Her round caught him in the throat and he threw both hands to his neck, trying to staunch the geyser of blood. His eyes flew wide with surprise. He tried to yell for help but only emitted a gurgling sound from deep in his throat. It was the sound of a man drowning in his own blood.
Alice grabbed the pack and slung it over one shoulder and pulled open the bedroom door, her light breaching the hallway and revealing a wide-eyed man in boxer shorts coming toward her. It was the boy’s uncle. He had a baseball bat in his hands and lunged toward her. Her gun was at the ready and she fired twice into the thick mass of his torso, dropping him at her feet. His cries for help followed her as she stepped over him and hurried down the hall.
She knew she only had seconds before the men at the bonfire were up there. She’d probably woken the rest of the neighbors with her gunfire. She bolted down the steps and ran through the unfamiliar house. She turned a corner and collided with a half-open closet door before her brain could tell her to slow down. She was stunned but pulled herself together and staggered out the front door. She could hear voices, see flashlights approaching, their beams cutting through the night air like spotlights.
They would be on her quickly and she didn’t want to have to explain herself. She felt like she was justified. She was saving her husband’s life, stealing back what had been stolen from her, but would these men see it that way? What if they shot her on sight?
Using the flashlight inside the house had already blown her night vision so she opted to continue using the light to expedite her escape. She could run faster if she could see. She sprinted across the yard and toward the woods, hoping that uncertainty would keep her sheltered, docile neighbors from firing on her. She reached the trail with at least fifty yards head start over the nearest pursuer.
She hadn’t run in years but gave it her all, negotiating the rock-strewn and root-laced path with a nimbleness she hadn’t known she possessed. She felt like a quarterback playing one of those games where everything was going just right. When she burst into the church parking lot, she began digging for her keys. With the aid of the light, she quickly found the correct one and was in the car as lights began coming down the trail toward her. She’d hoped everyone would go to the house but they must have split up. They were coming for her.
Voices were rising, getting closer. Lights were beginning to hit objects around her. They must surely be able to see her now. She flinched, knowing that if the lights were hitting her, bullets could also. No sooner had she thought that than a shot rang out. She heard it whistle overhead, clipping leaves and small branches. She threw the pack into the car and dropped into the seat, jamming the key into the ignition. There was another shot.
She was panicking. What if they shot out the tires? What if they hit the radiator? What if they hit her? She said a quick prayer as she turned the key in the ignition. It started. There was no time for relief. She flipped on the headlights and floored the gas pedal, spraying gravel in her wake. She slid onto the paved road, the car fishtailing as it clawed for traction.
“Concentrate,” she warned herself. “Do not fucking wreck!”
The tires caught and she shot off down the road. With distance growing between her and her pursuers, she forced herself to pay more attention to the road, trying to remember all of the obstacles she’d encountered earlier. She hadn’t come this far to collide with an abandoned vehicle or a downed tree.
She knew it was a dumb move but she reached up and flipped on the overhead light. She had to know if what she’d done was worth it. She reached into the open top of the backpack in the passenger seat and extracted a bottle. She didn’t recognize the name and angrily tossed it into the back seat. She dug another out with the same result.
“Don’t tell me…” she said, anger and frustration in her voice. “Please! Be there!”
Another bottle. This one a name she recognized. A neighbor with prostate problems. She tossed it in the back, becoming more desperate. There were dozens of bottles. She found another. Pre-natal vitamins. Another bottle. She read the name, tears stinging her eyes. Had she risked her life for nothing? Had she shot those men for nothing?
Then the name on a bottle sank into her brain. “Terry Watkins.”
Her husband.
Chapter 10
Alice
Alice shook her husband awake a little before 4 a.m. She expected him to wake with a start, as he always had in the years they’d been together. If there was a noise in the night or if Charlie woke with a bad dream, he always sprang from the bed. Now his eyes fluttered open weakly. Her flashlight sat on the nightstand, casting indirect light off the ceiling. In the glow of the LED bulb, he was pale and his skin puffy. She couldn’t help but think that he looked like a bloated corpse.
She had used her dad’s knife to scrape the label off the pill bottle. She didn’t want Terry to ask how she’d gotten his exact bottle of pills back. It was difficult enough to tell him about her experiences on the road. She couldn’t just come out and tell him that she’d killed their old neighbors to bring back his meds. He definitely wasn’t ready to hear that. Maybe one day they could talk about it and all the rest of the things she’d been through, but this wasn’t the day.
She held the bottle up in front of his glassy, half-lidded eyes.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Your medicine.”
“How?” he asked, too weak to form the rest of the question.
“There’s a nurse. Someone I know from work. She owed me a favor. She helped me get a refill.”
Terry raised an eyebrow, sensing there was more to the story. Alice opened the bottle and shook a pill out. She reached for a cup of water she’d set on the nightstand.
“Go ahead and take one right now,” she said. “The sooner we get this in your system, the sooner you’ll start feeling better.”
Terry struggled to sit up in the bed. He couldn’t do it. After watching him for a moment, Alice set the water and medication down to help him.
