A Root from Infertile Ground

by Thomas H. Reed

  Chapter 11

  Men began to move out across the desert and along the river bank, spreading out in a long line, keeping in verbal contact with each other as they moved. Then they began to close in on her position step by silent step. Then over the radio someone said, “I hear something.” But when he was challenged to answer back, there was nothing. Then someone screamed, a scream that was cut off a second later. Shooting started. Everyone shooting in different directions at the same time. Two men were killed by their own men.

  Jake growled over the radio. “Stop firing, you idiots! The next person that fires off a round better have her in his sights or I’m going to kill him.”

  For a long time everything was quiet. The men, now cautious, continued to move in on the woman. Another man screamed, this time in another direction. Panicked voices came over the radio, then went silent. In ten minutes she had managed to cut his forces in half.

  Jake picked up his radio. “Get the hell out of there and fall back before she kills all of you.”

  The men began to withdraw in a staggered cover, each man watching the other’s back as they moved out of the area.

  Then suddenly the radio crackled to life. “What were their names Jake?”

  It was a woman, but it didn’t sound anything like the whore he’d stabbed.

  Jake picked up his radio and said. “Who is this?”

  “What were their names? The girls at the bottom of the river bed.”

  “Look, who ever this is we can work something out.”

  “Who were they Jake?”

  Off to the left a man screamed. Then someone cussed, there was a sick sucking sound and a head came flying over the brush, landing almost in Jakes lap, the head was still blinking in surprise. Jake pointed his SKS in that direction and opened fire on the position. He keyed the radio. “I am going to kill you, bitch!”

  “You already tried that Jake. What were their names?”

  “Who the hell are you talking about? Whose names?”

  “The other girls you brought up here and murdered. What were their names?”

  “Who the hell knows, or cares. Their names weren’t important. They were just whores.”

  Three of the men turned and began to run back to the camp. Jake heard the engine start up on a vehicle and knew that others were turning tail and running as well. He keyed the radio. “You yellow bastards get the hell back here or I’ll kill you myself.”

  “I don’t think they are listening to you, Jake.”

  “Fuck them! I don’t need them for the likes of you. I’ve killed hundreds of little sluts like you, and you are no different; where the fuck are you?”

  “Right here Jake.” He turned around and saw her standing less than ten feet away. He started to swing the SKS around but suddenly it was shattered into fragments, bits of metal were imbedded in his hand when the SKS splintered from the impact of the steel jacketed bullet. He dropped the gun then stood up. He was six foot six, two hundred and fifty pounds of muscle. His handsome face like chiseled stone, two steel grey eyes boring into her.

  She tossed the rifle away and asked, “Who were they Jake?” He smiled and said, “You shouldn’t have done that. Now I am going to break you in half like a toothpick.

  Those were the last words that Jake ever uttered.

  With an impassive, stony look, she stood and watched calmly while Jake tried to curse her. But his vocal cords wouldn’t cooperate. He tried to reach her, but his arm could do little but twitch. He clinched his teeth and tried to kick at her, but with only a sliver of his spinal cord remaining, his efforts were sadly feeble.

  It took Jake five minutes to die, and she waited until he drew his last breath. Then she took a long drink from her canteen, slung her rifle over her shoulder and calmly began walking south.

  She hoped that Mel had managed to get the teenager to a safe place without encountering Jake’s killers.

  Chapter 12

  After five days of extremely hot days and colder than a Polar bear’s digs at night, she finally walked out of the desert and back into what some referred to as civilization.

  Civilization was a side of life Jodie had yet to experience. She had spent her childhood and most of her teens among people who had used and abused her and each other.

  She could hardly remember her father’s face, but she could well remember the woman he had dumped her on when she was only nine years old. She could also remember the men that the woman had led to her filthy little room at night. And she could remember the beatings she got from the woman when she complained that she didn’t want the men in her bed anymore because they hurt her.

  Just before she turned eleven, she ran away from that horrid woman and the men. She survived on what decent food she found in garbage cans behind fancy restaurants. Actually, some of it was damn good, and nourishing enough to put a little flesh on her bones.

  Her main former breakfast had been a daily bowl of cold cereal and an occasional hamburger from McDonald’s; her bed was a filthy pad in a seven-by-eight room. The creeps who shared it with her had likely never seen a clean sheet, so they didn’t mind the filth.

  By the time she was fourteen, her body was shaping up nicely, and every creep in her flophouse noticed. That was when she decided to get back some of what she had lost to those creeps in the past. The filthy crack heads had gotten her hooked up with the candy man when she was twelve, and now she needed it for survival.

  Yes, getting hooked up with creeps who supplied her with meth, bennies, black beauties, jollies … you name it, had become a daily chore. Her only means of survival had been through peddling the stuff, or peddling her ass to someone who would set her up with another fix.

