Finding Shelter

5

The lackey gave Max a hard shove, and Max found himself falling face-first onto the stockade’s dirt floor.

“That’ll teach you,” said the lackey, slamming the door closed.

Max heard the click of a lock. And another. The sound of footsteps.

And then he was alone.

His hands were still bound, making it hard to get to his feet.

But he managed. One leg at a time, using his hands together to help himself up.

He wasn’t the type of man who stayed down. If there was anything Max was good at it, it was pressing on, and picking himself up.

There’d always be setbacks. There’d always be problems with the plan. If you didn’t understand that, Max knew, small problems were liable to completely derail you.

It wasn’t as if Max was in the best of spirits, though.

The trick was to not let himself get too down. Not let himself sink into the spiral of doubt and despair.

And to do that, all he needed to do was find the next step. And do it.

He’d been cocky, maybe. He’d gotten himself picked up at that Jeep in the road. He should have hung back farther.

And then he’d made another crucial error, which was demanding too much too soon. After all, he hadn’t even tried to prove himself.

No wonder they’d thrown him in the pen.

Maybe that’s what he deserved.

Or maybe not.

He didn’t know where he was going to end up, but he knew that he wasn’t going to stay locked up for long. One way or another, he’d get out.

Max was back on his feet.

Looking around, he surveyed the area.

The stockade was an outdoor area bordered by a tall fence made of wire. The fence was at least twenty-five feet tall. At the top of the fence, there was a thick spiral of barbed wire.

There was a single door to the stockade, made of metal and thick wire. It appeared as if there were various key-only padlocks, as well as a built-in deadbolt.

Max was impressed by the fence and the door. Impressed with the level of infrastructure that this camp had managed to attain in a relatively short time.

Obviously there were people at the camp who understood construction well enough to build this. And they’d had to get the materials too. Not just any materials, because this stockade obviously wasn’t just tossed together haphazardly. Instead, it was a building based on a plan and rigorous specifications.

But that didn’t mean Max couldn’t escape from it if he decided that’s what the situation required.

He’d take it all in first. Then decide what to do.

His wrists were hurting from the plastic binders, which were cinched on too tight. But he ignored it.

His stomach was rumbling with hunger. It’d been a long time since he’d eaten.

But he was used to going hungry. Hell, most everyone was at this point.

His leg hurt. It always hurt. He could deal with that. A little pain never killed anyone.

His pack was gone. Confiscated. Same with his Glock and his knives. It was a blow. Hopefully it was temporary.

Outside the fence, there was all manner of activity. There were men pushing wheelbarrows full of supplies that looked like they’d been pilfered from various big box stores.

The men with the wheelbarrows were dressed in decent clothes. Not a lot of rips and tears. They looked fairly well fed, too.

Other men and women were walking here and there. Some carried clipboards that they studied. Others seemed to be surveying everything, standing there with their arms behind their backs, watching.

It seemed to be a well-organized militia. Plenty of work going on. Plenty of food available.

Everyone was armed with at least a handgun. Many had long guns.

Some men wore pieces of police or military uniforms. No one had a complete uniform. Max knew that the clothes didn’t mean anything. The men might or might not have been members of the police force or military.

Max turned his attention to the inside of the stockade.

There wasn’t much there.

On the other end of it, about a hundred yards away, there were a couple figures curled up, leaning against the fence.

The stockade was made to house a lot of men. That might mean something about what plans the leaders of the militia had. What tricks they had up their sleeves.

Max made his way across the dirt. He moved slowly, not wanting to draw much attention to himself.

Outside the fence, there seemed to be just one guard who paced back and forth. His eyes stayed trained on Max.

To Max’s surprise, one of the figures huddled up against the fence was a woman. He only noticed it as he got closer to her. She didn’t look up at him, and neither did the man next to her.

Both of them were thinner than everyone else on the other side of the fence. Max supposed that meant they’d been locked up for a while. Or maybe not.

Max nodded vaguely at them, and sat himself down against the fence, next to the woman.

He wanted information. But he didn’t want to appear too eager. He needed to play it cool.