“I’m sorry,” he said, embarrassed that he’d been unable to do it on his own.
Alice sat back down beside him, handing him the pill. He swallowed it, then she gave him the cup of water. He settled back, continuing to sip on the water.
“I thought about killing myself,” he said. “In this condition, I’m just a burden on everyone. I felt guilty about leaving Charlie with nobody but your mother. If something happened to her, he’d have no one.”
Alice shook her head. “You don’t have to worry about that now. Once we get this medication back to a therapeutic level you’ll start feeling better.”
Terry took a sip of water and looked at Alice. He shook his head despondently. “For how long? Until the meds run out and then we’re doing this all over again?”
“We deal with the problems one at a time,” Alice said, her voice firm.
“I’m not sure I want to live like this,” Terry said. “With you back, Charlie would be in good hands if I died. I could die in peace, on my own terms.”
“You’re not going to die.” It was not meant to be reassuring. It sounded more like an order.
“Yeah, I probably am,” he said. “I just want to have control over when and where.”
“What are you saying?” Alice asked.
“I think I want to end it,” Terry said. “I want to kill myself.” He looked her in the eye, defeated. He had given up.
Alice’s hand lashed out and struck Terry across the face. The glass in his hand flew against the wall and shattered. Terry was frozen in shock. Never in all the years they’d been married had he seen anything like this from her. They didn’t disagree often. In fact, they barely ever raised their voices at each other.
“You don’t know what I went through,” she spat, her finger hovering in front of Terry’s face. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to talk about it, but I didn’t go through it to come home to shit like this. I expect you to be a fucking man. I expect you to fight with everything you have. That’s w
hat I had to do.”
Alice rose from the bed and strode toward the bedroom door. When she reached it, she spun toward her stunned husband. “I better never hear you say anything like that again.”
She did not wait for a reaction. She left the room and shut the door behind her. When she turned, she found her mother standing at the top of the stairs.
“Is everything okay?” Pat asked.
Alice considered her answer. “Terry dropped a glass.”
“Dropped?” Pat asked.
Alice brushed by her mother, stroking her arm lightly as she passed. “I need some fresh air.”
Chapter 11
The Valley
“You sure it’s safe to abandon my post?” Pete asked.
He was standing with his dad in front of Outpost Pete, his brow furrowed with uncertainty. It was the concealed observation post that Pete had constructed in the early days of the collapse, allowing him to keep an eye on his family home until his dad could reach them. It also allowed him to continue playing a role in the safety of the community even after his dad made it back. He wasn’t so sure about giving it up.
“We are decommissioning your base,” Jim said.
Pete looked glum.
“It’s not a bad thing,” Jim said. “With the road blown at each end of the valley, I’m not as concerned about just guarding our house. We need to look at the bigger picture now.”
“I hate to give it up,” Pete said. “This was my job.”
“You’ll still have a job,” Jim said. “I’m putting you on the list to rotate in and out of the guard posts at each end of the valley with the other men. It’s a big responsibility. You’ll still be guarding the folks of the valley.”
“Really?”
“Really,” Jim said. “You’ll learn a lot working with the other men.”
“Is it dangerous?” Pete asked.
His voice didn’t convey fear, but instead a note of excitement that worried Jim a little. He was a boy, though, and boys always wanted adventure. Jim hoped there wouldn’t be any, other than the normal daily adventure of trying to stay alive and stay fed.
“We’re only hauling out the things you may need in other places,” Jim said. “We’re not tearing down Outpost Pete. It’s always possible we’ll need it again. I won’t undo all the hard work you put in up here.”
Pete seemed satisfied with that, then got a serious look on his face. “If we blew up the road, why are we still having to keep watch on it?”
“People could just walk in cross-country from any side,” Jim said. “People are pretty lazy, and the road is the easiest walking for a man or a horse. Those guard posts won’t be the only line of defense. We’re going to make a run to Pop’s house and get his diesel utility vehicle. We’re going to use it to patrol the perimeter of the valley.”
“Can I go on those patrols?”
“We can put you in the rotation, just like everyone else,” Jim said. “Now get in there and start sliding stuff out to me, anything you think we can use at the guard posts.”
The entry into the outpost was like an obstacle course but Pete maneuvered through it with an ease that Jim envied. In a moment, Pete crawled back with a milk crate jammed with gear.
“Do you think they’ll come back?” Pete asked as he got to his feet.
“The people who left the food and fuel?”
Pete nodded.
“I don’t know,” Jim said. “Depends on how desperately they need it. Seeing that we killed the men they left here, they may be scared to come back.”
“Or they may be mad that we killed their friends and they’re busy getting reinforcements.”
“The thought crossed my mind,” Jim said. “Still, we can’t obsess over all the bad possibilities. There are too many of them. You’ll go nuts if you dwell on it all the time. You still have to take time to enjoy life, to go fishing, and to be as happy as the current state of the world will let you be. You remember that, okay?”
“I will,” Pete said.
Jim took the crate and they walked back toward the house.
