“Haven’t seen you since this whole mess started,” Adam said. “Where you been?” He crouched down beside her door, putting a hand on the forearm that she rested in her open window and patting it.
She stared at his hand, then moved her arm from beneath it before answering him. She could not focus enough to engage in conversation while he was touching her. “I was out of town,” she said. “Just getting back.”
“You haven’t been home at all?” he asked. “I didn’t think I’d seen you for a while.”
She met his eye, trying to convey to him that she knew he would have been watching for her, also trying to convey just how unpleasant she found the notion. “No, I’ve been on the road. I was in Richmond when this all happened.”
“Richmond?” Adam said. “That must have been a shit storm. How did you get home?”
“I walked.”
Adam burst out laughing until he saw that she was not joking. “You walked?”
She nodded.
“I saw your family moving around,” he said. “I just assumed you were with them.”
She shook her head. “No. It’s taken weeks to get here.”
He leaned closer, folding his forearms and resting them in the open window. It wasn’t intended as a threatening gesture, but Alice found all intrusion into her personal space to be a threatening gesture anymore. It was made worse because it was him. He made her skin crawl. She could feel the reassuring warmth of the pistol hidden beneath her thigh. It was there. It was close. She could get to it if she needed. She could kill him if she had to.
“Your husband and son aren’t home,” he told her, speaking with exaggerated compassion, as if he were a friend breaking bad news.
Her heart lurched but she forced herself to maintain composure. “Do you know where they went?”
“They said they were going to your mother’s house to check on her. That was right after this whole mess happened and they’ve not been back that I’ve seen. We’ve only had this gate up for a few days though, so he could have been back and forth before that and I just didn’t notice it.”
“So he’s been gone a while?”
Adam nodded. “Yep. Right after the power went out. I’ll be honest with you, it caught a lot of us unprepared. Water ran out pretty quickly. Food too. A lot of people have left their homes. Those of us who have stayed are having to carry water from the stream down the road. Food is wherever we can find it.”
“I’m going up to my house,” Alice said.
Adam nodded. “Be careful,” he warned. “There’s been some break-ins. People stealing food and guns mostly. We don’t know if it’s neighbors doing it or strangers. Hell, it could be anyone. Just be careful.”
“I’ll be fine,” she said.
“I’ll come check on you later,” he said. “Make sure things are okay.”
“That won’t be necessary,” she said. “I’m pretty fucking sure things won’t be okay. Things may never be okay again.”
She drove off. It had been on the tip of Adam’s tongue to ask her if there was something wrong but it was clearly a stupid thing to ask. Everything about her was wrong. He tried to imagine what she’d been through, but he couldn’t. Despite her assurance, he would try to catch up with her later and make sure she didn’t need anything. It would be the neighborly thing to do.
Alice drove down the block and eased into her driveway. She killed the engine and sat there looking at the house. Had this been a normal summer afternoon, there would have been the sounds of children playing, of lawn mowers, and of cars. Now it was unnaturally silent. The grass in her yard was taller than they’d ever allowed it to get, but the grass was tall in all of the yards. Her son’s car was in the driveway but the house felt empty. She did not sense her family inside, did not feel the warmth of their love radiating through the walls, and into the cold void inside her.
She’d imagined a wholly different homecoming than this. She’d imagined her husband and son stepping out the door and smiling at her from the porch, her husband’s arm resting on her son’s shoulder like a classic father and son portrait. They would walk down the drive toward her and she would meet them halfway. They would wrap her in a tight embrace that would reboot her systems and start her life over again. While keeping that fantasy alive in her head may have helped her get home, it would do nothing for her now except slow her down and cloud her thinking. Emotions did nothing but muddy the waters and obscure the facts. There would have to be a new plan: accept the circumstances and move on.
She looked around at her neighbors’ houses. No one was even outside. Their lawns were as sad as her own. No one would waste precious fuel on mowing. To the left of her house was a brick ranch. It was one of the older houses in the neighborhood, built in the early seventies. Her family had never gotten along with the people that lived there, a man and his nephew. Neither of them worked but somehow they managed to get by.
They always had loud cars that disturbed the peace of the otherwise quiet neighborhood. They would buy one, wreck, it, then buy another, as predictable as the seasons. They always had drinking money, however. They always had money for renting the largest televisions from the rent-to-own store in town. They played music and video games so loud that you could hear them down the street. They also had a constant stream of visitors.
Alice was not naïve. From her job, she knew this racket. Both the uncle and the nephew claimed to have chronic pain and doctor-hopped to get as many prescriptions as they could for pain pills. Some of the pills they used for themselves, some they sold to their steady supply of customers. Alice knew this, just as all the other neighbors did, but they could never prove it to the police.
That neighbor’s yard was even worse than the rest in the neighborhood. They’d taken to throwing their garbage in the yard. It wasn’t even piled up neatly. It was just tossed out the door and lay where it landed. The first good wind to come up would blow half of it into Alice’s yard. She sighed, but accepted that this was an old world problem, not a new world one. In the current scheme of things, what did blowing trash mean anyway?
