The Borrowed World (Book 3): Legion of Despair

by Franklin Horton

  “But we will get to go back to our regular lives, right?” Charlotte asked. “Things will get back to normal, won’t they?”

  Gary was silent for a moment. They were not up to speed on the situation in the world. They did not realize the full implications. They had not seen what he’d seen. He had to be gentle about this. That was the problem Jim always had in communicating the seriousness of the situation to people who weren’t getting it. He had no subtlety. He had been the perfect example of how not to have this conversation.

  “I would love to pat you on the head and tell you it’s going to be all right. As your father, I would like nothing more than to be able to offer you that reassurance. We have to be realistic, though. It could be years before everything is completely normal again,” Gary said. “We don’t know the extent of everything that’s gone on yet. There is physical damage that has to be fixed. There are communication channels that have to be repaired before we can coordinate a recovery effort on a national level. There are a lot of things that have to happen. If it’s sooner than a year, I’d be surprised.”

  There was a collective moan from the group.

  “A year? Really?” Charlotte asked. “What about my job? What about school for the kids?”

  Gary shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you. My role right now, as I see it, is to keep all of you alive and not to maintain some illusion for you. You are all adults and will have to accept the reality of this situation the same as I do. I cannot tell you the…horror of what I saw out there. I do not want that horror to become part of our lives. At the same time, you all will have to accept that there will be inconveniences. There may be struggling. There may even be suffering. I will do my best to minimize that and try to make sure that we thrive. I have prepared for that, but there are no guarantees.”

  Gary’s wife cleared her throat and the room became silent. Everyone turned to her. “I have complete faith in you, Gary,” she said. “I did when I married you and I still do now. Do we have what we need to thrive and stay safe here in this house? If we all move in here together, can we weather this disturbance and stay safe? I know you made preparations, but are they enough?”

  Gary was silent. This was going to be difficult. They would probably not like this answer. “I’m not sure if we can or not,” he said honestly. “By the time I became concerned about societal collapse and began making preparations, we were already invested in this location. We had already built this house and established ourselves here. I thought about us moving to a more sustainable location but I just wasn’t sure I could go through that whole process again. Building a home is so emotionally exhausting. I have discovered there are shortcomings to this property that we might not be able to overcome if this is truly a long-term disaster.”

  Debra sighed as if preparing herself for a blow. “Such as?”

  “Water for one,” Gary said. “There is no water source up here. Town water was available when we built so we didn’t have to put in a well. That was a plus at the time because it saved us money on building the house, but it’s not so much of a plus now. There’s not even a creek nearby. The closest spring water is on Kent’s Ridge Road and it’s about a mile from here. We could certainly drive up there and collect water if we had to, but do we want to use up all the fuel we have left just on getting water? How much water could we collect on a bike? Could we push a wagon or wheelbarrow two miles round trip each day to retrieve water? Would it even be safe to do so? Could any of us even pull a wagon of water up that steep hill coming up the driveway? I’m not sure I could.”

  “That spring is also on private property,” Will said. “If water becomes a problem, who knows if there will even be free access to that spring anymore? They could close it off and start charging for water. I’m not sure if it was mine if I would just allow anyone and everyone to come on my property and take water.”

  Sara glared at Will, obviously not appreciating her husband adding his gloomy insights to the conversation.

  “Good point,” Gary said. “I’m just not sure that you all have any clue how much water we all use on a regular basis. My mother told me that when I was a baby their well dried up during a drought and they had to haul water from a spring two miles away. Even using a vehicle, they had to get water twice a day just to keep a baby clean and cloth diapers washed. If we run out of disposable diapers, how much water do you think it will take to keep three children bathed and in clean diapers? We’re talking lots of water, plus what we’ll all need for cooking, drinking, and bathing ourselves.”

  “Diapers would have been something good to purchase in advance,” Charlotte said. “Both disposable and cloth. Too late now. You should have mentioned that earlier.”

  “I didn’t mention it because I took care of it. I have plenty,” Gary said, smiling. “I probably have several hundred disposable diapers stored in one of the outbuildings and a few dozen cloth ones. Just in case.”

  Charlotte didn’t appear relieved by that. She was probably picturing herself scrubbing cloth diapers in a washtub and was not thrilled by the image. “I’m guessing you have a washboard stored out there somewhere?”

  “Better,” Gary said. “I have a prepper washing machine.”

  “What’s that?” Charlotte asked, not sure she wanted to know.

  “A five gallon bucket with a hole drilled in the lid,” he said. “You put water, soap, and dirty clothes in it. You stick a plunger handle through the hole in the bucket lid, then put the lid on the bucket. You agitate it like you’re churning butter. It’s not perfect but it’s easier than a washboard.”

  “A clean plunger, I hope,” Sara said.

  “It’s a new one,” Gary said. “Never used. Don’t worry.”

  “Is that it?” Debra asked impatiently. “Is water the big problem?”

