Black Autumn Travelers Read online

  “Dammit,” he swore. “Let’s at least try to get an exfil plan together before we wade into that shit sandwich.” He gestured at the burning city. “We can hide the motorcycles and ditch the trailer. At least then we can run out of a death trap without making a twelve-point turn. We need to find a deep thicket, lay the bikes down and cover them with branches.”

  “How long is that going to take?” Caroline fretted. “I’m telling you: I feel like we need to help them right now, or it’ll be too late.”

  “It’s dark in an hour. We CANNOT go into Louisville at night, Caroline. That’s certain death. Let’s hide the bikes, get a little sleep, and head in a few hours before dawn. We’ll run blacked out in the truck and hope that all the bad guys are asleep. There are more holes in that plan than a dude with five noses and ten butt holes, but that’s all I got.”

  The next hour, Mat searched for the darkest, thickest bramble he could find. He spotted a thick patch in the middle of a twenty-acre copse of trees less than a quarter mile off the main highway. They rolled the bikes off the trailer, pushed them into the thicket in a “J” path, obscuring the line of their trail. He laid the motorcycles down, covering them with branches he hacked off the surrounding trees with a small ax from his go-bag. Mat checked the Rotopax plastic gas cans bolted to the saddlebag brackets, making sure they weren’t leaking gas when laid over on their sides.

  He went through the saddlebags, checking the kit the Ross girl had chosen for the bikes. He found extra mags for the AKs, two-way radios, freeze dried food, a water purifier and a couple quarts of water. He even discovered an extra JetBoil and two spare canisters. Satisfied with the emergency cache, Mat carefully unbent the bent branches from the bramble, further hiding their trail. With any luck, no refugee would think to scavenge in the middle of a thicket.

  The work done, Mat looked at the darkening sky. A bolt of fear shot through him.

  What if she was right? What if they should’ve gone straight into Louisville?

  His only job in this new world had become her safety and getting her back to her parents. If they found her parents and brother, that job would grow serious hair. He might even lose her to her family. He couldn’t guess at what her dad might want to do. Mat didn’t know the man.

  In just a few days, Caroline turning her back on Mat mattered. He would do just about anything to get ahead of that possibility. Right now, with the night sky coating itself with weak, smoke-shaded stars, the fear tingling in his back told him he might have made a mistake. Maybe the situation had gotten ahead of him instead.

  What were the odds that going into Louisville this afternoon instead of in the wee hours of morning would matter? A hundred to one? Either they were dead or they were alive. A few hours wouldn’t matter.

  Still, Mat weighed his stake in the big game, a bet riding on a life-or-death gamble. Before, he had just been playing along—being the Big Hero. Now he played for keeps. He hadn’t even known that he cared about the jackpot before, but now he couldn’t deny it. He was in, all or nothing, for Caroline.

  Fuck me. How did I get in so deep?

  8

  “The hairs on your arm will stand up

  At the terror in each sip and in each sup

  Will you partake of that last offered cup?

  Or disappear into the potter’s ground?

  When the man comes around…

  Till armageddon no shalam, no shalom.”

  When The Man Comes Around, Johnny Cash, American IV: The Man Comes Around, 2002

  Brighton Drive, Louisville, Kentucky

  Red brick. White doors, white windows, and eaves. Perfect lawns and perfect trees. Even through his night vision goggles, Mat could tell that these homes were Tudor style and the neighborhood was early twenty-first century American well-to-do. Except for the trashcans overflowing the perfect country curb, and the garbage strewn about the lawns, Mat wouldn’t have thought “Armageddon.”

  Then he came upon the first burned-out homes. Scorched brick walls, some of them collapsed, and the occasional isolated chimney. They punctuated the otherwise intact neighborhoods.

  Mat tried to imagine how or why these homes had burned. Maybe the families had attempted cooking with fire indoors. Maybe criminals had hit the homes and burned them out. Maybe vandals had lit them on fire just for fun. One thing was certain: no firemen had come to stop the blaze. They had burned unchecked until the fire ran out of fuel.

