Wade joined in our concern regarding the deteriorating road security situation, and we alternated days so that at least one extra person was in the car Monday through Friday. From our group, that person would be either me, Mike, Pat, or Sally. Nikki and Beatrice, of all people, tried to volunteer to ride shotgun, but Pat politely talked them out of it. Well, he talked Bea out of it, since no way was he going to go against his wife on the matter. He left that chore up to me.
I waited until Wednesday to get Nikki alone, but with the kids hovering around, I ended up enlisting Nancy when she got home from work to distract them while I invited my sister out in the misting afternoon rain. We were ostensibly going to check on the new horses, but my little sister could always read me like a book.
We’d barely gotten out of the mudroom before she started quizzing me.
“What’s this about, Bryan? Something going on I need to know? Or, is it about Nancy? I’ve seen the way you look at her.”
Nikki’s concern was not unexpected, but it did warm my heart. Well, so much for easing into the conversation.
“You still have bad dreams about that that day when you had to shoot those men on your way here?”
The silence that followed was all I needed to know I was on the right track, but I let her work through her thoughts as we continued on towards the sounds of the horses playing in the barn.
“It’s getting better. I haven’t had the dreams in a week now. Hard work seems to keep them away. But why bring it up now?”
“Because everybody is different, Nikki. Some of us have a harder time than others, you know, processing that sort of thing. What I’m going to tell you, just stays between us, okay?”
“Sure, Bryan, but what’s this got to do…”
Her words trailed off as she turned to look at me.
“I don’t have that problem, Nikki. I killed all those men, first just those three at the office, then more later. And the only nightmares I ever had were of failing. Of them getting away with that girl, or somebody shooting Mike because I wasn’t fast enough. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“You…don’t see their faces?”
“No, and fuck those guys,” I hissed. “Look, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Have you ever talked to Pat about what he’s done when he was still in? Does he have nightmares like you did?”
Nikki’s face scrunched up like she’d done when she was a little girl, and I had to resist the urge to grab her up and wrap her away from all the hurtful things in the world. She was a grown woman with children of her own, but I still had moments when I saw her as the little sister she was.
“Not really,” she finally admitted, her voice going soft. “I know he had nightmares, and still does sometimes. From what he’s said, though, it was about some of his teammates. The ones he tried to treat, but they didn’t make it back.”
I nodded, expecting such.
“Like I said, this is just between us, okay? I won’t say anything to Pat about what you said, but he knows, generally, that we’re having this talk. The thing with escorting Marta and Dorothy, let me do this.”
“Is that why you recruited Sally? She’s like you, isn’t she?”
“Don’t sound so surprised,” I teased, then I continued more seriously. “Yes, I think she is. You know she saw action when she was in the Air Force, and she had to kill some men who were attacking her convoy. No nightmares about it, and no counseling needed. She just picked back up and did her job. That doesn’t make her a bad person, just different. Like me, I think.”
“You always joke about Mike having the hero gene, but he’s like that too, isn’t he?”
“No, it’s true that Mike’s got something inside him that makes him do the right thing, even if it means taking a life. I joke about the hero gene, but it’s true.”
“But what you’re talking about is different.”
“Yeah. I got the killer gene instead. Who would have thought?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Monday turned out to be a rarity, a day without rain, and everyone on the farm jumped to take advantage of the fair weather. While Bea and Marta led the kids, including an eager Lisa, in an assault on the greenhouse garden, harvesting the ripe and in some cases, overripe produce, I took Nancy and Mike over to the new property for some strategizing. Nikki, as per Mike’s new security protocols, remained on watch in the control room. She would stand duty until noon, when Marta would come to relieve her. This meant Marta could rest up, at least physically, before the start of the new week.
From the basement office, anyone in the security room had access not only to the expanded ring of cameras erected at key points around the property, but also had the Kenwood HAM system set up, as well as my old Panasonic shortwave radio.
I’d forgotten about the Panasonic after Mike installed his much more versatile Kenwood, but Marta had dug the twenty-year-old, boombox-sized radio out of storage one day when I was over at the new place and set it up to listen to music while she was working on the back porch. That was fine, but sort of like using the farm truck to pull your little red wagon.
As a result, I picked up a smaller, battery-powered Sanyo at the overpriced Variety Store downtown about two blocks from my office and reclaimed the Panasonic. The Variety Store was one of the few businesses in that row of buildings that survived Hurricane Debbie unscathed, but with the erratic supply situation, the once-packed shelves were becoming rather sparse. I’d lucked out though, and only paid twelve dollars for the palm-sized device. Now Marta and everybody else could listen to some music, but from a local radio station now instead of one in Costa Rica.
Mike and I decided to use the side-by-side ATV instead of saddling the horses or taking one of the trucks, so Mike and I ended up rubbing elbows stuffed in the front bench seat while Nancy lounged on the back bench with only a canvas bag full of tools to keep her company. Slower progress, but we didn’t have a saddle for Nancy yet and I worried the soggy ground where we were going would simply swallow one of our trucks.
