Ranger (The Bugging Out Series Book 5) Read online

  Ranger

  The Bugging Out Series

  Book Five

  Noah Mann

  Copyright

  © 2016 Noah Mann

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events, locations, or situations is coincidental.

  www.noahmann.com

  Books in the Bugging Out series.

  Book 1: Bugging Out

  Book 2: Eagle One

  Book 3: Wasteland

  Book 4: The Pit

  Book 5: Ranger

  Table of Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty One

  Twenty Two

  Twenty Three

  Twenty Four

  Twenty Five

  Twenty Six

  Twenty Seven

  Twenty Eight

  Twenty Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty One

  Thirty Two

  Thirty Three

  Thirty Four

  Thirty Five

  Thirty Six

  Thirty Seven

  Thirty Eight

  Thirty Nine

  Forty

  Forty One

  Forty Two

  Forty Three

  Forty Four

  Forty Five

  Forty Six

  Forty Seven

  Forty Eight

  Forty Nine

  Fifty

  Fifty One

  Thank You

  About The Author

  Part One

  Returns

  One

  I woke in the middle of a road with drops of cold rain pecking softly at my cheeks.

  I’m outside...

  That was the first thought that stuttered up from within as my eyes opened. Cracked asphalt stretched out before me. Barren trees to either side of the road. A whisper of wind in the grey daylight.

  What happened?

  What did happen? How was it that I was outside, lying on a two lane road? I wasn’t dreaming. Not now. This felt too real. The chill on my skin. A stinging ache on the backside of my right arm.

  An accident...

  Yes. That. I was in an accident. But what kind of an accident? I rolled slowly until I could gaze down the road in the opposite direction, the weathered strip of narrow blacktop disappearing beyond ranks of dead woods as it curved through the once lush forest in the distance. If it was an accident that had left me here, stunned and hurting, then where was the vehicle? There was no wreckage to be seen. Not on the road or in the adjacent knots of pine and fir.

  “Ahhhh...”

  I exhaled and moaned at the same time as I slowly pushed myself up until I was sitting on the hard, pitted surface. That unseen pain on the backside of my arm was matched, if not exceeded, by a shallow soreness that spread across my chest as I moved, muscles there seeming to resist even the minor exertion I was attempting. Damp air filled my lungs as I breathed deeply. The air tasted...stale. Then I realized it was not the air lacking in freshness and flavor—it was my mouth. My tongue. All those parts that sampled taste. I struggled to produce a bit of saliva then spit it out toward the muddy shoulder of the road.

  The staleness decreased. I spit some more between breaths until that flat sensation in my mouth was gone. But what had caused it?

  What had caused everything?

  I struggled to my knees, and then to my feet, steadying myself as I stood at the center of the road. The urge to call out surged, but I forced it down. Who was I going to call out to? And for what? Help? I didn’t seem to be hurt, just sore in places that made no sense. No, before I sought assistance I needed to take stock of myself and try to get my mind clear.

  “I’m Eric Fletcher,” I said.

  I knew that. At the very least I was certain of who I was. But there was more to me than just my name. More to my existence. To my place in the world.

  What was the last thing I remembered? I focused on that. Some morsel of memory was certain to pop up. That’s what I told myself. What I waited for.

  But none did.

  I did remember some things, however. The blight. That I recalled, and could see its effects in the grey woods bordering the road. I hadn’t dreamed that. The slow motion apocalypse which had decimated the planet had been real.

  As had other things.

  I lifted my left hand and saw the ring on its third finger. A wedding band. Simple and perfect all at once.

  “Elaine...”

  I spoke her name just to hear it in the space outside my thoughts. We’d been married. Hardly a month after Martin and Angela had wed. The ring on my finger that symbolized our union had been crafted by Hanna Morse in Bandon. Elaine had commissioned the gifted woman to make it for our big day. For that wonderful day.

  That wonderful day that I remembered.

  But I didn’t have any recollection of what had brought me to this place. This strange, unfamiliar place.

  The sputtering rain turned to a steady fall of cold water from the sky. I was not dressed for the weather. My feet were bare, and what I did wear was hardly adequate to beat back any chill, much less a soaking one. Just sweats and a tee shirt. The same attire I would wear when going to...

  ...bed.

  Tase him!

  I actually shuddered as the memory burst up from somewhere unknown. A voice. A harsh voice. One that I’d heard.

  In a bedroom. Not our bedroom, but a bedroom. That was where that phrase, that command, had been spoken. Had been given.

  Tase him...

  I looked down to my chest and lifted my damp shirt, high enough so that the pair of circular bruises were visible just below my sternum, small, scabbed puncture wounds plain at the center of each.

  Tase him...

  “A Taser,” I said.

  Eric!

