by Payne, T. L.
Jim smiled. “Thank you. He should be able to travel by tomorrow, I imagine. I’m anxious to get home and see my girl.”
“I hope she doesn’t do something stupid like come look for us,” Nick said.
“She wouldn’t. Your mother wouldn’t let her.”
“If you say so,” Nick said.
Brandon got the impression that Nick and JJ didn’t get along all that well. His tone had that vibe. It was hard to tell, though. He could be upset with her for putting herself in a dangerous situation. Brandon understood JJ and Scott’s reasoning for going to St. Louis. They felt an obligation. They hadn’t considered how quickly the city had devolved into chaos. Luckily, they hadn’t paid for their mistake with their lives.
“Um… Mr. Durham,” Sheena said. “Did you happen to run into any of the cartel members when you were out in the community?”
“Cartel?” Aiden asked. “There’s a cartel out here?”
“I’m sure it’s just a misunderstanding,” Brandon said.
“I don’t know. Scott and JJ seemed convinced,” Sheena said.
Brandon knew Sheena was just concerned for her son’s safety, but to bring it up and upset JJ’s family without proof that there was indeed a cartel looking for her seemed unnecessary.
“What about that border crossing card JJ found on the side of the road?” Sheena asked.
Raine looked to Brandon. “Did you get a look at the guy that shot Nick?”
Brandon's mind raced. He hadn’t considered it could be the cartel after their run-in with the neighbors and then finding Tom with JJ’s family. He’d thought cartel was too farfetched.
“I never saw them,” he said.
“What’s JJ got to do with a cartel?” her father asked.
“We don’t really know much about that,” Brandon said.
“Either she did, or she didn’t? Did they follow her from St. Louis?” Jim asked.
“No. I think this was something before St. Louis. Like I said, JJ didn’t say much about it so I’m sure it was nothing,” Brandon said, shooting Sheena a change-the-subject-look.
It really wasn’t their place to discuss JJ’s business with her family. But if the person that had shot her brother was part of the cartel, they may need to know who they were dealing with.
“Some of the neighbors claim to have received visits from men looking for JJ. They didn’t want trouble in the community, so they wanted all of us to go. JJ told them that they were only searching for her and that she was leaving,” Raine said.
“She didn’t say why they were after her?” Jim asked.
Raine looked to Brandon. “Nope.”
“How secure is this place?” Aiden said, moving toward the front door.
“Secure?” Lucy asked.
Aiden turned to her. “Do you have any perimeter defenses set up yet?”
Lucy shrugged and turned to Brandon.
“We just got here. We haven’t had time for anything like that. We did post guards last night. We didn’t see anyone until this morning,” Brandon said. “That was you guys, right?”
“We followed some guys that said they were heading over here. They hadn’t been very friendly and refused to tell us even where this place was,” Aiden said.
“Yeah. They weren’t very friendly when they showed up here either. They told us to leave,” Raine said.
“How'd that go?” Jim asked.
“Friends of the owner of this place showed up and ran them off. He said they might come back, though,” Raine said.
“How many weapons do you have?” Aiden asked.
“Not enough,” Brandon said.
Raine held the door open for Aiden as he carried a load of firewood in from the pile Lucy had split and stacked in the machine shed that morning.
“There’s not much left. Someone should be out cutting logs,” he said as he dropped the stack into the wooden box by the stove in the living room.
“We’ve been kind of busy since we got here,” Brandon said.
Aiden glanced around the room. Antonio, Tom, and Gage were seated along one wall in hardback chairs brought in from the kitchen.
“What’s wrong with your leg?” Aiden asked, pointing to the brace Antonio wore.
“I wrecked my knee,” Antonio said.
“That sucks.” Aiden pointed to Tom and Gage. “You two. Do your arms bend?”
They both nodded.
Aiden motioned for them to follow him and headed toward the back door.
Tom and Gage looked at one another, shrugged, and followed Aiden into the kitchen.