Max sat there for about an hour without a single thing happening. He didn’t know the exact time because his trusty Vostok watch had been confiscated by the lackey who’d thrown him into the stockade.

It wasn’t a good feeling, not having his gear. After all, the gear had gotten him through tough times. It had always been there. Sort of like a friend.

But he knew he’d get it back somehow. And he still had his most important tool of all. His mind.

A watch, a gun, or a knife were only good so far as one knew how to use them. Without a plan, without a mind behind the tools, they were just objects. Objects that looked nice but did nothing.

As Max sat there, he tried not to let his thoughts wander back to his camp, back to Mandy and to his unborn child. He knew that if he let his mind drift too far in that direction, he’d get lost in worries and doubts.

Max tried to remind himself that if he didn’t return to Mandy, she and the child would still be taken care of. Max trusted Georgia with his and Mandy’s lives. Not to mention his brother. And the others.

And Mandy could take care of herself as well. It wasn’t as if she was a weakling. Max had watched her do horrible things to bad people. He’d watched her defend herself in the most dangerous of situations. He’d watched her go on and on and never let herself stop, no matter what.

Max had trusted Mandy with his own life countless times. She was competent. She was intelligent. And strong. And she’d be the mother of his child, whether or not he returned.

Still, Max wanted to live. He wanted to return to Mandy.

He needed to return.

And to do that, he needed to forget, temporarily, about Mandy.

He also couldn’t let his attention focus on his disappointment. He’d spent a long time getting to this camp. He’d had high hopes. Hopes of restoring order to the country. Hopes that he himself could play an important role, that he could help start to squash the chaos that had overtaken the land.

Max needed to remember that just because he’d been imprisoned it didn’t mean that the militia wasn’t good, that Grant wasn’t a good man.

Max hadn’t yet met Grant or seen any sign of him. And nothing else about the camp made him think that anything bad was going on.

Max had simply been overzealous, overconfident, and too cocky for his own good. What had he been thinking, demanding a position and audience like that?

If he’d approached the whole thing in a humble way, maybe the outcome would have been completely different.

But Max had that pride deep inside him. It was the pride that he’d earned from surviving countless situations in which he knew he should have died. He’d earned it by going and going, no matter what.

Max kept his attention focused on his immediate surroundings, on the men and women who were at work outside the stockade, and on the guard.

When Max had been thrown in the stockade, no one had read him any rights. No one had told him about due process. No one had told him what would happen to him, or whether he could expect a trial or not.

The militia camp here was its own government. It answered to no one. It was all powerful. It didn’t have any obligation to read Max any rights.

So Max didn’t know what would happen to him.

From the looks of it, the man and woman next to him against the fence had been in here for quite a while.

The fact that Max and these two other prisoners were alive didn’t mean much. Max wanted to believe it meant that the militia wasn’t killing people, that instead it was just imprisoning them. Besides, Max was sure that were plenty of other militia groups who would have just shot him, rather than going to the trouble of incarcerating him.

After all, having prisoners meant feeding them, giving them water, possibly treating their medical issues.

Having prisoners was a good sign, in that sense. It meant a high level of organization. A high level of control over the population of the camp.

But Max knew that for each prisoner in the stockade, there might well have been ten corpses out in a ditch somewhere. Maybe they were planning on killing Max after interrogating him in a couple hours. Or maybe there was some other reason to keep him alive for now. Maybe others had not been so lucky.

Max’s mind was strategic. He couldn’t help it. He was always analyzing, always coming up with plans.

If it came to escaping, Max doubted he’d be able to go out the way he came in. He’d either need a key or he’d have to pick or break the lock.

While Max understood the fundamentals of lock picking, and had practiced before on a couple, he doubted he’d be able to pull it off in this situation. Max knew that realistically appraising his own abilities was important. Without the proper tools and plenty of time, he likely wouldn’t be able to pick the lock.

Getting the key itself was an option. Most likely, the guard had it.

But the guard was armed. And he wouldn’t want to just hand over the key.

