As she approached the house, Danny Dykes just happened out the front door on his way to the gas station to check on things.
Danny was never very bright, and couldn’t read the sense of rage Red was feeling.
“Well hello, there. Back for more jerky already?”
By the time he saw the butt of her rifle coming fast toward the side of his head, it was too late. It opened up a gash right above his ear and knocked him to the ground.
Horrified and confused, his right hand went to the wound and came back covered with blood. Red now stood over him, the barrel of her rifle inches from his nose and her finger on the trigger.
He found his tongue and demanded, “What the hell did you do that for?”
“Where’s the other man?”
“Did you even hear me, bitch? I said what the hell did you do that for?”
Red had never killed a man before. And as much as she wanted to at this particular moment, she couldn’t bring herself to do it.
So she did the next best thing. She made him wish he were dead.
She moved the barrel of her rifle away from his face and to his groin. Then she fired off a single 30.06 round.
From the hole that opened up in his jeans, and the way it was immediately surrounded by a rapidly growing circle of bright red blood, she knew the bullet had gone through his testicles and into the ground beneath him.
Then everything seemingly happened at once. Red heard a yell from the house. She couldn’t make out what it was, exactly, but she knew instinctively that the second man had heard the commotion and had come to help.
She turned her head toward the house, just in time to see the second man raise his own rifle.
He rushed his shot. She heard the shot at precisely the same time she heard the bullet whiz past her head and about a foot away.
Before he got off a second round Red raised her rifle toward him and fired a clean shot straight through his heart.
The man fell to the ground with a sickening thud Red heard even forty yards away. And even with the sound of her two shots still ringing in her ears.
Her attention went back to the first man, who’d been rolling around on the ground in agony, until he saw his brother fall dead in the front yard. He’d managed to get his handgun from his holster and was raising it to take aim at Red.
But his hands were covered with slippery blood and he was on the verge of passing out. Had he not been so incapacitated, he’d have been a split second faster and would have been able to even the score with this red-headed she-devil for shooting him.
That split second made all the difference. Red wheeled back toward Danny and put a bullet in the middle of his forehead.
Danny fell back into the dirt, paying the ultimate price for two grievous errors. First, whatever role he played in making a slave of the old woman and then abusing her.
And also for underestimating the red-headed stranger and what she was capable of.
As for Red, she stood stunned for a moment. Later she’d feel numb as the realization set in that she’d killed two human beings. Later she’d even grow nauseous at what she’d done and would throw up her dinner. Later on she’d hit her knees and beg her God to forgive her.
But not yet. The firefight had ended as quickly as it had started.
But there was still business to attend to.
She made her way quickly back to the cornfield, and to the old woman waiting for her there.
Chapter 37
Beth hadn’t been able to help herself. This strange young woman had risked her life to help her. To save Beth’s own life. And she hadn’t even thought to ask her her name.
She’d been told to stay in the cornfield. But as soon as the shooting had started, she felt a need to try to help. There wasn’t much she could do. But she had to try.
She’d broken free from the corn stalks, ran directly toward the battle, but it was over before she was even halfway there.
She met Red halfway, and fairly fell into the young woman’s arms.
Red looked nervously around her.
“Please. I’ve got to know. Are there any others?”
“No, child. It was only those two.”
They held each other, the old woman trembling and still favoring her left arm, for several minutes.
Finally Red broke away, held the woman at arm’s length, and asked her, “Are you ready to go home now?”
Both women were crying. Beth managed to nod her head yes.
As they walked past Danny’s body, Beth barely turned to look at him. They went on, Red’s arm around her, careful not to touch the wounded left arm until she found out what was wrong with it.
Red was surprised when Beth paused over Billy’s body. The front of his denim shirt was now soaked with his blood, his open eyes staring sightlessly at the clear blue sky.
But the biggest surprise came when Beth, who’d Red had pegged as a genteel and saintly woman, spit in the dead man’s face. Then she bent over him and said, “I hope you rot in hell for what you did to us, you son of a bitch.”
Then she straightened up once again, composed herself, and looked at Red.
“I’m sorry, dear. I don’t know why I did that. Something just came over me.”
“There’s no reason to apologize. And please, call me Red.”
“Hello, Red. Thank you. My name is Beth. Beth Sanders. For a long time I’ve been called bitch. But my preference is Beth. I like it so much better.”
Red led her into the house and sat the woman on the living room couch.
“You wait here. I’ll see if I can find us something cool to drink. Then I want to examine you thoroughly, and to see if that arm is broken.”
It was time for her to help her new friend heal, just as she’d done for Dave. She’d nurse Beth’s wounds, and be a shoulder for her to cry on. She’d listen to whatever the old woman had to share.
But Red wouldn’t pry into the reasons Beth hated Billy so much more than Danny. In Red’s eyes they were equal. Barely human, the worst kind of scum mankind could muster. In Beth’s eyes, though, Billy was obviously the worst of the pair. If she had an inclination to tell Red why at some point, Red would listen and commiserate with her, then comfort her.
