Before I could say anything, Pat brought his rifle up tight to his shoulder at the low ready position, preparing to step out from behind our makeshift shelter.
“Tell them folks in the house, Wil, tell them I’m checking the truck. Then I’m checking that woman.” Pat paused, steeling himself. “Boys, if they shoot me, I’m counting on y’all.”
I huffed out air through my nose in a vicious snort, but when I spoke, I barely recognized my own voice.
“Wil, you tell them they so much as pass gas in that house, I’ll murder every last fucking one of them. Then I’ll find their picture album and start working my way down their family tree.”
“Bryan, I can’t…”
“Tell them what I said, Wil,” I continued, more softly, but my voice sounded like razorblades to my own ears. “I’m not bluffing, and I’m so not in the mood right now. If one of them twitches, I aim to exterminate their bloodline. Tell them.”
“You got it,” Wil replied, and then he repeated my threat, my promise, word for word. From the fire in the other man’s eyes, Wil wasn’t feeling particularly charitable right now either.
Pat’s report came back to us a few minutes later, broadcast over my cell set to speaker. He found three little boys in the cab of the truck, and the oldest might have been ten years old. All dead from gunshot wounds to the head and neck.
Five minutes after that, he stood up from his crouch next to the porch and shook his head. They were all dead.
“What are we going to do?” Wil asked, his voice breaking.
“Call it in,” I replied woodenly. “This is a job for the Sheriff now.”
“And then what? What are we going to do next?”
I gripped Wil’s shoulder in my free hand. He’d gone forward to survey the interior of the shot-up truck, and I could tell he deeply regretted it. He was holding onto his ragged emotions as best he could.
I’d taken the coward’s way, stepping back and keying the phone to call Dispatch, requesting the medical examiner and more deputies. I wasn’t kidding about what I told Wil. This was suddenly no longer our problem anymore.
“You see stuff like this, over there?” I asked, half afraid of what he might say.
“Yeah, a few times,” the former Marine admitted. His features took on a vacant look for a second, as if reviewing file footage on a screen only he could see.
“How do you deal with it?” I asked, feeling my hands start to shake a bit from the release of adrenaline, and from my own frazzled nerves. I’d gotten the shakes after shootouts before, but this felt different. The sensation reminding me of how I’d felt after Mike and I had stumbled across that house of horrors in the storage office in Fort Worth. Like I was standing still, and the rest of the planet was moving, and slightly out of sync.
“You just have to put it behind you, man,” Wil replied slowly, measuring his words. “Just keep moving forward, focus on some goal, and just remember one thing.” Wil spoke softly, but with a fierce edge to his rough voice. “This shit. This, it wasn’t on you. Or us. This wasn’t our screw-up, man. Just think of it like driving past a wreck on the side of the road.”
I thought about Wil’s words as Pat trotted back to rejoin us, standing by the truck and waiting to hear the sirens. His mouth was turned down in a scowl, but he kept his own counsel as we stood and tried to ignore the elephant in the room. Treat it like a car wreck, I thought.
I wondered about what would happen later. When we were the cause of an atrocity, and not the innocent bystanders. Because in my gut, I knew there would be a time where we would have to kill people whose only crime was trying to feed their starving children.
“I feel bad now about threatening that guys family,” I admitted. “But on the other hand, I’m glad we aren’t the ones making the arrest.”
“Yeah, I hear you. Killing a woman and kids like that, just makes me sick. Don’t worry about what you said, though. It was in the heat of the moment, and hey, it worked.” Wil patted me absently on the shoulder. “That was some real Pulp Fiction level threats you were slinging, though.”
I didn’t bother explaining I wasn’t just making threats. If someone had taken a shot at Pat, I was pretty sure I would have done my level best to kill everybody in that house. The sight of that dead woman crumpled on the ground like a discarded rag doll was something I knew would be reappearing in my nightmares for quite some time.
