“We burn this stuff,” Dale said, carefully removing the gown, gloves and then the mask and dropping them into the burn barrel. The others did the same before lighting it up.
The pig flu, as some called it, had swept into Encendido with the speed of the Four Horsemen, causing most of its damage within the first two weeks. Dale watched the flames rise and quickly begin to taper, thinking about how the virus too had burned itself out of fuel before disappearing. But while the threat of infection was largely gone, Dale knew a new threat had moved in to fill the vacuum left in its place. The danger of men and women desperate with hunger and, above all, thirst. He’d read somewhere that under normal conditions, the human body could last three weeks without food, but only three days without water.
By no means was Dale a conscious prepper. Not that he disagreed with the notion of preparing for disasters—an inevitable fact of life. His largely self-sufficient lifestyle on the outskirts of a small Arizona border town had been more a product of upbringing, knowhow passed down through generations of resilient Hardy men and women. It was his great-great grandfather Samuel Hardy who had staked out this land in 1900, twelve years before the Arizona Territory would eventually become part of the Union—the last continental state to be added.
His ancestors had opted for a quiet life, never knowing that one day an interstate would be built not far from here, bringing with it a town and over ten thousand souls. But that amount wasn’t quite right, not since the flu had culled those numbers to somewhere just over three thousand.
Nobody knew for sure where the virus had come from. The internet and news reporters were full of ideas, some more wild than others. But in the end, Dale didn’t see how it made any difference whether it had started in China, the Middle East or right here at home. Attributing blame was about as useless an act as getting upset with a friend for giving you a cold. Most of the time, folks didn’t have a clue where they’d caught the flu, since it took twenty-four hours before symptoms were visible. Within forty-eight, most folks were dead. Like the Spanish Flu of 1918, it liked to target the young and the healthy, which was why the country’s—probably the world’s—infrastructure had been so severely devastated. To think how those glib pundits on TV had cheered that the mortality rate was less than they’d expected, by most estimates close to seventy-five percent. And yet their optimism had failed to take into account that even the comparably meager losses from its sister virus H1N1 had still managed to wreak havoc in some areas.
The reason was simple enough. We lived in a society of compartmentalized knowledge. Folks only knew as much as they needed to in order to get by. Which was why a guy like Randy Gaines could get away with fleecing car owners out of their hard-earned cash and also why a week and a half into the crisis, the power had gone out and never come back on. It was barely a week after that Dale’s sister Lori had died.
•••
They were heading back inside when Duke started barking and tore off toward the road. He was going after a man who was walking up the long driveway. Dale shouted, ordering the dog to return.
“What now?” Brooke wondered, concerned.
Shotgun in hand and mask back over his face, Dale went out to meet him, the others not far behind, also taking similar precautions. As they drew closer, Dale studied the man’s face. He didn’t recognize him.
“You’re on private property,” Dale said, not bothering with pleasantries.
“I’m not looking for trouble,” the stranger said. “I heard you give water to folks in need.”
The man’s clothes were ragged and he smelled like he’d been sleeping in the back end of a garbage truck. The flesh on his face was paper thin. He was suffering from dehydration. But more importantly, there were red rings around his eyes, a sign that he’d been infected and lived.
He began to reach into his pocket when Dale raised the barrel of the shotgun. “Keep your hands out of your pockets.”
The man removed his hand slowly, his fingers pinching the end of a dog biscuit. “My Roxy passed away three days ago and I had some of her treats left. Thought your dog might like a snack.” He extended his arms toward Duke, who barked at the motion, but otherwise, Duke didn’t budge.
“He won’t take food from strangers,” Dale informed him. “Not unless I tell him it’s all right. As for the water you came to get, I don’t know what you might have heard, but I’m afraid you got your facts wrong, friend. If we were FEMA there’d be a big ol’ sign across the front of the house.”
The man’s hand with the biscuit disappeared back into his pocket.
