The seven piles of river rock in the driveway were new since the last time she’d paid him a visit. It was a couple of years ago when she’d stopped by to check on Tuttle after the poorly-attended funeral for his late wife, Helen.
The ten-foot-tall rock mounds seemed to be spaced randomly, like an obstacle course. She figured Tuttle had left them untouched after the dump truck driver backed up and dropped them wherever he pleased.
All but one of the piles had a smattering of loose stones around their bases. But the fallen rocks weren’t the only items needing Tuttle’s attention. She counted at least a dozen unruly bushes whose branches were sticking up and out in random directions.
There were also clumps of weeds growing everywhere; some of them were green, while others had turned a light brown. The two-week drought had obviously started to take a toll on his front yard, if you could call it that.
To her right were three old Ford pickups. The paint across their rounded hoods had peeled away long ago, and the rusting side panels looked like they were barely holding together. She wasn’t sure what year they were made, but it was long before she was born.
Daisy didn’t understand the need for the hillbilly yard art, but Tuttle was obviously fond of it. Just past the trucks were dozens of rusting gas station and roadway signs sticking up at odd angles, plus a couple of ancient safes sitting in the weeds with their doors open.
The oddest item in his yard was the red Honda lawnmower. It looked relatively new and didn’t seem to match the rest of the man’s antique clutter.
She knew from her younger days that Tuttle cut the massive pastures out back with his tractor, so why have a Honda mower? There wasn’t any grass to cut out front, so why purchase something he didn’t need? The man hated to crack open his dust-filled wallet, so if he spent money on purchasing the unit, he must have had a good reason. That was assuming the man hadn’t gone completely nuts, which was a distinct possibility.
It was time to make contact, she decided, taking in a deep breath to charge her vocal cords.
“Frank? It’s me, Daisy. Daisy Clark. Can you come out and talk to me? It’s urgent.”
An instant later, she heard a response. “Since when, Daisy, did you join the Sheriff’s Department?” a man’s voice called out.
She recognized the ragged nature of the voice, though she couldn’t determine its location. “Yeah, Frank, about six months ago. I’m a deputy now.”
“I see that. Kinda hard to miss the badge and the gun. Why you here?”
“The Sheriff sent me to—”
“—arrest me?”
“No, Frank. Nothing like that. I swear.”
“Then you must be here to take my land and my guns.”
Daisy shook her head, keeping her hands up high. She still couldn’t track down his position. He was in front of her somewhere, but his voice didn’t seem to be attached to a body. “Why would you think that?”
“Because that’s what the law does. Takes stuff from the people. Hard-working people like me. Then they give it to those who never earned it. Look, I haven’t done anything wrong and I pay my taxes, so you got no right to be here. I just wanna be left alone.”
“I know all that, Frank. Nobody doubts you’re a law-abiding citizen. That’s not why I’m here. The Sheriff and I need your help with something. I don’t know if you know, but there’s a serious emergency in town.”
“Yeah? What kind of emergency?”
“There’s a problem with the power—”
“No! You can’t have my generator. Or my solar panels. They’re mine, I tell ya. Mine. So are my Faraday cages. I told every last one of you this would happen. But noooo . . . nobody listens to an old man like me. You should’ve gotten off the grid and protected yourself like I did. Them damn power lines. They killed my Helen with that woman cancer. Ate her down to the bone. It got so bad, I could almost pick her up from the sheet with one hand. But they ain’t gonna kill me. No way. No how. Not with my Faraday cages. They are the key, Daisy. The key to everything. You all should’ve been building ‘em like I said.”
Daisy took a deep breath, trying to remain calm as Tuttle continued.
“So you turn that pretty little ass of yours around right now and go back the way you came. You can’t have any of my stuff. I’m not kidding, Daisy. Do it now before I empty both barrels at ya. Just because you were friends with my daughter doesn’t mean I won’t shoot you.”
“Frank, you’re not listening to me.”
