Beyond the New Horizon (Book 3): Living on the Edge

by Conaway, Christine

  “A single handgun isn’t going to do you much good for protection if those guys happen to come back. Why not take one of the mini’s?”

  He looked Sam square in the eyes, “I don’t intend on being here if they do.”

  “What about your friend Jeffery? You going to leave him all alone to face them?”

  “No!” His face instantly went from serious to smiling when he looked past Sam.

  “We’ve got about all we can salvage from the house, but Sam, you need to go and see what Olivia has in the backyard.”

  “I turned them loose as soon as I saw them. I couldn’t bring myself to eat them knowing they were Olivia’s pets.”

  Gina laughed, “I don’t think she’s looking at them as pets now, at least not when she’s talking about frying one up for dinner.”

  “Please, not more chickens!”

  Gina shook her head, “Nope! Something better.”

  “Are you going to tell me?”

  “Nope, because she asked me to send you back to help her catch them and she even has a pen to put them in.”

  Sam stomped off in the direction of the house. Gina watched him go, smiling until she turned her gaze to Glen. She had been nursing long enough and seen enough of the older veterans with the same symptoms to know something was wrong. As soon as Sam had walked away, Glen had sagged on the bale of hay. His face lost all color, and she could see the effort it cost him to remain upright.

  “It’s getting hard to breath? How long have you been like this?”

  “Almost a month since my prescription ran out. Every day gets a little harder. I’ll survive until you people leave here.”

  “I’m not even going to ask if Sam tried to talk you into moving with us because I’m sure he did, but I can also see why you won’t go.”

  “You are correct on both counts. I’m counting on you to look after my granddaughter as if she were your own. I saw the way she looked at you. I’d rest easier if I knew that you felt the same way.”

  “We’ll take good care of her. You can count on it. We have three other girls a little younger than her and two young men who I think both have a crush on her. Boys she had attended school with, and it will be interesting to see who she eventually ends up with.”

  “Not anytime in the near future, I trust.”

  Gina wasn’t about to divulge anything that had happened to Olivia. It was her story and up to her if she ever shared it with anyone else. Sam knew parts of it, but only Gina knew the complete story. Oliva hadn’t asked her to keep it to herself, but out of privacy concerns, Gina would remain silent.

  “Nope, not anytime soon. Now, how about you? Is there anything that we can do to make you more comfortable?”

  Glen shook his head. “That man of yours is going to hunt us something to cook for dinner, and I am hoping you will wait until tomorrow to leave. I’d like to spend as much time as I can with Olivia. She may not be my flesh and blood, but Michael adopted her when she was barely a day old, and to me, she is my granddaughter.”

  To hear Glen say that Olivia was adopted came as a surprise. “Does Olivia know?” At the puzzled look on Glen’s face, “That she is adopted?”

  Glen sighed, “No. I think Michael and Clair were planning on telling her when she was eighteen. She probably has no idea. I don’t see any reason to tell her now.”

  “That’s true, no reason at all. Now how about…” Gina turned and looked out the open front of the building. Her hand reached for her gun but realized it was Sam and Olivia returning, and it sounded like they were arguing.

  “Gina, Sam said he wouldn’t do it. He said we needed all of them so they can breed.” She wrinkled her nose at the idea.

  Gina laughed and looked at Sam, “Didn’t I tell you they were better than chickens? But Sam is right honey, for tonight we’ll make up some of our dehydrated meals, and all have dinner together.”

  “Willy, why don’t we lock the horses in the back yard. There’s plenty of grass and a fence. If we can find a way to give them some water, they’ll be good for tonight.”

  “There’s a hand pump beside the back gate. As near as I know, it’s the only one in town. We get all of our water from it.”

  “You guys pack water from here to the restaurant? Why wouldn’t you move closer? It seems like it would make your lives easier.”

  “It’s like I said, all but two of our patients are in hospital beds. It was bad enough getting them to where we got them, and it was the only place with enough room to get them all inside.”