“How’s he doing?” Raine asked, pointing to Nick.
“He’s going to be okay,” Jim said.
Raine nodded and picked up the rifle leaning against a well-worn recliner across from the sofa. “Brandon and I are going to patrol the farm. I don’t want to be surprised if those neighbors come back or whoever shot your son shows up here.”
“I’ll come with you. I want to talk to Brandon about setting up some early warning systems. That should help you out some,” Jim said. “Antonio? You coming?”
Antonio stood and grabbed his coat from the rack by the door. “Right behind you.”
Sheena was in the kitchen washing brown beans in a large stew pot while DeAndre sat at the kitchen table drawing on a notepad taken from the refrigerator door. Raine stopped and looked over DeAndre’s shoulder.
“That is an awesome horse,” Raine said.
“It’s a dog,” DeAndre said, looking up at her.
“Silly me. Of course it is. I see its collar right there. What’s its name?”
DeAndre shrugged. “If I ever get to have a puppy, I’m going to call him Max.”
Raine gave his shoulder a gentle squeeze. “That sounds like a great name for a dog.”
“You ready?” Jim asked with his hand on the door handle.
“Sure,” Raine said. “I’ll see you later, buddy.”
Raine, Antonio, and Jim met Brandon in the workshop area of the barn. A workbench lined one wall, and tools of every kind hung on pegs above it. Bins and boxes were filled with all manner of nuts, bolts, and screws.
Jim immediately started throwing various items into wooden crates. Thirty minutes later, they had their perimeter defense hardware, as Jim called it.
“Grab that,” he said, pointing to a roll of barbed wire. Brandon glanced over to Raine, half-shrugged, and grabbed the wire.
“Let’s go set some traps,” Jim said, picking up a crate.
Antonio grabbed a crate and followed them.
Jim stopped at the edge of the field, set his crate down, bent over, and studied the ground.
“What is it?” Raine asked.
Jim straightened and said, “Coyote. You better keep an eye on those goats. Coyote can wipe a herd out pretty quick.”
Brandon walked up beside him and looked at the ground. “Looks like more than one.”
“Yep. They hunt in packs.”
Raine swung around, scanning the woods. “Oh, my gosh! Really. How many?”
“They don’t normally mess with humans. They’re nocturnal and generally shy away from human activity. But I’d keep an eye on the kid. Don’t let him go wandering around on his own,” Jim said.
“We won’t,” Raine said. “Won’t they set off our alarms?”
“Some of them. The ones made for human intruders are a little too high for animals that size to set off.”
Raine shuddered. As if it wasn’t bad enough that they had to worry about people, now she had to be concerned about all sorts of creatures that could attack them and kill the goats and chickens.
Jim handed Raine a wooden crate. He climbed over the barbed wire fence.
“Antonio, tie those tin cans all along the top of the wire. We’ll start in the woods and work our way back here,” Jim said.
At the back of the Wards’ property, Raine stepped around the mound of branches Jim and Brandon had piled in a clearing between two trees. They’d done that all a
long the fence the property shared with their neighbor, leaving only one cleared path from that side of the land.
In her hands, Raine held the box containing the four-inch pieces of garden hose with nails poked through them. She watched as Brandon and Jim rolled out a coil of barbed wire, crisscrossing them to form a lattice-type pattern on the ground.
“Okay, Raine. Just toss those down in any empty spaces,” Jim said as he wrapped an end of the barbed wire around a nearby tree.
Jim and Brandon continued to weave their deadly trap as Raine backed her way down the hill toward the field. Antonio was busy tying empty tin cans to the fence around the pasture.
When Jim and Brandon reached the clearing, they all continued along the fence until they reached the old wooden gate near the barn.
“Is that it?” Raine asked.
Jim shook his head. “Nope. Now we do the front.”
