“Shit, he’s a sneaky one!” Jay said, but even with his blacked out face I could tell he was smiling.
“Very,” I said, then turned to him. “Go get Foghorn,” I said, pointing at the homestead.
Raider took off like a shot, though he wasn’t barking and it was full dark. He made a beeline for the house as Jay and I struggled to jog across the road, trying to keep large trees between us and the house for cover until we were at the north western edge of the property where we had to either walk straight in or sneak in from under the cover of the brush of the surrounding property.
“Want to just walk right in?” I asked Jay. “I don’t see the Guard wanting to leave booby traps the way we did.”
“You didn’t really send Raider off to chase the rooster, did you?” Jay asked as we followed along after my dog.
“He’ll figure it out that they’re in the coop, but I betcha he’s marking all the dead bodies they left behind.”
“More holes to dig…” Jay sighed.
“I don’t know if we want to move them right away,” I said.
He was silent a long moment, and was about to talk, when Raider let out a happy sounding bark.
“He find something?” Jay asked me.
“I think he’s telling us what he didn’t find.”
“I always figured you and Jess as being the dog whisperers. That Doctor Doolittle shit spooks me sometimes.”
I had to laugh. To other people, who didn’t have dogs, what Jessica had taught me and Raider, the training, it was really about communication. It was breaking through that species barrier and being able to understand each other. How the heck did I know without looking at his body language that it was a happy bark? Witchcraft? Just getting to know my buddy, and communication. That was how I knew.
“That’s what I thought. Come on, you two ain’t been wrong yet.”
Everything was silent and, other than the rustling of the chickens in their roosts, things were almost unearthly dead. After the lights went out and people started congregating at the homestead, I’d got used to the noisy hustle and bustle of men, women and children going on about their days. There weren’t any kids running around the yard playing, the crackling of the main cook fire was gone, and the ashes were long cooled. Just a slight breeze blowing through the leaves was the only other thing I heard. It was more than a little creepy, but Raider wasn’t setting off the alarm bells. In fact, he was waiting on the top step for us, his tail a blur as his entire body wiggled.
“It’s good to be home, huh buddy?” I asked him.
He chuffed his answer to me then turned, pawing at the door. I opened it, waiting for him to bound ahead of me so I didn’t get knocked down in his excitement. He took off in the dark, making a beeline to the back where the bedrooms were. Jay walked in behind me, pulling the door closed, and snapped on a flashlight, keeping one hand over the front, the light trickling out between a couple of fingers.
“Just in case,” he said softly.
“Did you see Monty?” I asked him.
“Yeah, walked right in and got into your shine. Is that what you wanted to check out?”
“Not exactly. If he was going to help himself, why did he put the bottle back?” I asked him.
“You think he knew we were watching?” he asked, his face backlit by the weak glow of the light coming out of his hand as he panned the room.
“Maybe not exactly that,” I said, hearing Raider head to the other bedroom. “Bring that light to the pantry, would you?”
“Sure,” he answered, following me to the small doorway.
I went in and turned around, looking at all the bottles stacked up just out of sight. There were half a dozen, but only one of them had any shine missing from it. I moved aside so Jay could get behind me so I could see better and leaned my carbine against the wall. I reached up and, when I picked up the bottle, a piece of paper fluttered down. I picked it up and held it up shoulder height. The handwriting was big and blocky, and it was written on the back of a piece of paper that looked like it’d been hastily ripped off.
“What’s it say?” Jay asked.
I handed it over so he could see it.
Even salt looks like sugar.
“What’s that mean?” Jay asked, handing it back to me.
“I…” I scratched my head, then pocketed the scrap and picked up my rifle, “I feel like there’s something tickling the back of my mind. I can’t spit it out. I remember something like that from my English classes in college.”
“So you isn’t a dumb hillbilly hick, ‘shine running fool after all,” Jay said with an ironic grin.
“Bite me,” I said laughing, walking into the kitchen where I could see Raider sniffing hopefully at the top of our stove.
