A Stunning Betrayal

by Darrell Maloney

  There were also several boxes of dried foods in the basement. Enough to feed Ronald’s family for many months.

  In the corner was a stack of MREs.

  Ronald had never heard of Meals, Ready to Eat until he’d read the prepper’s Bible.

  Then he’d gone to a local Army surplus store and purchased a couple of them.

  He was impressed and surprised at the same time, both by how good they were and how long they lasted.

  They weren’t cheap, though, and he could only purchase a two-month supply.

  They were gone a long time ago.

  He was glad to have found these.

  He was also glad to find a good-sized pile of .556 ammunition, both in loaded magazines and in unopened boxes.

  Over a thousand rounds.

  Long enough to last him for months. Maybe years.

  It suddenly dawned on Ronald that he needed to get the hell out of there.

  This house was a prime discovery. The equivalent of a scuba diver finding a shipwreck full of doubloons or a prospector finding a vein of rich gold ore.

  But if he had any chance of keeping it he had to get his family moved here before daylight.

  To move them into the house during daylight hours would expose the ruse the house was vacant.

  And that would be an open invitation for any looter who came down the street to walk in and look around.

  He climbed the stairs to the ground floor and pushed the bookcase door closed.

  Then he crawled through the shattered window and back into the front yard.

  There he looked both ways to make sure he wasn’t being watched and scampered down the street.

  Chapter 45

  Ronald’s wife Monica had been stricken with… something, which kept her pretty much bedridden for several months now.

  They pretty much accepted she was dying, since there were no doctors and no medicine around to treat her.

  And since they didn’t have a clue what was causing her constant vomiting and weakness.

  Ordinarily Ronald wouldn’t have thought of moving her.

  But moving her would be a better idea than trying to move all the treasures he found at the Spear house, even if he had to carry Monica the whole way.

  Moving all the food, water and ammo could take weeks, and the chances of him doing it without being spotted were practically nil.

  He’d have to make a hundred trips easy, and if he were spotted just one time, all the spotter had to do was lie in wait to see where he went for his next load. Then he’d likely be shot and all would be lost.

  No, as much as he hated to ask Monica to move, it had to be this way.

  Besides, the Spear house was so much better than their own. It was two stories with a full basement. The Martinez family lived in a tiny single-story home.

  The Spear house was fortified, and Ronald’s wasn’t.

  It was a choice find, but he had to move fast lest someone else try to take it away from him.

  He burst into his house, calling out in the darkness.

  “Monica! Kids, it’s me.”

  Amy called back, “Mommy’s in the back yard. She’s throwing up again.”

  Daughter Amy and son Robert didn’t like their father very much.

  He wasn’t a nice man, and there was absolutely nothing they could do to please him, no matter how hard they tried.

  At some point they stopped trying.

  Now they were essentially strangers who lived in the same house.

  Despite their ages… eight and seven, they talked secretly about what they’d do if their mom didn’t make it.

  They’d heard rumors that Catholic nuns had taken over the Alamo and were taking in orphans.

  They didn’t have a clue how to make it from their house to the Alamo, and didn’t know it was thirteen long miles away.

  It didn’t matter, though.

  They’d brave the journey to get away from their father and his frequent violent outbursts.

  “You kids pack your backpacks. We’re leaving.”

  He said the handful of terse words as he walked through the house on his way to the back yard.

  No explanations, no reasons why. Just instructions they were moving with no elaboration at all.

  Most children would have asked a dozen questions under similar circumstances.

  Not Amy and Robert.

  Any questions would have been interpreted by their father as “sassing” him or “talking back” and would have resulted in a brutal backhand across their faces.

  Or worse.

  No, Robert and Amy just looked at one another in the dim light their candle provided them, then jumped up and did what they were told.

  They’d ask their mother if it was okay to bring their pillows. It would be much safer that way.

  On the back porch Ronald waited until Monica finished retching before announcing, “I’ve found a much better place for us to stay. But we’ve got to leave quickly and be there before the sun comes up.”

  Monica wanted to say she didn’t feel good.

  She wanted to say she was too weak to walk anywhere. That she’d had dizzy spells off and on all day and into the night.

  But she was just as afraid as her children of incurring his wrath. She’d been beaten more times than she could count.

  He wasn’t always this way, Ronald wasn’t. Once upon a time he was a loving husband.

  Then he started hanging out with the wrong crowd.

  He’d transitioned from marijuana into harder drugs.

  Then he did a two year stint in state prison for possession of six grams of crack cocaine.

  He’d bought it for his own use. He expected it to last him for a couple of months so he didn’t have to go out and hustle for it every three or four nights.

  But the cops didn’t believe him. Neither did the district attorney, who said that was too much for a single user.

  Anybody with that much must be dealing it, they said.

  Something happened while he was in prison.

  Or maybe it was just being in prison.

