“So you are Travis, right?” Gary asked yet again.
The man finally nodded. “I am. Jim and I grew up together. I’ve known him a long damn time.”
“He and I have been friends for about twenty-five years,” Gary said, smiling.
“I never said we were friends, or that I liked him,” Travis said, moving up the line of vehicles and looking inside each of them. “The sneaky bastard always seemed like he was up to something. What kind of trouble did you run into back at your home? Must be bad if you’re bugging out.”
“Looters and thieves, I guess you’d call them,” Gary said. “They kept trying to break into our house. It got to where we couldn’t even go outside without some kind of run-in. Last night they killed my son-in-law in the front yard. We just buried him before we left this morning.”
The trooper nodded, continuing to move along the line of vehicles, scanning both the contents of the vehicle and the person driving it. When he got to Debra’s vehicle, he stopped by the passenger window and stared at Charlotte. Her eyes were swollen from crying and she still moaned with the pain of loss, though exhaustion had sapped some of the fury from it.
“There’s a lot of shitheads out in the world right now,” the trooper said.
“That’s a fact,” Gary said.
“Where did you get the fuel for your trip? It hasn’t been available to civilians for several weeks.”
“It’s what we had at home,” Gary said. “I was out of town when the crap hit the fan and I walked home with Jim. My family didn’t drive anywhere while I was gone. They were afraid to even leave the house. We’re using every last bit of fuel we have for this trip.”
Travis nodded, seemingly satisfied with that response. “One last question,” he said. “Why are you driving a vehicle with Local Government Use Only tags on it?”
That question took Gary completely by surprise. He’d not considered that there may be some fallout from using a public vehicle for his private move. In the scheme of things, it seemed a minor detail. Leave it to a cop to notice something like that.
He decided that honesty was easiest. “Jim and I work at the mental health agency together. He lent me the vehicle. It’s from his division.”
The trooper considered this. “I’m not sure that the law allows him to lend a public vehicle for private use. As a matter of fact, I’m pretty sure that the law strictly forbids it.”
“Look,” Gary said, “we’re just trying to get moved. The truck is full of my personal belongings. I’m going to take it back once this mess is all over. It’s probably even safer with me than it would be back at the office. You could probably even say that I’m assisting the Commonwealth of Virginia in preserving one of its assets.”
The trooper looked Gary in the eye. He knew BS when he heard it, but he appreciated it when it was used skillfully. “How do I know it’s full of your personal belongings? How do I know that you didn’t steal a bunch of food and fuel from your work? Supplies paid for with public money? You prove to me that it’s your personal belongings in there and I’ll let you through.”
“Look if you want to,” Gary said, frustrated now. “We’ve got nothing to hide. We’re just trying to get moved. We’ve had a really bad night and today hasn’t been so hot either. We just want to get to our destination.”
The trooper slung his rifle over his shoulder. “I’ll take you at your word about borrowing the truck,” he said. “I still need to look in the back. If it’s full of personal stuff and not stolen goods, you’ll be free to go on your way. If I see any property tags indicating that the contents are state property, I’m confiscating the truck and everything in it.”
“Fair enough,” Gary said. “Knock yourself out.”
Gary led the trooper to the back of the vehicle and reached for the handle on the sliding door. The trooper put out a hand to stop him.
“I think I can take care of that,” he said.
Gary raised both hands and stepped back. “Sorry, just trying to help.” He had no idea what he was going to do if this went south. Was he willing to kill this trooper? He wasn’t sure he could do that.
“You can help me by going back there and standing by that next vehicle,” Travis instructed. “I don’t turn my back on people I don’t know.”
Gary did as he was told, walking back and standing by Debra’s window.
“Everything going okay?” she asked.
“I have no idea. This guy is a jerk,” Gary replied. “I think he’s just hassling us because he’s bored. I don’t know what he’s getting out of it.”
“Did you tell him that you were friends with Jim?”
Gary nodded. “Yeah, and I’m not sure that it helped. As a matter of fact, I think it may have had the opposite effect.”
