Maybe the best plan was to bring in one of Debbie's friends. She had a woman friend who was a dealer and always seemed to have meth or pills. She was a hard woman but he felt like he might be able to control her a little better than he could control a man. She wouldn’t likely try to take over this sweet house and run him out of the picture. Maybe she would take what he offered and be happy to hang out and enjoy the roof over their heads, the running water, and the flowing electricity.
"Hey, what do you think your friend Sharon is doing?"
Debbie shrugged. She’d been there beside him the whole time but lost in the murky soup of her own thoughts. "I don't know. It ain’t like I can call her and ask her."
"We need some help around this joint. We need somebody that can bring in some dope in exchange for food. Somebody who can help keep an eye on things when we’re passed out. I can’t even go to sleep for worrying that crazy bitch in the basement is going try to kill me."
"I know where Sharon lives but I ain’t sure she's home. She’s got a trailer over on Devil’s Branch," Debbie said. "Don’t know if she’s got anything either. If she's in as bad a shape as the rest of us, she might have used it up or traded whatever she had."
"Why don’t you go check in on her?"
"You mean like riding to her house and seeing if she's there?"
Paul nodded like that was the dumbest thing ever said. "Yeah, that's what I mean, unless you’ve sprouted wings and can fly over. Tell her how sweet this deal is. See if she might be interested in coming and staying with us. Tell her we’ll trade food for dope. If she brings the dope, we’ll let her stay here with us. Make it sound good."
“What about when the dope runs out? What happens to her then?" Debbie asked.
Paul hadn’t thought about that but he realized it would happen eventually. There was no way she had enough dope to keep them high forever. "Then we throw her ass out. Find somebody else."
"What if we can’t find somebody else?"
"Dammit woman, how the hell do I know? I ain’t got an answer for every damn thing. Just do what I told you. Go ask if she wants to come stay with us."
“I ain’t sure I want to go,” Debbie said.
“I ain’t sure it was a question,” Paul replied. “Get your ass up and go.”
Debbie stood up, looking a little confused. "What do you want me to ride?"
Paul sighed like he was struggling to be patient. “I don't know. Do I have to figure everything out? Look around. See if you can find the keys to something."
"Can I just take the dirt bike?"
"I reckon, but you can’t haul her back with it. She decides to come back with you I reckon I'll have to find the keys to something else and go back after her. You even know how to ride it?"
Debbie nodded "I reckon."
"Then take the dirt bike, I don't care. Just get out here. I’m tired of talking about it. Get going."
When he got this way there was no use arguing. He just got meaner and meaner and it always ended the same way. She needed to get gone before it got uglier. She went outside and climbed onto the dirt bike. It had been a couple years since she had ridden one but she remembered the basics.
She was pleased to find that it had electric start and she soon had the engine running. Standing in the driveway made her wonder about her mother. Had she crawled off somewhere and died like an old dog? The thought gave Debbie a brief flash of pain but it was her mother's own fault. She shouldn't have provoked Paul, it was as simple as that. Debbie had told her how he was. She should have just minded her own business.
Debbie conveniently allowed herself to forget that her mother was at their trailer on a mission of mercy, delivering food to them. You remembered what you wanted to remember though. You shaped your personal history in the way that allowed you to sleep at night.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Whitetop, VA
Grace felt like crap. Either from heat, dehydration, or lack of calories she was developing a pounding headache. She was also starting to feel nauseated. Everything was hurting her now. There was yesterday’s pain and fresh new pain piling on top of it. Her dad always told her that pain was just weakness leaving the body. Right now weakness must be leaving her like water through a net. She would just have to work her way through it.
To distract herself from the suffering, she fell into a routine of running a hundred steps and them walking one hundred steps. At some point in that distracting routine she began to feel a little better and reduced it to seventy-five steps of walking, and then even to fifty steps of walking, while still keeping with one hundred steps of running.
She didn’t realize the progress she’d made until she came upon the picnic area that marked her departure from this trail. Still running, she veered off the trail and cut through the jumble of picnic shelters, tables, and permanently-mounted barbecue grills. In better times this little area was mowed and the weeds regularly trimmed. With the rapid pace of summer growth, just a week or two without mowing made it look neglected and abandoned. In the past this area was a frequent fishing spot so she remained vigilant, but she saw no people. The last thing she wanted was a surprise as she got this close to home.
The road out of the picnic area was a wide and well-maintained gravel road. She jogged steadily up it, invigorated by her proximity to home. The rhythmic crunch of gravel beneath her feet even gave her a sense of nostalgia, reminding her of the many times she’d run on the same gravel road before going to college. When she reached the end of the park road, she turned left onto another gravel road. It wound through the steep mountains, occasionally passing houses with no residents visible. These houses had once held people, and likely still did, but no one made themselves known.