  Food was no longer a requirement. By the time she was sixteen, her health had began to deteriorate to the point that nothing really mattered except her next fix. Then she met the group of ‘Neo Nazis’, or mercenaries, or whatever the desert rats called themselves. That group had their own camp, complete with storage buildings, and it was set miles from any type of interference from the powers that be. They had enough drugs to keep a good size army high for months; their booze stash could keep a small river flowing for a week…Just her type of environment.

  Chapter 13

  Jodie woke slowly from her tormented sleep. Stiff and aching, she lifted her head, looked around in confusion. Her heart was still pounding fiercely. Her arms felt heavy and half paralyzed. The dream still lay heavy in her half awake brain. Then it dawned on her she was still in her office. She had been sleeping with her head resting on her arms on her metal desk.

  With effort she raised her head, rolled it from side to side hoping to shake off the cobwebs that had gathered in her brain, but the dream was still too fresh; she had revisited every ugly thing from her past; the full package had been laid bare for her to deal with; she suddenly felt nauseous.

  That sordid part of her life had all taken place before she had left her teens behind, but now it appeared as though it might still be playing a part in her present life, at least on some emotional level.

  She had been eleven days shy of eighteen the day she walked out of that desert eight years ago. From that day, she had turned her life around. Actually, the transition had taken place weeks before she walked out of the desert, because even then she knew what she would do with her life if fate would only work with her for a change.

  Since that day, a good deal of valiant effort had gone toward forgetting that any of her past had ever happened while she worked tirelessly at beginning life anew.

  Jodie’s most cherished dream was to make the day she reentered school to obtain her child therapy and youth counseling degree the first day of the rest of her life.

  But it seemed obvious to Jodie after experiencing such an appalling dream, that some part of her subconscious was unwilling to let her past stay buried.

  Jodie was acutely aware that she was still trembling inside and sweat ran from the back of her neck into the open collar of her green scrubs. Th
en suddenly an icy chill raced down her spine when she remembered the call from the girl in the desert. Had the police found the girl?

  Why hadn’t someone contacted her with information? And where in hell was Mel? He was supposed to have returned to the shelter over two weeks ago. She hadn’t even gotten a call from him. Had he finally decided to begin a new life far away from her? Was leaving her behind the only way he could ever hope for an entirely new beginning for himself?

  Jodie’s sturdy frame gave an involuntary shudder at the thought of moving on with her work, or even her life, without Mel. She could do it, but it would be the most difficult thing she had done in eight years.

  Jodie sat back at her desk and called the police department. She had to know what had happened with the search for the girl.

  “Yes Miss MacLean, one of our deputies picked the girl up late yesterday evening and took her to a local hospital. She’s in pretty bad shape. He found her on a country road about thirty-five miles north of here. An APB had been put out to all local and county workers to be on the lookout for her. If the deputy had been five minutes later he might never have found her. Fortunately, he just happened to see her stumbling along about fifty feet off old county road 12 on his way back into town. If she had passed out, it’s very likely he would never have spotted her. As dehydrated as she was it’s doubtful she would have regained consciousness on her own.”

  “Is she going to be all right?” Jodie asked. Not at all sure she wanted to hear the answer.

  “I really couldn’t answer that question, Miss MacLean. But you might wait a while and then call the hospital. I know she’s being properly cared for, and she is being prepped for additional test and treatment as we speak.”

  “Thanks. I’ll check with the hospital,” she told the dispatch and hung up.

  It was too soon to call the hospital if the girl was being examined for possible internal injuries. She would wait a while and then call.

  Jodie set up the coffee pot, and while it perked she went to the wash room and tried to freshen up a bit. She was still in the scrubs she’d worn the day before, but fortunately she didn’t look quite as bad as she felt. She pulled a travel toothbrush from her purse and quickly ran it over her teeth. She finger combed her hair, and instead of going to her apartment to shower and change clothes, she did a quick sponge job from her bathroom sink and added antiperspirant and a touch of body spray, and told herself she’d do for a few more hours.

  Returning to her desk, Jodie reminded herself again that she wasn’t taking care of herself as she should. She just didn’t have the time.

  Jodie knew she was an attractive woman. She couldn’t help but know it, every male that came within ogling distance never failed to exercise that manly trait. Mel had told her that she was the most gorgeous female he’d ever set eyes on. He’d also told her that her looks were the least of her charms.

  Mel knew Jodie as no other human on earth did, and still found her incredibly commendable... or so he’d said.

  Admittedly, she often wondered if he might be having second thoughts about her worthiness. After all, she had a background that no man would write home about: whore, acid-head, killer…

  Had the past eight years truly erased the first eighteen?

