He said, “Thank you.”
It was only two words, but it was all that needed to be said.
Chapter 59
The second day on the road was tedious. They had to move slower than they’d wanted, because the rocking motion of the wagon made Millie nauseated.
They also made a stop at a Pharmacy chain store. Randy checked the store for threats, then stood guard outside while Dave and Brandy picked up a good supply of Millie’s medications.
There was no way to tell whether they’d get another chance, and didn’t want her to outlive her pain meds.
When they emerged from the store, Brandy said, “What a nightmare!”
“How so?”
“The junkies trashed the place. They tore down the wire cage that separated the pharmacy from the rest of the store. Then they went through all the pills and took the ones they wanted. All the rest of them, they just threw on the floor.
“The entire pharmacy is just one big mountain of pill bottles. We were lucky to find the right ones as quickly as we did. It could have taken a lot longer.”
“But you found the ones we needed?”
“Yes. At least a six month supply.”
On top of everything else, it began to rain just after they stopped to eat lunch. They took refuge at a city park just adjacent to the loop, where those who wouldn’t fit in the wagon huddled under the shelter of a covered pavilion.
The rain never really stopped, but it slowed until it was more a minor irritance than a show-stopper.
They could have stopped again, for ponchos. But it was too late. They were already soaked to the skin, and couldn’t possibly get any wetter.
By the time they stopped for the night, at another roadside motel, they were miserable.
None of them, save Millie and the boys, had a change of clothes.
And there was no way they’d get any sleep in wet clothing. The only option was to shed their wet clothing and hang it to dry in their motel rooms while they slept naked, relying on the bed sheets and blankets to keep them warm.
Dave was able to nap on and off during the day, hunkered down in the wagon, and pulled guard duty for a second night in a row.
He was wet too, but he was a trooper. He spent the night on the wagon master’s bench, two heavy blankets wrapped around him, and shivering.
“Don’t worry about me,” he told Brandy when she came down to tell him good night. “The shivering will help keep me alert.”
The morning of the third day dawned without a cloud in the sky. The birds were singing their “morning songs,” and the sun started to dry everything out.
Dave developed a badly running nose and sneezing fits, but other than that the crew was in pretty good shape.
At mid-morning they stopped at another park and let the horses graze for an hour.
Randy sat by himself under a tree.
Brandy wandered over and asked if he was okay.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Why do you ask?”
“Shannon told me you were a dumbass.”
“Excuse me?”
“Hey, that was her word, not mine. She told me about your conversation. About how you were beating yourself up over your partner’s death. And how she had to give you a very heavy dose of tough love to set you straight again.”
“You’re not gonna give me a second dose, are you?”
“Nope. One dose and a good kick in the butt is usually all one needs. I just wanted to check up on you, to make sure you were okay. And to let you know I’m here for you if you ever need to talk.”
“Okay.”
He said nothing else until she started to walk away.
Then he added, “Hey Brandy?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
Chapter 60
Their arrival at Millie’s daughter’s house was a spectacle like no other.
The daughter’s family was country, in every sense of the word. They were independent and strong, relying on no one and getting by well on their own, even before the blackout.
The blackout to them was more an inconvenience than anything else. For they were a farm family, who grew their own crops and raised their own livestock. They already had the tools to survive, and their only real need was security: to keep what they owned from being stolen by others.
Millie’s daughter was sitting on the front porch knitting when the wagon and rider came into view. To ease some of the crowding in the wagon, the team had taken turns walking, and Dave and Shannon strode alongside the wagon as it made its way closer and closer to the farm house.
It could well have been a scene from the old west, except the narrow road they were on was paved.
And the canvas wagon cover was painted in red and black with the words, “Texas Tech Red Raiders.”
The daughter, whose name was Katrina, called into the house to her husband.
“Hey, Chris! Come out here, will you? And bring your gun.”
She didn’t know what to expect from the painted wagon and its entourage. But it never hurt to be safe.
When Jake saw his favorite aunt from the cover of the wagon, though, he didn’t want to wait for the formalities. He scrambled out the back of the still-moving wagon and ran full speed across the front yard.
His little brother wasn’t far behind.
Once the arrivals were no longer deemed a threat, the homecoming was a joyous one, though dampened at the news Katrina had lost a sister and brother-in-law.
She’d been worried about her sick mother and feared she’d never see her again.
She, the mother Millie, was the one she’d expected to lose. Certainly not her only sister.
But untimely deaths, even at the hands of another, weren’t uncommon in these miserable times. It was getting to the point where most of the families Katrina knew had lost someone. And it was growing worse by the day.
Once all the introductions were made, the visitors were invited for dinner.
Or, as west Texans are prone to call the evening meal, “supper.”
