“If you know of anybody who fits in that category you might want to put the bug in their ear so they can think about it.
“It’s a great way of life for somebody who enjoys traveling and helping people. And each man you send us is one less mouth you have to feed.”
“I’ll tell you what, Bill. I don’t know of anybody off the top of my head. But I’ll ask around. If we’ve got anybody who wants to help out the cause I’ll send them your way.”
Castillo wasn’t part of the original conversation, but joined in anyway.
“You know, I’ve been thinking about that myself.”
“Really?”
“Sure. I mean, since my dad died it’s only me. I have nothing to tie myself to San Antonio anymore except my friends here. And most of them aren’t worth a damn anyway. Especially Juan here.”
Big Juan smiled and said, “Don’t let the door hit you on your culo on your way out, my friend.”
Castillo asked of Buckley, “How does it work if I want to sign up?”
“It’s easy. You agree to a one-year tour, but if you like it you can re-up year after year. You get paid in points. One point per month. Twelve points can be traded for one acre of government owned land, as long as it’s zoned for residential occupancy. Twelve points can also be traded for ten acres of government owned agricultural land in case you want to become a farmer.”
“Shoot,” Juan said. “The only thing Castillo’s ever grown is his own marijuana plants in his back yard.”
“Hey, hey! I’ve gotten pretty good at growing beans and corn lately.
“And if I sign up you guys will feed me and give me a place to sleep?”
“Oh, yeah. We generally stay at a nice hotel, but you’ll have to be in pretty good shape because the lower floors are always taken. We generally stay on the fifth floor or above. But you’ll have your own room, and we bring along our own team of cooks who prepare our breakfast and dinner meals.
“We’re always in the neighborhoods over the lunch hour, but we have MREs to eat if you get hungry.”
“MREs?”
“Meals, Ready to Eat. They’re pre-packed meals that last forever. Most of them suck, but some are pretty good. And they come with little candy bars and dried fruit.”
Castillo looked to Juan and asked, “Can I trust you to take care of my Saturn while I’m gone?”
“Seriously?”
“Sure. Just remember I’ll want it back when I return. And don’t hang any of those fuzzy dice from the rear view mirror or put no bobbing-head dog in the back window.”
-22-
Three days into the search for Sara it occurred to Tom he had far more experience on a horse’s back than many of the men on his search team.
Horses are like motorcycles. A novice on a bike can get from Point A to Point B, but it takes him a bit longer than an experienced rider.
He’s not afraid of the bike, not necessarily. But he’s still learning how to handle the beast beneath his seat. Still learning how far he can lean, how tight he can make a turn, how much he can trust automobile drivers not to invade his space.
A novice horseman is the same way.
He’s more likely to give the horse way more than his share of attention and fail to focus on the search.
Tom decided to give up his car to a young volunteer who was chomping at the bits to help in the search but who’d never been on a horse in his life.
Tom teamed up with John Castro to search the woods and isolated roads to the south and east of the compound.
John Castro was a seasoned police officer. His areas of expertise were as a patrolman and an administrator. He had very little time under his belt as a detective.
Tom Haskins had been a sheriff for a very short time and had even less experience investigating crimes. But he had a firm grasp on the harsh realities of the new world.
Both men shared the same feeling.
That Sara had been missing for too long, and they had to find her fast.
The longer it took to find her the more likely harm would come to her.
The more likely they’d find her dead.
They didn’t even know for sure their killer had taken her.
Signs had pointed that way, sure.
But there was also a slight possibility she’d merely wandered off, gotten herself lost in the woods.
Tom had lost his voice. John wasn’t far behind him.
Yelling for hours at a time was hard on the vocal cords. Now, for Tom anyway, any attempt to yell elicited nothing more than a painful coughing fit.
He could whisper but nothing more, and even that was painful.
John wisely stopped yelling as well. He had to retain what was left of his voice to use his radio.
If they needed backup from the other searchers they’d have to coordinate it over the airwaves.
They’d taken to using Tom’s whistle. Three blasts every ten minutes or so.
The whistle could be heard for hundreds of yards. If Sara was out there somewhere and heard it, they’d rely on her to call out to them.
That was, of course, if she wasn’t bound and gagged.
Or worse.
John grew up deer hunting with his father.
But he wasn’t versed in the art of tracking animals. His dad preferred to sit in a blind or a tree stand for hours at a time, watching and waiting for an east Texas whitetail to happen along.
Tom, on the other hand, had some tracking skills. He was rusty, but still remembered the signs to watch for.
John let him take point.
Several times they’d stumbled across a broken twig, a bent branch, an overturned rock.
Each time their lead didn’t pan out. Usually because they came to a point when the signs simply disappeared. Or once when Tom stepped right into a fresh pile of deer droppings and realized they hadn’t been following a human at all.
