Behind The Curve-The Farm | Book 3 | The Farm

by Craven III, Boyd

  Angelica listened as she ordered her a double helping of lunch to be brought up to the room. She hung up the phone and turned around.

  “There was a small uprising on that side of the camp. Several guards were hurt. They blamed you. So, if hurting you while you were sedated… I just wouldn’t let that happen. I’m not 100% for sure it would have, but I feel like I owe you that. Then that creepy older guy is a doc and reminded many of them what a doctor or a nurse could get away with.”

  “So, I have him to thank too?” Angelica moaned. “I hate that. Is he still here at the camp?”

  “He is,” Coraline said softly. “He’s waiting for something.”

  “Yeah, I think I can figure out what.”

  “You want to talk about it?” the nurse asked as she pulled out what looked like scrubs and a neck lanyard and put them in a pile on the countertop, then she bent over and from a small basket, she pulled up some hospital socks, with rubber grips on the feet, and put those on top of the pile.

  “Not really,” Angelica said, thinking of Rob. “My husband is out there somewhere, and my son and my mother-in-law. I wonder if they got them.”

  “I can ask around quietly, but now that they cut you off the sleepy juice you won’t be near me for long. I can get you some lunch and a hot meal in you, but I think they are sending you to the barracks this evening.”

  “What time is it now?” Angelica asked.

  “Almost noon,” Coraline said. “You have time for a shower after all. Food is going to run about twenty minutes.”

  Angelica’s stomach growled again. “Any chance of a razor?” she asked, taking the pile of clothing.

  “No, not even for those of us who sold our souls.”

  “Well, this sucks,” Angel said, stomping back towards the bathroom. She stopped and turned to the nurse. “Thank you for watching over me, Miss Coraline. I truly appreciate it, ma’am.”

  “Ain’t no thing,” the woman said, a smile on her face. “I saw the fight. I ain’t never seen a woman kick a man’s ass like that before.”

  Angelica dropped her clothing on the toilet and walked back out to her. “Here’s the hard truth about fighting.” Angel’s voice was low, but she didn’t have any emotion in it. “I did as good as I did because I’ve trained most of my life to fight. Most of my sparring and fights are usually against men. Those guys out there? They weren’t as well trained, or hadn’t practiced in years. A man my size who has the same training as me will probably mop the floor with me.”

  “Because of their physical advantages.” Coraline said it as a statement, rather than a question.

  “Yes. Bone size, musculature, and their overconfidence…”

  “So, you were better trained than them, took them by surprise and destroyed them,” Coraline said the last bit with a smile.

  “Yes. Nobody ever said a girl has to fight fair, and nobody expects the level of violence that mama bears are willing to unleash. So, you have to hit them hard and fast, go for the quick take down. That sometimes will give a little person like me the advantage I need to beat some ass or get away. That old guy was good though, I got the feeling he was mostly toying with me. If he hadn’t have gotten more involved, I think I could have put a monkey stomping on those three little bitches and made them cry for momma.”

  Now both were smiling big. “You go get your shower sugar, I’ll have the doc sign off on things, but ask him to hold on your release until after supper. Still some folks in the barracks that are sore at you.”

  “You mean the guards?” Angelica asked.

  “And some of the ladies, apparently. Now girl, go get your shower done.”

  “Play it cool,” Curt said to Rob, who was sitting in the back of the Suburban.

  The flashing lights of blue and red lit up the early morning. The sun had started blinding them as it rose a few minutes earlier.

  “State Trooper,” Andrea told them. “Has a partner. Both are headed up on either side.”

  Rob made sure the gun under his shirt was out of sight. The rest of his toys were on the floorboard with a blanket over them, or in the back of the truck. With the back windows tinted dark, Rob doubted they could do more then see vague shapes back there.

  “Hi,” both troopers said at the same time.

  “Hello officers,” Andrea and Curt replied.

  “We have a stay at home order in effect—”

  “Oh crap, I forgot, I needed to leave this on the dash, didn’t I?” Andrea slowly picked up the travel letter.

