Chapter 23
Their third night, traveling in darkness and using night vision goggles to find their way, Red and Dave were becoming great friends.
Just before sunrise a heavy rain finally subsided. It was time to pull over and sleep.
And Dave was walking again, albeit very slowly and very painfully. He was in the mood for wild berries, of all things.
They parked the Explorer in front of a Ford Freightliner.
Dave got out and stretched. “Why don’t you check out the sleeper?” he said. “I’m going to go find a bush and empty my bladder, and see if I can find some wild berries close by.”
“Can you bend over to pick them if you find some? And if you do, can you straighten back up again?”
“I think so. If I can’t, I’ll call you and you can come and carry me back to the truck.”
“Yeah, right, Bucko. Fat chance of that.”
But she would have. Maybe not have carried him, but certainly would have lent a shoulder to help him back if he’d needed it.
And they both knew it.
When Red saw him return twenty minutes later, she was surprised. He wasn’t alone. Instead, he was accompanied by a young girl, a twenty-something, lugging a wet sleeping bag.
“Hey, Dave! You said you were going to collect berries. That don’t look like no berry to me.”
Dave introduced Red to the young girl.
“This is Red, she’s my traveling companion. Red, I found her sleeping under a tree.”
Red was intrigued.
“Why on earth would you sleep under a tree, in a rainstorm? The highway is full of abandoned vehicles. And most of them are dry.”
The girl laughed.
“Oh, I know. I prefer to sleep outside under the stars. The rains stopped for a bit and I thought they were finished. So I found a tree to sleep under overnight. Then the rains came back, and were so heavy I didn’t want to leave the shelter of the tree to return to the highway. But it was okay. The bag is waterproof, and the tree gave me some cover too. Are you two headed north?”
Dave and Red looked at each other.
Red remained silent.
Dave hesitated, but told her the truth.
“Yes.”
“Great! Mind if I join up with you? It sure helps the day pass faster when you have someone to talk to.”
Again, Red remained silent, and again Dave was honest.
“Well, to tell you the truth, we’re night travelers. We were just getting ready to crash in that truck over there so we could get some sleep. We won’t start out until after dark.”
The girl was visibly disappointed. She really wanted some company.
But she was undeterred.
“Oh, well. I probably should travel at night. It’s probably safer. But my night vision sucks. Maybe I’ll see you later on up the road. Where are y’all headed?”
“Lubbock.”
“Kansas City.”
“Oh. Well, I’m headed to Dallas myself. To see if my grandma and grandpa are still alive. I sure hope they are.”
“Well, good luck to you. I hope you can find them.”
“Good luck to you too. Be safe.”
And with that, the young girl headed north on foot, along the solid white line of the highway’s shoulder. The wet sleeping bag was draped over a bright pink backpack.
As they watched her small frame get smaller and smaller, Dave and Red considered their dilemma.
Red said, “I suppose we should have offered her a ride at least part of the way. It would have been the neighborly thing to do.”
“Yes. I thought the same thing, but I was afraid if she found out we had a working vehicle, she might try to steal it while we slept.”
“She didn’t seem to be the type. But then again, these days it’s wise not to trust anyone you don’t know.”
“What we could do is get a few hours’ sleep and let her get a head start. She can’t cover more than five miles, tops. We’ll leave an hour before sunset and catch her before she beds down for the night. We can let her sleep in the back while we drive, and she can keep watch tomorrow while we sleep. We’ll hide the keys before she wakes up so she doesn’t take off on us.”
“Dave Speer, I knew the first time I met you that you were a brilliant man. I don’t care how bad a thief you are.”
Chapter 24
Scarcely two miles had gone by when they drove around a sleeping bag, thrown haphazardly across their lane of traffic.
“Hey, that looks a lot like the girl’s bag. Or, at least, the same color. Odd place for it to be.”
Red felt a knot in the pit of her stomach, but said nothing.
Over the next rise, Dave said, “What the hell is that?”
It was a bright pink backpack, its compartments unzipped, its contents strewn across both lanes.
It was all he could do not to punch the gas pedal. He picked up speed as much as he dared, but didn’t want to move so fast that he drove right past the girl when they did catch her.
He scanned the left side of the highway, while Red scanned the right.
The light was starting to dim.
Dave had a terrible feeling of foreboding.
Red suddenly shouted, “Stop!”
Then, in an anguished tone, she said, “Oh, God. No.”
Dave braked hard, even as he turned his head to the right.
There, in the high grass just off the highway, lay what appeared to be a heap of clothing.
Both of them knew it wasn’t.
Red ran to the girl. Dave hobbled right behind her.
He stood helpless and watched.
There was absolutely nothing he could do.
Even with all of her medical training, Red was helpless as well.
The girl’s throat had been cut. Nearly all the blood had drained from her body, saturated her clothing and puddled in the muddy ground around her.
Red stood and walked over to Dave.
