Bleeding (Oil Apocalypse Book 2)

by Lou Cadle

  She made herself quit thinking such sad thoughts. His life hadn’t ended, and that was that. Tomorrow, she’d lecture him about being more careful. She wiped her eyes, pulled the sheet up to his chin, and left him napping.

  Chapter 14

  Pilar was napping again a few days later, and when a knock came on the front door, Sierra rushed to answer before it could wake him. Curt stood there, tapping a baseball hat against his leg.

  “Hi, Curt,” she said, slipping out the screen door. “What’s up?”

  “I just got off my guard shift and wanted to come by and ask how Pilar was.”

  “He’s asleep right now. He had a rough night. He coughs at night, and that hurts to do.”

  “I have a few pain pills if you need them.”

  “Thanks, but I don’t know if I could get him to take them. He has a thing about messing with his brain chemistry, he says.”

  “In a lot of pain, is he?”

  “Sit down,” she said, pointing to the pair of Adirondack chairs on the deck. “Can I get you anything? I have iced tea or water.”

  “Only if you want something for yourself.”

  She thought about her to-do list and if she could afford to sit and chat. “I wouldn’t mind a ten-minute break. Hang on, I’ll be right back.”

  Inside, she poured two iced teas and then brought them out. Curt was perched on the edge of the chair. “Here,” she said. “Lean back and relax. How was guard duty?”

  “Completely quiet,” he said. “I wonder if we might be past the worst of it.”

  “I hope so,” she said, but at the same time she shook her head. “I can’t imagine the situation with the Payson invaders won’t come to a head at some point.”

  “Depends on their food situation, I’d guess.”

  “Joan was saying when she came by yesterday to check on Pilar that she and the girls had only been eating about a thousand calories a day down there on the best days.”

  “That’s not enough.”

  “No. The eggs make all the difference. And they will in the future too. I guess once our freezers are empty, we’ll be increasing our flocks and eating ten or fifteen eggs every day. But that’s good, right?”

  “Very healthy food.”

  “I wish hens laid year round.”

  “I think it’s possible to get more laying time out of them with lights.”

  “Never been the kind of thing Pilar would have approved of before. Maybe now he will.”

  “So he’s healing up okay?”

  “Not much change, but Kelly says that’s normal. She said it will take him a couple of weeks to be able to do most things, and even then he’ll be in some pain.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I keep reminding myself it could have been so much worse. He could have died.” Just thinking about it brought tears to her eyes. She wiped them away and tried laughing at herself. “Look at me, being such an idiot. The worst is over now, and yet here I am sniffling over it still.”

  “It was hard for you. Is hard, I’m sure.”

  She looked at him to see his face filled with concern. His eyes, which often flicked away from hers after a few seconds, held hers steadily. “You’re sweet to say it.”

  “No, just reminding you of the truth. You doing okay? Need me to help with moving anything heavy or just anything at all? I can dust pretty well.”

  “Pilar was never big on dusting. He said ‘why bother? It just gets dusty again.’ Lisette was more into it.”

  “Right, his girlfriend. Did you ever hear anything from her before phones and net went out?”

  “Not a thing since she said goodbye.” Sierra glanced back to the kitchen, which was where that had happened for her and Lisette. “She drove off, and I guess it’ll stay a mystery.”

  “Must be tough.”

  “I wasn’t all that close to her. I’m ashamed to admit it. I had school and my friends. But Pilar must think of it a lot.”

  “I imagine so.”

  “I guess he won’t be dating a lot in the future either. Wouldn’t it be awful if that was the last chance he had at love?”

  Curt nodded.

  Sierra remembered that Curt’s own last chance at love had been about ten or twelve years ago, before the illness that had transformed his features from handsome to—well, not ugly. She didn’t see him that way any longer. Stark. Dramatic. Different. “I’m sorry,” she said in a small voice. “That wasn’t very sensitive of me, was it?”