  “Let me see that,” the trooper on Curt’s side said.

  Curt grabbed it from her and handed it over. The trooper on Andrea’s side looked in the back at Rob. “Good morning, sir.”

  “Good morning, officers,” Rob said, trying not to clench his teeth.

  They hadn’t even been forty-five minutes down the road, when the trooper had come out from behind a sign, lights flashing.

  “This travel letter seems to be in order, Mister and Missus Mallory. Rob. Listen you three—”

  “Wait, you didn’t even ask us for our—” Curt started to interrupt, the nervousness finally breaking into his tone.

  “I don’t know if you recognize me, but you might recognize her,” the trooper said, then whistled.

  Out of the passenger side rear window of their car, a big shaggy form jumped out and ran to the side the trooper Andrea was speaking to, and sat. They all watched, then Andrea let out a small laugh as it clicked.

  “You were there for the pig roast!”

  “Yes ma’am. And when a BOLO went out a day or two ago for a Suburban that matches the description of the three families at the farm, it sort of piqued our interest.”

  “And then there’s Jeff,” the trooper on Curt’s side said. “He did some damn foolish stuff back in the day, but my jaw about hit the floor when he asked me to be at the market to back his play a little bit ago. I was the guy who threw the feathers. That was fun.”

  “Holy shit,” Rob said, and let out a huge breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

  “Then this morning,” the trooper on Curt’s side started talking, “we see you two in the front and recognize the vehicle, and here we are.”

  “So, what are you doing away from the county? You know you’re safe at the farm,” the second trooper with the K9 said.

  Curt started to say something, then hesitated. Rob cleared his throat. “Doctor Mallory has to check in with the hospital, see if the last of her casts can come off and if she’s fit for duty. Curt’s got business to attend to.”

  “And what about you?” the one on Curt’s side asked, a smile on his face.

  “I’m the hired muscle,” Rob said, not quite lying.

  “You wouldn’t happen to be headed south east instead of north east, would you?”

  Now the three in the Suburban looked at each other, then back to them. “What makes you think that?” Andrea asked.

  “I was the one who did the digging for Daniels. He’s a great cop, but is lousy with computers. I found most of the info he was asking about in the database, and made a couple of phone calls. So, who did they take?”

  “My wife,” Rob said after a moment.

  “Do any of you have a burner phone?” the trooper on the left asked. “Like, one you’ve never used before?”

  “I do,” Andrea said, patting her purse.

  “Here,” the trooper scribbled something on his notepad, “that’s the number to the phone I just turned on this morning.”

  “What do you want us to do with it?” Curt asked, being coy.

  “If you’re about to do what I think you’re about to do… Like we said back at your market, some of us are tired of being part of the problem.”

  “Did they try to get to you guys?” Andrea asked.

  Both nodded. “But luckily a lot of the Arkansas State Troopers on this side of the state are single or don’t have much family. They don’t have a lot to threaten us with.”

  “Do you know what t
he ultimate goal is with these camps?” Curt asked them, curious if they knew.

  “Sure, it’s a big redistribution. Of goods, resources, and land. I heard a rumor that they’re saying this virus is an extinction level event or something like that.”

  “It’s bad, but it’s not that bad,” Andrea told them. “Trust me, from somebody who’s had it.”

  “None of this makes much sense to me,” the K9 trooper said. “It’s like we’re missing a bigger piece of the puzzle. But listen, if you get stopped again, you give the officers this.” He fished a card out of his pocket and handed it to Andrea. “And don’t lose that travel letter. That might get you across the state alone.”

  “Thank you, both,” Andrea told them.

  “Appreciate you helping us out,” Rob said from the back.

  “Hurry to where you’re going. Avoid Little Rock, and gas up before you get to the bigger cities.”

  “Thank you,” Curt said, turning the vehicle back on.

  They watched as the troopers went back to their vehicle before pulling back onto the highway.

