The Journal: Crimson Skies: (The Journal Book 3)

by Deborah D. Moore

  “I don’t know how to thank everyone, Miss Allexa,” Joshua mumbled, looking embarrassed.

  “There’s no need, Joshua. We’re all happy to have you here. You’re the first step in us establishing a new community,” I said to him. “It’s like the phoenix that rises from the ashes, we will rise too, one wing at a time.”

  August 6

  Anna, George and Carolyn stopped by this afternoon on their way into Marquette.

  “I don’t know if you will be allowed to communicate with us, but if you get the chance, Anna, please leave me a message at the township. I’d like to know how you’re doing. I’ll check the answering machine every Friday.” I hugged her goodbye.

  “Here are my rifles and the shotgun,” George said, laying three weapons on the table. “I’m going to keep this old .22 revolver. The firing pin is messed up, so it’s no good, and I thought it might be interesting to see what becomes of it when we go through their processing procedure.” He gave me a wink. I think George understood more than he was letting on.

  “Here are the keys to the pickup truck,” he went on. “It’s yours if you need it, and don’t forget it takes diesel.”

  Carolyn already had tears in her eyes, and her hug was long and surprisingly strong.

  “I think this time it is good to ‘let go and let God’,” she said, tears trickling down her heavily lined cheeks.

  “Yes it is, Pastor. I hope to see you again,” I said in all honesty.

  “Well, if I see Him first, I’ll put in a good word for you,” she said.

  The three got into Anna’s car and left.

  “I feel as if I’ve lost a large piece of myself,” I commented to Mark over a simple dinner of pasta served with a thickened venison soup and fresh bread.

  “I understand, Allex. They’ve been a large and important part of your life for a long time. Well, maybe not a long time, but definitely during an important time of your life,” Mark said.

  August 7

  I harvested the first of the green beans from the greenhouse, the ones I planted in early June. They were small and thin and I wanted us to have the very first of what was produced. I felt selfish that I didn’t want to share with my sons, not yet anyway, so I kept the beans a secret until dinner.

  “Where did you get fresh beans, Allex?” Mark said with obvious joy when I set his plate in front of him.

  “These are the first of what I planted back just before my birthday. I know they’re small, but I wanted us to have some first. I think they go well with the spiced beef stew on fresh pasta, one of my favorite recipes from Cooking in the Woods.”

  I smiled. I know I was still trying to impress Mark, or maybe it was more wanting to please him now. I lit the slender white candles on the table and turned on the battery CD player for some soft music.

  He poured some wine in my glass, then in his. The love I saw in his eyes took my breath away.

  The song “Waiting For a Girl Like You” came on. Mark stood and took my hand, pulling me into his arms for a very romantic slow dance and I knew I had made the right decision to marry him.

  August 8

  Jason grinned. “We hit the jackpot, Mom.”

  “Big time!” Eric slapped his brother’s shoulder. “If this works the way I think it will, that is.”

  “What are you two talking about? And where have you been now?”

  I knew they had gone off on one of their scavenging jaunts, and they don’t tell me where until they’re back. I’ve tried to explain that wasn’t a good practice.

  “We decided to check out the Sportsman Club down near Blind Belly Road,” Jason said. “I doubted we find any ammo or weapons, which we didn’t, but we found targets. Boxes and boxes of metal targets, you know the kind that pivot or spin when hit?” He paused for effect. “They’re bulletproof, Mom.”

  “From my understanding,” Eric went on, “they will withstand a small caliber bullet, anything under a .38, like a .22. However, if we layer them, they might stop armor-piercing rounds such as a .45 pistol shot, or a rifle in 5.56 or 7.62. Since the targets are only one-eight inch thick, it might take four or more to make them effective, but we’ve got lots to play with.”

  “I thought we could make a sandwich-board with two, creating a sort of bulletproof vest, but they’re too heavy for that,” Jason said. “If the layering works, I can build us protection to shoot from behind. I think certain windows that we might use to fire from can be made much safer!”

