Ranger (The Bugging Out Series Book 5) Read online

  He was gone. Dead. But I was alive. And I planned to stay that way. What the man, a good man, I told myself without any knowledge of the truthfulness of my estimation, had left behind would be my salvation. I believed that until I came around the front of the cabin and saw what had happened to the structure.

  The entire front wall was gone, logs snapped and blown outward, as was half of the west wall, leaving the interior open to the elements. Above that devastation the roof on the front half of the cabin was shredded, rain pouring in, soaking the interior. I peered in and, with daylight fading, took stock of what remained.

  Bits of metal were embedded in the remaining log walls, evidence of some explosion within. A propane heater, perhaps. Or one running on kerosene. The man might have left it running as he ventured out in search of supplies, or other people, returning to find that some malfunction had resulted in a gas-fueled blast. Maybe that had led to his decision to end his life.

  Maybe...

  All I was doing was giving time to maybes. To possibilities. I needed to deal with the certainty that at that moment I had to get out of the rain, and get dry, and, somehow, warm.

  I stepped into the weakened shelter of the cabin, just that move stopping the drumbeat of cold rain upon me. I looked around the simple one room building, but found little of use. No clothes, nor bedding had survived the explosion which had torn through the place. Cut logs that had been stacked by the fireplace were scattered about along with the rest of the contents.

  Something, though, had not been shredded or tossed from its place. Atop the thick and sturdy mantle jutting from the fireplace’s stone structure was a small box. It rested there, tipped on its side, but even in that position I knew what it contained.

  “Matches,” I said.

  I hurried to the fireplace and took the box in hand, my excitement ebbing almost immediately. What I felt in my hand bore almost no weight. I shook the box and heard just a small rattle of matchsticks. Opening it I saw three of the wooden sticks, their tips a bright red.

  Three matches.

  All around me the wood, which included no kindling, was damp. Soaked, even. The old, dead wood that the man had cut down on the verge of falling apart. It would burn, I knew, but not with what heat a single match would produce. Or two. Or three.

  Then something I’d seen but hadn’t noticed struck me.

  The logs he’d gathered for burning were not chopped. They were cut. I went to one and examined the ends.

  “Chainsaw,” I said.

  The thick branches and lengths of tree trunk hadn’t been processed with a saw or an axe, but with the ripping blade of a chainsaw. A motorized tool that should still be here. Or near. And though I had almost no hope that such a tool would still work after being exposed to the elements for as long as it must have been, there might be something more than useful I could extract from it.

  Gas.

  I scanned the battered interior of the cabin quickly, then moved outside, circling the structure until I was near the man’s body. The coat he’d worn, soaked and shredded now, was useless to me, but it had been tossed back on one side, exposing his belt and a sheath attached there, the bone black handle of a Buck knife protruding. I approached and crouched, gingerly retrieving the blade, its steel marked with signs of rust, but a slow draw of my thumb along its edge confirmed that it had held its sharpness.

  Standing again, I looked into the woods across the clearing, an oddity immediately catching my eye. A shape that should not have existed in any area of natural growth.

  A straight line.

  Holding the knife, I jogged across the narrow meadow, rain soaking me once again. At the far side I stopped and looked upon a row of wood that had been processed for burning, stacked and laid end to end, with precision and care. The man who’d done this had been meticulous.

  Except with his chainsaw. It sat in the open behind one of the low piles of wood, a quarter of it submerged in the soggy muck. Part of me mused as to why a man so ordered had let his tool remain exposed to the elements. Perhaps he’d been where I stood when the explosion rocked his cabin. That event might have been what pushed him to the decision he made. Lacking in food, his shelter suddenly compromised, he’d reached his limit.

  Physically, I was not at mine, but I could see it on the horizon. Hypothermia would drag me down to a sleep I would never wake from. I had to get warm, and dry.

  I had to make fire.

  I went to the chainsaw and crouched next to it, twisting the gas cap counter clockwise, the dry, wispy vapor that hissed from the tank as I uncapped it telling me what I’d found before I even looked.

