A Troubling Turn of Events

by Darrell Maloney

  He lit it and a cigarette at the same time, then walked down the steps to the basement.

  It would be his torture chamber and he’d spend a lot of time there in the days ahead.

  He smiled when he saw the backup generator.

  It was pull-start, which meant it wasn’t damaged by the EMPs.

  Most of the other appliances were probably fried.

  But if he could find a couple of lamps which weren’t plugged in at the time of the blackout, they’d probably be okay.

  And that would mean he’d have light whenever he went downstairs to play.

  He made a mental note to reroute the exhaust into the home’s attic, so it didn’t vent to the outside. It just wouldn’t do for the sheriff’s search party to see black smoke coming from a vent pipe at an abandoned house.

  He’d also have to rip up some carpet, so he could pack the padding around the generator to deaden its sound.

  Carpet pad made excellent sound proofing.

  He chuckled. Serial killers and stalkers picked up the oddest bits of useful information.

  He went to the kitchen and opened up the fridge.

  The stench of spoiled food hit him like a ton of bricks and forced him to slam the door quickly.

  But he had enough time to scan the contents and didn’t see any beer inside.

  Damn it.

  He made his way through the house, aided by the morning light coming in the east windows, and made his way to the garage.

  He’d found, in his travels, that many people stored their extra beer in their garages, where it was out of the way until it was needed.

  Of course, in post-apocalyptic America most houses had already been pilfered and cleaned out of such things.

  This one would have been too, were it not so isolated.

  But no. There was no beer in the garage either.

  Double damn it.

  What kind of people lived in a house with no beer?

  It just wasn’t right. It was downright un-American.

  Or at least un-Texan.

  He went to the den and hit a jackpot.

  He’d walked right by the wet bar on his way to the kitchen.

  Didn’t even see it in the dim light.

  He walked behind the bar and opened up the cabinets.

  They were chock full of liquor of all types. And it was all top-shelf stuff too.

  Below the sink was a mini-fridge.

  He opened it to find it was full of beer. Five, six, seven different brands.

  Okay then. The homeowners were forgiven.

  He took three bottles of Corona back to the bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed.

  He’d learned a lot of things since the power went out and he went on his killing spree.

  Two of the most important:

  1) Many beers tasted like crap at room temperature. But Corona tasted great whether it was cold or not.

  2) Women were much more fun when they were bound, gagged, naked and awake.

  He watched Sara and patiently waited.

  -43-

  As Jeff watched and waited for Sara to come around he couldn’t fight an uneasy feeling in his gut.

  He’d had it ever since he pulled off the highway and onto the gravel road.

  An uneasy feeling that he’d screwed up somehow.

  That he’d forgotten to do something.

  Something important.

  He finished one Corona and opened a second one.

  Ten minutes later it was gone as well. He’d hoped it would make the feeling go away and calm his nerves a bit.

  And that was the other thing.

  He normally wasn’t nervous when taking a live hostage.

  In fact, he was almost never nervous. He just wasn’t.

  He knew some people who’d quiver at the slightest thing. Who’d stay awake all night worrying about things and then be a walking talking wrecking ball the next day.

  He liked to think things didn’t get to him. That he had nerves of steel.

  But he couldn’t shake the nervous feeling he felt on this particular morning.

  Was it because he adducted a law enforcement officer for the very first time?

  He didn’t think so.

  After all, once her clothes were off and the badge gone, she looked like every other woman.

  Of course, she might not act like one.

  But any attempts she made to threaten him or to make him cower would be met with violence against her.

  He rather looked forward to it. Hoped she’d get bossy and demand her release and his surrender.

  It would make it much more fun to punch her in the face.

  One of the things he’d found since he started his killing was that it was a lot more satisfying to beat a hostage when she was causing trouble than when she was quiet and compliant.

  No, it wasn’t that he was afraid she’d be tougher to control because she was a cop. He wasn’t afraid of being intimidated by her at all.

  It wasn’t that… it was something else.

  Something he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

  He opened another Corona and tossed the cap across the room.

  It landed with a ping on the tile floor just inside the bathroom door and he studied it for a moment.

  Maybe it was the dim light coming from a nearby window, casting a tiny shadow of the cap. Maybe it was the way the color of the cap blended in with the color of the tile.

  Something about it… reminded him of the roofing nails he’d placed in the northbound lane of Highway 83 the night before.

  And left there.

  He slammed the Corona onto the small table beside the recliner, causing it to foam and overflow.

  He was on his feet and moving almost at a run.

  He grabbed Sara and carried her down to the basement. Checked the duct tape on her wrists and ankles.

  They were secure. He could tell because her hands and feet were a sickening blue in color. There was no way she was going to wiggle her way free.

  He’d be gone for a couple of hours.