  As soon as he could, Mat abandoned the main roads of Louisville in favor of the dense grid of residential streets crisscrossing the manicured neighborhoods. It was four o’clock in the morning and they hadn’t encountered any danger—just a city that looked as though every soul had vanished into thin air. Maybe it was like the old fire-and-brimstone preacher had warned. Maybe all the people except Mat and Caroline, unrepentant fornicators, had been taken up into the sky to greet the Coming of the Lord.

  As so often occurred in the run-up to battle, Mat saw nothing specific to worry him. Still, his Spidey senses did backflips, his hand antsy on the AR-15 in his lap, a round in the chamber.

  “You’re going to need to head northwest pretty soon.” Caroline navigated with her cell phone. For whatever reason, Google Maps began working the moment they passed the city boundaries. It was a good thing, because the big laminated map wasn’t detailed enough to get them to her parents’ house. “We’re looking for Brindle Road, but we still need to work our way a mile north.”

  All the lights in the truck, including the dome light, had been turned off. The only light in the cab was Caroline’s cell phone. Mat moved along at fifteen miles an hour, his Raptor nearly silent in the dewy, late September morning.

  “Roll down your window, please,” Mat asked.

  “It’s cold outside and I feel safer with it up.”

  “You’re not safer with it up and, if I have to shoot, the back blast will cook your eardrums with the windows rolled up.”

  Caroline rolled all the windows down and bundled up in her wind breaker. The smell of death wafted into the cab.

  “Also, I know it’s a pain in the ass, but please put your backpack on.” Mat reached around and handed Caroline one of the packs.

  “You’re worried. I can tell. What’re you worried about?” she asked.

  “I’m terrified, Hot Stuff. We’re deep in the shit now. I can feel it. If we have to abandon the Raptor and all our supplies, we’ll need these packs to survive. I made sure they had a critical load-out before we went to bed last night. If we fall into the meat grinder, we won’t have time to grab packs. Run your seat all the way back and it’ll be more comfortable. Will you pass me my pack, too?”

  Caroline handed Mat his pack and he slipped it on while he drove, rolling his seat all the way back.

  Mat made a right turn onto an inconspicuous residential street and his NVGs flared white, adjusting to a new light source. Twin fires burned in the middle of the street half a block up, and cars jammed the street in a crude barricade. Dark human forms flitted back and forth between the cars, like demons worshipping the firelight. He had driven into the voodoo night before in Iraq and knew the hideous things men were capable of doing when darkness fell. The flickering firelight and hunched shapes of men bent on mayhem lit a primordial part of his brain, drawing visions of torture, evisceration, and endless pain. Mat stomped on the brake.

  He checked his flanks and suddenly recognized ominous shapes hovering over the lawn exactly beside his truck. Mat’s blood ran cold.

  Skewered human heads lulled on poles of some sort—probably shovel handles. The residents had lined them up along a once-manicured lawn. The closest heads were only a few feet away from the Raptor and Mat could tell they were the heads of young African-American males, at least a dozen.

  “What is that?” Caroline pointed to the bonfires and roadblock, luckily keeping her attention from the severed heads.

  “Get down.” Mat threw the Raptor in reverse and roared backward, pulling out of the trap that would’ve
undoubtedly killed them both—a trap likely erected by insurance salesmen, Mary Kaye representatives and social media marketing consultants trying to carve their neighborhood out of the citywide chaos. The bedroom communities of Louisville had gone feral.

  “What happened?” Caroline asked, whipping her head around to understand the threat Mat had seen.

  “That was a wrong turn, babe. I’m pretty sure we just saw a neighborhood that’s been attacked by looters one time too many. I don’t think that was a block party with weenies and marshmallows; maybe a block party where they kill anyone who they don’t know from the P.T.A.”

  Mat shivered involuntarily, considering the ambush they had just avoided. He didn’t mention the part about the severed heads to Caroline. He presumed they had been set as a warning: Fuck with this neighborhood at your peril.

  What kind of a suburbanite, just nine days after the crash of the stock market, would chop off heads and stick them on shovel handles? Mat guessed it might be the kind of suburbanite who had already lost loved ones to criminals.

