Chapter 9
Red, Elizabeth, Michael and Zena spent the week after Michael’s pumpkins sprouted roaming nearby towns and the countryside, scrounging for seeds. During their travels, they went through the small town located just down the road from their new home. Before the plague, Red had driven through it a dozen times, but had never stopped, never paid it any mind. For the life of him, he couldn’t remember its name. Even before the plague it had stood half-empty. What a shame, considering the old brick buildings still had a lot of life left in them.
Over several days, they visited a string of small abandoned towns, which seemed to be less picked over than the city. Michael drove Red nuts with his insistence on checking every home for jewelry boxes. He’d pull out drawers and open closets looking for coins, gems, silver and gold—anything precious and portable.
“Let me teach you a little something about the law of supply and demand,” Red would say, not hiding his irritation with the boy’s obsessive hobby.
Michael listened politely, insisting that he understood jewelry wasn’t valuable now, but there was no telling what it would be worth later.
“By the time later gets here, we’ll all be dust.”
“That might be true for you, but think of your grandchildren.”
Red would throw his hands up into the air. “I give up!”
Elizabeth quickly reminded them of the task at hand. “Men—daylight’s burning.” That was her subtle way of telling them to shut up, quit bickering and keep looking.
They found individual seed packets of green beans, cucumbers, asparagus, musk melon and more. They gave them to Michael first so that he could give them his spontaneous little blessings. Just outside of town, they found an apple orchard, heavy with bloom and buzzing with bees. An abandoned strawberry farm produced a bumper crop and Elizabeth tried her hand at jam. By the end of summer, they were up to their necks in vegetables and fruit. Especially zucchini. Huge ones. And lots of them. August and September were devoted to mastering the art of canning. And zucchini bread.
The more Red settled in with the woman and boy, the further the alien encounter at Schlotz’s retreated into the depths of his recollection. It had happened during the darkest period of his life; he considered the possibility that it had been caused by a psychotic breakdown. Michael had never brought up the aliens in his dreams again, so Red decided to let it rest.
Fall arrived in colorful array. The woods became a smorgasbord of red, yellow and orange. Cool nights were spent snuggled together under old quilts for warmth. The wood-burning stove was always stoked and they had taken to reading novels by candlelight. They steered clear of books in which the characters lived in the world as it had been just before the plague, because the contents left them longing for what they had lost. It was safer to read about characters from ancient times or on other worlds. They waded through a lot of classics like The Iliad, The Hobbit, and Dune.
One afternoon, a knock on the door startled the three of them from a game of Uno. Red ordered Elizabeth and Michael to hide in the pantry. When they were safely hidden away, he opened the door to a brown-skinned man with black hair and mustache, and wire rimmed glasses.
“Hello,” the man said with a thick Indian accent. The stranger’s smile quickly faded when Red pressed the end of a revolver against the man’s cheek. The man held his hands up in the air in a gesture of surrender. “Please don’t kill me.”
“If you’ve come looking for trouble,” Red said, “then you’ve found it. If you haven’t come for trouble—then you have nothing to fear.”
“No trouble,” the man replied.
“Who are you?”
“Dr. Vanan Patel.”
“A medical doctor?”
“Yes, yes,” Patel nodded vigorously.
Red ordered him into the house and into the kitchen, where he tied Patel to a chair.
“How did you find us?”
In his thick Indian accent, Patel explained about his reoccurring dreams. They kept telling him to drive north. So he did. But his truck had conked out about ten miles down the road. It was full of medical supplies.
Elizabeth came out of the pantry.
“A doctor,” she gushed as if a celebrity were sitting in the kitchen. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. Red, untie him right now.”
“Not until I’m sure he’s telling the truth,” Red said between gritted teeth, pissed that Elizabeth had come out of the pantry.
“Oh, come on, now—why would he lie?”
“Let me handle this.” Red’s voice was so cold and calculating, she didn’t dare oppose him. “We are going to leave him tied up until I can verify his story.”
