Tertiary Effects Series | Book 2 | Storm Warning

by Allen, William

  We’d been going back and forth between the two prisoners to compare information, and not surprisingly, Randy Haines required very little persuading to spill his guts. He didn’t know everything, but he knew enough to cross-check what his daddy was saying. I barely had to hit him in the genitals with the Tazer more than once. I did it again anyway.

  “Anybody else got anything they want to ask Bernie? Going once, going twice…”

  Mike’s gunshot hadn’t been unexpected, but we still jumped when the boom of the Smith & Wesson sounded in the room and Sheriff Bernard Landshire’s reign of terror officially came to an end. I didn’t want him to do it, knowing he would likely have nightmares about it later, but he was a big boy and it was his choice.

  Taking care of Randy had only been the work of a few seconds after, just long enough for all of us to troop next door and deliver the coup-de-grace. The only surprise came when Cece hesitantly followed along, and then asked to do the deed herself. Pat gave her the pistol we’d removed from Landshire’s desk, but only after ‘fixing’ the magazine first.

  “Well, I guess that’s us done,” I said after the long silence that followed my lame attempt to break the somber mood. Later, I would blame my cavalier attitude on the pain meds Pat had given me for the cracked ribs.

  “What about me? And who are you people?”

  Cece’s question dragged me down to earth in an instant.

  “What do you want us to do? We can arrange for you to get back to Austin, but I have to ask that you please leave us out of your report,” Mike said solemnly.

  “What do you mean? You saved me. And you uncovered a terrible ring of thieves and killers. There’s no telling how many others you saved by what you did this night,” Cece said, sounding more animated than I’d heard since Pat had carried her down the stairs.

  I felt eyes on me from the rest of the group as they waited for me to explain.

  “Ms. Robinson, we might get in a spot of trouble, you know. Even given the current state of affairs, the powers-that-be frown on vigilante justice, and I can promise, even though the late, unlamented sheriff was guilty of heinous crimes, his confession was entirely inadmissible. If you tell your boss about us, even just mention our names, we’ll be arrested before the ink dries on the warrants.”

  “But you rescued me…”

  “Ma’am, we were going to have to take out Landshire no matter what. And that’s because we killed three of his deputies earlier today,” I explained truthfully. I lie when necessary, but this young woman deserved the truth. “No matter the provocation, no matter that his deputies kidnapped you and Ms. Stockton, he would have sent all of his other deputies out to our home and had us shot while trying to escape.”

  “But when I go back, they’re going to want to know what happened.”

  And there it was. The reason I don’t do the hero thing, and why I hate being maneuvered into acting that way. If we had simply done what we’d come to do and left this other matter to solve itself…

  No matter how I tried to rationalize it, I knew we couldn’t have left this woman behind.

  “Do you have family you can go to stay with?”

  Cece’s eyes filled with fresh tears.

  “My momma lived in Houston, same as Maddy’s parents. We’ve been trying to get in touch with them since the hurricane, but neither one of us have been able to get them on their phones.”

  “Where in Houston, Cece?” I asked delicately.

  “Clear Lake.” She said it in such a way that I knew she was aware of the truth. That close to the coast, if they’d tried to shelter in place, their deaths were almost a certainty.

  “Why don’t you come and stay with us for a while? We’ve already got family and friends staying with us, and Maddy’s there right now. We can make room for two more, especially with your agricultural backgrounds.”

  Mike made the offer sound like a casual thing. Just a place to rest and recover for the short-term, but if they came, they would likely be unable to leave. Not held as prisoners, but because of the worsening situation in their part of the world.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  We got home a little after seven a.m. after stashing the stolen panel van back up the paper company access road behind the house and hiking home. Wade, Ethan, and Wil took another appropriated vehicle, a Quad cab Ford pickup not registered to any of the deputies, and took a different but similar route home. Well, Mike hiked home while Pat and I stayed with Cece to keep her company as Mike retrieved one of the smaller ATVs that could be used on the narrow path out to our repurposed switching station.

