Her Name is Beth: Alone: Book 5

by Darrell Maloney

  This was a new world.

  The man simply looked around, then asked the group, “Hey man… has anybody seen Tony?”

  Most of the group was lost in their own little worlds. One said, “He went to Amy’s tent a little while ago. They’re probably still getting busy.”

  The man turned back to Dave and said, “Follow me, man.”

  Dave did as he was told and followed the man through the crowd.

  It looked like one of the refugee camps Dave had seen many times on TV. But those were always third world countries. This was America. It just didn’t feel right.

  Everywhere he looked, colorful tents were set up. Forlorn faces, some beaten, looked out of them into a dismal world. He stepped over people sleeping on bare ground. Toddlers running around without diapers. Mothers reading story books to their children. Here and there a campfire burned, as people boiled water or heated up cans of food.

  The man led him to a small blue tent, which looked almost as though someone were shaking it from inside.

  The unmistakable sounds of a woman nearing orgasm emanated from its bowels.

  “You might wanna wait until he comes out. I think they’re in the middle of something.”

  Dave merely nodded his head. He didn’t know what else to do.

  The man turned to leave, and told Dave, “His name’s Tony. He’ll hook you up.”

  “Thanks,” Dave said as the man disappeared into the crowd.

  He found a patch of unused grass and sat down, Indian style with his ankles crossed. While he waited for Tony and his girlfriend to finish, he looked around.

  The scent of marijuana drifted by again on a gentle breeze, this time from a different direction.

  He also smelled the strong scent of urine, of canned chili being burned. He heard people crying and children squealing. Off in the distance he heard what sounded like a man and a woman screaming, although he could make out only a few of the words.

  “Hey, man. You waiting your turn?”

  “Excuse me?”

  He looked up to see a monster of a man standing over him. He was standing in the afternoon sun, the sun glaring over his shoulder and making it difficult to see his face.

  “Are you waiting your turn with Amy?”

  “Um… I’m waiting for Tony to come out. He and his girlfriend are… busy.”

  The man laughed. He obviously wasn’t hostile. That was a good thing, since he had Dave at a severe disadvantage.

  “Oh, they’re busy all right. But she’s not Tony’s girlfriend. Or then again, maybe she is. Maybe she’d prefer that term over the one the women around here call her. If that’s the case, though, she’s the girlfriend of a lot of us around here. She’ll be your girlfriend too for three grams of gold or five grams of silver.”

  The words finally sunk in.

  Amy was a prostitute, and Tony was her john.

  “Of course, I don’t blame her for doing what she feels she has to do to survive. At least she’s not hurting anybody doing it. And she always answers her haters in the same way. She says hey, a girl’s gotta eat.”

  He held out his hand to Dave.

  I’m Big Al.

  “Dave. Dave Speer.”

  “Since you’re not in line, mind if I sit here and wait for her to invite me in?”

  “No. Not at all.”

  Big Al seemed a friendly enough sort. Dave figured he had nothing to lose by asking the questions he’d asked of a lot of people lately.

  “Say, Al, have you been here awhile?”

  He paused and looked at the sky, as though trying to remember the answer to a test question.

  “I guess. I mean, I didn’t even know what month it is, but I’d guess I’ve been here five, six months now. I wintered here, right over there in that big brown tent. It was a bear, let me tell you. I wore two pairs of long johns, two layers of sweat suits and a heavy parka. And I still shivered.”

  “Do you remember a little red pickup coming through here? With the engine and tranny removed, being drawn by two brown horses?”

  He paused to consider the question, then smiled.

  “Nope. I’m afraid not. Something like that I’d definitely remember.”

  Chapter 48

  The tent stopped moving and the moaning stopped. A couple of minutes later someone unzipped it from the inside.

  The young man who stepped out was nothing like Dave expected. He’d seen his share of drug dealers on TV, being wrestled to the ground on Cops, or doing a perp walk on the local news. He remembered them as being scraggly, unkempt, unshaven and mean looking.

