Tertiary Effects Series | Book 3 | Bite of Frost

by Allen, William

  As Mike and I walked the other two squad members back out to Wil’s truck, I filled them in a little bit about what I said to the sheriff. While we walked, I took out my notebook and tore out the page of numbers and gave them to Mike to add to his collection. He probably already had the distances mapped from that vantage, but if not, he could add them to his shooting book for later.

  “What’s on the docket for Casa Husband this afternoon?” I asked Wil as he and Pat slipped into their seats.

  “Well, I’m taking Wade back into the thicket and we’ll see which trees he wants dropped to block the back route,” Wil admitted. “That’s probably going to eat up the rest of the day for us. You got something rattling around in that big brain of yours?”

  I shook my head in denial, but they knew me too well.

  “Just keep your radio handy. If things go sideways here, I’ll need the cavalry to respond. And when is Shawn coming over to tour the Fitts place?”

  “Tomorrow,” Wil replied with a jaunty grin. “But I think we’ll be hauling them out to the house before the end of the week.”

  “Good deal,” I admitted. “Keep your powder dry.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  The next week whizzed past at an ever-increasing tempo as the weather continued to worsen and the family’s preparations ramped up in the face of lowering temperatures. Shawn Tyler and Mac Dunbar packed up their belongings and moved to occupy the Fitts house, and another late-night visit from angry, frustrated, and no doubt hungry, neighbors hastened the move. The expected shipment of food for the single remaining grocery store, the Woodshire Brothers just off Main Street, failed to show up for this week, and rumor had it the shelves had been picked nearly clean of food items. We’d managed to rescue that same shipment the week prior, but this time no one could say where the truck went missing along the route from Lufkin.

  All in all, the mood of the town continued to darken as the lack of food in the grocery store seemed to emphasize just how fragile their system remained. Most of the population at this point received some kind of public assistance or were drawing unemployment, but with the store’s shelves nearly bare, their government-supplied debit cards proved useless.

  While Pat and Wade took hospital escort duty, Wil and Ethan went to New Albany to lend their aid and support the transfer of our new neighbors, and much of the intel on the state of affairs in town came from their visit. Shawn wouldn’t openly discuss what had happened in the latest attack, but Wil said he was pretty sure there was blood on the sidewalk when they arrived with the gooseneck trailer to make the transfer. Due to the losses sustained by the families in the hurricanes and accompanying flood, all of the Tyler’s and Dunbar’s possessions fit in just the one trailer load.

  That night, as Wil and Ethan detailed the bleak scenes in town, I half-expected a call from the Sheriff or from Captain Buddy for help controlling the unrest, but the phone never rang. I wondered if it was because the Sheriff didn’t want to use us in town, or because the cell coverage was down again. Either way, I for one breathed a sigh of relief as we weren’t faced with the decision of responding to a call out or not.

  I would have helped Wil and Ethan in town, but the trip coincided with our installation of the first set of cameras for the yard at the Bonner house, and we wanted to get them all in place during a gap in the intermittent sleet. Mike had figured out how to upgrade the transmission system with a booster that allowed us to pick up the feed wirelessly at our house, but he needed a tower to do it. Using a pattern I had saved from an internet site, Mike and I erected a fake weathervane on the old barn to hide the antenna. I mean, the weathervane worked, but I used the welding and CNC machines to fabricate a metal rooster that spun with the wind while also housing the needed antenna in the central spire. Now we just needed a way to provide backup power the cameras since the usual solar kit wasn’t going to cut it. The kit was fine for powering LED lights and an appliance or two, but it lacked the wattage necessary to power the whole system for any length of time.

  We still had commercial power at the moment, but the worsening weather conditions and deepening financial crisis meant the Co-Op had a snowball’s chance in hell of acquiring any more replacement transformers in the event of another heavy storm. Line breaks they could deal with, at least for the time being. Like everything else, the power company was dealing with late payments or no pays, and the utility could only continue to buy power at a loss for so long before going broke. Nancy remained on furlough, and she resigned herself to not being called back anytime soon.

  There was talk on the morning news shows the very next day of more federal subsidies coming down the pipeline to assist the power companies across the country in similar binds, but nothing concrete was ever mentioned. I guess even the fake accounting where the Fed Reserve was magically creating money to lend to the government was having a hard time coming up with the billions necessary to bail out the failing utilities. No one on the sanctioned news channels talked about the economy as a whole, and apparently the whole notion of stock markets or commodities exchanges had become forbidden topic, as that part of the morning news programs were suspiciously absent. There was simply no business reporting, period.

  In truth, we were in the midst of a financial crisis that made the Great Depression of 1929 look like a market hiccup, and there was no end in sight. The lack of imports, from food to electronics, might have strengthened the domestic production, if there was anything being produced. The timing of the meteor strike meant that some farmers were unable to harvest their crops due to the constant rain, and even those who would get into their fields were reporting smaller than average yields. Some food went to their standing purchasers, the grocery stores and the wholesaler and distributor companies that had long-standing orders.