Debra grimaced. “Sorry. Jim can have that effect on people.”
Gary shrugged. There was nothing that could be done about it now.
The trooper’s rifle slid awkwardly from his shoulder as he leaned over to open the back door the truck. He unslung his rifle and propped it against the bumper, threw the heavy steel latch on the door, and tugged on the canvas strap that lifted the door. As the door rose, no one noticed the black clad figure standing in the darkened interior until it was too late.
Travis shaded his eyes to better see inside the truck. When his eyes adjusted and he saw the grinning skull face of the tactical mask, his hand dropped to his pistol and he opened his mouth to say something. It was then that everyone noticed that the masked man was holding a shotgun. The trooper yelled and began to draw his sidearm but it was too late. The skull-faced man pulled the trigger once, then twice, each shot pushing Travis further back.
Despite the mask, Gary recognized the hair. He recognized the eyes. It was Molloy. Somehow he’d slipped into the back of the truck during the confusion of the night. He was planning to go with them to their new home.
Stunned, Gary reacted, crouching beside the vehicle and drawing his Glock. The gunman noticed Gary’s movement and pointed the shotgun in his direction, firing off another round. Gary ducked and the windshield shattered. He popped back up, leveled his Glock across Debra’s hood and fired four times, each shot striking the black figure center mass. He twisted and jerked, dropping the shotgun. As he fell, he sagged to the truck bed, then slithered out the door onto the pavement. Gary stepped out of cover, keeping his gun leveled at the black figure. He saw no movement.
There was a scream behind him. Karen had heard the shot and run to her mother’s aid, finding the shattered windshield and two bodies covered in glass fragments.
“Mom?” Karen cried.
Gary ran back to the car and flung open the driver’s door. “Debra, are you okay?”
Debra rose slowly, glass fragments raining down from her. “I’m okay. Check Charlotte.”
Gary ran to the other side of the car. “Charlotte! Baby, are you okay? Charlotte?”
She didn’t move.
Gary pulled her door open and touched her shoulder.
“Charlotte!”
Karen was helping Debra brush the glass from her hair and out of her clothes.
“Tell me my baby is okay, Gary,” Debra pleaded. “Tell me she’s okay.”
Gary grabbed Charlotte by the shoulders and pulled her from the vehicle. Glass scratched and sliced at his fingers and the palms of his hands. He lay Charlotte on her back and brushed glass from her face and hair. He didn’t see any blood but her eyes were closed and she was unresponsive. Alice was suddenly at his side with Sara. They were watching him in silence. He noticed Will in his peripheral vision, checking the dead man, then joining them also.
“Charlotte, are you okay?” Gary asked, his voice breaking. “Please, baby, are you okay?”
Her face screwed into a mask of pain and a furious scream erupted from her. Gary recoiled from the intensity of it, realizing it meant she was alive. It was like the first cry of a baby, the indication that the child survived birth. He began sobbing. Debra, finally free of glass, came running ar
ound the vehicle. She dropped to her knees and hugged her daughter.
“Charlotte, it’s okay. You don’t need to cry. You’re alive,” Debra whispered. “You’re alive, sweetie.”
Charlotte opened her eyes and looked at her mother. “That’s why I’m crying,” she said. “I’m crying because I’m still alive and I don’t want to be.”
There was a moan from behind them. Gary had forgotten about the trooper in the midst of his fear for his family. He found Travis lying on his back, attempting to staunch the spurt of arterial blood from his neck with his fingers. Gary knelt beside him. The man had been wearing a heavy military plate carrier but several buckshot rounds had gone above the armor and caught him in the throat. The blood ran like a faucet. Gary tried applying pressure by placing a bandana over the wound but it was hopeless. In the days of 9-1-1, he might have had a fighting chance. In this world, he had none.
Gary noticed Travis looking him in the eye.
“Why did you do it?” he whispered. “I was going to let you go.”
“Do what?” Gary asked, confused.
“Let your people shoot me.”
“I-I… didn’t d-do anything,” Gary stammered.