Brooke cleared her throat. “I may have given out some water here and there.” She glanced up at Dale with a guilty look.
Her father sighed. Not because his Brooke had a kind heart, but because her good intentions were putting them in danger. Now Dale was forced to deal with a man who would die and probably soon if he wasn’t given something to drink. Dale had killed three men who’d deserved it. He wasn’t anxious to add another who didn’t.
Dale turned and started walking away, the ever-obedient Duke in tow. Then he stopped and planted his feet, fighting the anger surging up from within. “We’ll get you something to drink, but on two conditions.”
“Anything,” the man said. “My name’s Jason, by the way.”
“Don’t tell me your name, just focus on what I’m about to tell you. Once you’ve had your drink you’re going to turn around and walk away. If I see you back again the only warning you’ll hear is the sound of the bullet about to kill you.”
Jason swallowed hard.
“You’re also going to tell everyone you know that if they show up here, they better be ready to die. You want more handouts? You wait for FEMA and the army to show up, but you leave us in peace.”
Dale realized later, long after the man had guzzled what they’d given him and left, that he’d meant what he said. He would also have a talk with Brooke to remind her that if she’d had any lingering doubts about what desperate folks were capable of, the bodies they’d just finished burying out back should put an end to that. No doubt she would ask him whether help was really coming, whether he’d meant what he said about FEMA and the army. And he would probably tell her yes, as he’d done many times before. But the truth was they were on their own, battling for survival in a hostile environment filled with people who wanted them dead, even if they didn’t know it yet.
Chapter 4
“I need to borrow the truck,” Colton said to Dale once the man in tattered clothing had left.
“What for?”
“After my mom got sick and passed away”—he paused, his eyes turning glassy as he struggled to fight back the tears—“I wasn’t able to get all my things.”
“There’s nothing there you need,” Dale said dismissively. “Nothing that’s worth dying for anyway.”
“You said once I got settled in, I could go back and get whatever I needed. I’ve been here over a week now.” Colton was at least Dale’s size with the toned muscles of a young man, but with none of the sense that came with age.
They headed into the kitchen. Like much of the house, it was open with large rooms. Along the kitchen counter were a set of stools. The long living room made the space feel larger than it was. “You’re worried your old house is gonna get broken into?” Dale said. “Is that it?”
“If it hasn’t been already,” Colton replied. Red patches were forming on his cheeks, the way they did whenever he grew upset. “You said we only had room for whatever food and supplies were left and that the rest could wait.”
It was true, Dale remembered saying that. “Listen, Colton, after last night, it may not be safe in town, not anymore.”
“Then come with me,” Colton said. “We won’t be long and besides, you can check on Shane and Nicole.”
He was talking about Dale’s brother and his wife, who’d opted to bug out to his bungalow on the edge of town and wait for the feds to show up and relieve them. Dale thought the idea of waiting for an
yone to come and save you was a dangerous one, but he’d spent many years bossing his younger brother around, as siblings tended to, and knew that nothing he said would shake his brother’s staunch conviction.
As soon as reports of the virus began to surface, Shane had started gathering food, stockpiling whatever supplies he could. His brother was confident he could hold out for a month or two if need be and that Dale, Brooke and Colton were welcome to join them if they found themselves in a jam. Dale appreciated the offer, even if his younger brother had made it with a bit of chest-puffing.
Eyeing the serious look on Colton’s face, Dale relented. “Okay, twenty minutes tops.” He looked at Brooke as she walked into the room. His daughter knew her way around firearms and he was more than confident she could take care of herself, especially if Duke was there to help protect her.
“Take the Ruger SR45 out of my night table. Colton and I won’t be long.”
She nodded, reluctantly.
“If anyone approaches the house you don’t recognize, fire a warning shot. If they don’t leave, then they don’t mean any good.”
He then handed Colton the pistol they’d taken from the dead thief. “You keep this on safe until I tell you otherwise.”
Colton nodded.