As she stared at the neighbor’s house and their disgusting yard, she noticed a curtain in their living room part and then drop back into place. Someone was home and watching her. The hair on the back of her neck stood up.
She threw open her door and got out, holding the revolver down against her leg, concealing it against the silhouette of her body. She walked to her front steps, climbed them, and then tried the door.
Locked.
Around her neck, she carried the keys she’d retrieved from her Honda at the office. The car had four flat tires and a punctured gas tank when she finally reached it, but the sparse contents had not led anyone to break into it. She’d lost her car keys along the way home and had been forced to throw a landscaping paver through the window to get the set of house keys hidden in the console.
She opened her front door and pushed it in, raising the revolver against whatever threats might be inside. A powerful smell smacked her in the face, the musty smell of a closed house and the underlying tang of garbage. It reminded her of opening the car trunk on a hot day when a bag of garbage had fermented in there all day. She thought of the contents of the refrigerator and freezer, wondering if her husband had thought to clean those out before he left. Maybe they hadn’t intended to stay gone.
She checked all directions but couldn’t see much from where she was. The entry foyer didn’t present any long-range views. She stepped over the threshold and advanced into the house.
She started to call her husband’s name, just as she would months ago if she couldn’t find him in the house, but bit her tongue. After her experiences on the road she was more wary. If there were bad people inside her home, yelling out would just tip them off to her presence. The living room was ahead on her right. She pointed her weapon in that direction, advancing. She kept the pistol close to her body. If someone materialized, she didn’t want them to be able to reach out and snatch it from her g
rasp.
When she cleared the doorway and could see further into the house, the state of her living room made her gasp. The room had been ransacked. Books were raked off shelves. Furniture was overturned and the cushions slashed. A potted ficus tree had been uprooted and the dirt shaken out onto the carpet.
For a moment, emotion welled up in Alice and she felt as if she might cry. This was her home, the safest place in the world to her. This was the sanctuary she’d walked across an entire state to reach. Why would someone do this? Then that moment of vulnerability was pushed aside by cold rage.
She backed out of the room and continued to the kitchen. It was in a worse state. Drawers were emptied, her flour canister had been dumped out onto the countertops and the canister itself shattered against the floor. The cabinets appeared to have fewer things in them than when she’d left and she couldn’t tell if it was because the contents had been stolen or if her family had taken them when they left. Again, she didn’t have enough information to know if they left to go stay with her mom long-term or if they just intended to go check on her and got delayed.
She moved through the rest of the house and found it to be in much the same state. Every drawer was pulled and dumped, the contents of closets pulled out onto the floor, mirrors shattered. Every flat surface had been raked clean of the items that once sat there. Everything had been violated. Many of the things sacred to her had been trashed or were missing.
“They’re only things,” she whispered to herself. “They don’t matter.” It was a mantra she would have to repeat to herself several times.
She stepped into the master bedroom and tried to separate herself from the personal pain of what she found. The closet doors were open and her husband’s gun safe stood there battered and scratched. Whoever tried to get in it had not succeeded. She went to the window and looked out into the backyard. They had an outbuilding there with their camping gear, fishing equipment, and yard tools in it. The doors hung open, one of them canted awkwardly from a broken hinge. Through the now overgrown backyard, she could see a clear path of beaten down grass leading from her back door to that of the next door neighbor.
They had been here often enough to leave a path. She now knew who had violated her home. As if she’d ever had any doubt.
Chapter 3
Alice
Alice could not let herself dwell on the condition of her home. There were bigger concerns. She went to her son’s room and found one of the large gym bags that he used for his soccer gear. She took it to her room and began throwing clothes in it, with an emphasis on durability and comfort. She wouldn’t be needing the professional wardrobe she wore nearly every day at the office. She stopped packing long enough to change, putting on clothing of her very own for the first time in over a week. Although a small thing, it boosted her morale. It made her feel more like herself.
With a bag of clothing packed, she grabbed a raincoat and a fleece jacket, not knowing how long it would be before she returned to the house. It was hard for her to tell if her husband and son had packed any of their clothing or not. Certainly there were items missing from their closets, but she didn’t know if that was from theft or from her family taking them. She packed more of their clothing too, just to prevent it from being stolen once she left.
Making a final sweep of her bedroom for anything she might need in the immediate future, she noticed the gun safe again. She dropped her gear and tried to move the safe, wanting to see if anything rattled inside but she was unable to budge it. The door and lock were battered but it didn’t look as if anyone had been able to get inside. It had a rotary lock instead of a digital lock and the dial still turned. She input the combination and turned the handle.
The handle turned freely enough but she was unable to open the door due to the mangled metal around the edges. The door was binding on a lip of metal that had been bent from the attempts to pry it open. She went to the garage and retrieved the biggest screwdriver she could find. Using that, she was able to pry the now unlocked door open. Inside she found most of her husband’s guns. She noticed a few missing, which further led to her to believe that her husband had planned on a short stay at her mom’s farm.