  “Do you think they’re on the level?” Curt asked behind his shoulder.

  “I hope they are. They might have just given me the miracle I needed. We’ll see,” Rob said, relaxing at last.

  Seventeen

  Harry and Ranger were working around the area where the berries were. He had a bucket with him, but he was only half-heartedly picking them. What he was doing was trying to stay out of the way, and maybe find some more gold. He loved pirates and his favorite show on Disney was one about a kid pirate named Jake. He thought it would be a lot of fun to find more gold like Jake on TV did, but he couldn’t wander off. His grandma and her friend Luis were about twenty feet down the row, picking berries as well.

  “Ranger, do you think my dad is going to be ok?” Harry whispered.

  Ranger gave his human a look, then tilted his head to the side as if to say that was a silly question.

  “I think so too, I just… Momma is gone now, and Daddy’s gone to fetch her…”

  The word fetch made Ranger sit bolt upright. He bobbed his head left to right to see if his kid had a ball or stick in his hands. He let out a sigh and relaxed when he realized the little packmate was talking about something else. He would have to pay attention and listen harder; the little one wasn’t easy to understand all the time.

  “Are you finding any more gold?” Luis called.

  “No sir,” Harry called back. “But I’m looking for it. Last time I just tripped, and there it was.”

  “You know,” Goldie said to both of them, “Doctor Dante ordered that big fancy schmancy metal detector. Nobody has ever used it, and it’s probably still in a box.”

  “I don’t know how to use one of those things,” Luis told her. “Do you?”

  “I’ve used one a time or two,” she admitted. “And once I did spend some time down by Murfreesboro when I was younger. I went diamond hunting there.”

  “Diamond hunting?” Harry asked, walking to the spot between the two of them.

  “Yes. There’s an old caldera there. I guess folks used to try to mine it, then it went to the government. Now, they made it a state park. So, you can just go there and go looking and digging for diamonds.”

  Harry thought about it, and knew pirates loved diamonds almost as much as gold. He was interested.

  “How would you find them?” he asked her.

  “Mostly just by walking. See, I didn’t stay out there too long. Grandpa, back when he was alive, had a truck tire blow out. Turns out we both got stuck on that side of the state while we got a new tire and part of his front end rebuilt. We took advantage of the downtime by walking up and down that plowed field, looking for them.”

  “Did you ever find any?” Harry asked.

  “Your grandpa did. Actually, he found it the same time a boy your age at the time found it. They both saw it and the kid picked it up first. It was as easy as that. Your grandpa didn’t fuss none. The boy said he was going to sell it and use the money to help his grandparents out.”

  “Oh, wow, so is gold like, more expensive than diamonds?” Harry asked.

  Ranger had followed Harry to the new spot, but now he was vying for his pack-mate’s attention by rubbing his head on the boy’s mid section. Harry smiled and hugged the dog one handed, and then started scratching his ears the way he liked.

  “It’s worth is more than gold, if we’re talking about value on a pound-to-pound basis,” Luis answered when Goldie hesitated.

  “Hm… And you said the little boy was my age?” Harry asked.

  “I think so. Little Westley. I’ll never forget him.” Goldie smiled. “He found buried treasure and used it to help out his family.”

  That did it. If he wasn’t going to be a big tough rancher like his father, Harry was for sure going to become a pirate.

  “I wish we had a treasure map AND the gold detector thing,” Harry said, mostly to himself.

  Luis stood up with a jolt and dumped his basket in with Goldie’s. “I’ll be right back.”

  Dante and Rob together had rotated the harvest before the work crew had showed up the first time, so they could get the mix together in the silos. Now all Dante had to do was finish the harvest. He was worried. They had topped off their silos and he went over the yields in his head. Rob estimated nine to ten thousand pounds of corn per acre harvested. They had roughly sixty to eighty acres in corn alone. That equated to 530,000 to 540,000 pounds of corn alone. If the bags had roughly seventy pounds in them, that would be 7500 to 7700 feed bags needed just for corn, but they’d already sent a lot of it into the grain silos, and then there were the soybeans… he’d have to get on the internet.