  “And after we test out how many are required to withstand armor-piercing rounds, I’d like to make a protected crows-nest up on the roof,” Eric said.

  These two never cease to amaze me.

  August 9

  Late in the afternoon I heard some commotion outside only to find out the boys had finished their target testing and Eric was hauling lumber and some of the heavy metal sheets up on to the roof. They hammered away for an hour then came down.

  “I’m not quite done, Mom, but do you want to see your latest addition?”

  “Not really, Eric,” I replied. “The need for what you’re doing is a reminder of how much danger we’re still in, and I really don’t want to think about that right now.”

  “Oh, okay.” He sounded disappointed. “I’m leaving the ladder here for now, at least until we finish. After that, if it’s alright, Jason thinks we should build a permanent ladder on this side of the house too.”

  I reached out and took his hand. “Eric, I really do understand the need, and I think what you’ve come up with is ingenious, but I’m tired. I’ll look at it another time.”

  CHAPTER 7

  JOURNAL ENTRY: August 10

  We spent the morning working in both the greenhouse and in the garden. The garden is alive, barely, not flourishing like it should. However, there hasn’t been any regular sunshine in weeks, with the exception of a few days surrounding our wedding, a brief respite from the dreariness. The solar panels in the greenhouse are working out very well. Even ambient light recharges the batteries that keep the pond and the lights going.

  The high ash cloud is now circling the world, a band that is allowing only filtered sunlight to the northern hemisphere. Without Internet or television it’s impossible to know if South America is helping with the food shortage, or how they are affected.

  *

  At two o’clock, Mark and I drove to the township hall to see if there was a message from Anna. I was delighted to see a light blinking on the answering machine.

  “We need to start the generator to listen to this call,” I said to Mark. “Let me show you where the switch is, in case you ever need to use it.”

  We went through the hall into meeting room where we had done the food distribution last winter and from there into the maintenance area. In Pete’s office everything was neatly labeled and I quickly found the switch that turned on the whisper quiet generator that ran on propane.

  “Let’s hope there is enough gas left so we can at least listen. If not, we’ll take the machine back to the house with us.”

  “Allexa,” Anna’s voice came over the speaker, “it’s Thursday and we just arrived at my sister’s house. This has been a horrible experience! The three-hour processing has taken three days! Right after we got there, we were immediately separated and questioned. Interrogated is more like it. I don’t know where Carolyn is, I haven’t seen her since we got here.

  “George told me later that they took the gun, as expected, but kept demanding to know where his ammunition was. When he told them he’d used it all hunting rabbits, they laughed at him and pointed the empty gun at his head and pulled the trigger! And they took away George’s pocketknife, the one his father gave him for his sixteenth birthday fifty years ago. I’m not sure if that made George sad or angry.

  “That night we got our suitcases back. Of course they had gone through them. It looked like they had dumped it all out then stuffed it back in. Oh, and my jewelry case is gone.

  “This place is nasty, Allexa. It’s dirty, smel
ly, and overcrowded. We each get one bottle of water a day, plus a bowl of rice and one slice of bread. That’s it! One skimpy meal per day. I kept trying to tell them we had family to go to, but they wouldn’t listen.

  “And the nighttime. Lord have mercy! We could hear things… hitting, beatings, crying, and other things I don’t even want think about. We huddled in a corner, hands over our ears, but even that didn’t keep out the sound of the rats scurrying around.

  “We finally just up and walked out this morning when no one was watching. Even though the car keys had been taken from us, I had a spare in one of those magnetic boxes, so we did get the car back. The box of food we had for my sister was gone, and most of the gas had been siphoned out.

  “I never expected to be treated this way! If you ever talk to that Captain Andrews again, don’t trust him! He lied to us. The city is in shambles and I’m so worried about Carolyn.”

  I was stunned.