The ground was too rocky for footprints in most places, although there was a stretch of loose soil the previous day which yielded about eighty yards worth of boot tracks.
For a brief time they followed them to see if they played out. But they weren’t even sure it was a viable lead, since they were a men’s size eleven boot and were several days old.
It was possible it was their killer, on his way through the woods to wherever he had Sara or another victim hidden.
It was that possibility which made them try to follow the tracks, though they both suspected it was a waste of their time.
Whether that was true or not, it soon became a moot point when the ground got rocky again and they lost the trail.
-23-
Tom wondered if their killer was seasoned enough in the woods to be aware of the ground beneath his feet and to use it to his advantage.
Such a man might stay on rocky ground intentionally.
Might walk through streams to throw off anyone who might be tracking him.
Might make finding him extremely difficult.
On their second night out together they stayed up late hoping to catch the distant light of a campfire, or the scent of wood burning. Sara always carried a lighter in her pocket, though she wasn’t a smoker. All of them did when they were away from the compound for any reason.
It was on that night the wind shifted and they caught the hint of smoke. They worked their way through the brush for half a mile until they came upon a family on an overnight fishing trip.
Tom had taken the father aside, careful not to panic the children.
“There’s a serial killer loose in the vicinity,” he whispered. “If he catches a scent of your campfire he can find you as easily as we did. I suggest you douse your fire as quickly as possible and get your kids to bed. Then I suggest you head out at first light.”
Tom and John bedded down within earshot of the family, out of their sight but close enough to come running at the first sign of trouble.
That was their second night out. Three nights before.
For each of those five nights they�
�d done without a campfire themselves to make it easier to pick up the scent of someone else’s.
But that was the only time they’d smelled smoke, except for the smoke from a cigarette which wafted in on a gentle breeze and then disappeared again just as quickly.
For a brief time they wondered if they were no longer the hunters but rather the hunted. Whether the killer they were tracking was now tracking them.
Watching them from afar, maybe.
Perhaps looking for a clean shot.
Or even worse, toying with them. Leaving false markers for them to follow.
Maybe to take them even farther away from Sara.
They doubled back for a time, looking for the source of the cigarette smoke, but found absolutely nothing.
Other than that, they’d gone five days and nights before John finally caught a new smell.
One he didn’t like.
Not at all.
“That’s burning human flesh,” he told Tom.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m afraid so. The fire department burns corpses in the streets in San Antonio. They call them controlled burns. They wait until the wind is still and stack the bodies, sometimes head high, in the middle of an intersection. Then they stand ready to put out the fire if it gets out of control and set it ablaze. It’s the only efficient way to get rid of the bodies. There’s just too many to bury.”
Tom had been insulated from such a spectacle, having lived in Junction since the world went dark. As hardened as he was, he shuddered at the thought. In Junction and in Kerrville the bodies were fewer. They were typically buried by relatives or neighbors.
They followed the faint scent for almost two miles, their task made more difficult by an ever-changing breeze.
Finally they came to a clearing. It was the back property of a house on Winston Road, although Tom didn’t recognize it immediately.
He’d patrolled the road in the past, long before Sara’s disappearance, though he never saw it from this perspective before.
As they entered the property their eyes locked onto a burn pit not far from the house and a blackened heap it contained.
Tom’s feet became heavy, as though his cowboy boots had suddenly turned leaden.
John barely knew Sara, having only stayed at the compound with her for a short time the year before.
But Tom went way back with Sara. He loved her like a daughter.
As they trudged along at what seemed like a snail’s pace he said a silent prayer. And that was something. For although Tom was a believer in the Almighty and led his life accordingly, he seldom prayed. Not for himself or for anybody else.
But he was praying now.
The body hadn’t been there long.
Perhaps two days, maybe three.
They could tell because it was not yet covered by the fine dust which coated everything else in these woods.
Beyond that, the charred remains of what once was a human being yielded few clues.
The clothing had been burned away. So had the hair.
It was definitely a woman, though her age couldn’t be determined.
She wore no jewelry, but that didn’t mean much.
Her killer surely would have taken Sara’s wedding ring and necklace.
Gold was the new currency in the post-apocalyptic world.
A man who’d kidnap, torture and kill his victims wouldn’t be above stealing their jewelry either.
Tom examined the body closely.
She was slight, as Sara was.
She was about the same height and weight as Sara.
The only part of her which wasn’t charred was part of her right hand. From that Tom could tell she was Caucasian.
As Sara was.
The corpse was too badly damaged to make any identification possible.
But there was a chance… a very good chance, that this was the young woman Tom had grown to know and love. Had traveled across Texas with.
Had been through a lot of harrowing adventures with.
