Avenger (The Bugging Out Series Book 6) Read online

  Elaine eased one hand from our daughter and reached toward Grace. She leaned down and hugged us both, holding tight, the embrace lingering. There was happiness in the exchange. And sadness. She knew, as did I, that another should be there with us. Sharing this moment. Basking in the joy.

  “Neil would be so, so giddy about this,” Grace said as she straightened again, just a thin sheen of tears glistening over her eyes. “He would.”

  “I know,” I said.

  He was gone. My friend. Murdered in cold blood by a man who had once been a friend and colleague to him. Killed after a selfless act which had saved our town. Our home.

  And our lives.

  There was still much to be angry about, and in moments when I let the animus rise I could still see the face of Tyler Olin. The face of the man who’d taken my friend from me, taken a husband from Grace, and a father from Brandon and Krista. It was a face I both never wanted to see again, and one I wished was just outside the hospital, within reach, so I could bring vengeance upon the man who’d hurt so many and wronged an entire town.

  This, though, was not the moment to entertain such thoughts. This was a moment where new life had presented itself. A good moment. Perfection in the form of a child.

  “I’ll give you all a while to catch your breaths, then we’ll move you,” Grace said, then she stepped past the delivery table and into the hallway, closing the door and leaving us alone.

  Us...

  We were not just a couple anymore. We were more.

  We were a family.

  It was more than cliché to think what I was, but it was also true. And appropriate. Because for the moment, despite anything that existed beyond the hospital’s walls, all was right with the world.

  Three

  One of the first things I said to Elaine when we were alone with our daughter in a regular room was laughably obvious.

  “She’s so little.”

  “Babies are.”

  “But...”

  I didn’t know how to express myself yet. Not about this. Not about her.

  “I never thought I’d be a father,” I said, leaning close to my wife as she cradled our child. “I never thought I’d be married.”

  Elaine’s gaze shifted to me and smiled.

  “You never thought the world would end, either.”

  I allowed a slight chuckle at the observation, incorrect as it was. The world hadn’t ended. It had come close. We had come close to losing it all. But we’d fought back, in more ways that I could have imagined. Humankind had persevered, even when faced with those who’d lost their humanity.

  “Okay,” Elaine said, prelude in her tone. “Decision time. She needs a name.”

  I nodded at the tiny wonder who was our daughter. For whatever reason we hadn’t discussed any possible names to choose from. Part of it might have been fear of not having that chance. Fear of something going wrong before our child made its way into this world, screaming and oblivious to what we all faced. That fear had been realized early on for Martin and Angela. Their heartbreak was real, and, almost certainly, it was permanent. Even if they decided to try and conceive again, both Doc Allen and Commander Genesee told them that their chances were slim of successfully carrying a child to term.

  But two other women had given birth since the Unified Government forces were driven off. And now there was a third. There was, as my friend had always said, hope.

  And in that instant, with that snippet of a warm recollection, I knew.

  “Hope,” I said.

  Elaine looked to me, puzzled at first, wondering why I would bring Neil’s mantra into this moment of decision. Then, without me needing to say another word, she smiled, realizing that the single word I’d spoken was the decision.

  “Hope,” she said, looking down to our swaddled daughter and planting a soft kiss on her wrinkled pink forehead. “What else could it be?”

  It wasn’t a question she posed. It was a statement of certainty.

  “Hope Fletcher,” I said.

  She was perfect. It was a belief all parents held when gazing upon their newborn child. But here, I knew, she actually was. And the world needed her. It needed more like her. Perfect, unsullied keepers of the flame.

  We’d brought green back to the earth turned grey. And now we were bringing life back, little by little. We were warriors and pioneers. Trailblazers. Dreamers.

  “Do you—”

  The sudden jolt cut off my question. It shook the building, not with any devastating force, but with enough punch to remind us that, even if the surface of the planet had been devastated by man’s biological trickery, Mother Nature still ran the show.

  “Earthquake,” Elaine said, clutching our daughter just that much tighter. “Another one.”

  Oregon was earthquake country, sitting close to the Pacific ring of fire, a geologic hotbed of colliding tectonic plates out in the ocean to the west. If one forgot that factoid, just walking through town and seeing the fading Tsunami Evacuation Route signs was reminder enough that an upheaval of the ocean floor off shore could send a wall of water racing toward the town.

  And, in the past two months, the frequency of tremblors had increased, something those longtime residents of the seaside town said was worrisome, but not any certain harbinger of a major event. My old life in Montana had exposed me to only the most minor of earthquakes, though catastrophic ones had struck that region in the past. Here, though, the earth’s violent tendencies were worth taking note of—and being prepared for.

  The door opened quickly, though not urgently, Grace stepping in.

  “You both all right?”

  Elaine smiled and nodded.

  “All three of us,” she said.

  Grace smiled, too, mindful of her innocent mistake.

  “That didn’t feel too big,” Grace commented.

  There was no functioning Richter scale in town to provide us with an accurate measure of the shakers we’d experienced. Those who’d been through many in the past had said the larger quakes felt somewhere in the low 4 range, with most of less intensity than that.