  “Why wouldn’t the two of you just move down there? It seems like it would have been easier than moving so many.”

  “Because that place wasn’t fit for dogs to live. I don’t know when the caregivers left, but it was disgraceful the conditions these people were living under, and it was far easier to move them than to try to clean it. Besides that, we have some food and a way to cook it here.”

  Gina frowned, and she was reminded that she needed to change her bandages when the act of frowning hurt. She grimaced and knew changing them wasn’t going to be easy nor painless, but it had to be done.

  “Well, lead us to this restaurant, and we’ll get some dinner going. Olivia, let’s grab the saddle bags. The meals are in Sam’s, and I need the medical kit from mine, and I’m going to need your help once we get dinner over with.”

  With Willy leading Jeffery and Olivia walking beside her Grandfather, Sam and Gina followed the men to Willy’s restaurant. As soon as he opened the door, Gina noticed the problem. She had seen enough soldiers with infected wounds to know something was going on here.

  “Eww! Something stinks,” Oliva said from behind her hand, “Do we have to eat here?”

  Gina agreed and almost gagged because the odor was almost overwhelming to her senses. Her eyes watered from the fumes of decomposing flesh. She looked at the beds lined up down one wall and saw no movement from any of them. The tables lined two of the other walls and sheets of varying degrees of clean were hung to dry. She put the stench behind her and told Sam, “Build a fire outside. We’ll cook there. I’ll see what I can do for these people.”

  Sam, whose face had turned a beautiful shade of green couldn’t get out the door fast enough with Olivia right behind him.

  “It is that bad, isn’t it? We don’t notice anymore. Every single one of them has been laying in bed for so long they all have bedsores, with varying degrees of infection. We’ve done what we could, but nothing helps. We keep them clean and the ones who can swallow, we give broth to them. The other’s…” Glen shrugged his shoulders. “I guess we’re just waiting for them to die so we can bury them. It’s the least we can do.”

  Gina went and lifted the blankets on the closet bed. The sheets under the body, because it was now a body, were sodden with bodily fluids and excrement. She went down the line of beds inspecting each one of them. Sam had three graves to dig. She pulled the sheet up over each of the bodies.

  She turned to see Glen wiping his eyes. She could see where the two men had done all that was humanly possible for their patients. As far into the death walk as they all were, Gina would be surprised if two more of them lasted through the night. Gina sighed and wondered how the men did it. They knew these people were all going to die and yet they had brought them to this place and cared for them as best they could. She saw Willy bending over the last bed, and Gina had wondered when she had checked the woman if there was any relationship between Willy and the woman. They both had the same narrow face and a hawk nose. The woman was one of the people who Gina didn’t think would last the night. Willy pulled a small worn Bible out of his back pocket and read to her for several minutes. He slid it back where he’d gotten it from and leaned over and kissed the woman on her forehead. Blinking back tears, he came over to them.

  “Her time to be with the Lord is close now. I’ll help dig one last time, and I will pray I never have to see any more people die.” He went outside.

  “His mother was the only reason we went to th
e care center in the first place. We expected to find all of them deceased when we found out there were no nurses left there. We don’t know when they left or why. It was obvious that it had been a day or more. Empty I.V. bags were hanging on poles, dirty diapers and bedding that should have been changed days before. They just walked off and left them to starve.”

  “I think you and Willy have done all that you could. Maybe some of them knew that somebody cared enough to help them.”

  Glen started to walk to the door and stopped and leaned over. His face had turned ashen, and Gina wondered if this was going to be it for him. To her surprise, before she could walk to him he straightened up, took a deep breath and walked out the door. Gina expected to find Willy and Sam cooking, but only Oliva was bent over the pot on the fire. She had four of their mylar packages, standing on end ready to add the boiling water.

  “Where did Sam and Willy go?”

  Gina pointed across the street where Sam was standing waist deep in a hole throwing dirt over his shoulder as he dug it free. Willy was a few feet away doing the same thing, but as he dug, he sang, and Gina could hear him clear across the street.