  The man before him was in his early twenties with a new pair of Dockers and a nice polo shirt. Both were clean, which was an exceedingly rare thing in the new world.

  Also, he smelled… fresh. As though he’d showered and shaved that very day.

  Even more uncommon.

  The woman who stepped out behind him was probably considered beautiful the year before. Before the harsh new realities of life took their toll. She was still very pretty. The prettiest girl Dave had seen since he’d left Sarah. He could understand why men would want to be intimate with her, although he’d never understand how a woman could sell her body for money.

  Neither of them seemed surprised to find men waiting outside the tent. Apparently Amy was a pretty popular girl.

  Big Al was Johnny-on-the-spot with the introductions.

  “This is my new friend Dave. Tony, he’s lookin’ for you.”

  He turned to Amy and said, “And I’m lookin’ for you, little darlin’.”

  Amy made no effort to hide the disappointment on her face. She’d sized the two of them up as soon as she stepped out of the tent, and decided that Dave was a far better specimen.

  She looked past Al and asked Dave pointedly, “And what about you, Dave? Can I count on showing you a good time after Al’s finished?”

  The question caught Dave off guard and he stumbled over his words.

  “Um, no. I don’t do business with women who sell their bodies… I’m sorry. I meant…”

  He winced. The words had come out much more harsh than he’d intended. He had no idea what this woman had been through, why she felt a need to do the things she did. And in any event, it wasn’t his place to judge.

  He apologized again, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  She didn’t seem fazed. He suspected she heard the same things, and worse, on a regular basis.

  “Oh, it’s okay. I don’t really sell my body. I just rent it out. A girl’s gotta eat. Besides, I figure that anybody who presumes to have a right to judge me without getting to know me is a bigger whore than I am. A whore to society’s rules and regulations, that is. I’m a free spirit, and only God can judge me.”

  Dave flushed red.

  He looked for something else to say to right the situation, but she let him off the hook.

  She took Al by the hand and led him toward the tent, saying, “Come on, big fella. Since he don’t want them, you can have his twenty minutes too, on the house.”

  Al didn’t have to be told twice. He fairly skipped into the tent, leaving Dave and Tony alone.

  But not for long. From out of nowhere a skinny man with an awful nervous twitch appeared and took over the conversation between it even started.

  “Tony! I thought I’d never find you, man!”

  “Hey Lenny. What do you need today?”

  “You got an eight-ball?”

  “That depends. You got gold or silver? I don’t want any of that costume jewelry crap you tried to pass off last time.”

  “No, man. I got the real stuff.”

  He pulled a gold chain from his pocket. A gold chain he’d probably pilfered from some little old lady’s jewelry box.

  Tony examined it and seemed satisfied it was real. He opened his Gucci leather shoulder bag and took out a tiny black scale, no larger than a pack of cigarettes.

  And a pair of wire snips.

  He turned the scale on.
Dave was surprised that it worked. He supposed he’d gotten it from some prepper who’d saved it from the storm.

  He cut off about three inches or so of the chain and let it drop into a pile on the scale. It was still a bit light. He cut off another half inch and seemed satisfied.

  He handed back what was left of the necklace to Lenny, then noticed the curiosity on Dave’s face.

  “I melt it down into ingots. It’s easier to trade with that way.”

  Of course.

  He reached back into the bag and pulled out a tiny zip-lock bag, no bigger than a book of matches, and handed it to Lenny.

  The man licked his lips, as a starving man might do when sitting in front of a steak dinner.

  He took the packet of dope and disappeared within the crowd without saying another word.

  Dave couldn’t help himself. He said, “Pardon me for asking. But aren’t you afraid of being shot, or robbed?”

  “No. Why should I?”