  With the death of the commodities market as a whole, many farmers found their expected buyers to be absent and their contracts unfulfilled, but Big Brother seemed to have a solution. The Department of Agriculture stepped in, buying up everything food-related at a discounted rate for bulk distribution. This was well-publicized in the news, as a way for the government to help ease food concerns. How this food aid would be distributed remained to be seen, but we weren’t seeing any foodbanks opening in our neck of the woods. I also wondered how much of the food production was being actually sold off as opposed to being held back for seed or personal use. I just hoped the farmers set enough aside for themselves, and that they’d hidden their stores well.

  On a brighter note, Mike finally announced that the power loss overall on the solar front turned out to be slightly less than predicted, and he figured out more of the sunlight was getting through than first calculated. This might have been the first good weather-related news we’d received since the meteorite made impact with the ocean floor of the Pacific. He’d been studying the power situation closely, so I knew he had reams of data to back up his conclusion.

  In any event, we could now access the images from the Bonner property with our network, and the addition of the new antenna meant an increase to our radio coverage area as well. All good signs even as the winter weather continued to close in on us.

  After getting the new families moved in, we still weren’t sure about what to do with the Bonner house. With Charles gone, Mary didn’t want to move back, and none of the family with kids wanted to relocate, even with the promise of more space. Maddy and Cece made a half-hearted effort at volunteering to go back, but I was strongly opposed to the idea, as were most of the rest of our residents. The opposition came for many different reasons. To the pre-teen girls in the house, they didn’t want to give up their ‘big sisters’, while the adults looked at the two young women and decided they were still too untrained in the art of self-defense to care for themselves. We were living on top of each other, but still, nobody wanted to break up the band. So, we drained the lines, turned off most of the power at the breaker box, tied in the video feeds, and left the Bonner house empty for now.

  Yes, it violated
our own principle of having all the houses occupied, but honestly, it was the smallest of the houses and while the property bordered our own, we were using the fields already anyway and had a semi-regular presence there as we planted the greenhouse in the impassible thicket and left things as they were for the moment. I tried the Fussells again, but the voicemail was still full and their office was abandoned when I asked Wil to check on their most recent trip to town. I was kicking myself for not acting sooner, but my plate had been full for awhile now.

  The next few days came and went in a haze of working the farm and rotating our people in with the Husbands as we took turns working security at the hospital. One night when I was getting ready to head out the next morning, I thought about Sally, and how she was chomping at the bit to get back to what she called ‘real’ work. Having her back in the rotation would be a real godsend, as we were straining under the necessity of providing two escorts for hospital duty. Sally’s recovery was coming along nicely, and I knew she was looking forward to finishing her physical therapy, but she wasn’t there, yet.

  Thinking about Sally made me stop what I was doing as some dim memory was dragging its way to the surface of my conscious mind. Fortunately, I was simply rearranging the gear in my backpack trying to fit another pair of loaded spare magazines into the already cramped space, so it wasn’t like I was halting in the middle of brain surgery or anything like that.

  Nancy, however, caught me momentary freeze and decided to have a little fun at my expense. Since we were in my office and she was busy ironing clothes while I wrestled with the pack, she made me an offer I wasn’t going to refuse.

  “You okay, Bryan? Not getting another cramp there, are you?”

  Since I’d suffered a hand cramp the previous morning while milking the cows and had to apply an analgesic lotion to my forearms, so the joke was mean, but I still laughed.

  “No, just a brain cramp,” I admitted.

  “Ah, Bryan, I think the doctors call that a stroke,” Nancy retorted without missing a beat. “Is it the sight of my sexy underwear knocking you off-kilter?”

  Since she was ironing a load of thermal underwear, definitely not sexy, I let her have the obligatory chuckle, but my brain was still trying to resurrect that earlier conversation.

  “Seriously, what has you in such a lather?”

  “I was just thinking about having to leave the Bonner house empty now, and something Sally said earlier came bubbling back up,” I admitted. “I think it was…”

  I stopped again and snapped my fingers as the name came back in a rush.

  “Judith Sutcliffe,” I finally blurted out as the memory stuck around this time.

  “God Bless you,” Nancy pronounced delicately, and I laughed again, and this time I meant it. Since our little heart-to-heart conversation that allowed Nancy to unburden her fears, we had considerably advanced our relationship. Enough so that I was looking for a queen-sized bed to set up here in the office.

  I thought I might love Nancy, but I already respected the heck out of her. Nancy Prentiss was tough and cool under pressure, but she was also a person dealing with a lot of changes in a very short period of time. She’d gotten pregnant too soon, and under terrible circumstances, but she’d sacrificed and scrimped to provide for Lisa, and now she was worried she still couldn’t do enough to protect her child.

  “Sorry, but that was what I was trying to remember,” I explained. “Sally told us awhile back that she had a friend who lived up near the hospital, but I never followed up on it. Maybe we should stop in tomorrow morning and see if this friend has any information we can use.”

  “Is that it?”

  “No, I was also wondering if this friend might make a good fit over at Bonner. Sally hinted that her friend didn’t live alone, so if we think she’s a good person, we might want to get to know them better.”

  “You’ve decided to re-open recruiting?”

