Then a question from Travis caught her flat-footed. “Why do you hate Dad? What did he ever do to you?”
As if Lexi had run straight into a tree, she abruptly stopped and spun around to face him directly, casting a gaze of fury meant to slap her brother harder than her hand ever could. Then she let loose with her own verbal volley. “Shut up! I’m so tired of your whimpering and crybaby attitude.” She raised her pitch in a mocking way. “I’m hungry—I’m tired—I’m—I’m—I’m.” Now she was yelling. “What about me? I’m stuck in this horrible place with a sniveling little boy, who is just about to wet his little pants. You’re always complaining and whining. And since you brought up our dearly-departed father … let me tell you a thing or two about that bum. Our mother died of cancer and he couldn’t take it, and even though he had a little girl and a little boy, who was just a toddler, he left us. That miserable man, who cared only about himself, shipped us to Tucson on a flight, because he couldn’t be bothered to even drive us there, and dumped us like trash on our aunt and uncle.”
She paused for a moment, seething with anger at her brother, not really because of anything he had done, but because of her father; because she had been holding this anger inside for so long; because she’d never gotten the chance to tell her father this in person; and because she didn’t use the opportunity to tell him how angry she was when she had the chance while he was alive, instead of ignoring him from the back seat during the last of their time together. So, her whining brother received both barrels at once.
“I for one am glad he’s dead. I hope he rots in hell!”
She glimpsed only for a moment at Travis, like a hunter who’d fired the kill shot at the prized buck, making sure it hit. And even though she turned away from him and started to march off, she caught enough of a glimpse of him—a clear picture her guilty conscious would gnaw on endlessly—to know her words drew blood.
With each angry step separating her from her brother, left flabbergasted by her words, his image already burned fires of guilt inside her gut.
Travis just stood where he was, gut-shot, reeling, tears welling in his eyes, mouth gaping at this person who pretended to be his sister. Tears bursting like flood waters from a fall monsoon, he bawled.
Lexi was a good hundred yards from him when her pride gave in to her compassion and she stuttered to a stop. Her shoulders sagged and she felt horrible. Her brother wasn’t to blame. He was just as miserable as she was, more so because he was confused. She may have hated her father, but her brother didn’t know hate. Her brother was innocent and couldn’t hate anyone. He loved his father and looked at him entirely different than she did. Even the years of separation, with only a birthday card to look forward to—often signed by someone other than their father—didn’t sway Travis’s opinion of him. And until now, Lexi had stayed out of it, only occasionally responding to his questions of “Aren’t you excited to see Dad” with curt “no’s” or “I don’t care.”
As far as Travis knew, their father was a good man who left for the right reason, and Travis had waited for the day when he would return, even though he really never did, and now, never would.
Lexi realized she had been standing hunkered over, crying for herself; crying for the father she never knew, and never would; and crying for the pain she inflicted upon her innocent brother.
She really was “a bitch.” That’s what the popular girls had called her, first in high school, then later in college. And she knew she was that way to most people, but she didn’t need to be that way with her brother. He may have been smarter than most adults, but he was just a little boy who didn’t know any better. Her lips curled into a crooked smile and she quipped to herself, “Yeah, a little boy who already knows calculus, and will someday find the cure for cancer.”
She slowly turned around, fully intending to offer up some sort of apology to Travis. She was never very good at apologies, even when she was dead wrong, like now.
She fixed her gaze on the place where she had left Travis in a heap of emotional wreckage, all happiness eviscerated by her. But he wasn’t there.
“Not again!”
This time he was really gone.
This time, she didn’t see anyone on the highway, her eyes darting everywhere. A hundred yards or so away, she saw a small object lying in the middle of the road.
It was Travis’s cowboy hat.
Chapter 6
Frank
Frank felt as tortured as his wrecked gate, a testament to this morning’s invasion.
He had hoped a more careful examination would reveal that some part of it was salvageable. Unfortunately, it was totally destroyed. To prevent his unwanted visitors from driving right up to his home, until he could figure out what was going on and find a more permanent solution, he’d have to create a temporary barricade. He could use the small dirt road that crossed a neighbor’s property for ingress and egress; the terrorists weren’t likely to know about this.
His antique tractor was the solution. It hadn’t worked for years; its wheels were rusted in place and it wouldn’t be functional without a complete overhaul. It was his father’s and he had always intended to bring it back to some utility, but time and its lack of practicality scuttled that idea. So, it sat in back, a rusted monument to his father.
Using his truck, he dragged the antique from the back of his property and deposited it right in the middle of the broken entrance, its rusted-in-place wheels burrowing a trail the whole way. It would take an adversary several crucial minutes to move this, giving Frank time to hear and respond.
He walked one last patrol of all fifty acres and the main road, just to see if he missed something and to think through all his options. He was more careful this time, but he marched with a sense of urgency—he knew they would be back again.
He had been prepping for this moment, when the US would collapse, most of his life. Since 9/11, he’d thought a highly coordinated attack from terrorists was a possibility, albeit a remote one. He had thought a much more likely occurrence was a plasma burst or CME from the sun, which would lead to a societal and economic collapse. All his preparations were centered on this type of event.