As Jim walked off toward the barn, Raine cupped her hands over her nose and mouth. It was so cold. Her face was stinging. Her pants were wet from falling in the deep snow at the back of the field. She was ready to call it a day and sit by the fire with a warm cup of tea.
“Can we go in and warm up a bit first?” Raine asked.
Jim whipped around to face her. His stern stare made her feel like she was back in grade school getting called to the principal’s office for punching Billy Gunderson in the mouth. Again.
“Do you think that intruders bent on murdering your friends here, raping and killing you, and taking everything inside that house will wait for you to go inside and warm up?”
“Whoa. That’s intense,” Antonio said, holding up both hands with his palms out.
“You think that’s intense?” Jim scoffed and turned toward the barn. He paused, took two steps, and turned back. “You kids need to wake up. You are the only thing between stone-cold killers and that mother and child in there. Those two boys with bandages on their hands can’t protect themselves.”
He paused, took his trapper hat off, and ran a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair.
“You have to sleep sometime. It’s going to be hard. Hard as hell.” He turned and looked at Raine. “The hardest thing you’ve ever done in your life. You need to decide now if you want to survive this. If so, it’s twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week from now on. The minute you let your guard down, that is when they’ll come. Do you want to be ready or not?”
Raine nodded. His words penetrated her soul. A single tear slid down her cheek. Did she want to survive in a world like that? What the hell for? If fear and danger were all she had to look forward to, what was the point? Who would want that kind of life?
Sheena and DeAndre stepped out from the barn door. An ear-to-ear grin spread across DeAndre’s face as he waved frantically. “Raine. Mommy let me milk Esmerelda.”
Guilt pricked Raine’s heart. She smiled and waved back, making a promise to herself. She’d make sure DeAndre had a chance to survive and grow up. She glanced over at Antonio and then to Brandon. She’d do it for them. She could do it for all of them.
“What do we need to do, Jim?”
At the front of the property, Jim and Brandon walked parallel to the road, bending small trees and branches horizontally and wiring them together to form a fence that could only be penetrated by chopping through it. That would take an intruder time. Time Raine and her group needed to go on the offensive. Jim shut and locked the old pipe gate across the driveway. Antonio tied more tin cans along the top of it then dropped pieces of gravel from the driveway inside them. He pulled vigorously on the shut gate. It was loud, but Raine worried that it wasn’t loud enough to hear inside. They’d still need guards posted outside.
By the time they’d finished setting the early warning system along the perimeter of the property, Aiden, Tom, and Gage had a large stack of firewood cut and split. Raine met Lucy on the walkway between the barn and the house.
“You need help with that?” Raine asked, pointing to the load of wood in her arms.
“I got it. I hate that JJ’s brother got shot and all, but it’s really good to have them here. I’m not sure if we would have been able to get this much done without them,” Lucy said.
Raine pulled on the storm door and held it open. “Yeah. They seem to know their stuff. I’m sure that they’ll be on their way home after Nick wakes up.”
“Too bad. Aiden’s kind of cute,” Lucy said as she stepped inside.
Chapter 8
St. Francois County, Missouri
February 23rd, approximately 9:30 a.m.
The sun was high in the sky as Scott walked north on Highway 67. He tried to stay inside the tire tracks made by the Suburban the day before. Scott noticed that the snow outside the tracks was softer than it had been a few days earlier. Maybe it was warming up. Now that he thought about it, it didn't feel as cold as it had been.
Scott kept his head on a swivel as he walked north in the southbound lane. Every once in a while, he'd stop and listen for the sound of a vehicle. Sometimes, he almost wished he heard one. Maybe if he hadn't hidden when they'd come for JJ, he'd be with her now and they could have gotten away together. But he'd concealed himself, and now she was alone.
The images of JJ's battered face haunted him. There didn't appear to be one shred of humanity left in her husband—no sign of warm feelings for his wife, only anger and rage. His only concern was for his money. Did he not understand that cash was worthless now? What would he do with it if she told him where it was?
