Even with her voice low like it was, Caleb sensed that this was a conversation that would quickly become an argument if he took a wrong turn. Did it concern him that Lana had taken that Apex field marshal hostage?

  Of course it did. Just like it worried him every time she had to fire a gun at someone. But if he’d been in her shoes, he couldn’t say for certain he’d have done it differently. “I’m more concerned with what made her decide it was necessary. And whether—hang on. Gas station.”

  It couldn’t have come at a better time. Liz’s expression had darkened considerably. But she let the subject drop and kept her eyes open as they followed a gnarled metal arrow with Gas scrawled across it.

  The kind of station used for trucks or farm equipment, it was too overgrown to be in good shape before the impact. Half the station’s building collapsed so that the front of it leaned back precariously, ready to fall the rest of the way in, but the access ports for the tanks were intact and the machines out front were standing. Promising.

  “We there yet?” Lana asked lazily when he parked the SUV. She and Derek both yawned before she peered out the window, squinting. “Where are we?”

  “Gas station,” Caleb reported. “Come on. Let’s check about refueling. Grab the cans and the hose.”

  The four of them got out of the SUV, stepping into the bitter cold. Wind still blew from the east. Not ideal, but they’d come at least another hundred miles.

  “You two poke around the building.” He motioned to Elizabeth and Lana. “Don’t try and clear a path, that thing looks like it’s ready to fall the rest of the way over—but see if you can find anything to cover our faces when we’re outside. I have no idea how far from St. Louis we need to be before fallout isn’t a concern, so it’s best to play it safe.”

  Caleb watched them go, sharing a quick look of unspoken concern with his wife that he hoped conveyed how now might not be the best time to lecture their daughter. Not that it would have done much good if he had made it clear—Liz was either going to do it or not, if she’d made her mind up. He watched them for a second longer, then grabbed the canisters on his side of the car and met Derek around the front to trek toward the gas ports.

  “Middle of nowhere,” Derek observed as they walked. “Could be a good thing. Doesn’t look like there was much fire damage here, either.”

  “There was some back the way we came. But, no—looks like the front didn’t make it here. Of course, that could just mean it’s on the way. Don’t want to sit around too long.”

  “We’re tracking 70?”

  “For now,” Caleb confirmed.

  “I got a look at a map back at that Apex camp.” Derek knelt at a gas port and reached for the cover. “Kansas City is one of their big spots, it looked like. We can’t be far from there now.”

  The top of one port came free, and Caleb wrenched the lock on the cap to get it open. “We’re probably twenty miles out. Best not to get any closer.”

  After a few minutes of silence, Caleb spoke again. “Any idea what prompted Lana to take that woman hostage?”

  Derek glanced up briefly, then shook his head as he went back to cracking his port. “Must have had a good reason. Why?”

  “It’s probably nothing.”

  Derek focused on the work, threading a hose down the open gas port before taking a few tentative puffs on the house. “If there’s anything down there, it’s too far for this thing. If we’re that close to Kansas City, could be they’ve already drained the tanks here.”

  Caleb’s gut twisted a bit. That was a very distinct possibility, and if it was true, they might be out of luck. He wound the hose around his arm and set it aside before looking toward the building. “Depending on what’s in there, we could try to make a hand-pump and fit the hoses together, but...”

  “It’ll take time, and the tanks might be empty anyway,” Derek finished for him. “Your call, sir.”

  It was a tricky thing. If it was Apex who had cleared out the fuel, chances are they’d done a thorough job. They could waste a lot of time here and go to a lot of effort to find nothing. Then again, without some fuel they weren’t going to get far. Another ten miles at the most—the SUV was already registering empty on the gauge. There really wasn’t much of a choice at all, if Caleb was honest with himself. “Let’s see what we can find.”

  Derek nodded, and the two of them stood and started toward the gas station building. They got a few yards before Derek put a hand on Caleb’s arm, stopping them both and pointing into the night. “Hang on. Lights.”