When she came to the next intersection her spirits soared and she began to run harder. Any time the family had been gone on an extended trip, turning onto this road was when they felt like they were home. She passed one neighbor’s house, the yard growing higher than she’d ever seen it before. No one was out. In better times she’d have checked on these folks but now all she could think of was her own family. Her arms pumped harder. She was no longer jogging but flying at a dead run.
Around another bend in the road a dog started barking. She recognized it as the neighbor’s dog. It recognized her too, and wagged its tail. The dog had seen this girl run by its house before. Grace called a greeting to the dog but kept running. In response to the barking, a young woman came onto the porch. Grace threw up a hand and waved. The girl did not wave back, perhaps not recognizing Grace as she was dressed now and with gear strapped all over her.
Grace hit a straight stretch and burned through it like it was a fifty yard dash. The finish line was her family’s mailbox. She hung a right there, turning onto her own driveway.
Finally.
The gate on the road was closed. Grace stepped through it and fastened it back.
She was home. She was finally home. Grace’s heart raced with the urgency and exhilaration of being back on her family’s property for the first time in months.
The house was on top of a hill, hidden in the woods. The driveway was steep but Grace ran on in her exhilaration. She knew this road like the back of her hand, having walked it every day when the school bus dropped her off. She ran through a gauntlet of livestock fencing and past the small pond, past the old sheds that were there when her dad bought the place and then past the new ones that the two of them had built together. She ran past the woodshed where her father split and stacked firewood for the winter, pushing on until the land around her opened up into a large clearing. Their house sat in the middle of it, looking off toward hundreds of miles of mountain views.
When she caught sight of their home with its rough-sawn siding and stone chimneys, her heart told her to run through the back door and yell out that she was home. She imagined her family running to her and taking her in their arms. Despite the urging of her heart, she stopped dead in her tracks and stared at the house. Her brain was overriding he
r heart now.
She didn’t have any concrete reason to think her home had been compromised but what if it had? What if she burst into her home and found strangers there? She moved off to the side of the road where she would be hidden by a tree and removed the monocular from her pocket. She examined the house. There were no strange cars there, a good sign.
She moved closer but more cautiously this time. She went tree to tree, cover to cover. The front of the house rose high from the steep hillside so the family mostly used the back door. Grace headed in that direction. There were immediate signs that something was wrong.
Trash was strewn on the back porch and out into the yard. She recognized packaging from MREs and freeze-dried food. That was trash her family knew better than to throw outside. Her dad always told them that throwing those items outside was just advertising that you had emergency preparations. It invited theft and compromised operational security. Her family knew to burn or bury those things.
She moved to a better vantage point, closer to the kitchen door. Through the glass of that door, she could see into the house, into the living room, and get a better idea of the conditions inside. Besides more trash, cabinet doors were open and the contents scattered around the kitchen. Drawers had been opened and the contents dumped onto the floor. The sight of her family’s normally orderly house in such a state caused her physical pain.
Then she saw the man sitting on the couch staring at the pill bottle.
Her hand clenched the grip of her AR pistol. She started to raise it, knowing she could easily top him from the porch with a single bullet to the head. But what if there were more of them?
Her family had a safe room in the basement, but what if they hadn’t made it down there before the house was overrun? What if they were being held at gunpoint right now? What if her shot triggered a shootout and got her family killed?
For the second time since making it back to her hometown, Grace had to use restraint when all she wanted was to use her gun to solve the problem. It made her ache at all levels. It felt like a hand squeezing her heart and wringing everything from it. She backed off the porch with tears in her eyes.
She had to get out of the driveway before she was spotted. The practical side of her understood that standing there anguishing over the circumstances would not change anything. The reality of the situation remained the same. She needed to observe the house from concealment and try to determine what was going on in there, which would best be accomplished from the barn if it was still safe.
She cut through an open field to the left of the house. The field held the family’s shooting range and a small field where she and her father did training exercises that he came up with. There were stacks of tires to drag, cinderblocks to carry, sandbags to be shouldered. She ran across this field and cut up a hill, following a small farm road that led her to the back side of the barn.
When she reached the barn, Grace slipped the metal latch open as quietly as possible. She tugged on one of the heavy rolling doors and slid it open just far enough apart that she could get between them. Once inside she left the door cracked about a foot to allow light in. Her dad kept the floor cluttered with farm equipment, welding projects, and tools. It was a hazard to walk across the barn floor in the dark.
As she made her way across the floor, the light from open door diminished. She wasn’t too concerned because she could see where she was going now. She aimed for the crack between the other two barn doors, those on the front that faced the house. When she got there she could keep an eye on the house and see what she was dealing with.
She was still about five feet from the thin strip of light that shone between the front barn doors. She was shuffling her feet now, barely able to see, and walking carefully just in case there were unseen obstacles on the floor. She began to relax as she got closer to the door, her mind moving to the next stage of this mission.
Two steps from her destination, a pale figure staggered from the rich blackness to her left, arms extended, moaning. For some irrational reason the first thought that came to Grace was zombie. Her second thought was that she needed to put a bullet in it, preferably in the head.
