by Linda Howard
“All of us are gathering at the Richardsons’ place,” he said. “Their basement is completely protected. It’s too small for everyone to stay there, but it’ll do until Creed and I get something figured out.”
“F-figured out? Call the cops! That’s what you do!”
“The phones are out. No electricity, either. We’re stranded.” As he spoke he looked around, trying to see if there was anything useful up here that she could use as a crutch. Nada. He’d have to think of something, but first things first. “Okay, we need to get out of this attic; there’s no protection up here. Angelina needs to put on some warm clothes and some shoes—”
“I can’t walk,” Gena said. “I’ve tried.”
“Do you have an Ace bandage I can wrap around the ankle for support? I’ll find something you can use as a crutch, but you have to walk. You don’t have a choice. It’ll hurt like hell, but you have to do it.” He kept his gaze steady on hers, telling her without words how dire the situation was.
“Ace bandage? Ah…I think so. In the bathroom.”
“I’ll get it.” He was down the ladder in a matter of seconds, jerking open the drawers in the bathroom vanity until he found the rolled Ace bandage. While he was in the bathroom, he looked in the medicine cabinet and found a bottle of aspirin, which he pocketed; then he returned to the attic.
“Take a couple of aspirin,” he said, handing the bottle to Gena. “There’s no water, so chew them up if you can’t swallow them whole.”
Obediently she chewed, making a horrible face, while he swiftly and efficiently wrapped her ankle. “Here’s the plan: I take Angelina down first, and put her in the kitchen to change clothes—”
“Why the kitchen?”
“More protection. Just listen, and do what I say, because I may not have time to explain every detail. I’ll come back and get you, and once you’re safer, I’ll look for something you can use as a crutch.”
“Mario has his father’s walking stick.” Her lips trembled as she mentioned her husband, but she sucked it up and went on. “In the living room closet.”
“Okay, good.” Not as good as a crutch, but better than nothing, and he wouldn’t have to use up valuable time fashioning something. Rising to a crouch, he took Angelina’s hand. “Come on, cricket, let’s go down the ladder.”
“Cricket?” She giggled, diverted. “Mommy, he called me a cricket.”
“I know, honey.” She stroked her daughter’s hair. “Go with Cal and do what he says, change clothes in the kitchen while he helps me down the ladder. Okay?”
“Okay.”
Cal positioned Angelina between him and the ladder, so she wouldn’t be afraid of falling, and guided her down the wobbly steps. When she noticed the living room windows had been broken, she said, “Look!” indignantly and started into the room, but he intercepted her. The last thing he wanted was for her to look out the window and see her father’s body, nor did he want her to cut her bare feet on the broken glass.
“You can’t go in there,” he explained, herding her toward her bedroom. “That glass on the floor would cut your feet even if you were wearing shoes.”
“It would cut through the shoes?”
“Right through them. That was special glass.”
“Wow,” she said, wide-eyed, as she peered back at the glass in question.
Little-girl clothing, he found, was basically the same as little-boy clothing, just pink. He found jeans and a pullover shirt, little sneakers with pink shoestrings, socks with flowers on them, and a pink fleece hooded jacket. “Can you put these on by yourself?” he asked, guiding her into the kitchen.
She nodded, looking confused. “I put my clothes on in my bedroom, not the kitchen.”
“This one time Mommy wants you to change clothes here in the kitchen,” he replied. “She told you about it, remember?”
She nodded, then said, “Why?”
Oh, hell, now what did he tell her? Recalling experiences with his own mother, he pulled out an old standby: “Because she said so.”
Evidently Angelina had run into that edict from on high before. She sighed and sat down on the floor. “Okay, but you can’t watch.”
“I won’t. I’m going to get your mommy from the attic. Don’t leave the kitchen. Stay right where you are.”
Taking another long-suffering sigh as agreement, he went back to the ladder and looked up to find Gena sitting in the opening. “I scooted,” she explained, experimentally setting her left foot on the second rung down and bracing her arms on each side of the opening so she could turn around. He’d been thinking of lowering her with a rope, but what the hell, she was already on the ladder.