They held each other, but there was no passion between them. Merely the support two humans needed from one another when their world came crashing down.
Dave said, “I never even asked what her name was.”
The world had become a dark and ugly place.
And Red didn’t particularly like it anymore.
They buried the young girl under a pile of stones and prayed over her.
“Lord, please take her under your wings and to a better place. Because this one really sucks.”
Chapter 25
The young girl’s name was Sarah, although they didn’t know it until they saw the name on a bracelet as they were burying her. Her death changed both of them.
Dave was hit especially hard because it forced him to think of his own Sarah. It drove home the fact that the world was a different place now. That there were a lot of things he could no longer control. Evil things that could endanger his wife or daughters.
Red was heartbroken. She was in the house with Russell and Rusty the night they died. She’d have died too, except she’d gone outside for firewood just before the explosion. The blast injured her severely, but she somehow survived. And oddly enough, she felt guilty for not dying with them.
The guilt returned when her father died. It was an illogical argument, she knew. But she couldn’t help blaming herself, thinking that if she hadn’t gone off to be alone in the woods, she’d have been able to save him. She’d been haunted by the feeling that because she was selfish and put her own well-being first, that he was left vulnerable and alone.
And now again, with the girl she knew only as Sarah, the guilt returned.
“We shouldn’t have turned her away,” she told Dave matter-of-factly.
“I know. But we didn’t have a clue. And if we told her we had a vehicle she might have stolen it while we slept.”
“I don’t think so. She didn’t seem to be the type.”
“I didn’t think so either. But I have to keep telling myself she could have been.”
“Why?”
“Because if I don’t keep telling myself that, I’ll feel as guilty as you’re feeling. And one of us being so down is bad enough.”
“Maybe we should have taken a chance and taken her in anyway. I mean, at some point, the world has to start getting back to normal again. People have to start loving and caring and trusting one another again. At some point the hate and killing and distrust has to stop.”
“I agree. But it’s not that time yet. The world is still too dangerous. To trust now is to make yourself a patsy and to give the bad people the opportunity to take advantage of you. To turn your back to others gives them a chance to stab you in the back. She trusted others to let her pass unharmed, and she paid the ultimate price.”
“I wish I knew where the bastards were who did that.”
“So do I, Red. But we’ll never find them. They’ve gotten away with it for now. But God will make them pay someday. We just have to let Him handle it.”
The rest of the night, Red was sullen and angry. She didn’t say more than a dozen words, and Dave finally nodded off in the passenger seat.
He awoke with a start just before Red pulled over to park the Explorer for the day.
She asked, “Do you feel better?”
“No. Not really.”
“You dreamed about her, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“No.”
“Okay.”
Dave kept a journal of his travels, partly so he could share his experiences with his wife and daughters.
As the early morning sun peeked over the trees, the pair sat in the cab of a red Peterbilt that looked so new it would have been at home on the dealer’s showroom floor.
Dave sat in the passenger seat, scribbling away on his journal. Red was behind the wheel, talking to herself.
“Still has that new truck smell…”
Dave didn’t answer.
“I’ll bet this was its maiden voyage.”
Still no answer.
She resorted to humming a tune that had been stuck in her head while she waited for Dave to finish.
She wasn’t even sure what song it was. She hadn’t heard it on the radio, for the radios hadn’t worked in over a year. It was just something that magically showed up in the back of her mind a couple of hours before and, like a pesky gnat, just wouldn’t go away.
Dave finally stopped writing and clipped the pen to the outside of his journal.
“Can I read it?”
“No.”
“How come?”
“Because it’s personal.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“Can I at least ask why?”
He just looked at her and didn’t say anything.
“Dave, need I remind you that you’ve talked nonstop for the last three days? You’ve told me all about your wife and daughters and everything that happened the past year. You’ve told me about the kid you shot and the dreams you’ve had and the stupid bunnies you named after your girls.
“And, I forgot. When I dressed your wounds I stripped you naked and saw your ridiculous little…”
She paused for effect.
He looked at her.
“Feet. I saw your ridiculous little feet, which are the same shoe size as mine by the way. And I saw everything else that God gave you. And if you don’t mind me saying so, God has a great sense of humor.”
“Is there a point to all this?”
“Yes. Yes, Dave, there is. The point is that you no longer have any secrets from me. You’ve laid your body and your soul bare at my feet. I know everything there is to know about you. Except one. Whatever you wrote in your journal. So why can’t I know that too?”
“I’ll make a deal with you, Red. Will you stop humming that stupid song if I read you my journal entry?”
Red smiled. She’d won. And since the song was driving her crazy anyway, giving it up seemed like a small sacrifice to make.
“Deal.”
Dave opened his journal and read aloud.
Dear Sarah,
I’ve decided that if I get to Kansas City and find that you and the girls didn’t make it, I’m checking out of this world.
I don’t like it anymore.
