Return To Ely

by Darrell Maloney

  Chapter 23

  “Now let’s get those windows painted,” Kara said after they both finished eating.

  Karen’s note included several bits of advice the women could use to help fortify their new home.

  Or at least to make it less desirable for anyone who happened along and might have designs on the place:

  There are several cans of black spray paint in the paint shed next to the barn. Take down all the curtains and all the drapes on all the windows. Then spray paint the windows with black spray paint. Paint two coats to make sure you don’t miss anything. It’ll be very dark in the house, but that way you can use the lights at night without any chance it’s visible from the outside.

  Oh… and be sure the baby is outside so she’s not exposed to the paint fumes.

  It took the pair over four hours to get the windows painted.

  By the time they finished they only had a couple of hours left to do Karen’s next project:

  There are several sheets of plywood in the barn. Drag two of them over to the house and hammer them into place over the front and back doors. Paint each one with spray paint as follows:

  DEATH HOUSE: Family of four murder/suicide victims inside. Please let them rest in peace.

  Once the signs are up, raise and lower the front window to enter and exit the house.

  This one confused Kara a little. She wondered why they should go through all the effort of climbing in and out of a window every day or two to refill the generator’s fuel tanks.

  “Look, Kara,” Lindsey said. “I know it might sound silly, but I trust Karen’s judgment totally. If she thinks marauders will hesitate to take over a house that’s full of decaying bodies, that’s good enough for me.”

  By the time the two went to bed that evening they were exhausted.

  The house smelled of spray paint, but it wasn’t overpowering.

  They found a rifle and a handgun Karen had hidden beneath hay in the back of the barn, and ran the generator for several hours to charge the batteries.

  The batteries held enough electricity now to power the electric box fans which cooled them as they slept.

  It also ran the refrigerator which was cooling the water they’d placed there, and to freeze the ice cubes they’d use the next day when they made a gallon of iced tea.

  They were really looking forward to that.

  It was the small things, after all, that one really missed when the world went to hell.

  They could have had separate bedrooms.

  The house had five of them.

  They chose to share a room with a single bed on each wall, though, and placed baby Misty on a mattress between them.

  The bunker was cozy and they’d gotten used to sleeping in close quarters with others.

  It was now somehow comforting to open one’s eyes at night and to hear the breathing of someone close to them.

  As they waited to fall asleep they talked of what they left behind.

  “I wonder how your mom and aunt are getting along,” Kara said. “You don’t think they’re paying the price for us leaving, do you?”

  “I hope not. And I don’t think so. I don’t think Parker would do anything to hurt my mom. And I think he’s just human enough to understand it’s not Aunt Karen’s fault either.

  “I mean, obviously they’re gonna be upset. But I don’t think it’ll go beyond that.”

  “You haven’t talked about your father in awhile. Do you think he’s been able to find your little sister?”

  Lindsey’s heart hurt, as it always did when she thought of her father.

  There was a reason she hadn’t talked of him in awhile.

  She almost changed the subject; almost sloughed off the topic.

  But maybe this was the proper time to talk about him.

  “I had a dream a couple of weeks ago,” Lind said. “A dream about Dad. It wasn’t a nice one.”

  “I’m sorry. Do you want to talk about it? Sometimes that helps.”

  “I dreamed he went to Albuquerque and asked around, and the people were very helpful.

  “They told him where they last saw her. They sent him to a city park where they saw her playing.

  “He got there and there was no one there.

  “He thought he must have been mistaken. That he misunderstood the name of the street.

  “There were other children who were happily playing at the park. But none of them were Beth.

  “He was distraught. He broke down crying and almost left.

  “Then he noticed something beneath a large tree in the center of the park.

  “He went over and saw it was a homemade grave marker on a fresh grave.

  “It said:

  Here lies Beth Spear.

  She died of sadness

  because her Daddy never came for her

  “What did your mom say it meant?”

  “I didn’t tell her about it.”

  “Doesn’t she interpret your dreams? Your Aunt Karen said she interprets hers, and she always helps explain what they mean and why she has them.”

  “My mom and I don’t talk much anymore.”

  “Well, what do you think it means?”

  “I think it means I’m all alone in the world.”

  Chapter 24

  In the bunker not far away, Sarah was equally distraught.

  Not because they were punished for the women’s escape.

  But because she too felt all alone in the world.

  Oh, she still had Karen.

  And Karen was an amazing sister.

  But Karen was upset with her for being unfaithful to Dave.

  Dave didn’t deserve a wife who was cheating on him.

  Especially when he was out in the cold cruel world on a rescue mission to save their youngest daughter.

  Karen tried to find a reason for Sarah’s bad behavior. Had even tried to justify it to Lindsey by saying that somehow Sarah’s captivity affected her mind. That she was no longer well.

  But she only half believed it herself.

  She wanted to give Sarah the benefit of the doubt.

