Merry's Marauders (Book #2 ~ Scenic Route to Paradise, refreshed 2016 edition)

by Andrea Aarons

  Merry’s Marauders

  a novel

  by Andrea Aarons

  Book 2

  Scenic Route to Paradise

  Book 1 ~ Cynic, Surfer, Saint

  Book 3 ~ Catching Kate

  Book 4 ~ Desperado Dale

  Book 5 ~ Men Most Miserable

  Chapter 1 Blinded by the Light

  Chapter 2 War Changes Everything

  Chapter 3 My Friends Call Me, Mac

  Chapter 4 The Captain and his Crew

  Chapter 5 Commandeer

  Chapter 6 Window of Opportunity

  Chapter 7 Arroyo Road

  Chapter 8 High Drama

  Chapter 9 Party

  Chapter 10 White as Snow

  Chapter 11 Take a Vote

  Chapter 12 Red Alert

  Chapter 13 Mac Gets a Clue

  Chapter 14 Plans to Evacuate

  Chapter 15 Bad Habits

  Chapter 16 Three Days

  Chapter 17 Two Days

  Chapter 18 One Day

  Chapter 19 A Memory Lost and Found

  Chapter 20 Love Changes Everything

  Chapter 1 Blinded by the Light

  Jewish Proverb

  A merry heart does good like medicine...

  Lenny doing dawn patrol, stood on the hard wet sand, looking east. He couldn’t believe his eyes. The water before him was as smooth as ice. The swell was head high, being held up by a moderate offshore. Lenny could feel the breeze on his back. For a moment, he thought to look around to see how his surfing buddies were responding to these ideal conditions in the morning twilight but he found he couldn’t take his eyes from the ocean before him. Running with his board gripped beneath his right arm, he headed for the best day of surfing he hoped to ever experience. Lenny had never been barreled but he knew-that-he-knew this was the day.

  He was surprised how quickly he paddled through the impact zone and suddenly the set was upon him... In fact, Lenny realized he hadn’t even seen the three huge waves, that is, the set coming in. Odd? He scrambled into position to catch the second, idyllic wave speeding toward shore but that was when Lenny noticed he had grabbed the wrong board! His old board? How had he grabbed the wrong board? He hadn’t used this board in years. In fact, hadn’t he given this board to his kid sister, Nikki more than a dozen years before? He had! Cursing his stupidity, Lenny decided to make the best of the situation. He began to drop in.

  Everything was happening so fast but he was in complete control and he realized if he followed through just right, he would be in the tube. Lenny started to stand up and then a bright flash... What was that? Sunrise? The sun was due to pop over the horizon at any moment. And yet now, it was dark, deathly quiet.

  His surfing bros had told him it was like that when inside the rolling wave. Maybe he had been barreled? He opened his eyes...

  Lenny was tubed all right. He was wrapped like a burrito in sheets and a motel bedspread. He groaned. Lenny wouldn’t be surfing today. He was 500 miles from everywhere in the high desert city of Santa Fe, New Mexico. And then the boom-boom-booming started.

  The halfway house was a misfit. Santa Feans are a tolerant bunch. Still, the neighborhood was middle class with most houses owned by the upper middle class but as long as the housemates kept a low profile, not causing any problems in the small community of 20 plus homes, all was well.

  Agnes Merriweather - age 21 and known simply as Merry, answered her iphone. Mrs. Ortiz who lived across the street from the house was calling again.

  “Merry, I watched you come and go over there yesterday but I suppose you didn’t see the little fellow that has been hanging out with the girls... Well, I think they have him staying there too and he cannot be much older than 9 or 10 years of age,” she told Merry.

  Merry had been at the halfway home yesterday. She was planning a trip overseas and she wanted to make sure that everyone at “the house” knew their marching orders.

  It had been six months since the 4 bedroom was donated to the Santa Fe Christian Assembly and six months since she had started a halfway home for women just released from the county jail. It had been six months of hassles, headaches and exasperation... or so it seemed to Merry.

  At 70 years old and a recent widow, Emily Ortiz was a busy body but she was also, very understanding. She had a lot of compassion for “the girls” as she called them. Her eyes had kept quite a few minor incidents from turning into major aggravations for Merry.