  And they only had four thousand feed bags. Dante checked the levels in the harvester and the truck next to him with the camera and saw he was doing fine for now. He pulled out his cell phone and speed dialed the farm and feed store. He got the manager on the phone right away and asked if they had more feed bags in stock. The manager had gotten a store-to-store transfer, and the next week they could get some more from their corporate distribution center.

  “Any chance I can put in an order for next week for another six or eight thousand bags?”

  “Sure. We can get that done for you. Will you be driving the farm’s truck when you come?”

  “I’m sure we will,” Dante said. “I just grossly underestimated how many bags I’d need this year.”

  “Happens to all of us. I’ll have that ready for you when you pull in. Want me to write it up as a ‘will call’ so you can pay when you come in, or would you like to pay with a card over the phone?”

  “How about I pay when I come in?”

  “That sounds good. Thank you for the business!”

  “Appreciate the order. Will you call us when it comes in? We’re in the middle of harvesting right now.”

  “I sure will. Thank you, Mr. Weaver.”

  “Thanks boss. Bye.”

  Dante hit the end button on the call and grinned. Mr. Weaver. He’d spent so much of his adult life being Dr. Weaver, that he loved the way Mr. Weaver sounded. He hadn’t introduced himself as Doctor Weaver… His musings were interrupted by the radio.

  “Wake up, sleepy head. I’m about full,” Steven said.

  “I’m about 75% myself. How about we both head to drop your load and I’ll refuel before filling you up from what I got here?”

  “That sounds good,” Steven told him.

  Eighteen

  Luis returned with the metal detector. It had been removed from the box and the batteries in it were charged and ready to go. When he’d asked Leah if he could borrow it, she’d been happy to tell him where it was in their cabin. Now, he was heading back to the berry patch with it. Ranger saw him coming first and gave a greeting bark and ran up to him, his tail wagging.

  “Were you keeping an eye on those two for me?” Luis asked him.

  Ranger let his tongue hang out the side of his mouth in a doggy gr
in.

  “Good. That little boy needs you right now. More than ever.”

  Ranger chuffed, and rubbed against Luis’s leg before running back to Harry.

  Goldie turned to watch him come and Luis could see both their buckets were nearly full now. She was planning on making a pie and some preserves with the canning gear. Harry was kicking at the hole in the ground where they had found the first box.

  “You found it,” she said with a grin.

  “Si, and I also have the wand they ordered as well. I think this might be fun.”

  Luis seemed familiar with the equipment and fired it up. He started going over the area where they had found the ammo can.

  “Now this is like being a real pirate,” Harry said excitedly.

  They worked through the area, even pushing into the thorny branches and bushes around them. Then Luis went back over the spot where they’d found the first ammo can. Ranger looked at the humans and was ready to go. If they found a hole they wanted dug up more, he was the pup for the job. Ranger understood he had to take care of the little one while his big alpha was away, but he also wanted something else to do. Digging would be amazing. Ranger loved to dig and bury.

  “Do you guys need any help?” Leah asked, startling them.

  She’d come up with a spade in one hand, and her phone in the other.

  “I think we’re striking out,” Luis said with a sigh.

  “I’ve done threatened that old coot to take a rest, but does he listen to me? Lord no, and he keeps asking me to spank him with my spoon. In my day—”

  “Grandma,” Harry laughed, “you threatened more, but I don’t know what some of those words meant. I heard it when you were having your coffee.”

  Goldie’s face turned an alarming shade of red and Luis looked at the ground, his body shaking with restrained laughter.

  “Would a map help out?” Leah asked them.

  “Like a treasure map?” Harry asked.

  “Maybe it’s just like a treasure map,” Leah said. “It’s Dewey’s wife’s map. I uh…” she looked at Harry and Goldie, “got a copy sent to my phone when the picture of it was taken. When you and Mr. Owens went to the cave.”