“I’ve read the Constitution and I know I’m well within my rights to defend myself and my property from all threats, foreign and domestic. And that includes that new Sheriff of yours. Make sure you tell him I said to stay the hell away from this property. None of you got any right to be here. Not without one of them warrants. And an army to back it up.”
Daisy heard the distinctive ratcheting sound of two shotgun hammers being pulled back, one after the other. “Easy now, Frank. Let’s not do anything rash.”
“I’m gonna count to three.”
“Wait, let me prove it to you,” she said, bringing her left hand down slowly and unhooking the clasp on her duty belt. She took off the belt and held it out to the side with its holster and her Glock semi-auto handgun nestled inside.
She knew disarming herself while facing an armed threat went against all her training, but she was friends with this man. At least, she used to be. Tuttle wasn’t going to shoot unless he had a good reason to pull the trigger.
“Look, I’ve taken off my gun,” she said, leaning over to the left. “And now I’m putting it on the ground.”
He didn’t respond.
She sat upright and took off her badge and tossed it next to the holster in the dirt. “See, no more badge, either. Right now, I’m not a deputy. I’m just a defenseless girl who needs the help of a patriotic friend. A friend who’s known her a long time.”
“What about the other one?” he said in a sharper tone than before. “Cops always have one of them backup pieces. Let me see it.”
“You will. It’s on my ankle. But first I need to get off this bike. Can I do that?”
“Yep. But no sudden moves. Don’t make me blast a hole in ya.”
Daisy slid off the bicycle, then bent down and pulled up her right pant leg. She hesitated for a few seconds to give Tuttle a chance to see the holstered Ruger LCP .380.
“All right, now remove it,” Tuttle said.
She latched onto the gun’s stock and pulled it free with only the tips of two fingers. She held it out to the side as if it were a dead fish before putting it on top of one of the wraps of her duty belt.
Someone else might have simply tossed it to the ground instead, but she didn’t want her backup gun sitting in the dirt. She’d just cleaned and oiled it after her last trip to the range and didn’t want the internal mechanisms to be compromised.
“Now, back up ten feet,” he said. “Leave the holster and guns where they are.”
She did as he instructed, walking backwards with the bicycle’s handlebars in her hands. “Okay. I’ve done as you’ve asked. Now, will you come out and talk with me? It’s super urgent.”
One of the piles of rock in the middle of Tuttle’s driveway began to move, but not like Daisy expected. Stones weren’t falling to the ground from gravity. No, this was something else—a hatch opening along the front—a hatch covered in stationary rock. It rose up like the rear door to a minivan.
Someone stepped out with a shotgun pointed at Daisy. She assumed it was Tuttle, but she couldn’t be sure. The person was dressed in full camouflage, including pants, shirt, boots, gloves, and a balaclava covering their head and face.
“Frank? Is that you?”
The person holding the gun lowered their weapon for a moment to rip off the mask off with one tug from the bottom.
It was Frank Tuttle, all right.
His hair was much longer and a few shades grayer than the last time she’d seen him. His face seemed ten years older, too. Paranoia
and stress must have been getting to him.
“You got two minutes, so make it quick,” he said, sounding like he was chewing on something. He opened the front gate and walked through, never taking the gun sights off her as he approached.
Daisy ignored the gun and kept her eyes locked on his. “Mrs. Rainey told the Sheriff a little while ago that you have a bomb shelter on your property.”
Tuttle shook his head and snorted an angry breath. “That nosey bitch. She really needs to mind her own business. You know, one of these days, some of them fleabags of hers might just turn up dead. You know, from mysterious causes.”
“Let’s keep it civil, Frank. She’s just trying to help everyone.”
“How is that, exactly?”
“We’re hoping you might have a Geiger counter we could borrow.”
“I knew it! Someone nuked us!” he snarled after spitting out a patch of chewing tobacco. “Must be them damn Russians.”
