On Desert Sands: Alone: Book 6

by Darrell Maloney

  They made excellent hiding places.

  Chapter 48

  Beth had to admit it. Although she hadn’t bonded well with old Sal… mostly because he could be a great big grouch, she’d grown quite fond of the woman she called Grandma Nellie.

  Nellie was one of the kindest souls she’d ever met.

  Of course, Beth was only eight. Her collection of friends was somewhat limited.

  But she knew a lot of other adults. Her former teachers. Neighbors back in San Antonio. Those gray haired church ladies who even she could see smiled to somebody’s face and then gossiped behind their backs.

  The only woman Beth had ever known who was as genuinely kind as Grandma Nellie was her real grandmother. Grandma Elizabeth, who she was named after.

  Grandma Elizabeth died a full year before the blackout, but she and her namesake had had a magical relationship. Sarah had made arrangements for the school bus to drop Beth off at the nursing home where Grandma Elizabeth lived, and they spent time together every afternoon until Sarah got off work.

  They took turns reading to one another.

  Elizabeth’s vision was about gone, and she could no longer read the classic novels she’d enjoyed over and over again her adult life.

  But she could read Dr. Seuss books, with their oversized fonts. It seemed half-inch high words were the only words she could actually read herself, and thus boosted her self-worth and self-esteem.

  So even though Beth complained to everyone else she was way too old to have someone read Horton Hears a Who and One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish to her, she’d never tell that to Grandma Elizabeth.

  They had a system. Grandma Elizabeth tired easily. So she’d read Dr. Seuss to Beth, while Beth sat at her bedside holding the old woman’s hand and pretending to cling to every word.

  When Grandma Elizabeth began to fade and nod off, Beth would take the children’s book and put it aside. She’d read Gone With the Wind or The Grapes of Wrath until the old woman drifted off to sleep, then mark her page for the next time.

  And while her grandmother slept, Beth would continue to hold and caress her hand. She was fascinated with her grandmother’s hands. They were so strong, yet looked so ancient. Beth liked to run her fingertips over the raised blue veins while she slept, then to turn them over and pretend to read Elizabeth’s fortune when she was awake.

  Only once did Dave ever raise his concern about Beth reading such books.

  “The language can be a bit salty, Mom. And the subject matter… civil war and slavery? Isn’t that too much for a child of her age?”

  Elizabeth had pooh-poohed his opinion.

  “Those are classics, young man. She’ll never be able to consider herself grown up and refined until she reads them. Might as well get her started early, and build in her a love for good literature before she gets hooked on comic books and trash.”

  Elizabeth was never one to either mince words or withhold her opinion. And Dave shut up immediately, for his mother was one people didn’t argue with.

  Little Beth once asked her about her hands and why they appeared to be a million years old.

  “Why child,” she admonished. “That’s just not so. They’re only half a million years old. And they tell a story. Everyone’s hands do.”

  “What do you mean, Grandmother?”

  “Count the veins, child. An old woman will have a raised vein for every man she ever loved. And every wrinkle represents a man who loved her.

  “Every freckle indicates a child who warmed her heart with a smile. Do you see the dark spots? The ones which look like freckles, only they’re black?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Those are liver spots. But they’ve got nothing to do with liver. They actually come from grief. An old woman gets a new liver spot every time someone she loves passes away. And every little scar? Those represent each time a man has broken her heart.

  “So you can see, dear child, that I’ve lived a long life. I’ve had good times and bad. I’ve loved and been loved, and I’m going to leave behind some of the finest people on God’s earth. And you, child, are my favorite one of all.”

  “But if I’m your favorite, what about Lindsey?”

  “Your sister is my second favorite. She’d be my first, except you come by to read to me and she doesn’t.”

  She winked at little Beth in a conspiratorial manner and said, “But that’s our secret, honey. Don’t ever tell Lindsey, or you’ll hurt her feelings.”

  For a very long time Beth was on cloud nine. Being told she was her grandmother’s favorite gave her a sense she was very special indeed.

  The old woman in the red pickup, the one she called Grandma Nellie, had the same hands and the same temperament.

  Although she was only eight, Beth was bright beyond compare. She didn’t understand the reasons an old person’s mind starts to falter. But she could see Nellie’s was gone. At the same time, though, she sensed it wasn’t Nellie’s fault, and that she mustn’t be punished for it.

  Rather, she applied the same gentle care she’d given her own grandmother in the last months before her death.

  She held Nellie’s hand. She read to her. She talked with the old woman for hours at a time.

  She developed a game with Nellie. As old Sal steered the horses down the long stretches of highway, she and Nellie looked at the clouds.

  “Okay, Grandma,” Beth would tell Nellie. “The first one to find a teddy bear in the clouds wins.” Then a puppy. Then a slipper. Then a kitten. They entertained themselves for hours.

  They became more than friends. They became more like… family.

  Beth allowed Nellie to call her Becky. Because she knew that was the only way Nellie would ever see her: as her own departed granddaughter.