  If she came to while he was gone he didn’t have to worry about her going anywhere.

  The duct tape wrapped around her head would muffle her screams.

  Being in the basement would muffle them even more.

  By the time he came back she’d probably be fully awake, squirming and wondering how she got there and pondering her fate.

  He couldn’t wait to see the terror on her pretty face.

  The other possibility… that she succumbed in his absence, would be disappointing but wouldn’t be the end of the world.

  If she died in his absence he’d simply leave her there and move on.

  There were plenty of other potential victims out there.

  -44-

  He cursed himself as he saddled Shane and rode him along the gravel road back toward Highway 83.

  He screwed up, plain and simple.

  He had no one to blame, although he knew he’d take it out on the female deputy after his return.

  The front tire of the pickup truck picked up two nails from the roadway just as he’d planned. That was why it went flat so quickly.

  She’d been driving in a straight line, the rear wheel following the exact path of the front.

  So the rear tire didn’t pick up any additional nails.

  The rest were still out there, still lined up like tiny soldiers waiting to march off to war.

  Or waiting, perhaps, to be found.

  They started out an ally in Jeff’s plan to capture the female deputy.

  Now they were a liability.

  If they were found by the search team they’d be a clue. A tell-tale sign that this might be the spot where he’d abducted her.

  And common sense would tell them a truck with a flat tire likely wouldn’t have gone far.

  They’d search the nearest roads first.

  And since they’d be convinced they were on a hot lead, they’d search them well.

  Better th
an they would if they thought she was probably elsewhere.

  The pickup was well-hidden, deep in the woods.

  But he was afraid it left a trail of crushed grass, of broken tree branches. Of tire tracks in the soft dirt.

  As he rode Shane past the place where the truck left the gravel roadway he noted the trail was very faint. For there simply wasn’t a lot of grass there. The grass and weeds were spotty, the ground mostly rocky.

  He couldn’t tell the night before, as he drove the pickup in the darkness, that he couldn’t have chosen a better spot to leave the gravel road and go into the woods.

  It was pure luck more than anything.

  A searcher who thought this road was no different than the hundreds of other roads would probably do a half-assed job. He’d look mostly at the road ahead, thinking the pickup he was searching for stayed on the road and ended up at a farm or a ranch at the road’s end.

  It wouldn’t occur to him to look at the sides of the road to see if the pickup left it at some point.

  That same searcher, told there was a degree of certainty this was the road the pickup drove down, would do a much more thorough job.

  He’d most likely examine both sides of the roadway as well as the roadway itself.

  And he’d most likely notice the faint path the pickup left behind as it moved overland.

  If they found the pickup they’d try to follow the horse’s tracks that left the scene.

  And the footprints Jeff’s boots left as he led the horse through the woods.

  They’d bring in bloodhounds.

  They’d find the house, then Jeff.

  Of course, they’d never take the female deputy alive.

  He’d kill her at the first sign of trouble.

  But they’d put an end to his killing spree.

  And killing was so much fun he didn’t want to give it up.

  He was an experienced horseman.

  He rode at full gallop toward Highway 83, only slowing as he neared it.

  When he got close he brought Shane to a halt and dismounted, then tied the big horse to a nearby tree.

  He approached the roadway much more carefully. And once there he used the shrubbery as cover, walking adjacent to the road, until he came to the place where he’d lined up the nails.

  They were still there.

  All of them except for the two she’d picked up in her tire.

  About half of them were lying on their sides now, blown over by the pickup’s draft as it went over the top of them.

  But they were still there.

  They were in the northbound lane as Tom drove south in a panic several hours before.

  No northbound vehicles went through after Sara.

  Or they were incredibly lucky and their tires rolled through the space in the line Sara left in her wake.

  Jeff couldn’t believe his luck.

  He almost left the safety of the brush to retrieve them, then stopped cold.

  It occurred to him they might have been found.

  That here might be a cop watching them from a distance, knowing Jeff screwed up by leaving them there and might come back for them.

  Then he shook off his paranoia.

  The rubes who ran this county would never find the nails and tie them to the deputy’s disappearance.

  They just weren’t, in Jeff’s mind, smart enough.

  He crept low as he walked out onto the shoulder of the road and looked in both directions.

  There was no one coming.

  He quickly picked up the remaining nails and scurried back where he’d come. Made his way back to where his horse was tied.

  And only then did he throw the handful of nails deep into the forest where they’d likely never be found.

  He laughed most of the way back to the house.

  He’d won.

  He outsmarted them.

  He once again felt superior to his hunters.

  He no longer had the uneasy feeling he’d screwed up.

  He had, for sure.

  But he fixed the problem.

  Now it was time to have some fun.

  By the time he made it back to the basement Sara was starting to stir.

