Ranger (The Bugging Out Series Book 5) Read Free Page A

his chainsaw. It sat in the open behind one of the low piles of wood, a quarter of it submerged in the soggy muck. Part of me mused as to why a man so ordered had let his tool remain exposed to the elements. Perhaps he’d been where I stood when the explosion rocked his cabin. That event might have been what pushed him to the decision he made. Lacking in food, his shelter suddenly compromised, he’d reached his limit.
    Physically, I was not at mine, but I could see it on the horizon. Hypothermia would drag me down to a sleep I would never wake from. I had to get warm, and dry.
    I had to make fire.
    I went to the chainsaw and crouched next to it, twisting the gas cap counter clockwise, the dry, wispy vapor that hissed from the tank as I uncapped it telling me what I’d found before I even looked.
    Nothing.
    It was empty. There was no gas. I lifted the impressively light tool a few inches out of the mud and rocked it gently back and forth, confirming my suspicion. There was no gas. If there had been any when the man last set the chainsaw down to rest, it had evaporated.
    On a last hope I checked the reservoir which held the lubricating chain oil, but it, too, held nothing.
    Panic didn’t set in. Not yet. But it became very clear that I needed a plan B. And fast.
    Frustrated, I shook the chainsaw lightly, a brief admiration of the tool’s lack of heft slipping through the grim seriousness wrapping me.
    Light...
    The thought didn’t come from nowhere. It came mated to a memory. A recollection from my old life. My years as a business owner. A contractor. I’d witnessed dozens of accidents on jobsites in that time. Maybe hundreds. From the impossible to foresee to the bonehead moves of workers not paying attention to their environment. Cuts. Falls. Broken bones. Toppled equipment. Snapped beams. I’d seen it all.
    Including fire.
    One in particular seized my thoughts as I held the surprisingly light chainsaw in one hand. A subcontractor’s pickup had burst into flame. The reason why, I didn’t recall. But I did very clearly remember the fat rear tires of the dualie popping, their rubber feeding the blaze, turning the bed of the truck into an inferno before the firefighters arrived.
    And I remember sparks. Erupting from the bed like a shower of silvery fireworks going off. It was only after the red engines rolled up with lights spinning and sirens blaring did I learn from the battalion chief aboard that what I was seeing was magnesium igniting in the hellishly hot fire. Probably, he suspected, from a chainsaw, whose frames were often made from the material, or an alloy containing it. Used because of its lightness.
    I looked to the tool in my hand and set it back down into the mud, kneeling in the soggy dirt as I used the knife I’d taken to pry away the synthetic body that concealed the guts of the device. When I’d finally exposed the dull metal frame I ran a finger across it. The lack of heft, of density, was almost discernible to the touch.
    “It might work,” I said to myself.
    Might being the operative word here. If I could use the knife to shave off a good pile of the magnesium, hopefully pure enough, it would take a flame easily. And if one of the three matches would strike. And, of course, if I could process some of the wood remaining in the cabin into kindling that would dry and catch fire. All those variables needed to align so that I could, without any drama, live. So that I could find my way home.
    I gripped the chainsaw in my free hand, knife in the other, ready to stand. That was when I glimpsed the man through a narrow space between the stacked logs.

Three
    H e stood across the clearing, just outside the cabin, peering past one of the remaining walls to the dim space within. He held a rifle low, but ready. It was no modern weapon, but a throwback. Lever action, walnut stock, topped with a scope. Were it not for the blighted world all around he would have looked like a deer hunter out to bring home a