“Who’s going with you to Pop’s house?” Pete asked.
“Me, Pops, and Buddy.”
“You take Buddy everywhere you go,” Pete said. “Is he your best friend?”
Jim laughed. “No, I think Lloyd is probably my best friend because I’ve known him so long. I like Buddy because he reminds me of my grandfather.”
“How?”
“It’s complicated,” Jim said. “I’m not sure I could put it in words. It’s something about the way he sees the world.”
Pete considered this for a moment. “Can I go with you all?”
“Sure,” Jim said. “With the road gone, we have to drive out on farm roads and then ford the creek when we get closer to town.”
“How are we getting the UTV back?” Pete asked.
“We’re driving it.”
“Through town?”
Jim nodded. “Yep.”
“Cool,” Pete said, a smile spreading on his face. “Can I ride with Pops?”
“Sure.”
Chapter 12
Randi
“I knew you were sweet on me,” Lloyd said. “I knew it all the time. You were afraid of losing me, weren’t you?”
Randi was examining the cauterized stumps of Lloyd’s missing fingers. He’d lost them to the psychopath Valentine who’d been trying to extract information from Lloyd about the residents of the valley. Randi had gone looking for Lloyd and, just as Randi had predicted, he couldn’t let it go.
“Don’t let it go to your head. I went looking for you because I knew you couldn’t take care of yourself,” Randi said. “Sure enough you were bumbling through the woods like Winnie the Pooh and nearly got yourself killed.”
“I had things under control. I was just getting ready to open a can of whoop ass.”
Randi frowned at him. “I think you’ve spent a lot more time opening jars of moonshine than you have cans of whoop ass.”
“He only got the jump on me because I was distracted thinking about you,” Lloyd said, winking at her. “If I hadn’t been fixating on your beauty and charm he’d have never got the chance.”
“You’re fixing to lose another finger,” Randi warned, taking an intact finger in her hand and pinching it with imaginary clippers.
In truth, she did appear to be softening some. Her daughters encouraged Lloyd, but everyone suspected that they only did so because it kept Lloyd in the crosshairs of Randi’s sarcasm and earned them some peace. Randi did visit him daily, stopping by Buddy’s house to check his healing wounds.
“I reckon I can spare another finger if that’s what it takes. As long as I can still bang out a tune on the banjo I’ll be fine,” he said.
“It does kind of sound like banging when you play it,” Randi said.
“I can hold a tune.”
“Not as well as you hold a mason jar.”
“The two go hand-in-hand. Picking the banjo and holding a jar of liquor are both tools of the musician’s trade.”
Randi looked at him sideways then went back to focusing on his fingers. “They’re healing nicely but they’ll be tender for a while. There’s no indication of any infection. I’d keep them bandaged to protect them for a while.”
Lloyd stared at his damaged hand, then looked seriously at Randi. “How are you doing?” he asked.
She looked at him like he’d just fallen out of the sky. “What do you mean by that? I’m fine. I didn’t lose any fingers.” She held them and waved them around as proof.
“You know what I mean. You lost more,” he said. “You lost your parents and your brothers. I just wondered if you were doing okay.”
Although her reflex was to aim her radioactive sarcasm in his direction and watch him curl up like an ant under a magnifying glass on a sunny day, she held back. When she realized she wasn’t breathing, she forced herself to blow her air out slowly, then took several more breaths.
“I’m fine,”
she said.
“You don’t look it,” he said. “You’re wound tighter than a two dollar watch. Looks like you’re about to blow your cork.”
Randi continued to show restraint, to breathe deeply. She looked toward the road, not meeting his eye. “Look, I appreciate what you’re trying to do but I’m not all about sharing feelings and singing campfire songs.”
“Good damn thing. Your voice seems a mite gravelly for singing,” Lloyd said. “Must be all those cigarettes.”
“Asshole.”
Lloyd smiled. “All I’m saying is that if you need to talk, I’m here.”
She breathed, nodded, and sighed. “Understood. Now let’s change the subject.”
She hoped he was done trying to be nice. All that talk of feelings made her uncomfortable. She dug in her pocket for a smoke. She’d given them up, then restarted knowing that she’d be forced to quit eventually when the supply dried up. For better or worse, dozens of cartons had turned up in the gear left behind by Valentine’s men and now she was a smoker again. She lit up and leaned back against a porch post, her arms crossed in front of her and resting on her raised knees.
She stared at the crumpled mountains. It was late summer closing in on fall. The warm air was thick with haze. There was no breeze and not a single sound to be heard anywhere.
“Got one of those jars handy?” Randi asked.
Lloyd grinned. “Is a frog’s ass watertight?”
“Got more of that blackberry?”
Lloyd got up and went into the house, the screen door clacking shut behind him. She heard singing, the clinking of glass, and Lloyd’s heavy steps on the hardwood floors. When he returned, he placed two jars and two clear glasses on the porch.
“We ain’t drinking out of the jars?” Randi asked. “You think this is a date or something?”
Valley of Vengeance: Book Five in The Borrowed World Series Page 6