  Caleb spun, following where Derek pointed to the flat expanse behind the station, where the highway would be. Three sets of headlights making good time. He exhaled. “Patrols or something. Or maybe a convoy of survivors. They can’t see us from there.”

  “But they might see the sign for the gas station,” Derek argued.

  Fair point. Caleb’s lips thinned, and he waved the younger man toward the SUV. “Let’s get it moved. I’ll put it in neutral, we’ll roll it behind the station.”

  It took effort, but it turned out to be worth it. Sure enough, the lights angled off the highway a short time later, just as they managed to get the SUV rolled behind the collapsed building and out of view from the front. Elizabeth and Lana met them as they made it there, emerging from a broken section of wall carrying a few items in their arms. ”What are you back here for?” Liz asked.

  Derek opened the back for them to deposit their find—some water bottles, a roll of tape, and a handful of bandanas that wouldn’t offer much protection from fallout dust but might at least cut down the amount of it they inhaled if it came down to it.

  Caleb took one and tied it around his neck. “Lights on the road. Could be headed this way. Better to be safe, is all.”

  “Apex?” Elizabeth breathed.

  “Couldn’t be,” Lana said skeptically as she peered around the edge of the building. “They’d have caught up to us by now if they were chasing us, right? They’ve got newer vehicles and all the fuel they need, seems like.”

  “Better not to make assumptions,” Caleb warned. “Just sit tight until they pass. See any hardware inside? We’re gonna have to build a hand pump if we’re getting any gas out of the tanks here.”

  “Maybe,” Lana offered. “There was a tool rack. Nothing I thought we needed, but we—”

  “They’re turning in,” Derek warned. He stepped back from the corner of the building and drew Lana with him. “They’re gonna see our equipment by the tanks if they look.”

  Caleb hissed a quiet curse. “Worst case, they take our stuff. Best case, they figure someone already tapped the tank and found it empty. We sit tight and wait them out.”

  Everyone seemed to agree, so they pressed themselves against the building and waited. Caleb closed his eyes and focused on listening. Engines cut off. Boots crunched. If they spoke, he didn’t hear them. Not at first.

  “Signal’s nearby,” someone said. A man, his voice young and deep. “Someone was here, looking for gas. Could be them. Fan out.”

  Them? Lana mouthed in Caleb’s direction. What signal were they following?

  The people closing in around them were almost certainly Apex if they were tracking any kind of signal. Where could it have come from? He scoured his mind. Had the field marshal bugged the car somehow?

  He didn’t know and, at the moment, it didn’t matter. They either had to leave the vehicle and get away into the night or risk a fire fight and hope they came out on top. They might get some gas out of it that way, but it was a massive risk. He’d seen how the Apex agents were geared. To say they had superior equipment was a fatal understatement.

  Cursing mostly to himself he turned to his family. The only real choice was to evade. “Everyone move out. Quietly, across the field. Stay low and out of sight.”

  The back of the SUV was still open. Derek and Lana moved to it and gathered rifles quickly enough as they passed by it. Lana grabbed something else, something Caleb didn’t recognize. “What is that?”

  “Apex laptop.”

  His eyes widened. “That’s what they’re tracking.” He couldn’t keep the anger from his voice. “What were you thinking?”

  “That it could have everything we want to know about Apex on it,” she hissed. “There were coordinates. Some central hub.”

  He reached for the laptop, but she pulled it out of reach. “Lana, they obviously want it back or they wouldn’t have sent anyone after us.”

  “We can fix that,” she told him. “We just need to get something to block the signal. Dad, this thing could have a map of every hub out there, it could help us get around them. And who knows what else?”

  “It’ll be encrypted,” he pressed. “We’re not going to war with Apex, Lana.”

  She looked down at the laptop, thinking something over, and then shook her head and shrugged her pack off one shoulder. “Not yet. But we might be at some point. I’m not giving it up. I’ve got a feeling about this, Dad. Can you please just trust me? There’s stuff in Derek’s pack that I can use. The faster we get some distance, the sooner I can fix this.”