  “Why do I recognize that voice?” She wondered out loud. Somehow it was familiar but rougher than the one she remembered. “Glen is that Carver Jones, his voice sounds so familiar?”

  Glen nodded, “It is, but not many remember him anymore. Hasn’t made a record going on twenty years. Most folks think he died a long time ago, but he went into the service for a few years and then came home to look after his mama. He opened that restaurant, and once he got by the racism, he made a living for himself. He collected old relics, wagons and such from back in the day and spent all the time he wasn’t here, or with his mama, restoring them. He bought the building down the road and opened himself a museum, a real tourist stop. One time he went all the way to Arizona just to buy old Doc Holiday’s buggy. You should ask him to see it before you all go.”

  “Do you think he’ll leave here? I mean to go with us? Somehow, I can’t see him leaving you and Jeffery behind.”

  “He’ll go. He knows I won’t be here long and we’ve already talked about what to do with Jeffery. He doesn’t have that long either.”

  Gina felt her throat tighten and knew if they kept talking she would find herself in tears. She couldn’t believe what these two men had gone through to bring comfort to a bunch of old people and now for Glen to be so accepting about his own imminent death. “I’ll let you spend some time with Olivia. I’m going to see if I can give Sam a hand.”

  Gina paused by the trunk of an old oak tree. She leaned up against it and willed herself to be strong. Gina thought their group had faced some hazards, but everything they went through did not measure up to what Glen and Willy had been faced with and she only hoped she could measure up to the fortitude and compassion these two men had shown to perfect strangers.

  She closed her eyes and listened to Willy sing, “I’ve got my shoes on Lord, and I’m walking to the promised land. All I got with me I carry on my back, following the trail to the promised land. I see my mama and my daddy too, they’re there to greet along with you, I’m walking to the promised land,” He must have felt Gina watching him, because he quit singing and hummed the melody under his breath, keeping cadence with his shovel.

  She walked over to where his hole was now over waist deep, “That was beautiful. I didn’t recognize the song?”

  “It wasn’t no song, just the ramblin’s of an old man,” Willy threw his shovel up onto the pile of dirt and hefted his weight up the side. He went to look at the hole that Sam was digging.

  The dirt must have been soft because Sam had dug a hole three times the size of Willy’s. Gina went to stand beside Willy, “Why is Sam’s hole so big?”

  “We’ve been burying them however many we got to bury, in the same grave. These people won’t care how they’re buried or who with, it’s just important that they are. Besides that, we’re doing it for our sense of decorum and not theirs. That is where I plan on laying my mama to rest. I care that she gets buried separately, and it won’t be long now I expect.”

  “You seem so matter of fact about it.”

  “It’s a fact of life for sure. We live, and then we die. Where you go is determined by how you lived that life. It won't be long before she’s sittin up there lookin down on me wonderin where she went wrong.”

  He laughed to soften his words, but to Gina, they held a certain sadness, and she just nodded because to speak, would bring on her tears. She had been fighting them since the warehouse but was determined to save them until another time. Sometimes, Gina was afraid if she got started, she would never stop. She hadn’t felt so much sadness since she buried her family.Watching Sam and Willy dig graves reminded her there might not be anyone to dig their graves. She knew it shouldn’t matter, and she was stupid to worry about it, but it did.

  “Come and eat!” Olivia hollered.

  Olivia had packed chairs from the restaurant outside, but they ate sitting on the ground. Even though it wasn’t cold, they all longed to sit closer to the fire and draw whatever comfort it could offer them.

  Gina didn’t feel like eating but pushed her food around in the bag. When she felt she had pushed it enough, she set it down by her foot and stared into the flames. She hadn’t realized it, but she was humming the melody that Willy had been singing as he dug.

  “That’s right pretty, Miss Gina. You changed it some, but I like it.”