  She wanted to judge her not for the six weeks of bad behavior she’d just witnessed, but rather for the thirty five years Sarah had been an outstanding sister, wife and mother.

  She had to admit, the blackout changed everyone to some degree.

  In some people it brought out the greed and the anger they’d always kept well hidden.

  Some people became killers. Some became selfish.

  Some became outright mean.

  Perhaps some became promiscuous, looking for love, as the song goes, in all the wrong places.

  In any event Sarah’s infidelity was driving a wedge between the sisters.

  The timing couldn’t have been worse, for with Tommy dead and Lind gone this was a time in their lives when they needed each other the most.

  Karen was giving Sarah way more space than she needed simply because she didn’t know what to say to her.

  Sarah and Parker were at odds because she’d told him, unbeknownst to either Karen or Lindsey, that she couldn’t see him anymore.

  If Lindsey felt all alone, that was nothing compared to the way her mother was feeling these days.

  Sarah not only felt all alone.

  She felt like she was positively the absolute worst woman in the world.

  “I don’t think I believe you,” Parker told her while she made the men’s supper. “I think you knew all along they were leaving. I think you even helped them.”

  Sarah countered with, “Believe what you will.”

  “What did you do? Help them pack their bags? Maybe draw maps for them so they could find their way to Ely to get help?

  “They’ll get no help in Ely. There are no more than a couple dozen people there any more. The Leavenworth escape scared them all away.

  “We went through there. The sheriff’s office is run by a little old man. Eighty if he’s a day. He won’t be much good to them.”

  She di
dn’t know what to say, and decided agreeing with him might be the best tactic.

  “If that’s the case, maybe they’ll just pass Ely by and try to find someone who’ll take them in.”

  “Yeah, well guess what?

  “Nobody just takes in strangers anymore. Especially two mouths to feed and a bawling baby.

  “I mean, people have a hard enough time feeding their own families these days. Who in hell would take on more mouths to feed?”

  To rub salt in the wound, he brought up something he knew had been worrying her.

  “If anybody takes them in, it’ll be some of the escapees from Fort Levy.

  “And guess what? It won’t be out of the kindness of their hearts, either. They’ll want something as a tradeoff. And you and I both know what it is.

  “I’m afraid to tell you this, sweetheart. But I think your daughter and your friend have jumped from the frying pan right into the fire. And that they’ll pay a very heavy price for their escape.”

  “Okay, John. I get it.

  “You want me to say that Lindsey and Kara are going to be taken in by bad men who will rape them every day of their lives until they get tired of them and just kill them out of spite.

  “You want me to say that they had it good here. That they had to work, but at least they weren’t raped. And they signed their own death warrants by walking away.

  “There. I said it. I said what you wanted to say. Are you happy?”

  She threw a spatula across the room at him, which he easily sidestepped.

  He had no intention of letting up.

  “So, how does it feel, knowing your own daughter hates you and wants nothing to do with you anymore?

  “For that matter, so does your sister. And this husband you always talk about? The one in San Antonio who hasn’t even cared enough to come looking for you? How would he feel about you if he knew how you betrayed him? I’m sure he’d hate you too.”

  “Well, maybe they should hate me. After all, I hate myself.

  “Is that what you wanted to hear, Mr. Parker? Does it please you that I hate myself?”

  “Yes. Maybe it does.

  “Maybe somebody like you, who has no one left in the world who cares for you, should just give up and end it all. Put yourself out of your own misery. Just do the world a favor and kill yourself.”

  “For God’s sake, John, don’t you think I’ve thought of that? Don’t you think I’ve wanted to? Don’t you think I would have in a heartbeat if I had the means to do so?”

  Parker started to say something, then caught himself.

  Instead, he turned and stormed off down the corridor.

  Sarah turned off the burner beneath the boxed au gratin potatoes she was heating up and took the Salisbury steak from the stove.

  She sat down at the table and buried her face in her hands, sobbing almost uncontrollably.

  She looked up when Parker stormed back into the room.

  He slammed a 9 millimeter pistol onto the table in front of her.

  “Here! You have the means. Now you can quit pretending to grieve. You can quit pretending to feel bad for betraying your husband and your only daughter.

  “Now you can show you’re really serious and just get rid of yourself.

  “Go ahead. Do us all a big favor. Make there be one less miserable wretch in the world. Do it! Let me see. I’ll be the first one to do a dance and to piss on your body!”

  Now Sarah felt all kinds of emotions.

  She was sorrowful and remorseful for her own bad behavior.

  And she was amazed that this man she’d felt attracted to just a couple of days before could be so cruel and so brutal.

  And so uncaring.

  She looked at the gun on the table, just inches from her trembling hands.

  She could have done any one of a number of things.

  She could have shoved the gun away from her.

  She could have stood and walked away.

  She could have ignored Parker and gone back to her chores.

