Race to Refuge by Liz Craig Read Free Book Online Page B

pieces of wood that branched out in a way that made them nest together. Apparently, one of them staked into the ground and the other to something else. I watched as he carefully scouted around the area near our car, looking for some sort of signs. Then he looked up at the various trees and foliage around us.
    He motioned me to come over. I still felt a little silly in my work attire, checking out my snare trap location. Who’d have thought? I also felt remarkably unprepared. When was the last time I’d even gone camping? Middle school?
    Joshua didn’t treat me as though I were silly, though. In a clear voice he pointed ahead of us. “Can you see the signs that small animals have come through here?”
    I peered at the ground and cleared my voice. “I can see that it’s some sort of narrow trail. A well-worn animal path?”
    He nodded. “Look over the hill here.”
    When I walked up, I saw a small stream at the bottom of several hills. “Water source,” I said.
    Joshua pointed at the ground. “We haven’t had rain recently, but if we had, you would be able to see tracks in the mud. Or maybe a nearby burrow. You can definitely see other signs.” He pointed to a pile of small droppings. “So we know this is a good location to put up a snare trap. Knowing a good spot is half the battle.”
    He continued patiently showing me how to set up the basic trap, stopping from time to time to make sure I was following. And the weird thing was that I felt much safer in the exposed woods with this elderly homeless man than I’d felt at home with Brendan.

Chapter Eight
    Ty
    Ginny hung onto the passenger door of the minivan until her knuckles were white. I couldn’t blame her—she’d never even been in the car with me driving before. And I was driving pretty fast, hoping that we could get out of town before the roads got clogged up with people trying to escape.
    The main road out was already jammed with cars. Some were emergency vehicles, some looked full of people. There were a lot of horns honking.
    Ginny said in her quiet voice, “We could go that back way. Do you know the way? It’s how Mom takes me to skating practice when it’s rush hour.”
    I’d been back there a couple of times, but didn’t really know the way. “Can you give me some directions?”
    I heard Ginny draw in a deep breath and sit forward in her seat. I could tell she was funneling as much focus as she could into where she was. “Turn off at this light.”
    Not that I stopped at the red light.
    Soon we were on a curving, narrow back road with a lot less traffic. But I was still driving as fast as I could, right up to the time where we finally got to the edge of town. When we drove into the rural area north of town, I finally felt myself start to relax.
    “Ty, where are we going?” asked Ginny softly.
    “That’s something I’ve got to figure out,” I said. I tried to sound strong and confident as I said it, which was tough since my head was pounding and I felt totally lost. All I’d known was that I had to get Ginny and that we had to get out of the town. After that point, I really hadn’t put a plan together. “I’m going to drive a little farther out and then we’re going to sit in this locked car and I’m going to map out where we’re heading and what the short-term plan is.” It was to survive, but I sure wasn’t going to tell Ginny that.
    We continued for a few more minutes and I could tell that Ginny had a million questions on her mind. Finally she asked in a hesitant voice, “Why is there so much stuff in the back of the car?”
    I glanced over at her tight, pale face. “Ginny, something terrible is happening. Some kind of virus is making people sick and then those people are trying to hurt other people. The town is going to get taken over by those sick people, and if we stayed, we wouldn’t be able to survive. I threw a bunch of stuff in the car that I thought might help us if we were out in the country for a while.” Until