Too Tough To Tame: Red: Book 2

by Darrell Maloney

  She turned the mattress over too, for safe measure.

  Just in case the bed’s previous occupant had fleas or some other disgusting creature infesting his head or body.

  Even after that, she climbed onto the bed almost timidly. Almost saying to heck with it, and unrolling her bedroll in the front yard, beneath the stars.

  But truth was, the girly side of her had been missing the comfort of a bed. She’d been on the road for well over a week now, and her bedroll was getting old. For the several nights she was nursing Dave back to health and then traveling with him, they’d shared the bunks of truckers’ sleeping cabs together. The four inch foam mattresses were softer than her bedroll. But the accommodations were cramped for two people, and she was never quite comfortable sharing the bunk with Dave.

  Oh, he was respectful and they were fully clothed. But it was the first time she’d shared such accommodations with a man since her husband died. And it just seemed so… not right to her.

  She thought about her friend Dave, and how he was faring on his own rescue mission, until she drifted off to sleep a little after two a.m.

  She was so tired when she went to bed that morning she didn’t even realize the bedroom faced to the east. The curved staircase turned her around, and her internal compass was askew. She’d have preferred to sleep a couple of hours past sunrise, but the morning rays breaking through the windows and directly onto her face wouldn’t let her.

  She grunted an “ugh” and rolled over, her back to the sun, and dozed off again.

  But it was short-lived.

  She awakened a second time just a few minutes later by a housefly marching incessantly across her lower lip. The tickling sensation caused her to blow him away a couple of times, but he kept coming back to resume his pacing.

  “Damn it!”

  She swatted at the tiny creature and missed, and the mere effort in doing that made her wide awake. Or perhaps it was the motion accompanied by the anger she felt toward the tiny pest.

  She huffed and puffed and sat up on the edge of the bed, then put her head in her hands.

  Then she looked out the window at the great ball of fire in the eastern sky and growled, “This is your fault! Why couldn’t you just sleep in for once and let me get some rest?”

  Red never was a morning person.

  Chapter 45

  Red dressed and walked down the hallway in her stocking feet. Just in case Beth was still sleeping. She knocked lightly on the old woman’s door, then a bit harder.

  “Oh, no,” she said to herself. “Please, God. Don’t tell me the stress was too much for the poor soul.”

  She opened the door slowly, afraid of what she might find on the other side.

  But there was no one there. The bed was made, the room was spotless, and Beth was nowhere in sight.

  She stepped back into the hallway and walked down the stairs, still holding her boots in one hand.

  It wasn’t until she neared the kitchen that she smelled the bacon frying.

  Because the camp stove was on the back porch, where she’d left it several hours before. And because very few of the bacon’s delectable smells penetrated the screen door.

  Beth was sitting on the floor of the back porch, Indian style, watching the bacon intently with a spatula in her hand.

  She looked up and smiled.

  “Hello there,” she said. “I hope you slept as well as I did.”

  Red returned the smile and said, “I did, but I wish I could have slept a bit longer.”

  “Well, I woke up this morning in a fog. My memory is at its worst when I’m going through a period of stress, you see. And I was so confused…”

  Red held out a hand to help her up. She led her to two rocking chairs a few feet away and sat her down on the one with a cushion. Red took the other one, after taking the spatula from the old woman’s hand.

  “Confused about what?”

  “Well, I wanted so much to believe you were real. That you really had appeared out of nowhere, an angel of mercy, and saved me from my dreadful situation.

  “But I looked out in the front yard, expecting to see the bodies of Danny and Billy, and they weren’t there. I went to the corn field to see if you were hiding there again, and you weren’t there. I wanted to check the other bedrooms upstairs, but I was afraid they’d be empty and I think it would have broken my heart.

  “I thought I might have just dreamed the whole thing, and that Billy and Danny went out with Bonnie to shoot a deer and pack it out. And then I noticed the cast on my arm, and remembered you were the one who put it there. And that you dressed my other wounds as well. And I found the bottle of Metformin you brought me. I took it, and now I feel better than I have in months. My migraine is even gone.”

  Tears welled in her eyes.

  “Thank you for not being a dream.”

  Red smiled.

  “Well, men have called me a nightmare before. So I guess just being a non-dream is a step up, of sorts.”

  “What happened to the bodies? Did I dream that part? Are they still alive and out there somewhere? Are they coming back after us?”

  “No, ma’am. You didn’t dream that part either. Their bodies are a ways up the highway, so we don’t have to smell the decay. Hopefully the buzzards picking at the bodies will clean them down to bones before they get too bad.

  “As for their souls… I expect that right about now they’re standing in front of St. Peter, trying to convince him that they weren’t that bad after all and deserve to be let into heaven. And I suspect that St. Peter is getting ready to send them down the pathway to hell instead.”

  Beth’s words finally sunk in.

  “You mentioned Bonnie. Who is Bonnie?”

  “Bonnie’s my mare. She’s over there in the barn. That reminds me, I need to go and feed and water her.”

  Red smiled again.