  “Already enough excitement for today,” I said.

  “Hope’s first earthquake,” Elaine said.

  Still standing near the door, Grace’s smile softened, to something more sweet than bitter.

  “Hope,” she said.

  “I don’t think there’s a better name,” Elaine told her. “Not after everything.”

  Grace didn’t say anything for a moment. But it was plain from the pure emotion in her eyes that she could not agree more.

  “I guess we should fill out some paperwork on her,” Grace said.

  Paperwork...

  Yes, we were edging back toward some semblance of civilization, with forms and procedures to properly record the arrival of new children. Doing so had been Mayor Allen’s idea, though I’d wondered if his suggestion of our adoption of birth certificates was just the machinations of a man, an old man, reaching back for some bit of the past. Particularly with the passing of his wife after the Unified Government’s use of its virus to weaken the town. There hadn’t been many deaths, but, sadly, Carol Allen had been one.

  “Hope,” Grace said again. “I’ll get the birth certificate and let Commander Genesee know he’s got something to sign.”

  With that she left us. In her absence, as we waited for an official record of her birth to be made, Elaine and I simply looked at our girl. At our Hope. We said nothing. Just stared. Stared at the most wonderful thing either of us had ever seen.

  Four

  I drove through the storm to gather those things my wife would need for a few days in the hospital.

  We’d planned to have her ‘go bag’ ready the following week, which, we’d believed, was plenty of time. We, and those with medical expertise, had been wrong.

  Or, I had to allow, our daughter had just been anxious to make her entrance.

  Now, though, as Elaine lay in a hospital bed with Hope in a basinet no more than twelve in
ches away, I made my way through the swirling snow. At times the rare blizzard spat waves of icy flakes across the road, a horizontal whiteout washing away the roadway and houses to either side as I turned onto our street. The Humvee’s headlights reflected off the wall of white, blinding me as I crept the vehicle forward. I killed the lights as I neared our house and eased to the curb.

  Wind nearly ripped the door from my hands as I stepped from the vehicle. I leaned my body against it to get it shut, pulling the hood of my parka up, as much to mask the sound of the wailing gusts as to keep me warm. The fury of the historic storm pounded on me as I half stumbled around the front of the Humvee and up the walkway to the porch of our house.

  At the bottom step I moved no further, one foot planted on the wooden tread, my gaze peering past the edges of the cinched hood to the window to the left of the front door. I’d seen something there. The silhouette of something.

  Of someone.

  Instinctively I raised the side of my parka and slipped the Springfield from its holster, keeping the safety on. For the moment. There’d been a number of petty thefts in town over the past month and a half, which some had attributed to bored teenagers seeking thrills in a world where once ubiquitous activities had been erased with most of the technological infrastructure. There were computers, but no vast network which allowed continuous and instant communication with peers, be they fifty feet or ten thousand miles away. Every band they’d followed religiously was gone. Movies no longer showed weekly at the theater in North Bend, twenty miles up the coast, a facility which still stood, but had long ago been looted and vandalized, our scouting missions had confirmed.

  I, though, wasn’t convinced that simple mischief was behind the minor burglaries. What had been taken didn’t seem to fit the act of misguided youth. Essentials were missing. Staples scrounged from our continuous scouting missions, mostly to the south along the coast and inland to the east. Toothpaste, sewing kits, kitchen knives, and the odd can of food were what turned up gone. None of it, not a single item, had been recovered in town, even after Schiavo had Martin interview suspects and perform searches authorized by the Defense Council.

  My own suspicion was that someone in town, not a teenager, was gathering the supplies. Stockpiling. Maybe in preparation for another assault like the one we’d been subjected to at the hands of the Unified Government.

  As it turned out, I was as wrong as everyone else.

  I backed away from the front steps and slipped down the side of the house, carefully high-stepping through low drifts of snow that had piled against the siding nearly halfway up to the windows. In less than half a minute I was near the back door, close enough to see that one small pane in its glass inlay had been broken out. Just a quick reach through would allow any intruder to twist the lock and open the door.

  My thumb moved slightly and slid the safety down on my Springfield, making it ready for immediate use, my hold on it already depressing the integral grip safety. I crouched slightly and climbed the back steps, the storm masking any sound my weight might make on the aging treads and risers. I hoped. There could be someone waiting just inside the door, already knowing of my presence and approach. For all I knew a lookout had spotted me as I drove up.

  None of those possibilities, though, negated the reality that I had to confront what faced me. There was no 911 to call anymore. At least not yet. There had been some discussion by the Defense Council, spurred by citizen suggestions, to look at forming a police force. Something that would separate the act of enforcing laws from the military component charged with protecting the town from outside threats. It was not a bad goal to work toward, but we were not there yet. Which meant every individual was, in many ways, the only first responder available to maintain law. And order.

  With my free hand I gripped the doorknob. Once I turned it and pushed the door open, there would be no doubt of my presence to any inside. The raging wind’s roar would signal clearly that the entrance had been breached. I would be committing myself to dealing with whoever, and whatever, was inside.

