Frostpoint Read online

  FROSTPOINT

  Weathering the Storm Series

  Book 6

  By

  Kenny Soward

  Mike Kraus

  © 2019 Muonic Press Inc

  www.muonic.com

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  www.kennysoward.com

  [email protected]

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  www.MikeKrausBooks.com

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  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, without the permission in writing from the author.

  Table of Contents

  Preface

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

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  Special Thanks

  Special thanks to my awesome beta team, without whom this book wouldn’t be nearly as great.

  Thank you!

  Preface

  Last time on Weathering the Storm…

  After being beaten and robbed in a St. Louis back street, single mother Rita, traded everything she owned for enough food and gasoline to transport her family to Albuquerque, New Mexico where Rita’s parents lived. She drove as far as Oklahoma City before being turned back at a United States Military checkpoint due to ongoing terrorist activities in the area. Unwilling to go back to St. Louis, Rita decided to drive to Tennessee, where her Uncle Tex resided.

  Jake Walton spent two days at a FEMA camp in Providence and then trekked south with a military convoy to reunite with his family in Tennessee. Attacked by terrorists—nicknamed crawlers—on the highway, Jake was separated from the convoy. He navigated through dark American towns where the reeling United States military engaged in pitched battles with crawler sympathizers. Jake survived confrontations in Suffern, Harrisburg, and Roanoke, before finally reaching the US military outpost in White Pine, Tennessee. He visited with several soldiers from the original convoy before meeting Captain Stern, who asked Jake to do his country one more favor before reuniting with his family on Pine Bluff Mountain.

  Back at the cabin, Sara wondered what to do with the black computer they had found at the lodge after the gunfight with the crawlers. She received news from the Mike Report that there were several FEMA camps set up around Boston, and Jake might show up there. Sara was hopeful, but she had other problems to deal with. After a talk with the tortured girl they saved from the lodge, Kayla, Sara realized that the crawlers might be out looking for their technology and track it back to the cabin, putting everyone in danger. Sara wanted to toss the black computer off the side of the mountain, but Tex, the boot shop owner, woke from his injury and advised Sara to hide the equipment. Once that was done, Sara planned a scavenging run with Barbara to find generators and other supplies.

  Soon after they returned to Pine Bluff Mountain, a crawler force showed up at the gate and demanded entrance. A firefight ensued, killing one of Sara’s people, Frank, but the crawlers were forced to retreat. Knowing the crawlers would bring more of their kind if they were allowed to get away, Sara and Dion got in her van and ran the injured crawlers down, pushing the disabled vehicles into a gully and tossing in the dead bodies after the wreckage. The cabin was safe again.

  Yi, Katrya, and their soldiers searched in vain for their missing black computer, which they needed to receive their next orders. The Smoky Mountains made it difficult to track the device, and they grew frustrated. The overall team leader, Ukrainian agent Katrya Rusak, met privately with Yi and gave him some background about her life. She revealed that she was only in the United States to kill Americans and become a legendary assassin who would haunt the dreams of the citizens for years to come. Yi realized there was something mentally unstable with their leader, and he feared she would endanger the mission with her distracting proclivities. To Yi, Katrya was a rabid dog that needed to be put down, though he wondered if he had the strength to do it.

  And now, Weathering the Storm 6.

  Chapter 1

  Sara, Gatlinburg, Tennessee | 1:02 p.m., Monday

  “Be careful, Barbara!” Sara shouted up at the girl who stood on the wooden deck sticking out from the rock lip above the road. “Don’t fall!”

  “It feels pretty solid!” Barbara shouted back down, doing a little jump that made Sara’s heart leap in her chest.

  They’d situated the platform fifteen feet up, overlooking the Squirrel’s Nest row of cabins. A good four feet of the platform was situated right on the lip of the rock, and they’d placed about three hundred pounds of stones on it to act as a counterweight. Given that neither Barbara nor Sara weighed near that much, it was hopefully enough to hold them.

  They’d spent most of the morning working on the platform. Todd’s original idea was to build it at the top of the mountain. However, Sara thought it would be better overlooking the Squirrel’s Nest above the roundwood gate.

  “Okay, fine,” Sara said in her normal voice, wishing the girl would stop tempting fate. Then she raised her voice. “Let’s put the rail up.”

  Sara grabbed one of the ten pieces of wood they’d use to build the rail. She climbed the extension ladder they’d secured to the cliff’s face with rocks piled around the legs and a rope tied to the top rung. It was an awkward climb, but Sara had gotten good at it after carrying rocks and tools up and down all day.

  Once at the top, Sara handed the wood up to Barbara and then went down for more. Then she climbed up to join Barbara. With just enough room to work, they put up the posts first and then added a bottom and top rails.

  It wasn’t perfect, maybe a little squeaky, but it would get the job done.