  The problem was that Merry was trying to get ready for an extended trip abroad but also, she was packing up her mother’s stuff which was being sent overseas to the same remote destination. She had taken Mrs. Ortiz’s call as she drove south toward the Albuquerque airport to pick up a man who was sent by her mother to help Merry and also, to act as Merry’s travel escort for her trip.

  Mac D’Almata or more precisely, Malak of Almata was captain of the guard to the royal house of D’Almata. Merry had met him briefly last autumn when she and her mother visited the island nation in the Adriatic Sea. Now he was assigned to assist Merry, eventually escorting her to D’Almata which was not an easy task for even a seasoned traveler.

  Malak was waiting on the curb outside of the international baggage claim. He was just as handsome, and tall and dark as she remembered him, along with his inscrutable smile. She hadn’t expected Mac but another guard; a Bosnian named Rifta whom she knew quite well but at the last minute Rifta got very sick and so it was to be Malak. Malak or Mac as he was called by friends and family was first cousin to the king. Merry guessed correctly that he was about 35 and very capable of getting her to her mother on D’Almata along with more than a dozen crates of American goods. He dressed in jeans, a comfortable cashmere sweater under a black leather jacket with a travel-on bag and a small leather backpack slung over his shoulder.

  “Welcome to America,” Merry said.

  He replied, “Thank you, Merry. How are you?” His thick accent made her smile.

  “Very busy. Trying to get out of town! Are you hungry or can we run a quick errand first?” Merry asked. She was thinking of the halfway house. The international flight had fed Mac amply. It was decided they would tend to Merry’s errand.

  Patsy Sena, the live-in house mother and longtime family friend of the Merriweathers was not home when Merry and Mac pulled into the gravel driveway. Besides Auntie Patsy, there were six other women living on the premises. Ex-druggies, thieves and a violent parolee who were intent on getting their lives turned around.

  Merry came in and found only purple-haired Sylvia Medina and her housemate, Angel Tapia home. There was a Bible Study scheduled for four o’clock, Merry remembered and Patsy and the women who weren’t working would return before then.

  Merry looked at Angel and said without preliminaries, “What is up with the kid hanging around smoking cigarettes?”

  Sylvia answered before Angel could. “What kid? Oh, you mean the punk from the neighborhood back there? Yeah, he has been coming over mooching cigarettes.” There was a huge new development of houses about a quarter of a mile away and she lifted her chin in that direction as she spoke.

  Merry ignored her to direct her questions at Angel. “He’s your little brother, isn’t he? Where is he?” Merry had heard all about Angel’s younger brother because they had been praying about him for months as he went from foster home to foster home. Angel went over to the closet door and opened it. Junior was standing next to the vacuum cleaner. Merry had not decided what she was going to do but the next moment changed any viable decision she would have made, regardl
ess.

  There was a stunning white flash. Momentarily Merry was blinded, as were the others. The women and the boy started cursing and bumping into one another. Merry’s back was to the flash and she still wore sunglasses from her drive up from Albuquerque.

  “What was that?” she yelled. She stepped back away from the fumbling noises coming from Sylvia, Angel and Junior. A moment later, her vision cleared. Merry turned and opened the front door to see Malak, out of the car, running towards her.

  “Dungeon! Get to the dungeon,” he was shouting. Merry turned back to the others. Junior had a bloody nose. He had run into the closet door. Sylvia, her dramatic makeup smeared, towered above the shorter Angel Tapia, as they hugged each other. Both were crying because neither one of them could see.

  “Sylvia, Angel! Get those water jugs from under the kitchen cabinet...” Merry began but she was interrupted by Sylvia’s shouting that she was “blind!” Angel and now, Junior were crying.

  Mac was through the door. He grabbed Merry savagely by the arm, propelling her forward into the room. “Mac! Listen to me!” Merry yelled. “There is no dungeon or basement!”

  “Yes...? This is bad!” he responded but immediately began looking about for an alternative.

  Merry said, “There is the well house - it’s underground. But these girls, the boy... Will you get them in there?”

