No Time For Mourning: Book Four in The Borrowed World Series

by Franklin Horton

  “Like what?” Don asked.

  “Vegetables, fruit, liquor, or cigarettes to name a few things.”

  Hodge perked up. “They got liquor?”

  The guard stared at Hodge. “You should be asking about soap. When’s the last time you bathed?”

  Hodge shrugged. “Reckon it woulda been last time I got real dirty.”

  “Hell, I feel like I’m going to need a bath just from riding beside you,” the guard grumbled. “I may even have to burn these clothes.”

  “Easy now,” Don said. “He’s got feelings too.”

  “I’m surprised he can still feel anything under all that dirt,” the guard snapped.

  While Don was thinking of a reply, the guard jumped out and directed him where to turn. He guided Don while he backed up to the tennis court, getting close enough that they could open the gates on the trailer and there would be nowhere for the cattle to go but onto the tennis courts. While they prodded the cattle out of the trailer, Baxter drove up in the golf cart.

  “You boys want cash or is there anything you need to trade for?” Baxter asked.

  Don looked at Hodge like he wasn’t so sure about how to respond. “What kind of things do you have?”

  “We got about everything,” Baxter said. “This is a community of folks with good resources. They’re compiling those resources for the good of the community.”

  “By resources, you’re meaning money, right?” Don asked.

  Baxter nodded. “That’s right. The money that these folks have invested in their community goes toward these cattle, security, fuel, and other resources.”

  “You got liquor?” Hodge asked. “That feller there said there might be liquor.” He gestured at the guard.

  “There might be some spirits available,” Baxter said. “Do you have a preference?”

  “His preference is cheap and strong,” Don said.

  Hodge nodded.

  Baxter got on his radio. “Debbie, I need you to bring a quart of liquor to the tennis courts. The gentlemen requested something cheap and strong.”

  While Baxter was counting crisp green bills into Don’s hand, another golf cart arrived and a young woman brought Baxter a bottle of liquor, leaving it in the seat of his golf cart. When he finished counting money, he took the bottle and presented it to Hodge.

  “How much you take out for the liquor?” he asked.

  “Not a cent,” Baxter replied. “Consider this bottle a gift from me. It’s a gesture of good will. I’m hoping you boys can come back in another day or two with more cattle.”

  “We can if we have the fuel,” Don said.

  “The guard that brought you in will take you to the maintenance shed and refill your vehicle,” Baxter said. “You come back in a day or two with another load of cattle and we can do this whole transaction over again. Anything in particular I can be on the lookout for? A particular food? Cigarettes?”

  Don’s eyes lit up. “I don’t need any cigarettes. I’m about out of chewing tobacco, though. A carton or two of Red Man would be a welcome sight.”

  Baxter smiled. “I’ll have it waiting on you.”

  “We’ll be back, Mr. Baxter. You can count on it,” Don assured him.

  “Good. You gentlemen get your vehicle fueled up and I’ll see you back here day after tomorrow.”

  Everyone shook hands again and the two men got back in their vehicle. The security guard chose to walk rather than sit by Hodge again.

  “I really smell that bad?” he asked Don.

  “Some days you’re riper than a melon,” Don replied.

  Hodge pulled the collar out of his shirt out, buried his nose in it, and inhaled deeply. “I don’t smell it.”

  “You’re a fortunate man,” Don said.

  Chapter 10

  Baxter

  Baxter was well aware that he was in over his head. Everyone had been turning to him for answers since the shit hit the fan, like he was some kind of expert. He didn’t have any answers. Being an Emergency Management Coordinator was about being a liaison between agencies. It was being the person that communicated with FEMA, talked to the media, applied for aid for disasters that had already occurred, and applied for grants to prepare for those that had not yet occurred.

  Although he’d gone to a lot of trainings, none of them were worth a damn as far as preparing him for the current situation. He’d sat through a lot of Power Point presentations in his position. He’d learned about continuity of operations, setting up a command center, resource management, and about interagency coordination. What was happening now was not like anything he’d trained for.

  Things had fallen apart. Everyone had their own opinion about what was happening in the world and what it meant. No one wanted to listen to him and before long he was being elbowed out of the picture. Emergency resources that were supposed to be under his control started disappearing. He kept reverting back to his training, trying to hold daily briefings, while fewer and fewer people were attending.

  He felt like everyone could see that he was an unqualified phony. There were so many people around who were used to functioning in real emergencies. There were veterans, cops, EMTs, and National Guard folks all giving him the same look. He tried to maintain control but he was a phony. He was a bureaucrat who was in this job because he’d screwed up everything else he tried to do. He’d been a teacher, a banker, a real estate agent, and nothing had worked. He’d been fired or forced to resign from all those positions. If there were anyone around to fire him now, he was sure he’d be gone from this position as well.

  A family friend who’d felt sorry for him had pulled some political strings to get him this job. Everyone saw it as the kind of position that every county was required to have though it served no purpose most of the time. He had come into it with enthusiasm, anxious to learn the new job and see what he could do to help his community.

