Richard took a deep breath. “Well, if you want to talk to them, fine, go ahead. But I’ll probably be getting out of here tomorrow morning.”
“If you’re so sure they’re not trustworthy, then why are you willing to leave me here?”
He cleared his throat. “I trust them with you. I just don’t trust them with me.”
“That doesn’t make sense.” I turned and went to my little bed. Angel had found two sleeping bags and mattress pads which we put beneath the bags. It was comfortable, as we had built up about a foot of straw to go beneath them. I would never have dreamed I’d enjoy sleeping in a barn, but this one didn’t bother me. When we first started sleeping in barns, even ones without animals, the smell of what used to live there still seemed pungent and overpowering. At times it made me gag. I guess I’d gotten used to it because we were now sharing our barn with a mule, and I could handle it just fine.
I was angry Richard wanted to leave. But then days went by and nothing happened, so I thought he’d abandoned the idea. I forgot all about it. I knew he didn’t enjoy the Bible discussions or questions, but I still found it hard to comprehend that he preferred to take his life in his hands than submit to that.
I feel sure Aunt Susan’s house will be bare even if it’s still standing. And who knows, because she owned a wooden ranch and nowadays anything made of wood is fair game to get torched by those horrible soldiers. Even Tex and Angel’s house is mostly wood. I like it here and I’m growing fonder of the McAllisters by the day. (That’s their name, Tex and Angel McAllister.) I chuckle that I ever called Tex Hulk Hogan. He laughs about it, too.
What bothers me is, when we had that discussion where Richard told me he might leave, I’d asked him not to go without telling Tex and Angel.
“Don’t just take off,” I’d said. “They might think you have evil plans, like to come back with a gang.”
“If we had a gang we wouldn’t have come here on our own,” he said.
“Still—just let them know what you want to do before you do it, okay?”
“Fine.”
But he hadn’t. He’d taken off without even telling me.
I feel guilty about Richard’s leaving as if I had something to do with it. No one is blaming me, but I can’t believe Richard would actually leave me here without him. What if the McAllisters decide I can’t stay? Richard has left me on my own!
I sat down and started to have a good cry about it up here in the barn after I spoke to Tex and Angel. Then, in my heart, I felt a gentle tugging, as if a part of me was saying, “Why are you crying? It will be okay.” At first I tried to ignore that voice. I fought against it, actually, because I wanted to cry! Richard had abandoned me and I’d already lost the rest of my family! I was alone and scared. But the feeling grew stronger.
You aren’t alone. Don’t worry about Richard.
It made no sense to me why I would have these thoughts when I believed the opposite— I was alone and I had to worry about Richard. He was in danger out there. And then it hit me.
That wasn’t me—it wasn’t my voice! It was the Holy Spirit!
Those thoughts hadn’t come from me. My tears stopped. I was amazed and grateful. I didn’t know what to do or how to react, so I quietly thanked God, sitting there on my bed. The least I could do was thank him, right? And then, as I was thanking him, I got the urge to sing to him. Maybe that’s why Christians are always singing. Did you ever go in a church and NOT see a hymn book? I remembered how the Powells used to sing at night in the library, a song that went, “I Surrender All.” I remembered the chorus, so I sang it over and over.
I surrender all, I surrender all,
All to Thee, my precious Savior,
I surrender all.
I will try to describe how I felt while I was singing. (I don’t want to forget it and I don’t know if it will ever happen again.) I felt like Jesus was really close to me. I was almost ashamed that I wanted to worry about Richard. God told me not to. So I surrendered that worry. And then I felt something really light and free and beautiful. Joy! Just joy. All my cares seemed small and God seemed really big! It was the most religious experience of my life—except maybe when Jesus came to me in the library.
Why have I been blessed with such experiences? I have no idea.
I want Richard back—but I know my life is in God’s hands and I know this, too: He cares.
Richard would scoff at me if I told him about this, but I was so energized, singing on the inside, that I ran to the house to tell Angel.