  Shouting, he told them, “We’ve got two minutes… less, now.” He had Sylvia hold tight to her friend and he guided them outside following Merry who had Angel’s brother by the arm, although he struggled.

  Merry forced the boy to the left and along the side of the house; she made him sit down. “Sit here. It is going to be okay,” she told him. His head was shaved excepting for a three inch mohawk of dark brown hair, trembling above diamond stud earrings in each ear. He nodded hopefully.

  Mac came with the others who were beginning to get their vision back. Merry lifted the metal cap from the well. There was a ten foot drop into the room below. The ladder was in the garage but apparently there was no time to retrieve it.

  Pointing to the hole, she said to Mac, “I’ll be right back. Get in. Jogging, she returned carrying a laundry basket, Mrs. Ortiz shuffling before her. Mac stood over the well opening, motioning to them.

  “Watch out,” Merry shouted down the hole and then unceremoniously dropped the basket. Lifting thin Mrs. Ortiz, Mac swung her over the opening and then moved down with her until he dropped her. He wasn’t so careful with Merry. She had climbed over the lip when he grabbed her wrist and then let go. Kicking a water jug aside, she scrambled out of his way.

  Just as Mac secured the well cover but before his feet hit the ground below there was a thunderous booming, vibrating their refuge. Sylvia and Angel started howling and young Junior, whimpering.

  It was pitch dark in the well room but after groping about for a moment, Merry found the flashlight above the fuse box. She flicked it on. The ground below her feet trembled continuously. The sounds, like thunder came from a long distance but the reverberations could be felt in the cement encased room. Fine powder sifted down from the ceiling.

  Mrs. Ortiz was standing pressed against the holding tank for the well pump. Junior’s face was smeared with blood from his nose bleed. Mac’s eyes were wide with surprise at the flashlight as his sunglasses were now positioned atop his head. The others were huddled and humbled by the shock of the last few minutes.

  The plastic laundry basket had been filled sometime before the New Year. Pasty Sena and Merry had put together items for emergencies at the suggestion of their pastor. He hadn’t mentioned specifics but Merry went on-line and got a list of emergency basics for a large household. The intent was to have it ready to be thrown into the trunk of a car at a moments notice.

  The laundry tote carried blankets, a first aid and survival kit, food, a flashlight, batteries and several water bottles and other essentials. Merry had wanted to get more water but she tossed just one gallon of the dozens from the kitchen on top of the already filled basket.

  Mac whistled shrilly. “No more noise. Silence!’ he ordered.

  Merry wondered if Mrs. Ortiz was in shock. She continued leaning against the tank; her face pale under her olive complexion and her dark eyes staring wildly before her. Her salt and pepper hair cut short was covered by the falling silt. Merry had found the elderly neighbor standing in the driveway when returning with the laundry basket. The others quieted as Mac had commanded but Merry asked, “Mac, what is happening?”

  Mac’s forehead glistened. He puckered his lips and then wiped his mouth with a cloth handkerchief. He looked at her and then at the boy. He shook his head and then looked to Merry again. She assumed his was the look of disgusted disbelief.

  Pulling off a now tattered pair of black leather gloves that he had put on sometime before Merry returned with the emergency supplies, Mac said, “It appears to be war. From my experience, bombs or rocket flex come immediately after the flash.” He let out a whistled breath similar to a steam kettle. Nodding with appreciation, he looked around their confines, adding, “It’ll stop soon but this place is almost as good as a dungeon.”

  In a few minutes the thundering did cease.

  Mac said, “It sounded close but not on top of us.”

  Merry had given a flashlight to Sylvia. She held it while Mac and Junior gathered the things scattered from the basket. Merry was talking in hushed tones to Mrs. Ortiz but not getting a response from her. Angel had wiped Junior’s face with a sock that came from the basket and now she sat with the bloody sock in her hand.

  They hadn’t been down in the well room twenty minutes when Mac began his ascent up and out. He climbed the tank and balancing on it pushed the well cover up and over the lip. Light came flooding into the cavity.