  “Water is probably the biggest, but not the only problem,” Gary admitted. “Security would be running a close second.”

  “But we’re up here on this hill all by ourselves?” Sara said. “Isn’t that secure enough?”

  “Was it secure last night?” Gary asked. “It didn’t seem like it to me. We only heard those folks because they were on noisy machines. What about all the folks who might just walk in here on foot? How many folks have already been in here creeping around at night and you’ve just not heard them?”

  “I don’t think that’s likely,” Charlotte said.

  “I do,” Gary said. “Someone stole the generator last night while we were all distracted. I didn’t hear them take it.”

  The group look surprised.

  “How did they find it?” Debra said. “It was hidden around the side of the house.”

  “They probably heard it running at some point,” Gary said. “Then they just watched until they found it.”

  “Now you’re saying that people have been watching us?” Sara asked.

  “Probably,” Gary replied. “There could be people watching us right now.”

  “What people?” Sara asked. “That’s just creepy.”

  “There’s an entire public housing project close by,” Gary said. “Hundreds of apartments of people who are probably already out of food and water. People who need what we have.”

  “That’s nearly two miles away,” Sara pointed out. “They have closer neighbors than us. Wouldn’t they just steal from them first?”

  “By road it’s two miles, yes,” Gary agreed, then gestured toward the back of their property. “If you walk over that hill there, you come out in the middle of the complex. It’s probably not even three hundred yards away.”

  “I never realized that,” Charlotte said. “I guess I never thought about it.”

  “It was a lot smaller when we built this house,” Gary said. “They’ve added four new buildings since then. We have to take all of that into account when trying to assess the long-term viability of this location. Just as those people came in last night, there could be more people walking in. We need to be on guard against visitors from all sides.”
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  “This is making me sad,” Charlotte said.

  Gary couldn’t help but smile, seeing her pout just like she did when she was a little girl. “I’m sorry, sweetie. The good news is that in an hour you’ll be way too busy to dwell on it. Let’s just be glad that we’re all alive, we’re all safe, and we’re together. There are many families that aren’t.”

  *

  True to his word, Gary soon had his family distracted enough by the task at hand that they could no longer dwell on the unpleasant possibilities that they might be facing. They started at Sara and Will’s house, which was the farthest from Gary’s. Gary hooked a utility trailer to his lawn tractor, his most fuel efficient vehicle, and they used that to shuttle loads back and forth. It wasn’t like they were going a long distance and couldn’t ever return home, so they prioritized the loads with the items they would need the soonest and most often. As with any parents of small children, that meant starting with baby stuff: diapers, formula, baby medicines, clothes, toys, a playpen, and highchair.

  “Surely that will be enough to hold a baby for a day,” Gary said. “I don’t think your mother and I ever had this much stuff when we raised you girls.”

  “Sorry, Dad,” Sara said. “They just make more stuff now.”

  “Then they shame you into buying it,” Gary said.

  “Hey, we didn’t buy all this,” Sara said. “I remember you buying a lot of this.”

  Gary grinned. “First grandchild. I couldn’t help it.”

  “It’s okay,” Sara said, hugging him. “It will all get used and worn out before we girls are done having babies.”

  “I hope we’re never done with babies,” Gary admitted.

  Sara patted him on the back. “Dad, get moving,” she said. “I’ll have another load on the front porch by the time you guys get back.”

  While Will and Gary shuttled the first load to Gary’s house, Sara started working in the kitchen. She and Will did not have a generator like her parents so they’d not been able to keep the refrigerator and freezer going long enough to save their food. They’d eaten what they could and taken some things to her mom’s house. They’d still been forced to clean out the refrigerator several days ago when everything started reeking. There were probably things that needed to be thrown away anyway, like the leftover mustard from a cookout that no one was ever going to eat, the horseradish from a failed coleslaw experiment, and the bottle of wine they’d received as a housewarming present that had tasted like crap when they tried drinking it. Now the refrigerator door was propped open to prevent mildew and the inside was clean and bare.

  Sara made a quick pass through the kitchen and boxed up the contents of her pantry. She considered for a moment that she might need to leave some food for the point in time that she and Will returned to living in their own house, but if they were going to pool their resources she needed to be all in. She would take everything worth taking out of this kitchen and they could deal with restocking it when that time came. As much as she hated to admit it, there was also the possibility that they might not be able to return home anytime soon. She would not think about that now, though. She was more practical and realistic than Charlotte.

  As she passed the sink, Sara glanced outside through the single kitchen window. The window looked out across their sparse backyard to the boundary of weeds on the hill behind them. Their lawn looked pitiful. She and Will had sown grass and planted trees, but it had been a busy summer and the children needed their attention constantly. Yards took time to fill out and mature. Perhaps by next summer the yard would be more presentable.

  She turned back to her work, then froze. Something outside had caught her eye and was only now registering with her brain. She backed up. There had been something else there, something out of place.