He held the shotgun in one hand while pulling out a white handkerchief from his front pocket with the other. He covered his nose and mouth with the cloth, giving her a clear view of its surplus of yellow stains. “Or is it that cocksucker, Castro? He’s plumb crazy enough to do it. They all are. Even that rag-head . . . old what’s his name. The one who took all them hostages in the embassy.”
“That was way back in the 80s, Frank. I’m pretty sure he’s not in power anymore.”
“You sure about that?”
“Positive. Reagan got them released, remember? Way back in the 1980s.”
“Well, someone else then. The name don’t matter. They all the same. Always wanting to kill us. I’ll bet you didn’t know that the first thing they do when they capture you is take your children and wrap them up with them turbans around they heads. Then they brainwash your kids and burn your Bibles before cutting off the heads of the parents. Heathens, I say. Every last one of them.”
She didn’t know how to respond, so she didn’t.
He continued with eyes wide. “How close did they drop the nuke? Denver? Kansas City? LA? Is the radiation cloud on its way here? How long do we have?”
“Let’s not go there, Frank. We don’t know if it was a bomb or not. The Sheriff just wants to check the radiation levels. It’s his job to keep everyone safe, including you.”
“Well, I don’t need anyone’s help, thank you very much.”
A vision of four men in white coats appeared in her mind. The short video clip showed a team of doctors dragging him out his front door in a straitjacket, while stuffing Valium down his throat.
She flushed the image from her thoughts and brought her attention back to the armed man. “Do you have one or not? I’m kinda pressed for time here, Frank.”
He nodded. “Got me two of ‘em. One primary and one backup. You gotta have backups, Daisy. For everything. Only a fool don’t have backups.”
“Do they still work?”
“You’re damn straight they do. I test them every month on the third and the twenty-second, exactly at 10:24 AM. Just like the handwritten notes in the manual says. But it’s gonna cost ya. Big time.”
“Okay, how much?” she asked, wondering where this crazy old fart was going with his request. He better not ask her to take off her clothes or something else even more sick and twisted. His living alone in a homemade fortress with only his demons to talk to had obviously eroded some of his mental foundation.
Tuttle took the hanky from his mouth, then rubbed his chin with it for a few seconds before speaking in a calmer tone. “Three dollars. Cash. And none of that Mexican peso crap. I only accept American. You got it? I don’t do Jap, neither.”
She held back a laugh, wanting to play along. He was finally settling down a bit and she needed to complete this mission and get back to town. “Okay, three bucks. But you gotta put the shotgun down. We’re both friends here.”
Tuttle didn’t answer, only staring at her with his cloudy, brown eyes. The swatches of wrinkles around his eyes were heavy and distinct, compressing and releasing each time he blinked.
His weathered face showed the cumulative effects of an old man’s tormented life—a life capped by the slow, methodical death of the only woman he ever loved. Daisy felt sorry for him. He’d been through hell with his wife’s painful end, only to be left with a lonely shadow existence.
“Come on, Frank. You know me. You know I’m not a threat. Your daughter and I were best friends growing up. I was over here all the time, at least until Misty ran off with that skinny artist from overseas who blew into town right after high school. Can’t remember his name, though.”
“Cowie.”
“Yes, that’s it. Angus Cowie,” she said after testing Frank’s memory with the carefully worded question.
His mouth turned south. “Always ragging on our country about this and that. What a pompous ass. I never liked him. Not one bit, I tell ya.”
“That makes two of us,” she said, seeing his eye soften and his chin release its clench. She was getting through to him. “Look, I’ve done everything you’ve asked me to do. Now I need you trust me. Please, Frank. Put . . . down . . . the . . . gun.”
His whole body relaxed as he lowered the barrel and tucked the stock under his arm.
She gave him a friendly smile. “That’s better. Now, where is it? I need to get back to the Sheriff.”
“Let me see it,” he said in a more serious tone as all the expression ran from his face.
“See what?”
He held out his hand, palm up. “The cash. I don’t offer credit, missy. Cash up front or the deal’s off.”
