The Borrowed World (Book 3): Legion of Despair

by Franklin Horton

  When asked if he’d seen this particular man today, Buddy’s father replied that he had.

  “When did you last see him?” the trooper asked.

  “When I killed the son-of-a-bitch,” Buddy’s father said.

  His father was sentenced to twenty years and sent to the Virginia State Penitentiary in Richmond. Buddy was less than a year old at the time and had vague childhood memories of visiting his father there. Buddy’s mother kept The Yellow House running in her husband’s absence, hiring various folks over the years to fill positions.

  One night, shortly after Buddy’s father had been convicted and sent away, the trooper that had arrested him came into The Yellow House and sat right at the bar in front of Buddy’s mother. She held no ill-will against the man; he’d just been doing his job.

  The man placed a brown paper bag onto the bar top and slid it across.

  “What’s that?” Buddy’s mother asked.

  The man nodded toward it. Buddy’s mother hooked a finger in the opening and tipped the bag toward her, leaning over to peer in. Inside, she saw the Colt .25 automatic.

  “With the trial over with, we won’t be needing that anymore,” the trooper said in a gesture that would seem quite alien in this day and time. “But if you’re going to keep this place open, you might need it.”

  When Buddy’s father was released after ten years for good behavior, The Yellow House was still open and waiting on him. He worked that bar until he died of a heart attack in 1977.

  Buddy still had the gun his father had used to kill that man. In his family, the act had never been portrayed as murder. There were just certain actions that a person took in life that brought about a particular set of consequences. The rules of this were as set in stone as sums in arithmetic. A math problem only has one answer, as do some problems in this world. When that drunk laid his hands on Buddy’s mother, he set in place an unavoidable consequence, given the times, the region, and the man whose wife he’d touched. It was the natural world at work. There was only one answer.

  The same had been done when that man drove off in his teal Camaro with Rachel and had not brought her home safely. There were unavoidable consequences. Buddy had no other course of action available to him. If the world was collapsing around him anyway, that would just make it easier for Buddy to do what he needed to do.

  Chapter 4

  Gary’s House

  Richlands, VA

  When the morning sky began to show the first signs of graying, Gary felt a little better. He’d stayed on high alert for the remainder of the night, trying to maintain a watch on his home and hoping that his sons-in-law were doing the same at their homes. He’d been stupid to not send them home with radios. He’d thought that formalizing their security measures could wait another day, and found it wasn’t the case. If he wasn’t careful, his stupidity was going to get someone killed.

  His family didn’t even know about the worst part of the night yet. They were not aware of the mangled body still in his driveway. The big question that hung over Gary’s head was to understand why these people did what they did. He was sure it was a decoy maneuver of some kind and he’d fallen for it hook, line, and sinker. More stupidity on his part. Now that morning was coming and he could see without a light, he had to find out what the riders had done while he was distracted. Surely they didn’t just tie a body under his vehicle for laughs. If that was the case, they were a higher caliber of scumbag than he’d been expecting.

  Armed with his AR and his pistol, Gary checked the garage first. Karen’s Jetta was parked at the side of the house and the door that led to the garage wasn’t visible from there. While he’d been occupied with that body last night, someone could have pried open the deadbolt and had access to their fuel and other emergency preparations. When he checked, he found no indication of this, though; no signs of forced entry.

  He went to his outbuildings next. Although Will had said he’d emptied them of all the important supplies, the riders would most likely not have known this. They may still have thought they might find gas cans or other useable items in there. The buildings had not been tampered with. He opened each with the keys he carried in his pocket and looked around. Though things were a little disorganized where Will had hurriedly transferred the more important contents into the garage, they didn’t look like they’d been burglarized.

  As he exited the last building, the sun finally broke over the hilltop. The rays of golden light hit his yard and reflected off the dew, illuminating a pair of deep tracks that led across his yard from the road. That got his attention. They were not the heavily lugged tracks of an ATV tire, nor were they narrow dirt bike tires. He followed them to where they crossed his sidewalk. The tread pattern was more visible where the vehicle had tracked mud across the concrete and he thought he recognized it.

  Golf cart.

  Realizing that the directions of the tracks meant they could only lead one place, he ran furiously around the corner of the house. At the most remote side of the house, where it would have presented less of an eyesore to visitors, Gary had stored their Generac generator in a small housing specifically built for it. The housing lay upended from where it had been rolled.

  The generator was gone.

  Enraged, Gary kicked the empty housing several times. He finally let out a long sigh and closed his eyes. This was a blow. He knew that fuel would run out eventually but he felt like the generator had been a critical component of his emergency planning, giving them more options.

  The fact that it had been stolen told him several things. It could mean that his home had been watched enough for someone to know that he had a generator and where it was stored. It could also mean that his plan to bug-in at home was fatally flawed by virtue of their location not being safe enough. For certain, it meant that he was becoming more of a victim each day, with the theft of his garden and now his generator. He didn’t like that feeling one bit.

  *

  Regardless of how dire the circumstances, a little daylight always made everything more manageable. Coffee would help even more. Gary went back to the kitchen to regroup, process, and plan. He started a pot of water boiling on the side burner of his gas grill. He had other means of heating the water, but the gas grill was the quickest until he got things better set up.