  “Well, no offense. But you’re not armed, unless you have a peashooter inside that bag of yours. And everything about you reeks of money. It seems to me that it would be easier for one of your customers to just shoot you and take your drugs instead of buying them from you.”

  “Well, they could. But that would be like a dog biting the hand who fed it. You see, I’m the only guy within a hundred miles who has the connections to get what these people are hurting for. If they stole from me once, they’d never get anything from me again. And if they had the nerve to kill me, they’d be lynched by my other customers before the sun set that day.”

  Dave nodded. It made sense.

  Tony said, “You looking for anything in particular?”

  “Yes. But not drugs.”

  The dealer was puzzled.

  “Then what?”

  “I’m looking for a way into Albuquerque.”

  Chapter 49

  Tony seemed not to understand Dave’s words.

  “You’re in Albuquerque now. Or at least on the outskirts. It’s not safe for you to go any further.”

  “So I’ve heard. But I have no choice. You see, I’ve got to go in there. My daughter was stolen, and she’s in there. Somewhere. I’ve got to find her and bring her back.”

  “You said your name was Dave?”

  “Yes.”

  “Pardon me for being blunt, Dave. I’ve found it helps in my line of work. If your daughter’s in there, you can’t just go in there and demand her back. If they have her, then they will want to keep her. And they’re not the kind of men you can reason with.”

  “I know. That’s why I need your help.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Correct me if I’m wrong. But I’m assuming men in your particular trade have advantages that most men don’t.”

  Both men were distracted by noises coming from the tent, which was shaking like never before.

  Tony smiled and said, “Yes. Amy is just one of them.”

  “And I’m guessing also that in a city like Albuquerque, you can go pretty much anywhere you want to go, without being assaulted or molested.”

  “Yes. That much is true too. They tend to watch over me because I bring their candy.”

  “I’m willing to pay me if you’ll take me to the right people.”

  “The right people?”

  “Someone in each of the factions who would either know of, or be able to find out, where my daughter is, so I can negotiate her release.”

  “As I said before, these are not men you don’t negotiate with. If they want her, they’ll keep her. End of story.”

  “Then I will appeal to their human nature. Many of them are probably fathers. They’ll understand the bond a father has with his children. Maybe they have enough humanity left in their souls to understand my plight.”

  “Maybe. But I doubt it. What if that fails?”

  “Then I’ll at least know who has her. And where she is. And that’ll make it easier to take her from them.”

  Tony smiled, and had to stifle a laugh.

  “What’s funny?”

  “I’m sorry. The way you said, ‘take her from them.’ You almost had me believing it could be done.”

  “I won’t start anything with you around. I won’t put you in the line of fire. That’ll be part of the deal.”

  “You’re not listening to me, Dave. You seem to think you can just waltz in there and demand your daughter back and they’ll comply. And in response to their refusal to comply, you’ll just waltz in a second time and blow them all away.

  “What you don’t understand is, these are very bad men. The worst of the worst. One of them shot and killed two of his brothers because he thought they were taking more than their share of the spoils. His own brothers. He killed them over money.

  “And on top of that, they’ve got small armies. They have to, to defend their turf against the other factions. They’re bloodthirsty and brutal and men you don’t mess with. If you go in there with guns blazing, the first two people to die will be you and your daughter.

  “Trust me when I tell you this, and listen closely. Stuff like this has been tried before. Not recently, because everybody learned from the heads.”

  “The heads?”

  “Yeah. That’s how they advertise to the world how tough they are. Also to warn other factions where the boundary lines are. They’ll mark their territory by putting the severed heads of people who’ve pissed them off on sticks, then sticking them in the ground on street corners.

  “After a while, people stopped trying to piss them off. They didn’t want their head to be on the next stick. That was about the time the citizens started fleeing the city en masse. They just gave up and decided to cede the city to the outlaws.”

  “And you’re not afraid to go in there?”

  “It’s not the most comfortable place I go into. But they all know I’m neutral, and they all know I have something they want badly. So they let me come and go and peddle my wares.”