  Nothing.

  It was empty. There was no gas. I lifted the impressively light tool a few inches out of the mud and rocked it gently back and forth, confirming my suspicion. There was no gas. If there had been any when the man last set the chainsaw down to rest, it had evaporated.

  On a last hope I checked the reservoir which held the lubricating chain oil, but it, too, held nothing.

  Panic didn’t set in. Not yet. But it became very clear that I needed a plan B. And fast.

  Frustrated, I shook the chainsaw lightly, a brief admiration of the tool’s lack of heft slipping through the grim seriousness wrapping me.

  Light...

  The thought didn’t come from nowhere. It came mated to a memory. A recollection from my old life. My years as a business owner. A contractor. I’d witnessed dozens of accidents on jobsites in that time. Maybe hundreds. From the impossible to foresee to the bonehead moves of workers not paying attention to their environment. Cuts. Falls. Broken bones. Toppled equipment. Snapped beams. I’d seen it all.

  Including fire.

  One in particular seized my thoughts as I held the surprisingly light chainsaw in one hand. A subcontractor’s pickup had burst into flame. The reason why, I didn’t recall. But I did very clearly remember the fat rear tires of the dualie popping, their rubber feeding the blaze, turning the bed of the truck into an inferno before the firefighters arrived.

  And I remember sparks. Erupting from the bed like a shower of silvery fireworks going off. It was only after the red engines rolled up with lights spinning and sirens blaring did I learn from the battalion chief aboard that what I was seeing was magnesium igniting in the hellishly hot fire. Probably, he suspected, from a chainsaw, whose frames were often made from the material, or an alloy containing it. Used because of its lightness.

  I looked to the tool in my hand and set it back down into the mud, kneeling in the soggy dirt as I used the knife I’d taken to pry away the synthetic body that concealed the guts of the device. When I’d finally exposed the dull metal frame I ran a finger across it. The lack of heft, of density, was almost discernible to the touch.

  “It might work,” I said to myself.

  Might being the operative word here. If I could use the knife to shave off a good pile of the magnesium, hopefully pure enough, it would take a flame easily. And if one of the three matches would strike. And, of course, if I could process some of the wood remaining in the cabin into kindling that would dry and catch fire. All those variables needed to align so that I could, without any drama, live. So that I could find my way home.

  I gripped the chainsaw in my free hand, knife in the other, ready to stand. That was when I glimpsed the man through a narrow space between the stacked logs.

  Three

  He stood across the clearing, just outside the cabin, peering past one of the remaining walls to the dim space within. He held a rifle low, but ready. It was no modern weapon, but a throwback. Lever action, walnut stock, topped with a scope. Were it not for the blighted world all around he would have looked like a deer hunter out to bring home a buck.

  But that world no longer existed, and seeing the man, the stranger, in proximity to me did not give me the relief it might. I didn’t jump up and call out to him in hopes that he would help me. That very natural instinct was suppressed by the reality of my situation, what I knew about it, and, mo
re importantly, what I did not know.

  So I stayed low, hidden by the stacked logs, watching the unexpected visitor. Appraising him. Beyond the weapon he carried, and a pistol he wore on his hip, a somewhat large backpack was cinched tight to his frame. His head was topped by a simple cowboy hat, its brim and crown softened by time and the elements. It was a Cattleman style, I knew, my life in Montana ingraining in me that bit of seemingly useless knowledge. Not a Gambler, a Gus, or a Tom Mix. A Cattleman. Rain ran down its brim and spilled near the dead man’s severed head as the stranger turned his attention from the cabin and looked to the mangled body lying on the ground beneath the noose.

  Who are you?

  I wondered silently about the man. Could he have been one of those who’d taken me? And left me out in the elements to fend for myself? Possibly. But...