There was no way she could come down without using her sprained ankle. The first time she put weight on it, she couldn’t hold back a sharp cry of pain that she quickly muffled. The next time she tried, she bit her lip and simply forced herself to bear the pain for the brief time it took her to step down with her good foot. She rested there, waiting for the pain to recede, then did it again. Cal steadied the ladder as much as possible, but he couldn’t go up it to help her because the flimsy ladder wasn’t built to hold that much weight. When she was far enough down that he could reach her waist, he simply plucked her off the rungs and carried her to the kitchen, where he sat her in one of the chairs at the table.
Angelina was in the process of putting on her shoes, and she jumped up to run to her mother. Gena gathered her close, her blond head bent down to Angelina’s dark one. “I’ll get the walking stick,” he said, and went into the living room. The stick was shoved in the very back of the closet, but he found it in short order and took it back to Gena.
“We’ll go out the back door. I’ll carry Angelina. I know your ankle hurts, Gena, but you have to keep up with me.”
“I’ll try,” she said, still so white-faced she looked as if she’d faint at any moment. She hadn’t let her gaze so much as flicker toward the living room, as if she was afraid she would see Mario and she knew she couldn’t bear that.
“Sometimes we’ll have to crawl. Just do what I do.” He didn’t have time to explain the tortuous angles he’d worked out that would keep them mostly hidden from the thermal scopes. Infrared didn’t work as well during a warm day anyway, because the temperature difference between the ambient air and a human wasn’t as great. After two unusually chilly days, today was noticeably warmer. That, together with the fact that the human eye couldn’t see everything at the same time in such a wide radius as the shooters would be scanning, would help him get them to the Richardsons’ with minimal exposure. There were a couple of places where there was simply no structure available for shielding movement, and then Gena would have to hurry as best she could. The second person crossing was always in more danger than the first.
He had a lot to do, more people to find, but he put that out of his mind and simply concentrated on the task at hand. It took time—too much time, but Gena was doing the best she could. Finally he got them to a place where he could send them on without him. “You’re leaving us here?” Gena gasped, when he told her he was going back.
“You can make it; it’s just a couple hundred yards. I haven’t found the Starkeys yet, or the Youngs.” Despite her protests, he sent her on, then doubled back.
Before continuing his search, he worked his way to the feed store. Pressed against the back of the building, he darted his head around for quick looks as he studied the stairs leading up to his place, and the angles that would expose him to rifle fire. The stairs were just too risky, and that was the only entrance; there wasn’t one from inside the feed store.
Yet.
Using the butt of his shotgun, he beat the lock off the door to the back storeroom; the residents of Trail Stop might not lock up their houses, but that didn’t mean they left their businesses unprotected. Inside the storeroom was the chain saw he’d been using to cut firewood for the winter—there was already a sizable stack just outside the door—as well as the small ax he used to split the sma
ller pieces of kindling.
Taking the ax, he went into the main room of the feed store and studied the ceiling, mentally mapping out his apartment overhead.
He wanted to stay away from any plumbing, so that meant the left side. His bathroom was directly above the feed-store bathroom, which was only logical. His tiny efficiency kitchen, if it was big enough to qualify as an efficiency, was also on the left. Unfortunately, so was the checkout counter, which would have been the sturdiest, most stable platform for him to climb on.
He eyed the ceiling and did the math. The ceiling here on the first floor was ten feet high. He was just under six feet tall. That meant he needed to get about three feet off the ground in order to have some leverage with the ax. Well, hell, all those sacks of feed might as well do some good instead of just lying there.
He got busy hefting those fifty-pound bags. Each layer was stacked in the opposite direction as the one below it, providing stability. By the time he finished, he was sweating and thirsty, but he didn’t pause. Instead, he jumped onto his platform, braced his feet, and started swinging the ax upward.
The stack of feed wasn’t completely stable, and his balance was a little precarious because he couldn’t move his feet, which meant he couldn’t put all his power into his swings. With those constraints, it took him half an hour to chop a man-size hole through the ceiling and the flooring above. When he judged it was large enough, he knelt to carefully place the ax against the stack; then he stood, bent his knees, and jumped.
