SURVIVING ABE: A Climate-Fiction Novel (24 page)

"Not sure, but something was rushing them.  Then the one that stayed here must have heard something, because he ran to the front of the house.  Then there was more shooting, just before you came.  That’s all I remember."

Gus came over to them, and immediately Beth asked, "How is my husband?"

"He didn’t make it, I’m very sorry," Gus said gently.  Beth put her hand
s over her face and sobbed.  Ela continued holding the towel, trying to stem the bleeding.

"The last thing Al said to me
, before he passed out, was something about using a 'decoy' to deal with them.  What would he mean by 'decoy?' " asked Beth.  Neither Gus nor Ela knew the answer to that, or even if they understood what Beth had asked.

Gus decided there was nothing more important than getting the house patched up
, so they didn’t freeze to death during the oncoming night.  In the detached shop he found some 2x4-inch studs and blue plastic tarps.  Next he checked the tool bench and found a bench-mounted electric chop saw, a small gas generator, like the one he and many other contractors used on job sites, and a tape measure.  He went back to the house and measured the three windows with missing windowpanes; he felt relief when he confirmed all three windows were the same size, it would make the repairs easier.

Back in the shop he got the generator started and plugged in the
chop saw, which he used to cut the 2x4s; six pieces the exact measurement of the height of the windows, and six more pieces seven inches longer than the width of the windows.  Looking around he found a box of 4-inch nails and a framing hammer.  First he hauled the cut lumber to the house, and then he went back for the other needed items.

He rolled up one of the longer 2x4s with the edge of the tarp
, and drove in a couple of nails while it was still on the ground.  Then he held the tarp-wrapped 2x4 centered over the broken window and began driving the nails home; tick-tick-boom . . . tick-tick-boom.

Inside the
house the hammering panicked Ela, she thought they were under attack again.  She rushed toward the front of the house, but slowed to a walk when she saw Gus nailing the blue tarp over the window beside the door.  She went out to see if she could help.

She watched as Gus nailed the boards around the edges of the window, and over the blue tarp to hold it tight against the house.  She was surprised at how effortless he made the job look.  Each nail went in with two small taps and then one powerful strike, and he was on to the next nail.  Once the frame was up he used his knife to cut the tarp away from the outside of the frame, leaving a well-sealed window in about five minutes.

"Can I help?" Ela asked.

"I got this.  How’s Beth?"

"The bleeding stopped, and she is on the couch resting; she says she feels nauseous."

"She probably has a concussion, but I have no idea what to do other than warm up the house
, and maybe make some hot tea, or something else warm for her to drink," Gus said.  "Now that the bleeding has stopped a couple aspirin, as an anti-inflammatory and pain killer, is the only other treatment I can think of."

"A hot drink sounds good for all of us.  I’ll go look around in the kit
chen and see what there is," Ela said.  Once in the kitchen she got busy sorting things and straightening up enough to find out what food and drinks were available to work with.  While doing that she found the refrigerator, still cool inside, had some leftover food containers on its shelves, enough to get them through the night.  Heating water taxed the limit of her aspirations, cooking was beyond her at the moment.

After full darkness had set in with rain still falling, only the FLIR camera's degraded picture of the powerboat remained on and useable.  Periods of heavy rainfall further deteriorated the infrared camera's sensitivity to the point that only intense heat sources, such as engines and spotlights, were visible on the monitor.  During intervals of light rain the picture cleared enough for Eric to see humans and to recognize details of their surroundings.

During one such lull he watched
as the same two men he had seen earlier that morning returned to the anchored powerboat and tied off at its stern.  Shortly after the figures went aboard, heat flared around the vessel's stern, indicating the engines had fired up and were pumping out hot exhaust.  Moments after that a source of heat appeared at the bow as the winch pulled up the anchor chain.  Eric sensed urgency in the crew's quick actions; something had motivated them—was it Abe's looming approach, or news about the cyber attacks, or the growing unrest of the populace?

Rain and darkness coupled to complicate her task, but she did finally load the dinghy without anything falling overboard during the process.  While Tess concentrated on her undertaking, she did not notice the men going aboard the powerboat.  Shortly afterwards some interior lights came on aboard the powerboat, as the delivery crew installed new parts and fixed the problem; then started both engines.  Their unknown situation of being aground revealed itself moments later.