  “I have a horse named Bonnie too. A Morgan. Sweetest horse on the face of this earth.”

  It was another odd coincidence. But it wasn’t the last one the new friends would unearth.

  Red left the chair long enough to turn the bacon, then turn the fire down a bit. She noticed for the first time five chicken eggs in a plastic tray next to the small stove.

  “How do you like your eggs, Beth? Scrambled in bacon grease okay?”

  “Oh, yes, dear. That’s fine. But I’ll do it. You’ve done enough to help. You’re a guest in my house now, and you shouldn’t be helping with the chores.”

  Red gave the old woman what Hawaiians call “stink eye.” It wasn’t a look of hatred, but rather one of disapproval. Kind of like saying, “Are you nuts?” without mouthing the words.

  Beth said, “What? What did I say?”

  “You won’t be doing any chores for a while. You. Not me. You’ve been a slave to bad men and chores long enough. Today you’re going to relax.”

  “Red, I haven’t been able to relax in so long I honestly don’t know that I can.”

  “I’ll tell you what, then. We’ll have some breakfast, and I want to clean up and change, and then change your dressings. I know that yesterday you were in a bit of shock. You probably didn’t watch closely as I cleaned your wounds. Today I want you to watch closely, so you can do it while I’m gone. It’s important. After we’re finished with that, we’re going out to the stable to feed and water Bonnie, and you can spend the rest of the day following me around and keeping me company.”

  “Keeping you company while you do what, exactly?”

  “We’re going to make this house look empty. And we’re going to stock it with everything you need to enable you to stay in it as much as possible while I’m gone. We’re going to hide you until I come back, so that no one else happens by to do you harm until I return to take you to a better place.”

  Beth was a bit overwhelmed. She’d been forced to care for others at her own expense for so long, she didn’t know what to say.

  So Red said it for her.

  “And the only thing that’
s debatable is who makes supper at the end of the day.”

  Beth smiled.

  “I’ve got the supper part handled. But can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “That pretty gold locket you’ve got hanging around your neck. You keep clasping it in your fingers. It’s obviously very precious to you. Can I ask you about it?”

  Red wasn’t even aware she’d been doing it. But she wasn’t one who kept secrets.

  She went to the old woman, opening the tiny locket as she went.

  “Let me show you something you won’t believe…”

  Chapter 46

  Red drew the drapes in all the downstairs rooms. It made the first floor of the house very dark. But all the upstairs curtains were opened wide, and the light streaming down from the second floor did an adequate job of illuminating the staircase.

  “Okay, Beth, I need a lot of wood. Not firewood. Lumber. Know where I can get some?”

  “Milam used to make furniture. It was his hobby. Tables and headboards, mostly. He made them for our friends, and sometimes would put them out in front of the gas station for travelers to look at. Every once in a while he’d sell one of them, but not often. You see, Milam was a wonderful man and was so good at doing so many things. But making furniture wasn’t one of them. He knew it and admitted to it, and he wouldn’t mind me telling you this. For some reason, his tables had a bad habit of being crooked, or one leg would be slightly longer than the others. Or they’d have a low spot in their surface. Or something. But it was something he loved doing, so I always encouraged him to do it.

  “Anyway, he always kept a lot of lumber out behind the stables, in a small shed. Just before the blackout hit, he brought in a pickup load from the lumber store in Jacksboro. He never was able to use it because none of his tools would work anymore. So it should still be there.”

  Then she finally got around to asking her own rather obvious question.

  “But why on earth do you need lumber?”

  “Relax. I’m not gonna build any crooked tables. I’m going to use it to board up your house.”

  “But why?”

  “So no one will come in and find out you live here. We want to make it look abandoned.”

  Red spent most of the morning dragging pieces of mahogany lumber from Milam’s old shed to the house. She used a hammer and nails to board over each of the windows, then each of the exterior doors.

  On the kitchen door leading onto the back porch she left a gap between two of the boards just wide enough for her to squeeze through. Beth was thinner than Red. Red knew if she could get in and out of the house through the narrow gap in the boards that Beth could too.

  Once finished with the project, Red explained.

  “The front and back doors both open to the inside of the house, but the knobs are both covered over by the boards. That means an outsider cannot open the doors from the outside. They can only be opened from the inside.

  “I want you to stay inside as much as possible. I know you’ll have to go outside occasionally, but I want you to do it only every other day, and only in the early morning. And stay out only as long as you absolutely have to, then get yourself back in the house.”

  “But why only in the early morning?”

  “I’ve been on the road for a while now. One of the things I’ve noticed is that the nomads who wander up and down these highways seldom come out until mid-morning. I don’t know why. Perhaps after being on their feet all day it takes their bodies that long to recover. Or maybe they just don’t like walking in grass damp from the dew and wait until it dries off. Whatever the reason, we can use it to your advantage. If you can go out every other day to gather your eggs and feed Bonnie and the livestock, then make it back into the house as quickly as you can, the wanderers who come by later will believe the house is boarded up and abandoned.”

  “But what if they’re squatters looking for such a house. Won’t they just remove the boards and move in?”