However, for the moment, I cleared away those thoughts. I’d started the conversation, after all, as a way for Wil to focus on something else, but it morphed into my own issues. It might not have been the best idea I ever had, but the words got the former Marine working on keeping me from doing something stupid, so we can call it a win. For the other stuff, well, we’d burn that bridge when we got to it.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I woke up the next morning with the blanket wrapped around my neck like a noose. No, I wasn’t feeling particularly suicidal, but the nightmare hit me hard in the early hours, and I must have fought my demons to a standstill. I was strangely thankful I had resisted Nancy’s offer to brave the narrow cot in my office. She knew I’d been suffering when I got back the night before, but I’d worried about the fallout if she tried. Literal fallout in this case, as the floor in my office was hard and that didn’t even take my predictable flailing around into account.
It was five a.m. according to the clock on my desk, and I was chilled to the bone. My eyes felt gritty as I stumbled into the kitchen for a bite to eat before starting my early chores. I’d been up late the night before, sharing my story with Nancy, and that no doubt had my ghosts stirred up in a frenzy.
Beatrice and Cecelia were already making pancakes when I fell into my chair, a cup of coffee clutched in one hand and a piece of stale molasses bread in the other. The bread was a simple breakfast roll that Nikki liked to make, and we kept a supply on hand for the early crew.
“How many pancakes?” Beatrice asked, spatula held at the ready, hand on her hip like a prototypical short order cook. All she needed was an unfiltered Camel tucked in the corner of her mouth to sell the image.
“None for me today, Beatrice,” I replied with a sad face. “Got to get the cows milked this morning. I’ll get something after I get back and clean up.”
“I’ll go with you, if you like,” Cecelia volunteered meekly, and I gave her a quick glance before nodding my agreement. I usually milked the cows alone, but another hand would be welcome. I could tell Cecelia had something on her mind, but I figured she could fill me in when she felt comfortable enough to do so.
Honestly, I could use a little distraction this morning. The nightmare was almost always the same, but sometimes, I had variations on the theme. Some bits and pieces from my own current struggles would slip in as anachronisms that were more puzzling than anything else.
Last night, I had a whole new scenario to wrestle with. I was surprised my screams didn’t wake up the house, but if Beatrice or Cecelia noticed anything, they didn’t say a word. Because the nightmare had been turned into something even worse than I had ever endured before.
Helpless, I had to watch Collette die under a hail of bullets in front of the Hostetler house. In the background, Charlie bled out from a hole in his throat, gagging and whimpering as he succumbed to the wound while I howled in mindless rage and frustration.
Like always, I was trapped outside the vivid scene by a pane of glass that resisted all my efforts to break through and save them. All I could do was watch, driven nearly mad by the sight of my loved ones cut down yet again. Again, variations on the theme that had haunted my nights for years.
Thinking about it even now brought back the emotions, and I had to lean into a shelf in the mudroom as I felt the world begin to spin as my heart rate skyrocketed. The hammering in my chest and the whooshing of the blood in my ears made me dizzy, and I barely noticed the light touch on my shoulder as Cecelia reached out to steady me.
“Mr. Hardin, are you okay? Do you need me to go get somebody? Marta i
s still here. I heard her get up earlier.”
“No,” I managed to rasp out. “I’m fine. Let me just get my boots.”
“Mr. Hardin, you are anything but fine. Just hold on…”
I took a deep, cleansing breath. Then another, and I tried to center myself. Either the meditation exercise was working, or I was hyperventilating, but the queasy sensation began to fade and the thudding heartbeat seemed to subside. I held up a hand to Cecelia, catching her attention as she no doubt prepared herself for a mad sprint through the house and back to the bedrooms.
“I’m okay now,” I insisted, managing to force my voice into sounding at least partially coherent. “Just a bad spell is all. After yesterday…”
Cecelia stepped forward, closing the distance between us, and I was not prepared for what happened next as the young woman suddenly reached out and engulfed me in a hug.