But Red wouldn’t pry. Some things, perhaps, were best left buried.
Chapter 38
As Red had suspected, Beth’s left forearm was fractured. It had been three weeks since Billy had pushed the old woman to the floor because he’d waited too long to eat and his soup had gotten cold.
And pushing her to the ground, apparently, wasn’t punishment enough for her. He’d kicked her several times with his boot as well.
The fractured bone had already fused together, a bit crooked, but that couldn’t be helped. The only way to set it correctly and straighten it would be to break it again and set it properly.
And Red didn’t have the heart to even suggest it.
She asked, “How badly does it hurt?”
“Not as bad as it once did. It keeps me awake at night, though, with a dull throbbing pain. During the daytime it aches, but as long as I don’t use it a lot of bump it against anything, it’s manageable.”
“Have you tried ibuprofen at bedtime to help deaden the pain and help you sleep?”
“I finally stopped asking. Billy said I didn’t need it. That he wanted to save it all for his headaches.”
Red thought back to her tour of the shelves at the back of the tiny gas station, when she was looking for white vinegar. She remembered seeing a dozen bottles of ibuprofen, right next to an equal number of bottles of acetaminophen.
It made her angry, but she held her tongue.
“I’m going to go ahead and cast this, although it’s well on its way to healing. At your age bones are brittle and fragile, and if you were to stumble or overstress it, you could break it again. A cast will also help cushion it and soften the blow if you bump it into anything. First, though, I want to examine the rest of your body to see what else we’re d
ealing with.”
Red helped the old woman get undressed, and winced at every bruise she saw. They weren’t all fresh and black. Many were in varying stages of healing and discoloration. The beating she received at Billy’s hands wasn’t a one-time thing. They’d been ongoing for a very long time.
She also found open sores, one on the bottom of Beth’s foot and one on her ankle.
“These look like ulcerated diabetic sores,” she said. Are you diabetic?”
“Yes. But I ran out of medication months ago. And all they would let me eat were corn and other things from the garden. A lot of flour and potatoes. Mostly carbohydrates. I knew it was bad for me, but they said they had to save the meat and good vegetables for them and their customers.”
“Well, those days are past. Did they bother searching those Walmart trucks for medications?”
“Yes. They said they found some medicines, but that I didn’t really need them. That I’d be fine without them. They said they didn’t want to waste them on me if they could trade them for gold shavings.”
“I’m going to cast your arm and then clean and dress your sores. Any other ailments I need to know about?”
“No. I have to ask… are you a doctor?”
Red shook her head.
“No. I was a scrub nurse for a while. A surgical nurse, one who assists the surgeons in the operating room. I quit because I couldn’t stand to lose a patient on the table. Especially children. I just wasn’t cut out for that, I suppose. I consider myself a strong woman, but watching good people die was just too much for me to handle. I walked away from it. But during my medical training I learned many useful things. Things I can put to use now to nurse you back to health.”
“Bless you, child. You are a godsend.”
Red smiled, and actually blushed. It embarrassed her and she turned away.
“You stay here. I’m going to run over to your gas station and see what I can find.”
She returned twenty minutes later to find Beth napping on the couch, naked except for her bra and her underwear.
She’d have thought that after the stress of the previous couple of hours, sleep would have been the last thing the old woman could do. But then again, perhaps this was the first time in months she felt comfortable enough to nap. Maybe she was so sleep deprived her body just couldn’t wait to start catching up.
Red felt a new sense of pity for whatever the old woman must have gone through recently.
And although they’d just met, Red resolved to make sure Beth lived out the rest of her years in relative comfort, without fear of bodily harm at the hands of monsters like the Dykes.
Beth stirred at the sound of Red’s footsteps.
“Oh, thank heavens! You’re real after all.”
Red said, “I don’t understand.”
“I fell asleep for a moment and when I woke up you were gone. I was afraid I had dreamed you. That you didn’t really exist. And that Billy was going to yell at me and beat me again.”
“Was that his name? Billy? The more brutal of the two?”
“Yes, dear. The one I spat upon. Should I feel bad for doing that?”
“No, ma’am. He deserved it, and you earned that right. You shouldn’t feel bad at all. And I promise you, he will never harm you again. No one else will either. I will make sure of that.”
Beth looked at the goods Red was carrying, and took a large blue bottle from her hands.
“Metformin. That’s what I took for my diabetes, before I ran out.”
“I thought it might be. There were several bottles of it on the shelf. The bastards could have easily brought it over here for you. It wouldn’t have hurt them a bit.”
“They argued about me constantly. Danny wanted to keep me alive, so I could continue to be a servant for them. Billy wanted me to die, so he’d no longer be burdened with guarding me. Billy was the stronger of the two, and decreed that they’d just stop giving me medicines and let nature take its course. I have to admit, that was okay with me. I figured that the sooner I died, the sooner I’d escape the torment I was living.”