  “How mad would they be if you took me in with you?”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yes. I’ll pay you an ounce of gold for each faction you introduce me to, provided you introduce me to somebody who can tell me with certainty, no bullshit, whether that horse-drawn pickup truck is in their territory.”

  Tony pondered the idea. While he didn’t particularly like the thought of taking a total stranger into hostile areas, he was above all else a businessman.

  “You have the gold with you?”

  “I’m not carrying all of it. But the rest is nearby and I’m good for it.”

  “How do I know I can trust you?”

  “I’m trusting you with my life. I know one word from you and those guys in there will slit my throat.”

  “Good point. I’ll need to see what you’ve got, to make sure it’s real and at least eighteen carets.

  Dave reached into his backpack and took out a zippered canvas money bag.

  He handed it to Tony, who unzipped it and rifled through it.

  “It’s all brand new. I thought all the jewelry stores were cleaned out long ago.”

  “Maybe I’m one of the ones who cleaned ‘em.”

  Tony was still debating in his head.

  “Walk with me, Dave, back to my quad runner.”

  “You have a quad runner?”

  “Yep. Brand spanking new Polaris. Two seater. It don’t carry a lot of weight, but then again my merchandize is pretty light.”

  As they walked, Tony said, “You’ll need a cover. I’ll tell them business is too brisk for me to keep up with. I’m taking on a partner. That’s you.”

  “Okay. I don’t know enough about the drug trade to sound convincing.”

  “I’ll coach you as we go. You’ll also need a reason to be asking about the horse-drawn pickup.”

  “I can say we’re branching out. We’re going to start dealing in bootleg liquor too. And we need a vehicle to haul it around with. I’ll say I heard a rumor there’s such a vehicle somewh
ere in Albuquerque. I’m trying to find it so I can buy it.”

  “Okay. Sounds plausible.”

  “But will they buy it?”

  “I don’t know. I guess we’ll find out tomorrow.”

  Chapter 50

  The Polaris Ranger was built for off-roading fun, back in the days when people still had fun. Hunting, fishing, mudding, just traveling through the wilderness.

  It would go just about anywhere, it seated two, and was as reliable as any off-road equipment on the market.

  Tony used it for business.

  And it had cost him a pretty penny.

  Dave knew darn well how he’d gotten it. But he played dumb as Tony explained things to him. He hung on Tony’s every word, and tried to come across as fascinated.

  “Preppers? Like in the old cable TV shows?”

  “Yeah. People thought they were crazy because they spent so much of their time preparing for a big disaster. Most of them just stored food and water, guns and ammunition. But some of them foresaw exactly what happened.”

  “What did happen, exactly?”

  “There were fierce storms on the surface of the sun. The earth got bombarded with electromagnetic pulses which shorted out everything electric or electronic.”

  Dave said, “Seriously? So that’s how come all the vehicles died? And all the lights went out?”

  “Exactly. Well, there were a handful of preppers who saw that particular disaster coming, and who planned for it. This guy I know, Paul, was one of those preppers. He bought a small portable building, then lined the inside of it with sheet metal, then lined it again with plywood.

  “I’m not sure of the science of it all or how it worked, but he filled that building with all kinds of things, including three of these things. And when everything else was destroyed his things somehow survived. He’s also got a ham radio. He can talk to people all over the world. Let me tell you, it’s bad out there. Real bad. Only ten percent or so of people in the United States are still alive. In some countries, even less than that.”

  “And nobody’s ever tried to take this thing away from you?”

  “No, for a couple of different reasons. The people in Albuquerque have spread the word I’m untouchable. ‘Hands off,’ they call it. That’s because many of their leaders need the drugs I bring them. If somebody were to harm me or take my vehicle, the rest of the factions would find out and would all declare war on them. Right now they have an uneasy truce, but if one of the factions did something like that, the rest would gang up on them.