  With Sal she cut no such slack. Sal knew going in that her name was Beth. That she was no relation. That knowledge strained their relationship. And although she now knew Sal wasn’t the devil she first thought him to be… that he was a kind man who’d protect her at all costs, she’d never offer him the affection she gave so willingly to Nellie.

  Life at Benny’s place was so much easier than it had been on the road. It was permanent, for one thing. The scenery didn’t change from day, nor did the challenges of trying to stay alive.

  The people at Benny’s place were friendly for the most part. Despite Beth’s wildly imaginative talk of staging a rebellion to overthrow the patriarch, she had to admit she’d seen much worse places to be.

  In fact, life at Benny’s wasn’t that bad, considering how the rest of the world was living. It was stable, it was safe, and she was surrounded by people who seemed to care for one another.

  It reminded Beth of her Aunt Karen’s farm in Kansas, in the early days following the blackout.

  Before all those bad men overran the farm and shot Uncle Tommy and the other men.

  Before they’d taken over the place and ran it like a prison.

  All in all, Beth missed her Mommy and Daddy and her sister Lindsey. She cried herself to sleep some nights thinking about them. But she had the unrequited love of an old woman who adored her. And that would help sustain her until her father finally came.

  It had been a long day. Thom had been teasing her again about her freckles and she finally got angry enough to punch him in the arm. He wailed like a little girl and Beth was reprimanded and sent to her room without dessert.

  She needed hugs and snuggles and the reassurance that she was loved. So she did what she often did.

  She went upstairs and crawled into bed with Grandma Nellie. Grandma Nellie always had love and snuggles to give her little Becky.

  Only tonight she didn’t.

  Tonight she was very cold and unresponsive.

  Tonight she was dead.

  Chapter 49

  Beth would feel many things in the coming days. She’d feel the dreadful agony one feels when a loved one dies. That would be the biggest thing.

  But she’d feel other things as well. Thin
gs she couldn’t understand. Things that made no sense to her and left her feeling confused and angry.

  She’d feel disappointment in Nellie. Nellie had told her she’d always be there for her. Nellie had let her down.

  She felt resentment for old Sal. Although she could see he was hurting too, she felt no sympathy for him. Instead, her mindset went back to the days when he’d first removed her from her Aunt Karen’s farm. He was once again the evil man who’d stolen her.

  No, he was worse than that. He was the evil man who'd stolen her, and who had let Nellie die. He was her husband. Wasn’t it his job to keep her alive?

  She blamed old Sal exclusively for taking away the one person in Benny’s compound she really and truly cared about.

  Nellie was buried in a simple plot in the northern corner of Benny’s acreage. She wasn’t the first one buried there, and certainly wouldn’t be the last.

  Instead of marble or granite headstones, which were apparently hard to procure since the blackout, a three hundred pound boulder was rolled onto the grave once the service was over.

  A relative who proclaimed to be an artist, but who obviously couldn’t spell, painted the following on Nellie’s boulder in crude block letters:

  Here Lies

  NELLIE AMBROSIO

  She was loved by all

  She will be mised

  Beth wasn’t the only one left suffering.

  The day after Nellie was laid to rest Sal went into the mother of all funks.

  He wasn’t talking to anyone. He wasn’t eating. He wasn’t sleeping.

  He was barely alive.

  The only one he was even responding to was little Beth.

  And she started to feel sorry for him.

  Sorry enough to go to him. To hold his hand. And to tell him she was there for him.

  He’d turn to look at her, but his eyes would be in some distant place.

  He’d squeeze her hand but say nothing.

  He was in bad shape.

  Chapter 50

  Dave, of course, knew nothing of Nellie’s death or Sal’s condition.

  He was still convinced the pair were brutal slave traders who’d imprisoned his baby, and were making her do backbreaking labor. And perhaps other unspeakable things as well.

  He had no sympathy for either of them.

  And he was coming for them with every intention of making sure they died miserable deaths.

  First, though, Dave had another mission to complete.

  He’d finally crawled into a sleeper cab’s bunk about three that morning. He’d been so tired he fell asleep within seconds.

  When he awoke, he thought he’d only dozed off. He expected the sun to be up shortly.

  Then he finally looked at his watch. It said twenty one hundred hours. Nine p.m.

  He’d quite literally slept the whole day away.

  No wonder his muscles were so damn stiff.

  He crawled out of the bunk and stretched, then peered through the windshield of the big rig.

  It was spotted with drizzle.

  The rain was coming back.

  Peachy. Just peachy.

  But then again, the rain was his friend two nights before and helped cover his egress from the enemy’s compound.

  Perhaps he needed to stop bitching about things and become a “glass is half full” kind of guy.

  Perhaps.

  He sat in the driver’s seat and tried to shake the cobwebs from his head so he could formulate a new plan. One which would account for the rain.

  And when he was finished it was a simple one: Go in and kill all the bastards any way he could.

  Admittedly it wasn’t the most thought out plan he’d ever devised.

  But he was ready to implement it anyway.