Despite the lack of rain, I could feel a heaviness in the air, and the dark bellies of the cumulous clouds scudding across the sky gave credence to my worry. Florida had just taken another massive hurricane we’d initially worried was coming our way, but the weather report warned of yet another tropical storm building in the Gulf. This time, for some reason the National Weather Service remained strangely mute on the timetable and the likely storm track.
“You think this hurricane in the Gulf is going to go all megastorm on us?” I asked Mike, keeping my voice low to barely carry over the sound of the engine.
“Fuck if I know,” Mike admitted. He’d become even more concerned over the ominous turn for the weather, and I knew he was trying to dig deeper into what was only now becoming available online. Navigating Netfeed reminded me of trying to find a light switch in the dark, only to find out the bulb was burned out. In other words, a lesson in humility I didn’t need at the moment, but Mike was always the more persistent between the two of us. He was convinced someone inside NOAA was posting forecast information that the Netfeed bots promptly removed, but he was determined to get at the numbers before they disappeared.
“Well, let’s see if we can find a site we can use,” I replied, glancing back thoughtfully to Nancy as I spoke, raising my voice to be heard.
“Nancy, any chance we can borrow a skid steer or a track loader?”
The woman laughed, then gave me a considering look as she gauged my serious expression.
“Really? What do you have in mind? I thought we were just looking for a place to pour the slab for the other greenhouse. Some place back off the road where it wouldn’t draw attention, but where it could be maintained and harvested by Nikki and the rest of our crew.”
Now it was my turn to blink in surprise. The way she said ‘our’ made my heart give a little lurch.
“That’s true, but you can see from the tangle ahead, we’re going to have our work cut out for us,” I gestured, enc
ompassing the overgrown thicket as we motored closer. This ten-acre patch of trees looked to have never been harvested, and the kudzu vines seemed to give the secluded mixture of pines and oaks a jungle texture. Even after harvesting dozens of downed trees for power poles and firewood, the small forest still looked primeval.
“You want to build in there?” Nancy’s simple response told me my idea might actually have some merit. If we did this right, no one would think to search in those vines.
“When winter comes, we’ll lose a lot of the visual cover we now have,” I conceded, “but the idea is to haul out some of the standing dead trees for fire wood, and then construct the greenhouse in the middle of that mess. There’s trees still in there from the hurricane we never even tried to reach.”
“Won’t the limbs and vines obscure the sunlight you’re going to need?”
I turned to Mike, who’d actually done some research on the subject.
“Not as much as you might think. The pot growers in the north used these kinds of greenhouses in the woods to pretty good effect,” my brother lectured. “We just need to cut our way into the middle and then remove some limbs while leaving the bulk of the screening trees in place. You lose some solar coverage to the obscuring foliage in the mornings and evenings, but the idea is to keep the plants warm inside as well as give them sunlight. We have the little stoves just about perfected, using the already built model to experiment, and I’ve found using pine knots and the like work nicely for fuel.”
Idling the ATV as we drew near the outer edges of the rough clump of trees, I waited while my brother and our new friend studied the tangled mess. From this angle, an observer could barely see five feet into the densely-packed gloom of the trees and bushes.
“You just want to snake some of the dead trees out, like we did before, then pull the stumps and level the ground for the concrete slab, right?” Nancy inquired, and as she discussed the equipment requirements with Mike, I guided the ATV around to the back side of the grove of trees and approached to give them a closer look at what we might need to do.
From this side, the trees opened up a bit more, but I saw three pines that would have to go before we could even consider hollowing out the center of the thicket. One looked to have been struck by lightning at some point and was split about a third of the way down from the crown, and it leaned into the neighboring two trees like a drunken sailor being supported by his shipmates. That was a hazard, and I resolved to do the cutting on that one myself.
“We also want to be careful with the kudzu,” I chimed in, and while Mike understood my reasoning, Nancy gave me a curious look.
“Now you’re just messing with me. Careful?”
“Oh, yeah,” Mike added, moving in to steal my thunder. “Bryan’s been studying all those wild plant books, and turns out, kudzu is actually edible.”
“Edible? Are you kidding me? The Vine that Ate the South is actually a source of food?”
“Hey, we can’t spend all our time studying boobytrap manuals,” I said, giving Nancy a knowing grin, and she turned a pretty shade of crimson, and Mike continued his deep chuckle.
“Yeah, laugh it up, but you still ate the jelly I made from the flowers last year,” I said, nodding back to Nancy as I spoke. “That was easy, but I’m still working on a way to make the cornstarch substitute like they use in Japan. I mean, I can make it, but there’s got to be an easier way of reducing the leaves.”
“That sounds interesting, but like you said, makes for a whole lot of work. Any reason why?”
I started to give one of my noncommittal answers, but I decided if she was willing to throw in with our crew, then she deserved the truth. Or at least, the truth as I saw it.
“Nancy, before things get back to normal, I predict we’ll need every scrap of food we can grow or forage. You know we’re worried about making it through next year without a growing season, and this is part of our preparations.”
Nancy visibly gulped, all traces of levity now gone from her expression.
“Just how bad do you expect the situation to become?”