  Like much of his gear, his various cook stoves had been stored away in the garage and his outbuildings. With Will moving things into the garage in his absence, he wasn’t even sure where to start looking for his most critical items. When he’d gone to bed last night, it had been a priority to get some of his preparations set up today and start transitioning over to using them, and now the theft of the generator left him unsure. Was it even safe to set out equipment like solar panels or would they just be stolen? It looked like security would end up being a bigger priority than sustainability.

  With the coffee water heating, he took a moment to enjoy the morning view of his yard. He’d missed this sight while he’d been gone. He enjoyed it for all of about ten seconds before he caught sight of the feet sticking out from beneath his daughter’s car and realized that this had to be dealt with before everyone got up. He didn’t want his children or grandchildren to see it. He couldn’t help but want to insulate them from the ugliness of the world.

  He knew the body would be heavy, literally dead weight, and while he would have preferred Will’s help in moving it, he didn’t want to take the time to go find him. In the meantime, he could at least hide the body somewhere and Will could help him dispose of it later. He decided that pulling the body on a sled might be easier than just dragging it. He stored his children’s old sleds under one of his outbuildings. He went to it and retrieved one of the plastic ones, hoping he could roll the body onto it and then pull it through the wet grass.

  First, he cut the rope loose that held the body under the car. He’d stuck a Kershaw Cryo in his pocket that morning and he fished it out. Though he wasn’t excited about getting under the car with the body, he didn’t see a
ny other options. In the tight quarters, the body reeked. With the corpse so closely resembling a movie zombie, Gary also had to deal with the irrational fear that the corpse would latch onto him as he worked and try to sink its teeth into him. He was relieved when he finally got the rope sliced and could put some distance between him and the body. He rolled out from beneath the car and pocketed the knife.

  In short order, he dragged the body out by the ankles and rolled it onto the sled. It was nasty, disgusting work that he couldn’t imagine ever getting used to. He’d handled several dead bodies over the last couple of weeks and he hoped this wasn’t developing into a pattern. Despite the unpleasantness of it, he took a good look at the guy’s face in the light and it wasn’t familiar to him. He didn’t know the man, which made the whole process just a little easier. It spoke volumes about the state of the world that a dead guy wasn’t a big deal unless he was someone you knew.

  He leaned down to pick up the rope and start pulling the sled across the yard, startled to notice Debra and Karen standing in the doorway watching him with morbid fascination. They were clearly aghast at the circumstances, seeing Gary roll a dead body onto a sled. Having been sheltered until now from the horrors that were being visited upon the rest of the world, the look on Debra’s and Karen’s faces said a lot. In seeing the casualness with which Gary dealt with this corpse, they must have begun to realize how truly awful Gary’s trip home must have been.

  Gary felt that in allowing them to see this, he had somehow let them down. It disappointed him. Still, they had to see this kind of thing eventually. They had to know what was out there waiting for them. And for that matter, what was not just waiting for them, but now knocking at their door. He could not protect them if they didn’t realize how dangerous the world was.

  They all just stared at each other for a moment, so many thoughts and looks racing between them.

  “Do you need some help?” Debra finally asked, breaking the silence.

  Gary nodded.

  After they got the body behind the building and covered it with a sheet of black plastic, Gary walked around the house checking for other signs of damage that may have occurred either last night or in his absence. He was pleased that he found none. He did find one of his neighbors outside, likely doing the same thing. Gary raised a hand and waved at the man. When he waved back, Gary walked down his drive and followed the common driveway toward the man’s house. The neighbor met him along the way and they shook hands.

  “I see you made it home,” the man said. He was tall and effeminate, with a dismissive tone in his soft voice that always implied a dissatisfaction with whatever was being discussed. It had irritated Gary at first until he realized that it was the man’s way and not something directed at him personally.

  His name was Scott Rose and he was a self-proclaimed minister of some sort. He and Gary were polar opposites on many topics but they were in agreement where it was important. Both liked their privacy and wanted to keep their neighborhood peaceful. There were six houses total, with three belonging to Gary’s family and three belonging to Scott’s. That made it easy to make decisions affecting the neighborhood. Most of them could just be worked out between Gary and Scott. No Home Owners’ Association, no bylaws, just two guys standing in the yard over a glass of sweet tea making any decisions that had to be made.

  “I did make it home,” Gary replied. “It wasn’t easy. I can’t say that I’m happy to come back home to a bunch of idiots out here riding in my yard and stealing my stuff either.”

  Scott nodded. “Yeah, they hit me the night before. I didn’t catch them. Did you shoot one of them last night? I heard a shot.”

  “I shot at one of them,” Gary said. “Scared him off.” Gary didn’t want to go into the whole story with Scott about the dead body and the stolen generator.

  “Should have blown his nuts off,” Scott mumbled.

  “Trust me, I’ve seen enough killing recently to hold me for a while,” Gary said.

