Chapter 18
Before Tom left the house he searched it thoroughly for more bodies.
Another lesson he’d learned in recent days was that the bodies could be found in the most curious places.
Parents who murdered their children, for example, usually shot them in their sleep to make the process easier on them. Or they killed them elsewhere and then placed them in their beds, covers pulled up around their chins, as though to keep them from being chilled.
In one house he found a young boy, perhaps eight years of age, dressed in his Sunday-best suit and tie and placed between his mattress and box spring.
That one threw Tom for a loop.
He finally decided his parents, before they died, wanted to dress him appropriately to meet his maker. And perhaps they “buried” him in his bed to keep stray dogs from picking at his bones.
There were no additional bodies in this particular house.
Tom was relieved, for this was his second burn on this particular day and he didn’t know that he could stomach any more.
He returned to the front yard, where Buddy was tied to the driver’s side mirror of a classic Mustang. He placed the suicide weapon and his baton into the saddle bag and took out a can of fluorescent orange spray paint.
Thus far there had been no concerted city-wide effort at searching abandoned houses for bodies.
Major Shultz knew there would be at some point, though, as the bodies started piling up higher and higher.
At some point, the major reasoned, teams would be tasked to go door to door, for the specific purpose of dragging bodies onto the street for disposal.
After all, estimates were that sixty to seventy people a day were committing suicide now. And the experts expected it to rise significantly when bottled water supplies started to dry up.
And they expected it to triple when winter set in and life became infinitely harder.
The major’s solution to the problem which lay ahead in the not-too distant future was for his Rangers to carry spray paint with them.
“Any time you clear a house of bodies, and the house appears abandoned, I want you to spray a big check mark on the front door. That way when body collection crews come along later, they’ll know they won’t have to waste time checking that particular house. They can move on to the next one.”
As Tom painted a door-sized orange checkmark, he couldn’t help but wonder what would become of the house in the years ahead.
It was once the pride and joy of a family who no doubt took great care of it.
The floors were swept and mopped daily, the lawn was carefully manicured.
Children no doubt played gleefully in the house. Birthday parties were thrown. Memories were made.
Now it was just a death house.
Just another of many like it.
He made sure the door was locked before he departed. He didn’t really understand why. Anyone wanting access could just step into the broken window frame as he had.
He knew it was just a matter of time before looters and scavengers came around, looking for food or water or anything else of value in the now-abandoned house.
But he suspected it wouldn’t be for awhile.
The fluids which had drained from the decomposing body onto the easy chair and the carpet had soaked them thoroughly.
The awful stench which permeated the house wasn’t going away anytime soon.
And it would take a very sturdy looter indeed, with a very strong stomach, to want to climb through that particular window and into this particular house.
Chapter 19
As Tom knocked on the door at 5555-55th Street he thought how cool it would be to have such an address himself.
No one could possibly forget how to find him. It would be the easiest address in the world to remember.
And, since the sun was starting to dip in the western sky, it would be a great place to end up this particular day. It wouldn’t be hard at all to remember where he left off the next morning.
An old woman answered the door.
A very old woman, bordering on ancient.
Tom’s heart instantly went out to her. She seemed to be in great pain.
“Can I help you, young man?”
She spoke with equal parts curiosity, misery and suspicion.
“Hello ma’am. I’m Tom Cohen, from the Texas Rangers. I’m going door to door checking on people, to make sure they have everything they need. Is there anything I can do to help you? Bring you some water, perhaps? Maybe some food?”
The look of suspicion left her face and she became a little bit friendlier.
“Oh. I thought you were another beggar looking for something. I almost didn’t answer the door.”
Tom had been briefed there were thugs going door to door looking for easy marks. Occasionally when they sensed someone was alone and vulnerable, they forced their way in and robbed them of food or water.
“No, ma’am. I’m one of the good guys, but I’m glad you’re being cautious. Is there anything I can do to make this whole thing easier on you?”
“Well, if you know how to bring the power back on so I can watch my shows it would help me a lot. My shows used to come on Monday night. I really miss them.”
“I sure wish I could, ma’am. I would in a heartbeat. Can I help you in any other way? Take out your garbage, raise stuck windows? I can put you on my list and bring you a case of water tomorrow if you like.”
“No, thank you. Some of my neighbors are sharing their food and water with me, God bless ‘em. The only other thing I need is my medication. I’ve run out of some of them, and others are getting low. I don’t suppose there’s any way you can help me with that?”
Tom hated to turn her down on the only request she’d made.
“Well, now. I might be able to help at that. There’s a pharmacy a couple of blocks from here. I might be able to get there while there’s still enough light to dig through it and see if I can find your meds. Can you loan me the bottles?”
She smiled broadly, as though finally seeing an end in sight for the pain she was suffering.
“Why, yes. Come on in and I’ll get them.”