Paying close attention to paying out the rode without damaging the dinghy, plus steering in reverse to deeper w
ater, Tess wasn't facing the dim lights or the activity on the powerboat.  She left the outboard idling in reverse, pulling lightly against the rode, and steadying the dinghy.  She carefully maneuvered herself forward in the dinghy, so she could stand to lift the heavy anchor and throw it cleanly overboard.  She didn't want to take the chance of having it catch the dinghy's tube with a throw that was too short.

As she repositioned herself unexpected things started
to happen in rapid sequence.  A powerful spotlight came on sweeping the anchorage and then settled on Tess, blinding and disorientating her.  With her attention distracted from the anchor in her hands, she stumbled.  The RIB roared to life and shot across fifty yards of water toward her, while she struggled to regain her balance and control of the anchor.

As Tess wobbled in the dinghy with her heavy load, a sharp end on the
anchor shackle's safety-wire punctured the dinghy’s air tube, and then ripped out when she dropped the anchor overboard.  With the spotlight shining in her eyes, and the drone of falling rain in her ears, she didn't realize her inflatable dinghy had begun to deflate.  She turned toward the dinghy's outboard, blindly stepping over the dinghy’s center seat.

At that moment the speeding RIB arrived.  Without coming to a stop the RIB hit Tess’s deflating and listing dinghy hard enough to knock it from beneath her feet, she hit the water before she realized what had happened.

The sudden immersion shocked her system, though she resisted sucking in a lungful of river water.  Motor and propeller sounds surrounded her; she let herself sink in an effort to escape.  Her feet touched the soft bottom of muck where she waited as long as her lungs allowed; when she pushed off for the surface both of her sea boots came off and stayed stuck in the mud.  Feeling the rain splashing on her face, she finally gasped and took in a breath of air.

Looking around wildly, her head turning back and forth just above the rain-pounded surface, she could see nothing
; except the spotlight's glare reflected from the splashing downpour that surrounded her.  The scream of the RIB’s outboard motor, terrifying while she had been underwater, subsided a bit now that her ears were above the water's surface.  She regained the ability to tell from which direction the roar of the outboard came.

Keeping her head above water
, she dog paddled away from the noise.  Though her swim strokes were hampered by her raingear, she kept going until the engine noise abated.  Feeling exhaustion coming, she knew the raingear had to go, or it would eventually drag her down.  Since her boots were already gone, it helped ease the job of getting her rain pants off; the jacket followed.  She was then able to float enough to conserve her energy.

When she was in
shallow enough water she tried to stand.  Each time her feet touched the soft, bottom mud it tried to hold her like quicksand.  She decided trying to get to the riverbank through that muck wasn't a good plan.  Her options were limited.  Even if she made it to a place where she could stand, all she could do was wait for enough light to find Robin.  The better plan would be to find and swim to Robin, and avoid crawling through mudbanks.

Tess heard the RIB’s outboard being throttled up and down.  She figured they were trying to pull the powerboat out of the mud,
using the power of the RIB’s 60-HP outboard to assist the main engines.  She hoped they were successful and left, without coming back to find her.

The only way she could explain their actions toward her was revenge for her having caused their powerboat to go aground.  However, she had not done it intentionally, unlike their actions of dropping their anchor on top of hers when they had had the rest of the river available.  She had spent the entire day, and much of the night, trying to untangle the mess they had made.

Treading water she turned slowly, probing the darkness and looking for a reflection of the powerboat’s spotlight from either Robin, or her dinghy.  With her energy waning she had to get out of the water.

When the dinghy left the powerboat Eric saw not much more than a white blob moving away from a large heat source toward a smaller one.  He watched intently and saw, during a moment of clarity in less rain, two dinghies come together, each with one person aboard.  Moments later one less person and dinghy could be detected.

The
remaining dinghy continued to move erratically, its engine showed strain by glowing hotter, as its path zigzagged the water.  Eventually, it headed back toward the powerboat.  The other dinghy, and the person in it, no longer gave off a detectable amount of heat, and were no longer displayed on the monitor.  From what he had seen Eric felt positive the person and dinghy that disappeared had been Tess, and that she was currently in the water on a pitch-black night during a rainstorm.

Now Eric had a decision to make.  If he did nothing there was a good chance of law enforcement coming around
, just when he was trying to stay as far under the radar as possible.  He decided to make an effort to get Tess back on her boat; hopefully, to avoid any chances of being questioned by law enforcement.

