what had happened.

  “Nice job, Matt,” Nick said to his nephew. “You stuck to the plan.”

  Nick gave Trina a little smile.

  She threw her hands in the air. “I know, I know. I didn’t follow the protocol.”

  “You did fine, Trina,” Nick said. “You probably saved that girl from freezing. We’ll go over the protocol again later. For now, I want you to take your watch duty in the rear kitchen entrance.”

  “Okay, that’s a new one,” Trina said. “But who’s going to be on guard at the north entrance? It was my turn to be there.”

  “I will,” Nick answered.

  “Nick, you’ve been on watch all night,” Jessa said. “You need to sleep.”

  “I can sleep later,” Nick said. “I want to be around just in case our visitors decide to make a stupid mistake like coming back.”

  3

  “Did you see the look on that guy’s face?” Patrick asked as he drove the minivan down the road. “Who’d he think he was, Dirty Harry?”

  Angie put on her new sweatshirt. “I mean, it’s pretty nice that lady gave me some clothes. But we needed food, too. Like, real food.”

  “Yeah, and a place to stay,” Patrick answered. “What a bastard that guy was. They have that big hotel all to themselves and they couldn’t let us stay the night.”

  As he drove, he distributed the food, then tore into his own ration.

  Josh gobbled down his fruit and granola bar. He leaned his head back in his seat. The energy flooded into his body and made him feel a little better. But he knew the hunger would come back quickly.

  He had been desperate for food all night. Maybe the guy at the hotel was right. Maybe they could find something once they got to a highway.

  He saw a road sign and looked at the directions scrawled on his arm.

  “That’s it!” Josh said, leaning forward to direct Patrick. “Here’s the road that’ll lead us to the highway. That guy said to turn left here.”

  Patrick gave Angie a smile. Then he turned right.

  “No, left,” Josh said. “Left will take us to the highway.”

  “We’re not going to the highway, Josh,” Patrick said.

  Josh felt a chill. “What? Why not? We have to get more food–”

  “Oh, we’re getting food,” Patrick interrupted. “Don’t worry about that, Joshie boy.”

  A smile spread over Angie’s face. “Are we going back there?”

  “You know it, babe,” Patrick said. “I’m gonna get the food they should have given to us in the first place.”

  Angie let out an excited squeal. “That’s why I love you, baby! You’re so crazy!”

  Patrick smirked. “But first we’ve got to scope things out and make a plan. I think we can get a view from that ridge up there.”

  Josh’s mouth hung open in disbelief. “Let’s just go to the highway and get food from empty houses like that guy said, Patrick. This is crazy. You want to steal from those people?”

  Patrick clenched the steering wheel. “It’s what they deserve, turning us away like that. Heartless cowards. They’ll get what’s coming to them.”

  “Did you see those guns they had? How are we going to take them on? We don’t have any weapons, Patrick.”

  “With my brains, we don’t need weapons.”

  Angie squealed again and leaned over to plant a kiss on her boyfriend’s cheek.

  Josh collapsed against the seat back in exasperation. It was an insane idea, but he couldn’t talk any reason into those two. How had he ended with up this pair of psychos?

  Just three weeks ago he had been a community college student in Denver. He worked hard, determined to get ahead and have a good career. He was getting top grades in his computer science classes even while working full-time at a supermarket.

  When everyone around him started dropping like flies from the Hosta virus, the violence started. The BSC and Los Pumas were battling for resources and territory, and it became more and more dangerous to leave the house. The gangs either killed people or sent them to work on forced labor camps.

  Then his 4Runner was stolen while he was sleeping in his big apartment building. When his food ran out, he had no choice but to try to leave Denver on foot.

  In Stonegate, the BSC had nearly caught him. He was running through backyards and climbing fences, trying to lose a couple of gang members who were chasing him, when a minivan pulled up. The back door slid open.

  “Get in!” a woman’s voice had called to him.

  And that was how he got all mixed up with Patrick and Angie.

  They had saved his life, and he was grateful to them for picking him up. But they kept making bad choices, one after another. They had gotten lost in the mountains, ignoring every idea that Josh had to get them to shelter and find food. Now they were in a remote area of the high country with no food.

  Getting the directions to the highway had been a godsend. It meant they would get out of this endless range and back into the remains of civilization. They could raid some abandoned house for canned goods, if nothing else.

  But, no. Patrick was obsessed with getting revenge. He wanted to put their lives in danger to steal food from those people at the ski resort.

  The stress of a crazy situation had gotten to them all. But it seemed to change Patrick and Angie the most. It was making them become monsters.

  Josh watched as Patrick steered the minivan up the steep road that curved up and behind the ski lodge. He tried again to talk some sense into the guy.

