Then she laid it upon the roll to provide a softer and more comfortable place to lay.
She put the other two blankets aside. One for her to cover up with in the cool night, the other for Jacob in case his sleeping bag failed to keep him warm.
But it wasn’t time to turn in, not yet.
It was time to talk.
In the opposite corner of the room were two plastic chairs. They were nothing fancy. Molded plastic seats and backs, with stainless steel legs. They were used a very long time before by customers while they waited for their oil to be changed or a tune-up to be done.
Now the chairs sat, stacked one within the other, upside down, having not felt the warmth of a friendly human bottom in a considerable amount of time.
She righted the chairs and separated them, then kicked trash away from a spot on the floor so she could place them on a flat surface.
“Come here, Jacob,” she commanded. “We need to talk.”
Chapter 20
There was something in the tone of her voice. It was not unlike his mother, God rest her soul, when he was little and in trouble and she used all three of his names to call him. Or like his teacher the day she called him in after class to tell him he was failing math.
It was Red, taking the dominant role. But he didn’t mind. It was somehow soothing to know that someone was helping to watch over him for the first time since his parents died.
He decided he kinda liked it, although he was a bit fearful of what her words might be.
She positioned the chairs so they were facing each other and only a foot apart. She wanted to send him a message that although they would never be intimate in the way he might want to be, that she was there for him. That she’d be his protector, his big sister, his friend. At least for whatever time they would have together.
She looked him directly into the eyes and said, “One of the ponies is yours. I’d prefer the Morgan, since he’s the stronger of the two and I have a long way to ride. But he’s probably the faster also, and if you think you’ll need the Morgan to get you out of tough situations, I’ll take the Bay.”
He hesitated. She wasn’t sure whether he was going to complain about them splitting up, or was trying to make up his mind.
She decided to let him chew on it for a minute and move on.
She dug into her pocket and pulled out a purple and gold string bag. The words “Crown Royal” were still visible, although the bag was well worn and had seen much better days.
She held the bag out to him and he asked noncommittally, “What’s that?”
“Coins. Gold and silver. I’d guess about twenty thousand dollars’ worth by weight.”
“For what?”
“You said the man was going to pay you for watching his horses. Did he?”
“No.”
She reached out and took his hand from where it rested on his knee and turned it palm up. Then she placed the bag upon it.
He wasn’t expecting it to be as heavy as it was. His hand sagged slightly from the unexpected weight.
“Now he did.”
“What if I don’t want it?”
“Jacob, don’t give me a hard time. You can use it. If not now, then later on. Refusing money is a bad thing. You seem to me to be a very intelligent man. Don’t prove me wrong and make me think you’re a sap.”
His heart warmed slightly when she called him a man. He was somewhat short of that legally. But age didn’t seem to matter so much anymore. Not as much as ability or character. So perhaps she was right. Perhaps he’d earned the right to be called a man after all.
He didn’t dwell on it.
“I just want what he owes me. And you said I could keep one of the horses. I’ll accept that as payment. You keep the money.”
“Jacob, that’s blood money. It makes me cringe to even handle it. Some of it may have come from my father’s pocket after he was murdered. Some of it may have come from by good friend Eddie. That was the man Luna stole the horses from. And if it didn’t come from either of them then it almost certainly came from the hand of the man who ordered my family killed. I don’t want it. I want to stay far away from it.”
He took the velvet bag and placed it on a small table near the window.
Then he changed the subject.
“Red, I will let you have the Morgan. You’re right. He’s a much better horse. However, I want something in return.”
She hadn’t expected to have to negotiate with the man-boy. Perhaps he was more mature than she’d expected.
“Okay, Jacob. I’ll play your silly game. What is it you want?”
“I want to go with you. I’m tired of this place. It’s given me nothing but pain and death and misery.”
Chapter 21
“Jacob, are you crazy? You don’t even know where I’m going.”
“Where are you going, Red?”
“Back to Blanco.”
“Okay. Now I know where you’re going. Are you satisfied?”
He managed to crack a smile and caused her to laugh. The tension was broken.
“Jacob, Blanco was a tiny town even before the blackout and now it’s shriveled up to practically nothing. There’s nothing there for you.”
“That’s not true, Red. All my life I’ve wanted to go to Blanco. I’ve always liked small towns. They’re quieter. More laid back. The people are friendlier. And I’ve always wanted to live close to the Rio Grande.”
“The Rio Grande? Jacob, do you even know where Blanco is?”
“Sure. It’s close to El Paso.”
“Jacob, you are so busted. For someone who’s ‘always dreamed of moving to Blanco,’ you are way off the mark. Blanco is in central Texas, east of Austin. It’s hundreds of miles from the Rio Grande or El Paso.”
“Okay, so I’m wrong about that. But you’re wrong about something too.”
She drew back a bit.
“Oh, yeah? What am I wrong about?”
“You said there’s nothing for me in Blanco. But there is. You’ll be in Blanco. You will be there for me.”
She softened.