  “You have a good heart, Sierra Ash,” he said. “And you’re a pretty amazing kid.”

  “I’m not a kid. And I don’t mean that in the way a kid would say it. I’m really not any more.”

  “You’re still a teenager, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t think that matters as much. I honestly feel that I transformed into an adult that night in the barn. The night you saved me. Have I thanked you for that?”

  “A couple dozen times,” he said with a wry smile.

  “Every day I am alive, I should thank you. I’m only here because of you.”

  “You might have survived it on your own.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. Today? Hell, yeah. I could think of ten things I could have done to stun him or kill him. I wouldn’t fumble the shotgun today. Back then, I was incompetent and scared.”

  “You don’t feel scared any more? Like when you were down in Payson, getting the Kershaws out?”

  She tried to put words to it. “It’s different. Down there, I was scared, sure. But it wasn’t like my brain got turned off because of it. In the barn, I was like this bundle of panic, and nothing else. In Payson, it was a healthy fear. A sane fear. It was even a helpful fear. I was more alert, and I would bet you I heard better because of it. It’s like....” She really was having a hard time pinning it down. “It’s like I have it on a leash, like when you clip the leash on Jasper, and it obeys my commands.” She managed a smile. “Maybe not the best metaphor. But you see what I mean?”

  “I do. I know about putting emotions on a leash.”

  She was curious. “Which emotions are those?”

  He looked down and started fiddling with his hat, rotating it in his hands and staring like he was examining it for stitching flaws. “Most of them.”

  “So which ones do you not keep on a leash?” She wanted to know the answer.

  “Contentment, I suppose. That thing you feel when you’re alone, and the birds are singing, and it’s a good day, and no one is judging you.” He looked out at the turbines and not at her.

  It sounded like the answer of a lonely man.

  “I think you’ll find that we all judge you now. But in a very positive way. Like your coming over here to check on Pilar. That’s really nice of you.”

  He glanced back at her. “I was checking on you too.”

  “I’m good. I’m a hell of a lot better off than Pilar.”

  “Must be a lot of work for you.”

  “It’s some. But he did most of it while I was in school, so it seems only fair.”

  “Fair is good when you can get it. You can’t always.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, blurting it out before she had really thought through the words.

  “About what?” He finally shifted so he was looking right at her.

  “That life hasn’t been fair to you.”

  “At least I have plenty of company in that.”

  She cocked her head in a question.

  “I mean, think of it. Nobody has it easy these days. Even being rich wouldn’t protect you right now. How many rich people have a big vegetable garden? Hens? Dairy cows?”

  “A few?” She wasn’t sure.

  “Very few. I never would have wished for what’s happened, but you do have to say that about it.”

  “What?”

  “It’s been a great leveler. Gun skills, mechanical skills, gardening skills, owning a bit of land—that’s what counts now. Not money in the bank or net worth or personal jets.”


  “I guess we’ve been lucky.”

  “Or smart. Your dad and Arch may not have had this exact situation in mind, but they had something like it in mind when they decided to build out here and stay off the electric grid.”

  “And you? Weren’t you thinking of that?”

  “Not really. I just wanted to escape, you know?”

  She didn’t know from personal experience, but she believed she knew what he meant. It had grown too painful for him to stay in the mainstream of society, and so he had chosen to be a hermit. “I suppose it doesn’t matter why you chose it. It still ends up benefiting you.”

  “True.” He finished his tea. “Thanks for the drink. Are you sure there’s nothing I can do for you?”

  “No, I’m good. In fact, I’m caught up enough that I was going to spend a half-hour at the Kershaws, explaining how to get a hen to sit a nest.”

  “Joan seems pretty sharp.”

  “Yeah, she picks things up quickly. And she’s motivated.”

  “I wouldn’t wonder.” He stood. “You come running if you need any help at all, okay?”

  “I will. You’re a good friend, Curt. I know this will sound crazy, but one of the silver linings to this whole situation has been getting to know you better.”

