Wolf Tracker

Chapter One
Tami shifted in the saddle as the horse beneath her stomped a hoof, and leaned a forearm on the saddle horn to ease the ache in her back. She gazed down the hill at the weathered ranch house below. It looked deserted. But was it? Guess wrong and she was right back where she’d started. And she’d rather freeze to death out here than put herself back at the mercy of abusive men.
She needed rest and relief from the November wind. She had been looking for some sort of shelter for the past couple hours. When she first spotted this ranch house half hidden by bare trees and shielded by a hill, fear had warred with hope in her heart. Was this house safety for her or danger? The house stood with its once-white paint chipped away by weather to show the wood beneath. A couple of windows appeared to be broken, but the structure itself looked sound. The barn twenty yards behind the house hadn’t stood the test of time as well. One end of it had fallen down, showing a rusted pickup truck under its fallen boards. The truck, like the barn, might have been painted red once. How many cold wet winters had it taken to strip the paint from everything here? This place had to be abandoned.
Tami waited, watching house and barn for any sign of life for nearly a half hour before mentally girding her loins, touching a heel to her horse’s flank, and starting down the hill.
This might be a mistake. Maybe the house wasn’t deserted. Maybe there were a bunch of men lying in wait for her to ride into a trap, and then they would tie her to a bed and treat her just like those guys in Greasy Butte had. Her body tremors escaped her control, and her horse, sensing her apprehension, shied. She stopped him in the slight protection of a skeletal bush and focused on controlling herself. But the awful memories she’d been pushing back for days clawed at her lungs again. Tom Leach, her so-called husband number one, had finally given up trying to cajole her into sex and forced her. And then Steve, husband number two, and then Dwight, and… After that first time with Tom, Tami decided not to fight them. If she appeared to accept what they did to her, then maybe they would untie her. Escape was a lot more likely if she was able to move around than while she was tied to a bed.
Stop thinking about it!
Tami draped her horse’s reins over the crook of her elbow, blew on her cupped hands, and stuffed them under her armpits to warm them. That was the past. Her present was on a horse in the empty countryside on her own, keeping at least one step ahead of her so-called “husbands.” But it was hard not to remember what had been done to her and to wonder if what they’d said was true. No, it was impossible. No way were those assholes telling the truth. She was not in the year 2064. It was 2014. November 10, 2014, 4:49 p.m. to be exact. Her watch said so, and it was a top-of-the-line piece that not only told the time, but the temperature, compass direction, and date as well. Why would she believe a bunch of rapists who had a house without electricity or running water? They were fundamentalist, brainwashing weirdos living in a guarded compound who thought they owned her. Except for the trips she made to the outhouse under the escort of at least one of them, they had kept her tied to the bed until she had fooled them into thinking she accepted her new role as their wife.
God, that had made her feel helpless. Tami didn’t do helpless. She taught people how to survive in the wilderness. She taught them how to trap and cook their own food, how to find their way back to civilization, how to keep warm in the mountains in January. She taught them how not to be helpless! It was one of the reasons the co-pilot had chosen her to leave the crashed plane and find help for the other survivors. Being captured, tied to the bed, and forced to sleep with a bunch of anti-government extremists who claimed to be her husbands was her very own nightmare come to life. As soon as she was safe she would have them arrested. And she would damned well enjoy seeing them helpless.
No, Tami told herself fiercely, shifting her weight in the saddle to ease the pressure on her sore crotch. Don’t think about that. Get home. Get help. Get safe. Focus on the plan. Don’t give in to fear.
“How’s that for a motto?” she muttered to her horse. He flicked a tired ear back toward her; plainly he had no comment.
Grimly, she continued on to the house. She would not quit, not until she was safe and those men were punished. The horse blew his breath out in a huff that sounded almost like encouragement.
“Yeah, boy,” she murmured to the gelding. “You’re my friend, aren’t you? If it weren’t for you I’d be dead now, huh? Well, I guess you’re not the reason I survived the plane crash, but you’re the reason I was able to get away from those guys.”
How crazy was it that she was talking to her horse? Not crazy at all. Tami often held conversations with him. Sometimes she thought he answered.
“Yeah, you’re right. It wasn’t coincidence you were left saddled in front of the house when everyone was gone.”
