Desmond poured the remaining gas under Frank Villaine’s SUV and touched it off. He tossed the can in after. A tiny flame becamea major flame. Then a torrent of flame that swept away all trace of the two men. “What about the Kia?”
“We didn’t touch it. And we wore gloves in the cabin. Anyway, no time now.”
They walked through a stand of trees to the path where Desmond had parked the white Ford van. They climbed in, Moll behind the wheel. In ten minutes they were cruising slowly along Route 84, the road that led to Millton.
“They won’t be hitching,” Desmond said.
“No. But they will stay close to the highway. Use it to guide them. Not like they have their GPS anymore.”
Moll hit the hazards and he drove slowly northwest, half on the shoulder when he could. Both men were scanning, Moll left, Desmond right, for any clue that gave away their prey. They knew what to look for. They’d done this before.
70
This is called a loaded march,” Ashton Shaw is saying to his three children. “Or a forced march. As in you’d rather be doing something else.” He chuckles and continues to stride along a mountainside path on the outskirts of the Compound.
Colter, Dorion and Russell are behind him, in that order.
On their backs are packs weighing thirty pounds or so. He had tried to give Dorion a lighter one, but she wouldn’t hear of it.
Their passage is fast, and the children are keeping up, though breathing hard. Their father is not. Ashton Shaw, an academic by training and in practice, had to be the most fit professor on earth.
Over his shoulder he calls, “Roman soldiers learned loaded marches before they ever touched a weapon. To become a legionnaire they had to hike twenty miles in five hours, with a forty-five-pound pack, and carrying a sudis. Who knows what a sudis is?”
Colter reads more than his siblings and he particularly likes history. “A sharpened stake they used to build nighttime defenses with.”
“Good,” Ashton says. Russell seems irritated his younger brother could answer.
“Hey, I know!” Dorion calls enthusiastically. “Let’s make some sudis and we can carry them like the Romans!”
Both Colter and Russell tell her to be quiet.
Shaw, Parker and her daughter were on their own forced march, in the woods north of the cabin on Timberwolf Lake. They were burdened by no packs but they were plenty challenged: the uphill terrain was dense with thick briars and brush, roots, rocks and trees—standing and fallen. The survivalist, the swimmer and the volleyball player were, however, making good progress.
The scorched skeleton of the Winnebago was now several miles behind them. Hannah was on point, a spot she’d seized. There was no reason for her not to be in the lead. Both Shaw and her mother had a good eye on the girl and any potential threats ahead.
They continued their hike in silence. Over them were branches and boughs of oak and pine, yew, beech, box elder and hemlock. Beneath, ground cover of eastern hay-scented fern, aster and ragwort. Moss everywhere. These were old forests. Damp and rainy Middle America rarely saw the purge of cleansing forest fires, and trees grew and grew until the stronger choked the weak.
Coming to a particularly formidable wall of greenery, Colter pointed to the left and they continued onward. Ashton Shaw had taught his children how to navigate by the sun and stars, ever challenging, as the earth had the inconvenient habit of spinning.
Never assume the sun and stars are your only source of nav. Use whatever works...
The words were probably a paraphrase of his father’s, but the point was clear, and today Shaw was not using celestial navigation but dependable Route 84, from which the occasional hiss of cars and of a tractor-trailer’s engine brake guided them north, to the safety of Millton.
They made better time once they moved into a forest that was mostly pine, with little tangled ground cover they had to work their way around.
Hannah said, “I’m thirsty.”
Shaw was too. He knew a dozen rules for finding and drinking water in the wilderness—such as, look for animal tracks around ponds because if it’s safe for other creatures it’s probably safe for you, and never drink from clear ponds because there’s a reason nothing’s living in them—but said, “We’ll wait. Don’t have time to find a safe source.” The day was moderate of temperature and the air humid. There’d be no danger of dehydration before they finished the trek. Thirst was an irritation, not a danger.
Never let discomfort trick you into taking a risk...
And few things were more devastating and dangerous than waterborne illnesses.
After forty minutes, they broke from the trees and found themselves on a riverbank over a wide, slow-moving river. There’d be a bridge nearby but Shaw hoped they could ford; he wanted to avoid any roads the Twins and Merritt might be on.
It didn’t seem that deep. The surface color told Shaw this.
The sound of a clearing throat startled them, and they turned to see, on the other side of a dense growth of brush, a gaunt and sallow-faced young man. He was hunched over, looking at the phone he held in his left hand and frowning in concentration. His right gripped a short spade, with which he’d just dug a small hole in the mossy earth. He wore sweats, a stocking cap not unlike Hannah’s.