by Pike, JJ
“Drop it.” Aggie couldn’t see what the alpaca had in her mouth. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be good. “Drop it.”
Floofy did no such thing. She kept on bobbing for treats in the filthy water. Aggie had to forcibly remove the trash from her teeth. There was a fish carcass partially wrapped in an empty bag of chips. Her hand touched the slimy monstrosity and she yelped and dropped it. There were scales on her hands. Like, lots of them. The fish had shucked its skin and slid into the water ahead of the bag.
Aggie didn’t want to run her hands down her pantleg. She didn’t want any of the fish left on her. The water was gross, the animals still tethered together and the reins in her left hand. She led them to the bank as fast as she could and wiped her palm in the dirt, squishing her fingers through the warm mud. It wasn’t clean, but it wasn’t covered in fish scales either.
She grabbed leaves as often as she could as she made her way back to the front of Betsy’s house. She couldn’t get the fish stink off her hands. She tethered Indie and Floofy and went in search of water. Any water would be better than what she’d been in.
She found none.
Instead she ended up washing her hands with orange juice from one of the tiny boxes Betsy had been offering earlier. She’d left hers by the Humvee. Her hands were sticky, but not stinky and gross. Orange juice was a million times better than fish.
Dad and Petra were deep in conversation on the back porch.
Bryony had moved outside and, in spite of her injuries, was playing some elaborate game that included a stick, a ball, and a willing if waddling dog. Together, Bryony and Mouse had invented a new team sport: Interspecies baseball.
Mimi looked on from a beach chair by the front door. That meant she could watch over Bryony out front and Paul, just inside the door.
Aggie smiled. She didn’t need to talk to them. They were all entertaining themselves. She could do her work and then spur them to action. Again.
She was ready to plot and plan. She opened the back door of the Humvee. She couldn’t put too much stuff in the back. Paul would go in the middle there, flat on his back. Petra could drive. Dad could sit shotgun. Mimi and Bryony would fit in the back once Paul was settled. Where would Mom and Betsy go?
Hmm. Could Mimi ride? She’d never seen her grandmother on a horse but that didn’t mean it had never happened. If Mimi rode with Bryony they’d have room for Mom and Betsy in the Humvee. She looked down the path. Her mother hadn’t returned. How long should they wait?
Get the Humvee road-ready, then decide. She could ask Mimi what she thought. Or Petra. Dad would have been her go-to consultant but she was scared of what he might say to her. Better to keep him at an arm’s length until she was sure he was back in control of his faculties. That way neither of them would have to deal with any uncomfortable truths.
They would wait at least another ten minutes. Then she’d send these guys on ahead and go find Mom.
Right now, she needed gas for the Humvee.
The garage was, according to Betsy, off limits. She didn’t disagree that the garage was a danger zone, but she had no choice. She leaned against the side of the Humvee and thought through what she was going to do. Jim had everything she’d need to drain a couple of gas tanks. She’d never seen a tank pump, but he was exactly the kind of guy to buy a useful gadget like that. His garage was perfectly ordered. She’d find it fast enough.
What did she know for certain?
He kept all his keys on a board towards the back of the garage.
That wasn’t great.
That’s where the bodies were.
She’d have to go down there with protection. A face mask at least. And gloves. She looked down at her pants. They had micro-tiny rips, but that was enough to let an infectious agent in. And, to make matters worse, she had a hundred little scratches on her hands and legs.
Petra had said there was stuff in the attic. What were the chances there were clothes up there? Good, right?
She smiled at Mimi on her way past.
The attic was so well organized it even had a floor map at the top of the stairs, right where you couldn’t miss it. There was a section dedicated to “Esther” which had an ornate cot, baby clothes, and toys. Betsy had labeled every last item with Esther’s name and when she’d use it and for what, even though her baby had never made it home from the hospital.
There were pictures, boxes of books, an entire section given over to Christmas ornaments, a rocking horse, a sewing machine, three crock pots, and—at last, something that was useful to Aggie right now—their “war” section.