She thought she had Tim, the last, youngest, and possibly kindest of her husbands to thank for this horse and her escape. He was the only one who hadn’t actually raped her. He’d kissed her a few times on the night he’d come to her room, and he’d slept in the bed with her, but aside from those kisses, he didn’t do anything bad. In fact, he told her in a whisper which horse was his and where it could be found the following day. He was the one left behind to guard her that day, too, and he dozed off after many exaggerated yawns before lunch. Sure enough, a saddled horse waited in the corral. It was the last bit of luck to come her way. Or maybe not luck. The saddle bags had been filled with dried meat and fruit, and some bread, and a canteen had been hung over the saddle horn.
“I boarded a plane, and it crashed,” she told her horse now. “Talk about bad luck, huh?”
She waited for some sympathetic remark from her horse, but he was busy snatching mouthfuls of the dried grass as he tiredly plodded toward the ranch house. Tami sighed at her own idiocy. Maybe she really was losing it. But she kept talking to him anyway, trying to work up her courage.
“When the plane crashed I expected help to come soon, even though the plane’s radio didn’t work and no one’s phones could get a signal. You’d think someone would have been tracking all the flights. They had to have noticed we weren’t flying anymore. Not,” she confided, “that I’m an expert on the air traffic control business. But the co-pilot said help would be coming soon. She’d know, right? But no one came and people were hurt, so she asked for volunteers to walk to find help. So, sure, I volunteered to go. The co-pilot paired up me up with a college basketball player named Jessica Butenas. Poor Jessi.” Her voice faltered for a second before strengthening again. “We walked north.”
And look where it had gotten them: captured by men who had raped them. Poor Jessi had committed suicide. That had hardened Tami’s resolve to get away. She had taken this horse and made her escape five days ago. After spending the first three days hiding from the men who had held her prisoner she had ridden west for two days straight. Exhaustion dragged a lead blanket over her, so every movement was an effort. Her horse wasn’t much better off. Her plan to find some regular people—that is, people who were not criminals—had failed. She’d never seen so many abandoned houses and collapsed barns in her life. Why the heck the entire population of this region of Nebraska had left their houses and ranches she couldn’t imagine, but it wasn’t because terrorists nuked New York. Those crazy extremists had told her all kinds of nutty stories to try to brainwash her. After passing a dozen deserted houses she was willing to admit it was sort of spooky. But there was a good explanation for it, she was sure. One that didn’t involve World War III and the Ten Plagues.
“Good thing the weather’s been mild for November,” she remarked idly to the horse. “But the sun’s going down and it’s getting cold.”
Tami grabbed her blanket from behind the saddle and wrapped it over her shoulders after reining her horse to a stop in front of the house. “Well, here we are. Sure doesn’t look like anyone’s home, does it, boy? I hope to God no one’s home.”
Even the simple act of dismounting, something she’d done a million times in her life, nearly sent her to her knees. She’d pushed herself hard for the first couple days of her escape with no thought of rationing her strength because she’d expected to find help right away. That had been a serious miscalculation. Her crotch had already been sore and bruised, and hours in the saddle hadn’t given her any time to heal. She needed rest and food to be able to mend the damage.
She stood beside the horse, ready to flee at the slightest sign of men. She waited, tense enough to shatter, for any sign she wasn’t the only person here. She found none and her shoulders, pulled high with tension, lowered slightly as she forced herself to relax. “Food, Freedom,” she whispered, hardly knowing what she was saying. “You can eat this grass, but I need people food.”
Yeah, food was a priority. She had been careful to ration the food in the saddlebag after the first day, but there wasn’t much left now. After she checked out the place, she would set up a snare and hope for a rabbit. This tumbled-down ranch house had part of a barn for her horse, and easy access to a creek. The creek would attract some small animals she could snare for supper.
After a quick pat for her exhausted horse, she left him ground hitched in the yard and approached the house cautiously. The wooden steps and veranda were in fragile condition, but that was not the whole of her concern. What if someone was here, just hiding until they could grab her? She doubted it, but even her exhaustion couldn’t shake off her paranoia.