“It’s okay, it will be fine,” she murmured into my chest as she tightened her grip around my waist. Cecelia was a tall young lady, and her head fit under my chin as I rested it there while she tried to offer me comfort.
“What did Pat tell you guys last night?” I asked, holding my own arms out somewhat helplessly as the young woman clung to me. She loosened her grip and took a small step back, looking up to meet my eyes.
“Not much. I could tell he didn’t want to talk about it. I know he was pretty upset. For him, I mean.”
“That’s Pat. He holds it all in.”
Cecelia said something then, but my thoughts went back, and this time I was able to focus on the aftermath of the shooting at the Hostetlers. That was bad enough, but it didn’t trigger another panic attack.
We ended waiting for what turned out to be two hours for Buddy Cromwell to show up with another officer I vaguely recognized as one of the detectives, and a technician I knew was the extent of the department’s crime lab. We’d taken another five minutes to deliver our verbal report. Then the three of us had pulled security as two ambulances arrived a bit later. The technician must have shot at least a full memory card full of digital photographs while Buddy and the detective spoke briefly with Albert Hostetler before waving us off. I was surprised when Buddy said the family would meet them at the station with their attorney to do the formal interviews.
“You’re not going to take them into custody?” I asked with surprise, and Buddy just shook his head.
“Bryan, this will likely go to the grand jury, but honestly, I doubt they’ll indict.”
My shock must have shown on my face, as Buddy placed a hand on my shoulder and gave me a short pat of encouragement before he continued.
“Man, with all the home invasions we’ve been responding to in the last month, what do you expect?” Buddy said with a sigh before continuing. “Albert was horrified by what we told him, especially about the children in the truck, and if we had the manpower, I’d take him in just to make sure he didn’t hurt himself. But we don’t. And he has his own grandkids in the house that he had to think about.”
“But you’re going to let them come down on their own and make their statements? What if they decide to run?”
“Bryan, where are they going to go?”
That last sentence had driven home the situation for me. Not long after, the blanket-draped bodies were transported to the ambulances, and I thought I heard a wail of horror from inside the house at the sight of the small corpses bundled up for the ride, but it might have been my own imagination.
Cecilia’s words jarred me back to the here and now, and I struggled to catch the end of her sentence.
“…that there was a terrible, tragic mistake, and several people were shot by a panicked homeowner,” she finished, and I had the gist of it. “Is that right?”
“Close enough,” I murmured, not wanting to say what I felt, that it was more a firing squad than a single shooter, but instead I stuck my left foot in the matching rubber boot, and then repeated the motion with the right foot. “Let’s go before the cows come looking for me.”
I completed my first round of morning chores with Cecelia pitching in admirably, clearly still not familiar with the rhythm of the jobs but no stranger to hard work or the country setting. As a budding Agricultural Extension agent, she had more book learning about the subjects than I ever would, but from a practical standpoint, she and Maddy were both still learning the ropes. But with that book learning, she brought some unexpected knowledge with her as she finally worked up her courage to speak.
“Mr. Hardin, can you explain your plans for feeding all of us, long-term? I mean, I know with the greenhouses and stored foodstuffs, we are going to have a buffer here, but for how long? I mean, when the crops fail, how long can we last?”
I appreciated the use of ‘we’ in her question, since that word, maybe unintentionally but with unmistakable meaning, showed her commitment to our group. Her friend and fellow rescued agent Maddy used the same pronoun when discussing the challenges we were facing.
This was one of the big complaints many of us had with my niece’s husband, Charles. He still referred to the problems ‘you’ were having, as he still considered himself a temporary boarder here until his employer in Beaumont came back online. In fact, I’d been meaning to have a sit down with him over that attitude when we’d gotten the call for the Hostetler house, and I was dreading the confrontation to come.
Shoving aside my other concerns, I forced my focus on what Cecelia was asking.
“We have stores of bulk foods set back, but from the tenor of your question, I take it we missed something?”