  Whatever it was, it changed him in many ways.

  He’d gone in soft.

  He came out chiseled, displaying muscles Monica never knew he had.

  It wasn’t just the muscles. He had several ugly tattoos. Prison tattoos, crudely done with black ink.

  Most of all his prison stint made him jumpy and mean. His moods now turned on a dime.

  She asked him one time what it was about prison that made him so.

  He punched her so hard he loosened her front teeth and left a nasty bruise on the side of her face.

  So nasty a bruise she couldn’t leave her house for a week.

  She had to call in sick to work and say she had the flu. If she’d gone in in such a state one of her friends would have called the cops for sure.

  She hadn’t been in the job long enough to earn vacation or sick days. She lost a week’s pay.

  He beat her a second time for that.

  She never asked him about prison again.

  Chapter 46

  On this particular night he was in a particularly good mood.

  He even carried her part of the way to the Spears’ house.

  He said he had a surprise. Something all of them would appreciate.

  Even the kids were hopeful they’d get through the rest of the night without being cursed at or slapped around.

  But they knew better than to count on it.

  “This is gonna be great,” Ronald said as they turned onto Dave’s street and neared his home.

  “You guys are gonna love our new digs. It’s got everything. It’s got a generator in the basement that’s vented to the back yard. A TV and movies to watch. It even has a computer with video games on it.

  “And best of all it’s got food. Lots and lots of food. No more being hungry. No more going to bed at night with your stomachs growling. No more of that crap. Not ever again.”

  He addressed Monica directly,
“We’ve hit the mother lode, baby. I don’t know where the hell those people went, but they left everything behind. And it’s all ours now. All of it.”

  As they crawled through the shattered window Ronald told his kids to watch out for sharp glass.

  That surprised them, because for a very long time they had the impression he didn’t care whether they lived or died.

  Monica was skeptical.

  “But… it’s just an empty house.”

  Were he not in a benevolent mood, such a comment might have earned her a punch in the face.

  But not tonight.

  “Just wait, baby. Just wait and see. You’re not gonna believe what’s in this house.”

  And she couldn’t.

  None of them could.

  For so long they’d lived from one day to the next, one meal to the next, not knowing whether each sunrise would be their last.

  This… this must be what heaven looked like.

  At least in the new world.

  “Okay, I want you guys to stay here in the basement tonight.

  “Tomorrow there’s plenty of time to explore our new house. Tonight though, I don’t want any lights except for the basement. I don’t feel comfortable about that busted window. I’m worried that somebody else may see it and think it’s okay to walk in and check the place out for themselves.”

  He got no arguments. He almost never did. And especially not on a night like this.

  He cranked up the generator for the kids and told them to find a movie to watch.

  Then he took two fully loaded magazines upstairs with him.

  For the rest of the night he’d stand guard, lest anyone come through that shattered window.

  At daybreak he’d give Monica one of the handguns Dave left behind and have her relieve him.

  He’d measure the shattered window and scout out some of the other houses in the neighborhood… the ones which were really vacant… to see if he could find one of similar size.

  Yes sir, things were looking up for the Martinez family.

  At daybreak he swung the bookcase door open and hollered down into the basement.

  “Are you guys still awake?”

  Daughter Amy called back, “Robert and I are awake, Daddy. Mommy is sleeping.”

  “Well, wake her up. Tell her I need her.”

  “Yes sir.”

  A few minutes later Monica stumbled up the basement stairs.

  It was obvious she’d had a rough night. Her hair was unkempt, she had heavy bags under her eyes and her eyelids were drooping.

  It a word, she looked like hell.

  Yet Ronald, being the kind of man he was, didn’t ask how she felt or if she was okay.

  He merely handed her the gun on his hip and said, “Sit right here. If anybody opens that door and it’s not me, I want you to shoot them right in the head. Don’t ask any questions. Don’t hesitate. Just shoot them in the head and I’ll clean up the mess later. Understand?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “You’re not gonna fall asleep on me, are you?”

  “No. I won’t.”

  “I’ll just make sure.”

  He took the chair he’d sat in while keeping guard and pushed it to the other side of the room.

  “There. Just lean against the wall. That way you won’t be able to fall asleep and give away our gold mine.”

  He started to walk away and she followed him with her eyes.

  He reprimanded her.

  “The door! Watch the door, not me!”

  Her head instantly snapped back into place.

  This wasn’t the sweet Ronald she’d married. As he walked away she wondered what happened to that Ronald. What happened in that prison, she wondered, that turned him into the monster he was now?

  He walked back to the basement doorway and called down, “You kids come up here.”

  They didn’t have to be told twice.

  They’d been wanting to explore the rest of the house. All they’d seen to this point was the basement. And it held all kinds of treasures.

  They could only imagine what the rest of the house had to offer.