Aggie changed out of her clothes. Dang, the cuts on her legs were longer and deeper than she had realized. She found a camo uniform. It had to have been Jim’s. It was too big, but not by much. The man had to have been skinny as a rake when he wore this. She cinched the pants with a belt, drew the jacket in tight, unpacked the gas mask, and spent five whole minutes looking for a pair of gloves. She finally found them in the “gardening” section. The flashlights were a lot easier to find. They were in the “illumination” section. She collected two and tested them for brightness. The garage was a dark place. She did not want to go in there blind.
She kept the mask on her head so she wouldn’t scare Bryony (or be mistaken for a stranger and get herself shot) and made her way downstairs. She didn’t offer Mimi an explanation as she passed her, nor did she look towards Dad and Petra.
She walked as if she was headed to the barn, then doubled back and let herself into the garage as quietly as she could.
The air was sweet with decomposition. Flies buzzed and hummed in lazy circles above the cars. She pulled her mask down over her face and adjusted it so she could see the path in front of her and flicked on her flashlight. She did not want to step in human goo on accident.
The walk to the board that held the keys was interminable. She read off the names of the cars and did her best to select the largest and second-largest vehicle in the fleet. She stashed the keys in her pocket and checked the counter for gas cans. She didn’t spot any in her immediate vicinity. The problem with a World War II gas mask was that the eyepiece restricted her vision. No way she was going to take it off, but she had to move slowly and deliberately because she’d lost her peripheral vision. Weird how much that rattled her cage. She’d never known that tunnel vision would be the thing to shake her nerves.
The cans were going to be bright red. She stood in one spot and did a 360-degree turn, moving the flashlight beam in time with her body so she could scan all the surfaces around her. Nothing. That couldn’t be right. Jim was not the kind of man to be caught short especially when it came to his cars. She did another spin, this time slower.
The cannisters were green, not red; and metal, not plastic. “Good on you, Jim, listening to Mom.” Her breath fogged up her mask. She waited until the steam effect wore off. The gas canisters might have been made of metal—good, full points on that score—but they were stashed on the far side of the bodies.
Bad. Very bad. Stepping over death bad. She had no choice. If her family was going to make it to the mines she had to “screw her courage to the sticking place”—a phrase she’d picked up when she’d been going through her Shakespeare phase—and go for it.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Alice wasn’t sure whose arms and legs belonged to whom, but she had her assailant in a headlock and had no plans on letting her go. The girl thrashed and kicked, like a badger in a snare. The second girl—the one who’d come charging through the door when Alice had launched her attack—was on top of the two of them, swearing and ripping at Alice’s arm. She could feel the nails digging into her skin, but nothing short of a damn nuclear bomb was going to make her let go.
Reggie barked, his muzzle so close to their faces she could smell his breath. This was no game and he knew it. He lunged and circled, barked some more, but didn’t join in. Alice had a flash of the other dogs, the ones who’d paced below her tree all those years ago, but there was no comparison. Re
ggie was well-fed and well-trained. Unless something in him snapped and his primal Labrador essence was unleashed—was there even such a thing; weren’t they all happy jowls and thumpy tails all the time?—they were in no danger of him mauling them to death.
Being on the bottom of the heap, flat on your back with two potential killers writhing around on top of you, had its advantages, if you ignored getting your ribs cracked and not being able to draw breath and worrying that your head was about to be crushed. When Betsy brought her cane down on top of the three of them, Alice was cushioned from the blow. Kind of. Sort of. Mostly. The girl on the top of the pile gasped and rolled.
Betsy kept on coming, whaling on the girl who had her hands over her face, but whose arms were taking a beating.
Reggie’s barks increased in pitch, tone, and frequency. He was worried now, trying to get his body between the girl on the ground and whatever came next.
Betsy held off. She didn’t want to hit Reggie any more than Alice wanted him to get hit. It would be a terrible outcome if an innocent was hurt in the melee.
