Escape and evade a post.., p.1
Escape And Evade: A Post Apocalyptic Survival Thriller, page 1
ESCAPE AND EVADE
A POST APOCALYPTIC SURVIVAL THRILLER
HARLEY TATE
CONTENTS
Escape and Evade
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Epilogue
Also by Harley Tate
Acknowledgments
About Harley Tate
ESCAPE AND EVADE
FALLING SKIES BOOK FOUR
Dwindling supplies and a long road to travel. A government bent on regaining control. A family caught in the middle.
Welcome to Falling Skies. Do you have what it takes to survive?
Caleb Machert and his family survived a meteor strike, acid rain, and a deadly tornado. They escaped a general gone rogue and a zealous cult. Now hundreds of miles separate them from the last chance at something akin to a normal life.
When a private police force shows up demanding registration and compliance, the Machert family is faced with a decision: comply and lose any chance at freedom or run and put their lives at risk. It’s one family against the machinations of a new government and a narcissistic billionaire. Time isn’t on their side.
Escape and Evade is book four in Falling Skies, a post-apocalyptic thriller series following ordinary people struggling to survive when a meteor strike plunges the United States into chaos.
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PROLOGUE
Cheyenne Mountain Complex
Monday, July 16th, 9:30 am MST
Tap-tap-tap-tap.
President Margaret Welcher drummed her nails across the desk. It was a gesture she’d mastered in the early years of her career—slow, deliberate, and disconcerting to most everyone. Her newly appointed chief of staff, Aaron Gervais, stumbled over his words.
Welcher held back a smile. “Spit it out, Aaron. I don’t have all day.”
“Like I said, Norman has some concerns.” His spindly throat constricted as his Adam’s apple bobbed. “As you’d expect from his track record before the asteroid, his chief issue is Trusk. He considers the man an opportunist, with no interest in shepherding places like Springfield into the new backbone of the United States.”
Gervais eyed her nails. “He told me, and I quote, ‘I said before that if he were the last billionaire on Earth, I wouldn’t trust him. Trusk is pretty darn close to that now, and I’m not about to change my mind.’”
Welcher’s index finger hovered above the desk. The Secretary of Defense was becoming quite the thorn in her side. “And this is news, why?”
“I told him I would bring his concerns to you.” Gervais kept his expression neutral. “He should be back from St. Louis in the next week, and he’s going to want a meeting. I can put him off, but not for long.”
Before the meteor, Norman Wilson had been a retired navy captain serving in the House for a liberal district in Oregon. President Welcher had heard the man’s spiel on the evils of billionaires before. If Wilson had his way, there wouldn’t be any billionaires, and the American people would spend their mornings in bread lines hoping to get some scraps to keep from starving.
So it wasn’t surprising that he had reservations about Trusk, or about Apex. It also wasn’t a surprise that he’d channeled his concerns through her chief of staff instead of coming to her directly. She and Wilson had never gotten along. Too bad he got out in time, she mused privately. If she’d overseen who found out about the meteor, he probably wouldn’t have.
Norman didn’t trust anyone who hadn’t worked a blue-collar job, regardless of their demonstrated integrity. Margaret, on the other hand, trusted a person based on what she could observe, what she heard about them, and her own personal judgment—which had never failed her yet.
Did she place her blind faith in Alan Trusk? Absolutely not. But the man had been helpful and had asked for very little in return. At some point, everyone was going to realize that the world wasn’t actually over and would want to go back to normal. To the way things had been before.
It would be men like Trusk who would lead the effort on the economic front, who would innovate and create jobs. Partnering with Trusk made perfect sense. Moreover, it was the only way to keep him close. What Norman needed was to see it all laid out in plain language.
“Schedule the meeting.” She waved dismissive fingers in Gervais’s direction. “I can deal with Norman. But start finding me a list of more qualified candidates for Secretary of Defense. If he’s not going to play ball, I need someone else who will.”
“Ma’am?”
Welcher raised an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you’re that dim. Who other than Trusk is going to get Springfield and people like them on board? The military? We’re down to less than ten thousand confirmed enlisted personnel. We’ve been looking at mutinies, whole platoons going AWOL, generals declaring themselves kings of mountains in North Carolina, St. Louis calling itself a sovereign nation, and we’ve been losing people to lawless anarchists left and right.”
She snorted at the carefully blank look on Gervais’s face as she rubbed her forehead with her fingertips. “I apologize for the rant. I’m just tired of dealing with people who refuse to see what’s right in front of us. We need Trusk. Do I like it? No, of course not.”
Gervais nodded.
“I don’t think the United States Government should need anyone but the voters. But that’s never ended up being true, and right now we can barely keep this base secure. Never mind dealing with places like St. Louis.”