  Just then a military Humvee sped by on the main street, going out of town, followed shortly by Kathy’s red convertible. With the top down it was easy to see that she wasn’t in the car, but two soldiers were, and they looked like they were having a great time.

  “Mark, go shut the generator off, and hurry!” I said. I unplugged the answering machine and wrapped the cord around it. I stuck it in the back seat of the car before Mark rejoined me. As soon as he got in, I headed for Bob and Kathy’s house down the road.

  That car was Kathy’s baby and she would never ever let someone take it! Something was very wrong.

  The front door to the house stood open. I pulled my Kel-Tec from the shoulder holster and edged along the garage, trying to stay out of direct sight of the foyer. Once alongside the door, I peeked in and almost lost it. There was so much blood!

  “Mark! Help me here!” I called out, and stepped inside.

  Bob was in the living room, sitting in a kitchen chair, tied tightly with what looked like a clothesline. His head was down, his chin resting above the ropes that were used. I could see a bullet hole in the middle of his forehead.

  It was deathly silent. I put my gun away and followed the red streaks on the floor to the kitchen, where Kathy had dragged herself and lay in a pool of wet blood. I gently turned her over. Her face had been battered and her lip was split. Her red hair was smeared with the deeper red of congealing blood oozing from a cut on her scalp. Her jeans were pulled half off and still clung to one foot.

  Mark quickly knelt down opposite me and searched for a pulse.

  “She’s still alive,” he reassured me. “Bob is dead.”

  I stood shakily, and noticed that all the cupboards were opened and everything had been pulled out and thrown on the floor.

  “Allex! Pull yourself together and get her a blanket, a sheet, anything!” Mark commanded.

  I looked at him for a second, then ran to their bedroom and yanked off the top blanket from the bed. I stopped in the bathroom long enough to grab a couple of big towels.

  “Can you help her, Mark?” I asked, freeing her foot from the bloody and torn jeans, and then tucked one of the towels between her legs where most of the blood was coming from. It was obvious she had been raped, brutally, and perhaps repeatedly.

  “I hope so. We need to get her back to the house where I can examine her better. Help me wrap her in this blanket and get her to the car,” Mark was so calm, so business-like.

  “What about Bob?” I asked, my eyes pleading for any scrap of hope.

  “There’s nothing we can do for him. He’s gone, Allex. Let’s just concentrate on Kathy.”

  We lifted her as tenderly as possible and laid her in the back of my car. I put another blanket over her and we sped home.

  I hurried into the house to set up my massage table to lay Kathy on so Mark would have a higher surface to work on, like we did for the surgery on Eric’s foot after the wolf attack. After covering the table with a clean sheet, I helped Mark bring her in.

  Redheads tend to have pale skin, and Kathy was no exception, and her skin was taking on a translucent look. She was losing a lot of blood.

  I started the generator and set up lights for Mark to work, and then moved the table closer for his instruments. A quick spritz of bleach water on the wood, then a bleached sackcloth towel and we now had a sterile surface for his instruments.

  As we gently removed the blanket she was wrapped in to give Mark access to her injuries, I draped another in its place to keep her warm. Then I began to carefully wipe the blood from her face and hair so Mark could see those injuries too.

  She moaned. Her eyes widened in fright and she tried sitting up.

  “Kathy!” I threw my body across her, facing her so she could see me. “You’re safe. We’re here. You’re safe,” I kept repeating. She fell back against the table and sobbed.

  “You’re hurt, and Mark needs to examine you to see how bad it is, okay? Can you tell me what happened?”

  I needed to distract her while Mark worked.

  “Bob was out in the barn when the Humvee pulled into the driveway and four guys jumped out, weapons drawn. From the house, I could see Bob grab his rifle. One of those guys shot first and caught him in the knee, and he managed to shoot back before going down. I’m sure he hit one of them before another shot hit his shoulder.” She winced when Mark removed the towel.