  “There!” Caroline pointed to a street sign that read, “Brindle Road.” Mat made a left, and rolled through the stop sign. A moment later, Caroline pointed again, “That house with the big walnut tree in front.”

  Mat pulled onto the lawn beneath the tree and winced as his brakes squeaked. Any noise right now dragged his nerves through hell. He felt a creeping dread, like a man who shows up to a friend’s wedding in his best suit, only to find it had been the week before.

  “Let me clear the house before you come in,” Mat insisted. “Trust me on this. Stay in the car until I come back for you.” Caroline nodded and checked the chamber of her AK. Mat stepped out, still wearing his NVGs. It made sense for him to go in first, but part of him just wanted more time—more time while she still might care for him.

  Mat used the big walnut tree trunk for cover, then slipped around the tree and made his way to the side of the house past a one-car garage. The backyard held no surprises, a lawn surrounded with flower beds. Mat tried the back door and found it locked. He knocked quietly and waited. Nobody answered. He knocked again. Still no answer.

  Trying to be as quiet as possible, Mat threw his weight against the door. The added weight of the backpack hit the door harder than he had anticipated and it burst inward with a loud crash. Afraid he might get shot by Caroline’s parents, Mat called out in a loud whisper.

  “Mr. and Mrs.…” Mat suddenly realized he didn’t know Caroline’s last name. “…I’m a friend of Caroline. I’m Caroline’s friend. Don’t shoot.” Mat stopped and listened. Deep inside the house, he heard a creak and his blood ran cold. Mat slung his AR-15 around outside his backpack and out of the way. Simultaneously, he cleared his Glock from the holster.

  “Don’t shoot. I’m a friend of Caroline’s,” Mat loud-whispered again. He entered a kitchen with a sink full of unwashed dishes. The kitchen smelled like rotting meat, which probably came from the refrigerator. The creak sounded again, and Mat placed it upstairs, above him in the small loft bedroom he had noticed when they pulled up. He stopped and listened again. Nothing.

  “Don’t shoot. I’m with Caroline.” Mat side-stepped the corner of what must have been a living room, noticing a stairwell and a closed door across the room, most likely leading to the main floor bedroom. Stepping into the living room, Mat’s boot punched into something that could only be human flesh. More concerned with the threats that might come bounding out of the bedroom or down the stairs, Mat cleared the living room and slowly crabbed around the one-hundred-and-eighty-degree corner at the bottom of the stairwell. Then he returned to the body.

  With a quick flick from his tactical flashlight, an image burned into Mat’s retinas, and it was the last thing he wanted to see: a middle-aged man on the floor. From the image still fried into his night vision, Mat couldn’t deny the balding head and the pool of shiny liquid beneath the human form. Mat thought that the man—undoubtedly Caroline’s father—was wearing a track suit. It might have been the closest thing to tactical wear the old man had owned, probably the best thing in his closet during a night when bad men might come into his home.

  Well, the track suit hadn’t saved his life,. And, if her dad had a gun, whoever killed him had probably taken it. Mat hadn’t seen it on the floor.

  Keeping his eyes pointed toward the threat angles, Mat levered the toe of his boot into the pool of blood. The rippling sound of medium-fresh blood broke the silence in the room as he lifted the boot.

  Mat exhaled loudly. The man had probably died recently.

  Pushing his regret and shame to the back of his mind, he returned to work. Somebody very definitely still breathed life in this house, and fifty-fifty that person would kill Mat, given the chance.

  Mat loud-whispered up the stairs. “I’m with Caroline. Don’t shoot.”

  Mat couldn’t go up the stairs without clearing the bedroom first, unwilling to leave uncleared space behind him. He Indian-walked up to the door and, with practiced speed, opened it, flicked his tac light, and stepped into the position of dominance, sweeping the room from the deepest corner of greatest danger to the closest corner of the room. The center of the bedroom was filled with a queen-sized bed with a single human body lying half in and half out. At a glance in the dark, Mat surmised it would be Caroline’s mother.

