Officer Of The Watch: Blackout Volume 1 Read Free Page A

as he could then set it off to the side.  As gently as he could, he moved Christina off his sleeping bag and onto a nearby boulder.  Christina moved woodenly, staring off into space without really acknowledging his presence.  Tears streamed silently down her cheeks.  Eric rolled up the remaining sleeping bag and then tied both of them to the frame of his hiking pack.  After doing a quick sweep of the area to make sure they hadn’t left anything behind, Eric shouldered his pack and grabbed their hiking sticks.
    Eric knelt in front of Christina and handed her stick to her, patting her knee, and said, “Tina, the sun is coming up and we need to go.  We’ve got to get down off the mountain and get back to camp, okay?”
    A brief look of confusion passed across Christina’s face, and then her eyes seemed to focus on Eric for the first time as she blinked. 
    “But what about the people?” Christina asked in a whisper.
    “What people, Tina?” Eric asked, confused.
    “The people,” Christina repeated with heat in her voice.  “The people on the planes! The planes crashed, but they had people on them.  What about the people?”
    Eric took a deep, slow breath through his nose and had to swallow past a hard lump his throat to answer.  “I don’t know, Tina.  But we can’t worry about that right now.  We have to focus on getting down off this mountain, okay? I’ll help you the whole way, but we have to go.  One step at a time, and we’ll get it done.  Once we’re back in camp, then we can worry about other stuff.”
    Christina nodded slowly, and Eric helped her to her feet.  Carefully, the two made their way down the winding trail and off Crowder’s Mountain.  The ‘mountain’ was barely worth the name at hardly more than 1600 feet elevation.  Still, compared to the surrounding flood plains, it was a towering giant.  The trail wasn’t difficult, but it was deep in shadows for the most part, and there were stones and roots exposed enough to trip over if you weren’t cautious.  Christina stumbled several times, but Eric managed to catch her before she hit the ground.
    It was a little more than a mile down Pinnacle Trail from the peak to where the side trail that led to their campground split off from the main path.  After nearly an hour of hiking, the sun was well up, and Eric and Christina were both soaked with sweat.  As they approached the sign marking the camp trail, a uniformed park ranger stepped out of the brush with his gun drawn.
    “DOWN!” The ranger yelled, pointing with his free hand at the ground, “DOWN! On your knees, hands where I can see them!”
    Eric froze and Christina screamed collapsed in a sobbing heap.  The ranger blinked, not quite sure what to do.  Thankfully, a second ranger came running up the trail from the direction of the park office.  She looked a bit older and had several stripes of rank on her uniform.
    “Jesus, Mike,” the woman said.  “Put your damned gun away! Can’t you see these people are terrified?”
    Mike hesitated for a moment, then holstered his pistol as the woman walked the rest of the way to them.
    “Look, Claire,” Mike said, “they were on the trails after hours, and we don’t know who they are.”
    “Did you ask?” Claire demanded with her fists on her hips.  Mike didn’t say anything, and Claire shook her head.  “I didn’t think so.  You folks camping up here?”
    Eric nodded and pointed towards the campgrounds.  “Our stuff is back in the camp area.  We just went up last night to watch the meteors.”
    Claire nodded and knelt in front of the still sobbing Christine.  She took Christine’s hands in her own and squeezed them reassuringly.  “It’s okay, honey,” the matronly ranger said in a soothing voice.  “Mike’s just scared and nervous.  I guess we all are.  You are safe, okay? No need to cry now, honey.  What’s your name?”
    Christina tried to answer, but she was crying too hard to get words out, so