  Sara stepped out onto the platform and was pleased to find that it was good and stable, even with both of them standing there.

  Sara exchanged positions with Barbara and leaned her elbows on the rail, looking out over the land below them. They could have simply used the rock face as a lookout, but extending the platform out four feet gave them a decent view of the curves that hugged Pine Bluff Mountain all the way up to the Squirrel’s Nest.

  “This is a near perfect position,” Sara said, looking down. “I can see Karen and Frank’s old cabin from here, and the entire straightaway down to the main road. You know, where Dion and I…”

  “Ran those crawler jerks off the road?”

  “Yeah.” While Sara couldn’t see down into the gully
, she knew the bodies were down there, rotting away, and she wondered when their friends would come looking for them.

  “We’ll need to camouflage it,” Sara said as her eyes drifted down as far as she could see before the browning forest blocked her view. Her eyes came immediately back the other way as she followed a line of vehicles coming up Pine Bluff Road. Sara’s jaw dropped open as she counted three, four, and then six vehicles. There were three sedans, two pickup trucks, and a van.

  “Never mind that.” Sara pointed. “We’ve got company.” She stepped to the side to make room for Barbara.

  Barbara peered down at the line of cars as they took the first curve and moved past Frank and Karen’s old cabin. “I don’t recognize any of them.”

  “Stay up here. I’ll grab your rifle and hand it up.” Sara stepped out of the lookout and started to climb down the ladder.

  Once Sara reached the bottom, she grabbed Barbara’s rifle from where it leaned against the rock face and handed it up to her. Then Sara shouldered her rifle, took the radio out of her pocket, and hit the talk button. “This is Squirrel’s Nest. We have a red alert. We need eyes on the gate. I repeat, eyes on the gate.”

  “Roger that,” came Todd’s instant reply.

  “How many?” Dion asked, and Sara glanced over to see him standing at the front corner of one of the cabins with his pistol pointed down at the ground. He had his hood pulled down low, so she couldn’t see his face.

  “Six vehicles.”

  “Damn.”

  “Yep. Stay sharp.”

  “Y’all need any help down there?” That was Tex, his voice breaking over the radio unexpectedly. The man had gotten up early and volunteered to start working on Frank’s grave, claiming he needed the exercise. Understanding the man was probably developing a mild case of cabin fever, Sara had agreed to him digging as long as he took it easy.

  “Negative,” Sara replied firmly. “Hang tight until we see what this is all about.”

  “Understood.”

  Sara placed her radio back in her pocket and shouldered her rifle, keeping it trained on the gate. She couldn’t hear the sound of the car engines yet, but her stomach churned with nervous anticipation. Six vehicles was a lot. That could be anywhere from six to thirty people. They wouldn’t stand a chance if this was an armed squad coming to take the mountain, though Sara was determined to put up a staunch defense.

  On a whim, Sara glanced up at the second-floor window of Frank and Karen’s cabin, to Kayla’s room. She couldn’t see the girl, but the window was open, and she caught a glimpse of the girl’s pale hand holding a gun pointed down at the gate. She hadn’t seen Kayla after Frank’s death, and she wondered if she blamed herself for Frank getting shot.

  Either way, Sara was glad to have the extra gun.

  “Looks like we got the lookout up in the nick of time,” Sara mumbled under her breath. She couldn’t imagine what it might have been like with six vehicles rolling up out of the blue.

  Just then, the lead sedan came around the steep curve, its engine revving high as it fought gravity. The driver seemed surprised to come face-to-face with the roundwood gate, and he pulled to the left so that the next sedan coming up could fit in. Once those two vehicles stopped, Sara stepped away from the rock face, swiveling her rifle back and forth between the two vehicles.

  The drivers saw the AR-15 and instantly threw their hands up, eyes going wide. Sara grinned in satisfaction as she waited for someone to get out and speak. She fully intended to make them turn their caravan around and head right back down the mountain, and the tougher she acted, the quicker their decision would be.

  A pickup truck pulled in behind the two sedans. A short, stocky man got out and slammed the door shut behind him. His dark windbreaker blew all around him as he came up to the roundwood gate. Then he jerked back his hood and nodded to Sara.

  “Steven?” Sara lowered her rifle at the sight of the man’s gray eyes. Steven was the man who’d helped her rescue her son back at Trailmarker’s Urgent Care. Then Sara remembered the promise she’d made to Doctor Smith, the owner of the facility. “You brought wounded, didn’t you?”

  Steven slid over the waist-high roundwood gate and strode up quickly, addressing Sara in a loud, staccato tone. “That’s right, Sara. We’ve got about a dozen people who need attention. Some of them are hurt bad. One might already be dead.”