  After developing a local emergency plan—a key part of the position—the county administrator called him to his office.

  “Look, Baxter, we’re glad to have you aboard. Don’t be trying to change the world,” he said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’ll be blunt with you,” the administrator replied. “You’re here as a favor. We get grant money for your position. I’ll be determining how those funds are spent. Your biggest job is to not rock the boat and not fuck anything up. Are we clear?”

  While Baxter was shocked, he completely understood. He rose from his chair, shook the administrator’s hand, and backed out of the office. For the last two years he’d gone to all the trainings they asked him to go to and signed where they asked him to sign. He spent no money and issued no memos. He simply did the minimum that the position required, which was exactly what the county wanted.

  He was completely taken off guard on the day of the terror attacks when the county administrator came to him and asked what they—specifically Baxter—were planning in terms of a coordinated local response.

  Baxter shrugged. “I don’t have a clue.”

  The county administrator had gotten very angry, slamming his fist on Baxter’s desk. “What the hell do you mean you don’t have a clue? This is your job.”

  “You told me my job was to stay out of everyone’s way and not fuck things up,” Baxter reminded him. “You never allowed me to do my job.”

  “You’re a damn liar,” the administrator said. “I never said that. You repeat that and I’ll deny it.”

  “Look, I’m not trying to get anyone in trouble,” Baxter said.

  “You’re not in any position to get anyone in trouble,” the administrator exploded. “Remember there are a lot of eyes on you right now. You screw this up and they’ll hang you from the rafters. You wrote an emergency plan. I suggest you reacquaint yourself with it and start carrying it out immediately.”

  That was when Baxter knew they were going to make him a scapegoat. If there were any shortcomings in the county’s response, they would be pinned on him. Any deaths would be pinned on h
im. Any misappropriated resources would be pinned on him. He had everything to lose and nothing to gain. There was no way that anything they did would be adequate in the face of the pending disaster they faced in the wake of the terror attacks.

  That very day he set up a daily briefing for the community and began sharing what limited information he had. He hoped that if he could get his face out there, if he could be seen as being active in the disaster response, it would be hard for them to paint him as a failure. That was his hope, anyway.

  The only practical thing he had to offer was basic instruction to the community on water filtration and hygiene. While most of his training was in keeping communities stable until aid arrived, every indication was that there would be no aid arriving in this disaster. He was lying to the community around him. He was a fraud.

  It was after one of his less than mediocre briefings that a contingent from Glenwall Country Club approached him. He did not know the men that introduced themselves to him though he recognized their names. He knew them as wealthy, powerful men who were at the epicenter of local society. They were men who understood that being successful in business wasn’t always about your own abilities. Sometimes it was about identifying a problem and being able to put the right person on that problem.

  In this case, the problem was the societal collapse and the failure of the infrastructure. Somehow these men had come across his name as being the person to bring onto their team to help them face this problem. More likely they’d merely seen his title and assumed that he brought some skill and training to the table. While Baxter felt like a fraud and felt vastly underequipped to deal with this problem, there was no way he was telling these men that. He could have a new future at Glenwall. They could provide him with a level of insurance against the pending collapse. If what they said was true, all he would have to do was identify what they needed and they would work toward gathering those resources.

  Above all, they respected him. At least they respected what they thought he was. He’d never been respected in this position before. He was treated like a child and basically told to sit down and shut up unless spoken to. He now had the opportunity to change that. How could he not take that opportunity?

  Chapter 11

  Randi

  Sherry and Carla took the kids to the spring and tried to clean them up as best they could. It was difficult. Cold spring water with no soap didn’t have much effect on ground-in coal dirt. While they were gone, Randi and Tommy buried their parents in the yard. They’d already siphoned all the gas out of the tractor. Tommy was able to start it anyway, using it to dig until the fuel was exhausted. Then it was shovel and mattock. At four feet, they could go no further and squeezed their parents in side-by-side, covering them up with rich black dirt. It was as emotionally exhausting as it was physical, with Randi and Tommy alternating between tears and rage.

  When their work was done, they returned to the barn with their arms and backs aching. They found the girls still trying to clean up the children, this time using some glass cleaner they found on a shelf. Tommy took the digging tools and returned them to their proper place. Carla got up from where she was scrubbing a child and gestured for her mom to follow her outside. From the look on her face, she had something to say, and her daughter was so hot-headed Randi didn’t know what to expect.

  “Linda says that she saw one of the people that set the house on fire,” Carla said. She was the oldest of the children and probably the only one capable of verbalizing what she saw.

  “She said that after Granny got shot, a woman with long blonde hair and tattoos on her arms came around the corner and touched Granny’s neck. She said the woman stayed there until someone yelled for her and then she left.”

  That instantly had Randi’s full attention. That only described one person she knew.

  “Did she hear what they called her?” Randi asked.

  Carla nodded. “Lisa.”

  The information hit Randi like a fist. She shook her head, pacing involuntarily and trying to get her breathing under control. Tommy walked out at this point to see what was going on.