  She could have picked up the gun and shot Parker in the head.

  Instead she picked it up, put it to her own temple and pulled the trigger.

  Nothing happened.

  Parker cleared the weapon and emptied the magazine before he walked into the room.

  She was so unstable, so unpredictable, he wasn’t sure what she would do.

  And, quite honestly, he didn’t expect her to carry through with her threat.

  This, for Sarah, was the very last straw.

  She’d failed, in her mind, as a wife. She’d failed as a mother. She’d failed her only sister.

  And now she couldn’t do something as simple as take her own life.

  She stormed out of the room, yelling back at Parker, “Finish your own damned supper.”

  Chapter 25

  Dave was working his way east now toward Topeka.

  The “three musketeers,” as Beth was now calling them, had passed a green highway sign the afternoon before which said the city was eighteen miles away.

  “How much farther, Daddy?” the inquisitive child asked.

  “At fifteen miles a day I’m guessing less than a week now,” he responded.

  He resisted the urge to qualify his estimate by saying, “as long as we don’t hit any more trouble.”

  He once hesitated to make such estimates because the journey, and his solo journey before it, was full of trials and tribulations.

  But Oklahoma went so smoothly, was so trouble free, that he was actually becoming optimistic.

  So was Kansas.

  So far, anyway.

  It was the longest stretch of highway he’d put beneath him since he left Texas that he didn’t have to kill anyone or come close to getting killed himself.

  It was actually quite nice.

  And it was driving him absolutely bonkers.

  “I don’t get it,” he told Sal the day before while Beth lay sleeping behind them.

  “Surely the bad guys haven’t all been killed off already. I mean, I always believed that would happen eventually. And it would be nice if it has. But for it to end so suddenly…

  “It’s just… weird.”

  “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, my friend. Perhaps Madame Fate has just decided you’ve been through so much you needed a break for awhile.

  “After all you’ve been through… Getting bushwhacked and beaten and robbed of your vehicle, you deserve it.”

  “That’s something else I’ve always thought. That I deserved a break from all the hostilities.

  “But Karma’s never been nice to me before. Why now? And for how long?”

  “Just enjoy it while it’s here, Dave.

  “There’s plenty of time for things to go bad later on. And they probably will at some point.

  “I share your belief that eventually the world will get tame again. That good will win out over evil.

  “But I don’t think it’ll happen in my lifetime, and probably not in yours either.

  “Hopefully our Beth will live to a ripe old age and can count on dying in her sleep instead of being threatened by marauders.

  “My best advice to you is to enjoy your respite as long as it lasts.

  “But at the same time don’t get too complacent.”

  “You know what else I find weird, Sal?”

  “What?”

  “That word. Weird.”

  “You find the word weird weird? Why?”

  “Because when I went to school one of the rules my third grade teacher taught was the ‘I before E’ rule. She said any time the two letters were side by side in the middle of a word, the I would come first, except when they were immediately after the letter C.

  “So what’s the whole deal about the word weird? What makes it so special, anyway?”

  Sal merely looked at him, unsure how to respond.

  Unsure, actually, whether Dave was losing his mind.

  Finally he thought of the proper words.

 
; “Have you spent a lot of time on this problem, my friend?”

  “A considerable amount, yes.”

  “Should I start worrying about your sanity? Should I start sleeping with my gun beneath my pillow?”

  Dave ignored the slight.

  “Well, think about it, Sal. Of all the words in the world to break such an important rule, the word weird is the one.

  “I mean, was that some spelling expert’s jab at the world? To make the word weird the one word that doesn’t have to follow the law?”

  He looked at Sal, who’d gone silent again.

  “Well? I’m looking for your input.”

  “Dave, if I must give you my input, let me give you two insights.”

  “Yes?”

  “First of all, every rule is made to be broken. And every rule will be broken at some time and in some fashion. It might as well be that word as any other.

  “And second… we really need to find something better to occupy your mind.”

  Chapter 26

  Lindsey and Kara spent most of the next day following Karen’s treasure map, or at least her list of cryptic notes which told them where to find what they needed to survive.

  Lindsey was always under the impression the reason they moved from the farm to the Dykes brothers’ bunker was so they wouldn’t run out of food in her father’s absence.

  It turned out that wasn’t the case at all.

  They had plenty of provisions hidden around the farm.

  Tommy and Karen were preppers long before Lindsey’s parents. In fact, they were the ones who turned Dave and Sarah on to the whole prepping lifestyle.

  In the barn they found a goldmine of food, hidden in plain sight.

  In the back of the barn were several drums stenciled with the words:

  SODIUM CARBONATE

  AGRICULTURAL PESTICIDE

  DEADLY POISON

  It was a ruse. The plastic drums were empty and brand new when Tommy bought them three years before.

  They were ideal for hiding unprocessed wheat germ, which could be ground into flour or planted.