BOOOOOM!
There was a second shot. Had Buddy been forced to fire on someone? Was he in trouble? Or was the second shot only added incentive?
It worked.
This time the door of the house flew open. A man in jeans and unlaced boots came staggering onto the porch, a black pump shotgun in his hands. He didn’t appear completely awake yet. He clambered down the steps and studied his surroundings, then decided that the shots must have come from down the driveway. He loped off, the shotgun clutched in one hand.
When Randi returned her eyes to the porch, she found Lisa Cross standing there. Lisa was scanning her surroundings, trying to figure out what was going on. She did not appear to have any weapons and had her arms crossed in front of her body as if she were chilled from the morning air. At one point, Randi almost felt as if Lisa was staring at her but the woman gave no reaction that indicated she’d seen anything amiss.
Lisa rubbed her arms against the chill, then backed into the house. It was Randi’s cue to get moving. She got to her feet and scrambled through the weeds, skirting the house.
At one side, the weeds came close to the house and there she eased out of them. She ran, quickly crossing the open yard, and flattened herself against the peeling wood siding. The garrote hung from her right hand. In the back of her waistband, she had her pistol as backup. If all else failed, she had a knife in her pocket. At this point, Randi didn’t care how Lisa died as long as she got to cause it, as long as Lisa got to watch her do it, and as long as it hurt.
She had to make her hurt.
A dog reappeared, sniffing at her, hoping for a second round of treats. She passed him one, buying a few more moments of silence. She moved to the corner of the house, reaching the edge of a porch that spanned the entire front of the house. It was not as grand as it sounded, rippling and slouching, as if it were balanced of the backs of tired men of irregular heights. It was made of a poplar gone gray and soft as a brushed wood sweater. Some boards and most railings were missing. Trash and debris covered the porch, eventually yielding when new trash pushed the old over the edge.
Randi tried to climb up onto the porch but was not tall enough. She turned her back to it, rested a hand on each side of her, and boosted herself up in a sitting position. She spun and slid back against the house, her heart pounding. She listened. There were no sounds from inside the house.
She looked down the driveway to make sure that Lisa’s new friend was not returning. Thankfully he was nowhere in sight. She edged sideways to the door, still not sure how she was going to make entry. The dog came back up the steps at this time, wagging his tail and smiling at her. She cursed under her breath. The dog was going to give her away. Its happiness shone like a beacon on the dark and accursed property. Joy was an unnatural thing there.
She held her breath, terrified as the dog approached her and began licking her face. If Lisa saw the dog’s tail wagging through the screen door, she might investigate and find Randi sitting there. Just then, Randi saw a Folger’s can of clothespins sitting nearby. She leaned and retrieved one.
“I apologize for this,” she said, and then she clamped one on the hound’s ear.
The dog howled and bolted for the steps. Randi shot to her feet and flattened herself against the wall. The screen door flew open and Lisa Cross ran out.
“What the hell?” Lisa yelled.
Randi made a swipe at Lisa’s head with the loop of the garrote. From the corner of her eye, Lisa caught the movement and ducked, ramming an elbow into Randi’s midsection. It knocked the air out of Randi and threw her back into the wall. Lisa spun to face her opponent, aiming a jab at Randi’s face. It connected and Randi’s head bounced off the wall. Instead of stunning her, the pain fueled Randi’s fire.
Lisa tried to knee Randi in the stomach but Randi crossed a knee in front of herself, deflecting the blow. Undeterred, Lisa immediately threw a forearm up to Randi’s throat, pinning her against the wall.
Randi’s mind was racing. She was amazed at how fast Lisa had been even when caught off guard. Then she realized that her breathing was completely cut off and she was being choked out. Next she noticed that her hands were still free and that she should still make them do what she came here to do. She whipped the loop of wire around Lisa’s neck and jerked it tight before the woman had a chance to understand what was happening.
Both of Lisa’s hands instantly flew to her neck and she began clawing at the wire but could not get a finger under it. Randi realized she did not have enough tension on it and Lisa might get a finger under it if she didn’t remedy that. Randi moved to her right, yanking her hand and pulling the garrote tighter.
A croaking sound came from Lisa’s throat. Her eyes widened in a panic that revealed she knew the seriousness of what was happening. She was in deep shit. She tried to kick at Randi but Randi was behind her now, hauling backward on the toggle. She stumbled down the steps, dragging Lisa with her.
Lisa fell but got back on her feet. She gave up trying to loosen the wire noose and began to focus on Randi. She tried punching at Randi but Randi kept moving. She took some blows but they were rushed and imprecise. Randi kept moving to Lisa’s back, yanking on the toggle, throwing Lisa off balance. The wire was cutting into Lisa’s neck. Blood began to flow from multiple cuts made by the wire. Lisa staggered and Randi took advantage of it, yanking the toggle firmly, and pulling Lisa to the ground.
Randi quickly sat down above Lisa’s head, putting her feet on Lisa’s shoulders, and pushing with her legs. It yanked the garrote tight, making it easier on her cramping arm. The load was no longer on her biceps, but on her legs.