There had to be a reason why they hadn’t returned. Had something happened? Had he been injured? Killed? She couldn’t let herself go down that hole. She had to take things one step at a time.
She removed the long guns from the safe, placed them on the bed, and rolled them up in the comforter. She knew her husband would cringe at his guns getting scratched against each other but she didn’t have the time to baby them. She didn’t want to leave them and she didn’t know how else to transport them. She removed the few pistols, placing them in a wheeled piece of carry-on luggage from the closet, along with all the boxes of ammunition. She found a box of spare ammo for the .38 revolver she’d been carrying and she placed that in the bag with her own clothing.
She took the roll of guns, the bag of clothing, and the suitcase of handguns, leaving them just inside the locked front door. She decided that she’d load everything into the car at the same time. Her mind racing, she tried to think of all of the things that she should take but she wanted to believe she’d be back there again.
She needed to keep that hope alive. She wasn’t ready to give up on her house and her belongings. She was certain that the garage, the outbuilding, and the basement still had items she needed, however, she didn’t have the room to carry everything in this trip, nor did she feel like she had the time to invest in looking for them.
She stood in the entry foyer, trying to think of any things that she’d missed that they might need. Her mind was spinning and she gave up. She’d plan on coming back with her husband in his truck. They’d load it, along with his utility trailer, and maybe they’d just move everything to her mother’s house. Right now the most important thing was finding her family; they could deal with the rest later. When she came to this conclusion, she leaned over to pick up her bags. Before her hand closed on a handle, she heard a rattle from the front door.
Someone was trying to get in.
She stared at the handle and listened. It rattled again. It could have been her husband but wouldn’t he have just used his key, or at least called out to keep from startling her? The old Alice would have retreated to the bedroom and called 9-1-1. This Alice strode to the door, pulling her revolver from her back pocket. In a single motion, she unlocked the door and whipped it open, holding her gun at the ready.
The young man from next door was clearly not expecting this and threw his arms up, stumbling back a step. “Don’t shoot!” He was greasy looking and his shaggy hair stuck out in all directions. She could smell him from where she stood.
“What the fuck do you want?” Alice hissed.
He didn’t answer. His eyes were flicking back and forth, searching for an answer. For a lie.
“What do you want?”
“I d-didn’t recognize the c-car,” he stuttered. “I was making sure someone wasn’t breaking in.”
“The hell you were,” she replied. “After all this time you suddenly decide to be a good neighbor? You were probably just concerned that someone was in here stealing shit you planned on stealing yourself.”
He didn’t answer.
“Everything okay, Jake?” came a voice from beyond her line of sight. She recognized it as the kid’s uncle.
The fact there were two of them didn’t faze Alice. She was still comfortable with the odds. If the uncle tried anything, she’d drop this one, and then drop him too.
“Jake?” the man repeated.
“You better back off my fucking porch right now,” Alice said. “I don’t ever want to see you on my property again. Matter of fact, I don’t ever want to see you again, period.”
He started backing up, slightly emboldened both by his suspicion that she wasn’t going to kill him and by the presence of his uncle. “Crazy bitch! Think you’re all bad with that gun, don’t you?”
Alice raised the gun slightl
y and put a round in the porch light above the punk’s head. Glass fragments rained down on him. He flinched and cried out. Funny how a punk’s attitude changed when he understood your willingness to pull the trigger.
“Get out of here now!” she spat.
He stumbled off the porch, brushing glass from his hair.
The uncle ran into view, concerned by the sound of the shot. He looked from his nephew to Alice. “What the fuck?”
“Take this piece of shit with you,” she told the uncle. “Keep him off my property. I find either of you in my yard again I’ll kill you.”
The uncle bowed up, his chest puffing out, his arms stiffening. “I don’t like being threatened.”
“And I don’t like being robbed,” Alice replied. “The men at the road warned me about homes being broken into. I could kill you right now and pull your bodies up into my house. No one would know any better. I’d tell them that I found you robbing my house and you threatened me. They would believe every word of it because I’m a respectable fucking citizen, and you would just be another dead scumbag.”
“You don’t have the guts,” the uncle challenged.
Alice turned her mouth up into a chilling smile. “You don’t think so? Try me. Please...try…me.”
The uncle could see then that she wanted him to try. She wasn’t only ready to kill him, she wanted to. She was practically begging him for the opportunity. He grabbed his nephew by the arm and they backed away. Alice kept the gun trained on them the entire time. When they were back in their house, she went back in hers. She had more things to get before she was ready to leave.
Chapter 4
Alice
Alice was making a pass through the kitchen, packing food and cooking gear into plastic shopping bags, when the front door burst open. She drew her pistol and dropped behind the kitchen island.
Valley of Vengeance: Book Five in The Borrowed World Series Page 2