Before they headed for the truck, Dale stopped to ruffle the dark brown and beige fur on Duke’s head. “You protect my little girl while we’re away, got it?”
Duke tilted his head.
•••
Dale and Colton made the short trip into town in Dale’s Chevy pickup, bringing the shotgun along with a handful of spare shells just in case. Neither of them had been into town since the death of Colton’s mother, Lori, a week and a half ago, and Dale wasn’t sure how safe the area would be.
Before long, answers to that very question began trickling in. The first few houses they reached had large red X’s slashed over the front doors with red paint, a sign the dead were inside. The hope had been that by leaving the bodies in their respective homes, it would keep the infection from spreading, but hunger had a way of tempering a man’s aversion to risk. More than one of those doors showed signs of being kicked in. The windows of some homes were shattered too with holes large enough for someone to climb through.
When they arrived at the house Colton had shared with his mother, there was no X on the door. She had died in the house but been buried by her son in the backyard, a simple wooden cross marking her grave. Regardless, thieves had kicked the door in anyway, presumably making off with anything of value―which was to say, any food Dale and Colton had overlooked, precious metals that might be melted down into crude nuggets and, most important of all, water from the pipes and the water heater.
In the early days after the power went out when the town had no longer been able to pull water out of the ground, his brother Shane had described seeing bucket gangs forming in order to ‘suck houses dry’.
Dale swung the truck into the driveway and hadn’t even pulled to a full stop when Colton began reaching for the door handle.
“Hold up,” Dale said, throwing the Chevy into park and sliding on his mask. “We don’t know what the situation is inside.” Dale grabbed the shotgun, exited the vehicle and used the pad of his thumb to click off the Mossberg’s safety switch. Colton put his own mask on and fell in behind Dale as the two men swept the house.
The one-story bungalow was eerily quiet. A large front entrance led to a recently renovated kitchen. On the left was the living room and on the right a small dining room. Although decorated in a Southwestern style, every room looked as though a tornado had roared through, tossing items into the air, letting them fall without any discernible pattern.
With every room cleared, Dale wondered if Colton had such a clear idea of what he was after. Seeing the decaying state of the neighborhood left Dale itching to return home.
“It’s in my mom’s room,” Colton said, leading the way.
He brought Dale down a narrow hallway to the master bedroom where his mom had slept. From a bookshelf below a window which looked onto the backyard, Colton pulled three large photo albums and set them on the bed.
Dale gazed out the window, his eye drawn to Lori’s grave, sitting beneath the meager shade of a mesquite tree. As the oldest of three siblings, Dale had always felt an almost overwhelming sense of responsibility for his younger brother and sister, sometimes forgetting both of them were well into adulthood. Once the flu began to take hold in the community and it was clear this wouldn’t be like the other false alarms in the past, Dale had suggested they all move together into his place and pool their resources. They had both refused. Shane had always held some resentment over the fact that Pa had left the family plot to Dale. But in Dale’s mind, it was a decision that had made sense. He was the most stable of the three. Over the last decade, Shane had moved from odd job to odd job and Lori’s marriage to a convicted felon had left more than a little to be desired.
He found Colton kneeling by the bed, flipping through old family photos.
“Was that all you needed?” Dale asked him, moving toward the hallway, eager to leave.
His nephew’s gaze followed him across the room, a forlorn expression on his face. “It’s all I have left.”
A loud thudding sound made Dale’s heart rate spike. He looked over at Colton, who rose to his feet and scooped the albums into his arms.
“What was that?” Colton asked.
Dale leveled the shotgun, aiming the barrel down the hallway. “Sounds like we’re not alone.”
Chapter 5
When the thumping sounded again, Dale knew it was coming from the garage, the one area they hadn’t checked. They headed in that direction, Dale admonishing himself for his lack of thoroughness, a mistake he would make sure he never repeated. A set of stairs creaked beneath his feet as he went from the kitchen to a small laundry room. He slowly turned the door handle to the garage and pulled it open. It was dark, thin strands of light struggling in through a tiny raised window. Dale swiveled the shotgun over to a flicker of light. He racked the Mossberg and called out, “This is private property. Identify yourself before I blow you away for trespassing.”