“Now what would your wife-to-be think of that?” he asked in a falsetto voice.
Dude was cracking me up. It was a lot funnier than it should have been, but it was a welcome release of tension to laugh. He joined my nearly silent laughs a moment later.
“Pregnancy hormones. Who knows what she’d say,” I said after a moment. “Maybe Linda and Jess can make heads and tails of this.” I patted my pocket with my free hand.
“Alright, let’s go, but real slow like.”
“You worried that somebody’s still around?” I asked him.
“No, I wanted to talk to you about your future mother-in-law,” he said, suddenly serious.
“You mean … like…”
“Listen, man, I know the basic back story of what happened, but like… I don’t know. There’s something about that woman…” His words trailed off as he turned the flashlight at the front door, highlighting something on the floor.
“Those weren’t there before,” I said, goose bumps running up and down my body.
“Raider didn’t alert us,” Jay said, clearly as disturbed as I was. “Is that—”
“Pictures,” I said simply, bending over to pick them up.
13
I woke up with a start, my heart beating almost out of control. The dreams. No, the nightmares. I’d thought I was over them. It was bad, and I felt sick, sweat soaked. Jess tried to pull me back down onto the sleeping pad we’d made out of a few of our blankets over a tarp, but I had to sit up. I needed more room, more air. I needed—
“It’s ok,” Jess said, sitting up and pulling me almost into her lap.
“It’s… I don’t… I need to—”
“Don’t hyperventilate. Take a couple of deep breaths.”
I tried to do as she said. We were being quiet because we’d set ourselves up under a shelter half. With the sides open, our voices would carry. Mary and Grandma snored softly in another shelter half across from us, less than two steps away. Slowly I calmed, my speeding heartbeat seemed to be losing the nitrous that had it running like an out of control race car. After a couple more moments, Jessica let go and pulled on my shoulder. I turned to her in the early morning light.
“Which one was it?” she asked me.
“New one,” I told her simply.
“Tell me.”
“I don’t think I can remember it all,” I lied.
“Bullshit,” she said softly. “Lay it bare or I’m going to make Diesel and Yaeger sit on your head after feeding them pork and beans all day.”
I shook my head, feeling my mouth move into a smile. I took another cleansing breath and blew it out slowly.
“The dead were speaking to me,” I told her. “The men I killed.”
“Ok, that’s a start. Was it a guilt dream?” she asked quietly, pulling my hand into hers.
“I think so.”
“Go on,” she urged softly.
I took another deep breath then told her. “First it was Emily’s husband. He still had the cracked helmet on, but I knew it was him. He said that to beat them, I had to become one of them.”
“One of the dead?”
“I don’t know. It’s creepy. It was like I was standing right in the middle of the yard between the bar
n and the front porch. They surrounded me. The KGR, Lance’s guys, the biker-looking fools I blew up. They all looked just like they had died. Every single one of them told me that to beat them, I had to become one of them.”
“It’s probably your brain working out some of the crap you’ve been ignoring,” she said softly.
She wasn’t putting me down, in fact, she was bluntly telling me what I’d already thought.
“What I don’t get though, is what scared you so badly,” she finished.
Dammit.
“At the end, Emily’s husband told me that if I didn’t do it, I couldn’t be saved. That’s when the dream started replaying the last moments in the bunker.”
“Where my dad…?”
“Yeah, except… I lost both of you, and Mary. It was almost like a message, or a warning. If I didn’t become like them, I was going to lose everybody I love. I don’t know,” I finished, pulling my hand back and rubbing my face with both palms, trying to shake the nightmare loose from my brain.
“Don’t let it haunt you,” Jessica said simply.
“I know, but it’s like there’s something missing. Some clue I’ve missed.”
“Maybe it has something to do with the note and pictures you found?” Her words were soft, but still blunt.
“I don’t know, we were too freaked out to really check them out too much. The note though, it makes no sense to me.”