Alice wrapped her legs around the first girl and tightened her grip. She didn’t want the kid to pass out, but if she didn’t let up squirming they might have to go there.
Betsy stood over the second girl, her walking stick smack in the middle of her chest. “You move and I’ll come at you again.” She reached towards the side table, her hand searching for something she might use to tie her up.
The girl rolled and grabbed Betsy’s ankle with both of her bloodied hands and sank her teeth into the old woman’s flesh. Betsy didn’t hesitate. She brought her stick down on the girl’s head with a crushing blow. Lucky for her, Betsy was 72 and not 27. If she’d had the strength of a younger woman that stick would have gone clear through the skull. As it was, it scratched up the side of the girl’s face and left her writhing and screaming.
It might have been the blood dripping out of her friend’s nose, or the violence of the attack, or the shame of having been bested by a couple of oldies, but the young woman in Alice’s grip stopped moving. Alice didn’t waste any time. She wriggled out from under the girl, flipped her, and used her own scarf to tie her hands behind her back a second time. That wouldn’t hold for long. She kept a knee on her prisoner while she looked around for a cord. In all this mess she could see nothing she could make into a reliable form of restraint.
“You stay there.” Betsy abandoned her charge and headed for the stairs, apparently confident she wouldn’t be followed.
“What’s your name?” Alice nudged the girl under her. “I said, what’s your name?”
The girl didn’t answer.
“Fine. One of you is H and one of you is C, I take it.” They’d been back three times why wouldn’t they come back a fourth time? “From now on, you’re Helen and you over there with the broken cheekbone, you’re Claire.”
Neither girl responded, but they were looking at each other, their eyes wide and their faces twitching. That couldn’t go on. Alice knew all about secret signals and codes. They might be blinking in Morse for all she knew.
“Eyes on me. Helen…” She looked down at the girl beneath her. “Why were you looking for silver?”
Helen—or whatever her name was—gasped. Claire’s eyebrows shot up. Even with all the blood on her face, Alice could still read her expressions.
“Good. We’re getting somewhere. You tell me what I need to know and there’ll be no more bloodshed.”
Betsy returned with a bunch of belts, some scarves, a length of rope, and three retractable leashes.
Alice laughed.
“We can’t let them go and we can’t leave them here so I figured we’d take them with us.”
Alice didn’t want to talk strategy in front of “Helen” and “Claire” but they couldn’t walk away and discuss their next steps until the girls had been properly restrained.
The women worked in silence, securing their prisoners, tending to their wounds, keeping Reggie from licking them. He play-bowed, backed up, found a wad of batting from one of the torn-up cushions and threw it over his head. Alice did her best to ignore him, but it was tough. The guy desperately wanted to play.
“I’ll tie Helen to this end of the couch. You secure Claire to the other end.”
“Claire? Her name is Claire?” Betsy looked down at the girl whose face she had mangled and then bandaged.
Alice shrugged. “Their names begin with H and C. I don’t know which one of them is which or what each letter stands for, except that it’s a name…”
Betsy held up her hand. “Say what?”
“I’ll tell you in a moment. Let’s just get them back to back so they can’t signal to each other. Then I’ll update you.”
There was a scratch at the back door. Not human.
Reggie bounded away, barking, but this was a happy rather than a frantic sound.
Alice roped Helen to the leg of the couch, her back safely angled away from Claire. She pulled the knots tight so Helen wouldn’t be able to get away without a massive struggle, checked on Betsy’s progress, then tiptoed towards the back door with Reggie.
Maggie-loo writhed through the doggie door and planted her face in Alice’s hands. She and Reggie were still in sniff-and-tell mode, but Maggie-loo was far more interested in investigating the cuts and scrapes on Alice’s hands than talking to the new dog.
“How did you get here, girl?” Alice had left the dogs in Jim’s barn where they’d be safe. “Where’s Mouse?” If one dog had gotten loose who was to say two weren’t roaming the woods looking for her? They’d become her charges. She couldn’t leave them in the wild.
