STEADFAST Book One: America's Last Days (The Steadfast Series 1) Read online

  "The cabin sounds fine. I was tired of the road, anyway. By the way, my name is Talia Wiseman."

  "Well then, Talia Wiseman, the cabin it is. I'm Eric Radner." He rose to his feet, willing to accept in confidence what he'd just left in God's hands—even if it meant he'd have a new roommate. "But it's still about a ten-mile hike, and after what I just did to those two fellas, we need to cover some bad terrain fast."

  "I'll do my best."

  "Well, your best is going to be on my back." He unfastened his pack. "What're you, eighty pounds?"

  "I don't know." She chuckled. "What do you have in mind?"

  He hadn't heard anyone laugh in years, but it was a good sound. With her help, he fastened his thirty-pound pack to his front, then she climbed onto his back to ride piggy-back style. Behind his ear, she sucked on her meat stick. It was meant to be his dinner, but she needed it more than he did.

  Eric entered the woods behind the General Store and angled east into the dense forest. Either Talia wasn't much of a talker, or she sensed the seriousness of the moment to let him march without conversing. After two miles, Talia relaxed, so Eric bowed his back and adjusted her weight to prevent the sleeping woman from slipping off.

  When all alone in the mountains, he'd thought being a Christian was harmless enough, but he could see that learning to think and care for others like God cared had made him an enemy of Adderthorn. And now there was the massacre in Mastover to think about. Christians had been killed and Bibles had been burned. It was another type of virus that had begun to spread, and he wasn't sure how much longer until the contagion would reach his peaceful cabin in the woods.

  With the added weight, it was dark when he finally approached the last ridge before reaching his cabin. First, he had to pass over a deep gorge by sidestepping on the tree-bridge he'd fallen across the expanse two years earlier. Cresting the final ridge, he paused and looked back down the mountain. He sensed something or someone was back there, moving in the forest. Mountain lions had stalked him while hunting in the past, but usually they were silent predators. This was something different—a human. Someone from Adderthorn must've tracked him up the mountain.

  With his passenger, and in the dark of night, Eric's options to respond to this new threat were limited. He reached his cabin and fixed up his bunk for Talia. For himself, he laid out a blanket on the floor, but he didn't go to sleep. Instead, he walked out into the night and listened to the mountain that had become his home. In his old life—the ignorant and modernized man who'd first come to the wilderness—it all seemed like someone else's life now. His friends and business associates, his neighbors, and even a couple of loose girlfriends—none of them had cared enough to tell him the truth about his lost soul. No, God had driven him up to those mountains to teach him and to help him grow.

  And now, it seemed God was drawing him back to humanity, but Eric wasn't certain he wanted what humanity had to offer. This was his mountain and his forest. He'd saved an old woman from dying in a jail cell, but what would that mercy cost him?

  As he prayed that question to the night sky, the sky was silent, but he'd been reading the Bible for enough years now. He knew the truth—showing mercy always came with a price.

  *~*

  Chapter 3

  The following morning, Eric knelt at the edge of the deep gorge in the Sharrock Forest. In forgotten years past, the Rocky Mountains had shaken and split open the chasm many miles long below the eastern ridge of the mountain. The aftereffect was a forty-foot-deep natural barrier between his cabin and the town of Adderthorn. The steep walls, averaging seventy feet across, squeezed upon a creek, causing it to boil with the ferocity of a river.

  It wasn't the water or the gorge that troubled Eric now. What concerned him was that someone had cut and pushed his tree-bridge into the gorge. Far below, the bridge lay splintered against boulders. The water cascaded over it with fury. He'd kept spiked boots in the bushes on the cabin side just for crossing the slippery log. As far as he knew, no one had been that close to his cabin as long as he'd lived there. But someone from the town side had evidently found the bridge overnight. Because of his boldness in the town the day before, and his aiding the escape of a suspected Meridia Virus carrier, it seemed Adderthorn now meant to permanently cut him off from them. The Pickford brothers were certain to be behind it, but there were surely other woodsmen and hunters in Adderthorn as well, maybe experienced trackers who could find him if they wanted to.