  “Same here,” he said in a rough voice, and then he turned and strode off.

  Good guy. The world didn’t know what it had lost, driving him off as it had.

  Chapter 15

  Two weeks after Pilar’s accident, Pilar and Dev’s father were both better, but neither was near a hundred percent. Dev’s father was working at learning to shoot left-handed at the same time he was rehabbing his right shoulder. Using a rifle, he was equally as good with both hands—that is, not very. But with his right arm, he was getting better with his Glock, though he couldn’t hold it up for long and keep it steady. Pilar’s rib also made it difficult for him to hold his arms in the air for long. And he couldn’t twist fast or drop fast to the ground, both of which might be required of him in a firefight.

  Joan had been practicing every day with Mitch Morrow’s rifle or shotgun under Arch and Dev’s tutelage, and she was improving, but it would be weeks before she was anywhere near Pilar’s normal level. Two months ago, Dev would have said Sierra was the worst shot of all of them, but that was no longer true. She had great vision and her experience so far seemed to have taken all her hesitation away. A moving target was no problem for her now. She was every bit as good as his own mother, and maybe better than her father had been when he wasn’t hurt. And she was fearless. Too much so, if you asked Dev.

  It was true that nothing bad had happened since the Kershaws had moved here. No one had invaded, no one had stolen from them, and no fires had been set. The two guys down at the other neighborhood hadn’t even snuck up to spy on them, and when they’d checked on them every four or five days, they seemed to be content learning how to live via trap and garden. Dev’s mom had helped them plant some late-fall crops so they’d have cherry tomatoes and squash and green beans again before the first freeze.

  His father had said, “They’re happy to have full bellies for now. But when they get used to that, we might have problems from that Oliver.” Rudy was anxious to please and grateful, but Oliver still seemed suspicious and sort of angry all the time. Maybe he had good reason, but so did everyone alive in this world. And he had no reason to be angry at Dev, but that didn’t stop him from being short-tempered around him and challenging every other thing he said.

  The worst problem they had now, in the absence of enemies on their doorsteps, was the weather. Every afternoon it clouded over, a typical monsoon season occurrence, but the clouds never dropped any rain. The gardens needed a lot of water.

  As the neighbors all met over a lunch of grilled hot dogs, tomato slices, and grilled planks of blue potatoes and yellow pepper halves, they could hear a low, slow rumble of thunder from up the mountain. Arch said, “If it doesn’t start raining soon, we need to revisit the issue of using the stream to irrigate.”

  Pilar said, “The only argument you’ll get from me this time is that neither of us is physically up for laying pipe right now. By the point that we are, it may be raining.”

  “So you’ve come around to my way of thinking?”

  “I had a lot of time to think while I was lying there those first couple days.” He still couldn’t remember how he had fallen. It seemed it would forever remain a mystery. “The animals are smart enough to find water, even if we steal water from the stream. If the water table falls below the level of our wells, the stream might save us.”

  Sierra said, “Could it do that?”

  Pilar shrugged. “If we don’t get rain for a few years, and if the snow doesn’t fall, eventually, yes.”

  “So why not wait until that happens?”

  He looked at her and shrugged.

  Dev tried to work out what he was thinking. He might be trying to get along with Dev’s father. But maybe he was thinking, next time I fall might be the last time, and he was planning for Sierra’s future. Maybe Dev should volunteer to learn how to maintain the turbines as well. That’d keep Sierra from risking a fall in the future. But no, she’d refuse that kind of help.

  They talked about other things over the grilled food—about Oliver and Rudy, about Jasper’s inclination to go after any hen or chick that she could get to, about how the brood hen was doing with Joan’s new eggs. They talked about fall hunting and about how maybe Joan would want to learn to make sausage so her girls would find game meat more palatable. Joan said, “They’d better adjust to it. We have to get used to this way of living.”