He caught the rough edge of the hole and hung there for a few seconds, getting the swing of his body under control, then flexed the muscles in his upper arms and shoulders and pulled himself up. Under the strain, the cuts Cate had so gently tended the night before stung as they began bleeding again.
When he was high enough, he gave a surge of effort that shot him upward, enabling him to wedge one arm on the floor. Planting the other arm, he pushed and lifted himself through the opening, and rolled onto the floor of his own bedroom.
Swiftly he stripped naked, leaving his wet and dirty clothes where they lay.
When he dropped back down into the feed store, he was dressed for hunting.
24
EVERY TIME THE OUTSIDE DOOR OPENED, CATE’S STOMACH would tighten and her heart would give a little leap as she looked up, hoping to see a lean, shaggy-haired man coming in. When time after time it wasn’t him, she felt her nerves wind tighter and tighter, until she had to distract herself or go crazy.
She tried to keep busy, but there was only so much to be done in a basement with so many people who were hungry, thirsty, and in need of a bathroom. The thirsty part, at least, was easily taken care of by Perry and his water bucket. Cate and Maureen did their best with food, but Maureen hadn’t been prepared to feed that many people; she didn’t even have a full loaf of sandwich bread on hand. They heated soup and stew on top of the kerosene heater, and slathered peanut butter on a mound of crackers for a quick protein fix. Other than that, without electricity, they were limited in what they could do.
The bathroom situation was more iffy, since it involved leaving the secure basement and going upstairs, where there wasn’t as much protection, but desperation eventually sent every person up. With no electricity to run the water pump, flushing involved carrying a bucket of water up with you to pour in the toilet, which meant Perry was kept busy drawing water from the well. Even Creed managed to hobble up the stairs, to Neenah’s consternation, using Gena’s cane.
“Last night was a lucky shot,” Creed said, pausing on his way up when Neenah mentioned Maureen’s close call. “They were firing for effect, in the dark, keeping us off balance. They haven’t been shooting as much today, because now they have to factor in how much ammunition they want to waste. Of course, they can always go get more, while we can’t. I figure they’ve been shooting whenever they get a glimpse of Cal.”
A sort of charged silence fell over everyone, and Creed looked around. He saw Cate standing at the foot of the stairs, white-faced and feeling as if she’d been punched in the stomach.
She knew that everyone who had arrived that morning had told of being located by Cal, rescued by Cal, taken care of by Cal, sent over by Cal. She had pictured him as a sort of shepherd, rounding up the flock. Instead, he was out there getting shot at.
Creed winced when he saw the look on her face, muttering, “Shit,” under his breath. Then: “Cate, he’ll be all right. Better men than those yahoos have tried to kill him.”
She felt light-headed as she put out a hand for balance. Creed winced again, evidently realizing his last statement hadn’t been exactly reassuring, and backtracked. “What I mean is—I was in the Marines with him. He knows what he’s doing.”
She didn’t feel any better. Presumably Creed had also known what he was doing, but he’d gotten shot anyway. Maybe if she hadn’t already been widowed once, she would have had a more noble outlook, but she had lost her husband suddenly at a young age. Untimely deaths happened—and doctors had been fighting to save Derek. Now people were actively trying to kill Cal; how could she possibly be reassured?
She felt as if she had just met him, and something was bursting to life between them. Everything was new and exciting and trembling with promise. She couldn’t lose him now.
Forgetting about his errand for now, Creed hobbled back down the stairs and gently took her suddenly cold hands in his. His rugged face was kind, his hazel eyes full of understanding as he warmed her hands in his. “He’ll be okay. I don’t know who those guys shooting at us are, but I promise you none of them is even close to being as good as he is. Cal wasn’t a regular Marine, he was Force Recon. I don’t know if you know what that means—” He paused, and she shook her head no. “Well, it means he’s an expert at a lot of things, and high on that list is not getting killed.”