  Scott looked at him with a question in his eyes but it never reached his lips and Gary didn’t elaborate. Despite their years as neighbors, they weren’t close enough to talk about personal matters. Theirs was strictly a meat-and-potatoes relationship.

  “I was wondering about closing the gate on our road,” Gary said. “If you got a key and I got a key that about covers everybody, doesn’t it?”

  Scott nodded. “I reckon so. That may slow them down. Probably won’t stop them. You can drive around it.”

  “Do you know who they are?” Gary asked. “I haven’t been able to get a look at any of them.”

  Scott shook his head. “All kinds of possibilities. There’s the public housing project over the hill, then there’s also hundreds of houses up and down the main road. They could be coming from anywhere, really. There’s no shortage of Godless troublemakers.”

  Gary mulled it over, staring at his house in the distance. “Things like this have a way of getting out of control,” he said. “I’ve seen it a lot recently. With no police to call, little conflicts grow into big conflicts and people get killed.”

  Scott reached into the pocket of his brown polyester pants and withdrew a snub-nosed revolver. “I got no problem enforcing the law myself when I have to. Some people need killing.”

  Gary stared at the gun, then raised his eyes to Scott. It was easy to talk about killing when you’d never had to do it. “You ever shot a man, Scott?”

  The man met his eyes, shaking his head. “No. Never had no call to. You?”

  Images of violent episodes from his journey rushed to fill Gary’s head. He saw the shocked expression of the people he’d shot on the Blue Ridge Parkway. He saw the way that life faded to death, like a flashlight losing power. He remembered the smell of the decomposing bodies they’d found on Mount Rogers, the family killed for their food and supplies. He remembered the smell of a man shot in the gut, the contents of his intestines mixing with blood and pouring from his body in a black torrent that the man’s clutching hands could not slow.

  Had Gary shot men? Yes. He’d killed them and he would forever be changed by it. It was not something he cared to talk to Scott about, though. If Scott ever had to make those decisions, he could see for himself that it was not something you went around bragging about.

  “I’ll shut that gate,” Gary said, turning and walking off. “You take care of yourself.”

  *

  By the time Gary made it back to his house, his entire clan was assembled in the kitchen and working on breakfast. They were discussing the events of night, using enough coded language that the grandchildren wouldn’t be able to tell what they were discussing. They were serving eggs, sausage, biscuits, butter, and jelly. Gary could not immediately tell what was made from fresh, canned, powdered, or freeze-dried ingredients. That was a good sign. Unfortunately, though, with the generator gone, there would be no more refrigeration. He hadn’t yet shared that tidbit with his family. It was only when a cup of coffee was placed in front of him that Gary realized he’d walked off and left the water heating on the grill burner earlier. He opened his mouth to say something about it, but his wife cut him off.

  “That’s okay,” she said. “I kept an eye on it.”

  He smiled. The beauty of being home and back among family was that they did things like that for you. They kept an eye out for you so that you didn’t have to be so hyper-vigilant all the time. That said, it was now time for him lay out the ideas he’d tossed around in his head this morning as he’d maintained a watch.

  Once breakfast was prepared, Gary had everyone sit in the kitchen so that they could discuss their situation together. They’d never had a family meeting before.

  “I want you all to know that being back here with you is beyond words. This is all I thought about while I walked across the state. I missed you all more than I can ever tell you.” He took a breath. His emotions were flaring up and he felt his eyes watering.

  “I’m more than a little concerned about what our neighborh
ood is turning into. I think we might need to literally circle the wagons,” he said. “There’s no way we can defend three homes with the few people we have. I think we all need to move into this house until things are safer.”

  Sara frowned. Her reaction didn’t surprise Gary. Sara’s house was new and she’d just finished getting things the way she wanted them. Of course she didn’t want to move out of it. “Why your house, Dad? I just got moved.”

  “Simple. Our house is brick,” Gary said. “The other houses are vinyl siding over wood. Brick offers some degree of ballistic protection. Vinyl does not.”

  This was a solid argument. Gary expected debate as to why they needed ballistic protection but there was none. They were all reasonable enough to see that this might truly become the case. Just because no one had fired on the house yet didn’t mean that it wouldn’t happen at some point. The fact that they were already having to carry guns around on a regular basis meant that conditions were escalated, to say the least.

  “The wolf couldn’t blow down the brick house when the pigs hid there,” Lana offered, looking up from the toy she was playing with.

  “Exactly right, Lana,” Gary said, stroking her head. “I think you all should spend the morning gathering what resources you have and shuttling them over here so we can consolidate things. Bring sleeping gear, batteries, flashlights, weapons and ammo, food, all of your emergency stuff,” Gary continued. Then, with a glance down at Lana he had a thought. “We can take turns watching the kids so everyone can get packed up without having the kids try to help. That would be more efficient.”

  “How long will we have to stay like this?” Charlotte asked. “I like my house.”

  “I know you like your house, baby,” Gary said. “We have to think differently now. You have to leave behind your everyday mindset and adopt a survival mindset. This is not about comfort, it’s about staying safe. There’s no way I can tell you how long we’ll have to alter our lives. Just remember that stuff doesn’t matter. What matters is in this room right now.”