Her AR pistol was dangling free of her grasp. She had not anticipated needing it in the barn and was not holding it when the threat appeared. Her hands dropped in the dark, trying to find the grip, trying to fish the rifle up by the sling. Before she could even get a hand on it, the figure was upon her. It both embraced and sagged upon her. Grace thought she was being tackled as the figure fell upon her, knocking her backward. Her attacker moaned eerily as Grace fell. She hit the ground hard, the figure landing on top of her.
Grace rolled violently to the side, throwing the figure off her, and kicking it away. She jumped to her feet but still couldn't make out any detail. She ran for the open back door. When she reached it, she swung around and shouldered her rifle. She had an optic on but at this range she wouldn’t need it. It was a point and shoot situation.
She aimed, found the trigger, and realized at the last moment she was staring into the damaged face of Mrs. Brown.
Grace averted the rifle in a safe direction just as she was preparing to pull the trigger. She recognized the figure in front of her as Mrs. Brown, but it was more by shape, hair, and clothing than by features. The woman was heavily bruised, her face puffy and swollen. Her eyes were black and swollen shut, her lips like thick sausages encrusted with blood.
Grace pushed the barn door open, allowing more light into the barn. Only then did the panic release its hold on her. She ran to Mrs. Brown and set her weapon down on the lid of a feed bin.
"Mrs. Brown, Mrs. Brown. You hear me? What happened to you?"
Ms. Brown tried to answer but her words were distorted. There was no doubt why. Her lips were so swollen they would not form words. When she opened them to try to speak, Grace saw jagged, broken teeth and a tongue bloody and swollen.
As Grace studied Mrs. Brown’s injuries, she suddenly froze, as if an icicle had been shoved into her heart. If this was Mrs. Brown’s condition, what had happened to her own family? Had whoever did this to her done something similar to her mom and brother?
Grace touched Mrs. Brown’s shoulder. "Where's my family? Are they okay? Just nod yes or no." Grace's voice was becoming more demanding, more frantic. She was approaching panic. “Did the people in the house do this to you?”
Mrs. Brown's eyes were open and appeared to be slightly more focused now. She was still making sounds that Grace couldn't decipher. She patted Mrs. Brown on the shoulder, realizing she was wasting her time. The woman could have a concussion or brain injury.
"I'm going to the house. I'll be back for you in a minute. We’ll get you some help."
Mrs. Brown went ballistic. She was clutching at Grace, her fingers clawing at Grace’s forearms. She gestured wildly, making noises, attempts at words Grace could still not understand.
"Is it dangerous at the house? Nod for yes!" Grace asked.
Mrs. Brown nodded frantically. That stopped Grace in her tracks.
"Are my mom and Blake okay?"
Ms. Brown looked apologetic and shrugged, though the gesture made her wince with pain. She made another sound that Grace thought she might understand. It meant she didn’t know. Grace’s family may be alive or they may be dead.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The Hardwick Farm
When Teresa Hardwick woke up in the Ready Room she was incredibly sore. Healing muscles had been stretched, stitches on both the inside and outside of her body had been tugged and strained. She had felt like an invalid the last week, recovering from her surgery. Now she had a renewed sense of purpose. She knew what she had to do. Of the things she had to do, she had already accomplished the first task. She had gotten the children to a safe place.
Blake and Dylan were playing a board game in the floor. Several forms of entertainment were available in the Ready Room to keep people occupied. There were books, games, and even a small television with a DVD player that ran
off the inverter.
"Mommy, you're awake!" Blake ran and hugged his mother.
Teresa winced. "Easy now. Mommy is still a little sore from her operation."
"I'm sorry." Blake released her and patted her on the back like she was a puppy. It brought a smile to her face.
"Are you okay, Dylan?" she asked.
Dylan nodded, but with the distant expression of a terrified and traumatized child. She didn't know what to do for him at this point. The only thing she could think of that would make a difference to him right now was to be reunited with his grandmother, the one person who seemed able to reach him.
That made Teresa wonder what had happened to Leslie. Surely her daughter and this daughter's boyfriend wouldn't have harmed her. Surely Debbie, regardless of what she’d sunk to in life, would not be party to harming her own mother.
Would she?
Teresa got up and used the camping toilet. When she slid back the curtain, she washed her hands and face in the gravity-fed sink. She didn't know how long she'd been asleep but she felt better than she had at any time since the surgery. She remembered there was a battery-operated digital clock on one of the shelves and took a peek, shocked to see it was 9 AM.
"Did I sleep all night?"
The boys nodded.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to sleep that long. What big boys you were to take care of yourselves.”
"We fell asleep watching a movie," Dylan said.
"How long have you been up now?"
Blake looked at the clock. "Almost two hours."
"Let me get you boys something to eat. I'm sure you're starving. You didn’t get dinner or breakfast."
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