  There was no final, calming breath before I decided. I simply acted, pushing the door inward and stepping through, leaving it open, tendrils of the storm slapping it again and again against the counter inside. To the left was a closet, and past that an opening to the hall and the bedrooms beyond. To my right was the main space of the kitchen, and another pathway to the hall, this one passing through our small dining room. Choosing which way to move took me just a second, and I turned left, exiting the kitchen after just a few steps.

  The hallway was empty. Even in the dark of the house I could see that. Enough ambient light was bleeding in through the front windows, as well as those in the bedrooms, to reveal a bare corridor. My next consideration was to decide on an exploration of the bedrooms versus heading straight for the front of the house.

  The sound from my left made that choice for me.

  Our bedroom...

  Not the nursery, which we’d completed painting and furnishing just a few days earlier, but from the room in which Elaine and I slept. There was nothing of value in there. No food, no weapons, the former kept exclusively in the kitchen, and the latter, except for the sidearm I carried, locked in the closet near the front door. From my position I would have seen that space opened in the front room, but it was not.

  Click...

  That sound now focused my full attention toward our bedroom door. It could have been many things, but what concerned me was its similarity to the sound of a weapon’s safety being moved, from safe to fire I had to assume.

  Then, I heard something else. Something which should not have surprised me, but which did. A voice. Hushed. Whispering very deliberately.

  A woman’s voice.

  There was just enough timbre audible that I could make such an assumption. Still, if I was correct, who was she whispering to? Another intruder? Herself?

  The latter possibility was not as farfetched as it seemed. On treks both to and from Bandon I had crossed paths with survivors whose mental faculties had been more than degraded. After landing our aircraft on the road while seeking out Eagle One, Neil, Grace, Krista, and I had come across a woman who’d cut her own eyelids off. While seeking the source of salvation in Cheyenne, Elaine, Neil, and I witnessed a man in a business suit walking calmly down the road, dead cellphone to his ear. Even in Bandon there were two residents whose peculiar ways sometimes resulted in solitary conversations with themselves.

  Both of those locals, though, were men.

  I might be facing more than one intruder. That likelihood slowed my advance as I weighed the best course of action. There was retreat, backing carefully out and summoning help, though by the time assistance arrived the house would likely be empty again, those who’d broken in gone into the storm. I didn’t want that to happen. I had to know, we had to know, if there were others out there, near our borders, who were raiding our homes and our fields.

  The decision I made leaned mostly toward the latter need.

  “You’re not getting out,” I said, holding position, my weapon pointed at the floor near the door to our bedroom. “Walk out of the bedroom with your hands visible.”

  I silently reprimanded myself for not automatically deploying the small flashlight I carried. A simple tap on its switch as the intruder exited the bedroom would have illuminated the scene properly. But as it was, the small device rested at the bottom of my left front pocket. Reaching for it would have been a simple exercise, but in no way did I want to take the support hand off my weapon. The ambient light would simply have to do.

  As it turned out, that was the mistake which turned what should have been a position of advantage to one which could have cost me my life.

  I’d expected one of two things to happen—the intruder to emerge with their hands empty and up, as I’d instructed, or total noncompliance in the form of silence, which would have forced me to enter the room to force the issue. The person who’d broken into my house made their own choice.

/>   In a flash of shadows the intruder was through the bedroom door and charging at me in the narrow, darkened hallway. My mind made several quick assumptions based upon the sudden flow of visual data. What appeared to be hands were empty, and the stature of the figure charging me seemed small, or smaller than me. When that appraisal was combined with the voice I’d heard, I was more convinced than ever that the person barreling at me was female.

  All of these things kept me from bringing my weapon up and firing. I’d held it low on the off chance that the belief about local teens turned out to be true. There was no way I was going to put a bullet into a kid unless I was forced to. The same went for an unarmed, and unknown, person closing the distance to me.

  “Stop!”

  I yelled the command knowing that it would not be heeded. Less than a second later a lowered shoulder drove into my midsection and hands pummeled my face. Gloved hands. I fell backward, keeping a tight grip on my Springfield with one hand, the other trying to block the fists punching awkwardly at me. Off balance, I caromed off one side of the hallway and tumbled to the floor, the intruder’s motion never stopping as she scrambled over me and skittered across the floor toward the front door.

  She...

  I was certain it was a woman now. The sound of a grunting breath being exhaled as we slammed to the hardwood convinced me of that, enough timbre in what I could hear to allow the distinction. I wondered for an instant as I rolled to get up and give chase if it could be someone from the town. A female teen, possibly, though the assumption had always been that any mischief was being carried out by boys. Doing so, though, only fed into a stereotype that had been disproven to me on many occasions. The ‘fairer’ sex could be just as badass as their more testosterone fueled brethren. My wife, who’d taken out a hulking Russian to save my life in the pit near Skagway, was as hard and as capable as any man I’d known. She’d taken a bullet aboard the Groton Star off the coast of Bandon, and crossed the wasteland to reach Cheyenne with Neil and me. And, she’d brought new life into this world.