  “I saw them come toward the house, so I locked the door and hid in a closet. I didn’t know what else to do, Allexa. Bob wouldn’t teach me how to use a gun,” she said, tears running down her face.

  I grabbed a couple of kitchen towels and tucked them under her head like a pillow.

  “Can she have some water?” I asked Mark and he nodded. I filled a glass from the kitchen sink and added one of Jacob’s straws, bending it so Kathy wouldn’t have to sit up. I gave her a sip, and then continued washing her face and the hair around the laceration on her scalp, sending fresh blood oozing out.

  “What happened next, Kath?” I urged to keep her talking.

  “I heard a lot of banging around in the kitchen. I think when they couldn’t find any food they got pissed and started looking everywhere.” She let out another sob. “That’s when they found me in the closet.”

  “The first one hit me, really hard, and he was on me.” She shut her eyes tight. “He raped me, Allexa.” She gripped my hand so hard my fingers went numb.

  “The others went out and dragged Bob in. When that first one forced me into the living room, they had tied Bob to a chair. They,” she breathed hard, crying harder, “they made him watch while they all took turns raping me, hitting me. Then the fat one put a hand gun to Bob’s head and shot him!” she wailed. “The fat guy told me to shut up and hit me with that gun. I don’t remember anything else.”

  “You did good, Kath, you did real good,” I said, comforting her as bet I could. “You rest now.”

  ~~~

  “What do you think, Mark?” I asked quietly, even though I was sure Kathy was out.

  “The injuries are extensive, Allex.” He looked up at me with sorrow in his blue eyes. “I’m a trauma doctor, not a gynecologist, and that’s what she needs to repair the damage.”

  “Stay with her, I’ll be back shortly,” I said, leaving the house. I could feel the anger surging through me as I hurried across the road.

  Eric looked at me with questions in his eyes. He instantly knew something was wrong.

  “Is Don’s landline phone still working?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “I unplugged it and hid it so Emi wouldn’t be tempted to call her mother.”

  “I need it. Now!”

  Within moments, Eric had retrieved the bright red desk unit and plugged it in. I dialed 911.

  “Put Andrews on the line, now!” I snarled into the receiver. The dispatcher said not a word, and put me through.

  “Andrews,” the Captain sighed.

  “You promised to leave us alone!” I spat at him.

  “Ms. Smeth. Yes, I did, and I will,” he replied.

&n
bsp; “Then why did you send those men to terrorize us this afternoon?” I yelled, getting even angrier.

  “What are you talking about?” He actually sounded perplexed.

  “Four of your soldiers rode into Moose Creek today in a Hummer, shot and killed one of my friends, raped his wife, and ransacked their house!” I started breathing hard. “Are you going to deny sending them?”

  “Who did they kill, Allexa?” Captain Andrews asked quietly.

  “Bob, the big guy,” I said, my voice cracking. “Kathy is in really bad shape. Mark is doing all he can, but he’s not a gynecologist, and that’s what she needs. She needs surgery to repair the damage they did to her.” I paused for a moment. “She might die, Captain.”

  “Do you know who these four were?”

  “No, though one of them was wounded, and Kathy described one as fat. Oh, and they stole her red convertible; it’s going to be hard to miss.”

  “I’ll get back to you,” he said with controlled anger and hung up.

  “Bob is dead, Mom?” Eric looked unbelieving at me.

  “Yes, and Kathy is dying,” I sobbed.

  ~~~

  We’ve learned to leave at least one of the boys at the house across the road. If ever there was a need for defense, two directions were better than one. Eric followed me home, while Jason stayed.

  “She’s sleeping,” Mark told me when I arrived back at the house. “I gave her a light sedative, against my better judgment. I’ve no doubt that blow to the head has resulted in a concussion, and she shouldn’t have any drugs, but it might be a moot point if we can’t stop the bleeding and replace some of the blood she’s lost.”