“I would have let you go,” Travis said. He was weaker now, his voice slowing, his eyes shocky.
“He wasn’t one of my people,” Gary rushed to explain. “He’s one of the people that killed my son-in-law.”
The explanation fell on deaf ears. The trooper was gone.
“Shit!” Gary yelled. He beat on his thighs with his fists. He stood and yelled it again. “Shit!”
Will came running up with his rifle in his hand. “We need to get out of here,” he said. “There are a lot of houses up in that neighborhood and people are starting to come out and look. We need to be gone before someone comes down here.”
That thought cleared Gary’s head quickly. He grabbed the trooper’s Tavor rifle and handed it to Will. “Put this in the truck and shut the back door.” He grabbed six spare mags from Travis’ vest and the Sig that he’d dropped beside him. He found two spare Sig mags on his belt and he took those as well. It wasn’t so much a calculated move as a reaction to gather what resources he could immediately lay his hands on.
“I’m sorry,” Gary said to Travis’ body.
“I’m not,” Will said.
“How can you not be sorry?” Gary said. “He was just doing his job. He didn’t deserve this. He died thinking we did this to him on purpose.”
“If that cop hadn’t opened that door, who would have been the next person opening it?” Will asked. “Who?”
The realization dawned on Gary. It would likely have been him. Or it would have been Will. Either way, his family would have lost another man. As badly as he felt about it, he would rather it be the trooper than he or Will. His family couldn’t sustain another loss.
“We need to get going,” Will urged.
Gary ran to the cab of the truck, which he’d fortunately left running, because they didn’t have time now for boosting cars. People were getting closer to the road. He snatched up his radio. “Let’s get out of here.”
Everyone piled into their cars and pulled out, the vehicles in the back swerving to avoid the two dead bodies. As they slipped through the concrete barriers and past the intersection, Gary could see people coming down the street from a nearby neighborhood. Some of them appeared to be carrying weapons. The obvious conclusion that those strangers would arrive at when they came upon the scene would be that Gary and his people had killed the trooper. It’s what he would think under the same circumstances. They would have to hide the truck when they got to Jim’s and then get rid of it at the first opportunity. It was the most obvious of the vehicles and if there was any sort of law enforcement in place at all, they might be looking for it.
Gary took the radio off the dash. “Jim, you read me?”
The response was immediate this time. “Jim here.”
“We’re coming in hot,” Gary said. “We hit stormy seas.”
“Understood,” Jim said. “You know the road by the old school near my house?”
“I do.”
“Turn there and go four miles,” Jim said. “Then turn right and take the first left. Go about one half mile and I’ll be waiting for you by the side of the road. There will be folks with me to help.”
Gary felt better already. “Appreciate it,” Gary said. “We’ll see you in a few.”
Chapter 18
The Valley
After receiving Gary’s radio transmission from the road, Jim drove to the end of his driveway to wait on him. He’d sent Buddy, Lloyd, and Pete up to Henry’s farm earlier to get the house presentable. It wasn’t like they were staging it for HGTV or anything, but there were a few things that needed immediate attention.
They opened the windows to let in some fresh air. They pulled up the hallway carpet, removing the bloodstain from where Henry’s wife bled to death at the hands of Charlie Rakes. They also gathered and removed the accumulation of trash from when Charlie and his family had lived in the house. What could be burned was dealt with in the backyard. Non-burnable trash went to a sinkhole back away from the house. It was the same way they did it in the country a century ago, before landfills, transfer stations, and community dumpsters. Garbage pickup had never been available out this far and, at this rate, wouldn’t be for a long time coming.
Ellen and Nana had fixed a box of ready-to-eat food for the family. It wasn’t like in the old days, when Gary could just send out for pizza since it was moving day. Jim didn’t know what they’d fixed, but it smelled good in the cab of the truck.
When Jim heard a truck approaching, he recognized it. The exhaust on that truck had been rusted out for years and had a particular sound to it. He’d told his crew to get it fixed but they kept putting it off. There was no sense in Gary stopping his whole entourage in the road just for a greeting when they were this close to their new home. Jim pulled out in the road, waved to Gary to follow him, and led the convoy directly to Henry’s farm.