  But why let me go and then track me? Because tracking was precisely what this man was doing. I knew this as he crouched near the body and studied the muddy earth near it, reaching with a free hand to trace indentations in the saturated soil. It was unlikely, I believed, that he would note any indication of my passage through the area. The weather was almost immediately erasing any hint of footprints in the soaked earth.

  Still, that he was looking at all meant that he wasn’t just wandering aimlessly. And I feared that one of my first estimations of the stranger, incongruous as it was in this new world, might be more correct than I’d allowed.

  He very well could be hunting. And the only prey that remained walked on two feet. Like me.

  I didn’t move a muscle as the man stood and let his gaze play over the meadow that lay between us. He didn’t seem to focus on any one spot, the woodpile holding his attention just for a few seconds before he looked to the grey woods that surrounded the clearing. Then, without word or fanfare, he turned and made his way past the cabin, heading back up the trail that had brought him, and me, to this place.

  For several minutes I waited. Not moving. My own gaze playing over the woods beyond the meadow, scanning for any movement. If the man had suspected a presence near the cabin it would be logical for him to approach through the forested land surrounding it and take up a position to surveil the area unseen.

  But I saw no movement. Heard no sloppy footsteps through the mud. When I was certain I was alone, I stayed put. Watching more. Listening more intently. Even as the soaking cold bit deeper into my body. Through skin and flesh down to bone.

  Finally, I had to move. Had to make an attempt to get out of the weather. As quietly as I could, I rose, the chainsaw and knife in my hands, and walked across the meadow toward the cabin. With every step I expected to hear a voice order me to stop. Or, worse, a rifle safety clicking off. If I was to be shot, I’d never hear the bullet fired. I’d be dead before the crack of the shot reached me.

  There was no voice that called out. And no shot. I reached the cabin and moved into the meager shelter it provided.

  Drenched without rain washing over me, the chill hardened upon my body. I had to work quickly, but with my coordination dulled by the creeping effects of hypothermia, every action was doubly difficult. I placed the chainsaw on the dry stone edge of the hearth and began working the knife along a length of its magnesium frame, working back and forth with the dull blade, a pile of shiny shavings building beneath it. Slowly. My fingers began to ache and then tingle, feeling leaving them. I pressed on, ignoring the sensations and focusing on what I was thinking about. On who I was thinking about.

  Elaine.

  I had to get back to her. Back to Bandon to make sure she was all right. That she hadn’t been spirited off from our getaway as I had.

  I shaved the frame. More. Harder. The mound of magnesium grew. And grew. I imagined I would need as much as possible, thinking that what I was dealing with would not be as pure as the magnesium firestarters most outdoorsmen were familiar with. I would have to make up for insufficient quality with abundant quantity.

  Finally, when my hands were nearing a point of uselessness, I stopped, satisfied with what I’d managed to shave from the old saw’s frame. I gathered logs that had been tossed about the cabin and arranged them around the pile of magnesium in the hearth. They were thick, as beefy as my forearms and larger, and would not be easily lit just by a brief flaring of intense heat that I hoped to generate. No, I needed actual kindling.

  Just above my head I found it.

  Jutting from the structure of the stone fireplace was a length of thick, seasoned lumber that functioned as a mantle. The rustic beam predated the blight by decades and, most importantly, was dry as a bone.

  I stood and worked the knife along its lower edge, the dulled blade carving long slivers of the rich wood with difficulty. My fumbling hands did nothing to ease the effort, but my determination to live would not allow me to stop. I’d been soaked and cold now for hours. The temperature had to be hovering in the mid-forties. After sundown it would creep into the upper thirties. The hunk of wood I was attempting to slice and dice might be the only thing that would allow me to make it through the night.

  Piece by piece I cut slender lengths of kindling, gouging the once lovely mantle. Once again, when my hands and fingers and arms were left trembling and weak, I stopped, awkwardly gathering the strips of old wood and arranging it above the pile of magnesium shavings.