  If Jodie knew anything about herself, it was that she was no longer the stupid acidhead that went willingly into a camp of uncivilized mercenaries to peddle her ass for drugs. She was also aware that she’d killed those murdering scumbags in self defense as well as to protect a young girl who was incapable of protecting herself. She didn’t believe for a holy minute that what she’d done was wrong. She was certain in her own mind it wasn’t. But she also knew it was illegal to take the law into one’s own hands. At the time, there had been little choice, those freaks would have killed her even if she had attempted to leave the area peacefully, and there was no law out there to help her or the young girl they surely would have added to their growing heap of dead female bodies.

  Either way she would have been dead. Mel had intended to do exactly what she’d done. He understood that ridding the world of those murdering freaks had to be a priority. But now that he’d had eight years to rethink the whole situation, Jodie believed he might be having a problem with it. Maybe her reasoning stemmed from questioning herself. And maybe nobody would ever know Mel well enough to know what he was thinking. However, Jodie knew that in this world where a large percentage of humanity was skimming the edge of insanity, Mel was the kindest, most logical human type she had ever known. On that fateful day eight years ago, Mel had not only gotten the sixteen year old girl out of the scumbags’ camp and gotten treatment for her, he had also found Jodie and insisted on her completing her education. And after learning about her hopes for a future career, he had helped to establish the small clinic and busted his ass for four years to insure that it was going to work.

  And now they had proof it was working: almost two thousand young children and teenagers now had lives because she and Mel had made it happen.

  Chapter 14

  But where in hell was Mel, now?

  Midnight: Lightening flashed, thunder rolled with a jarring effect. Jodie was expecting to lose her electricity any minute. As a rule even her phone was knocked out when a storm of this magnitude hit the area. She was feeling pretty lucky that her small clinic had no patients or temporary boarders waiting to be moved. She had transported the last one to a foster home before dark, and then sent her aides home. Now if she could just make it home and to bed before the streets flooded, with a bit of luck she could get five hours of sound sleep before reopening the clinic.

  She was hanging up the office phone when suddenly the front door burst open and then quickly slammed shut.

  Jodie’s breath caught somewhere between her lungs and her throat when Mel’s bloody body stumbled through the front door. She jumped to her feet and tried to catch him before he collapsed, but her attempt failed. She grabbed a cushion from a chair and pushed it under his head and then felt for a pulse. He was conscious, and had a strong enough pulse, but he’d obviously lost way too much blood to be on the safe side.

  Mel tried to raise himself up, pleading for Jodie to listen to him. She gently pushed him back, telling him to lie still while she called for an ambulance and contacted the emergency room so they would be prepared for his arrival.

  Mel grabbed her arm and said in a strained voice, “No! You can’t call anybody, Jodie. They’ll find me... find us... I can’t go to a public place, and I can’t stay here, but you can help me. You have to help me. You have to come with me!”

  “Mel, you’re not making sense, now stay there while I call...”

  “No! I have a place... a safe place... and it’s only twenty minutes from here. Nobody knows about it. But we have to leave... now! The only reason I’m alive now is because they wanted me to lead them to you!”

  Jodie heard the desperation in Mel’s voice and felt a sudden chill. Mel didn’t panic without reason, as a rule, not even when he had a good reason. She settled quickly down beside him, suddenly feeling weak-kneed and looking a bit pale.

  “Jodie, I’m not as badly hurt as it looks. I’ve just lost a lot of blood from three nonfatal bullet wounds, and I won’t be able to drive, but we’ve got to get out of here, and now! They wanted me to believe their plan was to kill me, but then they allowed me to escape, and it was obvious to me that their main purpose was to find you. Knowing that, I managed to give them the slip, but they will find both of us if we stay here. They couldn’t have been that far behind me.”

  “Who are you talking about, Mel? You’re still not making a lot of sense!”

  “Jodie, we don’t have time to discuss this now, but apparently you destroyed more than you thought you did when you set their camp on fire. It’s no longer a mystery that Jake was so determined to get you. He knew his own life was screwed, and that nothing he cold do would make his case a lot better. His insane desire for revenge got him killed before he could carry out his plans…
his plans being to kill you and then kill whoever was left of his crew and then go into hiding.”

  “Okay, Mel. Can you stand if I help you?”

  “I can because I have to. And we can’t screw around here trying to make like Florence Nightingale. So let’s get moving!”

  After getting Mel into his car, she loaded the medical supplies she would need, and within five minutes the two of them were headed north on a back road out of town.”

  “Do you have any weapons in this car in case we need them?” Jodie asked.

  “Only a handgun, but I doubt we’ll need it as long as we’re on this road, and I have an arsenal at the cabin, and the cabin is also well stocked with food.”

  “That’s encouraging, and if we can get you patched up enough to help me stand off this war party, then maybe we will be able to survive for a while longer. Are we going to get the law involved in this?”