  I hated to drive the damn big truck home, but we were short on choices and the loot needed to be hauled off. Even if we planned to dispose of the drugs, we needed some way to haul that many kilos. Not to mention all the other gear we would stack in the keeper pile.

  “So, you really go by Cece, or is Madeline just sticking you with a schoolgirl nickname that you can’t get her to drop?”

  “Why would you ask that?” Cecelia asked with drowsy curiosity. She might be fierce but she was also hurting, so Pat made sure she was still getting the good stuff.

  “Way to go, Bri-Bri,” Pat interjected, getting a startled chortle from the reclining figure laying on a sleeping bag.

  “Bri-Bri? Seriously?”

  ‘What can I say? Told you, Pat’s married to my little sister. It was cute, at first. But she called me that for years. Even shouted it out at my law school graduation ceremony.”

  “Damn, that’s cold,” Cece finally pronounced. “No, we’ve been Maddy and Cece since we first met freshman year of high school. When we were both accepted to Texas A&M, going in as roommates just made sense. She’s pretty nice, you know, for being so pale and all.”

  “Oh, you did not just go there,” Pat interjected, stifling a tired laugh.

  “Maddy is family to me,” Cece said softly, suddenly changing direction and growing more serious. I knew she was hurting, despite the pain killers coursing through her system, and even more, she was damaged deep down in her soul in a way I couldn’t understand. Didn’t want to understand. She was trying to prop herself up with the jokes, but she was running short of the necessary energy to maintain the strong front she was holding up for us.

  “I’m sorry about what happened to you, Cece. If we could’ve stopped it from happening, we would’ve done it,” I said over my shoulder, not wanting to see her tears falling, but I couldn’t escape the shallow sobs. “We didn’t even know you existed until Maddy told us, and we got there as quickly as we could. I know that doesn’t help, but what Pat told you before is true. Some of us at the farm are family by blood, and others are family by choice. We look out for our own and if you’ll let us, we’ll try to look out for you as well.”

  “What are you people, anyway? Is this some kind of, well, religious thing?”

  I exchanged a quick glance with Pat and we had to stifle a laugh at the question. I was surprised at how my mood had been shifting so greatly in recent days, and I decided I needed to have a sit-down with Mike and Pat, but later.

  For now, Pat gave me a nudge to answer Cece’s question.

  “I’m sorry, Cece. No, we’re not a cult. When I say we’re family, that doesn’t mean like the Charles Manson family, or even the Addams family.”

  That last bit even got a laugh from Cece, and probably a sigh of relief.

  “You’ve met some us already. Back home, we have my sister Nikki, this galoot’s wife, and Mike and his wife. Well, she’s at work, but you’ll get to meet Marta tonight. Then there’s my nieces and nephews. Mary, our cousin, and her husband Charles. Then we have some friends who are also staying with us either at the main house or at the Bonner place we just acquired. The other men who were with us earlier? They’re some of our neighbors.”

  “Billy…” Pat prompted, and I nodded.

  “One of our friends who’s staying with us, Sally, she has a son named Billy. He’s nineteen and has Downs. He’s a very nice young man, but I j
ust wanted to warn you that he might have questions for you. Please don’t take offense, and in turn, don’t hurt his feelings.”

  “That’s okay, and I thank you for letting me know. What, what should I say to him? And everybody else?”

  “Nobody waiting for us at home will have any idea what happened to you, or what we did. What you choose to share is up to you, but please keep what you saw us doing to yourself.”

  “Okay, I can do that. Can I at least tell Maddy what happened to me?” The desperation in Cece’s voice pained me, and I turned to fix my eyes on hers. Even with the tears and the pain killers, her eyes were more clear than I’d seen before. The bruises on her cheekbones made me grind my teeth, but I think I managed to keep all emotion off my face as I answered her question.