  “That’s a possibility,” I admitted, “but I wouldn’t make that recommendation until after meeting with this lady, if she’s still alive.”

  “What made her make your list?”

  “Nancy mentioned she was a former Marine, did some overseas deployments, and likely had some mechanical skills. If she still has family in the area and she can contribute to our group, then yes, we might consider extending an offer.”

  “Being able to fight is part of the recruitment criteria?” Nancy inquired, and I gave her a curious look.

  “What are you asking?”

  “I don’t know her, but I have heard Dorothy mention her name once or twice.”

  Nancy paused, and I held up my hands, wiggling my fingers.

  “Don’t hold out on me, little miss. If your sister has gossip, then I want the scoop. Otherwise…”

  “Are you threatening me?” Nancy retorted with a saucy lilt to her voice and a batting of the eyelashes that nearly made me start laughing again.

  “Oh, okay. Nothing bad about her. I’ve never met the lady. Dorothy just commented once that this little neck of the Piney Woods was finally emerging from behind the Pine Curtain, since it was now acceptable for homosexuals to openly live together and nobody was in a hurry to burn down their house. I believe she mentioned someone by that name as an example.”

  “Oh, is that all?” I responded with a sigh of relief. Nancy gave me a look I couldn’t read.

  “Doesn’t it bother you?”

  “I could care less,” I replied honestly. “I’ve known a lot of people over the years. Who they sleep with behind closed doors really doesn’t have anything to do with the kind of person they are. I’ve learned to live and let live.”

  “That’s a pretty liberal attitude for having grown up around here,” Nancy responded, then held up a hand. “I don’t disagree, mind you. I’ve worked in different jobs over the years, so like you, I’ve met all kinds of people. I’m glad to find out we share the same values in common that way.”

  “Our dad raised us that way,” I replied simply. Now it was Nancy’s turn to give me the hand wave to keep going, so I did.

  “My father was a hard-working man, and he had to be. Farming isn’t for sissies, as I think you’ve seen. He worked hard, every day, and he taught us the value of making an effort to better oneself. He never had a real chance to go to college, but he valued education and he made sacrifices to make sure that all of his kids had a chance to succeed. Not monetary, since there was never enough money to amount to much once all the bills were paid, but he made sure all three of us had the chance to better ourselves.”

  “You really loved him, didn’t you?”

  “I did, and more, I admired him. He took the time to teach us things while we worked alongside him. He didn’t just instill our values into each of us, but he also taught us how to judge people and make our own decisions based on those judgments,” I explained. “Not based on how a person looked, or where they were from, but how they acted and how they treated others.”

  “Is that why you didn’t hesitate when Wil suggested Shawn and his family?”

  I gave Nancy a confused look, and she continued.

  “After one meeting with them, you seemed to make your decision based on what you learned from that short time, and then Mike and Nikki fell in line with your suggestion to extend an invitation. That was pretty impressive, I have to admit.”

  “What can I say? I’m just that damned good.”

  I said it with a grin, and Nancy provided her response by throwing her underwear at my head. Okay, they were thermal longjohns, but still, that counted, right?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  After a quick family conference that night, Sally agreed to accompany me in the morning as we would make a quick stop at the Sutcliffe home on our way into the hospital. She seemed just as excited for the chance to get out again as she was to see an old friend, and when I called Wade that night, he was fine with the idea. We would leave a little earlier to build in time for the attempt. Whether Judith or her family still lived at the house
since the troubles began was up for debate, but our neighbor agreed it was worth the effort.

  The next morning dawned cold and clear, with no rain in the forecast and the temperatures hovering in the low teens. Cece volunteered to milk the cows herself this time, and Nancy, bless her, got up with me and asked Cece to teach her the ropes while I got ready for this morning excursion. I was happy to see the two of them bonding like they were, and left the duo to it while I went out to the mudroom to start laying out my gear.

  My night before had passed without the usual nightmares, but in the half-light before dawn, I felt a strange, burning twist of apprehension slide through the center of my chest, like a blade made of frost. I bit back the gasp on my lips and panned my head back and forth. For a split second, I thought I’d been hit with a taser, but maybe it was the precursor to a heart attack, instead. Except I felt fine now, and worried about the time wasted if we intended to do this right with Judith and her family.

  As my only concession to the pain I felt this morning, I’d loaded heavy for the escort trip. In addition to my usual combination of magazine carrier over the body armor, I added one of the Kevlar impact sports helmets Pat had scrounged up. Whether they would stop a bullet was up for debate, but as Pat explained, if you slipped and fell down a flight of stairs, you might want to wear your helmet to insure your brain stayed on the inside of the cranium.

  I slipped the helmet over my still shower-damp hair, then fiddled with the throat mike and earbuds until I had the short-range comms system in place. If Sally was going, too, we’d get Wil to help us wire up Wade with his set of the gear before we headed out.

  I cinched up my web belt, adjusting the holster for my pistol like I always did, then slipped on the canvas canteen cover and finally, snugged in my metal canteen and tapped the button that sealed my water carrier away. I repeated this process with the canteen mounted behind the spare magazine holders on my left side.