A Troubling Turn of Events

by Darrell Maloney

  “Was he really?”

  The thought of her brother being so concerned for her he’d walk more than a thousand miles to see her didn’t surprise her.

  They’d always been close, after all.

  And she’d always considered David one of the finest people she’d ever known.

  The man continued.

  “They were our next door neighbors and our best friends. They were considerably younger than us, but it didn’t seem to matter. They invited us over all the time to play dominoes or Monopoly.

  “Your brother was a very serious Monopoly player.”

  She smiled just a bit.

  “I remember. I always asked him to let me skip the rent when I started going broke. He always gave me a lecture: ‘If this was real life your landlord wouldn’t give you free rent…’”

  “Yes. You sound just like him. I’ve heard him say the same thing to Rachel.”

  The old man grew solemn.

  “We loved them like they were our own children. They were wonderful people.”

  “How did they die?”

  “Marauders. They broke in during broad daylight. I think they thought the house was abandoned, or no one was home.

  “David was caught off guard and away from his weapons. He fought them hand to hand, and was getting the best of them.

  “But they had guns and shot him in cold blood.

  “Then they shot Rachel. Out of pure spite, I suppose. She was certainly no threat to them.”

  Tillie didn’t want to ask the question. She was absolutely terrified of what the answer might be.

  But she had no choice.

  She had to know.

  “Did they… what happened to Millicent?”

  “They spared Millicent.”

  She exhaled, and until that moment wasn’t even aware she’d been holding her breath.

  He went on.

  “We were out at the time. My wife Margaret and I. We were walking back from an abandoned truck with a case of water and a case of noodles when we heard the shots.

  “We were close enough to see them run out of the house and down the street.

  “We got Millicent out of there immediately. She was hysterical and a bit in shock, I think.

  “We tried everything we could think of to revive them. CPR, direct pressure, everything.

  “But we knew even before we started it was hopeless.

  “Their wounds were just too severe. They lost too much blood.”

  He looked directly at her and the sadness in his eyes was impossible to misinterpret.

  “I’m sorry for being so graphic.

  “If it’s any comfort at all, they died quickly. Almost instantly. And I have to think they felt no pain.

  “Millicent was in bad shape. She wouldn’t speak at all for the first day. Not a word.

  “We held her as much as we could. Encouraged her to sleep.

  “But every time she fell asleep she woke up screaming.

  “I can only imagine how what she saw will affect her for the rest of her life.”

  -53-

  “Millicent saw the whole thing. She ran into the next room when they broke in and the fighting started.

  “She told us she started screaming when her daddy attacked one of the men and knocked him down. Another climbed on David’s back and he fought him off too.

  “Then they shot him. Rachel screamed and tried to save him and they shot her too.

  “Millicent said one of the men aimed a gun at her and told her to stop screaming but she couldn’t stop. Her whole world was crashing down.

  “She said for some reason the man never pulled the trigger. He just turned away and they all left.

  “She told me a couple of days later she wished he’d pulled the trigger so she could have gone to heaven with her mommy and daddy.

  “It was one of the saddest things I’ve ever heard anyone say.”

  “Where is she now?”

  He started to cry too now too.

  “We wanted to keep her. As far as we were concerned she was our granddaughter.

  “But we couldn’t care for her.

  “Both of us had cancer. We knew we wouldn’t be around to see her grow up. We wouldn’t be able to protect her if the marauders returned.

  “We took her to the orphanage, up at the Zavala branch library. We made them promise to find a good home for her. A safe home, with someone who would love her and protect her.

  “We told her we loved her, and leaving her there was the hardest thing we’d ever done.

  “But she said she understood. She is the bravest young girl I’ve met in all my years.

  “We came back here, Margaret and I, and dug the graves.

  “They’re not as deep as they should be, I’m afraid. But we did the best we could.”

  “Where is Margaret now?”

  “Margaret passed away four months ago. Her cancer was much worse than mine. I still have a few weeks or months left, although I curse the heavens every morning when I wake up for forcing me to live another damn day.

  “I feel the same way Millicent felt when she said she wanted God to take her to where her parents are.

  “I want to go to my Margaret. We were married for fifty-seven years. I don’t like living anymore since she’s gone.”

  Tillie moved to the other side of the graves. She was by his side now, and wrapped her arm over his shoulder.

  “Bless you, sir, for taking care of my brother and his family. And especially for making sure Millicent was taken to a safe place.

  “You’re welcome. I hope you can find her. She should be with family if at all possible. And she spoke of you all the time, always in glowing terms.

  “She worshipped you. Did you know that?”

  Tillie found it hard to find her voice.

  “Yes. My brother used to tell me the same thing.”

  They finished the weeding and Tillie prepared to leave.

  They hugged and held each other for a full minute.

  That was out of character for Tillie, but the man broke down in her arms and she just couldn’t bring herself to let him go until it passed.

  “Thank you again, sir. If I can find Millicent I will bring her back to see you.”

  “I’d like that, and thank you.”

  Tillie set off with a piece of paper clutched tightly in her hand.

  It was the directions he wrote down for her, so she could find the Zavala Library.

  She was several blocks away before she realized she’d never even asked him his name.

  The directions were spelled out clearly in a shaky handwriting.

  But the library was several miles away and couldn’t be reached the same day.

  They stayed the night in a sleeper cab on Loop 410 and Tillie went through one of her worst nights in years.

  She was up at first light after not sleeping a wink.

  Hero had no clue what was up but sensed she was in bad shape.

  He licked her hands and the tears from her face, and placed his big head on her side as she tried to sleep.

  It was the only way he could convey to her that he loved her.

  And she understood.

  After the pair had breakfast they set off again, and covered the last five miles to the library-turned-orphanage.

  She was greeted on the library grounds by half a dozen children who had a thousand different questions of her.

  “He won’t bite, will he?”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Can I pet him?”

  “Did you bring him here to stay with us?”

  “I don’t like it here. Will you be my new mommy?”

  She had a question of her own.

  “Is there a little girl here named Millicent?”

  All of the children shrugged their shoulders or ignored her to play with the dog.

  Except for one.

  A little boy of about ten, who said, “There used to be. But she left.”

  Tillie’s heart
sank.

  She put on a brave face and stepped inside hoping against hope the boy was wrong.

  He wasn’t.

  The people inside told her Millicent had been adopted along with a boy named Charles.

  The adoptive parent was named Sarah Harter, and she listed a rural address in Junction, Texas.

  “I think it’s north and west of here,” she was told. “Maybe a hundred twenty miles or so.”

  Two days before Tillie thought her quest for Millicent and her parents was just about over.

  She couldn’t have been more wrong.

  Her journey was far from over.

  *************************

  Thank you for reading

  COUNTDOWN TO ARMAGEDDON, Book 11:

  A Troubling Turn of Events

  Please enjoy this preview of

  The next installment in the series,

  COUNTDOWN TO ARMAGEDDON, Book 12:

  It Can’t Be Her

  *************************

  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 were also other indications 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 had grown 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 wisely 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 twenty 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 thought 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.

  On their second night out, as was their habit, 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 sets 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 of perhaps half an acre.

  It was dotted with cold campfires, some months old. A creek ran through the eastern edge of the clearing, and the men got the sense it was a frequent camp sight for hunters and fishermen.

  But it wasn’t a happy place. Not today.

  For as they entered the clearing their eyes locked onto a blackened heap at the other end.

  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.

  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 emotions 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 didn’t know 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 tasking 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.