Would he kill her? Scott recalled the enraged expression on David's face as he struck him. He had no doubt he'd kill her. But how soon? How long could she hold out? Was there time to find and save her?
Scott heard a branch snap behind him and jumped. He spun around, thrusting the pocketknife out in front of him. A beagle climbed out of the ditch and ran toward him, his tail wagging furiously. Scott exhaled, turned, and continued walking. He looked back over his shoulder, and the dog was still following him. Scott picked up his pace. He felt like everything was going in slow motion. He just could not walk fast enough. He wanted to just be there already. He wasn't sure how long it would take to convince the others to help him.
Scott wasn't sure they would. They didn't owe him anything. He hoped the bond that he and JJ had formed with the group while in St. Louis would be enough. Would they leave the safety and comfort of their new refuge to help someone they barely knew? He mulled that question over for nearly half a mile. The pre-world-gone-to-shit Scott would have for sure. If someone was smart and strategic, they wouldn’t either. It wasn't wise. The risk was too great. They weren't cops or military. They were ordinary people with no special skills. Could he really ask them to go up against David and the cartel? Could he live with himself if he didn't?
He found himself humming a tune as he tried to keep putting one foot in front of the other. When he realized it was the bedtime song that he'd sung to Lily when she was little, he stopped and gulped back tears. A tight knot formed in his chest. That Suburban was his one shot of making it to her. Everything he tried failed. Maybe he wasn't the guy to save JJ.
Scott stood in the middle of the road and looked out over the empty fields on both sides of the road. He was in the middle of nowhere without a vehicle or weapon. He had no food or water. He had nothing going for him at the moment. What hope did any of them have in this new world? What was he supposed to do?
He felt the dog brush his left leg and looked down. "Go on. Get. I don't have time to play.” The dog looked up and Scott got the first view of the rabbit in the dog's mouth. The dog sat next to Scott's foot and dropped it on the road. staring up with his big brown eyes.
Scott reached down and ruffled the fur behind the beagle’s floppy ears. "Okay, boy. You take your rabbit and run on home before some hungry person steals it from you."
The dog stood, wagged his tail, sniffed the rabbit, and then took off running toward the open field, leaving his catch behind.
Scott scooped it up off the ground an
d held it out in front of him. "Hey, boy. You forgot your rabbit."
The dog ignored him and just kept running. Scott watched him disappear over the hill. He looked down at the rabbit in his left hand. He held up his right hand. He had a knife and a rabbit. All he needed now was a fire, and he'd have food. He stared at the dog's tracks across the field, then turned his attention to the road ahead of him. He was likely just half a mile or so from the farm. In thirty minutes, he would know if Raine and the others were willing to help rescue JJ. JJ had said her family had old trucks. Maybe they'd be willing to loan him one after they rescued her and they reached her folks’ place. Maybe—just maybe—his situation wasn't as hopeless as he had thought.
Scott wasn't sure how, but he found the strength not only to continue walking but to run. When Scott reached the junction near Possum Hollow Road and the highway, he was forced to stop and place his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. He felt like an old man. Just weeks ago, he would have been able to run a half-mile, no problem. The rabbit's feet scraped the ground in front of him.
"Don't move."
Scott sucked in a breath. He opened his left hand and let the rabbit drop to the ground. He started to straighten.
"I said don't move. You deaf or something?" a raspy male voice said somewhere behind him.
Scott braced to be shot in the back. "I don't want any trouble. I just stopped to catch my breath. I'm only passing through."
"You don't want no trouble, huh? How about you take two slow steps back away from that rabbit and turn around?"
He just wants the rabbit.
Scott tried to calm himself as he did as the man demanded. He slid the knife under the cuff of his coat as he turned and put his hands in the air.
An elderly man in a dirty tan jacket and rubber muck boots stood before him, shotgun in hand, pointed at Scott's stomach. The man looked to his right, twitched the barrel of the shotgun to his left, and said, "Get it, boy."