  Before he could grab the thing and throw it into the field, she had stuffed it into her pack and thrown it back over her shoulder. He could still wrestle it off her and get rid of it, but the noise would draw attention. “This conversation isn’t over,” he warned her, then waved her along in the direction Derek and Liz had gone. “Go, move. Let’s hope they don’t follow us right away.”

  The field was big, and open, but the grass was tall and overgrown. It didn’t take long for them to wade far enough in to reach a patch high enough to duck down behind. As soon as they were down, she took the laptop out and waved frantically for Derek to pass her his pack. He did, a question on his face, and Lana began to rummage through it.

  She withdrew several bags of chips they’d been saving and with a pained look on her face, opened them and dumped them on the ground. Caleb realized within a few seconds what she was doing, and quickly began to help.

  There was barely enough material to work with, and it was difficult to do quietly, but he gambled on the tall grass soaking up some of the noise as they split the bags open and began taping them together. When they were done, Lana had a fairly large sheet of foiled plastic that she wrapped around the laptop and taped closed.

  Then, without comment, she folded the final split bag long-ways, and put it over her upper arm. “Tape that down.”

  Caleb stared for a moment before he did as she said. They could discuss it later. Once it was done, Lana tucked the shielded laptop away again, hefted the pack, and crept further into the grass. No one needed to be told what to do—if the tracking signal was successfully hidden, they had to move away from the last spot it would have been registered. They filed out into the tall grass, away from the gas station, and the SUV.

  A freezing blast of wind rolled across the weeds and Caleb ground his teeth to keep from chattering.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  LANA

  Near Odessa, MO

  Thursday, July 19th, 10:26 pm CST

  Lana huffed through the grass as fast as her feet and the pack strapped to her back would allow. At last, the grass gave way to a stand of trees, sheltering them a bit from the wind.

  Stopping wasn’t an option. It was too cold and windy. A tree branch cracked overhead, crashing down a moment later, no more than five feet from Derek. They might not be so lucky next time. They needed proper shelter and time to figure out what to do next.

  Lana reached up to check that the strip of foil was secured over her upper arm, where that Apex woman had jabbed her. Had she been chipped? It was possible. The spot was sore, and there was something hard under it, deep down beneath her skin—far enough that it could have been mistaken for a small cyst.

  Maybe her father was right about the laptop; it made sense that it would be tracked. But if it was her? Then leaving the laptop behind would have changed nothing. She wished she remembered more of what Jessup told her about radio waves and tracking devices and how it all worked. She didn’t even know if the foil was sufficient.

  But they hadn’t been caught. Yet. If Apex was willing to send people after either her or the device, whatever was on that laptop was worth knowing.

  They traveled in silence, bandanas up around their faces like masks, more to ward off the chill than any fallout. The collar of her jacket hugged her neck, but the cold seeped in along with the wind, vicious and biting. Lana’s eyes watered, and twice when she reached up to wipe her eyes, she found a brittle bit of ice on her lashes.

  Her limbs grew heavy, and her steps faltered, but Derek caught her arm. “Look, up ahead.”

  In the distance, the vague shape of something large and boxy emerged from the darkness. A house or a barn, it didn’t matter. It was out of the wind, at least, and maybe closed off enough that they could risk a small fire.

  By the time they got close enough to see any detail, it became clear it was a house. An old farmhouse with a wrap-around porch, the kind Lana’s mother had always talked about wanting. It looked like it was in good shape, too. There was a second building nearby, with a wide garage door on it.

  “Check the garage,” Caleb ordered. “We’ll see if there’s a way in.”

  Lana and Derek both acknowledged him with jerky waves of their hands, before scurrying across the withered grass to test the side door to the garage. Locked with a padlock. Nothing they couldn’t deal with, but it gave Lana pause.

  She spoke barely above a whisper. “You think someone would have abandoned this place but left everything locked?”