“There you are,” she said. Her eyes were searching mine, kindly. She and Tex knew I’d been upset Richard had left.
“You okay?” she asked.
“Angel!” I said, and she must have seen the glow in my eyes. Her eyes widened as she stopped what she was doing in the kitchen to listen.
I opened my mouth and then I realized I didn’t know what to say; how to describe my experience.
“What is it, hon?” she asked. She could tell I had something different to tell, I guess.
“The Holy Spirit spoke to me!” I finally blurted out.
Angel’s face crumpled into smiles and she came towards me, her arms outstretched. I say, ‘crumpled,’ because when Angel smiles, her eyes smile most of all. They crunch up into happy little slits. So she came towards me and when I saw her arms outstretched, something inside me broke and I rushed into her embrace like a little child who’s been lost in the supermarket and then found its mother.
I would have been embarrassed if Richard had seen me. But no one was there—and it felt wonderful. Angel cared.
“Tell me what happened,” she said afterwards, holding me by the arms and looking deeply into my eyes. “C’mon, we’ll take a tea break.”
My heart took a little leap. Angel’s “tea breaks” were a reward for labor well done. She’d pull out treats from a storage source I didn’t know the location of. It was like a small visit to the past, to when grocery stores existed. She called her treats “absolute junk food,” which meant they would be bad for you but taste great.
So today we had packaged ®Twinkies with our tea. They tasted wonderful. Angel joked that everybody should have kept ®Twinkies because they wouldn’t go bad for anything—they were so full of preservatives and chemicals you could probably keep them forever.
Then we talked about my experience and for the first time I told her about Jesus giving us water in the library.
She looked at me soberly. “Sarah, don’t get the wrong idea about what I’m doing here. Usually we have a tea break as a reward, you know that.” I nodded, wondering where the conversation was headed.
“I want you to know this is not a reward. You haven’t done anything to EARN it. I wanted a tea break because I’m celebrating with you. We’re celebrating your Christian walk. God rewards those who seek Him, Hebrews 11 tells us that. I just want to rejoice with you. For now on, when you pray, you’ll learn to always listen to that still, small voice. I did that when I first saw you and Richard on the property.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “What did you do?”
“Well, I was scared!” she said, her eyes wide. “Tex was gone hunting and I saw there were two of you, and at first I was ready to high-tail it back home. But I prayed for help. I prayed for wisdom. I asked God to protect me and show me what to do. I got there just when Richard cut himself down and that scared me; then I saw he was hurt, and I felt a little safer. Then I heard him call your name. No offense, but when I realized it was a woman and not a second man I was dealing with, I felt relieved.” She paused and took a sip of her tea.
“So I was still praying and I heard you saying you couldn’t make it out of the pit. I said, God what should I do? Her little eyes were huge in her face. “And all I heard was Go! But see, in my heart I was planning it out, how I would come to your aid. So when I heard Go, it didn’t even occur to me that he might have been saying Go away, or Go home. It was Go help them, to me. So that’s what I did. If God had wanted me
to leave you there, I would have known it. You see, that’s how the Holy Spirit works. He knows us inside out and he knows what we need to hear when we need to hear it. But you will NOT hear the voice of the Holy Spirit if you are not regularly on your knees seeking God. Draw near to me, He says, and I will draw near to you. That’s in the book of Hebrews.”
“I understand,” I said.
“And listen here, Sarah. Don’t go thinkin’ that you’re gonna hear the voice of the Holy Spirit every time you pray. It doesn’t work like that.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
“It’s a lot more common not to hear God’s voice than it is to hear it,” she added. “Remember, we walk by faith. If God spoke to us every time we spoke to him we wouldn’t need much faith to believe, now would we?”
Smiling, I nodded and took another bite. Here I was, after the apocalypse without any family or familiar friends, sleeping in a barn—and I felt joy. I was crazy about Angel and fascinated by God. Angel talked to me about him like no one else I’d ever met. I used to wonder if God was real and how a person could know it for sure. I don’t wonder, anymore.
