the entrance gate had been rammed off its mounts. Tightening her grip on the wheel she aimed for the closed exit, keeping her foot firmly on the floor. She had covered half the distance to where the truck was sitting when its occupants noticed her. Racing towards the barricade, she noticed two men stand up in the bed of the pickup a moment before the Ford’s bumper slammed into the heavy, iron gate.
The collision was bone jarring, but the momentum of the big Ford battered the gate off its hinges, sending it cartwheeling down the road to bounce off a tree trunk before coming to rest on a neatly tended lawn. Gunfire erupted from the bed of the pickup that had been guarding the entrance, but Katie couldn’t tell if they actually hit anything or not. All she knew was no bullets struck her, and if any hit the truck they didn’t hit anything vital.
Braking hard, she made a left onto the main road, the Ford threatening to tip up on its outside set of wheels. Fighting it back under control she stayed on the gas and in less than a quarter of a mile had to brake again for a right turn. She spared a glance in the rearview, not seeing any pursuit. Yet.
On the major road that fed into the area, Katie pushed the Ford as hard as she dared, the speedometer needle sweeping up to 100, then beyond. She checked her mirrors and still saw no sign of pursuit, but didn’t back off on her speed. Right now the best thing she could do was to quickly put as much distance between herself and the looters as possible.
A couple of miles later she slowed to turn left onto the small, two-lane highway that ran northeast to what she hoped would be safety in the mountains. Negotiating the turn she checked over her shoulder, breathing a cautious sigh of relief when she still didn’t see any sign of the men who’d crashed her neighborhood. Feeling slightly more secure, she lowered her speed to 70, though she would have liked to go faster.
70 was fast enough in the truck, though, as she had to brake hard and swerve around a burned out car that suddenly appeared when she rounded a curve in the road. Now she slowed to 60, knowing she missed running into the wreck by only a couple of feet. She wanted speed, but John had built up the Ford for bouncing and bulling its way off road, not high speed driving on pavement.
Katie calmed down after a few miles of not seeing any other vehicles in her mirrors. She’d had to avoid two more abandoned cars, but at the lower speed was able to do so without any adrenaline inducing dramatics. She had already passed the sign welcoming her to Tonto National Forest and soon crested a minor pass in the foothills, dropping back down to the Salt River valley.
A few miles ahead she could see where the road she was on intersected with a larger highway that ran past Saguaro Lake, then on up to the Mogollon Rim. The Rim is the southern edge of the Colorado Plateau and runs 200 miles across Arizona. On The Rim, thick forests of Ponderosa Pine grow and the weather is cool in the summer and cold in the winter. South of The Rim is where the Arizona desert begins, several thousand feet of altitude lower with blistering summers and mild winters.
Turning onto the larger highway, Katie began seeing other vehicles fleeing the Phoenix metro area. Cars, trucks and SUVs crammed full of families and supplies. There weren’t a lot of them, but enough that for a moment things almost seemed normal. Until she rounded a long, climbing curve and traffic came to an abrupt stop.
In front of her she could see a long line of vehicles, red brake lights glowing, stretching out of sight around the next curve in the road. Soon a heavily loaded Chevy Tahoe came to a stop only a couple of feet from the back of the Ford and she was glad she had left plenty of space between her bumper and the car in front of her.
She checked the mirror; grateful to see the Tahoe was occupied by two women and a lone man. The car to her front looked like a man and woman, and she scanned ahead looking for any vehicles whose occupants might pose a threat. Not seeing anything she