  Mat couldn’t dwell on the implications of her dead parents until the house was completely clear, and his mind flipped back to the creaking in the upstairs room. He hoped he would hear footfalls on the staircase if someone came down to hit him at his six. In any case, he wasn’t planning on spending more than seven seconds in the bedroom and he swept the backside of the bed, noting that the dead body was a middle-aged woman. Her long, blonde hair and trim figure made sense, given how beautiful her daughter was.

  Mat cleared the closet and left the room, quietly closing the bedroom door behind him.

  Again, he turned to the staircase. Taking a quick peek, Mat saw nothing at the top of the stairs. There was literally no proper way to handle a staircase without tremendous risk. If someone was waiting at the top of those stairs, ready to blast him, Mat would get blasted. The longer he waited, the more likely it would be that Caroline would grow impatient and come looking for him. That would add a free radical to the situation. Mat needed to clear the top floor quickly, risky or not.

  Once more he loud-whispered up the stairs. “I’m Mat. I’m Caroline’s friend. Don’t shoot.” Mat figured the odds of Caroline’s brother shooting him, if that was who was hiding upstairs, was more than there being a gangbanger lying in wait.

  Drawing a breath, Mat stormed up the stairs, immediately sweeping the small anteroom to his left, then leveling his gun on a little, smiling terrier, wagging his tail on the floor.

  “Jesus, buddy. I almost ventilated you.”

  Mat considered the door behind the dog. The door to his right was open and it revealed a small, empty bathroom that smelled like the toilet bowl was probably full of turds. He would need to clear the upstairs bedroom just like he had cleared the bedroom below. Slowly, Mat slid the dog across the hardwood floor with his boot, out from in front of the bedroom door. The terrier kept smiling and wagging, as though nothing was amiss.

  With a burst, Mat opened the door and stepped into the position of dominance, inside the room and a couple feet along the wall, sweeping from the deepest corner back toward the window on the far wall. Nothing moved. Mat took another breath.

  He stepped across the room and cleared the backside of the bed, moving to the closed door of a closet. He threw open the door and cleared from side to side, seeing nothing but hanging clothes.

  On instinct, Mat spoke. “Hey, buddy. Come on out of there. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m Caroline’s friend.”

  A whimper came from the back of the closet and, slowly, the clothes parted. A boy stepped out, his eyes ghoulishly white through the NVGs.

  “Are my mom and dad dead?” the boy asked, likely already knowing the ans
wer.

  Mat pulled the truck off the street and into the driveway, backing in for immediate egress. Caroline had gone inside and Mat busied himself with prepping the truck for departure, giving her a few moments alone with her parents.

  Eventually he would have to go inside and get her. They needed to hurry the fuck out of Louisville, ASAP. Dawn was breaking.

  The boy had told Mat that gangbangers had gone door to door the night before, jacking homes. His mom and dad had been in bed when the gangbangers burst in the front door. His dad had struggled with someone in the living room. Shots had been fired. The men rummaged through the kitchen and checked the house over, took their mom’s jewelry and some canned food in the kitchen, and left without finding the boy in the closet.

  The story gave Mat a rock-hard knot in his throat, the implications undeniable. If he had gone straight to Caroline’s parents’ house the night before, like she had asked, her folks would still be alive.

  Mat’s anger with himself shunted into a short fantasy of what he would’ve done to those droopy-assed gang-bangers if he had been at 17 Brindle Road last night to welcome them.

  He didn’t know for sure if he had made a tactical mistake by not coming earlier. Whatever the case, the results were in, and he would get to live with the consequences.

  As he leaned against the big walnut tree, scanning Brindle Road for threats, he couldn’t see a future for himself in this shitty world without Caroline. He assumed he would figure it out, but he couldn’t see it at that moment, with Caroline beside the remains of her parents inside the dark house.

  Pretty much every woman he had ever known would place the blame for their deaths squarely on Mat. Something in the female psyche, in Mat’s experience, defaulted to placing the blame on their primary male figure, pretty much every time. For better or worse, he had signed up for that privilege the moment he called Caroline from outside her dorm. There was a ninety-nine percent certainty that Mat would be the new bad guy in her drama.