  “Sorry, but of course you can talk to your friend. What I meant was…”

  I struggled to put my concerns into words, so I just released my hold on the filter between my brain and my mouth and let go of the ache in my chest that had nothing to do with cracked ribs.

  “What you saw me do back there, that’s not me,” I explained. “I’ve never done anything like that before in my life, and I pray to God I never have to do it again. I’ve never taken pleasure in hurting others, and I didn’t enjoy what I did then either. I’m afraid when you’ve had a chance to assimilate what you’ve been through, you might look at me in a different light. That’s all.”

  Cece took nearly a minute to process what I’d said, but she never looked away from me as she thought.

  “Wow. All right, I think I understand. You did what you did to the sheriff and to that…creature because you needed to know those things you asked him about. Information that might affect your own people. Do I have it right?”

  “You do. For example, we needed to know if the sheriff had any kind of security in the house, any CCTV system either in the building or recording the roads. It wouldn’t do us any good to leave behind evidence framing his deputies having pulled this off if he had offsite recordings of what actually happened.”

  “I see. That makes so much sense. How did you think to worry about that?”

  “Cece, Bryan worries about everything,” Pat pointed out, finally rejoining the conversation. I could tell that the time Pat had spent working to help the poor girl created a bond of trust there. “That’s why we usually listen to what he has to say. And I don’t see anything wrong with confiding in your best friend, but you might want to leave out the Tarantino parts.”

  “There is one person you might want to talk to, though, if you’re willing,” I added carefully. Like I was negotiating a mine field. “Her name is Nancy, and well, you can talk to her. She’ll understand.”

  I offered that last part with more hope than anything else.

  We talked for another ten minutes about more mundane things, at least, mundane in this new world. I explained how we were using a greenhouse and wood stoves to continue our growing efforts, and the makeup of our mixed farming and ranching work. The greenhouse angle caught Cece’s attention, and I had to admit that Bea, who I’d failed to mention before, and Nikki, seemed to have taken over that realm as their own.

  Then I heard the sound of an ATV engine, which meant the little beast was close by. I crawled out of the truck and waved to Mike, noting that he had a passenger with him. I expected Maddy, but instead, as he slowed the side-by-side to a stop, I saw he had Nancy sitting with him. Mike looked exhausted from the previous twenty-four hours of shit, but Nancy appeared to be in a similar state. Her face looked pale and her fair hair peeked out from under her hood in an ill-kempt mess.

  I stuck my head back inside the truck and announced that Cece’s ride was here.

  “That your woman?” Cece asked, nodding in Nancy’s direction as I helped her down. Her steps were made gingerly, mincing, and the oversized rubber boots we’d liberated for her didn’t help.

  “My woman?” I paused at the reference. “Yes, I guess you could say so.”

  “She looks worried. And pissed. So be nice to her. She was probably up all night wondering if you were going to come back to her.”

  “Dang, Cece, you’re wise beyond your years,” I said in a joking fashion, and she took it in that manner.

  “Hey, if we’re all family here, does that make you my…”

  “Uncle, and yes, that means you can have a pony.”

  After Pat changed places with Mike, he took off with Cece in tow. My brother and I exchanged tired greetings while Nancy hung back, eyeing me cautiously.

  “Mike said you’d been shot,” she finally said, approaching me carefully as she watched her footing on the mucky ground.

  “Hit the vest, so I’m a little sore, but fine. Sorry we couldn’t radio any kind of update, but we were worried about intercepts. Everything okay at the houses?”

  “Yes. No. Everybody was worried to death, Bryan.”

  She struggled to get the words out, and I could tell up close from her eyes it looked like she hadn’t slept.

  “I’m sorry, Nancy, but it had to be done.”

  “So he’s dead?”

  “As a doornail. Even though his deputies jumped the gun, we found his plans. He was going to kill us all, Nancy. Kill everybody here and steal what we’ve worked for. I couldn’t allow it.”

  Nancy stepped up, extending her hands to take mine. I’d finally ditched the nitrile gloves and I could feel the work-hardened callouses on her palms as she closed her fingers around mine.