Emotion roiled in her, terror and anger and even embarrassment that she was falling apart like this. But she couldn’t help herself; she clung to his hands for support, looked up at him for even more reassurance. “Mr. Creed, I—”
“Call me Josh,” he said. “I think everyone here is on a first-name basis, don’t you?”
“Josh,” she said, vaguely ashamed because she had kept him, too, at a distance. “I—you—” She stopped because she was stammering and had no clear idea of what she wanted to say. Go get him? Bring him back safe and sound? Yes, that was what she wanted. She wanted Cal to walk in that door.
“Listen.” He squeezed her hands, then patted them. “He’s doing what he does best, which is finding out what’s going on.”
“It’s been hours—”
“People are still coming in, aren’t they? He sent them, so you know he’s okay. Roy Edward,” he called, raising his voice. The elderly Starkeys were the most recent to arrive. “When did you last see Cal?”
Roy Edward looked away from Milly Earl, who had been cleaning his face. He and Judith, his wife, were bruised and scraped from falling. They weren’t nimble on their feet; both had taken some bad tumbles, but, by some small miracle, hadn’t broken any bones. “No more’n an hour,” he replied. The old man was exhausted, his voice thready. “We were the last ones, he said. He was going to gather some things before he came back here.”
The last ones. Stunned out of her own misery, Cate looked around at those who were here, and those who weren’t. Everyone in the basement was doing the same thing, because no more neighbors would be arriving to cries of relief and welcome. Mario Contreras. Norman Box. Maery Last. Andy Chapman. Jim Beasley. Lanora Corbett. Mouse Williams. They’d lost seven people—seven!
Silently Creed made his halting way up the stairs. Tears streaked Neenah’s face as she went with him, lending him support so he wouldn’t damage his leg more.
“We can’t let ’em just lay there,” Roy Edward declared, something fierce entering his cracked old voice. “They’re our people. We have to do right by them.”
Again there was silence as, one by one, they realized the enormous responsi
bility that lay before them. Retrieving the bodies would be a daunting task, and even then, without electricity, there was no way to preserve them. Still, they had to do something. The weather was warm today, which meant the need for action was extremely pressing.
“I have that generator,” Walter finally said. “We all have freezers. People, we’ll manage something.”
But Walter’s generator was on the side of the community closest to the shooters—and moving chest-type freezers around was a two-man job that would require them to be in the open.
Gena couldn’t bear up any longer, not even for Angelina’s sake. She buried her face in her hands, sobbing in great, raw sounds, her entire body heaving. Cate remembered when she, too, had cried that way, and she crossed to Gena, sat down, and put her arms around her. There were no words that would make the pain less, so she didn’t say anything. Angelina’s face crumpled and her big dark eyes began swimming with tears. “Mommy, don’t cry!” She patted Gena’s leg, both giving and searching for comfort. “Mommy!”
Cate gathered Angelina close, too. Her babies had been too young to know anything when Derek died, too young to miss him and cry for him, but Angelina wasn’t. When she understood that her daddy was gone and was never coming back, nothing in the world except time would give her solace.
“How do you do it?” Gena sobbed, the words so thick with tears and choked out through sobs that Cate barely understood her. “How do you manage?”
How do you function when your entire body has been overtaken by searing emotional pain? How do you function day to day when a huge hole has been ripped in your life? How do you ever smile again, laugh again, feel joy again?
“You just do it,” Cate answered quietly. “Because you have no choice. I had my babies. You have Angelina. That’s why you have to do it.”
The door opened and Cal came in.
He’d changed clothes. He was wearing what she thought of as deer-hunting clothes: a pair of woodland-pattern camouflage cargo pants, an olive-drab T-shirt, and an unbuttoned shirt in the same woodland pattern as his pants. He also had on flexible Gore-Tex boots, a hunting knife in a scabbard on his belt, the shotgun with its sling hooked over his left shoulder, and a rifle with a big scope mounted on it in his right hand. If he’d been going deer hunting, though, he’d have been wearing either a cap or a hunting vest in bright orange.