I don’t want to live in a world without you in it. Believing with all my heart that the three of you survived and were waiting for me was the only thing that kept me from pulling that trigger on those nights when I toyed with the thought of killing myself. I couldn’t bear to think of you and the girls somehow making it back, to find me dead on the floor by my own hand. And I didn’t want you to know that I was incredibly weak and took the easy way out. That’s the only reason I never did it.
But now… now I finally see the world as the really evil place it is. Yesterday we met a young girl. Her name was Sarah. I know… what are the odds, right?
Anyway, we had the opportunity to take Sarah under our wing. To let her join our little band of idiots. But we chose not to do so. Because we couldn’t trust her. A sweet young girl who couldn’t have been much older than Lindsey. And we were so afraid of her we cast her out. We went back to pick her up later, only to find out she’d been brutally murdered. Her throat was sliced open and all the blood drained from her body. There was nothing we could do but bury her.
It could easily have been you, my own beloved Sarah. Or one of the girls.
I don’t want to live in a world where an innocent child can’t walk down a highway in broad daylight without being slaughtered like an animal. I just don’t.
If you and the girls didn’t survive, I’ve resolved myself to joining you. May God forgive me if it comes to that. But I’ve made up my mind.
Red didn’t say a word. She didn’t know what to say. She could have chastised her new friend… told him he was an idiot. She’d told him that several other times for various reasons.
But this time she held her tongue.
She couldn’t, in clear conscience, challenge him for thinking of doing something she’d considered herself.
She’d had the same thoughts since Russell and Rusty died. And especially since Butch fell victim to the evil which now encompassed Blanco.
She merely looked at him with sadness in her eyes and said, “I’m exhausted. I’m gonna hit the rack and get some rest.”
With that she crawled from the driver’s seat into the sleeper compartment and lay on the bunk. She cried herself to sleep.
Chapter 26
The two were in a general funk their last night together.
But at least they had something to talk about besides young Sarah.
Instead, they tried to put the sweet young girl out of their thoughts and argued instead.
Dave insisted on diverting to Lubbock for a couple or three days to provide some backup for Red when she went after Jesse Luna.
Red insisted she didn’t need him, didn’t want him, and was better off going it alone.
Each of them thought they had a valid argument.
“Two guns are better than one,” Dave argued. “You can’t cover your back in the heat of battle. I can do that for you. And besides a second gun, you’ll have a second set of eyes too. It might save you from being ambushed.”
Red countered, “I know you used to be a big bad Marine and all, but let’s face it. Lately you’ve sucked at taking care of yourself. Where were those sharp eyes and gun handling skills when you let a crotchety old man get the drop on you in Blanco? Where was that toughness when you let them beat you until you were an inch from death? And exactly what good are you going to do me when I have to watch out for you and protect you from making the same mistakes again?”
Her words stung, probably more than they were intended to. But Dave was undeterred.
“Okay, I’ll admit it. I let my guard down and walked into an ambush. But I wasn’t expecting trouble. This time I know there’s the chance of being ambushed every step of the way. And that the odds are likely to be against us eve
n before we set foot in Lubbock. Red, I’m a combat veteran. A tour in Iraq and another in Afghanistan. I can handle myself in combat, I really can. I got stupid, yes. But I learn from my mistakes and I’ll be more careful from here on out. You really need a second gun.”
“Dave, you’re missing the point. You don’t have a second gun, remember? You let an old fool like John Savage take it away from you, and you never got it back.”
“Ouch. Thank you for reminding me. But you already told me you had a backup pistol you’d give me. And I’m an expert shot with my AR. And not every gun battle is going to be close range. If we’re smart, we’ll take out most of the bad guys from a distance. And two rifles are much better than one.”
“But Dave, when I get to Lubbock I’m going to be trying to keep a low profile. Luna knows what I look like. I have to keep in the shadows, stay out of sight as much as possible while I scope the place out and come up with my game plan. Surely a big bad corporal in the United States Marine Corps can understand the value of gathering intelligence before a mission.”
“You’re not making fun of my Marine Corps, are you?”
“Of course not. I’d never do that. I’m making fun of you.”
“For wanting to help you?”
“No, stupid. For thinking you can go in there, all beaten up and bruised and wearing a magazine cast on your broken arm and thinking you can just blend in. We might as well walk into town with a big neon sign above our heads that says Hey everybody, look here! It’s a couple of strangers asking questions!”
“And you’re gonna be less conspicuous, a beautiful woman with flowing red hair. You’re not gonna stick out like a sore thumb yourself?”
“You really think I’m beautiful?”
“Oh, shut up. You’re ruining my argument. The fact is, although I’ve been stupid and I’m injured, backup is always a good thing. I may not be the perfect backup, but right now I’m the only option you’ve got. You saved my life and you’re not gonna deprive me the opportunity to repay you. It just wouldn’t be right or fair.”
Too Tough To Tame: Red: Book 2 Page 9