  Elaine had shouted my name. Then she’d shouted no more. I’d flailed against hands reaching out of the darkness. Trying to get to her. To protect her.

  From what, or who, I had no idea.

  I walked to the side of the road and planted my hand against the stout, dried trunk of a towering fir, my head hanging, eyes closed, trying furiously to dredge full recall from the fog of my thoughts.

  It wasn’t at the house we called home in Bandon. It was another house. One down the coast a few miles. A getaway we’d decided to take shortly after being married. The closest thing to a honeymoon that we could manage in the world as it was.

  “What happened?”

  I posed the question to myself, or to any power that might bring that knowing to me.

  “We went to that cottage,” I reminded myself aloud, slipping pieces of my fragmented memories into place, bit by bit. “We drove there. It was in one of the Humvees that came in on the Rushmore.”

  The Navy supply ship had made a second visit after bringing its initial load of promised supplies for Bandon, along with the garrison to secure the settlement. Four of the aging and ubiquitous military vehicles had been provided for the town’s use, along with more capable trucks. The town’s diesel plant was back up and operating after the return from Alaska, so fueling the transport was little issue. I’d simply requested permission from the mayor and Schi
avo to use one of the Humvees for a couple days, and the okay had been given without hesitation.

  “We drove there,” I repeated, thinking back, not only seeing that short trip in my mind’s eye, but feeling it. “We.”

  Elaine had been at my side. On the way there. And at the small cottage nestled close to the shore that had been previously scouted and found to be safe. We weren’t the first from Bandon who’d journeyed there. A reservation book for the location actually existed at the town office building on the coast highway. Schiavo had set the garrison’s headquarters in the same facility, taking over what had been the offices of the police department. We’d signed the reservation book for the dates we’d desired and that was that.

  “But something happened,” I said.

  I shivered, both the penetrating chill and fear of the unknown I’d just expressed mixing to send a sharp spasm through me. Yes, something had happened. Something that was very clearly not good. Ending up in a strange place, alone, with no idea where Elaine, where my love, was, could be nothing but worrisome at the very least.

  At the very worst...I didn’t want to imagine.

  The desperation to know, to understand what had transpired was fierce. But amidst that overpowering need a reality forced itself to the forefront of my thoughts.

  I had to get home.

  But where was home in relation to my present location?

  I looked to the sky. Or, to be more precise, to the clouds that masked the bright blue day above. A flat, ashen brightness spread from a point roughly twenty degrees from dead above. Had the clouds been gone, or simply parted, the sun would be right there, hanging above the earth that was trying to heal. But was I looking at a rising sun heading toward noon, or settling toward the day’s end?

  I needed to know which it was. Were I to guess, and begin trudging along the road or through the dead woods without that knowledge, it might be hours of walking before I knew if I was heading in the right direction. A direction that would take me home. Or at least closer to that place than I was right now.

  West. Unless I’d been picked up and spirited off across the Pacific Ocean to Japan or the Asian continent, Bandon would lie in that general direction from my current position.

  I was wet, and I was cold. I needed to find shelter, and, if possible, make a fire, though how realistic the latter was I didn’t know. And I couldn’t know. Not until I moved from the spot to scour for resources along the path I would choose that would take me home.

  But shelter, and the possibly impossible fire, would have to wait. I needed to stay put, in this spot, and watch the sky, tracking the vague center of brightness filtered through the clouds until I was certain of the way I must travel.

  I stood close to a tree just off the road, accepting the scant shelter its bare limbs and dead trunk could provide. My eyes stayed fixed on the storm above, the highest point of a towering fir the marker against which I would judge the movement of the shrouded sun in the southern sky. If it tracked directly toward the tree, climbing higher into the sky, then west would be to my left. If it tracked away, to the right would be the direction I would travel. Away from me, or toward me, would give me similar indications as to the correct path to take.

  All I had to do was wait and watch.

  Time ticked by as I studied the movement. As I estimated the drift of that bright blot upon the clouds. Five minutes it might’ve been. Ten minutes. Probably closer to the latter, I thought. But by that time I had my answer.

  West was to the right, almost arrow straight along the road. I would have to maintain that bearing beneath the clouded skies. Doing so, keeping the vague point of the sun’s position just above my left cheek, would require focus. Focus that would be increasingly difficult to manage as the soaking cold chilled me with each step.

  I began to walk down the center of the road with two purposes in mind. Get home, and, before that, get out of the weather and get warm so that I might live to see my friends, and my love, again.

  Two

  I counted steps. As much to keep my mind off the penetrating cold as to guesstimate the distance I had covered.

  Two miles. Then three. By some good fortune the road did not stray from a true westerly direction by much. The few curves that it took through the woods corrected around the terrain, making unnecessary any overland travel on my part.

  Two thousand two hundred steps. Another mile. Four.

