The Last Rebel: Survivor by William W. Johnstone Read Free Book Online Page B

beautiful as it was, perhaps someone was living in it. Perhaps some Rejects, and that would mean trouble with a capital T.
    He finally nodded, then reached down and picked up the AK-47. Bev noticed him, but seemed oblivious of its implication.
    “Good,” Bev said. “Maybe they have propane and everything is still working. Then I can take a shower and wash my hair. I’m getting a little gamy.”
    “I won’t argue with that,” Jim said with a smile, but keeping his eyes trained on the house. “Got your gun off safety?” he asked.
    “You think this is dangerous?”
    “I doubt it, but like my grandmother used to say, ‘A stitch in time saves nine.’”
    “What does that mean?”
    “I have no idea.”
    Jim scanned to his left. There was a natural opening in the forest, as if vehicles had parked there regularly. Jim liked it. He could go deep enough into the woods so that the HumVee would be concealed.
    “We’ll park over here,” he said.
    He moved the HumVee into the gap, then stopped it but did not get out. Bev looked at him.
    “Aren’t we going in?” she said after fifteen or twenty seconds of sitting there.
    “I just want to listen to things a bit,” he said. “Where I come from, what you hear is as important as what you see. Sometimes more important.
    “Okay,” he said, after another ten seconds or so, “let’s go.”
    As he got out, he looked at Bev. He liked what he saw. She did not seem that afraid, just alert, as he was. He didn’t need someone with a loaded gun who was nervous going in with him. They left Reb in the truck. Again, he was silent.
    They walked across the road, glanced up and down it—nothing—then crossed it and continued until they were at the front gate. It was held by a regular latch. Jim disengaged it and they entered. Bev followed him partway up the brick path, and then was surprised when he didn’t continue to the front door. Rather, he veered off toward one side, the business end of the AK-47 raised.
    He walked slowly around the house, Bev following, and as he went she was surprised. He stepped so lightly that she could hardly hear his footfalls, and she got the sense that she was following an animal rather than a man. If she hadn’t earlier gotten a sense that this man had lived in the mountains, she had now.
    He stopped at every window and tried to look in, but he couldn’t. In every instance, the blinds or drapes or other window coverings had been pulled. Somebody, it occurred to Bev, did not want anyone looking in—or maybe out.
    A couple of times he stopped and held up his hand for her to do the same, and once put an ear against one of the windows.
    In the back of the house there was a beautiful multilevel redwood deck. It had some handsome wooden chairs on it. The woods had been cleared around it to a distance of about fifty feet and the grass was dotted with flower beds.
    Jim went down the other side of the house, glanced in a window—blinds pulled as on the others—and as he approached the front of the house he raised his weapon. Bev followed suit.
    They had noticed when they first came to the front of the house that the blinds had been pulled in the windows on both sides of the front door. “I don’t see any fresh vehicle or man tracks,” Jim said quietly, “so the house is probably empty. But one never knows.”
    He smiled. God, Bev thought, this guy was cool. She felt nervous, but in control of herself.
    He proceeded toward the front door, motioning to Bev to stop as he got within a few yards of the door, but he did not walk out in front of it. He was well aware that someone standing behind it could fire through the door. Though oak, it would not withstand a fusillade of shots, which would kill whoever was standing there.
    Instead, he kneeled down and sort of scuttled up to the door. Anyone shooting would fire over his head, expecting that the kill zone would be at least five feet off the ground.
    He tried the doorknob with his left hand. It turned.