They almost declined, wanting to hurry back and hopefully save Brandy’s job. But then Chris asked them, “When’s the last time y’all had fresh pork ribs? I slaughtered a hog two days ago. Got it packed in my chest freezer. I’ll pull out a couple of racks and put ‘em on the spit, and they’ll be ready in no time.”
Randy was overcome in two vastly different ways.
His mouth watered at the prospect of having fresh meat, for it was getting harder and harder to come by.
And his head spun at the words “chest freezer.”
Was he hearing things? Had he finally lost his mind?
He hadn’t.
But he’d stumbled across one of the few preppers, besides Steve Peters, in all of Lubbock County.
“Aha! I knew that’d get you.”
Randy had heard of the preppers. The major had explained where they got the radios they were using, and how some people had been able to protect a certain amount of electronics.
Randy knew the preppers were out there, albeit in very limited numbers.
But he never thought he’d actually meet one.
“Ordinarily we would never have told you, you understand,” Katrina said. “But you’re a lawman, so we felt we could trust you. And you brought my mama and my nephews back here, so mama can die among family instead of all alone. And so that the boys would be safe after her passing.
“We owe you something. Something bigger than we could ever possibly repay. The least we can do is send you away with some good food in your bellies.”
“We’ll keep your secret, won’t we gang?” Randy said as he looked to the others for confirmation. “And we’ll accept your kind offer to stay for supper.”
While Chris was barbequing, Katrina made sure her mother was comfortable and then gave her new friends a tour of the property.
“Most of our provisions are under lock and key, as well as most of our guns and ammunition
,” she explained. Chris would strangle me if I showed you that part of the operation, but I can show you some other stuff.”
She took them into the inner sanctums of the farm house. It wasn’t until they were actually inside the house that they noticed all the windows had been covered.
With five sheets of plywood.
It didn’t appear that way from the outside of the house because the curtains were still in place.
From the inside, though, it looked as though the living room was a huge plywood box.
“Both floors are like this. What we’ve essentially done is to make the place bulletproof, in case we ever come under attack. Each of the windows has a removable gun port we can take out to return fire. We tested it by firing several rounds into the back of the house. Between the brick, the original walls, and the plywood, not a single shell made it into the house.
“The only down side is we have to use lights twenty four hours a day, but that’s no problem. We have a turbine outside that generates electricity when the wind blows and stores it in batteries for when it doesn’t. And we have a huge diesel generator we use as a backup.”
Brandy looked around, and was impressed. But she had a lot of questions.
“How did you protect all your lamps?”
“We have two huge shipping containers buried outside. Just like the ones on container ships. One is used for food storage. The other was chock full of lamps, small appliances, a ham radio, TVs, DVD players. Everything we needed to maintain our standard of life.”
Dave was incredulous.
“You have TV?”
“Sure.”
She turned it on to show them.
“Of course, it’s worthless without a DVD player. We were able to save a pretty good collection of DVDs, though, so as long as we watch them sparingly, we shouldn’t run out for awhile.”
“You’re too far for city water. Where do you get your water?”
“We have our own well, driven most of the time by a good old fashioned windmill. But again, when the wind is sparse, we were able to save the well pump.”
They were impressed.
Very impressed.
After their tour and an exquisite meal, the team said their goodbyes and left. They were invited to stay the night but chose not to.
“Thanks anyway. But we’ve got three more hours of daylight to travel by. It would be an awful shame to let it go to waste.”
Back on the road, Dave announced he was tired of sitting in the back of the wagon and asked Randy to take a turn on Trigger.
Randy obliged, and sat on the driver’s bench with Brandy.
“Do you feel better since Shannon ripped you a new one?”
“Oddly enough, yeah I do.”
“Still feel guilty about your partner’s death?”
“Yeah. But maybe I can see things from another perspective now too.”
“Feel good about what we did today, bringing Millie home to be with her family to spend her last days?”
“Definitely. Don’t you?”
“I do. But I’m also bothered by the whole thing.”
“Bothered by the whole thing? But why?”
“Because if we had showed up at that store just ten minutes later, we never would have seen those two little boys. We never would have helped them. They’d have had to deal with their grandmother dying on them, and having to dispose of her body.
“And then they’d have to learn to live without her, being sitting ducks for anyone and everyone who felt a need to prey on them.
“But what bothers me the most is this… just how many more families like that are out there that we don’t know about?”
*************************
Thank you for reading
RANGER, Book 2:
A Whole New World
Please enjoy this preview of
The next installment in the series,
RANGER, Book 3:
Death Comes Calling
Steve Peters wasn’t the fool some had thought him to be over the years. If he were, he wouldn’t have had good food to eat and a comfortable bed to sleep in at night, a ceiling fan rotating slowly over his head.