Maggie-loo sniffed Reggie, who sniffed Maggie-loo and on and on. There’d be no answers on where Mouse might be. That would have to wait until they’d sorted out the mess in the front room.
First things first, they had to decide what to do with H/C.
Alice didn’t look at the girls as she passed through the living room to the kitchen. The dogs followed—because she was the boss and they loved her and she’d always needed a doggie entourage even though she hadn’t known it—with Betsy close behind.
Alice propped open the door between the two rooms and she and Betsy huddled by the kitchen sink, their voices low, but their eyes on the girls they’d roped and bound.
“Who are they? What do they want? The way they crept by me out there, I knew they were trouble with a capital T. I didn’t want to leave Fran, but I didn’t want you to be in danger either. You understand, don’t you, Alice? I couldn’t leave you here and not let you know some sneaky girls were crawling your way.” Betsy’s eyes were bright, her words faster than her usual Southern-style pace. Unlike Jim, she wasn’t from Tennessee, but having lived with a man with a drawl for 50+ years, her speech had slowed so that it almost matched his. Not so now. She was amped up and charged to full capacity.
Alice pointed her to the back of the kitchen door, let her investigate, and waited for her return. “You can read that, right?”
“They went to some trouble to make it hard to spot. What did they use? Grease?” said Betsy.
Alice shrugged. She had no idea what the girls had used to leave their mark, but Betsy was right on one score, they’d done it in a way so as to draw as little attention to it as possible.
“But to answer your question, yes, I know how to read a search and rescue grid.” Betsy folded her arms, unfolded them, folded them again.
“They’ve been here four times now. Did you see the little symbol in the top right-hand corner?”
Betsy shook her head.
“Go take a look. Tell me I’m not insane.”
Betsy trotted back to the door and peered hard. She didn’t have her glasses, so she had to do a couple of steps backwards and forwards, to get the right distance from the door and read the symbol.
Alice kept her eyes on the girls. Helen was twisting her hands, trying to loosen the knots. Claire had her head bowed down towards her chest. She’d sustained serious i
njuries. If Claire had been her child, she’d have taken her to the emergency room to get those lacerations seen to, but there were no operational emergency rooms for at least a 100-mile radius and, anyway, the girls had meant them real harm. Claire would have to tough it out and if, once she and Betsy had talked it over, they decided to take them back to Betsy’s place, perhaps their nurse-in-residence would stitch her up properly.
Betsy was back at her side, whispering fast, like a Gatling gun gone wild. “It’s the symbol for silver. What in the world? Why is everyone obsessed with silver all of a sudden? We haven’t had a chance to catch up properly but Bill’s friend, Arthur, came here looking for silver. We didn’t know that at first. He said he wanted a place to stay is all, but that wasn’t the case because he went away and came back and that was when we had the first gun battle. I was hit, Midge was hit, it was a terrible time…”
Alice had a hundred questions. Where to start? She already knew her daughter had been shot and that Betsy had sustained injuries, but who had done it and why, that was news. Start there. “Arthur?”
“Did you know him? He didn’t mention you. He said he was Bill’s friend. But Aggie recognized him. She went to his wedding.” Betsy scratched her nose, a bit too hard. But they’d been out in the woods so long it was no wonder she was having an allergic reaction to whatever—a bug, a tree, a plant, all of the above. “Aggie said it was wife number four or five in the car. Seems a bit excessive to me. I’ve made do with one man this whole time. Can’t see how you’d juggle more than that…”
Alice put her hand on Betsy’s arm. “Are you feeling alright?”
Betsy drew in a huge breath through her nose and let it out through her mouth. “I’m jabbering aren’t I?”
She was. They were all altered, one way or another. Exhaustion would be their downfall if they didn’t sort out a sleep roster and start taking better care of themselves. “Back up. Aggie knew Arthur?”
