Jailbreak Read online

  Jailbreak

  CHRIS BOSTIC

  First printing, September 2019

  Copyright © 2019, Chris Bostic

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-13: 978-1693011436

  Cover Design by Chris Bostic

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

  DEDICATION

  To my readers,

  with gratitude for

  your support.

  The enthusiastic

  reception of the series

  motivated me to finish the story.

  CHAPTER 1

  “I can’t believe your mom let you come along again,” I told Katelyn as we hunkered against a rock outcropping so we could watch the road below.

  “Better than spending time with my brother?”

  “It doesn’t take much,” I offered, though I didn’t really mean it. John had been a pretty solid mentor the first few months following our escape into the park. He also seemed to have accepted me pretty well into the Jennings family.

  “That’s not nice, Zach.”

  I looked at the gloomy sky overhead. Not exactly a picture-perfect spring afternoon. “Guess I’ve kinda lost the nice.”

  “Yep. Grumpy as an old bear.” She nudged me with her shoulder to let me know she was kidding.

  “Speaking of which, I finally saw one yesterday. Not a very big one, but it was my first since winter.”

  “Great.” She clearly didn’t mean it. “Guess we can add bear meat back to the menu.”

  “Yeah, they’re gonna wish they went back to hibernating. I don’t know how long they’ll last before we hunt them out of the park.”

  “And the deer, and the fish. We’ve been putting a hurting on the wildlife.”

  I rubbed my washboard stomach and noted that it hadn’t come from working out.

  “It’s been putting a hurtin’ on me.” I stood up to stretch out my back, resting the hunting rifle against a tree.

  The only hunting it did was unfriendly humans. Thankfully very few and even farther between. Bow and arrows were used for wild game to keep from attracting undue attention.

  “What I wouldn’t do for a real bed.” My spine popped loudly enough for her to hear. “Maybe an actual chair. That would be nice.”

  “Imagine if there was more of us. There really would be nothing left, like extinct,” Katelyn said, evidently still thinking about the wildlife. She always had a soft heart in that regard. “It’s probably a good thing Spotted Owl’s group went ahead and pulled out a while ago.”

  That had taken me by surprise, since Spotted Owl had seemed a whole lot more motivated to tough it out than the folks my mom had cobbled together.

  “I guess it’s good. I don’t know.”

  “Why not?” she asked.

  “Do we really want to be going back to the city now? It’s not even been a year since our comfortable little world turned totally upside down.”

  “It can’t get any less comfortable.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “Think about it. Do you really like eating weeds and raw meat and not having real furniture? In a house, with an actual roof?”

  “Of course not, but we do cook the meat. And I’ve been getting pretty good at that.”

  Katelyn exhaled exaggeratedly. “I’m done, Zach. Look at me.” She ran a hand through long hair that failed to have the same luster it used to. The stained, worn clothes completed the picture. Still, she looked every bit as beautiful to me as she ever had.

  “Guess you got a point there.”

  She slugged me on the shoulder. “You’re not supposed to agree!”

  “I was thinking about me.” I gestured along my body from waist to head. “I’ve probably lost twenty pounds, and I didn’t have a lot to spare.”

  I used to look like a runner, but I’d become more like one of those emaciated marathoners with ribs sticking out. At least the weather had broken, so I didn’t need any extra weight to keep me warm. Not that I’d been remotely warm while hiding in cold, musty caves all winter long.

  “Come with us when we go,” Katelyn said. “Your brother got to go with Field Mouse and Spotty. Surely you can come with us.”

  “He didn’t really ask. He just left.” That left a bad taste in my mouth. I couldn’t leave Mom and Maddie behind without at least asking. I had sort of broached the subject once, and that hadn’t gone well. “Mom says it’s a bad idea.”

  “You gonna listen to your mom or me?”

  I rocked back on my heels. Katelyn had never used that line before. We were as close as two fillets in a skillet, but it’s not like we were married. Then again, despite being just shy of eighteen, our worlds revolved around each other. Still, I couldn’t abandon my family.

  “She needs me,” I replied. “She’s not been the same since Dad died.”

  Neither have I.

  “Zach, I get that, but….”

  Not a day went by that I didn’t think of him, broken body on the forest floor. Attack helicopters roaring overhead. Smoke rising into the night sky.

  That was one thing I hadn’t missed. The sky above had been oddly quieter for weeks, day and night.

  No more jets; no helicopters. An occasional drone made a pass overhead. Maybe once a week, or less frequently.

  We’d worried the Army would retaliate when we’d beaten them back from the eastern entrance to the park. Truly, deeply worried, to the point that everyone was on high alert for weeks. But all that did was wear us out. Another attack never came, and some members of our group grew complacent.

  Not Mom, which was why I was still out on watch duty. In a different part of the park, though. When folks started bailing out for Gatlinburg as winter dragged on, she at least agreed we could move camp closer to town. So we packed up in February and moved to a cave off the Grapeyard Ridge Trail, about halfway between the old ranger station at Greenbrier and the road below—the Roaring Fork Motor Trail. It ran out of the east side of Gatlinburg on a little loop through what had been Great Smoky Mountain National Park. My home away from home, if I still had an actual home left in suburban Knoxville.

