Later, Tom caught Kate in their room. “Don’t take this wrong or think I’m a pervert, but Lucy is supposed to be thirteen. She acts thirteen but her figure says she’s about twenty. Am I missing something?”
Kate said, “Crap! I’m jealous of Sam and now you bring up her teenaged daughter’s body.”
“Stop! You know that I mean there’s something fishy there. I only lust for your body.”
“Seriously Tom, Granny B mentioned the same thing the other day.”
“Hmmmmm.”
***
Tom and Kate left the ranch, and Tom told Jack that he would search the area southwest of the ranch with Jerry and Kate. He made a beeline for the old cabin. Jerry and his son, Jacob, were working in the shed. “Jerry, Kate needs the drone to search for Sam. She disappeared last night.”
“Sure, take it. I’m done with the bomb cradle measurements. I’ll work on that for now.”
He took the drone to Kate, who was sitting in an old Adirondack chair. She took the remote and performed a preflight check. All was okay, so she launched the drone.
A while later, she was looking into the remote control for the drone. Tom asked, “See anything yet?”
“I just checked on the closest group of campers we spotted last night. They don’t appear to be with the gang. There are women and kids in the group. The women and kids must have been hidden because I didn’t see them on the visual or IR last night,” Kate said.
“How far is that group from the ranch and the Community?”
Kate wrinkled her nose and scratched some figures on a map. “Oh, they’re about five miles from the ranch and three miles from the Community.”
Tom said, “Look for Sam in the direction where that group is located, to keep her from stumbling into them.”
Kate hesitated. “Tom, I hate to say it, but this smells fishy to me. Could Sam have gone to meet with the group?”
“Where is the drone now?”
“Over the group. I’ve done a body count and took pictures of everyone at the camp.”
Tom was amazed, but didn’t have time to ask how she’d made pictures. “Please move the drone over the ranch as fast as possible and then make for the group’s camp while searching for Sam. I think you might be right.”
A few minutes later, the drone was over the ranch and heading back toward where the group was camped. Kate said, “I’m turning the IR camera on so we don’t miss any people.”
They saw several deer, a couple of dogs, and something that looked like a cougar. Tom choked when he saw the last animal. “That was a big cat. Wait! Can you back up? I thought I saw something north of the cat.”
“I saw it too, and I turned the drone around. Look, it’s a person only about a half-mile from the ranch. Tom, that’s a straight line back to the other group’s camp.”
Tom watched for a few minutes when suddenly, the person veered north toward the old cabin. Kate saw the change in direction. “The person is now heading toward the old cabin. I’ll change to visible … Damn, the woman has red hair.”
Tom was disappointed. He’d trusted Sam and had almost fallen in love with her. “What the hell could she be up to?”
“Look, there are a couple of people heading her way,” Kate said.
Tom didn’t believe his own eyes. “Look, the bitch fell down in the grass where they can find her. She intentionally changed direction so we wouldn’t know she came from the camp. What kind of game is she playing?”
Kate held back on saying, ‘I told you so’. “It doesn’t look good, but let’s assume she had good intentions until we find otherwise.”
Tom’s face contorted into a weird grin. “I probably deserve your wrath concerning Sam. She was a trusted friend. However, everything she told us about herself turned out to be a lie when I look back. It took a while before she told the truth.”
Kate looked down at her feet. She said, “But was the truth she told you, just another lie to fit her agenda?”
“Oh! Crap!”
Tom watched Lucy and June stumble onto Sam lying in the grass. Sam acted as though she was dazed, but soon got to her feet. They kept the drone overhead until they were back to the ranch. Tom’s face turned red, and he slumped down on the cabin’s back porch. Kate watched the disappointment wash over Tom’s face. “Darling, all we know is that she’s hiding those people from us. I hope we find her motives to be good, but I’ll admit this doesn’t look good right now.”
Tom wrapped his arms around his wife. “Never think for one minute that I have thoughts about what life would have been with Sam. I found my true love.”
Kate changed the batteries and keyed the control board to fly the drone back to the group’s camp, and kept surveilling them until the time for a battery change. Tom took turns watching the screen for any unusual activity, but didn’t see anything odd or suspicious. They did see hunters coming back to camp with game, and a woman tending to two wounded people.
The group was armed with hunting rifles, semi-auto pistols, and a few revolvers. They had set numerous traps for the game around the area and had two hunters armed with compound bows. They brought a deer and two geese back to the camp while Tom watched.
Kate came back outside just as Jerry walked out of the shed. Jerry griped, “I need the drone for a few minutes to do a trial fitting. You’ve had it above those people for over four hours.”
Tom moaned. “And my eyes are just about glazed over. We haven’t seen anything but normal survivors trying to