  He gave the padlock on the garage door an experimental twist, then laid it back down against the metal. “Don’t know. You think someone’s still here? There’s no lights on.”

  “It’s got to be three or four in the morning. They could be asleep.”

  “Not without a fire going at least, though,” he argued, leaning to look at the main house. “In this cold... well… that looks like a gas tank, though. Heck, I don’t know.”

  “Let’s go find Mom and Dad before they break in and get us shot.” She hurried toward the house, slowing only when a stranger’s voice carried across the lawn.

  “I understand what you’re saying, mister, but you got to see it from my point of view. Front door was locked. You come around the back and start jiggering with my lock. Looks an awful lot like trying to break into my house.”

  He was older, calm, but firm. Lana and Derek crept closer, clearing the side of the house to find her parents near a small back porch, both standing still with their hands up. Lana ducked instinctively, and waved Derek against the side of the porch as well. She signaled him to keep quiet and stay low as they inched forward.

  “Of course it does,” Lana’s father responded. “We apologize, honestly. We’ve found so many homes abandoned that we didn’t think anyone would be here. If you’ll just let us walk away, I give you my word we won’t bother you.”

  The old man grunted and spat. “I’d like for that to be true, but now, you see, I gotta wonder if you two are gonna head out there and wait around, then come back when you think I’m asleep. And, I do have to sleep. So I figure that puts us all in something of a tough position, you see? A catch 22, if you like.”

  Lana readied her rifle, fingers moving silently to switch the safety off. She could just see the shape of the old man in the darkness.

  Before she could raise it, though, Derek pressed close to her, his voice barely audible as he whispered just behind her ear, “He could shoot your dad if you startle him. Or your mom.”

  He was right. Jaw clenched, she eased her finger off the trigger and forced herself to keep the barrel of the weapon down. What had her father told her? Assess the risks and rewards, and figure which course of action would get the best combination out of a situation?

  The last thing they needed was another gunshot wound to treat, assuming it was somewhere non-fatal. Which wasn’t at all guaranteed. “Circle around the other side,” she whispered to him.

  His acknowledgment was a quiet grunt of assent as her father spoke up.

  “I get that,” he told him. “I suppose all I can say is that we lost our ride recently. No gas. And these Apex folks had us pinned down, so we had to leave it before we could get refueled. It’s cold out, but nothing we can’t survive. I saw some firewood stacked up on the side of the house over there. If you could spare us a few logs, we’ll hike out and get a fire started to keep us warm and be out of your hair.”

  The old man lowered his weapon slightly. “Apex, eh? What did they want with you?”

  Caleb shrugged. “What they want with everyone, sounds like. Except... Well, we had a run in with them a few hours ago, back east. My daughter, Lana, ruffled some feathers. We didn’t think they’d follow us out this far. But here we are.”

  The old man sighed, and finally lowered his weapon. “I’m familiar. They got my grandson about a week ago. Swallowed their whole story hook, line, and sinker. Shipped off to some mountain out west. You can put your hands down.”

  Lana’s parents did, slowly. She let out a breath she’d been holding and switched the safety back on the rifle before shifting it to hang behind her as she stood and emerged from her hiding spot. “Everything okay back here?”

  The old man leaned, peering at her through the darkness. “That your daughter?”

  “It is,” Caleb confirmed, and waved Lana toward him. “This is Lana. I’m Caleb. My wife, Elizabeth. Where’s Derek?”

  Lana cleared her throat and shot the old man a sheepish look. “He’s uh... circling around the other side. Should be here in a second. I saw the gun, and—”

  “No need to explain,” the old man said, waving it off. He hefted the rifle. “Honestly, thing’s not loaded. Ran out of ammunition just a little after this all started trying to stock up some meat before the storms ran off all the deer, which they did.”

  Lana swallowed. She had very nearly put a bullet in the man. She spotted Derek off to the side, just barely visible as he poked his head around the corner and waved him down. “Come on out. We’re okay.”