Eric decided to launch his large sit-on-top kayak
, which he used more as a swim platform than a mode of water transport.  The kayak had an auxiliary electric motor that would propel it quickly to the area where he thought Tess had gone in.  He grabbed his handheld FLIR thermal imager, leaving behind his GPS device.  The U.S. GPS system was no longer operable, due to jamming by telecommunications satellites high above the earth; tricked by the computer virus that had just been activated.  His memory of the spot on the river where she had been anchored and his thermal imager would have to be enough.

Stopping when he reached the general vicinity, he began slowing scanning the area with the FLIR and
soon picked up a dim heat signature.  When he moved toward it the image cleared enough for him to recognize it as a person in the water.  He hit the kayak's speed control and rapidly closed the distance.

Tess felt near the last of her reserves of energy.  The water wasn’t cold, but neither was it up to body temperature.  The chill was sapping her strength, and hypothermia would become more of a problem; she knew her time to find a solution ticked away with each beat of her heart.

Since the spotlight no longer glared and the motor sounds were gone
, she knew the powerboat had left.  She felt relief and anger.  The bastards had shown no concern after knocking her in the water, and they may have tried to run over her.  Hard to tell, but when she was in the water she thought the RIB's propeller was directly above her.  For a moment she stridently hoped that what went-around to her tonight, would come-around to them tomorrow, in spades.

Done wishing for the proper retaliation, she refocused her mind on surviving the moment by taking stock of her predicament, and what she had to work with.  She heard only the pounding of
the raindrops hitting the river, nothing else, no clues for her ears.

She realized knowing the depth of the water might help.  After letting herself
, momentarily, to sink to the bottom she determined the water was close to ten feet deep.  That meant she was in the middle of the river, maybe close to where she'd originally gone in.  Turning slowly, as she treaded water, she looked intently for any sign of Robin in the flashes of distant lightening.  The glimmer of a dim light gave Tess hope and renewed energy; she started swimming, while trying to keep focused on where she had seen the light.

Gus opened his eyes to the soft light of
the glowing embers in the fireplace, he got up from the recliner he had been sleeping in, and quietly put some wood on the fire.  He went to the couch to check Beth and found that she was still breathing, but asleep or unconscious; he didn't know which and didn't see how finding out would help anything at the moment.

He looked at Ela
curled up on a love seat, completely covered with a comforter, except for a few dark strands of hair across the white pillowcase.  The fireplace heated only the living room, and had done a poor job of that in last night's sub-zero temperatures.  Gus returned to the recliner for a little more rest and some quiet time to put his thoughts in order.

Last evening had been diff
icult.  After wrapping Con and Al's bodies in sheets, moving them into the temporary morgue the front bedroom had become, and mopping up the blood, both he and Ela had sat staring at the fireplace in a silent house.

This morning
that silence remained unbroken.  It bore down on him heavier than silence did when he was alone.  Job number one today would be changing both his and Ela's focus; from what had happened, to preparing for what might happen next.  If he'd learned anything from this ordeal, it was not to depend on bad things only happening to the other guy.

When it started to get light outside, Gus got up to see if he could find and brew some coffee.  He found a gray, enameled percolator
in a kitchen cabinet.  As soon as he had the coffee going he decided to make breakfast, thinking a good meal to start the day would make the rest of it go better.  And if today turned into anything like yesterday, he’d need the energy.

In the pantry
he found a box of Bisquick and some maple syrup to go with the two eggs and bottle of beer he had found in the refrigerator.  The griddle heated on the old propane stove while he mixed two eggs, about half the beer, and a teaspoon of sugar in a mixing bowl, using a whisk.  He poured Bisquick into the bowl until it peaked well above the liquid and mixed that in.  The final step was adding beer, as needed, until the batter had a pourable, but thick consistency.  Any beer left in the bottle would go toward early-morning-stress-relief for the chef.

Now that the griddle was
hot, he poured the first batch of beer pancakes. When bubbles started to appear on top he flipped the half-inch thick pancakes.  He soon had a platter of hot cakes, maple syrup, and butter sitting on the kitchen table; a feast he hoped would brighten the day.

Ela
came in as the aroma of the sizzling batter penetrated the living room, "Morning, what are you making that smells so good?"

"
My hunting-camp breakfast . . . beer pancakes," Gus replied and smiled at Ela.  "Because Abe preempted my planned menu while camping, I decided to make it this morning.  You hungry?"

