No Ordinary Day , Tate, Harley [ebook offline .TXT] 📗

road. Emma took stock of their surroundings. Nondescript forest, no obvious landmarks. They could have been anywhere. If they managed to escape, how would they ever find their way back?

“We have a couple bottles of water and a few snacks,” Emma offered. “You’re welcome to them if you’ll leave us alone.”

The old woman cackled. “Right, and I’m your fairy godmother. We all know what’s coming. A few snacks aren’t going to matter when the supply chain breaks down and society grinds to a halt.”

“It might not get that bad,” Holly volunteered in an unsure voice.

“It already is, sweetheart.” The woman who’d walked along in silence until now spoke up.

With a prominent nose and high cheekbones, the resemblance to the older woman was unmistakable. Her daughter? Emma glanced at the man. He was a few inches taller and twice as broad, but there was no denying it up close. They were a family. Emma didn’t know if that was good or bad. Maybe if she kept them talking…

She shook her head as if confused. “I don’t understand.”

“Leave it to you city types to not know your head from your butt. You know where chickens come from?”

“Eggs?” Holly asked.

The woman shook her head in disgust. “Farms. Did you know Georgia is the seventh largest producer of chicken worldwide?” She snorted when Holly shook her head. “Course you didn’t. Bet you never even left your happy little suburb before.”

Holly blushed and focused on the ground.

“We got more chicken meat up here than anyone knows what to do with. Ordinarily, that’s not a problem. They get fat, they get slaughtered and shipped out. Now, we ain’t got no supply chain. Warehouses can’t take the chickens cause ain’t nobody got working refrigeration. Those chickens get too big and they can’t walk, they can’t move around, they’re like big, fat sacks of muscle with no one to eat them.”

Emma swallowed. “So what happens?”

“They got to be put down. Millions of chickens. All that food, going to waste.”

“Can’t the farmers slaughter them?”

The man shook his head. “Everybody up here works for one of the big guys, the national meat producers. They don’t get paid to process the meat, they get paid to grow it. Farmers don’t have the equipment, and even if they did, they don’t have a way to keep the meat cold.”

Emma could barely keep up with what they were saying. “You mean there’s not going to be any meat delivered to grocery stores.”

“Looks like the city girl might have some brains in there somewhere.” The man spat again on the ground. “It’s the same for produce, too. Without somewhere to keep it cold, all the fruit and veggies will rot.”

The older woman nodded. “Things are going to get ugly as soon as more of y’all start comin’ up here lookin’ for food.”

Emma lifted her hands. “I swear we were just walking through.”

“That’s what you would say, isn’t it?” The woman pointed at the thinning tree line. “Throw them in the barn. Tell Jenny to stand guard.”

A burly hand wrapped around Emma’s arm and she winced. “You don’t have to manhandle me.”

“Right.” He tugged her forward and she stumbled.

Tank growled.

“Get that dog and put it somewhere.”

“He’s not mean!” Holly held onto Tank’s harness. “Please don’t hurt him.”

The younger woman grabbed Tank’s harness and Holly cried out.

Emma tried to console her. “It’ll be okay. I’m sure they won’t do anything rash.”

The older woman laughed again and a chill snaked down Emma’s back. She stumbled into a clearing as the man pushed her forward. More compound than farm, half a dozen buildings fanned out in a lopsided circle around a gravel parking area and a handful of pickups.

She couldn’t see much before a hand was on her back, shoving her into the nearest outbuilding. The overwhelming stench of manure wrinkled her nose and Emma gagged.

A laugh barked out behind her. “Get used to the stench. It’s what people like you ought to smell like!”

Holly stumbled in after and the door slid shut.

Emma fought the urge to vomit.

“What are we going to do now?” Holly’s voice shook as the teenager spun around in the dim light.

If only Emma knew.

Chapter Twenty-One

John

The familiar sound of Tank’s barking filtered through the trees and John tensed. Short and clipped, with an underlying edge, Tank’s bark lent no comfort. Something wasn’t right.

It had taken most of the day to zero in on Emma’s location. Finding the truck had been easy. Abandoned on the road with no gas and only a few cast-off items of clothes inside, it filled him with confidence. Overtaking the two women would be easy on foot.

But the tracker threw him for a loop. They weren’t on the road. Not even close. According to Emma, Gloria’s cabin was miles from here, but the tracker was stationary in the middle of the woods. It had been years since John practiced woodland land navigation, using trees and topography to orient himself to a location.

Most targets these days kept to the cities.

Making more missteps than he should, he turned a simple locate-and-recover into an all-day hunt. As the sun waned, stretching the shadows of the trees, Tank barked again. John pulled his binoculars from his bag and eased into a crouch.

A hundred yards ahead, the trees thinned, revealing an acre of buildings, vehicles, and animal pens. A family compound? A homestead? Whatever it was, Tank was somewhere inside the perimeter and not happy about it.

The door to a dovetailed, square-log cabin opened and a grizzled old woman stepped onto the porch. Judging by the deep smile lines and creases across her forehead, she had to be pushing seventy. She opened her mouth, shouting something across the gravel area.

John swiveled. A man about his age, built for manual labor, nodded in response. Family compound, indeed. If the old woman was the matriarch, John would need to neutralize her first. He glassed the property, searching for any means of easy entry.

Three trucks and an older sedan anchored the main gravel area. Two cabins