Gervais spread his hands. “Ma’am, for what it’s worth I think you’re doing an excellent job.”
That wasn’t at all surprising. She hadn’t hired Gervais because he was intelligent. She didn’t need a brilliant chief of staff; she needed someone willing to fall in line, say yes to her, and tell other people no when she didn’t want to deal with them. All the same, she gave him a gracious nod before her lips stretched to a tense smile of relief. “Thank you, Aaron. That means a lot.”
The man lit up like he believed it. No, not brilliant. But more than adequate.
“Set the meeting,” she reiterated. “And for anyone else who needs to hear it, the official line is that we trust Alan Trusk until he gives us a reason not to. I’ve got his word and ample evidence that he will work in the best interests of the United States through all of this, and you can remind any naysayers that it was men like him who gave this country the most competitive economy on the planet. We’re going to need innovation like that again very soon. It will pay dividends to keep Trusk and his friends close.”
Once Gervais had finished scribbling the note, he gave a curt nod and rose from the sofa. “Anything else for the morning, Ma’am?”
Her lips tightened briefly. Three days ago, Pete Camby had left the base with the former President. He’d made it out around an hour before she issued the order to have their credentials canceled, and she’d only found out afterward that they were no longer at Cheyenne mountain.
A small team had been assigned to determine their location, and she’d asked for an update once with forced nonchalance. The more she asked, the more desperate she would seem. If word got out that she was particularly worried about it... well, it was easy enough to assume she would receive a status report if anything changed.
Then again, Daniels—and, for that matter, Camby—had been well liked by enough people that she wasn’t entirely certain she had one hundred percent support across the base’s staff. There was still the possibility someone, somewhere, would keep secrets from her. But Aaron Gervais was at least one person she could rely on to be discreet, even if she didn’t trust him entirely.
She went for it. “Any news on our runaways?”
Gervais grimaced as he glanced down at his reports. “Not... exactly. The vehicle they took wasn’t a military one, so it’s difficult to confirm, but a Town Car was spotted yesterday that could fit the description.”
“No confirmation?”
Her chief of staff shook his head. “No, Ma’am. I’m sorry. But if it was them, then it looked like they were headed in the direction of the Springfield settlement.”
Welcher’s eyes narrowed slightly as the wheels in her head started turning. Daniels was no longer the president, of course, and his last days in office had been borderline disastrous. The vote to remove him and elevate her to the office was unanimous across both chambers of Congress, but only because Daniels was frozen.
He’d been popular among the people of the US. Having him out in the wild was likely to cause problems eventually. But she couldn’t predict what those problems would be or confirm that there would be any at all.
The whole mess left her in a paranoid hiatus, forcing her to be reactive and passive instead of proactive and aggressive. Not good. “If that’s where they’re going,” she offered, “I want to know the minu te they arrive.”
“Absolutely,” Gervais agreed. “Do you think Daniels will become a complication? He was just about catatonic at the hearing.”
She could see why he’d think so. Welcher wasn’t so sure, though. She’d never particularly liked Daniels, but before all of this—before his apparent collapse—he’d been a savvy politician. He wasn’t stupid, just poorly equipped for all of this. If he’d been an idiot, she might have believed he was too far gone to worry about. Knowing what she did about the man, though, it was more likely he didn’t have anything he felt was worth saying.
Was he the type of man to head to Springfield and try to start over? He’d won Colorado and the surrounding states by a large margin. If he wanted to, it was entirely possible he could muster support. If he did, he might even attract some of the military, and she couldn’t afford to lose officers or soldiers now. Not with the numbers they’d already lost. “I just want to know where he is. That’s all. Keep me updated as soon as you know anything.”
“You’ll know it the second I hear it, Ma’am,” he assured her. “Your first meeting with director Wolverton is in about ten minutes. Shall I delay him to give you some time to prep?”
She flipped through her papers and found the report Wolverton would be discussing. “Ten minutes is fine.”
He stood and straightened his shirt and jacket, smoothing everything to a nice professional cleanliness that she appreciated in him. Like her, Gervais respected the dignity of his position. “If you need a breather, just give me the signal.”
“Will do.”
He strode to the door of the office with a bounce in his step. What a refreshing change. By the time Pete Camby absconded with the former President, her former chief of staff looked ready to collapse. To know that Pete was out there with Daniels was troubling, but at this point it hardly mattered.
Trusk was already bolstering her military, and if everything went according to plan, they would soon have most of Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah brought back under the protective umbrella of the United States of America. Hopefully that would give places like St. Louis and Dallas, which had both recently declared themselves to be sovereign nation-states, the appropriate level of worry about seceding from the Union.
If not, they’d be looking at a full-blown civil war before the year was up. She needed time and resources to consolidate a properly defended and stable territory in the heart of the country or they would be sunk.