I’ll never be happy we’ve had the pulse, or that my mom and Jesse and Dad are gone; but I almost feel like I needed it to get where I am today. I trust that Richard will return.
Life doesn’t feel so bad right now.
I’m happy.
Chapter 61
ANDREA
I could have been up and around three days ago—that’s how much better I feel— but everyone’s treating me like I’m fragile. I still have pain—Mrs. Philpot says there’s no way around it, bullets cause pain. But it will heal. And she says my wound looks good. She says I’m lucky it isn’t infected. I guess I am, because we certainly don’t have a lot of antibiotics and apparently they already gave me some when I got sewed up by Mr. Clepps.
It really hurt to use my injured arm, so Mrs. Philpot had to help me change my clothes—majorly embarrassing—but at least I was excused from my usual chores. Downstairs, though, I felt useless. Everyone else had something to do—except me. So with one arm, I found I could help with meal cleanup, clearing tables, fetching utensils and that sort of thing. I told Mrs. Martin I could do childcare too, but she said, “Not today.” Still, it felt good to be out of bed and doing something.
I rested for awhile but went back down to help with lunch. The children were curious about my arm but I couldn’t let them touch it. Even a slight touch sends fire through the wound. I held Lily on my lap with my good arm to give the ladies on childcare a rest, but my baby sister makes me sad now. She reminds me about my mom. I guess I fell into a blue funk. I mean, I’ll probably never see Mom again. How could she still be alive? If she and Washington were okay, they would have come back.
Jared came looking for me just as lunchtime was ending. He said, “So—do you still want me to check out your old house? See if your mother and Washington are there?”
I was surprised he would still do this—considering. I thought he might be angry after I blew the whistle on his having the food buckets, but he never once behaved as though he was. I looked up at him. “Sure! You would do that?”
He slid onto the seat next to mine. “Yes. If you want me to.” He handed me a pen and paper. “You’re right-handed, right?”
I smiled. “Yup.”
“Write your address.”
I wrote the address, suddenly aware of how long it had been since I’d done that. There was no writing anymore except in my journal, no forms to fill, no paperwork. When I wrote out the address, it felt like writing somebody else’s information.
“Thanks,” I said, as he took the paper and tucked it in his pocket.
“Good to see you on your feet,” he answered. “How is it feeling?” He nodded toward my bandaged arm.
“It hurts.”
He nodded. “Bullet wounds are like that. They go right through ya.” He smirked, and I gave a belated little laugh, realizing Jared was joking! He joked differently than Roper, and with such a poker face that I’d almost missed it.
“Do you have a key?” he asked.
“A key?”
“To your house.”
“Oh, of course. I think I do. It must be upstairs in my purse.” Purses were also things of the past. Since we never left the compound there was little need for one. I’d brought mine with me when we came but I hadn’t touched it in months.
He stood up. “I’ll come by later to get it.”
I looked up at him gratefully. “I don’t know what to say. I really appreciate your going.”
He nodded. “We leave tomorrow.”
“Who’s going with you?”
He took a deep breath and then stretched his neck as though it was stiff before he answered. “Roper.”
After he’d gone I ran around the house looking for Roper or Mr. Martin. I couldn’t let this happen! I couldn’t let Roper go with Jared. Lexie had told me how Jared treated him when I was getting sewed up. And here I’d thought he was being so nice! When all along he may have been simply planning a way to get rid of Roper! And the stupid thing is, nothing was happening between me and Roper. I liked him a lot—no doubt about it, but we had no understanding and nothing had happened between us. We hadn’t even kissed.
I finally found Mr. Martin out by the cabins and asked to speak with him alone. I explained the situation and said, “Please, Mr. Martin. Don’t let Roper go with Jared! Let anyone else go, but not Roper!”