  For a moment I cupped my hands in front of my mouth and exhaled, warming my fingers as best I could so that some dexterity would return to them. I would need that ability to hold and manipulate something small. If I could not manage that, then my time would run out.

  I looked to the box of matches on the mantle, stretching my fingers as I continued to breathe upon them. They moved without excessive tremoring, and they did what I wanted them to do. It was time.

  This had to work.

  I took the box and slid it open, removing one match as I crouched near the makings of a fire I’d collected and made. Behind me, rain hammered the world outside, small streams penetrating the roof overhead, nearby but not close enough to threaten what I was about to attempt. Darkness spilled into the damaged cabin, night coming fast. The cold was building by the second, it seemed. My mind and body craved warmth.

  “Come on,” I said to myself and I dragged the match head along the abrasive strip on the side of the box.

  A lovely yellow flame bloomed at the end of the match. For a moment I did nothing with it. I didn’t put it to the magnesium shavings. Didn’t move it an inch. I just stared at it.

  Then, I eased it toward my kindling and the accelerant I’d scavenged from the chainsaw. The tiny flame licked close to the silvery shavings. Closer. Closer. The precious fire was almost in contact when a sudden gust of damp wind ripped through the open front of the cabin, snuffing the match out and scattering the pile of magnesium.

  “Damn...”

  My hands trembled, iced to the bone now, knuckle joints almost locked by the penetrating cold. I used my left hand to brush the magnesium back into a pile beneath the kindling and shifted my body to better protect the makings of my fire. Then, I struck another match.

  I felt the wind rushing over my hunched back as I hovered over the tiny flame I held. The almost comically small bolt of hot yellow danced as the gust swirled past and into the hearth, but it held. It had to. Still one more remained, but I seriously doubted if I would retain any dexterity to manage a proper strike to ignite it.

  This one had to take.

  I guided it gently toward the low scoop of shavings, bringing the flame to the bits of magnesium. In contact with them. A few glowed. A few more sparked. Would there be enough purity in the likely mixture of metals in the alloy to allow a full and satisfying burst of heat and fire?

  “Yes...”

  I breathed the word as the pile began to blaze, a slow-motion inferno building. A blinding pulse of hot white erupted, spreading to the kindling. Bits of wood from the mantle blackened, then began to burn.

  I had a fire. I had made a fire.

  For the next ten minutes
I nurtured it, feeding small lengths of kindling and scavenged wood into the growing fire until the larger logs I’d arranged began to smolder. Then burn.

  I spent no time warming myself further right then. Instead I did what any outdoorsman would do—gathered more wood. More than I thought I would need. When I had a stack half as tall as me I let myself huddle close to the hearth, stripping my clothes off and hanging them from a jagged bit of wood on the mantle. They dried as the chill was slowly driven from my body.

  Lightning struck outside. Thunder followed. Rain poured. I listened to the storm and curled up on the stone extension of the hearth, bathing in the wonderful warmth. Giving thanks that I was alive. And that I might stay alive.

  Great flames leapt into the chimney. Smoke would be jetting from its outlet above. There was a chance I would give my presence away to the stranger I’d seen, but I thought it a small chance. The downpour would smother and prevent the spread of the scent beyond a few dozen meters. If he was closer than that, then he already knew exactly where I was.

  “Who is he?”

  I asked myself the question as I tried to stay awake long enough so that I could put my clothes on again when they had dried. Whoever he was, was it possible that he was unrelated to the situation I now faced? Could he not have been involved in my abduction?

  “It doesn’t make sense,” I said to the fire.

  And, I realized, at the moment, it didn’t matter. And if it did, if he did, what mattered more was making it through the night and finding my way back to Elaine and my friends in the light of a new day.

  I took my now dry clothes from where they’d hung and slipped into the meager protection they provided from the elements. Outside, the storm built. Rain sprayed at a severe angle into the cabin, drenching the floor just a foot from where I’d found refuge close to the hearth. I hugged my body and pressed against the warming stone surrounding the fire, feeding fresh logs into it as the night took hold.