“You said you saw Monty leave it?” she asked.
“Yeah, I think he’s the one who did. It said, ‘even salt looks like sugar,’ whatever that means.”
Her face lit up. “It’s part of a quote. It goes… ‘Don’t trust everything you see, even salt looks like sugar,’ That has to be it.”
It hit me like a ton of bricks. Monty had only left half a quote because it was a message, it was a warning. Not everything is as it seems. That I knew, because I was aware of McKinney and Young’s deceptions and knew they were working with Spider’s KGR now.
“Things aren’t what they seem…”
“I had a dream too. Remember when you and Jay snuck in here, all freaked out over the pictures that were slid under the front door?”
“Yeah,” I said softly. “Raider didn’t even bark or alert that any strangers were about. He was his usual, happy-go-lucky self as always.”
“That’s just it. What if it wasn’t a stranger?”
I shivered. Paranoia was a feeling I was becoming accustomed to, and not in a million, billion years did I ever think a moonshiner could be hit with it harder than I was already used to.
Our core group sat around one of the smaller fires while everyone had their tin cups of water heating. Grandma was across from Jess, Mary and I, with Jay to our right, Linda to our left. Les, Sheriff Jackson and the others were hanging back a little bit, having eaten first. Margie and Curt had been up earlier than Jess and I, and had silently made a huge batch of drop biscuits, so we were heating water for coffee or tea.
“Did you check out the pictures?” Linda asked me and Jay.
“Briefly. Polaroids. They got… somebody,” I said, putting my arm around Mary who was groggy and falling asleep sitting up. Raider was curled behind her and any second now she might end up using him for a pillow by the look of things.
“We knew that. Still, she warned us,” Linda said.
“There’s that,” Curt said softly. “It just stings. I mean… She was one of us. She was sweet on you and—”
“Doesn’t look like she’s a willing guest,” Jay said, handing the top picture to his right to let everyone see. When Grandma passed that on, she looked down at the stack he was still holding.
“Why do you have a picture of my daughter?” she asked suddenly.
The quiet murmurs around us quieted as Grandma’s words cracked through the air like a bullwhip.
“I… This one?” he asked, handing her the entire stack.
She started flipping through them, her face going pale. There weren’t many in the stack, just a few. I’d seen them last night, but other than recognizing Emily tied and gagged, I hadn’t recognized anyone.
“Let me see that,” Sheriff Jackson said, taking the picture from a reluctant Grandma, who looked like she was going to choke up.
“Oh no, that’s Liz all right,” he said, showing Curt and Margie over his shoulder.
“I ain’t seen her since Wes was knee high to a grasshopper,” Curt said, “but that … it really looks like—”
“That’s Liz,” Les said as he looked over. “Has to be.”
“It is,” Grandma said quietly. “I never quit writing letters to her when she left. She always kept in contact.”
I wasn’t following everything, but I knew Grandma had some letters from my mom, but I’d never had a chance to talk to her about it, and I had no idea why.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?” I asked her suddenly.
“Because I was protecting you and Grandpa from the truth,” she said, a tear in her eye slowly rolling down her cheek.
“What? I mean, my mom’s been around all this time? Why keep that from me? What kind of secret are we hiding here?”
“This isn’t the proper time for it,” Grandma said.
I was trying not to get mad, and I tried to talk softly, but it came out so flat sounding that everyone who heard me could probably tell I was on fire inside. “When is the proper time, then?”
“Just not now, ok?”
“Then please, pick a time. I know we have a lot of stuff going on and things to discuss, but we’re talking about my mother! All I remember her by is a picture. I don’t have any memories of her at all, so please. Let’s get this one scheduled, or is the secret too horrible to share with me?”
“Uncle Wes, don’t be angry,” Mary said, surprising me, squeezing me with one arm.
“I… I’m sorry. It’s just…”
“Mommies are special,” Mary said simply, “and someday mine will come back. Maybe yours will too.”
“Water’s boiling,” Les said pointing.