“I’m killing you bitch,” Randi hissed. “I’m killing you for my brothers and my parents.”
Lisa’s mouth came open like she was going to say something but she could not. Randi pummeled her with her free hand for even trying to speak. She kept the pressure up with her legs, hoping the wire wouldn’t break. She pulled as hard as she could.
The wire was completely buried in Lisa’s neck now. Randi gritted her teeth. Her legs and arms were both cramping now. It was only pain and it wouldn’t stop her. Something popped within Lisa’s neck. Her eyes were open and went glassy. Her mouth was locked open, waiting for a breath that would never come. Randi sagged backward onto the grass, keeping the tension, closing her eyes with the effort. She muttered incoherent and disjointed curses, tugging, afraid to let up.
A shadow fell across her face and she opened her eyes, blinking. “Buddy?”
“I ain’t your fucking buddy,” came a man’s voice.
He raised a rifle and pointed it at Randi’s face. She was too spent to even protest.
“Just fucking do it,” she whispered. “I’ve already done what I came to do. I killed her.” She couldn’t help but give a weak smile as she said it.
His body jerked violently and he staggered. Only then did Randi hear the shot. There was the mechanical sound of a lever action rifle cycling, then another shot hit the man, knocking him to the ground. He arched, kicked, and scrabbled at the ground but he was done.
Buddy came running up, breathing too hard so speak.
“Took you long enough,” Randi said.
“Thought … I was … breathing too … hard to … shoot straight,” he gasped.
He sagged to the ground beside Randi, and then lay back in the yard, staring at the sky.
“You dying?” Randi asked.
“I don’t think so,” Buddy said. “You?”
“No. Me neither.”
They each lay there for a few moments, simmering in their own thoughts and emotions. After several minutes passed, Buddy raised up. “We best be going.”
Randi sat up. She shoved her left hand in her pocket and came out with her knife. She’d never opened it with her left hand before but fumbled around until she got it, then set about cutting her hand loose from the garrote. She slipped once, drawing blood from the side of her hand, but she saw it as a small price to pay.
Wh
en she was free, she stood and regarded the ghastly countenance of Lisa Cross. There was no doubt she was dead, her face purple, her eyes and mouth still open. After regarding her for a moment, congratulating herself on a job well done, Randi bent and grasped the toggle again. Her hand was sore and her muscles screamed but she towed the dead woman across the yard.
When she reached the porch steps, she made it two steps before running out of steam.
“Buddy, can I get a hand here?”
Buddy shrugged, knowing that there was no point in asking what this was about. He started up the steps, grabbed a handful of Lisa’s shirt, and helped drag the dead woman onto her porch.
“What are we doing?” he asked.
“Get an arm,” Randi ordered.
Buddy grabbed one arm and Randi the other. Following Randi’s direction, they stood her against a porch post, where Randi lodged the garrote’s toggle into a brace nailed between the porch post and a support beam. When they released the body, it hung there, supported only by the wire around its neck.
“That’s a wicked greeting to leave for an unsuspecting visitor,” Buddy said. “I pity the poor soul that walks up on it.”
“This place is cursed,” Randi said. “This ground produced nothing but devils and hate. It’s a service to mankind to warn away the unsuspecting.”
Chapter 39
The Valley
When Alice and Charlie made it to town, they chose to quietly skirt around it rather than take the shorter and more direct route through the center. They were tired, exhausted really, and knew their horses and the goods packed on them would make a tempting target for anyone looking to steal. They were armed and willing to shoot, but understood that someone in the dark recesses of a Victorian townhouse could shoot them from a window. They had no defense against that other than to avoid civilization as best they could.
They led their packhorses through an outer orbit of subdivisions, crossing yards and suburban hayfields when the roads ran out. They saw many signs of death, hunger, and violence but did not stop. Alice would not let her focus waver. Her mission was to reach Jim’s valley and find safety for the two of them. She would not stop for anything. At this point, it was almost animal instinct.
By dusk, they’d reached the same spot where the men had set the trap for her by pulling the dog into the road. She wasn’t sure the men she’d fought had been dead when she left them but they were certainly dead by now. There was no treatment available in this world for a bullet wound to the gut or for a traumatic impact with a fencepost.
She paused at the spot and recalled the experience. When she’d left Jim’s valley she’d thought the hard times were over and that her bad experiences would be relegated to memory. It had not happened that way. She continued to rack up bad memories the way truckers rack up miles. Had those men she met on this road had their way, they’d have robbed and killed her before she ever learned the fate of her family.
In some ways, it might have been a more merciful end for her. She’d have been spared the deaths of her husband and mother. She’d have been spared the scene in the church. What if she hadn’t made it to her mother’s farm, and those things had still happened to her family? Charlie would be there all alone and dealing with these things without her. Maybe that would have been better for him in the end too, to not have seen her like this, to not know what she’d become.
The “what ifs” were overwhelming to consider sometimes. It was incredible that each life could be so altered by the impact of minor and completely random events. The decision to not go out for a drive with friends could cause someone to miss a car accident that would have taken their life. The decision to go to a concert with friends could lead to meeting the love of one’s life, and inevitably, to the children that were the greatest experience they ever had.