  Since his provisions were adequate for the time being, Eric wasn't complaining about being cut off from town—at least cut off from the shortest way to town. He could always hike down to the highway or climb farther into the Sharrock Mountains to circumvent the gorge, but both routes would require a full day's journey. If they really wanted him gone, they could burn the forest down, since all he had to do was fall another tree across the gorge to make an easy route for himself again. But apparently, he wasn't welcome in Adderthorn any longer, so he didn't have any intentions of being unpleasant toward them.

  One thing for sure, he thought as he marched back toward the cabin, God was shaking his protected world from under him. Most significantly, he had another soul to care for now, an elderly black woman who was so feared by the locals of Adderthorn, they'd left her in a cell to die. And his more distant concerns were the stirrings in Mastover to the northwest, thirty miles away. If Mastover's massacre of Christians was true, the country was still on the decline, regardless of whispers in the east and west of infant governments being established. Of course, Eric guessed Wyoming had always found its own way of doing things, no matter the country's currents.

  Reaching his cabin, he leaned his rifle against a stump and took up a telescope meant for observing the stars. Instead, he crouched and trained the scope down the ridge to the southeast. A column of smoke had been rising at the edge of the plain, which he'd noticed on his return from Adderthorn the day before. Now, it was a dwindling wisp, barely noticeable. Tree tops hindered his view of the smoke's immediate source, but he still hoped to spot some sign of the source or perpetrators—or spot anyone approaching the mountain heights before they could surprise him. The chances of someone climbing a rugged mountain covered in thick brush was remote, but he hadn't thought anyone would track him to the gorge, either.

  At least from the east, no one could approach by bicycle, or by vehicle, even if they had fuel. Eric had fallen trees across the old logging road years earlier to discourage visitors. His own car, driven from his Nebraska home, was hidden in a ditch far below, abandoned and rusted, the plates removed.

  "What do you see?"

  Talia Wiseman's scratchy voice interrupted his focus. She crouched next to him, the wool blanket he'd purchased the day before draped over her shoulders.

  "Somebody was burning something." Eric kept the glass to his eye. "It's a little unnerving. We might start wood fires nowadays to stay warm, but burning something to make that much smoke—it probably means renegades. Common people, survivors, don't burn things like that anymore. We refurbish, reuse, and rebuild."

  "I don't see anything." She squinted her ancient eyes, so he passed her the telescope. "Where do I look?"

  "There's an alley cleared of trees down that direction so I could keep an eye on a small section of the highway, about seven miles away."

  Still seeing nothing, she passed the scope back to him. If there were something farther out on the plain rather than against the mountain and trees, she probably would've been able to easily see it.

  "Thank you for allowing me to sleep in your bed." Her presence was comforting as they stared at the forest together, where birds fought with squirrels over seeds. "If you show me the tools, I'll build myself a bed frame. You can't sleep on the floor every night."

  "I don't mind." He glanced at her. "You might like to know our friends from Adderthorn may not know exactly where we are, but they cut off our most direct route to town. They destroyed a log we crossed last night."

  "That was fast."
r />   "Probably Sheriff Leo and his brother." Eric disassembled the scope and stowed it in a black case. "I've tried to keep routes to the cabin closed to others, though accessible to me, of course. I'm not worried now that Adderthorn cut us off. It means they'll stay away. But I need to look into that smoke. There are some homesteads down there."

  "You know them?"

  "No, but travelers on the highway have stopped there to camp off and on for a few years. There's been a chance that someone would climb the mountain to see what lies up here."

  "So, you've never made contact with anyone down there, your closest neighbors?" She clucked her tongue. "You should know your neighbors, Mr. Radner."

  He grunted but didn't respond further. After the way she'd been treated by strangers, was she still open to contact with others?