“Jacob, you understand that there can never be any relationship between us. I mean, there just can’t be.”
“Oh, don’t be so full of yourself, Red. I know that. You’re not my type. I meant you’re the closest thing I have to family now. You’re the closest thing I have to a friend. And I put my curse on you when I started to like you. So now I have to follow you to Blanco to protect you from my curse.”
“So we’re back to that again?”
“Red, I’m serious. If you don’t like my company, fine. I’ll just tag along, a quarter mile behind you, and there won’t be a damn thing you can do about it. Or, you can accept it and we can ride together and keep each other company along the way. It’ll make the journey a lot more pleasant for both of us.”
She just looked at him.
And she did something she seldom did.
She gave in.
“Okay. You can come along. If you make it all the way to Blanco without getting your dumb ass shot, I’ll introduce you to some people. Help you find a place to stay. That’s not hard, because at least half the houses in Blanco are vacant now. Their owners are dead. So they’re up for grabs.”
“Doesn’t the bank still own them?”
“Yes. But the banker’s name is John Savage. I’ll just make a special deal with him.”
He laughed, thinking she was kidding.
Then she saw the look on her face.
“Wait a minute. What kind of special deal?”
“I’ll tell him if he gives you a hard time about squatting on a vacant piece of property I will kill him slowly and painfully. If he gives you the keys a nd signs over the deed to you, I’ll make it a lot easier and kill him quickly.”
“Red, you can’t be serious. You’d kill a man for a deed? And then kill him anyway after you get the deed?”
“Not really, actually. Actually I’d kill him even if you weren’t in the picture.”
“But why?”
“Because he’s the man who paid Luna to kill my family.”
The sun set and the pair was exhausted. With no light to continue their conversation, they decided to turn in.
Red kicked off her shoes, lay upon her pallet and pulled a spare blanket over herself. She placed her rifle next to her, and her handgun beneath her bedroll just under her head. Where it could be reached easily.
Jacob crawled into his sleeping bag and placed his weapons in a similar fashion.
He wasn’t copying her actions. It was the safest way to sleep, as he’d discovered in recent months. Still, it was nice to know that he wasn’t completely inept when it came to personal safety.
Before Red drifted off to sleep, something popped into her mind.
“Jacob… a little while ago, you said you were glad there was no chance for a relationship between us. You said I wasn’t your type. What did you mean by that?”
“I meant I like my women sweet and caring. Not mean and grouchy and irritable.”
In the darkness she couldn’t see him smiling.
She went to sleep wondering whether he was serious.
Chapter 22
Most of the windows of the old station were boarded over, but not completely. On the bottom edge of an eastern window a two inch gap allowed the morning sun to enter the room and to warm Red’s face.
She’d been lost in a dream. A great dream, where she was teaching her young son Rusty to ride a horse. And not just any horse, but Bonnie.
Bonnie was the horse Red got as a gift from her father at age seven. She was up in years now, but still a faithful companion and friend. The pair had been though an awful lot together and were as close as two girls could be.
In her dream little Rusty wasn’t so little any more. He was about seven himself, full of giggles and sillies and as handsome as any young boy could be. Red stood in a meadow and watched as Bonnie took him at an easy gait in wide circles around her. Rusty’s laughter warmed her heart.
She knew day was breaking when the first rays of the sun hit her face and her cheek started to get hot. But she relished the dream and didn’t want to let it go. In a semi-conscious state she rolled over, desperate to enjoy the moment with her son.
But it was inevitable. The dream was gone. Rusty was dead. Dead like her husband Russell. Dead like her father. Dead like her friend Eddie, who was a bit nuts by anybody’s standard. But he never hurt anybody, and he certainly didn’t deserve to die.
She looked around her as the light streaming through the borders of the window lit the room. She tried to imagine how the room must have looked when the world was still sane. Before evil had a hand in making it almost unlivable.
It was once a vibrant place, undoubtedly clean and orderly, with everything in its rightful place on a designated shelf. Attendants once scurried here and there to make their customers happy and send them on their way.
People smiled and said good morning to one another.
There, in the corner of the room where the coffee bar lay wrecked, was fresh coffee, steaming hot. Its aroma filled the room and helped turn grumpy zombies into personable human beings.
She longed for a cup of coffee that was fresh and free of grounds. One she could make on her kitchen counter instead of having to boil in a pot over a campfire.
Why did the world have to change? Why did evil men have to take away her family?
Why couldn’t she just wake up and realize this whole thing had just been a nightmare?
The corner of her eye detected movement a few feet away. In the pile of trash which covered most of the once-clean floor a tiny mouse foraged for food. He stopped for a moment and stood atop an old milk carton, staring at Red.
Red smiled at her own foolishness, remembering once upon a time when she feared the little creatures. Red had always been fearless, and always ready to prove it. She fought like a wildcat, even sometimes with boys. And she was the first to volunteer to do anything… jump from a cliff into a pool of water below, drive her car ninety miles an hour, pin a live rattler’s head with the butt of her rifle and then pick him up to show her friends.