Alice sometimes thought that she was nothing more than a steel ball in a pinball game. God had drawn back the plunger and threw her into gameplay. Now she was bouncing from bumper to bumper with no control.
“Mom, are you okay?” Charlie asked.
It was only then that Alice realized she’d been sitting there immobile in the middle of the road. She had no idea how long she’d been lost in thought. Her horse shifted under her and snorted.
“It’ll be dark soon,” she told Charlie. “I don’t want to go into the valley at night. They’re a jumpy bunch and they have a lot of guns. They might shoot visitors on sight.”
They’d only been riding for a day, though it had been a long one. They hadn’t talked much since arguing over the dead child’s body. Now she was drained emotionally and physically and they needed to settle in somewhere. They had camping gear and would stay in the woods.
“We should get off this road,” Charlie said. “Back in the woods.”
“Definitely,” Alice said. “Nothing but bad memories.”
Charlie looked at her curiously but she did not elaborate.
She turned her horse down a well-worn trail off the left shoulder of the road. There were tire marks leading into the creek. She didn’t know the area well enough but she considered that it could even be a back way into the valley. The road seemed to go in that direction.
“It stinks here,” Charlie said.
There was the smell of rot in the air. Having grown up on a farm where dead livestock were pulled off to a sinkhole to rot, she knew the smell of decomposition and death. She did not look too closely into the ditch or the brush on the shoulder of the road. There would be a body somewhere and she didn’t want to see it. It could have been one of the men she encountered here or it could have been someone else. She doubted that she was the only one who’d been forced to take a life on this road.
Once they were across the creek, she left the rutted farm road. It appeared to receive some traffic and she didn’t want to be close to it if someone came through. They found a path off to the side that may once have been a logging road and followed it into the woods. It was nearly full dark when they found an isolated clearing that might hide them if someone came along.
“As much as I hate to do it, we should probably get the loads off those pack horses,” Alice said. “They’ve had a hard day. They’ve earned a break.”
They unpacked the animals and tied them to long leads. The horses appeared grateful, dropping and rolling around in the dry grass despite their tethers.
Alice spotted Charlie gathering twigs and stacking them. “No fire,” she said. “People can see it or smell it. We’re in blackout. I don’t even want to see a flashlight.”
Charlie sighed. “Then I’m probably just going to bed.” He sounded a little disappointed.
“That’s just as well,” Alice said. “We’ll spread a tarp out, put our sleeping bags on it, and just sleep like that. Do you need something to eat?”
“No,” he said. “I’m more tired than hungry. I’ll eat in the morning.”
Although Alice hadn’t had much of an appetite either, food was important to keeping up their strength. She would have to make sure they ate well tomorrow.
“What about bugs and snakes and stuff?” Charlie asked as he rolled out the blue tarp. He’d camped his whole life but never out in the open without a tent.
“There are worse things out there,” Alice said. “Trust me on that.”
He knew better than to ask what.
She wondered if she should have said that to him. While she didn’t want to expose him to all of the horrors of the world, neither did she want to isolate him. He needed to realize the dangers. He needed to know that he could never assume he was safe and that he should never trust anyone until they’d earned it. What a disappointing world it had become.
“Do we need to keep watch?” Charlie asked.
“I think we’ll be fine,” Alice said. “The horses will let us know if something comes around.” Still, she would sleep with her revolver in her sleeping bag and a rifle beside her. She advised Charlie to keep his AR handy as well.
It took them very little time to s
ettle into their sleeping bags. They could see stars through the trees above them. There were frogs peeping somewhere below them. Night birds called. The horses tugged at grass and chewed.
Soon they were both asleep. Despite their grief, leaving the farm had lifted the yoke of sorrow from them. They were sad and devastated, stripped of two people who had helped define their family and their world, but they were free now of the constant reminders of their loss. They would not notice each day the shut door to Pat’s empty room. They would not see Terry’s sweat-stained John Deere hat hanging on the coat rack. When they awoke, it would be the first day of a new life. It had to be better than the one they’d left.
It had to be.
Chapter 40
Jim
Ellen was still on night watch when Jim woke up in the morning. He made coffee and joined her on the porch. They sat in the swing with warm mugs in their hands, the support chains creaking as they rocked.
“It’s cool,” Ellen remarked. “Feels like fall.”
“I used to like fall.”
“You don’t like it anymore?”
“It’s hard to enjoy anything with all the crap going on.”
“It does seem like something bad is always happening,” Ellen said. “I keep waiting for things to level out but they don’t.”
“Just so we’re clear, I don’t enjoy this,” Jim said. “I’m not sure I ever did, even though you seemed to think so. I’d gladly go back to my boring job now. I’d gladly go back to the security of knowing that you all were safe. I worry constantly and there’s no relief from it.”
“We could move back into the cave until things are worked out,” Ellen suggested.
“I thought about it,” Jim said. “I don’t think there’s room for everyone. How could I move you all back in there and leave Gary’s family and Randi’s family out? Not to mention Lloyd and Buddy.”
Valley of Vengeance: Book Five in The Borrowed World Series Page 18