  Inside the cabin, she watched as Eric shouldered his pack that he'd repacked with essentials for an extended hike. He also attached the empty revolver to his belt. It was clumsy against his hip, but he felt that just the appearance of it might discourage aggression, if someone felt ornery towards him.

  "What about breakfast?" she asked. "You shouldn't travel without eating something."

  Eric picked up a tin cup and swished black liquid that was still warm from heating before she'd awoken.

  "The jars there—coffee from chicory in that one, chufa there, and dandelion or pine needle tea there. Sorry, ran out of sweetener. There's lotus biscuits and oak bread. No yeast, so it's flat. More smoked meat in this jar—same as you had last night, but it'll soften more if you boil it. There's salted meat in the cupboard, but we'll save that for dinner tonight. I should be back mid-afternoon. Oh, and the hammer and nails are behind the bed. Some boards in the shed out back. Why are you smiling?"

  "You've been alone up here a long time, Mr. Radner. I think you've forgotten how to talk to people."

  "Did I say something wrong?" He touched his jaw, wondering if he should trim his overgrown beard to be a little more presentable as well. "You weren't exactly expected."

  "I'll busy myself." She dismissed him with a wave and turned toward the coffee and tea in glass jars. "We'll talk when you get back."

  For another moment, he watched her pick out green pine needles from a jar and pour steaming water from the kettle on the stove. Though she'd been there only a few hours, she seemed at home already. In those days, adaptation was key to survival, and to reach her age, Talia Wiseman must've adjusted to a lot of scenarios through the years.

  Outside, Eric slung his rifle over his shoulder and descended the ridge to the east. Most of the way, he zigzagged to throw off anyone intent on backtracking his sign to the cabin. An hour later, he reached level ground.

  Since the logging road to the highway was dirt, he didn't walk on it. His footprints would've been too obvious. But he eased up to the log-strewn road to examine the soft ground, now overgrown with weeds. He found only deer and wild turkey tracks since the last rain.

  The thought of turkey meat made his mouth water, and he gazed in the direction of the recent tracks. Most of his days were spent hunting and gathering, so his mind naturally went to the prospect of catching turkeys, even though he'd intended to investigate the smoke this day. He preferred to trap turkeys rather than shoot them. His turkey coop had been emptied over the harsh winter, but he'd already begun to put out juniper berries on the ground to bait the birds closer to the cabin. Turkey eggs had been a good supplement to his diet, but he'd opted to eat the birds outright during the cold months rather than starve on mere egg rations. It was only spring, but in his mind, it was never too early to make preparations for the next winter. This was especially important now with another mouth to feed.

  Remaining in the trees, he decided to hunt turkeys another day. He continued alongside the logging road, creeping toward the highway. He hadn't been to the edge of the forest for months. Though he'd fashioned snowshoes to use atop the several feet of snow the mountain received each winter, snowshoe tracks were a sure way to attract attention, so he'd remained in the higher elevations, venturing out only for wood or to hunt deer during breaks in the weather.

  Leaving the logging road, Eric followed the highway south to where a little smoke was still visible. He eyed the highway cautiously, not comfortable with the prospect of meeting travelers moving up or down the road. In the early years, travelers had been a source of news and even a few supplies for him. Now, he believed his survival depended on total secrecy.

  From a rocky outcropping protruding toward the highway, he hesitantly peered through the bushes to spy on a smoking homestead—or what was left of a homestead. At one time, it had been a gas station with a couple of buildings. Farther to the east and across the highway, was a ranch-style home, though he saw no sign of life over there.

  It was possible a careless traveler had accidentally burned down the house, but that was unlikely. Eric felt this was an intentional fire, and his renegade theory seemed the likeliest idea. He hadn't known there were inhabited buildings on this side of the mountain, or he would've relied on them for supplies rather than the more populated town of Adderthorn. Normally, people chose the safety of numbers against roaming thieves and killers. Three years earlier, he'd foraged here, collecting loose boards and old nails left behind by the previous owners.