He’d built shields of Faraday-like protection using a combo of steel bars and mesh all around his house and garage/workshop. Besides protecting his electronics and his two electronic-ignition-system vehicles, they created an almost impenetrable physical barrier against any potential invaders, whether terrorists or the run of the mill B-and-E. His solar power system had circuit and battery protection from an EMP’s surge. With his well and septic, and over a year’s worth of food set aside, he was ready for the worst the sun could throw at him.
The actual attack may have not been from the sun, but it was just as deadly, perhaps even worse. Although nukes destroyed the major cities of New York, DC, and Chicago, it was the two separate nukes exploded in the atmosphere that brought America to its knees. The EMPs from those two detonations probably fried most unshielded electronics from Canada to South America and from coast to coast. Many late-model cars, appliances, TVs, some cell phones, and pretty much everything electronic, especially where the EMP was closer, were probably damaged beyond repair. But, this would only be the start of the end.
The American grid would be down, which he confirmed with the lack of Internet and satellite service. In spite of years of warnings to Congress that serious upgrades were needed, the network of transformers that made up the electric grid was fried either from the EMP or from the system’s overloaded capacity. The result was a cascading failure that would take years to fix, if indeed it ever could be. Its effects on the machinery of America would be systemic and result in failure of everything: power, water and sewer delivery, food production and delivery supply chains, medicine, communications, and emergency and security responses. He knew that as food stores would dry up quickly, in the next day or two, those that didn’t die from the bombs would eventually starve to death or succumb to diseases once thought no longer a problem. Ch
aos would reign supreme.
All these things Frank dreaded for his country, but he still prepared for them as he grew surer with each year’s passing that the systemic risks of a collapse became far greater than during the previous one. Many of his buddies, even those whom he served with, thought him paranoid. Frank knew they suffered from the same normalcy biases that most Americans did, but then evidently he did too. In spite of his warnings for them to prepare for the worst, he was also sure they would be blindsided by this event.
He suspected that the Pentagon had been blindsided as well. None of their Middle East enemies had the capabilities to launch nukes. So, that left the North Koreans, the Chinese, or the Russians. He figured one of them must have taken advantage of the situation, though any one of them would have made an odd bedfellow with the Islamists. At least, he was pretty sure of this fact: Islamic jihadists were behind this attack on the US. One man’s dying words proved this to him. For his own immediate safety, he had to figure out why they were in his home town and why they had targeted him so early.
Frank once again examined each of the bodies and what they were carrying on them. They were all dressed in the same camo-colored paramilitary outfits, and all carried brand-new AKs and lots of ammo. These of course he would add to his inventory, along with one of the trucks.
Vehicle one, a beautiful 1958 red Chevy, was only good for parts—he’d shredded the engine during his successful campaign to stop it. The second was a ’79 Chevy C/K, and it was in perfect shape except for the bullet hole in the windshield and reddish brain matter spattered all over the inside of the cab. The fact that both vehicles were older, without electronic ignition systems, wasn’t lost on him.
There was no identification or anything useful on any of the three bodies, their tactical vests, weapons and ammo already salvaged. Frank dragged each body about two hundred yards away from his house and down wind. He would let nature’s scavengers clean up this mess.
After careful inspection of the vehicles, he found no identification in the cabs or glove boxes. Not even registration or insurance. It wasn’t until he went underneath the seat of the newer one that he found a useful clue: a yellowed receipt from Stowell Grain & Feed. The name of the purchaser on the receipt was Bart Maldonado. Frank knew Bart and his family pretty well. They didn’t see eye to eye on some things, but he certainly didn’t expect this kind of behavior from any of the Maldonados. So, probably the truck had been stolen or purchased from Bart. Most importantly, he had a place to start, which was far better than waiting around for them to attack.
After moving the terrorists’ trucks around the back of his detached garage, behind his house, he parked his truck inside and loaded up his ATV.
He would head down the mostly dry river bank that bounded the back of his property and follow it all the way to Maldonado’s. With any luck he’d find out why these terrorists invaded his property and his little community in Texas. If they were there, maybe he’d reap a little American justice and send these bastards back to Allah, gift wrapped Texas-style.
Chapter 7
Lexi & Travis
Other than his well-used cowboy hat, there were no other signs of her brother anywhere. It was like he’d melted into the pavement, leaving only his hat in his place.
It was the same place where she’d been yelling at Travis only minutes ago. Of course, he wasn’t there now.
Lexi twisted her head around violently from one side to the other, making sure she hadn’t missed any clues.
He must have walked off into the heavy growth on either side of the road, but where?
It was no use yelling for him; she knew her brother well enough that she was sure he would be sitting and stewing for hours if left on his own. One time he’d disappeared for almost a whole day because Lexi yelled at him about something stupid he did—he was always doing lots of stupid stuff. Uncle David, Aunt Sara, and Lexi had gone off searching for him, hollering his name to the limits of their voices, and together they searched over a five-mile radius around the house. They had knocked on doors, scoured washes, walked miles of roads without any sign of him. When they returned to call the police and plan for the worst, he was there, watching his favorite TV show, The Walking Dead. After his aunt and uncle promised to not turn him into a zombie—she wasn’t going to let him off that easy—he fessed up: He’d been up in the large tree out back, watching their search, and saying nothing. No, he’d remain quiet if she called for him, and in fact, Lexi believed her pleas for him would only fuel his resolve to maintain his silence. She had to think like her brother and find him.