“Fine,” she said with a pout.
“Don’t you even think of untying him after I go to find the truck.”
“This is overkill, Red, he’s definitely a real doctor.”
“Elizabeth...” he said testily.
“Okay, okay, I won’t untie him until you’re back.” She turned to the hostage. “I’m sorry, Dr. Patel. It’s nothing personal, it’s just that Red is very protective, but don’t worry—he’ll treat you right when he figures out you’re telling the truth.”
Patel nodded.
Red made sure Elizabeth’s gun was loaded and told her to guard the hostage. Leaving Zena with her, he brought Michael with him to find the supply truck. They walked down the road until they spotted an army truck with a red cross on the side, about ten miles away, just as Patel had claimed.
“Cover me,” he told Michael, whose gun skills were coming along nicely under Red’s tutelage. The boy’s Ruger LCP was equipped with a laser, but the kid really didn’t need it at this range. Red ran toward the truck, keeping his head low. He flung open the driver’s side door, aiming his gun at the seat. Empty. He did a similar check of the back of the truck.
“All clear,” he told Michael. Checking out the back, he saw that the stranger had been telling the truth. Popping open the hood, he examined the engine—just a broken hose. As he worked under the hood, he had Michael watch what he was doing.
“This will be your job some day,” Red said. “It’s time you...”
Searing pain grazed his temple. A bullet pinged as it ricocheted across the highway. Flinging himself over Michael, he knocked him to the ground, shielding the boy with his own body.
Whispering in Michael’s ear, he said. “Don’t let them see your pistol until I give the word. I’m going to play dead. Push me off of you like I’m a corpse, and when I say now, it’s Call of Duty for real. In the face, in the stomach, wherever you can shoot ‘em. Don’t hold back. Got it?”
“I got it,” Michael whispered back.
“Now, push me off of you the best you can.”
With a heave, and a grunt, the boy managed to shove Red’s weight off to the side. Red flopped like a piece of meat and remained still. His head throbbed, and warm blood was streaming through his hair, but Red knew it was only a flesh wound. He also knew from his time in the military, though, that head wounds were difficult to assess at a glance. He was counting on his injury to look far worse than it was.
Although his eyes were closed, he heard footsteps approaching, and men’s voices. There were at least four of them, but he couldn’t be sure.
“Is that your pop?” one of them asked Michael.
“You killed him!” Michael screamed. “Why! Why!”
What a great little actor, Red thought.
“We saw the truck first.”
“No you didn’t—we did!” Michael’s voice sounded near tears.
“Them’s the breaks, kid.”
“He’s a feisty little thing,” one of the other men said. “I wonder how he’s gonna taste char-broiled.”
“Spicy, I bet.”
“You’re not gonna broil me,” Michael said. “That would be gross.”
“Nah. Old people taste gross broiled—gotta stew anyone over about twenty-five or thirty, but the young ones are pretty good as friers.”
“Like this little girl the other week. After we took turns tenderizing her, she made for a tasty rack of ribs.”
Red realized by their tone and malicious laughter that they weren’t just trying to scare Michael; they really did intend to turn him into a meal. They were like overgrown house cats, torturing their prey before eating it. He never felt so much rage and abhorrence.
“Now!”
In one fluid motion, Red’s gun was out of its holster. He pumped two of the guys with bullets. Michael took care of the other two without any problems. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the first kill for Red or Michael; all three members of Red’s new family had needed to kill before. Elizabeth always got quiet afterward. Michael, however, treated it like a walk through the park.
He watched the boy get to his feet, clumps of pulpy gray brain matter clinging to his straggly blond hair. Blood had splattered across his face and clothing—Red’s too. Michael went over to the fallen bodies to methodically search through their pockets. “Slim Jims! And lighters too!” he cried out, happily piling them up on the crumbling verge of the highway. He slipped a bejeweled signet ring off one of the guy’s fingers and slid it into his jeans pocket.