The flashlight came back on, revealing a thin and malnourished man, six buckets of water assembled around his feet. Right away, his hands went into the air.
“I was sure no one lived here,” he said weakly, the fear trailing off each word. The flesh ringing his eyes was dark, his cheeks sunken and hollow. “The door was already broken up when I came in. I swear to God I meant no harm.”
“Are you armed?” Dale asked.
The man shook his head.
“Empty your pockets,” Dale ordered him, entering the garage with Colton close behind. There was no car here, only piles of junk near the water heater.
“I ain’t took nothing.”
“Well, you were about to,” Dale said.
“Then why you want me to empty my pockets?” the man asked.
“Because I want to know what kind of a thief you are.” Dale took a closer look. “Wait a minute. You’re Pete Thompson, used to work for Teletech in shipping, drove a forklift.”
The man nodded. “That’s right, nearly fifteen years before they took our jobs away and sent them off to God knows where.”
Teletech made components for television sets and had been the main industry fueling the town’s economy until the owner, a local man named Hugh Reid, had decided that he could make more money by sending half the jobs overseas. At the time he’d promised the remaining employees that he was committed to keeping American workers employed. But talk was cheap, as they said, and within a year the rest of the jobs had also vanished, along with the heart that kept the town’s blood pumping.
As though fate had decided they hadn’t suffered enough, six weeks later H3N3 would show up to finish off an already dispirited population. But through it all, one man had managed to weather the storm, the same one who in a way had started the town’s decline—Hugh Reid.
“I
work for the city now,” the man said. “Collecting water.”
Dale scoffed at the lie. “Last night, I shot three men who snuck onto my property and tried to steal water from my well. You’re lucky you’re not armed, or I woulda done the same to you. Now get outta here before I change my mind.”
Pete moved toward the stairs, slowly at first, the shotgun still trained on the middle of his chest. He drew even and thanked Dale for not doing anything rash. Dale didn’t respond. Killing three men was enough for one day.
They listened to Pete’s footsteps run up the small flight of stairs, through the kitchen and out the front door.
Colton’s eyes bounced between the spot where Pete had been standing and Dale’s shotgun. “Shouldn’t you have at least given him one bucket of water?”
“We’re all in a rough spot these days,” Dale replied. “But to nearly shoot a man for doing something wrong and then reward him by letting him keep what he was trying to steal, well, that just sends the wrong message.”
With one hand, Dale bent down and grabbed a bucket, the shotgun cradled in the other. “Go on, let’s load this into the Chevy. It belongs to you, after all.”
Once they had finished, Colton climbed into the cab and set the photo albums between them.
“Where to now?” he asked.
Dale glanced down at his watch. They’d already been gone for twenty minutes. “I’m gonna drop you off at home. Then I’m gonna head back out and check on Shane and Nicole. After seeing how far things have fallen in town, I’m starting to think they may be in over their heads.”
Chapter 6
Dale did as he said and was soon back on the road. Brooke was fine, which was his primary concern. He hated being in a situation where he had to leave her alone, whether Duke was there to protect her or not, but he also knew that with only three of them to look after the property and run the odd errand, spreading themselves thin was inevitable.
The ride past the outer suburbs and further into town was an even greater eye-opener for Dale. Seemed even with Sheriff Gaines and his deputies on patrol, they still couldn’t stem the tide of vandalism and theft. It was amazing what a difference a week could make. But small towns weren’t like big cities. When the social fabric came undone in cities, it was an excuse for many to live out their sickest fantasies. While the news stations were still on the air, Dale had watched as unrest and criminal activity within the first week began to spike. By week two, when reports were that a vaccine was still months away, widespread looting and murder became the order of the day.
Defiance (The Defending Home Series Book 1) Page 2