  He returned to the sleeper long enough to strap on his sidearm, replace the knife into his boot, and to grab his AR-15 rifle.

  Then he climbed out of the cab and onto the pavement below.

  He scanned the area in all directions. The only movement he detected was about a quarter mile away. Three men walking down the highway in the opposite direction. Taking their sweet time.

  He didn’t remember voices, but assumed it was their talking as they walked past his truck which had awakened him.

  In the upper right corner of the goggles the power monitor reflected two of six bars. From past experience he knew he had maybe four hours of battery life left.

  The prudent thing to do would be to replace the batteries.

  But they were hard to come by. He only had a dozen left, and they had to last him for awhile.

  The next best thing was to take spare batteries with him, and he made a mental note to remove some from his weapons bag.

  He looked around again, just to be sure he was alone, then stole away into the darkness toward the garbage pile which held the rest of his weapons. Along the way he said a silent prayer, asking God to help him get through the night intact.

  “Not for me,” he made certain he specified. “I don’t deserve it. Please spare me for little Beth’s sake. So I can go and liberate her next.”

  As he finished his prayer a bolt of lightning struck a tree two hundred yards in front of him.

  He wasn’t sure whether it was God telling him he understood Dave’s request and would honor it.

  Or whether it was God telling him he was an idiot for going into a hostile situation totally alone.

  He made it to the garbage pile without an indication of any other movement in any direction.

  So far, so good.

  The easy thing to do would be to go through the bag and decide which weapons he’d need, then leave the rest behind for another fight another day.

  The trouble with that was that he had no idea how many bad guys he’d encounter, or under what circumstances. He didn’t know if it would be over quickly, or whether he’d be involved in several prolonged firefights.

  He didn’t know whether he’d have the opportunity to apply guerilla tactics, which he considered his specialty, or whether all the fighting was going to be a bare-knuckle, all out brawl.

  In other words, he didn’t know squat.

  He didn’t know which weapons he’d need, or how much ammo to take.

  And it was a situation where taking the wrong weapons or insufficient ammo could cost him his life.

  So the only prudent thing to do was to take it all.

  Lugging a hundred pounds worth of guns, ammo and grenades wouldn’t be easy. Nor would it be subtle. It would slow him down and reduce his chances of slipping in unnoticed.

  He felt he had no choice.

  He hefted the bag and manhandled it to the far side of the highway from the Crazy Town checkpoint and moved it a little at a time, from the cover of one abandoned car to the next.

  The night vision goggles gave him a distinct advantage, although he always had to be mindful the bad guys could have them as well.

  They didn’t have them, or at least weren’t wearing them, the first time he infiltrated their camp.

  But that was before they were invaded. Before someone came in right under their noses, took a valuable vehicle, and then left unmolested.

  Things would be different now.

  They’d be watching out for him this time.

  Presumably with all the manpower, all the firepower, and all the tools they had available to them.

  Chapter 51

  At another time, under other circumstances, Dave would be cursing the rain.

  This time, it was a familiar friend. It had helped him two nights before, and he hoped it would do so again.

  But like every woman he’d ever known she’d have a mischievous side to contend with. The rain brought with it the lightning, which would periodically take away the advantage his goggles gave him. In fact, several times a minute the lightning would flash, and would appear several times brighter through his goggles than it would to someone not so equipped.

  There was a chance his goggles might cause him to be blinded tempor
arily at a crucial time.

  Like for example when he was lining up a shot or trying to take cover.

  He might have to ditch the goggles at some point. But for now, for the first part of his operation, they were coming in very handy.

  The rain was light. For now. But he knew it could turn torrential at any time.

  It didn’t rain often in the desert environment that was Albuquerque, New Mexico. But when it rained, as the saying goes, it poured.

  So the rain, and the lightning it brought with it, might be an ally or foe. He wasn’t sure which. But he’d progress slowly until he found out for sure.

  He entered Crazy Town at the same place he had two nights before, moving gingerly from the abandoned cars on the highway to those on the service road beneath it.

  This time, though, instead of progressing directly to the Dalton’s Raiders’ headquarters, he’d take a detour.

  Enemy combatants are enemy combatants, no matter where one finds them or what they might be doing at the time. In Dave’s estimation, it made sense to pick off the easy ones any chance he got to lessen the chance they’d be called in as reinforcements against him later.

  He considered the sentries at the checkpoint to be easy targets of opportunity. He’d already evaluated their habits during his previous excursion to determine whether they were sloppy, lazy or stupid.

  In his estimation, they were all three.

  Of course, a smart leader would have moved the slackers out by now and replaced them with his elite guard. He wouldn’t know for sure about that until he assaulted them. But just knowing whether that was the case would tell Dave a lot about the capabilities and tactics of the men he was dealing with.

  And so far he wasn’t impressed.

  He made his way across the service road and to the same alley he’d used before to traverse the distance to the headquarters. He was lucky in that no lightning bolts lit him up and made him a sitting duck.

  He hoped his luck held as he searched a row of houses until he found what he was looking for.