Ground Hogs' Day
NORAD Road, Colorado
1
Any hopes Samantha had of finding help at Cheyenne Mountain was gone before she got there. The smoke she had sort of been following all morning rolled up from behind the hills in thick, black waves that signaled fresh devastation. Then, there were those big, wide-winged birds circling menacingly in the sky above Colorado Springs - all clear signs that something was wrong.
Sam had built it up in her mind that the government had been ready for decades. All she had to do was get there, persuade just one guard to check her name, her prints, and she would be safe inside the protective bunker. Ignoring the voice that asked why she was more worthy of protection than any of the dead she'd passed along the way, Sam had pushed herself relentlessly, making eight to twelve miles a day on foot. She longed to drive (she was sure some of the vehicles she passed wouldn't have been damaged by the EMPs), but she couldn't handle any attention she might attract.
The dreams of safety and authority had been the only thing keeping her going for the last four frightening weeks. Alone and mostly defenseless, Samantha was moving through a new, unknown world that tried hard every day to break her.
This kind of existence went against everything she'd been raised with. Her sheltered childhood and wealthy parents allowed her to stay above all the human misery she was seeing daily now, and it was heartbreaking. So many times she had the thought of just gathering supplies and hiding somewhere, but the idea of real safety at the compound had kept her feet moving through Rawlings, where rats as big as a loaf of bread were starting to take over, and by Table Rock, where she'd been chased out of a barn by an animal that looked like a cat and acted like a rabid raccoon.
This morning, she had bleached her yellow locks to kill the lice that were now immune to pesticide products. She wasn't sure where she had picked them up, thought it was likely from the dead soldier when she'd taken his gun and ammo. In all reality, the tough little bugs were the least of her worries.
To distract herself, she'd been looking for a groundhog, only a little interested in knowing if another six weeks of winter was in the future. Even more so, she needed a break from the flashes of murdering Henry, of the fear that Melvin was lurking, looking for her, but mostly, of finding no help. She hadn't seen one of the elusive creatures, but she had seen a dead porcupine with what was probably a gunshot wound, and wasn't comforted.