“Don’t know, but we’ll need alternatives,” I temporized, not wanting to get into my dark speculations. Mike gave me an odd look, but I shook him off as I continued, trying to sound more upbeat for once. “We’re lucky, in one respect, with the timing of this disaster. As it is, most of the garden was harvested before the patch flooded, and we saved most of the corn crop. Now the early returns look good from the first greenhouse, and we’re finally ready to break ground on the second. Looking at using things like kudzu, or curly dock, or some of the other forage foods just makes the resources stretch further. I think…”
Before I could provide any more information, the walkie talkie strapped to my hip gave a warning chirp. Mike got the same and he reached his first. Keying the microphone, my brother muttered a gruff, “What?”
“You and Bryan need to get back up here right now. I got a deputy at the front gate demanding entrance and he’s getting antsy.”
Nikki’s voice sounded tinny and distorted, but I could still hear the anxiety.
“Antsy how?”
“He just threatened to pull down the gate if I don’t open it. Says he’s here to inspect our property.”
Fuck. The sheriff’s games are already starting, I fumed. We’d worried about this new crop of thugs he’d recruited, and I thought back to what Andy said about their own little power-play in Kountze. Mike looked at me, and I keyed the mike to reply.
“On my way. Tell him the owner will meet him at the gate. Do not open it for him, Nikki.”
I glanced over at my brother, then back to Nancy. Then we stepped fast to the ATV.
“Ya’ll better hold on. This could get bumpy.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
I arrived at the front gate five minutes from getting Nikki’s call, skidding to a stop just as the deputy finished attaching a tow chain to the bottom crossmember of the gate. The chain ran back to the front winch mounted on the Albany County Sheriff’s Department Suburban parked nose-in on the driveway.
I’d dropped Nancy back by the house, but Mike refused to budge when I’d slowed down. Now he was scrambling off the seat and shouldering his AR even as I was shutting off our ride.
“What the fuck are you doing?!” My shout seemed to thunder in my ears, but the deputy barely took a step back before he was joined by two more deputies who’d been standing as sentries nearby. All three carried AR pattern rifles, and I wondered stupidly if they were select fire or not.
“Are you Bryan Hardin?” the lead deputy, the one who’d been attaching the chain, demanded.
“Yes, and I’m giving you ten seconds to get off my property,” I managed to reply, forcing the piss-inducing fear out of voice. Even though we were separated by the barrier of the crosshatched metal bars of the gate, I could see straight down the barrel of the rifle aimed at my head from thirty feet away. I’d been seeing that view a lot lately, and it never got any easier.
“County road, and we’ve got orders straight from the governor, shithead,” the deputy replied, his taunt ringing in my ears. “We could shoot you and your accomplice here, and nobody could say a thing.”
“First, no, that is not a county road,” I responded carefully, sensing the man really wanted an excuse to pull the trigger. “You entered my property line as soon as you pulled off the gravel road. And I was unaware that Governor Hicks suspended the State Constitution. You got a warrant, or some kind of probable cause to justify demanding entry on my property?”
“Don’t care about hairsplitting, lawyer, and your fancy law degree don’t mean squat anymore anyway,” the deputy retorted, and he gave me a sinister grin that Snidely Whiplash would have admired. “We got orders from the top to inspect all the farmland and assess the condition of the crops.”
I studied his face briefly, getting a glimmer of recognition. I thought I knew all the deputies by sight, if not by name, and he was familiar. I decided to see if I could pump him
for more information, and maybe stall things at the same time.
“You know anything about planting, deputy? Seems mighty irregular to send the law out to count chickens and inspect ruined fields. Also, seems strange this is the first I’ve heard of this supposed order from the governor’s office. You inspected any other farms today?”
“We figured you’d be first, Mister Lawyer,” the deputy conceded with that same evil grin of his. “You being new to the county and all.”
“Yeah, I get that a lot here,” I responded with a touch of acid in my tone, but my mind was whirring away at the implications of what the unknown lawman had said. Before I could say anything else, I heard a car door slam and I spied a fourth figure approaching from the Suburban.
“Deputy, that will be quite enough, and more than enough.”
The speaker was a slender young woman in her early twenties, clad in a business suit and carrying an oversized briefcase that seemed to strain her slender arms to support. Despite her petite size, the young lady with the pixie cut hair-style and the round-rimmed eyeglasses seemed to have a confident way about her. Her confident swagger seemed forced, however, and she reminded me of a still-wet behind the ears attorney trying to hold her own in a courtroom full of sharp elbows. There was something else there as well, but I was unable to discern the emotion hidden in those dark brown eyes.
“Mr. Hardin, please excuse the tactics,” the young lady went on, marching up to the fence and extending her hand through one of the gaps in the metal tubes. “My name is Madeline Stockton and I work for the Texas Department of Agriculture. I’m out of the Houston office, temporarily reassigned, and I’ve been directed to perform a survey here in Albany County to assess the farming conditions, amongst other things. Do you think you can see your way into allowing us entry? We really are here under orders from the governor’s office, and this is being done pursuant to provisions under the current State of Emergency declaration.”
Tertiary Effects Series | Book 2 | Storm Warning Page 25