  That number again, which I had thought multiplied by my stride would roughly equate to distance of a mile, passed.

  Five miles. The sun sank lower ahead and to my left. It was the middle of spring, or had been when Elaine and I had set out on our getaway. Assuming that no more than a day or two had passed, I could tell by the position of the setting sun that I had maybe three hours of daylight left. Night would follow.

  And with that, cold.

  As I pressed on I looked to either side of the road. Through the trees into the thinned-out woods. There was the occasional limb that had fallen from the dead canopy, but not enough in total to be useful in constructing some makeshift protection from the elements. And without some sort of tool, a knife or an axe, or even some piece of metal to be wielded as a cutting instrument, I had little chance of chopping and breaking what I would need to fashion a shelter.

  Another mile I walked. And another nine hundred and eighty steps past that before I stopped, shivering, and stood at the center of the road looking off to my left. At what had caused me to pause.

  A narrow but plain path was worn between the stands of fir and pine trees. Not wide enough for a vehicle, it was nonetheless a way that had been traveled before. By someone. Going somewhere.

  Since before the blight, I thought. There was evidence of lower limbs having been chopped away, possibly for firewood. Or, it appeared, to make a clearer way through the once lush woods.

  I was looking at a trail.

  To take it, and head south by doing so, was one half of a choice to be made. To continue west with the daylight that remained was the other. The way through the forest might lead to shelter. An old cabin. Or an abandoned hunting camp.

  Or it might be nothing more than a hiking path meandering through the grey wilderness for tens of miles.

  I was cold. The constant rain had beaten a chill deep into my bones. Walking was growing more difficult by the minute. In another mile my bare feet and wobbly legs might be able to carry me no more.

  My mind was not far behind. Every thought was a struggle. Moments of clarity were few and far between. A quarter mile up the road my senses might be dulled enough that I wouldn’t see something similar to the path off to my left. I might miss my best chance at staying alive.

  I took a few steps toward the path, pausing where it began at the shoulder of the road. It might lead to nothing. And it might lead to everything.

  There’s always hope...

  My friend’s words, spoken first to me even before the blight ravaged the land where I now stood, both buoyed and stung me. His simple encouragement had become a mantra of sorts, spurring me on when faced with difficulties. When faced with uncertainties like what lay before me.

  But his abrupt departure, under the most inexplicable circumstances, hurt every single time I married that desire to persevere with his memory. I didn’t want to forget him. No. That wouldn’t erase the pain of what he’d done. What I wanted was to understand the why and the what of his leaving.

  “You’d take the path,” I said aloud, referencing what I knew my friend would do.

  And what I would, as well.

  I left the road and walked along the soggy trail, mud caking my feet and legs up to the ankles, soaking and staining the loose cuffs of my sweatpants. I didn’t count steps here—I just walked. Moving forward. Up a gentle incline the path crossed, and then down into a hollow beyond, bare trees and small boulders filling the natural depression, the tangle of features thinning out as a clearing opened up, something at its southern boundary.

  A building.

&n
bsp; It was a cabin. Not a shack. A true stone chimney rose from the wall nearest me, and as I moved quickly toward it I saw a window, intact, set into the western wall of the small structure. Its walls were made of aged logs, stacked decades ago, I guessed, and the low roof, simply shingled with split wood, bore spots of wear where the elements and neglect had taken their toll.

  My pace quickened, bringing me nearer to the old getaway. Someone had spent time here. Using it as a base for hunting and fishing excursions, I imagined. A place of solitude off the beaten path. It was a place where someone had enjoyed life before the blight.

  And it was a place where that someone had died after the apocalypse had raged its way across the globe.

  I stopped near the back corner of the cabin and stared at the body beneath a dead pine. The parts of the body, I corrected myself. Beneath a noose that had been suspended from a high limb the remains of a man lay, head in one spot, body from which it was severed in another a few feet away. For a moment I was confused by the sight. Then I was not, the images of what had happened tumbling into my head like a disjointed film playing at some advanced speed.

  The man, the unfortunate soul, had retreated here, to his getaway, after the blight struck with full force, much as I had retreated to my property in the north of Montana. He’d hung on here, wherever here was, until doing so was no longer an option. Some fear of going on, of starving, of wasting away had cemented his decision, and he’d looped a hangman’s noose over a limb close to both his cabin and the meadow. Maybe last spring, I thought. That was when he’d stepped onto the fat log positioned beneath the rope and stared out at the open space, imagining it as it had been when the world was green and fresh and alive.

  Then he did the deed. Took control of his fate, on his terms.

  And from that moment a year or so ago, nature took over. Nature and decay. At some point, as his body decomposed, tissue and muscle and bone was no longer stout enough to maintain the integrity of the human form. A separation occurred at the neck, body dropping one way, and head another, leaving what I was witness to.