  Merry told Mac about the ladder and he came back with it. They helped Mrs. Ortiz up first. Sylvia went up next and then Junior and Angel. Merry turned out the flashlight that was lying on the ground next to the discarded bloodied sock. Returning it to the spot above the fuse box, she put the basket with the supplies behind the tank where they would not be seen from above.

  When Merry surfaced, no one was in sight. There was a haze and dust in the air, reminding Merry of the effects of a forest fire. The sun shined eerily pink like at sundown although still high in the sky, as it was not quite noon. Looking south to Albuquerque, Merry saw a horizon shrouded in a low dusty looking cloud. Near and far, sirens were sounding - ambulances, fire trucks, house and car alarms but there weren’t any natural noises; no people, no birds, no dogs barking. A normally quiet neighborhood anyway, the houses were separated by as much as three acres.

  Not bothering to pull the ladder up or to cover the well house for now, Merry headed inside. Sylvia had Mrs. Ortiz on the couch with a cup of water in hand. Mac wasn’t around but Merry could hear Angel shouting in English-Spanish slang at Junior in the other room.

  Merry said to Sylvia, “You okay? And you, Mrs. Ortiz? Are you alright?” Merry thought the older woman looked sane again. Mrs. Ortiz bobbed her head. Her voice was shaky but then it usually was.

  “My doggy. I hope she isn’t hurt. She ran off just before that flash and I left her... but… But how did I get down in that well house with you, Merry?” she asked.

  Merry stepped forward and took Mrs. Ortiz’s hand. She patted it gently and noticed that the widow continued to wear her wedding band. Merry said, “We’ll talk about that later.”

  Angel and Junior came into the room. Angel had a suitcase and Junior held a backpack in his arms. Angel pushed past Merry, saying, “You people are loco-crazy! I’m getting out of here. Come on, Junior!”

  “Angel, don’t be ridiculous! What? You think this is our fault?” Merry asked, incredulous. “You need to stay here, until we figure out what to do. Where are you going to go, anyway?”

  Junior looked like he wanted to stay but he followed his sister as she crossed the room for the door. A cell phone left atop a Bible was on the ledge of the narrow wind
ow that ran parallel to the front door. Angel stooped and picked these up. She hesitated in the doorway to check her phone.

  Merry staring at her is disbelief said, “Angel, the cell phone isn’t going to work! Katrina? 9-11? Los Angeles, just last year? Does that ring a bell?”

  Limp, bleached blond hair hanging unbrushed at her shoulders, Angel looked up at her not comprehending. Merry came over and touched her shoulder, looking first to the boy and then into Angel’s panic-stricken face. “It’s serious. No telling what’s happening but my advice - and I’ve given you some good advice lately - stay with us until things settle down.” Angel had three tears tattooed below the outside of her right eye but real droplets were flooding the inside corners of both eyes. Turning she went out the door with the child following.

  They were down the driveway when Merry called, “Angel! Your brother isn’t even wearing a jacket - come on!” Angel wore a light coat and tight jeans while Junior followed in oversized jean-shorts and an extra large white T-shirt.

  Sunny days in Santa Fe were usually warm even in the winter months but nightfall or dense shade meant frigid cold now in March. Snow was not infrequent as late as May, although rare for the lower New Mexican elevations. At the moment, with the abnormal overcast, it was cool. Merry closed the door.

  Going to the kitchen Merry reached for the faucet. Her hand was trembling. Gripping the faucet handle to steady herself, she yanked it on... nothing. Although the house was on well water, no electricity meant no pump and no pump meant no water.

  At 21 years of age, Merry was a looker. Her parents had been missionaries raising Merry and her siblings in South Africa for the most part although they had gone into nearby nations for shorter intervals during their 20 year stint. She thought like, and carried herself as an American but occasionally her sing-song speech often gave way the fact that she was raised elsewhere. Dark blonde hair, golden brown eyes framed by dark long lashes and dramatic brows, at an athletic 5’7”, Merry was a looker. As a child, no one especially her parents concentrated on her extraordinary beauty and so Merry grew into adulthood without vanity. That fact and because she was raised on the mission field, left Merry with a well-developed personality. Besides having a beautiful head on her shoulders, Merry had a good head on her shoulders, too. She was sensible.