  “What the hell is going on?” he asked.

  Randi stopped pacing and stared at him, her eyes on fire.

  “What?” he repeated.

  “Lisa Cross,” Randi said.

  “Did this?” Tommy asked, gesturing toward the still burning house.

  Randi nodded.

  “Alone?”

  “No,” Carla said. “Linda said there were others but she only saw the girl. Heard her called Lisa.”

  “She described that bitch to a tee,” Randi said. “Long blonde hair and tattooed arms.”

  “She’d have been with her family,” Tommy said. “The rest of that trash would have been with her.”

  “Why?” Randi asked. “Why do this?”

  “I ain’t got no idea, Sissy,” Tommy said. “But there ain’t but one way to fix it.”

  Randi was nodding.

  “What’s that?” Carla asked, certain that she knew the answer.

  “Kill every fucking one of them and burn their house to the ground,” Randi said.

  “I still wonder why they did it,” Carla said.

  “It don’t matter why,” Tommy said. “All that matters is that we make things right.”

  “When do you want to do it?” Randi asked.

  “Dawn,” Tommy said.

  “I want to go,” Carla said.

  “No way,” Tommy and Randi said at the same time.

  “Why not?” Carla asked both of them.

  “Somebody’s got to watch these babies,” Tommy said. “You and Sherry need to stay with them in case we don’t come home.”

  “How am I supposed to live with that?” Carla asked. “How are the rest of us supposed to go on if you all don’t come home?”

  “I can’t live with not doing something,” Randi said. “I have no choice in this. It’s what every fiber of my body is ordering me to do.”

  “What happens if you don’t come home?” Carla asked. “Seriously, what do we do?”

  “You go to my friend Jim’s place and you tell him what happened. Hopefully, he’s in a position to help you out,” Randi said. “I’ll draw you a map before we go.”

  Carla ran the fingers of both hands through her hair, trying to grip the magnitude of the conversation. “Sherry won’t be happy about this.”

  “Sherry can get over it,” Tommy said.

  Chapter 12

  Randi

  Sherry and Carla made a bed in the hayloft, putting the children between them and covering up with old horse blankets. They didn’t expect to get much sleep out of fear that the children would wake during the night and wander off the edge of the loft, though they were all exhausted both physically and mentally.

  Randi and Tommy stood guard. With the shock, the anger, and the sadness of the day, sleep would not have come to them anyway. They sat outside the barn in rusty metal folding chairs watching the night pass. The moon reflected on dewy grass. Owls hooted. Eventually even the crickets got tired and went to sleep.

  When Randi’s clothes became soaked with dew, she shivered. Nearly all their clothes had been burned in the fire. There were some things still hanging on the clothesline or scattered in vehicles, however it wasn’t anything warm. It would be a long winter if they couldn’t get a hold of appropriate clothes for each of them. It was but one more thing on a list of many.

  She walked to the remains of her childhood home. The structure had collapsed into the basement and burned completely up by this point. All that remained was a deep bed of glowing embers radiating a wall of heat. She could not help but feel guilt for warming herself over the charred shell of her family’s home. It raised a lump in her throat to think that this was the last time the old house would ever provide her comfort.

  She stared into the embers, thinking about the things lost in there. Most of the guns the family owned, with the exception of what they carried, had been in there. All of the fami
ly photographs. Everything special that any of them owned had been in there. They’d lost everything except for the people at their sides.

  She heard the scuff of a step behind her. Tommy came alongside her and stared into the embers. It was like watching a lava flow cool. “I’m tired of sitting over there thinking by myself. Ain’t nothing but the same thoughts swirling round and round. It’s making me crazy.” His voice was abrupt and alien in the stillness.

  “You thinking about what I’m thinking about?” Randi asked. She already knew the answer. There was only one thing to be thinking about.

  “Probably,” Tommy said.

  “How we kill the Cross family?”

  “Yep.”

  “Come up with anything?”

  “I’ve ruled out anything complicated,” he said. “I’m back to the groundhog method.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We set their house on fire and shoot them as they come out. Same way you’d smoke a groundhog out of a hole.”

  “I like the sound of it.”

  She caught her brother in the corner of her vision. The glow of the coals washed his face in red and orange, colored his damp eyes.

  “Momma and Daddy were good people,” he said. It wasn’t a statement of loss or emotion, merely a comment on the nature of the two people they’d lost.

  “Being good people doesn’t mean much anymore,” Randi said. “Bad shit can still happen to you.”

  “They thought it was important to be good people. They thought if you did the right thing, everything would be fine.”

  “People that think that way may not be prepared for the reality of this world,” Randi said. “They may be better off dead than to have to change into something they don’t want to be.”

  “I can’t believe you even said that,” Tommy said. “How can they be better off dead?”

  “Daddy wouldn’t have had the stomach for what people are becoming,” Randi said. “He’s better off not seeing it. I think I’d rather that he died being the man that I remember, a good man, rather than having to become something else. I’ve had to become something else and there’s times I’m not comfortable with it.”