Ranger (The Bugging Out Series Book 5) Read Free

another, leaving what I was witness to.
    He was gone. Dead. But I was alive. And I planned to stay that way. What the man, a good man, I told myself without any knowledge of the truthfulness of my estimation, had left behind would be my salvation. I believed that until I came around the front of the cabin and saw what had happened to the structure.
    The entire front wall was gone, logs snapped and blown outward, as was half of the west wall, leaving the interior open to the elements. Above that devastation the roof on the front half of the cabin was shredded, rain pouring in, soaking the interior. I peered in and, with daylight fading, took stock of what remained.
    Bits of metal were embedded in the remaining log walls, evidence of some explosion within. A propane heater, perhaps. Or one running on kerosene. The man might have left it running as he ventured out in search of supplies, or other people, returning to find that some malfunction had resulted in a gas-fueled blast. Maybe that had led to his decision to end his life.
    Maybe...
    All I was doing was giving time to maybes. To possibilities. I needed to deal with the certainty that at that moment I had to get out of the rain, and get dry, and, somehow, warm.
    I stepped into the weakened shelter of the cabin, just that move stopping the drumbeat of cold rain upon me. I looked around the simple one room building, but found little of use. No clothes, nor bedding had survived the explosion which had torn through the place. Cut logs that had been stacked by the fireplace were scattered about along with the rest of the contents.
    Something, though, had not been shredded or tossed from its place. Atop the thick and sturdy mantle jutting from the fireplace’s stone structure was a small box. It rested there, tipped on its side, but even in that position I knew what it contained.
    “Matches,” I said.
    I hurried to the fireplace and took the box in hand, my excitement ebbing almost immediately. What I felt in my hand bore almost no weight. I shook the box and heard just a small rattle of matchsticks. Opening it I saw three of the wooden sticks, their tips a bright red.
    Three matches.
    All around me the wood, which included no kindling, was damp. Soaked, even. The old, dead wood that the man had cut down on the verge of falling apart. It would burn, I knew, but not with what heat a single match would produce. Or two. Or three.
    Then something I’d seen but hadn’t noticed struck me.
    The logs he’d gathered for burning were not chopped. They were cut. I went to one and examined the ends.
    “Chainsaw,” I said.
    The thick branches and lengths of tree trunk hadn’t been processed with a saw or an axe, but with the ripping blade of a chainsaw. A motorized tool that should still be here. Or near. And though I had almost no hope that such a tool would still work after being exposed to the elements for as long as it must have been, there might be something more than useful I could extract from it.
    Gas.
    I scanned the battered interior of the cabin quickly, then moved outside, circling the structure until I was near the man’s body. The coat he’d worn, soaked and shredded now, was useless to me, but it had been tossed back on one side, exposing his belt and a sheath attached there, the bone black handle of a Buck knife protruding. I approached and crouched, gingerly retrieving the blade, its steel marked with signs of rust, but a slow draw of my thumb along its edge confirmed that it had held its sharpness.
    Standing again, I looked into the woods across the clearing, an oddity immediately catching my eye. A shape that should not have existed in any area of natural growth.
    A straight line.
    Holding the knife, I jogged across the narrow meadow, rain soaking me once again. At the far side I stopped and looked upon a row of wood that had been processed for burning, stacked and laid end to end, with precision and care. The man who’d done this had been meticulous.
    Except with