“Those days are over, Beth. You’re going to rejoin the living, and we’re going to make you all better. You’re going to start eating the healthier of the fruits and vegetables from your garden and I prescribe a lot of protein too. You don’t have to share your beef and pork with anyone, not anymore.”
Chapter 39
Red busied herself cleaning Beth’s foot sores and applying antiseptic ointment and fresh bandages.
Beth watched her with some fascination. And her curiosity got the best of her.
“Ummm, I hate to ask, dear. But what are the large bottles of Elmer’s glue for?”
“For your cast.”
“For my cast? Really?”
“Yes ma’am. In these days and times, we have to make do with what we have.”
After the sores were done, Red went to the kitchen and returned with a large glass bowl half filled with water. She poured both large bottles of glue into the water, then stirred the mixture into a wet and sticky concoction, then started dipping several rolls of gauze into it.
One at a time, she wrapped the wet gauze around Beth’s forearm.
“It’ll take a bit longer to dry than plaster, so I’ll have to ask you to lay here with your arm in this position for about an hour. But once it’s dry your cast will be just as strong as any you’d have gotten made at a doctor’s office before the world went dark.”
“And you learned how to do this when you were training to be a nurse?”
“No, ma’am. Actually, my dad taught me this trick. He used to sell a lot of this glue at his hardware store. Turns out it’s the glue equivalent of duct tape. You can do darn near anything with it, from clearing your face of acne to gluing together fine furniture. My Daddy taught me lots of stuff that’s come in handy over the years.”
Beth detected sadness mixed with the pride in Red’s voice.
“Your father… he’s gone?”
“Yes, ma’am. He was murdered by some very ruthless people. The same people who murdered my husband and son a couple of months before. That’s why I’m here. I’m going to Lubbock to track one of them down. And to find out what he knows about who else was involved.”
“Is there anything I can do to aid you in your journey?”
“Just stay alive and get healthy until I come back for you.”
“What do you mean, come back for me?”
“You shouldn’t stay here any longer than you have to. It’s too dangerous out here, you being elderly and with health issues and no one to watch out for you.”
“But… this has been my home for fifty two years. The only home I have. I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
“Yes, you do. You’ll love Blanco. It’s not much bigger than this place. And it used to be a wonderful little town, before John Savage came in and brought his corruption with him. It will be a nice town again. I’ll make darn sure of that.”
“What is Blanco? That’s a place?”
The poor woman was obviously confused.
“I’m sorry. You’ve been through a lot today. I shouldn’t just assume you’d want to relocate. You should have the time to think it over.
“Blanco is indeed a place. It’s a town west of Austin about ninety miles or so. I have business in Lubbock, but I’ll be coming back this way in a few days. Maybe as long as a week or two. If you want, I will take you back to Blanco with me. You’ll be safe there. Safer than this place, where you’re at the mercy of any creep walking down the highway who decides they need your place more than you do.”
“But we just met. Why would you want to do all that for me?”
“Let’s just say you remind me of someone I once knew and loved.”
Beth’s head was spinning. This place was her home, the only home she’d known for many years. Her husband was gone now, murdered and burned, then buried beneath a pile of burned wood. But this was where his spirit was, she was convinced of it. She und
erstood the dangers in staying. But she wasn’t sure she wanted to leave, either.
Red could see the uncertainty in her eyes.
“Look, if I do some things to ensure your safety, would you think about it? On my way back through here in a few days, I’ll stop and ask you if you want to move to Blanco. If you do, I’ll get you there safely. If you choose to stay, I’ll try to equip you with as many tools as I can to help you fight the dangers that will come along. Then I’ll wish you well and go on my way. Fair enough?”
“Um… okay, dear.”
Red helped her get dressed, then walked up the stairs behind her in case the stresses of the day made her weak and she fell backwards.
Once she was at her room Red excused herself, saying, “You’ll hear some banging. That’s just me. And I’ll leave for a bit, but I’ll be back before sundown.”
“Okay.”
Beth was drained, and a bit overwhelmed. When she’d awakened that morning to Billy’s yelling at her to hurry up and fix his breakfast, she’d been little more than a slave. She’d been beaten in one form or fashion five of the last seven days. Her world was full of despair. She had no hope for a better future and she wished she were dead.
Now, over the span of a few short hours, she’d made a new friend. One who genuinely seemed to care for her and was willing to protect her. Billy and Danny were both dead, and she no longer had to worry about being beaten. Did that mean she could actually plan for a future? Look forward to waking up in the morning instead of dreading it? Did it mean she could feel again? Care again? Love again?
She hoped it wasn’t a dream.
She hoped that the mysterious red-headed stranger came back. There were so many questions she wanted to ask her.
Chapter 40
Red’s hands trembled as she sat on the creaky old steps of the front porch.
It had been a rough day for her too, thus far. She’d gone her whole life without killing a single human being, and today she killed two of them, less than a minute apart.
Too Tough To Tame: Red: Book 2 Page 13