  “Zach?” Katelyn was saying when I tuned back in. “Are you even listening?”

  I’d heard plenty in my head, just not her.

  “Sorry.” I turned to look at her. “It’s kinda not really my call. Besides, I don’t think I can run away like Austin.”

  “He didn’t abandon you guys. He went off to scout the town.”

  “And didn’t come back.”

  “He probably found food,” she insisted. “Real food. Unless you really like asparagus, nothing’s gonna be ready to harvest for a few more weeks.”

  Obviously, with all the turmoil and moving around, we didn’t get any decent gardens set up in the previous year, which really set us back when it came to fresh fruits and vegetables. Then the MRE packets ran out, leaving us with mostly dried foods like beans, flour, and pasta noodles to go with rabbit, deer, and fish. And now bear meat.

  “Things didn’t work out according to plan,” I mumbled. “But who’s to say that town will be any better? Last time we were there, we dragged your mom out unconscious in the back of a pickup truck.”

  “And now we don’t even have trucks…or gas. You know there’s still cars in town?”

  “I know. But I wouldn’t guarantee there’s any fuel to run them.”

  “I don’t get why you’re being so stubborn.” She turned her back to me to stare away from the road, down toward the creek.

  “I don’t get why you’re pushing me about leaving.”

  She turned back around. “Because it’s not just talk anymore. I’m leaving…soon. And I thought you’d want to go with me.”

  CHAPTER 2
>
  “I want that more than anything in the world,” I told Katelyn.

  “Then act like it.” She turned back away from me again to stare at her hands. I wanted to take her hands in mine, but the idea of her leaving had me rattled. Worse yet, she’d challenged me about it.

  “And how do I do that?” I finally said. “I’ve spent pretty much every waking hour with you. Even better now that you get to come with me to watch the road.”

  “It’s not better,” she harrumphed. “It’s not better at all. It’s just normalizing stuff that we shouldn’t have to do. I should be watching movies on my couch, snuggled up with you in a blanket.”

  She got me going every time she mentioned that. We’d only had an hour of that, back before the great escape, but it had been the most wonderful hour of my life.

  I leaned over to put an arm around her, saying, “I want back on that couch with you. But this isn’t so bad, when it’s just the two of us. Maybe goofing off in the creek or a waterfall. Bringing back water, and maybe taking a little too long.”

  “It’s not so romantic anymore,” she said. “It’s work.”

  “You sound like you’re thirty or something.”

  “I feel like it.” She turned to look me in the eyes. “Just talk to your mother. Convince her to come with us. We’ll all go.”

  “I’ll talk to her, but I’m not guaranteeing anything.”

  “Then you have to run away with me. I don’t want to go without you.”

  “Same, but I can’t just bail out.”

  “Then you tell her that you’re going to town to bring back supplies, and maybe you don’t end up coming back right away. Or ever.”

  “Do you even know me?” I said a little sharper than I’d intended, but she’d pushed a button there. “There’s no way I would lie about it.”

  “I know. It just sucks.”

  While a gentle breeze stirred the leaves concealing our position, an uncomfortable quiet settled in over us. Though inches away, it felt like we were miles apart. And soon would be, literally, if I couldn’t convince my mom to leave.

  I ran some ideas through my head about how to persuade her. Mostly that we needed better intel, to find out more about what was going on in the real world. Short range radios hadn’t been a great source of information recently. Or not reliable information, anyway.

  “I really thought she’d leave when Spotted Owl pulled out,” I said, breaking the long silence. “Especially when her first born went with him. If that didn’t do it….”

  Katelyn seemed lost in thoughts of her own, not offering a reply.

  “I don’t even know where they’re at. Gatlinburg, but not where exactly.” Though hard to believe, we really had no idea. “We kept expecting Austin to check back in at some point, but I don’t even know if he’s still alive.” That was something I hadn’t admitted out loud before. “Maybe I could convince her that we need to look for him. Make sure he’s not dead or captured. Surely she’s thought that too.”

  Katelyn kept ignoring me, like punishment for not agreeing to leave with her.

  “Babe, I’ll try.”

  I reached over to take her hand. Our fingers linked together like they always did, but she stayed quiet.

  “We’re all alone,” I said tentatively. “We used to, uhm, talk and stuff.”

  “I know what stuff you mean,” she said softly. “You’re talking about making out.”

  “Maybe.” More like definitely.

  “Which is why I never got to watch the roads with you.”

  “Probably. So you were listening to me?”

  “Of course.” She turned to face me. “Your mom thought you wouldn’t pay attention to the road if I came along. She still does. I see the way she looks at us when we leave. She’s still treating you like a kid.”

  “True story.” That was undeniable. Though I’d pushed back several times, she hadn’t been able to break the habit. “That’s not the only reason though.”

  “What isn’t?”