Jim found the gate open and eased through, the truck bouncing a little on the cattle guard. Pete, Buddy, and Lloyd were sitting in the shade of the porch. He saw Buddy spin the lid back onto a mason jar and pass it to Lloyd, who tucked it into a bucket of tools. Pete was sipping on a Dr. Pepper he’d come up with somehow. Jim drove toward them, then pulled out of the way to make room for the mass of vehicles following him.
Gary pulled in behind him and killed the engine on the box truck. He slid out the door and slammed it shut behind him. Jim got out and walked toward the man. He extended a hand, then withdrew it and instead hugged his friend. Over the course of walking hundreds of miles, he figured the grade of their friendship had gone up a notch.
“It’s good to see you, Gary.”
“You too, Jim,” Gary replied.
“I’m sorry things have been so rough up your way. I didn’t come back to a picnic either. I had to kill a man within fifteen minutes of getting home.”
“Yeah, it definitely wasn’t the homecoming I imagined,” Gary said. “I thought after what we’d been through, I kind of deserved more. I thought the world owed me at least a couple of good weeks of wearing flip-flops in a lawn chair.”
“So much for that,” Jim said.
“No kidding.”
Gary’s family had been hanging back and allowing the two men a moment to reconnect, then began filtering over. Everyone was introduced.
“Jim, you remember Will, don’t you?”
Jim nodded and extended a hand to Will.
The rest of the introductions were rushed since Charlotte needed to get off her feet. Jim quickly showed Debra and Sara to the master bedroom and they escorted Charlotte, making sure she laid down on the bed. Jim had warned Lloyd, Buddy, and Pete not to mention anything about the death in the house or the bloody carpet. He hoped they remembered.
Outside, Jim found Gary speaking with Alice in the front yard. Jim hadn’t seen Alice. She’d not got
ten out of the car when he was out before and he had no idea she was even with them. Gary hadn’t mentioned it.
He approached the two. “Alice, I want to apologize for being such a—”
His apology was cut off when Alice grabbed him in a tight embrace. “You have nothing to apologize for, Jim. I had a lot of time to think on my way home. I should have realized that you had a better idea of what was going on. I just couldn’t admit it, either to myself or to you all. I guess I’m hardheaded.”
“I was still a dick,” Jim mumbled.
“Just because you were a dick didn’t mean you were wrong,” Alice said. “I’ve known you long enough that I should have been able to separate the messenger from the message.”
“I’ve been trying to work on that same thing for years,” Jim chuckled wryly. “If you won’t allow me to apologize, I at least want to express that I’m sorry for whatever hardship led to you being here.”
Alice smiled. “I’ll accept that. Thank you.”
“Where’s Rebecca?” Jim asked. “She still convinced that FEMA is going to get her home? I wonder if she made it yet.”
Alice’s smile dropped like a rock. “She didn’t make it. She was murdered.”
Jim was genuinely shocked. He and Rebecca had butted heads over the years but he did have kind of an admiration for the woman. “How?”
“We met up with a man in the camp. He wanted to leave with us, but they made it hard to leave. When we finally got out of there, he came with us. He turned out to be mentally ill. I was pretty much done with the two of them but he killed Rebecca before I could part ways with them. I got up one morning and found her dead. He’d stabbed her repeatedly. I still have nightmares about the sight of it.”
Jim didn’t know what to say. He touched Alice’s shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this, Alice?” Gary asked. “I had no idea what you’d been through.”
“You had your own problems, Gary,” Alice said. “You didn’t need to hear about mine.”
Gary shook his head.
“Then I had the misfortune of crossing paths with the same man again in Bluefield. How’s that for luck? I went to sleep in an abandoned car on the highway and woke up zip-tied to a pole in his basement. His mental illness was getting worse and, besides Rebecca, it turned out that he had already killed his mother. He was going to kill me too.”
The Borrowed World (Book 3): Legion of Despair Page 26
