The Burning Fields (Surviving the Fall 5)

“What’s up, then? You’ve been a bit distant the last day or two.”

Mark didn’t reply for several seconds as he moved a box of substrate from one side of the tunnel to the other. “I guess… you said he said something about there being other people he was working for, or with, right?”

“Yeah.” Dianne remembered every syllable of her short conversation with the stranger. “He said that he ‘had to get something for them.’”

“Them.” Mark shook his head and sat down on an overturned plastic tub. “What do you think he meant by that?”

Dianne sat down on the ground across from Mark. She had considered the implication of “them” often since the events a few nights prior. “There must be a group of people nearby who—”

“How close? In Ellisville? Or Blacksburg?”

“If I knew that, I could get a job as a psychic.” Dianne chuckled and shrugged. “I have no idea. But if they’re sending people out to scout around th

en we probably have more trouble coming our way soon.”

“Do you think they’re the ones that burned down the Carson’s house?”

“I don’t know why someone would do that and not burn the Statler’s place down as well.”

“Maybe they accidentally did it?” Mark closed his eyes, trying to imagine what a group of people could have done to burn down a home. “Like they broke a gas pipe or something?”

“No idea. It’s certainly possible, though. Maybe burning it down spooked them and they decided to stay away from the area for a while.”

“So we should secure the property?”

Dianne smiled. “You read my mind. Come on, let’s head upstairs. After dinner I’ll show you the plans I’ve been drawing up. I think we should get to work on them tomorrow.”

Mark and Dianne stood up and Mark replied as he followed his mother up the stairs. “How are we going to secure the whole property?”

Dianne smiled. “We’ll figure it out.”

Chapter 3

Somewhere in Utah

“Why does the flipping weather have to change so fast around here?”

Rick spoke to no one in particular as he climbed out the wreck of a nearby car and dusted snow and soot off of his clothes. The weather which had changed from unbearably hot to frigidly cold in the course of a day was already starting to warm back up. The two feet worth of snow that had fallen while he was huddled in the back of the Humvee was melting quickly, leaving a soft slush base on the road beneath the deceptively wet top layer.

After waking up from his nightmare and realizing that the new day had brought warm weather Rick decided to do a bit of scouting in the nearby vehicles before taking off again. He was only a few miles inside the Fishlake National Forest but the change in scenery had been noticeable. The barren desert and small hills gave way to taller, more defined peaks and patches of green and various shades of brown though the colors were still mostly covered in white.

The main highway, Interstate 70, was a two-lane highway in each direction split down the middle by a wide median. It wound and meandered back and forth through the national forest, occasionally splitting off into dirt and paved paths that branched out to the north and south. Rick could see a fair distance down the road ahead of him thanks to his elevation and the road looked clear for the most part with only a few vehicles scattered here and there.

Rick sighed as he climbed back into the Humvee and started the engine. “Guess I’d better get moving.” He mumbled to himself as he buckled his seatbelt and set off through the snow. Off to the side of the road where the land dipped down, he could see streams of water from the melting snow as they carved paths through the dirt and grass.

With no real plan except to head east, Rick turned on one of the GPS units he had acquired and zoomed in on the static map of the region. Interstate 70 looked like his best bet for not only getting through the national forest but beyond. After passing through the forest there would be a fair way to go before hitting the city of Grand Junction where his next great obstacle would begin to rear its head.

Stretching from British Columbia down through New Mexico, the Rocky Mountains were a breathtaking sight to behold. Rick had seen them from the air a few times while in a plane but the only true way to appreciate their majesty was from the ground. He could still remember being in a car with his family when he was a child as they drove across the plains of Kansas towards Colorado. The sight of the cloud-like mountains rising above the plains reminded him of white-capped giants standing tall on the horizon, frozen in place for all of time.

While the snowstorm in the national forest and the travel across the desert in the military vehicle had been uncomfortable he was more concerned about what would happen when he started having to cross through the mountains. Not being familiar with how the Humvee would perform at high altitudes or in deep snow he was unsure of the best place to cross or what the best destination was.

Continuing on I-70 to the north would take him into Denver but the terrain looked exceptionally steep along the road based on what he could tell from his GPS. Breaking off in Grand Junction onto I-50, though, would dump him out near Pueblo and south of Colorado Springs.

The idea of heading into Denver had its appeal given the size of the city and his admittedly misguided hope that things would have settled down some in the day or two it could take to get there. As he scanned the map near Colorado Springs, though, he noticed a label for Cheyenne Mountain and remembered where he had heard that name before.

“That’s… that’s where NORAD is.” Indeed, as he zoomed in on the map, he saw a label for the North American Aerospace Defense command as well as Fort Carson, a military base just down the road from the facility. Built deep within Cheyenne Mountain and designed as both a strategic command post and one of many shelters of last resort for high-ranking government officials, NORAD would undoubtedly be staffed and well-protected from anyone looking to take advantage of the current situation.

Thinking about visiting yet another military facility made Rick’s stomach turn after his experience at Nellis but the more he thought about it the more it started to make sense. The commander at the Nellis Air Force Base had wanted to send Rick to northern Virginia to join a task force whose purpose was to figure out a way to solve what was going on. It had only been Rick’s refusal to be pressed into service that had landed him behind bars while Jane had been sent on her way in a transport craft shortly after she and Rick had arrived at the base. With many miles to go before the decision would have to be made, Rick verified his route one last time before shutting off the GPS to conserve battery power and give his full attention to the road.