  “I’m going out for awhile,” Ronald said with a bit of a growl. “You can look around, but do not say a word while you’re in the back yard. Not even a whisper.

  “And when you’re upstairs, use one of the flashlights from the basement. Don’t take a lantern up there. I worked too hard to find this place to let you nitwits burn it down.

  “And keep an eye on your mama. Make sure she doesn’t fall asleep. Tell her if she does she’ll have me to deal with when I get back.”

  “Yes sir.”

  He took his own flashlight into the garage, still marveling that Dave had working batteries and wondering how he’d managed it.

  In the garage he found a tape measure. There was no window putty he could apply to hold the new window into place, but he did find a tube of bathtub caulking he could use instead.

  He also grabbed a chisel to dig out the old putty.

  Ten minutes later he was on the street headed toward the first of several vacant houses in the neighborhood in search of a window pane to replace the one he shattered.

  Chapter 47

  Dave would have given his right arm to have his own working flashlight.

  Well, maybe not.

  But he sure wished he had one.

  It was tough, crawling his way through the Food World trailer, because it was mostly untouched except for the four pallets at the end of the trailer.

  They were off the interstate now, on a two lane state highway.

  Such highways were seldom traveled by highway nomads because the abandoned trucks were fewer and farther between.

  Abandoned trucks were the lifeline of the modern highway nomad, and what they depended on for food and, to a lesser extent, water.

  Most truckers kept to the interstates to make their runs.

  There were a few exceptions, though. Truckers who were overloaded and trying to avoid scales sometimes used the back roads.

  Sometimes truckers knew shortcuts which could cut miles off their routes, or which could avoid construction zones which tended to bottleneck and slow them down.

  And sometimes trucks, like this one, used back roads to make deliveries to grocery stores in towns that weren’t located close to an interstate highway.

  This truck sat unmolested for months when the power went out simply because back then most people stayed close to home.

  Most were left in the dark (quite literally) about what happened and whether it could be fixed.

  They had faith that their local power companies could make repairs and turn the lights back on. That neighborhood mechanics could get the cars running again, and that trucks would once again be able to stock their supermarket’s shelves.

  It wasn’t until the supermarket shelves were all empty and tractor-trailer rigs in the cities were stripped clean that many people got desperate.

  Most people hunkered down and started growing gardens or learned how to fish and trap small game.

  Hunters went hunting.

  Those who lacked such skills and were unwilling to learn them either ended their own lives or took to the roads.

  Even then, common sense dictated that most of the unlooted trailers would be on the interstates, and most nomads made a beeline to get to them.

  The occasional tractor trailer on a state highway was a relative rarity, so nomads tended to stay off such roads for the most part.

  On the Food World trailer Dave was working, only a few nomads had picked through it. And they found what they needed in the last four pallets at the end of the trailer.

  There was simply no need to search any farther.

  Dave knew well that a fully loaded trailer was a pain in the butt to dig into.

  Standard wooden pallets are forty inches wide.

  If workers who load such pallets are good at their craft, the boxes on the pallets don’t hang over the pallet’s edges.

  I
f forklift drivers who load the pallets onto the trailers are good at their own craft, they load the pallets flush with the trailer’s walls.

  If the pallets are stacked properly and placed on the truck properly, there’s a very narrow aisle that one can squeeze through to get from the back of the trailer to the front.

  The problem is that warehouse workers who build the pallets are typically minimum wage employees who haven’t got much incentive to do their jobs right.

  Frequently they’re people who go from one job to the next to the next, sometimes getting fired or quitting several times a year.

  Now, there are good quality people working in distribution system warehouses.

  But there are at least as many who couldn’t care less about doing a proper job.

  The same is true about the forklift drivers. They typically get paid better because they have skills a pallet builder doesn’t have.

  But they don’t get bonuses or recognition for being neat and tidy.

  They get bonuses and recognition based on how many trucks they can get loaded and on the road on any given day.

  The result is often poorly built pallets just thrown into the trailers.

  Compared to some Dave had seen, this one was actually pretty good.

  He was able to squeeze himself about halfway through the trailer before a particularly wide pallet blocked his way and he had to climb over it.

  A typical trailer on its way from a distribution center isn’t stacked all the way to the ceiling.

  The pallets are stacked about head-high.

  Sure, pallet builders could stack the pallets higher and move more product.

  But lifting boxes over their heads is hard work.

  And their employer doesn’t pay them enough to strain themselves.

  So when the pallet becomes so high it causes them to strain, they’ll call it good enough, shrink wrap it and start another pallet.

  As a result, a typical grocery store trailer has three to four feet of dead space between the top of the cargo and the trailer’s ceiling.

  For highway nomads, the dead space is a godsend.

  It not only allows access to the entire trailer’s cargo, but it gives a nomad a place to toss boxes he doesn’t want when he’s digging for something he does want.