  “Why you couldn’t come with me. I’m sure your mom didn’t want you to be alone with me either. Like I’m some kind of monster.”

  “There’s no doubt about that.” A slight grin creased her tight lips. “You’re a monster alright.”

  “Nice to see at least a tiny little smile.”

  “No thanks to you.” When I raised an eyebrow, she added, “You know I care like crazy. I’m just upset about all this. About everything.”

  “Obviously. You should’ve been all over me by now.”

  “That would be you.” She harrumphed again, but the grin grew a little wider. “You’re not that funny.”

  “You either. But you’re still hotter than a campfire.”

  “Am I? You just said I wasn’t looking good.”

  “Whatever. You know nobody gets my heart racing like you.”

  “Sweet talk me all you want. We’re not rolling around out here.”

  “You promise your mother?” I bit my tongue, thinking I maybe went too far. Then it dawned on me. “Wait a minute. She sent you out here. To convince me to leave, so I’d convince my mom to leave. It’s all a big set up, right?”

  “Wrong.”

  “You two set me up, to put the pressure on me. Like I wouldn’t be able to tell you no.”

  She shook her head. “Not even close.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “I asked her if I could come out the last couple times. You’ve been so busy starting that garden, and things are getting close. Real close. I had to try to convince you.” She leaned in a little closer for a change. “For me, not her.”

  “Checks out.” I sat back down, resting against a huge rock, and exhaled. “I guess thank you for trying.”

  “I’m not done,” she said, sinking down next to me. She leaned in close. “I’ll do whatever it takes.”

  “Anything?”

  “Anything,” she purred, and nuzzled my neck.

  When her lips found my earlobe, I actually growled like a bear. My body turned to her reflexively, my hands going to her cheeks.

  We kissed, over and over. Lips mashing together like they hadn’t in a while. I ran my hands through her hair, pressing up against her.

  She held my face, as if refusing to let me stop kissing her. But that wasn’t going to happen.

  As the heat built like a furnace, my hands roamed her body. I counted the ribs on her side as I went, saddened to feel how she was withering away like me. But ecstatic to have the chance to touch her. To be with her. To get my tired blooding pumping once again, racing through my body at a fever pitch.

  I laid her back on the ground gently, straddling her while our lips stayed pressed together. Heat flowing between us until I practically broke out in a sweat.

  “This can’t be some kind of goodbye thing,” she whispered, coming up for air. “You have to say yes.”

  “Yes to you. Right here, right now.”

  “Be serious,” she said, putting her hands on my chest.

  “I’ll try, babe,” I replied. “That’s all I can promise.”

  “I guess that’s good enough for now.”

  CHAPTER 3

  “Shift’s over,” I declared as the sun dropped below the distant ridge.

  “About time,” Katelyn said with a sign. “Who’s got the next one?”

  “Probably your brother, though I’m a bit surprised he’s not here yet. He’s never late.”

  “Just don’t say he’s usually early, like extra early.” Katelyn pulled at her shirt collar and not so subtly untwisted a bra strap.

  “Never. Not that early.”

  “Good.”

  “So we just go?” she asked as I motioned for her to head off behind the big rock to a little game path that would take us back down to the Grapeyard Ridge Trail.

  Though no one had been mowing the trails since last summer, when the big economic collapse had hit and martial law became the order of the day, we still used the marked trails for getting back and f
orth quickly. It had just been a bit more difficult last fall, until the winter freeze and snows helped kill off and trample the weeds.

  The forest was coming alive again, not that April was upon us yet. In a couple more weeks, the trails would be even worse than before, and we obviously weren’t going to machete them to attract any more undue attention.

  “I thought it went pretty quickly this afternoon,” I said as I walked side by side with Katelyn back down Grapeyard toward our camp.

  “You would. I still don’t see how you can sit out here all day.”

  “It’s just four to six hours of time alone with my thoughts.”

  “That sounds awful.”

  “You don’t like my thoughts?” I teased.

  “I don’t even like my own.”

  “Actually it drives me crazy too,” I admitted. “Nice of you to come along to pass the time.”

  She winked. “Is that what we’re calling it?”

  “I’d say come back tomorrow, but….” I sucked in a big breath and held it for a second. “When are you leaving? I don’t think we ever discussed that.”

  “Not sure. All I know is soon…very soon.”

  “And John’s going with you?”

  “Of course.”

  “That could be what I need to convince Mom. If there’s no one to watch the roadblocks, then we’re that much more in danger out here.”

  Not that Mom would see it that way. In fact, she’d grumbled a bit recently about people not pulling their weight. Sometimes I thought she might slip off with just our family and go back deeper into the park.

  As we veered off the trail to go cross country to the cave, I readied myself for the uphill climb.

  “You’re quiet,” Katelyn said.

  “Just planning my attack.”

  “You want to try it out on me.”

  “Not really.” I didn’t even have an opening line yet. Plus, I wasn’t sure I should even launch right into it, seeing how I was walking back with Katelyn. I didn’t want Mom to blame her for pressuring me.