Attacking the guard was a possibility. After all, Max might be able to reach through the fencing to strangle the guard or incapacitate him in some other way. Then he could remove the key and open the gate.

But attacking the guard was a long shot. It sounded more like something that might work on a television show than in real life. After all, the guard would surely fight back.

Max figured that his best chance was also the simplest. His idea was to just wait until no one was looking and then climb over the fence.

Sure, there was barbed wire at the top. And it would cut him up to hell. And he’d bleed plenty, the blood trickling back down the fence. But he could deal with it. He’d dealt with worse. If he was really lucky, he could find something to blunt the barbed wire with a little. Throw a blanket over it or something.

Not that there were any blankets around. The best he’d be able to manage would be some article of clothing.

It was likely that the guards had already thought about people climbing over the fence. Unless they didn’t mind people escaping. Surely, they’d have something in place to prevent it. After all, barbed wire was extremely inconvenient and painful, but it didn’t stop everyone. Especially not the most determined people.

Maybe there was another guard out of sight, waiting to shoot anyone at the top of the fence.

Or maybe there was something else. Something Max couldn’t think of at the moment.

So maybe that wasn’t the best plan after all. It was too easy. And the militia seemed too organized to overlook something so obvious. So tempting.

Max frowned slightly as his mind kept churning, looking for another plan.

He didn’t come up with much. Except that he’d wait and see how the food was delivered. If someone came in through that gate, maybe there’d be an opportunity there somewhere.

Max’s gaze shifted away from the men laboring with the wheelbarrows to the fencing itself.

If only he had some wire cutters, he could cut right through that fencing.

Then he thought of it.

Digging.

He could dig under the fence.

The dirt was loose. A little damp. Perfect for digging at with his hands.

Sure, he wouldn’t be able to dig very far. But he didn’t need to.

He just needed to dig a little shallow patch beneath the fencing. The way a dog would. He was thin enough that he could squeeze himself under it, provided that he could bend the fencing a little.

But surely, the militia guard would have thought of this possibility too.

Max was getting exhausted, thinking through all the possibilities.

And he didn’t yet even know if he needed to escape or not.

Would it be better to wait and see what happened? Wait to see whether they would give him a second chance, some kind of audience.

No, probably not. It seemed just as likely they’d kill him.

Max didn’t want to take any chances.

He wanted to live. He wanted to survive. It was just a drive he had. An intense one, like some little motor that kept on chugging and chugging, deep in his body, no matter what happened.

There was no point in thinking about his crushed dreams of restored order.

He just needed to live.

He could think about it all later.

Suddenly, after over an hour of silence, the woman next to him stirred. She shifted her position, and in doing so, turned to face Max.

For the first time, Max saw her face.

She was a young woman. Early twenties, probably.

But she looked old. Ancient, even.

Her face looked haggard. Lines everywhere. Gaunt, as if all the fat had been stripped from her body. And not in a good way. More like an unhealthy, starvation kind of way.

She looked old beyond her years.

But her eyes were still young. That’s how he knew her real age.

There was pain in her expression.

She spoke with care, as if the words themselves caused her pain.

“They’ll keep us in here until we die,” she said.

“Why?” said Max. “What do they have to gain?”

“They take us,” she said. “And they do experiments on us.”

A chill ran up Max’s spine.

“Experiments?” he said. “What kind of experiments?”

The woman didn’t answer. She just stared at him.

It was a horrible stare. There was something in those young eyes of hers that said something. Something that couldn’t be put into words.

The chill didn’t leave Max’s spine. And he knew that he wasn’t going to wait around to see what happened. He was going to try to escape. Tonight, if at all possible.

“And don’t think about escaping,” she said, her hoarse voice continuing, almost as a coda to Max’s thoughts. “They’re harder on you when you try to escape.”

That wasn’t good to hear.

But Max wasn’t going to give up easily either.

He’d gotten himself into all this. Walked right into a trap. Fallen for tales of a charismatic leader. Marched right on in. Foolish.

Well, he wasn’t going to stay anyone’s fool.