  “I just don’t think it’s a good idea,” Josh said. “This could get us killed. It doesn’t make any sense to steal food when we can get it from some empty house south of here.”

  “It’s not just the food, you know,” Angie said, turning around in her seat to face Josh. “It’s the principle of the thing.”

  “That’s exactly right, sugar,” Patrick said, stroking Angie’s cheek tenderly. “That guy needs to be taught a lesson. He can’t disrespect me – and my lady – and get away with it.”

  Patrick flashed his icy gaze at Josh in the rearview. “That’s something you don’t understand, Josh,” Patrick said coolly.

  “What’s that?”

  “Honor,” Patrick said.

  Josh grabbed hi
s aching stomach. He had a bad feeling about this.

  4

  Daniel Parker stood in front of a dusty old adobe house. The sun had already been up for a while now.

  He was late.

  He carried his 20-gauge shotgun and set out swiftly across the patch of dirt that comprised the front yard of the adobe. He wanted to get to the edge of town, where the alfalfa field met the tree line. The town wasn’t much to speak of, just a few scattered houses. It wasn’t long before he came to the alfalfa field.

  He slowed his pace, taking a few steps, then pausing. He crept across the field with his gun in the ready position, but he spotted nothing.

  At the edge of the forest, he heard a slight movement among the saplings. Then, he saw it.

  A rabbit dashed out from the brush. Daniel aimed and fired without pausing to think.

  The shot rang around the hills, sending some birds scattering from the trees overhead.

  Daniel approached the kill and placed a hand on the cottontail’s soft fur. He always thanked the animal for its meat, just as his great-grandfather had taught him.

  This meat was especially important.

  It would help his mother heal.

  She needed to get better quickly. The work waiting for them in White Pine Falls weighed on his mind, but what worried him most was her health.

  The past two days, Daniel and his mother, Anne, had been in quarantine in this deserted town.

  It all began when they had been driving with the rest of the Watlah tribe from Los Gatos. They were fleeing the wildland fire, headed toward White Pine Falls in the northwest. There, they would build a new home with the rest of his people. There, they would meet Nick, the man who had saved his life, and the friends Nick had taken in. Knowing that Nick’s lodge would burn in the fire like their own home, Daniel’s family had invited their new friends to join them.

  But somewhere along the way, Anne had taken ill. It was near the end of the several hour journey through the night. Daniel had been driving the old single cab Nissan truck with his mother in the passenger seat. It came on all of a sudden, intense and acute. She became dizzy and weak with nausea and fatigue.

  Daniel fought back panic.

  They couldn’t continue.

  Daniel flagged down his dad, who was driving another vehicle with Daniel’s siblings. From a safe distance, Daniel explained the situation.

  No one said aloud what they all feared. No one used the words Hosta virus.

  But they agreed that Daniel and Anne should go into quarantine.

  They were just being precautious, they assured each other. It was just a bad cold, brought on by the cooler temperatures. Surely she would feel better in a couple days. Just in case, though, she and Daniel, who had been in close proximity in the same vehicle, would have to stay away from the rest of the tribe while she recovered.

  That night, Daniel had driven to the nearest town, a small community called Robinson. While his mother had waited in the truck, he had checked out several houses before he found one they could use as temporary lodging.

  Anne had slept for much of the past two days they’d spent in quarantine. Her condition hadn’t improved, Daniel noted nervously. But he was relieved to observe her normal skin tone and temperature. As long as her skin didn’t take on that horrible, damning shade of gray, there was still hope.

  There was so much that didn’t make sense to Daniel. With his mind swimming, his thoughts turned to the events of the past few weeks.

  When the Hosta virus had begun to decimate most of the outside world, Daniel’s people had cloistered themselves off. They avoided any contact with people from outside their town for weeks, keeping visitors out by force. They had even stopped hunting to avoid contact with infected wild animals. Daniel’s great-grandfather, a tribal elder named Edward, called it the Dying Time.

  But when Daniel had been injured in the woods, he was found by Nick and Charlie, who lived near Los Gatos. Daniel had no choice but to accept life-saving help from the two outsiders. The two men had been exposed to the Hosta virus and were still alive, so they couldn’t have been carriers of the illness. To be safe, though, Daniel had gone into quarantine for three days. Showing no symptoms, he had rejoined his family.

  The tribe assumed the Dying Time had ended, and they began to welcome Nick’s group into their village.

  Had it been a mistake after all to make contact with outsiders? What if Daniel had infected his family with this horrible disease?

  The thought was unbearable. No, it couldn’t be true. He couldn’t have infected his community with the Hosta.

  Besides, no one else in the village had shown signs of the illness. Yes, there had to be some other explanation for his mother’s sudden illness.