  She scanned the yard close to the house but it was so bare that anything unusual would have been readily apparent. She looked higher onto the hillside, where the knee-high weeds merged with the woods that bordered their property. Her breath caught in her throat when she saw three men standing there.

  These were not normal men. Besides all of them wearing black clothing from head-to-toe, they were also wearing masks. They were pullover cloth masks that covered the wearer’s face from the eyes down. The masks were printed with a skull pattern that made them appear to be leering at her from the hillside. In another time and place the getup might have been laughable. Now, with full knowledge of what type of people would be wearing such an outfit and why they would be wearing it, it filled her with terror.

  They made no attempt to hide themselves as they watched the house. She was nearly certain that they could not see her because of the glare off the window. She backed away slightly, just in case, putting her body off to the side of the window. She watched to see if they would walk away but they continued watching.

  She ran to the front door in a panic. She looked out and couldn’t see her dad or Will. They were probably unloading the trailer into the garage for now and the garage wasn’t visible from her front door. She could yell for them but it was several hundred yards. They probably wouldn’t be able to hear her. She started to run out the front door and toward her parent’s house but with the yard bare of any concealing vegetation she would be out in the open. What if they came after her? If they took her, no one would have a clue where to even start looking.

  She found that the idea of running away did not set well with her. She did not want to be afraid in her own house. She wanted to stand her ground. She had been raised to do that. She was not a victim and she would not let herself become a victim. This was her house. She needed to calm down and take control of this situation. She had not seen any visible weapons. If she could calm herself, she could take care of this.

  She closed the front door and locked the deadbolt, then made a quick pass around the lower floor of the house and confirmed that all of the doors and windows accessible from the ground were locked. She ran back to the kitchen and glanced out the window again. The men were still there. One held a long knife in his hand now and was using it to point. It looked like he was pointing toward the French doors that led from her dining room to the patio. Surely they couldn’t think the house was abandoned. If they’d been watching it for any time at all, they would have seen her father and husband leaving with the trailer full of stuff. Maybe they knew it was still occupied and didn’t care.

  She ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time. Though they planned to take all of the guns with them to her dad’s house, they’d not started moving them yet. They had a gun safe in the bedroom that her dad had bought them as a housewarming gift. She punched the code into the digital lock and threw the lever. The weapon that both her dad and Will had encouraged her to use if she ever had to defend her home was the 12 gauge shotgun. It was a Mossberg 590 tactical model and they kept it in the front of the safe with the tube magazine loaded and the chamber empty. All she had to do to ready the weapon was to rack the pump and chamber a round. If the sound of the pump action cycling was not sufficient enough to deter these trespassers, then perhaps a chest full of 00-buckshot would do the job.

  Shutting the gun safe, she ran to the window of Lana’s room and peered out the curtains without disturbing them. The men had come closer and were at the edge of her straw-covered lawn. They had crouched down and continued to study the house. She wondered if they were trying to figure out if anyone was home or not. They were clearly on her property now. They were trespassing and were not well-intentioned or they wouldn’t be lurking in the weeds behind the house. They wouldn’t be wearing masks. She had to make it clear that this was the wrong house to mess with.

  She returned to the front door, unlocked it, and slipped out. She looked back toward her parents’ house one more time and still saw no one. Though two weeks ago she could have called over there, or even called 911 for help, now there were fewer options. As she’d considered before, she could run, but that would not send a message of strength. That would not be a deterrent. Panic
resurfaced and she had a brief thought that she should run to her sister’s house for help, then she remembered Charlotte and her husband were not there because they were at her dad’s house looking after all the kids, waiting on their turn to empty their own house. She would have to deal with this alone.

  Dropping off the side of the front porch, she walked along the red mulch and foot-high shrubs toward the side of the house furthest from that of her sister’s or parents’. She chose this side because she assumed the men would be splitting their attention between studying her house and keeping watch toward the other houses. There was nothing on this end for them to be concerned with. No other houses, no other neighbors. They would not be expecting anything from this side. She was counting on that.

  She listened at the corner and heard nothing. Even so, she raised the shotgun to her shoulder, placed her finger on the safety and stepped around the corner. She’d been taught to do this in such a manner that you didn’t lead with the barrel, allowing an intruder to grab the barrel and take your weapon from you. She stepped away from the house, putting some distance between her body and the corner, but there was no one there. She released the breath she’d been holding and approached the back corner of the house.

  She knew this time would be different. She knew there was definitely someone around this corner. Three someones, in fact. She paused, keeping her body close to the wall. If they had handguns on them and opened fire, she would have to duck back quickly and hope that the house could absorb the bullets.

  She shouldered the weapon and leaned around the corner, glaring down the barrel at the men. The ghost ring sight lay on the chest of the middle man. At this distance, without the protection of her locked house around her, the masked men terrified her. She had never been so close to killing a man purely out of fear.