Free Tread Fearless: Survival & Awakening (The Gatekeeper Book 4) by Kenneth Cary Page B

far or long it would take him. He had to find her, not only for the sake of his sanity, but to redeem himself of Lisa. By rounding off his travel desires with a dose of reality, Mark controlled his impulse to keep peddling past Austin, and to head toward the city in a northwesterly direction at the first possible opportunity.
    Mark pushed his bike up the road and stopped next to the still and now unconscious white man. Without checking for a pulse, Mark knew the man was dead. In a way, Mark was almost happy for him. The man was now free of his troubles, of the chaos brought about by the crazy disaster. Mark longed for the same freedom when he thought to take his own life, but the woman, the vision, it changed everything for him in a moment.

    After dragging the two bodies off the road, Mark peddled on. He did as promised, and left the revolver with the white guy even though it would no longer help him. Mark would have kept it if it was in better shape, but it was old and splotched with rust, and not worth the weight it would add to his load. But he did keep the useful ammo andempty casings. Their weight was inconsequential given their future barter value.
    Mark spotted a still smoldering wreck of a ranch home on a distant hill, but he felt no desire to go investigate. However, he was keeping an eye open for a possible cache site, or someplace to stash his gear before venturing into the city on foot.
    After turning left on Satterwhite Rd, yet another indiscriminate and seemingly isolated country road, Mark believed he was finally traveling in the right direction. But when the road took an unexpected ninety-degree turn to the northeast, he groaned and peddled hard up the steep grade before him. When he reached to top, he paused to catch his breath and look around.
    The ground on which he stood was just high enough for him to see the tops of the tallest buildings in Austin, but better yet, it laid out the entire valley before him. Mark saw a freeway in the distance, about two miles away. At first he was confused about his location, so he removed his compass and looked north with the needle. It wasn’t Interstate 35 as he first thought, but rather some other major roadway that probably connected to I-35.
    He didn’t see any movement on the freeway, but he removed a set of small binoculars from a saddle bag and had a look around anyway. About a mile down the road he saw another intersection that would take him due north, toward the city. After scanning the horizon one last time, Mark stowed his gear, took a drink from one of his water bottles, and remounted his bike.
    Other than a barking dog, Mark heard nothing to indicate the presence of people nearby. In fact, he was surprised he didn’t see more people out and about. A part of him was fine with that, because the last thing he wanted was another fight with local desperate folks; it felt strange to peddle so close to a major city and not see another living soul. He didn’t know what was going on, but he knew he’d find out soon enough.
    Mark reached the intersection and looked at the road sign. “Turnersville Rd S,” was printed in black letters on a faded white metalplate. Before him the narrow unmarked road rose slightly upward as it climbed another length of rolling ridgeline. He was thankful it was October and not August, or he would have been overly exhausted at the exertion of climbing the recent set of hills in the heat. As it was, the day was clear and warm, in the upper eighties by Mark’s reckoning, and it began to wear on him. He also wanted to stop for lunch, but he wasn’t about to do it in the open, and certainly not in the middle of a rural intersection.
    Mark shoved off and began climbing the moderate grade after shifting down to a lower gear to better handle the weight he was carrying and towing. At the top of the grade he saw a large electrical substation sitting in a large clearing off to his left. He didn’t know much about substations, but it was