When they were secure, when Alan Trusk delivered on his promises, people like Norman would see that she’d made the right choice. No one would miss Thomas Daniels, and she would be known as the woman who saved the nation. Times like these called for tough choices. She hoped hers would pay off.
CHAPTER ONE
CALEB
Near St. Louis, MO
Monday, July 16th, 1:23 pm CST
Three days. Three hundred miles, give or take.
Caleb Machert crouched by the edge of the road, testing the limits of his healed thigh. His wife and daughter perched on the bumper of the SUV, scrubbing their arms and faces with a spit of bottled water and worn washcloths stolen from Calvary.
Three days with food each morning, midday, and evening. Water to drink, thanks to an unmolested case tucked beneath a toppled display at the last gas station they’d stumbled across. The drive had been long and slow, but they’d talked and reminisced and wondered about the future in a way the last few weeks had made impossible.
If he squinted against the perpetually clouded sky and ignored the pillar of smoke on the edge of the horizon, he could almost pretend they were on an extended family vacation. A cross-country trek through as many states as possible, stopping to take in the natural beauty of the landscape, checking out the world’s largest ball of rubber bands. Family bonding.
Almost.
“Take this.” Derek shoved a hand into Caleb’s field of view. A pair of blue and white pills rested on his grubby palm. “I checked the stock. We’re good for a couple more days before we should conserve. How’s the shoulder?”
Caleb stood and gave it a roll. “Range of motion’s improved, but it’ll never be normal.” He shoved the pills to the back of his throat and swallowed them dry before eying Derek’s midsection. “How about you?”
Derek popped a large pill in his own mouth, wincing as it went down. “Antibiotics seem to be working. Figure we should save the big-hitter pain pills for something worse, so...” He fingered his abdomen with a grimace. “Still hurts like a mother, but I think it’s fine. Hasn’t bled or oozed anything. That’s gotta be a good sign, right?”
“I’m guessing.” Caleb fell silent and his gaze returned to his family.
Lana peered into a dirty makeup mirror she’d scrounged up somewhere along the route, using her finger to scrub insistently at the nooks and crannies of her face. Ever since Calvary, Lana had picked up in the hygiene department, washing her face, brushing her hair. Trying to look nice, he supposed. Derek did the same.
He knew they were an item of sorts, and all that most likely entailed. His baby girl, growing up in this hellscape, falling for a soldier. Had she picked Derek because he was a good man, or because he was the only one left? Maybe a combo of both.
Caleb cut a glance at Derek. The kid’s eyes were trained on Lana, watching every move. Not so long ago, Derek’s fixation on Lana had made Caleb wary, made him want to keep a close eye. Now, seeing the look of soft adoration on the soldier’s face was a comfort. This was a line of defense. And, as Caleb understood it, a voice of reason.
The way Lana told it… How she’d insisted that Derek wear the flak jacket when they escaped Calvary’s small militia of armed zealots, and how Derek had forced her to put it on…
Caleb glanced at the SUV. When they were miles away from Calvary and the tornado, they’d pulled over and organized their gear. He’d grabbed the flak jacket and his fingers scraped over a slug, tangled in the fibers. If not for Derek’s insistence that Lana armor up, that slug would have penetrated her right lung.
She would be dead now.
A hole in a muscle they could fix; a few stitches and some antibiotics were about as much as anyone could do for that kind of wound. A shot through a lung, though, or any other organ, was a death sentence now.
If Lana chose Derek… There were worse things. But it didn’t make watching his daughter turn into a woman any easier.
Get it together, Machert. Lana had been grown a long time and he needed to accept it. She’d watched her boyfriend die. Killed people. Been assaulted. Lana had the right to make her own choices now.
And anyway, there was less to be concerned about with his daughter these days than there was with his wife.
Elizabeth still scrubbed her nails with the grimy washcloth, rubbing at something the rest of them couldn’t see.
“Derek,” Lana called, snapping Caleb out of his thoughts. “Gear up. Let’s get a closer look at St. Louis.”
Elizabeth’s brow furrowed, and she stopped scrubbing. “St. Louis?” She gave Caleb the look that said she expected him to back her up. “Absolutely not. We don’t need to go anywhere that size.”
Before Caleb could agree, Lana threw her hands up. “Obviously we are not going into St. Louis, Mom. But we should get a little closer and see what state it’s in, that’s all. The route we’re traveling has us coming pretty close. I don’t want to get sucked into some fresh new military or crazy cult mess when we drive past it tonight.”
She softened her tone. “We’ll be on foot, no one will see us, it will be fine. I am not eight years old. I’m an adult who can put a bullet through someone’s eye at a hundred meters. Dad?”