“I’ll wait out here for you, ma’am. I don’t want you to get into the habit of letting strangers into your house unnecessarily.”
“Okay, then. I’ll be back in a minute.”
She returned with four bottles. Two of them were partially full.
“Here you go, young man.”
“Thank you, ma’am. Now, if it’s too dark in the pharmacy when I get there I’ll have to come back in the morning. Did you take enough out for your doses tonight and in the morning, just in case?”
“Oh, my goodness. I never thought of that.”
He gave her back the two bottles that were partially full.
She returned after another minute.
“I just dumped them all on my dining room table, in case you get lost coming back or forget my address.”
He laughed.
“Your address, ma’am, is one I could never forget if I wanted to.”
Tom said goodbye and placed the pill bottles in his saddlebag, then mounted up.
He rode two blocks to an abandoned Walmart store.
Before he tied Buddy up and went inside he checked his watch. He had less than an hour of light left. He’d have to hurry.
He knew from past experience that the store pharmacy had no exterior windows. The building itself had sky lights which would make it relatively easy to find his way to the pharmacy. Once there, though, the pharmacy would be very dark.
His solution was to find his way to the shelf where the candles were stored.
Most of them were gone now, taken by looters to light their homes at night. He managed to find one which had been knocked to the floor and buried under trash the looters had left behind.
Then he made his way to the pharmacy, through an electronics section which had been picked clean.
Tom knew the last laugh was on the l
ooters, for stealing televisions and computers which would never work again.
His attention was diverted to the jewelry department, where two men in their twenties were looking through a glass display case.
Most of the other display cases had been smashed, their contents stolen. The men were debating whether the jewelry in this particular case was worthless costume jewelry, or was worth their effort to steal.
“Go ahead and break it,” one said to the other. “We can always toss it if we can’t get anything for it.”
Tom sensed the “anything” he was referring to was dope.
Tom could have left them be. He was, after all, on his own important mission.
But Tom had been a law enforcement officer for too long. There were some things he just couldn’t let slide.
He asked in a loud, clear voice, “You boys aren’t stealing or anything, are you?”
They stopped talking immediately and sized him up as best they could in the dim light of the skylights.
He had no uniform. They didn’t make him out to be a cop.
“What business is it of yours, asshole?”
“I’m a Texas Ranger. If you don’t want me to ruin the rest of your day, I suggest you leave the store and get on your way.”
The man laughed.
“Oh, bullshit. There ain’t no Rangers in Lubbock. And even if you was a damn Ranger, this ain’t your jurisdiction.”
“My jurisdiction, young man, extends anywhere in the state of Texas.”
Tom didn’t see the third man, who’d left his two buddies to go to the sporting goods section. He was returning with a plastic sack full of shotgun shells when he stumbled upon the conversation.
He’d come up behind Tom, and about twenty feet away from him, when he heard Tom challenge his friends and came to a dead stop.
The man quietly crouched down and put the plastic bag on the floor.
He caught the eyes of the two men at the jewelry counter, but neither said a word or even acknowledged him.
As Tom tried to talk the two men into abandoning their endeavor and leaving peacefully, the third man quietly observed. Then he slowly retrieved a handgun from a belt holster.
“I’m trying to give you guys a break, now,” Tom said. “But it’s really your choice. You can leave the store or you can go to jail.”
All four men knew Tom was bluffing. The justice system was broken beyond repair. The only people being arrested now were men caught red-handed in the act of killing someone.
Tom never saw the man behind him raise his weapon and aim it at his head.
He saw the man at the jewelry counter smile, but never thought to wonder why.
Tom never knew what hit him.
Chapter 20
The Rangers had taken to mustering at the steps of the Mahon Federal Building every other day at high noon.
It was a lousy way of conducting business, for it took each of them off the streets and their assigned duties for a minimum of two hours every other day. Up to five hours for those who lived on the outskirts of the city.
But it was the only means they had of communicating.
The meetings were typically rowdy affairs as they played pranks on one another, told the latest dirty jokes, and told grim tales of their most recent exploits.
“I burned a body of a naked man I found in an abandoned house,” Ranger Tony Maddox was telling the others as Randy walked up. “He was tied to the bed, face down and gagged, with his hands cuffed behind his back. The handcuffs were covered with pink fur, and the only thing he was wearing was a woman’s blond wig.
“There was a ping pong paddle next to the body, and a note.
“It said, ‘Dear officers… I didn’t kill him. I was spanking him for being a bad boy and he must have had a heart attack. Please bury him for me, would you?’”
One of the other Rangers asked, “Did you bury him?”
“Oh, hell no. We dragged him out to the middle of the street and burned him. The neighbors came out and watched and said now they understood.”
“I asked what they understood, and they said they’d seen him out in the yard a time or two wearing a diaper with a pacifier in his mouth. I’ll tell you what, you never know how kinky some people can be behind closed doors.”