A fast walk through the house showed it hadn’t been disturbed in years. Nor did it offer much. It was utterly deserted, full of dust and rotted overstuffed furniture that had obviously been home to rodents sometime in the past, but the undisturbed dust on the floor made it plain it was a long time since anyone had been here. The floors and roof were solid. That was all she needed. She could at least get a chance to heal up a bit without the house collapsing on her. She went back out to her horse and led him to the barn to get him settled for the night.
No matter how weary or hurt she was, Tami always took care of her horse before herself. That was the first thing she taught in survivalist training: take care of your transportation first. A vehicle with worn-out belts or tires was guaranteed to die at the most inopportune time. Human feet had to be kept dry and clean. The health of a horse could mean the difference between life and death for its rider. This horse was her ticket to freedom, so that was the name she’d given him.
“What a fine boy you are, Freedom,” she crooned as she loosened the saddle girth and lifted the saddle off his back. “So strong and faithful, so pretty.” Actually, he was homely with his black roman nose and nondescript dun coloring that matched the dull tan of the dried grass, but his large eyes still held some fire in spite of his weariness, and that made him beautiful to her. “We’ve had a long, hard ride, haven’t we? But you’re a hero, Freedom. You saved my life.”
He might not understand her words, but her tone hopefully encouraged him. “Here, baby, let me get you tidied up, and then you can have a nice drink. The water in the tank looks clean. No dead birds or anything like that to spoil the water. I guess they’ve had some rain here lately. Thank goodness we haven’t gotten caught in it. It’s cold enough without us being wet, right? There, now. You can get at the water tank from here.”
She curried him as best she could and hobbled him so he could get to the dried-out grass growing inside the barn, but not run away. At least, not without taking baby steps. She wished there was something better for him to eat. Some oats or something. But it looked like they’d both be riding lean. After giving Freedom a final nose scratch, she dragged herself and the almost-empty saddlebag of supplies into the house.
The broken windows she’d noted earlier were the source of the dirt and dust swirled on the floors. Her hiking boots left damning tracks in the dirt drifts as she walked through the living room. Anyone could see she’d been here. She thought the assholes had given up looking for her, but if what they had told her was true, any man who saw her could try to capture her. Her husbands said that in spite of her advanced years and unattractively short hair she was a prize any man would be happy to take, women being, as they put it, “so scarce and all.” Advanced years? She was thirty-four, for crying out loud. They had been playing head games with her. They said plagues after the nuclear attacks fifty years ago had wiped out nearly all the women in the world so any woman of breeding age was a prize. They’d said all kinds of crazy things to try to make her dependant on them. The morons thought when planes crashed, they leaped fifty years into the future? Their brainwashing techniques hadn’t worked on her. She was crazy enough to talk to her horse and expect answers, but not crazy enough to believe anything those men told her.
Standing in this deserted house with her arms wrapped around herself wasn’t getting anything done. She should get the rope out of the saddlebag over her shoulder to make a snare. She should be checking out the rest of the house. She should be doing something. Instead, she stood quietly in the empty living room to give herself a minute of rest. Dust danced in the slanted light of the setting sun. It was cold in the house, but not freezing. Her watch said it was forty-nine degrees Fahrenheit and eight degrees Celsius. Thank God the weather had been unseasonably warm. A person could freeze to death sleeping in the open with only a couple blankets, even in mid-November—or least fall prey to hypothermia. The temperature hadn’t dropped below freezing, even at night, and the daytime highs were near sixty. She prayed the good weather would hold until she found safety. Which had to be soon. Right? Please. Let it be soon.
Tami stepped carefully through the narrow butler’s pantry toward the kitchen, avoiding the wide strips of wallpaper dripping in curling, crumbling sheets from the top of the wall to the floor. The layout of this house was pretty close to that of her uncles’ 1920s ranch house. She guessed it had been built around the same time. The tall floor-to-ceiling cabinets were empty except for mouse droppings. No canned goods, no jars of peanut butter, nothing. She would have to finish off the last of the bread she had taken from her captors and hope for a rabbit to eat. As she turned to leave the kitchen to set up her snare, something on the colorless, papered wall caught her eye. Stapled to the wall was a faded, age-yellowed calendar. For the year 2017.
For the first time since the plane crashed, Tami cried.