  Misha said, “I miss potato chips.”

  “I can teach you how to make some this winter,” Dev’s mom said.

  “Will they taste like King Chips?” Misha said.

  Dev’s mom looked in confusion at Joan.

  Joan said, “A store brand.”

  “Depends how thin we can cut them. That’s part of the trick.”

  “One day,” Dev’s father said, “if you want to be frying anything, we’ll have to use rendered fat from rabbits or chickens, not bottled oil.”

  “We have the oil today,” his mom answered. “And you can reuse the frying medium for potatoes over and over. At least until it turns dark.”

  Dev imagined by the time the bottles of oil were gone, they wouldn’t want to be rendering fat from chickens but eating every morsel of it. For now he wasn’t going to bed hungry, but that’s because the fruit trees were bearing and the vegetables were plentiful, the freezer was full of meat and the shop was full of canisters of flour and rice. Come the end of winter, they might be running low on meat, depending on how hunting went. While they could eat their stored beans and rice and bread, the more they ate, the less of that there’d be over the coming years, if they made it years, which was no sure thing. Hunting would provide more and more of their food, but then there’d be other people out hunting in the same animal populations. Eventually, there wouldn’t be much left to hunt.

  “How many are left in Payson?” he asked Joan.

  “Five thousand, at least.”

  “It’d take a lot of deer to feed that many. I’m sure the gardens down there aren’t bearing like ours. Not most of them. They haven’t had the time to build up the soil like we have. Nothing near Pilar’s soil.” His mom was a good gardener, but the Crocker garden grew the biggest and best vegetables of all because of all that Pilar did to build up the soil.

  Sierra said, “I’m finished eating. I’m going to take a plate down to Curt. I wonder what he likes on his hot dog.”

  As had become his habit, Curt had volunteered to stand guard while they ate.

  “Just fix a plate with a dab of everything on the side,” Dev’s mom said. “And that’s thoughtful of you.”

  As Dev watched her fix Curt’s plate, he was aware of a strange sensation in his chest. It took him a minute to identify it. Jealousy, that’s what it was. Which was crazy, because Sierra wasn�
�t his girlfriend or anything like that. And taking Curt food probably wasn’t anything more than a kind thought on her part. Curt was pretty old, after all.

  But still, he felt the twinge again as she walked away, holding the plate in both hands.

  “Devlin?” his mother said.

  “What?”

  “I asked if you wanted watermelon yet.”

  “Wait,” his father said.

  Dev thought at first he was saying he wanted to wait for the watermelon, but then his father pulled out his cell phone. He shaded the screen with his hand and looked at it. His face went hard. “There’s trouble down at the kids’ place. Let’s go.”

  Everyone jumped up but Joan, who sat very still, her face draining of color. They all had their rifles close at hand. She said, “What do we do?”

  “We need to go see what’s what,” Dev’s mother said. “Does it sound like it’s an attack? Is there shooting?”

  “It said, ‘Trouble. Someone’s coming,’” his father said.

  “That’s probably not good,” she said, adjusting her rifle strap. “We’ll get more ammo at home. Dev, come on.” She grabbed her rifle, which was leaning against the deck rail with everyone else’s.

  “All of us?” he said.

  “Pilar, you stay here. We’ll leave Sierra and Curt to defend our neighborhood, and you. Joan, that means we need you with us.”

  Joan was still pale, but she also had a growing look of determination on her face. “I’ll be at the end of the road in less than five minutes. Misha, come on. Jasper, heel.” She took off at a run for her house.

  Dev ran with his folks to their house and gathered magazines and spare rounds. His father said, “I’m sticking with the Glock this time.” He also grabbed the binoculars.

  His mom said, “That’s fine. Dev and I have the range, honey.”

  “We have two good shooters and two not-so-good going. Two good and one not-so good staying. Is that the right way to do this?” He was talking to Dev’s mom, not to Dev.

  “It’s fine.”