While lesser people all over the city were scratching out a meager existence, eating cold canned beans and stale bread.
Or giving up altogether and committing suicide in great numbers.
He’d stopped counting the gunshots long before, but he had the sense they were increasing day to day.
He’d heard the first ones right around sundown on the second night of the blackout. Word was getting around that this wasn’t just a blown transformer on a power pole down the street. No, word was that this was big. It was worldwide, and it was permanent.
Word was that the police wouldn’t be able to help. There was no 911 to call anymore, and even if there was there was no way for the cops to come to anybody’s aid.
For the rest of their natural lives, the residents of Lubbock were on their own. Those who owned guns had better know how to use them or learn in a hurry.
Those who didn’t own guns? Well, they were just screwed, for lack of a better term.
It was every man for himself, and only the strong would survive.
The first shots Steve had heard, on the second night, could have been anything.
It could have been a bandit holding someone up and then shooting them out of meanness.
It could have been someone taking advantage of a newly impotent police department to end an old grudge once and for all.
It could have been one of Steve’s neighbors, firing a gun into the air to scare away a prowler.
But it wasn’t any of those things.
It was a young couple, three blocks over, who decided they weren’t cut out for such a horrible life.
It was the man, shooting his wife in the head, and then again in the heart to ensure she didn’t suffer. Then putting the gun into his own mouth and pulling the trigger a third time.
It was the sad tale of a couple just beginning their adult lives who decided instead to take the easy way out.
It was the first time of dozens that Steve had heard shots which snuffed out the lives of others who had similarly given up.
At the beginning, the shots almost always occurred within an hour of sunset. That, apparently, was when those so inclined grew most depressed, and were most likely to do the deed.
Perhaps it was dread from contemplating another long night of terror. Or maybe they just didn’t like going to sleep not knowing if they’d wake up with a gun in their faces.
Or perhaps they just didn’t like going to bed hungry, and it gnawed away at their psyche.
The police took to calling it the “killing hour.”
Gradually, though, the shots started coming at all hours of the day.
Desperation, it seemed, was expanding to fill the daytime hours as well.
That was going to work to Steve’s benefit. For to carry out his Plan B, he’d have to count on his shots not attracting too much attention.
During the two days he’d been on stakeout before, he’d seen some of the neighbors, sitting on their porches or under the trees in their front yards to escape the stifling heat from their houses.
And he’d noticed a curious thing.
When shots rang out, even when they were close by, the neighbors pretty much ignored them.
They didn’t run toward them, to find out what happened and see if they could help.
They didn’t run into their homes in fear of their own lives.
They just went about their business.
Steve found joy in knowing that. For he was getting ready to kill two people. A man he knew as John Shultz, and a boy of eight or nine.
He didn’t know the boy’s name. Hadn’t thought to ask.
And it didn’t matter anyway.
Steve had known that when the world went to hell one of the first things to disappear from the supermarket shelves would be the candy.
It was human nature.
When people were stressed, they liked to ease their concerns with junk food and candy.
It was the American way.
He knew that four months into the blackout candy would be very hard to come by.
To children it would be more valuable than gold.
Steve didn’t much like candy himself. But he had the forethought to stash away a few bags of it with his other provisions. He figured it would make good barter material later on.
And he couldn’t have been more right.
He saw the boy actually lick his lips when he pulled the bag of peanut patties from behind his back.
“Want these?” Steve had asked.
“Oh, boy, sure!”
Then, remembering the whole “stranger, danger” lecture he’d gotten at his grade school, the boy cocked a suspicious eyebrow.
He asked, “What do I have to do?”
“Oh, it’s easy. All you have to do is go knock on the door of a Texas Ranger who lives on the next block. I’ll write down the house number so you’ll go to the right one.
“All I want you to do is to knock on his door, and tell him the lady two doors down is sick and needs his help. Then I want you to walk over there with him.
“After you walk him over to the lady’s house, you can leave him and come back here. And I’ll give you the whole bag of candy.”
“Wow! The whole bag?”
“That’s right, my little friend. The whole bag.”
Kids are saps, he thought to himself as he wrote the major’s street address on a piece of paper.
“Now, I want you to wait fifteen minutes before you go knock on his door, okay?”
The boy looked puzzled.
“You do know when fifteen minutes is, don’t you?”
“No, sir. Not without a watch, anyway.”
Steve suddenly had a bit of a dilemma.
Then he noticed the sun’s shadow, which extended about four inches from the curb where they stood.
He took a pebble from the grass adjacent to the curb and placed it in the shade of the curb, an inch or so from the edge of the shade.
“Watch this pebble. When the sun hits it, fifteen minutes are up. Then you can go. Remember, the old lady lives two houses on the other side of him. Okay?”
A Whole New World: Ranger: Book 2 Page 18