Michael chewed on a meat log, neatly laying out the pilfered knives, guns and other prizes all in a line. As the adrenaline wore off, the pain in Red’s head got worse and he began to notice a secondary throbbing in his back. He could barely straighten out his spine through the pain; he realized he must have knocked a vertebrae out of place when he hit the ground with Michael.
“A truck, medical supplies, weapons, a nice piece of string, fishing lures,” the boy went on oblivious to Red’s pain. “By the way, when are you going to fix my rod?”
“Remind me when we get back.”
“Okay...two Kit Kat bars, three lighters, an unopened 8-pack of AA batteries, five packs of Juicy Fruit gum, an unopened pack of Pokémon cards, an aerosol can of Cheddar Cheesy Product, an 18 karat gold ring, and the Slim Jims,” Michael said through a mouthful of meat. “A pretty good haul, I’d say.”
“Yeah,” Red gave him a wary glance, saddened how this harsh existence had hardened the youngster’s conscience. “A good haul. Now, get behind the wheel and turn the key when I tell you.”
After ten minutes of woozily peering about underneath the hood of the truck, the sweat dribbling from his forehead onto the engine block, and his head spinning—Red tweaked a belt and shifted a bolt with his emerging new ability, let it be, and the engine roared to life. Michael scooted over to the passenger side and they headed toward home.
Pulling into the driveway gave him a sense of relief. First thing he was going to do, after freeing that doctor from his ropes, was take a week-long nap. But when he got to the back door, it was wide open. There was Dr. Patel sitting at the kitchen table sipping a cup of coffee and enjoying a piece of pie with Elizabeth. The foolish woman had untied him.
Busy gabbing and laughing with the doctor as if he were her new best friend, Elizabeth only glanced up at Red as he stepped up onto the front porch, not noticing the storm clouds forming in Red’s eyes. His fist had clenched into a ball. The muscles in his jaw tensed. When he stepped through the doorway, she stood up so fast her chair almost turned over. Dr. Patel frantically rethreaded his hands through the rope, but it was too late.
Michael trailed in behind him, covered with blood, but all smiles.
“Uh...” was all Elizabeth could say. When she noticed the blood spattered liberally over the both of them, her hands went to her mouth. “Oh, god, what happened?”
“Four guys jumped us,” Michael said with a shrug, but the exuberant smile never left his face. “And we took their Kit Kats and Slim Jims.” He generously held them out to share.
“Slim Jims,” Dr. Patel said, his eyes lighting up. “Yum!”
“I thought you were supposed to be a doctor.” Feeling like his well-being had been usurped by Slim Jims, Red’s face rankled into a frown. “Can’t you see I’m wounded?”
“Huh?” Michael’s happy expression turned into confusion.
Red’s words altered the mood from frivolous to frantic, sending Elizabeth and the doctor into motion. Michael collapsed onto a kitchen chair, hugging himself, rocking back and forth, humming a rhythmic lullaby.
Knowing that Michael was home safely, Red finally gave himself permission to give into his weakness. Unable to restrain the pain a moment longer, he allowed it to flood through his body, graying the edges of his vision.
He woke upstairs in the bed. Covered with a sheet, wearing only his underwear. His body was clean and smelled like flowery soap but his head felt like it had been through a meat grinder. Hands went to his temple to find a wad of gauze.
“Hi,” a soft little whisper came in his ear. It was Michael.
“Uh, hi,” Red said groggily. “How long have I been asleep?”
“Two days—off and on. You got shot in the head and the back. Good thing Dr. Patel was here.”
“If he hadn’t showed up, we wouldn’t have went for the truck...never mind. Yeah, good thing he was here.”
“I’m glad you didn’t die. Zena would have been scared without you.”
“You would have taken care of her for me though—right?”
“Of course. Want me to call her?”
“No, I’m not ready for a hundred and ten pounds of lonely dog. Where’s Elizabeth?”
“Out in the garden. Dr. Patel is downstairs though. Want me to get him?”
“Please.”