  “I was worried to death about you. I kept trying to tell myself that you would be fine, and my rotten luck had finally run its course.” She was nearly sobbing at this point, and I could only stand there and stare at her as she melted down in front of me. All the stress, the worry, came out in a torrent of emotion.

  “Why did you go, Bryan? Mike and Pat, I can understand. They have experience with something like that. Why does it have to be you risking your life all the time?”

  Rather than try to organize my words to explain, to marshal my arguments in a lawyerly fashion, I just let the words come without thought. Hey, it’d worked with Cece, I thought to myself.

  “Because everything I love is here. Everyone I care about is concentrated here on our farm. I’ll do anything to keep you safe. To protect the people here. Yes, I took a risk, but we all did. Do you think Mike loves his family any less? The sheriff was a clear danger to our survival, more so than we even knew when we went. We had to do a hard thing, Nancy, harder than you may ever know, but I’ll do it again to shelter us from the storm.”

  Nancy closed the distance between us, her arms around my bulky raincoat and body armor, and I somehow found her lips as her face turned up to mine. We kissed, long and lingering, and I ran my fingers up her delicate neck and buried them in that mass of hair.

  I don’t know how long we stood like that, heedless of the rain soaking us, before Mike cleared his throat. Once, then again, with greater volume.

  “Sorry to interrupt this Hallmark moment, guys, but we still need to unload the truck.”

  Nancy and I broke apart, but our eyes caught, and I knew I was totally in love with this woman. We might be facing the end of the world as we knew it, but I’d finally found the woman I intended to spend the rest of my days with, and I’d fight anybody to protect that precious gift.

  “When we get back to the house,” I said to Nancy as I brushed a lock of hair from her rain-slicked forehead, “I’d like you to talk to my new niece, Cece…”

  EPILOGUE

  We managed to get the truck unloaded and the remote site resealed even as we worked under the storm warning that preceded another hurricane. We made no trips to town, and only kept in contact with the Husband family next door while we shored up sandbag levees, retarped the greenhouse, and took down all the equipment in a repeat of our previous maneuvers. At least this time, I managed to erect a protected antenna using one of the stouter trees to maintain our long-range news gathering ability. We were not going to allow another information blac
kout to occur.

  Seven days after the raid on the sheriff’s house and we’d heard nary a peep over the radio, either the public system or from our Amateur friends in the area, and then it was time to hunker down in earnest. For a while, we thought the storm would miss us altogether, but at least we only caught the edge this time when Hurricane Javier came spiraling up from the Gulf and made landfall on the Louisiana side. The Category Five storm stirred the mostly deserted carcass of New Orleans, now a drowned city, before screaming up the length of the state, flooding Baton Rouge up through Shreveport, and continuing on into Arkansas, hammering Little Rock from the other side after being battered by Debbie just a little over a month before.

  Most of our group spent three days in the shelter at the height of the storm, but I rotated with Mike, Pat, and Sally in maintaining a watch upstairs through the worst of the weather. We had almost continuous howling rain for thirty-six hours, but the worst part for me were the vicious lightning storms. I worried that some of the raiders might take advantage of the weather to hit homes, and we heard reports over the radio of just such things happening, but either we were lucky or the raiders decided not to risk themselves this close to the hurricane.

  Once the all clear was given, we were well into the second day of digging out when Beatrice sounded the all-hands alert over the radios that we had visitors at the gate. I dropped what I was doing and raced to grab my kit and gear up when she followed up with a broadcast notifying everyone that it was two vehicles marked as the Albany County Sheriff’s Department.

  “Well, let’s see what they want,” Mike muttered as he continued strapping on his body armor. After our tumultuous trip to Dallas, I’d pretty much given up on the ‘gray man’ approach to weapons and gear. No more hunting rifles and revolvers. I was adopting Mike and Pat’s military spec approach and I slung my FAL and joined Mike at the shed to grab our ATV for the ride up to the gate.