“No,” he said out loud in a voice more a whimper than anything else.
“It can’t be her.”
-24-
Tom Haskins was as tough as nails. He’d always been that way, raised by a father who was old school. Who taught his son he had to be rough, tough and unbending. For it was a man’s role to be a provider and protector of women and children.
Tom was born that way and lived his life that way, even before the blackouts had hardened him further.
Here was a man who was Texas-tough.
Yet he went to his knees before the body in front of him.
Something else Tom was: he was a man who kept his feelings to himself.
He seldom showed any kind of emotion. No sorrow, no anger, no pain.
He was a man who bore the ultimate poker face. One never knew what Tom was feeling through his emotions, but rather his actions.
But today… today was different.
For if this was his friend Sara, he’d failed in his job to provide for her and protect her.
He tried to shake it off.
He tried to convince himself this wasn’t Sara.
That it was somebody else.
That wouldn’t make anything right. Nobody deserved to die this way. No woman deserved to have her body disrespected in such a manner.
But at least if Tom was able to convince himself this was a nameless, faceless victim it would make things easier to deal with.
Then he saw a glint of something in the ashes.
Something half exposed, half buried beneath the body.
Something made of metal.
He bent over to get a closer look, then reached down and pulled it out.
He shook off the ashes, then wiped off the char.
It was a badge. A Kerr County Sheriff’s Deputy badge.
Badge number 217.
Sara’s badge.
Tom was a very strong man. Everybody said so.
He was strong as a rock.
But on this particular day, at this particular time, he was no longer the stalwart rock of a man, devoid of emotion.
On this particular day, at this particular time, he was as emotional as anyone else he knew.
And he sobbed like a baby.
John Castro hadn’t known Tom for long.
But it was long enough to know they were cut from the same cloth.
They were men’s men. Old fashioned and tough. Men who took no guff and who honestly believed their purpose on earth was to provide for and protect others.
It was what led them to law enforcement.
Other men scoffed at the thought of going out day after day, laying their very lives on the line, so that the decent members of society could live their own lives without fear.
In the days ahead Tom would spend a lot of time second-guessing himself.
And blaming himself, for he’d reason that if he’d turned down the job as Sheriff of Kerr County, he wouldn’t have led his precious Sara into the same line of work.
And she wouldn’t have been on patrol that day. Wouldn’t have seen that animal walking nonchalantly down the roadway after killing young Katie.
And wouldn’t be lying there before him, burned beyond recognition, and indeed barely recognizable as a human being.
John knelt at his side, ready to help in any way he could, but not really knowing how.
Men typically aren’t as good at comforting others as women. It’s not necessarily a character deficiency. Not necessarily a fault of their own. It just is what it is. Women are more compassionate, more capable of providing comfort.
It just doesn’t come naturally for men to reach out and hold another, to wipe their tears and convince them things will be okay.
Perhaps it’s because they were never mothers, but that’s not even all of it. Even women who aren’t mothers are more consoling than men.
That’s just a fact of life.
So as much as John wanted to he couldn’t pull his friend away f
rom something which was causing him so much misery. Couldn’t console him.
And that was the worst part of it all.
For while women are compassionate healers of emotional things, men are the fixers of everything else.
And as much as he wanted to, John couldn’t fix this.
Tom finally stood and put Sara’s badge into his shirt pocket.
For a moment he pressed his hand against his chest, as though trying to push the badge closer to his own heart.
It’s common for people in a state of shock to think of nonsensical things. A psychiatrist will say it’s a way of keeping the mind busy without having to deal with the problem at hand. And that it’s a good thing, for the mind might otherwise just shut down and send one inside themselves.
“I’ve got to see if I can clean this thing,” Tom said to John. “I can’t give it to her family this way. The burn marks will forever remind them of how their mama died.”
John didn’t quite understand Tom’s worry about cleaning the badge. But he somehow sensed it was important he not trivialize the notion.
“Don’t worry. We’ll find a way to get it clean. We’ll make sure it sparkles like new.”
Tom merely nodded, satisfied with the answer.
His eyes were glazed, his face emotionless.
He was in a daze.
“Why don’t I go find a blanket to wrap her in?” John asked.
Tom blankly nodded again, though John was almost certain he hadn’t a clue what he’d said.
-25-
It was John and not Tom who walked around to the front of the house and knocked on the door.
He’d asked Tom if he was okay and could cover the back in case someone came running out firing as he ran.
Tom was still in bad shape, but assured him he could handle his end.
If anyone came out of the house with gun blazing, it would be Sara’s killer.
And Tom would happily blow him away.
John wasn’t surprised that no one answered the door.
A resident wouldn’t have just let someone burn a corpse behind their house.
They’d have raised a ruckus, and would likely have been shot for their efforts.
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