But she’d been terrified of mice.
She’d been that stereotypical woman who let out a small scream and jumped atop a chair at the first sign of one.
But that was so very long ago. In a world so very far away.
These days, she accepted the little rodents for what they were. Merely another of God’s creatures, fighting day to day for survival, with as much right to be there as any human.
Perhaps more right. For as small and helpless as they were, they were better than humans in so many respects.
Mice had never started a war or sent their own to die in a faraway country, just to fulfill political aspirations or enrich their friends. Mice never gathered in hateful mobs and destroyed things that belonged to another. Mice never raped one another or killed for greed. Mice, to Red’s knowledge, never even interacted with one another unless they had to. They seemed solitary creatures, content to scurry here and there searching for food.
Until a human decided it was time for them to die.
Red had come to terms with the mice. She still wouldn’t touch one. She’d still move away if one got too close.
But she wouldn’t go out of her way to avoid them anymore. And she damn wouldn’t climb atop a chair and scream when one came into the room.
That was downright embarrassing.
“Red? You awake?”
Red had her back to Jacob, and didn’t know he was awake. But it didn’t surprise her. People seldom slept past sunrise anymore. It was too dangerous.
She wondered if he’d been watching her as she was watching the mouse.
She rolled over to face him. He was still in his sleeping bag a few feet away, propped up on one arm.
It was the first time she’d seen him without his cowboy hat on. His hair was a mess.
But he wasn’t a bad looking kid.
“You need a haircut.”
“Well, good morning to you too.”
“I’m serious. How are we going to find a girlfriend for my new little brother if you look like shit on a biscuit?”
He smiled.
“I don’t know what part of that is more troubling. The new little brother part or the shit on a biscuit part.”
“Before we leave I want to walk into the 7-Eleven down the street. I know all the food and water’s gone, but I want to see if there are any scissors the looters left behind.”
“Not a chance. I’ve been in there a couple of times and it was picked clean. The only thing still on the shelves were two bags of kitty litter and flashlight batteries.”
“Well, we need to find some somewhere. I refuse to travel with a ragamuffin.”
Chapter 23
“There. Now you no longer look like a girl.”
She spun him around in the barber chair so he could look into the broken and dusty mirror in front of him.
There wasn’t much light that penetrated the bowels of “Lou’s Downhome Barber Shoppe,” or what was left of it. But the plate glass window was completely gone, resting in a six inch pile on the sidewalk outside. So by using the first chair, just inside the door, Red was able to see enough to cut Jacob’s hair and not his ears.
Jacob was appreciative of that.
He’d closed his eyes as he savored the feel of her fingers upon his head. He knew a relationship with Red was out of the question. She’d make sure of that. But he hadn’t felt the touch from a girl since he snuggled with his girlfriend at the Lubbock High football game two years before.
And Sarah Anna was long gone now, having been taken by the plague. She’d died a slow and miserable death, coughing nonstop for days. Throwing up everything in her system, then having painful dry heaves. Finally, mercifully, she’d died alone, locked away in a room by herself. She’d forbidden Jacob from coming in, and barricaded the door from the inside.
“Somebody needs to go on
living, to tell people in the future what a hell this was,” she’d said. “So far you don’t have this, and I’m not going to be the one who gives it to you. I won’t be the one who signs your death warrant.”
He’d given into her, stopped begging her to let him in. It was only after the coughing had stopped that he broke the door down with a sledge hammer, then cradled her lifeless body in his arms.
Another one he’d made the mistake of caring for.
Another who’d died because of his curse.
He wondered why he’d never caught the plague himself. After he carried her body to the lake and buried it, he was covered with the things she left behind. Her vomit, her urine, her sweat.
Some people seemed to be immune to it. That, he decided, was a curse unto itself.
Perhaps it was by design. Perhaps the intent was to leave some people behind to tend to the dead.
He’d have been better off dead. The dead merely go to sleep. Maybe there’s a better life out there for them. Maybe not. But Jacob was certain after they’d taken their last breath, as miserable as they might have been, they would feel no more pain.
He’d raised his voice to the heavens as he stood over Sarah Anna’s grave that day and cursed God.
Maybe that was why he was still alive, even though he frequently didn’t want to be. Perhaps he was being punished for cursing his creator, and would be forced to live and watch his loved ones and friends die for all eternity.
Perhaps he’d be the last man on earth and would be left to bury all the rest.
Red’s comment brought him back to the real world. But he was so distracted by his own thoughts her words didn’t register.
“What did you say?”
“I said there! You no longer look like a girl.”
He shifted his gaze a bit to see better in the broken mirror and agreed with her assessment.
Then he wondered aloud, “I wonder why they trashed this place. I mean, surely they didn’t break into a barber shop hoping to find anything to eat or drink.”
“They were probably desperate after all the food was gone from the stores. Maybe they thought they’d find a bag of potato chips in the barber’s office or something. Then got mad when they didn’t.”
A Lesson Learned: Red: Book 3 Page 7