She smiled, then took out a money clip from her pocket. Her hands unrolled the small wrap of bills and shuffled through them until she found three one dollar bills. She pulled them free and gave them to him in a clump.
He took turns holding each one up to the sun for a moment before stuffing them into his pocket.
“Follow me,” he said when he was done, spinning his boots in the dirt and walking toward the pole barn.
She followed behind him as he sauntered around the rock piles and through the weeds on his way to the massive structure. The man’s movement left a trail of stench she had to walk though—a strong combination of cigar smoke and body odor.
Daisy couldn’t imagine how bad it smelled inside his singlewide home. The sun’s relentless baking of a tin can like that would etch the smell into the walls and floor permanently.
Fifty feet later, Daisy could see behind the house. Tuttle had built an impressive chicken coop beneath one of the majestic oak trees. Next to it was a two-story pigeon house about the size of a Jeep. Neither of the two wooden structures existed when she last visited, and both of them were full of animals and surrounded by dense wire cages.
When they reached the pole barn entrance, Tuttle unlocked three padlocks with a set of keys from his pocket. He slid the double doors open from the middle, then went inside and disappeared into the darkness.
She waited in silence for him to turn on a flashlight.
“Well, you coming in or what?” he asked from inside the void.
Daisy didn’t like the idea of following a creepy old man into a dark building, but she didn’t want to raise the man’s suspicions. Not after spending the time to get him to trust her. She stepped inside.
He closed the doors behind her, then flipped on a light switch, igniting a series of overhead lights high above in the rafters. Since the power was out in the area, Tuttle obviously had backup power. She didn’t hear a generator puttering in the background, so that meant battery backup. She should have expected that, given his solar panels, Faraday cages, and reputation as a prepper.
The barn was filled with stacks and stacks of provisions and supplies—an impressive sight. Everywhere she looked, it was more of the same.
All of the columns were sitting on raised platforms, like heavy, reinforced pallets, and wrapped with several layers of shrink wrap. Each stack went from the floor up to the ceiling, some four stories aw
ay. Wal-Mart had nothing on this man.
“Holy cow, Frank. Did you buy all this stuff?”
“Yeah, you know what they say . . . you can never have enough ammo. Or supplies,” he answered, wearing a slight grin. He was obviously proud of his inventory.
“Well, I don’t think they were talking about you. You certainly have enough. How did you stack all of this crap up?”
“A series of chain hoists,” he said, pointing at the ceiling at the far end of the center aisle. “And my forklift parked around back. I keep everything out of sight from that witch across the street. I swear, she sits around all day just waiting for me to do something.”
“Is that why you parked the old trucks and put the signs out front? To piss her off?”
“Yeah, ‘cuz it seems like every time I look over there, she’s out on her front porch, staring at me from that there rocking chair of hers. My plan is to stack up so much stuff that she stops looking over here. Until then, I have to work mostly at night just to have a little privacy.”
“Night work, huh?” she said, letting her eyes take a quick inventory of what was around her.
“Well, when the moon’s not out. Truth is, it’s not easy living alone, but it’s even harder when you’re living across the street from a crazy person.”
He should talk, she thought quietly.
“But I make do as best I can,” he added. “It just ain’t the same since my Helen passed.”
“You probably don’t know this, but she was one of my favorite people in the whole world. She always had a smile on her face and made me feel welcome every time I came over.”
“Yeah, she did that with everyone. She had a big heart.”
“Yes, she did. When I used to hang out here with Misty, I could see how much she loved her family, Frank. I think everyone in town knew that, too.”
He nodded. “Helen was the best.”
Daisy walked down the center aisle and took in the size and scope of his inventory. Tuttle even had four pallets of disposable diapers. “This is totally unbelievable. How could you afford all this? It had to cost a fortune.”
“Helen’s parents. They were loaded when they passed.”
Bunker: Boxed Set (Books 1, 2, and 3) Page 7