  “Tell us about your museum. Glen said it was pretty extensive.”

  “I’ll do better than that, tomorrow after the service I’ll show it to you.”

  “The service? Oh, you mean the funeral. For just a minute, I’d forgotten about them. Don’t you guys think we should move the bodies tonight?”

  Willy shook his head, and his dreadlocks flopped, “Them folks don’t care none if they are outside or inside. Tomorrow it will all be over for them.”

  After Gina had made one final check on their surviving patients, she knew Willy was right. None of them could survive the night. Only one had a detectable breathing pattern. The only one to show any life at all was Jeffery, and when Gina caught a whiff of his feet, she figured he didn’t have long. Once the gangrene circulated through his system, he would go quickly. She had never seen anyone die from it, but she hoped it would be painless for him.

  “I’m going to spend the night here with my Grandfather.”

  Gina nodded and gave her a hug. Olivia held on to Gina for a long time before letting go. Gina kissed the top of her head, “Thank you for helping me with my bandage.”

  Olivia nodded and went to sit back by her Grandfather. Willy came out carrying a lit kerosene lantern, and he handed it to Sam.

  With the light held in front of them, he and Gina walked back to the warehouse. “I’d like to take the opportunity to go through the stuff up in the overhead. Half of it, I don’t know what it is used for, but you might, and Glen wants me to pick him out a handgun.”

  Gina stopped walking, forcing Sam to stop too, “What does he need a gun for?”

  “I didn’t ask and you shouldn’t either. I have my suspicions, but I don’t want to say.”

  “He wouldn’t take his life. I know he wouldn’t do that. He’s a Christian and knows that suicide is not the way to God.”

  “Nope. I don’t believe that is his intentions at all. He’ll still have Jeffery to look after until he’s gone and I don’t think Glen thinks he has much time as it is. I think that’s why he’s trying to hurry us out of here.”

  Sam held the light high for Gina to climb the ladder and then followed her up, careful with the hot lantern. Inside the tiny room, the lantern lit it up like daytime. Gina stared around in disbelief. The shelves were full of horse medicines, medicines for cattle, a couple of plastic bottles to feed calves, halters, lead lines, a couple of lariats, two saddles, and several saddle blankets, sat stacked on a saw horse. There was a gun safe with the door sitting open, and Gina could see wh
ere Zack must have had a good business going. The bottom of the safe held green military style ammo cans and several rifles were standing on end in the taller side compartment. Boxes with the names of Glock, Targus, and Baretta were stacked two high, and she thought there had to be a dozen in all.

  Sam pulled out a pelican case and snapped it open and smiled, “This is what we really need. Without it, eventually we would run out of ammunition.”

  “What is it?”

  Pointing at each item, Sam explained what they were. “This is a reloading press and dies. This is for case prep, primers, powder, this is a press kit, this is for weighing out the powder and this,” he pulled a book out, “is the manual for how to do it.”

  “Have you ever done any reloading of your own?”

  “No, that’s why the manual is so important. Someday we may need this, but by the looks of it, not for a while if we’re lucky. There’s got to be cases of ammunition here.”

  Gina walked down the shelving looking at the plastic bottles of various sizes, “Well, we can use this. It's a shame Glen didn’t know what was up here. He could have given Jeffery some of this bute. It’s a painkiller and anti-inflammatory for horses and cows. I’ve taken it before in small doses.”

  She turned to face Sam, who’s attention was still lost inside the safe, “We have to take all of this. There are antibiotics and wormer, and stuff for calf scours, even bottles for hand feeding if we ever need them. There’s everything we could ever need right here.”

  If Gina hadn’t been looking she would never have known he answered her. She saw him nod his head and she hoped he was listening to her. Her sleeping bag was still down on the cart from Oliva sitting on it, and Gina was ready to get some sleep. She had waited another ten minutes before she said anything, “Come on Sam. If we’re going to get any sleep we need to get started on it. Tomorrow is going to be a long day, and I’m tired.”