  Sara looked past Steven at the line of vehicles. They’d piled in as tightly as they could, and a couple of people—Sara assumed they were Good Folk—had stepped out of their passenger seats and looked expectantly up at Sara and Steven. Sara’s eyes were attuned to the bulges they wore beneath their coats. They were armed, but their intentions did not seem the least bit menacing. In fact, their expressions were tired and desperate.

  Sara lowered her rifle barrel further and dug her radio out of her coat pocket. “Natasha, we’ve got wounded,” she said after pressing the talk button.

  “Thank you.” Steven nodded gratefully.

  “Help me get the gate lifted,” Sara said. She pocketed her radio, shouldered her rifle, and gestured for Steven to get on the other end of the roundwood gate.

  Together, they moved the gate and ushered the cars through, the last two vehicles being the ones with the wounded. Sara and Steven stepped over to the cabins as one of the pickups pulled up. Two Good Folk got out, went around back, and released the gate. The metal crashed down, and a stream of blood flowed out the bed protector to be whipped away by the wind. Several Good Folk pulled out four people on stretchers, bringing them over to Sara and Steven.

  “Where do you want them?” One man asked, looking back and forth between them.

  Sara looked down at the man on the stretcher. He held one of his hands to his stomach, and it looked like he was missing a couple of fingers. His other hand seemed to be holding a flap of flesh to his forehead, so the wind didn’t whip it away.

  Frozen in place, Sara’s eyes darted from the first stretcher to those coming behind him. There was a woman holding her gut, and another man unconscious and covered with blood. None of them had been bandaged or seen to at all. The first man writhed on the stretcher, making it hard for the bearers to keep them balanced. These weren’t wounded who’d been patched up at Trailmarker’s and then brought here to get some rest. These people had been picked right out of a battle and dropped on Sara’s doorstep.

  Sara was vaguely aware of the van door opening as Good Folk stepped into the back to get more wounded, someone moaning loudly inside. She took a step back, her hands clenched tightly in front of her. She wanted to help them all, but she had no idea where to start. Was the man with the flap of loose flesh on his head more critical than the woman with the wound in her gut? Sara had no clue.

  “Sara?” Steven questioned her, his voice edged with urgency. “Where can we put them?”

  “I don’t…” Sara’s words trailed off as she tried to think.

  “Sara!” Steven stepped in front of her to block her view.

  “What?” Sara’s eyes snapped up to meet his.

  His ice-cold glare penetrated her confounded emotions. “Do you want these people to die out here in the cold wind, or inside where it’s warm?”

  “I don’t—”

  “Watch out, step aside!”

  Sara turned just as Natasha came through the front door of her cabin and stomped down the porch steps. She shoved past Sara and Steven and went straight to the man with the head wound. She removed his hand from his wounded head, glanced at the injury, and put his hand back in place. Her head swiveled, eyes moving across each of the growing number of wounded displayed before her, triaging them with a glance.

  She gestured at three; head-flap man, gut wound, and bloody person. “Take these three inside my cabin. Take the moaner to Frank, um, Karen’s cabin.”

  Snapping out of it, Sara went up the porch steps and held the front door open for the first stretcher. “The first three up here.”

  Natasha inspected each of the wound
ed as they went past, her eyes soaking in information about them like a computer. Then she looked at Sara. “Get them situated in the living room with enough space to walk between them. Then get some water boiling and bring in the saline and towels. I’ve stored a few gallons of it in the laundry room.”

  Sara nodded and followed the last stretcher inside just as Dion called out for the Good Folk to bring the rest of the wounded from the van up to the porch. Sara rushed into the kitchen, lit the campfire burner, and placed a pan of water on it. Boots scuffled in the open living room as the mumbling, groaning wounded were situated and placed on air mattresses.

  One of the wounded let out a sudden, animal-like wail that made Sara’s stomach shrink and the hair along her arms raised. It was a sound she never would have expected to hear from another human being. Sara set her jaw and shrugged off the fear.

  She wouldn’t allow herself to freeze again, not when someone’s life depended on her.

  Chapter 2

  Sara, Gatlinburg, Tennessee | 1:45 p.m., Monday

  “Shhh. You’re going to be fine.” Natasha whispered to the woman with the belly wound as she dug rudely into the bullet hole to see what was causing the nonstop bleeding.

  Sara had already soaked three hand towels with blood and tossed them into a pile. Natasha had shooed most of the Good Folk out of the cabin, although a few remained inside, looking solemn as they attended to the other wounded until Natasha could get to them.

  The man with the head flap emitted a low moan that shook Sara’s soul. She wanted to turn and help the man, but she stuck with Natasha, directing her flashlight on the area so Natasha could see what she was doing.

  “Dab it,” Natasha said.

  Sara dabbed at the blood that was pooling around the bullet hole and drew the rag away so Natasha could look again. Natasha placed a scalpel and tweezers to the wound, and the instruments clanked as she pushed at the flesh to determine the extent of the damage.