  In the flickering light of the oil lamp he held in his hand, the sight of his grinning face terrified her. He looked like a medieval court jester.

  But there was nothing funny about the situation.

  He went to one knee before her and said, “I’m going to take the tape off your mouth for a minute and ask you a single question.

  “You have two choices.

  “Either you can yell and cry for help and I’ll kick every one of your teeth in. You’ll spend the next few hours choking on your own blood.

  “Or… you can tell me your name.

  “Are you ready?”

  She managed to nod her head slightly.

  “Good.”

  He removed the tape and she meekly squeaked out, “S… Sara.”

  He smiled and replaced the tape, then stood over her.

  “Welcome to my little house of horrors, Sara.”

  Then he kicked her square in the face, knocking her cold again.

  It was important, in the early stages of their relationship, that he show her who’s boss.

  -45-

  Tillie never wrote down her brother’s address.

  Never committed it to memory either, for that matter.

  It simply wasn’t necessary.

  On the day he called her up and announced he and Rachel were moving into their new home he gave her the address so she could log it into her address book.

  And she pointed out to him something very curious about it.

  “You said 5659 Stonewall Avenue?”

  “Yes.”

  She remembered laughing on her end of the telephone.

  “What’s so funny, Tillie?”

  “Well, that’s gonna be an easy address to remember.”

  “How? What on earth are you talking about?”

  “’56 was the year of Dad’s birth, remember? And ’59 was the year of Mom’s birth. And Mom’s maiden name was Stonewall.”

  “Wow, you’re absolutely right.”

  As long as Tillie remembered the years her parents were born she’d never have any trouble finding her brother’s house on Stonewall Avenue.

  And getting there was ridiculously easy as well.

  Tillie had driven the route on a couple of occasions.

  She knew that Highway 281 connected with Interstate 37, which went through downtown San Antonio.

  Once on I-37 all she had to do was take the Stonewall Avenue exit.

  Piece of cake. Who needed GPS, anyway?”

  San Antonio was a sprawling metropolis before the blackout. Its population was now a small fraction of what it once was.

  But geographically it hadn’t changed much.

  Well, there was a lot less smog.

  Tillie had hoped to make it to David and Rachel’s house by sundown but it just wasn’t meant to be.

  For one thing, she’d slept a lot longer than she’d planned on.

  Walking those extra miles in the darkness took a toll on her and wore her out.

  Actually, that wasn’t quite true. It was more a matter of her breaking her routine and going to bed much later than she normally did.

  She was used to getting about ten hours sleep. That was way up from the seven hours she averaged when she lived in Georgia.

  Of course, she was a couch potato back then. She never got any exercise at all, except for running to and from the refrigerator during commercials.

  These days she walked an average of twelve miles a day.

  A substantial amount of distance for someone whose legs were half as long as an average man’s.

  Her logic was that a high-powered race car needed a lot more fuel than a slow-moving minivan.

  If she was the race car and sleep was her fuel, it was only natural she’d need more of it than she once did.

  That wasn’t the big
gest thing that slowed her down on what she’d hoped was her last day on the road, though.

  That was her own stupidity.

  She climbed onto the trailer the night before stepping onto the ICC bar, grabbing the trailer’s rear hand grip and pulling herself up.

  She should have gone down the same way.

  But she was in a hurry, and that made her stupid.

  Normally she’d have been up around sunrise, and on the road half an hour later.

  But she slept through the sunrise.

  She continued to sleep until the late-morning sun heated the trailer beyond her comfort level.

  She finally awoke at just before noon covered in sweat.

  “Holy crap, Hero. Why didn’t you wake me up?”

  Hero just whimpered a bit, placed his chin upon the floor of the trailer, and placed a paw over his snout.

  Humans had an atrocious habit of blaming dogs for things the humans did wrong.

  In the light of day she could read the boxes in the trailer she couldn’t read the night before.

  The rig belonged to a chain of women’s clothing stores and was making its weekly run when the sun’s electromagnetic pulses turned it into a permanent highway statue.

  The majority of the cargo was left more or less intact because a) Most highway nomads were men. Women were a rare thing on the open road. And b) This was high-end clothing. And those women who might be out there typically bypassed high fashion and chose comfort instead.

  No one wore dresses anymore. Even women who once wore only designer dresses and carried only Gucci bags now chose jeans, t-shirts and backpacks instead.

  The world had changed in so many ways…

  Tillie quickly rummaged through the boxes.

  Generally she was a t-shirt and jeans girl herself.

  But this was a special occasion.

  This (hopefully) was to be the day she finally reunited with her brother and his family.

  Tillie always had a hard time shopping for clothing. Most stores offered a very limited supply of women’s clothing in her size.

  She always had the choice of wearing something she didn’t like but would fit her, or shopping at the girls section and wearing clothing designed for a younger generation.