A few minutes later, Dr. Patel came to sit next to the bed, giving him the low-down on his injuries.
“One bullet barely skimmed your skull, but it was enough to give you a concussion. The other one entered through your left side, just passing through the muscles surrounding your abdomen, and never entered the true abdominal cavity. A messy-looking wound, but a very lucky one.”
“It doesn’t feel lucky,” Red said, trying to readjust his legs, but finding it too painful to move.
“Very, very, lucky,” Dr. Patel said, patting his hand.
“Thank you for, you know, saving my life.”
“You are very welcome.”
“And I’m sorry about tying you to the chair.” Red said sheepishly. “A man can’t be too careful these days.”
“I understand,” the doctor said. “If my wife and children were still alive, I would have done the same.”
“Elizabeth and the boy are not my real family...”
“Biologically, that’s true,” Dr. Patel said. “Elizabeth has told me about your situation. But they love you like family, and judging by how they speak of you, you them. In these sorrowful times that makes you a doubly lucky man.”
“Are you planning on staying a while?” Red asked.
“If I am welcome.”
“Of course, you are welcome.”
“There’s a suitable home down the road. I can help you move in, if you would like.”
“Not for six to eight weeks,” Dr. Patel said. “That’s how long it’ll take for you to recover, at least enough to resume anything more strenuous than bathing. No moving. No wood-chopping duties. Besides, I already moved in down the road.”
“Oh.”
With Elizabeth, Michael and Dr. Patel on the case, Red was nursed back to health in record time, but he wasn’t back to chopping firewood for two months. Dr. Patel visited almost every day, asking if anyone felt sick. When nobody did, he seemed almost disappointed. The man admitted that he needed the companionship, but when he learned that a small town was forming a few miles away, he expanded his new practice, frequently made the trip to tend to the community, but he always returned to the house down the lane.
But it wasn’t long before a second stranger came knocking on Red Wakeland’s door. This time it was a woman, a very attractive blonde in her late-twenties, named Veronica Frend. She didn’t appreciate being greeted with a gun to the face, but at least Red didn’t tie her to the chair. After a long interrogation, he decided that Veronica and
her four chickens weren’t a threat.
In her old life, she had been the head IT person for a big insurance company. She said that she didn’t know a damn thing about raising poultry, but when life gives you chickens, you learn how to make omelets.
One evening, when Veronica and Elizabeth were cutting up carrots on the back patio, she made a confession. Before the plague hit, the company she worked for was being investigated for investment fraud. When Red asked her if she had played any part in the company’s underhanded dealings, she replied, “Of course.” She saw the turn of events as a chance to come clean, to live an honest life in which she could help people instead of swindle them. As a former car dealer, Red could relate.
The next arrivals were a lanky fourteen-year-old named Nathan Steelsun, and a factory worker, in his early thirties, named Jerome Firestine. The kid told everybody to call him Nate. They’d come all the way from New York based on Jerome’s hunch that they were supposed to go to Ohio. Nate and Jerome moved into a house down the street, but within a couple of weeks, the kid set up his own homestead closer to the town square. Red had reservations about letting someone so young live alone, but Nate was an independent little cuss and had survive don his own for months before hooking up with Jerome. More people trickled in every week, many of them on bicycles, some on foot, a few carpooling. It was a mystery how they had found the place. The common explanation was simple: I felt called.
Red and Elizabeth felt the responsibility to get all of them through the winter. They had explored many of the homes in the area already, so they helped the newcomers find the best homes to support rustic living.
Red shared firewood but he taught the new arrivals how to cut it for themselves, and was kept busy maintaining the axes and splitting mauls in sharp condition. Come spring, Red and Elizabeth were sharing what they had learned about gardening and divided up the seeds Michael had insisted they saved—Red was now glad for the boy’s obsession with plants and with gardening. It never would have occurred to him to save seeds from the tomatoes, peppers, and other vegetables, much less the flowers. Only a few zucchini seeds this year! Ten plants would provide all they needed, he knew now.
Red the First Page 4