"
I wasn’t, but I am now. Beth is unconscious, I think.  I tried to wake her, but couldn't."

"I figured that; she didn’t look good earlier when I got up to put wood on the fire
. We’ll just have to keep her as warm and comfortable as possible.  See what happens, I guess."

"Is that fresh coffee I smell?"
Ela’s interest honed in on the percolator just now starting to perk.  She went over to the stove for a closer look at this new way to make coffee; she’d seen it of course, but not tried it.

"Yup,
the cups are set out if you want to pour us a cup when it’s ready."

"How do I
know when it’s ready?" Ela asked, while peering at the pot.

"
Not really sure of the correct way.  A friend of mine says more than eight minutes of perking makes campfire espresso.  I just watch the dome, somewhere past watery-brown usually works, but I’ve only done this while camping; anything tastes good then.  Use your best guess," Gus said with a shrug.

After a minute or two Ela
found a hot pad and poured two cups of coffee that looked a lot darker once in the cups.  She noticed some coffee grounds in the brew, but the delicious aroma made that easy to overlook; taking a small slurp off the top, it tasted perfect.

Once they sat down and started to eat, the pancakes disappeared quickly;
they ate like there might be no tomorrow.

"That was a first for me, nev
er heard of beer pancakes.  They were delicious," Ela said finishing up.  "Thank you."

"They're quick, easy, and hot, but the secret is waiting until everyone is hungry
.  Then they're even better."

"Worked on me.  I'll clean up in here."

~~~

After breakfast
Gus used the snowmobile to pull the attackers’ frozen bodies into an unheated shed.  There they would be safe from scavengers and preserved until he could tell the Sheriff what happened.

Before he rolled them
up into another of Al’s blue tarps, he searched the bodies.  Each one had a wallet with an employee ID card for the dude ranch just up the canyon; he would talk to Beth about that if she regained consciousness.

He knew the resort catered to
well-to-do people from Hollywood and the entertainment industry, so it could be a robbery or kidnapping plan using the storm as a cover.  The perpetrators probably knew they could count on zero response from law enforcement while the road remained unplowed.  Seeing a possible motive and opportunity for high-stakes criminal activity meant nothing to him, but it added worry.  Whatever it was that they had inadvertently walked into yesterday, he needed to find a way to walk out of today.

Still, it puzzled Gus t
hat the highway wasn’t open yet, days after the storm hit.  If there was one thing Coloradans knew how to do, it was how to plow snow off the highways. He had never heard of a main thoroughfare being closed for four days. Especially one that wealthy people depended on.

He h
eard a noise and looked up to see Ela coming from the house on a run.  The next catastrophe had arrived it seemed; he hurried to meet her.  As soon as she saw Gus coming out of the shop, she stopped and turned back toward the house, waving at him to follow her.

Beth lay on the floor in front of the couch
with her feet kicking; her arms had tangled in the blanket and stretched it taut as they flailed around. Her eyes, as well as her jaw, were clenched shut; she looked rigid.

"What do we do?" Ela
asked.

"
Keep her from hurting herself until the seizure passes, and try to hold her head steady."  He walked around to Beth’s head.  "How about if I grab her shoulders and lift her enough for you to slide one of those couch cushions under her upper body, then we can duct tape some pillows around her and the cushion, to immobilize her?"

"Where’s the tape?"
Ela asked.

"In the kitchen."

She was back just as Gus figured out how he would, as gently as possible, maneuver Beth's body.  He got up and stepped over Beth, and then went to his knees straddling her.  After grabbing the blanket and wrapping it around her upper body, he lifted her.  Ela slid the cushion under in a flash.  Then they sat her up enough to pass the roll of tape around her chest and upper arms first.  Padding her head with rolled towels, they then carefully taped the towels to the cushion around her head.

As soon as they were done Beth
's body relaxed. Thinking that she had died they both franticly started feeling for a pulse, before noticing that she was still breathing.  Feeling relieved that Beth rested comfortably, they decided to bring a mattress in to get her off the cold floor, and to avoid the risk of her falling off the couch again.

By noon the temperature was
up to near freezing, the sun was out, and roofs began shedding their snow.  Warmth from the fireplace was finally reaching the kitchen where Gus and Ela warmed up some canned stew for lunch.  Two bites into their meal they heard an approaching motor that sounded like a snowmobile.