T Connor: Bitter Cold Apocalypse 2

“And what about other weapons?” I asked, jumping to the next point. “Is there anything else? Another room full of stuff?”

Bob shook his head. “This is it. Though the townspeople will all have their own personal weapons, of course.” He cast me a worried glance. “Are you thinking we’ll need to use them?”

It was a pointless question, and I let it pass. Of course we would need to use them. Randall was crouched outside the town right now, looking every bit the invader.

And with the amount of weaponry I’d seen in that shack, compared to the weapons in here, I didn’t think it was going to be a fair fight.

But that didn’t mean we couldn’t be as prepared as possible.

“We’ll have to go through the people, figure out who has what, and who can use what. Whether they have military backgrounds. Whether they have skills we don’t know about,” Marlon said quickly, running his fingers over a box of grenades.

“And start building a plan,” I agreed grimly. “But most of all, we need to know what Randall’s plans are. We need to know when he’s going to attack, so we know how much time we have. Not to mention, we need to know what he’s bringing with him and how many men he has.”

Because he looked like he was going to attack soon, and we were going to have to be ready for that. But it was going to be a whole lot easier to get ready if we knew the timeline.

Marlon and I looked up from what we’d been perusing, our eyes meeting in perfect understanding.

He gave me an almost imperceptible nod. “We have to get into his camp.”

I stared through the binoculars once again, my eyes on the camp in front of me, my body this time hidden by one of the cars sitting on the street. We’d returned to the city of Ellis Woods to a predictable lack of people on the streets—and a total lack of electricity. No lights and no heat, making it almost unlivable in the houses and buildings, which couldn’t be saved by any amount of insulation in the walls.

There was, after all, only a certain amount of time for the heat to hold out against the cold. And it was the middle of winter. In Michigan. The people wouldn’t have had a prayer if it wasn’t for how prepared the town had been for this sort of disaster, with gas-powered generators already hooked up to a large enough building for everyone to fit into.

But we’d found one additional aspect, which I hadn’t exactly been expecting. The town itself had been full of cars that had just stopped working wherever they were when the EMP—since that was still what we’d figured had happened—had gone off in the sky. Any vehicle that was built after the mid-1970s was depending on some sort of electricity in its engine, which meant that the bomb that had fried all electrical circuits had also fried most of the cars in town. Sure, there was still a classic car here and there, and those were still functioning, but they were also rare.

And every car that had stopped working had been deserted right where it had stopped.

It made the town look messy and deserted, like there had been some sort of zombie apocalypse. But it also really came in handy right now, when we were seeking cover as we moved closer and closer to Randall’s camp.

Marlon and I hadn’t even had to talk about it. We’d agreed without discussion that we didn’t want to be spotted again. That it would be dangerous, even, to be spotted again. Sure, Randall knew that we knew he was there. He had to know that we knew he was planning some sort of invasion. Hell, he’d seen us looking right into his weapons stores.

So he knew we were preparing.

But he didn’t need to know that we were coming back for another look. And he certainly didn’t need to know that we were considering doing a whole lot more than just that.

I brought the binoculars down from my face and turned toward Marlon, who was peeking over the hood of the car we were hiding behind. We were still several blocks from the edge of town, having crept on our hands and knees over the last two blocks, to maintain our cover.

We didn’t want to get too close to the edge of town—or Randall’s sharpshooter’s range—until we knew more about what was going on out there.

“I don’t see one damn person in that camp,” I told Marlon, relating what I’d seen through the binoculars.

And that was weird, really. Sure, it had looked deserted when we were here before—but then men had come rushing out of some of the buildings, and the place had suddenly become incredibly active. We knew there were over sixty men down there.

Where the hell were they now ?

“Me either,” Marlon said, his eyes still on the encampment, a frown creasing his forehead. “And I don’t know about you, but that makes me real nervous.”

“Me too,” I replied grimly. “Where are all those men, and what are they doing?”

Were they already on their way here? God, I hoped not. It was the middle of the day and bright and sunny out—which made it the stupidest time possible for an invasion.

But we’d already confirmed that Randall wasn’t the smartest man ever born. He’d also never been in the military. There was no guarantee that he would see the futility of trying to conduct an invasion in broad daylight—when the people you were invading knew you were doing it.

Marlon held out a hand for the binoculars, and I turned them over quickly. There was nothing more to see down there. Not from this view, at least. But I had no problem with him confirming that for himself.

Maybe he’d notice something I hadn’t. Maybe he knew to look for some additional clue.

A few moments later, Marlon dropped the binocs from his face and scowled. “Nothing,” he muttered. “Where the hell are they all?”

“Holding some sort of Outcasts Anonymous meeting in one of the sheds, maybe,” I replied.

Marlon cast me a sudden and very surprising grin. “Do you think it would be anonymous if they all know each other? And if they all know they’re outcasts?”

“Outcast Pride, LLC?” I asked, grinning back. “‘We’re outcasts, and we’re proud!’”

Marlon stifled a laugh at that, and shook his head. Then his eyes went back toward the camp in the distance. “We have to get closer. I need a better view of the entire camp. For all we know, they could be just out of our view, hidden by one of these buildings.”

When we got closer—all the way to the edge of town, in fact—we saw that the men hadn’t disappeared after all. Instead, they were all grouped to the side of the camp. They’d been hidden by one of the buildings, but now that we could see them, we could see that there did in fact seem to be some sort of meeting going on. Randall was at the front of the crowd—joined by the one useful cousin he seemed to have, Logan—and I could see his other two cousins, Ben and Sandy, slightly to the side.

“Terrific, he’s been joined by his family,” I said with a grin, handing the binoculars to Marlon. “Now we’ve got the whole quad together.”

“Not like that’s going to make a difference,” Marlon responded. “Logan’s the only one with half a brain in his head. The other two are completely useless.”

“Still two sets of hands to hold a gun, though. And that makes them a hassle,” I answered.

I stared into the crowd. I could see well enough from where we were, though I’d be counting on Marlon to pick up the details as long as he had the binoculars. I could see the men and their basic features, but nothing else.

I could also see that Randall seemed to be making some sort of speech to his ragtag crew. He was gesticulating madly and pacing back and forth, and I could see from his face and the aggressive set of his shoulders that he was screaming. He was either really angry or really impressed with what he was saying.