“Uh, you might want to up whatever you have stored, Mr. Hardin,” Cecelia said nervously. “I don’t think you’ll get a crop in for at least a year.”
“What kind of crop? We’ve already harvested this year’s corn and all the garden produce,” I asked, slightly confused.
“No, I meant, next year’s crop is probably going to fail,” she announced with a diffident tone.
“But we’ve made plans to use cool weather crops to compensate,” I replied, but the young woman’s frown left me worried even before she spoke her next words.
“Even if you get warm enough weather and sufficient rainfall, I’m afraid the soil is just about ruined. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
Yep, that’s what I was afraid she was going to say.
“Well, hell.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
After straining the milk and placing it in the cooler while Cecelia cleaned up, I hustled to round up Beatrice and Mike and Cecelia did the same with Madelyn as we retreated to semi-privacy of my office to dig further into the matter. While we waited for Mike and Madelyn to finish washing dishes, Cecelia admitted to me in a whisper that Madelyn had actually gotten the idea first, but she’d been hesitant to speak up.
“Why didn’t she say anything, and put you up to it instead?” Beatrice asked, deeply curious.
“You know the old expression about shooting the messenger?” Cece replied simply, and that was the end of it. We all knew Maddy was a great young lady, but she was lacking in self-confidence. When the door opened and Mike walked in, trailed by the recent college graduate, I studied her stooped shoulders and downcast expression. Despite my own dark mood, or maybe because of it, I stood and strode over to the pensive young lady and held my arms out. Madelyn rushed forward and I engulfed her in a hug, and I felt her breathing deeply for a few minutes as she struggled to get her emotions under control.
For the next twenty minutes, Cecelia and Madelyn proceeded to tell me what all was wrong with our soil, and despite their use of what I tended to think of as ‘terms of art’ like ethylene production, nitrogen fixation, and my favorite, micronutrient displacement, I thought I had a handle on the problem. Maddy was basing her predictions on a series of rough field testing performed using some of Mike’s chemistry supplies and pH testing strips, so we probably needed more precise instruments, but she admitted the calculations were close enough for government work.
In a nutshel
l, the constant rain had not only damaged the root structures with waterlogging, the runoff had then carried away things we needed in the soil for successful cultivation. I was thinking about erosion, but this was both smaller in scale and larger in scope. Maddy suggested we plant a variety of clover she was familiar with as a winter cover crop, and Cece added that we needed to gradually add prepared organic material to the fields as a way to raise the levels of micronutrients.
“We have the compost piles,” I suggested. “I know there’s been some wastage from the flooding, but we covered those piles with that in mind.”
Cece was mildly interested, while Mike was skeptical. She asked a few questions, admitting that she’d seen the tarped-off areas but wasn’t sure what they represented. When she found out we let our compost piles sit for a year minimum before touching them, Cece huddled with Maddy and they started making calculations. Cece wrinkled her brow, and I knew she wasn’t about to give us good news.
“We can use it, but there won’t be enough. Any other organic fertilizer?”
“Well, there’s the biomass we use in the methane tank, but that stuff is too raw right now to consider,” I explained.
“Need to strain it for bones, too,” Mike muttered under his breath, just loud enough for me to hear, and I had to suppress a shudder. Well, I reasoned to myself, Sergeant Bailey would contribute more to the county that way than he ever did as a deputy.
Out loud, I said something else.
“I’ll hit Wilson’s, but they are probably out by now. Their shipments have been sparse as heck lately.”
“Not just from the hijacking action,” Mike added. My brother took a second to look around the room. “Look, you guys know Bryan and I have made some predictions, based on historical examples and modeling?”
“Call it projections, instead of predictions,” I interrupted. “We’re not trying to call college football games here. What Mike is tiptoeing around is our concern that the situation, national and local, is deteriorating at an accelerated rate. The just-in-time supply chains are nearly done for, guys.”
Tertiary Effects Series | Book 3 | Bite of Frost Page 16