She stood right where she was, facing west, in the direction she had stomped off. Sliding his hat onto her head, the brim still warm with his sweat, she pretended to sulk and cry and channeled her inner Travis. He was right-handed and was on the westbound side of the divided highway, so he probably turned right, dragging his feet across the pavement. She mimicked this as well.
When her feet crunched some loose gravel on the highway’s shoulder, her head down as she imagined her brother’s would have been, something caught her eyes in the recently cut thick grass right off the pavement, before the green wall of heavy growth. It was the matted down tracks of either a very small adult … or a ten-year old boy!
But beside these were other tracks, made by wider shoes with broader gaits. There were many footsteps, in fact, leading through an opening in a wall of maples.
Lexi took two steps into the dense growth, plunging her into near darkness from the shade. She squeezed her eyes shut and reopened them, trying to get her eyes adjusted to the low light levels. She heard him first.
“Stop!” he said, a sort of muffled yell that almost seemed to echo from under the trees’ canopy.
Two men had hold of Travis. One restrained his arm and muffled his screams. The other was rifling through his backpack and then he hunched over and started into his rolla-board.
Frozen like a statue for a few moments, her feet were welded to the soft ground by fear, her always clear mind clouded and unsure. She felt like a small girl compared to these two big men. Without thinking she shouted, “Stop!”
The one rifling through Travis’s bags halted his theft and looked up casually, as if his number had been called at the post office and he just wanted to get rid of his package and move on. A smile broke onto his bearded face, as if he had just remembered a funny joke; Lexi suspected that she was the punch line.
He stood, the smile turning malevolent as he started to walk toward her. “Come here, little sweet thing. We ain’t goina bite,” he taunted her in a gravelly southern voice, a little pointy in places like crushed granite.
She stumbled backward, out of the canopy, into the brightness. Forgetting the highway’s curb, she tripped and fell hard onto her tailbone. Righting herself immediately, she shuffled backward down the other side just before the grass strip median. Just then, she remembered her father’s gun in the front pocket of her pack. Swinging the pack around in front of her, she struggled to unzip the zipper, before reaching in and searching for it frantically.
She didn’t remove her gaze from the oncoming man, only a few steps away.
Got it!
Releasing the pack, she clutched the gun’s cool heaviness, thrust it out toward the man, and unsteadily shambled back some more. Her hands and arms wobbled as she tried to aim it at him, hoping desperately he would run in fear. She had fired a similar gun—Some-Number-Magnum—with a pink handle, owned by her aunt, who took her to the range to fire it. Although it was intended for a woman’s slenderer hands, when she fired it, the recoil was so bad she’d almost dropped it. In spite of her protests to stop, her aunt and uncle forced her to fire almost twenty bullets at a paper silhouette of a man, like this one. They said she was a natural at it. But at this moment she vividly remembered the loud bang, the painful vibrations in her hands, and her swearing she would never fire the damned thing again. It didn’t matter then; it mattered now.
The man kept coming, seeming al
most surer of his step. “Whada-think you goina do wi dat?” the man gloated, as he continued his advance, having reached the shoulder of the highway.
Lexi continued her scuttle backward, almost into the eastbound lane of I-10. “Leave me alone!” she demanded. It came out as a whimper.
This man kept coming, his beard pointing east, pushed by the wind. Now that he was fully in the sunlight, she could see his clothes were covered in dirt. He and his buddy must have been sleeping off of the road when Lexi and Travis had come along and she woke them with her yelling.
She caused this.
He was in the middle of the westbound blacktop, not hesitating or slowing his progression toward her.
She didn’t want to see what came next.
She turned her head down, scrunched her eyes closed (hoping that would muffle the explosion she’d hear next while knowing it would do no such thing—she wasn’t stupid, just hopeful), and squeezed the trigger. It blasted and her hands whipped back. But this time she held tight.
She looked back and saw she must have missed because the man was now running at her, only a few feet away on the grassy median.
It was a panicked reaction of adrenaline that forced her hand. She quickly pointed again; this time she kept one squinted eye on the sight and the man—just like her aunt had taught her—and squeezed once more. Before she could fully feel and hear the effects of the eruption, she threw herself sideways to avoid the man, who tumbled past her and onto the asphalt.
He clutched his gut, a dark red dye spreading out past his fists. He looked up at her, his face twisted in confusion, then pain, and then anger. “You shot me?” he mumbled.
She ran back to the opening in the trees, not sure what she’d do, just knowing she had to be there. The other man was still standing, but was no longer clutching her brother, who had moved behind a tree several yards away. Lexi and the man stared at each other for a long moment, but his gaze kept falling on her gun which he had surely heard go off.
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