  After watching the smoldering structure for thirty minutes, he finally emerged from his cover. The place was abandoned, or the owners had been killed, so he considered it fair game for him. Tools and materials were his priorities, even solar panels, batteries and wires, if he could find them, for a project he'd hidden above the cabin.

  He circled the ashes once before stepping into the soot to search for metal. Even his untrained eye could see at least three spots where the fire had originated. Glass bottles suggested Molotov cocktails. What kind of people had firebombed peaceful homesteaders? His eyes narrowed as he checked the highway. There was a chance that others would be drawn to the smoke, too, or the bandits could return to their crime.

  Under a collapsed roof timber, he found a blackened body pinned in the ashes, which were still hot to the touch. From the size of the body, he guessed it was a man, with a gun in a charred leather gun belt on his waist. But in those days, women were just as likely to be armed as men, especially in remote Wyoming.

  "Who are you?"

  It was a woman's voice, harsh and bold, coming from behind him. Guessing her voice was backed by a firearm, Eric raised his hands. With his mind on the highway, she'd approached from somewhere else and gotten the drop on him.

  "My name is Eric Radner. I'm just passing through. Saw the smoke and turned off to check it out."

  "Liar. You came from the trees. Let me see you. Slowly!"

  He turned toward her, holding his hands wide. The sun was behind him, so he could see her better than she could see him, twenty feet away. The shotgun she held would cut him in two if she fired. She looked to be about thirty-five, and below curly brown hair, a streak of dried blood ran from her brow down the side of her small nose.

  "Where are you from, Eric Radner?" Her shotgun barrel didn't waiver. "Your pack is light. Your boots have been patched. Talk!"

  The question caught him unprepared. The only people he'd ever crossed since the pandemic were in Adderthorn or on the highway, and they'd always known he came from somewhere in the mountains.

  "Originally, I'm from Lincoln. I got caught in Wyoming when the outbreak struck. I just stayed here."

  "Stayed? Where?"

  "There." He pointed vaguely with the pinky of his left hand. "Up there."

  "You're the crazy mountain guy?" She frowned. "You got infected, didn't you, but lived?"

  Eric glanced around. There was no cover to dive behind, which would've been preferable to telling her all his secrets. But she was no fool, having noticed his patched boots and light pack already. She knew he was a scavenger from nearby.

  "Those were just rumors I started about myself during the first year. I'd join travelers for a mile or two on th
e highway, to trade with and warn them to stay out of the woods since there was a mad man up there."

  "So those people would go to the next town and pass on your myth? I get it. Clever." She lowered the shotgun. "You're standing on my husband."

  He leapt aside and almost fell in the ashes. Daring her diverted barrel, he stepped out of the burnt remains to her side of the house.

  "Sorry." He remembered what Talia had said about his conversation skills, and tried to think of the appropriate thing to say. "Did you see who did it?"

  "Some maniacs on mountain bikes. I guess they're the new road warriors, huh? They wanted our tools." She bowed her head. "I guess Brad should've listened to them, but they looked like they wanted me as well."

  Eric nodded. Tools were more valuable than gold since equipment was always breaking down. And she was a beautiful woman. With men who had no scruples to steal valuable tools, it was a small step further to assault a woman.

  "Well, if you can point me to a shovel, I can help you bury him."

  She looked at him for a moment, then seemed to resign from shooting him as she cradled the shotgun in her arms.

  "Just you saying that, I guess it means you're all right. But no, that beam on him weighs probably three hundred pounds. And he's already burnt to a crisp. We couldn't even move him without him falling apart. There's no sense."

  A few years earlier, such words would've sounded cold, Eric thought, but these were hard times, and toughened people had to make hard, rational choices.

  She walked through the ash as Eric gazed at his mountain. Even after sawing down trees and thinning his yard for more sunshine, the cabin was still hidden.