Major Shultz came out of the building and counted heads.
“One of you is missing. Who is it?”
Randy looked around and started to open his mouth, but somebody beat him to the punch.
“Tom Cohen. Bastard’s always late.”
Someone else said, “I heard he was going door to door, offering to trade his horse for a pogo stick.”
It was well known that Tom hated riding horses.
Somebody else asked, “Hey Tony… that note you found with the naked guy? It wasn’t signed ‘Love, Tom,’ was it?”
Major Shultz put a damper on the fun when he said, “Okay, I have some good news for you guys. But we’ll give Cohen ten more minutes. In the meantime, try to at least act professional, okay?”
Ten minutes came and went.
Finally the major said, “Okay. He must have gotten delayed. I’ll fill him in later on what he missed.”
He proceeded to fill the Rangers in on the latest local and world news.
“Yesterday I sat in on a meeting with the city’s Director of Water and Waste. Real nice guy by the name of John Martinez. His crews have been feverishly working on their equipment, and have gotten two of their pumps working again. They used to have four, so they’ll only be pumping at fifty percent. But they’ll be pumping within a few days. The United States Army had a secret facility at someplace called Red River Armory and was able to protect a limited amount of industrial-sized generators and about a hundred deuce and a half trucks to move them.
“We’re getting one, as well as a crew of men who think they can get our own water plant generator working again.
“The Army is going to deliver that generator to the water plant on Friday. Then they’re going to systematically drive the deuce and a half down every city street, making an announcement to the public with bullhorns.
“The water will not be turned on until the entire city has been swept with the truck. In addition, they’re asking the local police and us to help get the message out.
“It’s critically important that the public get the message, for their own safety. So from now on, any time you encounter the public tell them this message from the mayor: the water will be turned on in a few days. But the initial run of water will be contaminated with deadly bacteria. They are to run their faucets for two minutes before they can use any of it. Also, they should boil it before they drink it for the first few days. Otherwise they might get sick and die.
“And Lord knows there’s way too much dying going on already.
“Okay. That’s the first piece of good news. Here’s some even better news. Ranger HQ has procured us some hand-held radios. I understand they were negotiating with some doomsday preppers in San Antonio for them. Rumor is they had to pay a pretty penny, but that’s none of my concern.
“My concern is that we’ll finally be able to communicate again.
“Now, the radios are coming up here on horseback from San Antonio. That’ll take four or five more days. The generator we got from our own prepper here locally will be used to charge the batteries. We’re getting two six-hole battery chargers and twenty extra batteries.
“I’ll continue to come in here every morning, I’ll crank up the generator each day and will keep all the batteries charged.
“When I issue your radio to you, it’ll have a battery on it and I’ll give you one spare. It’s going to be your responsibility to ride downtown to swap out your batteries when they go dead.
“I understand these are top-of-the-line Motorolas. If you conserve your batteries they should last you a couple of days or more. No idle chit-chat. Use them to call for backup or to share important information, not to talk about some hot woman you saw walking down the street. U
nderstand?”
He glared at a couple of Rangers in particular. The looks on their faces told him they understood.
“Now then, we’ll still meet here every other day until we get the radios. Then we’ll make it every fifth day. Any questions before we break up?”
There were none.
As the group broke up, the major had a question of his own.
For Randy.
“Randy, any idea where Tom Cohen might be? He’s never been this late before.”
“No, sir. Last I heard he was canvassing his neighborhood.”
“Take a break from your own neighborhood. Find him. Make sure he’s okay. Tell him to report to me so I know he’s okay too. If he drags ass in here later I’ll tell him to leave a note on your door so you can go back to what you were doing.”
“Yes, sir.”
Chapter 21
Steve Peters was in a quandary. When the lights went out, he’d expected Major Shultz to come calling. The major had known that Steve had a ham radio antenna in his back yard because he’d helped carry the pieces of the antenna two years before. He’d also known Steve’s radio was EMP-protected, because Steve had stupidly let it slip.
And Steve knew in a crisis, Shultz would eventually come to him to use the radio.
Steve knew that Shultz would likely be on guard the first time he came to visit. The likelihood Steve could get the drop on him on his first visit was minimal.
But the major had to go.
For the major was the only one who knew Steve’s house wasn’t really vacant. That Steve’s supposedly abandoned house was in reality a secret fortress. One well stocked not only with the essentials, but with creature comforts most people were having to live without.
But were missing tremendously.
And Steve’s very survival depended on his secrets being kept, for if word got out he had such things he’d be a huge target.
Steve’s original plan was to let the major come and go his first visit. To be friendly to him, and to place his radio at the major’s disposal. Provided the major agree to certain stipulations. For one, he could only come and go at night. Steve certainly didn’t want his neighbors to see the major coming and going from a vacant house and wondering why.
A Whole New World: Ranger: Book 2 Page 6