Indeed it was. So were my feelings. They roiled in my chest, making me queasy. What was the big secret? That was what really had me dying to know. What was so horrible that my grandma would have kept any contact from my mother away from me? And why keep it away from Grandpa? That was the question I should’ve asked her, but I said nothing, instead reaching out and putting an arm around little Mary. She looked up at me smiling, and leaned her head against my side.
Raider made a groaning sound, and flopped on his back. I looked over my shoulder and he caught my glance. His tail started thumping, which caught Yaeger’s attention and soon all three dogs were crowding the small fire where we were heating water for coffee. Grandma wasn’t meeting my eyes, and Jess gave my shoulder squeeze. The percolator only took a few minutes once the water was boiling, and Lester poured a small helping of coffee. The small camp was waking up.
“Does anyone know who the rest of the people in the pictures are?” I asked Linda, Jay, and Grandma, who had held onto the pictures I’d brought back with me.
They showed many people bound and gagged, and once Grandma had asked about my mother Liz, I did sort of recognize the woman in the picture. I hadn’t seen her since I was little, and I only had the one picture to remember her by.
“Let me take a look,” Sheriff Jackson said, taking a long sip of his coffee.
The pictures were handed around the fire one by one. Raider started making a funny sound and I turned to see that Mary had started scratching him in the right spot and he was trying not to thump me with his leg. You get that right spot scratched, his leg would start thumping the ground like a drummer beating a bass in the middle of a school band concert. He was obviously trying to hold back.
“Can we do something fun today?” Mary asked me.
“What you have in mind, kiddo?”
“I’m guessing you want to take a bath, and get your hair brushed out and braided?” Jessica said, half a heartbeat after I had asked her what she
had in mind.
“I don’t know… It just seems like we’re always busy doing something, we haven’t really had a lot of time to do fun stuff.” Mary’s eyes were big, but she wasn’t being taken by emotion. She was curious, and I thought to myself, maybe camping out here was such a new adventure that she was really having fun. Sheriff Jackson cleared his throat and then handed the pictures back around the way they’d come.
“I don’t think I recognize anyone here, but I’m willing to bet if we showed the entire group the pictures of the captives, many of them would.”
“Are you worried that these are potentially being used as blackmail?” Linda Carpenter asked him.
“That’s exactly what I think,” Sheriff Jackson said. “Either that, or he’s taunting us in an effort to demoralize our group, so we think we’re more compromised than we actually are. What you think?”
I wasn’t sure who the question was directed at, so I took a long drink of my coffee. The silence drew out and then I realized everyone was staring at me.
“Actually, I agree with both of those,” I told the group at large, “but I also think he’s trying to force us into acting.”
“How so?” Jessica asked me.
“Spider doesn’t necessarily know that we know about Deputy Rolston. Rolston saw Emily walk into the camp on her own, and unmolested. It’s almost like she was a known entity there, or she had someone radio in to let her all the way through. I think Spider believes that showing us a picture of her bound and gagged will force us to act. He’s probably expecting us to concoct some sort of plan to go in and try to save our loved ones.”
“Well, you sorta did that once already. That’s how you got that beautiful scar on your head,” Linda said, tilting her coffee cup my way.
“I’ll tell you all what…” Jay spoke up for the first time in a while. “What I’m not understanding is why we’re not talking about your daughter”—he looked at Grandma and then at me—“and your mother. You both just gonna sit here discussing everything that’s going on while your loved one is in the middle of Spider’s camp, not knowing what the hell is going on? I mean, y’all know what he does to the women. I figure Emily is some sort of special kind of stupid, or a traitor all along, otherwise she never would’ve walked in there on her own. I don’t know why you don’t want to talk to Wes about his mom,” Jay said to Grandma, “but right now what we need to be worrying about is why those pictures were left, who left them, and what the hell are we going to do with both the National Guard and the Keggers crawling up our ass.”
Still Surviving (Book 5): Dark Secrets: Page 9