  “I’ll take care of that.”

  And she did.

  Red found a can of red spray paint in the tack room.

  Across the large exterior wall of the front porch, she painted the following message in large letters:

  FAMILY OF FIVE DEAD AND ROTTING INSIDE

  MURDERED BY MARAUDERS

  PLEASE LET THEM REST IN PEACE

  Red knew it would take a very hardy soul to move into a house occupied by rotting corpses. It was a smell that penetrated everything and make strong men puke. And in an enclosed place like a sealed house, it would linger for years.

  Of course, there weren’t really any bodies inside.

  But the nomads didn’t know that.

  Chapter 47

  Just before dark Red packed her things and prepared to leave.

  She had a long list of things she wanted Beth to do in her absence, and went over them for the twentieth time.

  “Remember, the trick to being safe is to make the house appear to be unoccupied. Keep the windows upstairs open so it doesn’t get too hot. Absolutely no candles or lanterns in the upstairs rooms. Try to go to bed and get back up in daylight so you won’t need them.”

  “But I can have light downstairs, can’t I? It’s so dark with the curtains drawn and the windows boarded.”

  “Yes. Downstairs the light is no problem. They can’t see in the windows anyway. Eat the jerky the bastards left you so you don’t have to go outside to cook. I brought you at least a week’s worth of vegetables from the garden to eat as well. The only things you’ll need to go outside for is to gather your eggs and feed your stock. Do that every other day. It won’t hurt any of the animals to get two days’ worth of food and water every other day. They’ll probably eat it all the first day, but they won’t starve to death waiting for you to bring them more.”

  She could see the apprehension in Beth’s face.

  “Look. I know you’re not crazy about the prospect of being a prisoner in your own home. I’m not crazy about asking you to, after everything you’ve been through. But it’ll only be for a week or ten days, and it’s the only way I can reasonably guarantee your safety while I’m gone. I’ve lost too many friends and people I’ve cared about lately. I don’t want to lose any more.”

  “Oh, I understand. It’s just that… well, what’s the point in gathering the eggs every other day if I can’t cook them?”

  Red looked at the old woman and smiled. Faced with the prospect of hiding out for her life, she couldn’t think of anything more important to ask than what to do with the eggs.

  She was obviously far less concerned about the whole situation than Red was.

  “That’s a good point. Why not just leave the eggs in the hen house until I get back? Maybe you’ll have some spankin’ new baby chicks by the time I return.”

  “Actually, there’s something else too. I wish you wouldn’t go to Lubbock. Call it an old woman’s intuition. Tell me I’m just a worry wart. I don’t care. I just think that no good could possibly come of you going off to a strange place in search of the man you think murdered your family.”

  She turned and looked Red right in the eyes before continuing.

  “You say you’ve lost your entire family. So have I. You’ve rescued me from a very bad situation, and I will be eternally grateful for that. I really will. You’ve given my life new purpose and given me the opportunity to actually feel again. To think I have a future again. Well, what kind of future will that be if the only friend I have in the world goes off and gets herself killed?”

  The tears invaded her eyes once again.

  “Red, at what point do we just admit that the bad people win sometimes? That going after justice is sometimes a fool’s game? That it just results in more and more killing of the good and decent ones?”

  Red felt her pain, and even saw her logic.

  But she was too stubborn to bend.

  “You can’t expect me to believe in the rules of law and of justice my entire life and then give up on it
when the going gets rough. I wasn’t wired that way. And the sad fact of the matter, my home town is in trouble. Big trouble, and somebody needs to save it.”

  “But why does it have to be you, dear? I mean, you swooped in here and saved me even before you met me. You could have gotten killed. And now you want to save a whole town? I’m afraid I don’t understand. Why not let someone else save Blanco? Why not just think of yourself for once and take yourself out of the line of fire?”

  Red thought slowly before answering.

  “Because there is no one else. No one with the guts to do it, anyway. Blanco has become like a turtle. The citizens stay off the streets now and stay in their houses where it’s safe. They hide their heads like a turtle who runs into his shell whenever trouble comes around. And if I don’t do it, then who will? And if someone doesn’t challenge these kinds of people, and make sure justice is administered, then where does the killing stop?”

  Beth had no answer. She gave up. She reached out her arms and hugged her new friend. Red hesitated, like she wanted to say something else, but held her tongue.

  She opened the kitchen door and tossed her backpack and bedroll onto the darkened back porch. Then she climbed through the gap in the boards.

  “Goodbye and good luck,” Beth called behind her. “I’ll pray for you.”

  Chapter 48

  Once again, Red was all alone. She walked west along Highway 84, lost in her thoughts. It was a moonless night, and most of the stars were hidden by clouds. Even with the night vision goggles it was difficult to see, for they had precious little light to amplify.

  She wondered for the thousandth time whether she was doing the right thing. At some point, she knew, even the staunchest supporter of justice would have thrown in the towel and focused on protecting their own loved ones instead of placing themselves in harm’s way by avenging those who could no longer care.