“Well, Andrea, there’s two things about this situation I don’t think you understand.”
“Like what?”
“Well, first off; Jared is going on a supply mission. He needs certain ingredients to mix us up more of those grenades he makes. So, if he’s planning on stopping off at your home that’s news to me. Second thing is this: Roper volunteered to go. He’s a grown man. It’s out of my hands.”
Chapter 62
LEXIE
Andrea and I tried to talk Roper out of leaving the compound with Jared. We brought him up to our room so we could be alone with him and sat in a small circle on the floor.
“We need you here,” I said. “You’re our alarm, now!”
He grinned. “You still have your old system. I won’t be gone long.”
Andrea said, “You don’t know Jared like we do. He’s not trustworthy.”
“Why not?”
“Well, he took the food buckets,” I said.
“He had a reason to,” Roper replied. “It made sense to me.”
“He gives us the creeps,” Andrea said, wide-eyed.
Roper grinned. “Is that all?”
“He’s sneaky! He’s always got something up his sleeve, and you never know what it will be.” But nothing we said made a difference to Roper.
Finally, Andrea said, “OK. I’m just going to tell you the truth. I don’t like to do this, but you’re forcing me. You’re forcing my hand.”
Roper grinned again. “You don’t like to do this. You don’t like to tell the truth?”
Andrea gave his hand a little slap. “That’s not what I meant.”
He waited, trying not to smile. “Jared is jealous of you,” Andrea said. I met her eyes and for some reason we both broke up into helpless laughter.
Roper grinned, but he clearly didn’t get it. “Jealous of what?”
We stopped laughing. Andrea looked at me, but it had been her idea to come clean. The ball was in her court. I said nothing.
“He’s jealous because he knows I think you’re funny, and you’re a lot more handsome than he is (Roper let out a breath of disbelief) and because…he knows…I like you.”
He didn’t smile this time. “Are you and Jared?…”
“No! We’re not.”
He kept looking at her, with his brows raised.
“OK, I flirted with him. Once! That’s it!”
“I think Jared likes Andrea,” I said. When he just looked at me blankly, I added, “He got angry when you came in just to ask how she was doing, r
emember?”
Roper nodded. “I remember. He’s known her a lot longer. I figured he cared about her. He didn’t know me from Adam. I didn’t blame him for that.”
“He told Andrea he was leaving tomorrow to go look for her mother! He didn’t say a word about having to get any supplies! He’s not honest.”
“He wanted me to think he was going out just for me!” Andrea added.
“Well, he mentioned what he thought you’d be interested in,” said Roper. “I don’t have a problem with that.”
Andrea and I were taken aback. Roper was a sweet guy. So sweet, he couldn’t conceive that Jared was not.
“I think you’re being foolish,” I said.
He met my eyes. “Would you rather Blake went along with him?”
“No, of course not!”
“Well, I volunteered to go because I don’t have a girlfriend.” He didn’t look at Andrea. “I volunteered to go because Blake does.”
I stared at him. “Are you telling me Blake volunteered? To go with Jared?”
He nodded. “That’s right.”
“And you volunteered so he wouldn’t have to?”
He nodded again. I stood up and paced the room. I couldn’t keep still. Finally I said, “I don’t think either one of you should go! You know who should go? Mr. Prendergast should go! He’s got no family here and no girlfriend, and no one will care if he goes.”
Roper looked thoughtful. “I think that’s sad.”
“What’s sad,” I said, coming back and resuming my seat on the floor, “is that you are insisting upon doing this when Andrea will have to worry about you nonstop.” He looked at Andrea, who blushed. “And if something happens to you, and she doesn’t get her mother back, then who does she have?”
Roper looked like he was trying to be patient. “Girls, girls,” he said, getting to his feet. “I appreciate your concern. But I have to do this. I volunteered. And we may bring back stuff that will save this entire compound if we’re attacked again. And you know we are likely to be attacked again.”
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