  Daniel dressed the rabbit and brought it home. He planned to boil the bones for a nutritious broth, then add the meat and some onions and potatoes he’d found in a root cellar to make a stew.

  His mother was puttering around the kitchen when he got home. She looked up at him guiltily as he walked in the door. He was stooped over to avoid hitting his head in the low doorframe.

  “Mom, you should be in bed,” he chided her as he looked up.

  She managed a smile. His mother looked fatigued, but still beautiful with her soft, shining eyes and long, black hair pulled back on her head.

  “I can’t sleep all day, Daniel. I need something to do to keep busy.”

  He watched as she reached for a pot of water, then struggled to lift it. She was too weak.

  Daniel’s heart sank.

  “Let me do that,” he said.

  “I guess I’m weaker than I thought,” she said, disappointed. She moved to the living room to stretch out on the couch.

  Daniel arranged some kindling and small logs in the wood-burning stove. Once the fire was going, he set the pot of water on the stovetop to boil and began to chop the vegetables.

  “It didn’t take long to find this cottontail at all,” he called to her from the kitchen. “The virus took out a bunch of rabbits, but I think the survivors are starting to make a comeback. It doesn’t take them long to bounce back, you know.”

  He cringed when he realized what he’d said. He hadn’t meant to bring up the Hosta virus to his mother. It was a sensitive subject, and he didn’t want her to think about it.

  “Sorry, Mom,” he said. “I didn’t mean to bring up –”

  He cut himself off and walked into the living room. His mother had already fallen asleep.

  She looked so frail and weak. He had never seen her like this. She had always been strong.

  Daniel turned away sadly, pushing his worries out of his mind for now.

  She would recover.

  She had to.

  5

  Liz and Mia looked up from the stack of dirty dishes to see Trina enter the kitchen with a rifle slung over her shoulder.

  “Guard duty back here begins already?” Liz asked.

  “Yep, Nick’s already back at the front entrance,” Trina said as she grabbed a few raisins. “Frankly, I think it’s a little silly to add more guard shifts. I don’t think those three kids are coming back.”

  Liz scrubbed some oatmeal off a bowl. “I don’t know. I think we’ve all learned you can’t be too cautious these days.”

  “They’re just kids,” Trina said. “They’re not going to do anything. And anyway, we should have given them more food.”

  Liz shook her head. “I disagree.”

  “It’s not right to turn our backs on people in need like that. We have enough to spare,” Trina said.

  She looked at Mia, who knew the food inventory best, for confirmation. But Mia looked down at the plate she was drying.

  “You did a good thing giving the girl some clothes,” Liz said.

  Trina shrugged. “I didn’t need so many clothes, anyway.”

  “Right. But we do need all the food we have,” Liz replied. “Besides, they’ll find some food once they get out of the mountains and find a town.”
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br />   Trina sighed.

  “I understand where you’re coming from,” Liz said. “I hate turning people away, too. But we gave them a snack, some clothes and told them how to find more food. That was the best we could do. It’s tough, but we have to look out for ourselves.”

  “I guess so,” Trina said noncommittally as she walked to the back door to begin her six-hour guard shift.

  Liz and Mia stayed behind to finish the cleanup after breakfast. Mia listened as Liz recounted the plot of a new book she was reading.

  Liz put away the last dry plate and tossed the dish towel on the counter. She removed the hairpin from her updo and let her dark brown hair tumble down her shoulders.

  “Okay, we’re finally done here. I’m going to take a nap before I have to take the afternoon watch. What are you going to do, kiddo?”

  Mia shrugged. “Not sure. Read, I guess. But first I’m going to see if Bethany wants the oatmeal I saved for her.”

  Liz watched as Mia picked up the bowl of oatmeal she had set aside for Bethany. It was covered with a clean dish towel.

  “Ask her if she feels up to cooking lunch today,” Liz said as she held the door open for Mia and they walked down the hall.

  Mia nodded and watched as Liz retreated to her room. Bethany had moved to her own room across the hall so she wouldn’t be disturbed by Liz’s and Mia’s comings and goings.

  Mia took a deep breath, then knocked on Bethany’s door.

  “Come in,” Bethany called.

  Mia pushed the door open to see Bethany lying in bed, awake but groggy. Bethany smiled when she saw Mia open the door. With considerable difficulty, Bethany rolled over and sat up in bed with her back against the headboard. Her brown ringlets created a mane of hair around her head.

  She groaned. “It’s so hard to move with this big belly,” she said.

  Her eyes got big when she saw the bowl of oatmeal Mia held out to her. “Ooh, food! Thank you.”

  “It’s just oatmeal,” Mia said. “And it’s kind of cold. Sorry.”