A Stunning Betrayal

by Darrell Maloney

  Once Dave’s aisle was blocked he was able to crawl the rest of the way across the top of the pallets, dragging a propane lantern with him.

  And there, in the number one pallet position on the left side of the front of the trailer, was a pallet wrapped in orange plastic.

  “Bingo!” he said as he smiled broadly.

  Chapter 48

  Many of the newer trailers Dave had worked in recent months had translucent ceilings.

  It was a recent trend in trailer building.

  Manufacturers had finally found a sturdy translucent plastic that was just as tough as the sheet metal which had covered such trailers in the past.

  The advantage of the plastic was that it let in light while still protecting the load.

  In such trailers it was possible to make out the markings on most boxes, and made the job of a nomad a lot easier.

  This trailer, unfortunately, was an older model with a sheet metal roof.

  Without the propane lantern it would have been almost pitch black in the front of the trailer.

  Of course as helpful as it was, using the lantern wasn’t without risks.

  The most obvious risk was the fire hazard. Using anything with an open flame surrounded by cardboard boxes and plastic wrap was asking for trouble.

  Dave had to be extremely careful to keep the lantern upright and sitting atop a stable box.

  And not to put anything close enough to it to catch fire.

  He also had to be mindful of the carbon monoxide gas the lantern produced.

  Ordinarily he wouldn’t have used such a device in a closed space without adequate ventilation.

  In this case he didn’t have much choice.

  Before he’d climbed aboard he’d taken a small fire axe from the trucker’s utility box and punched several air holes in the driver’s side front of the trailer.

  It wasn’t hard to do, as the hatchet was sharp and the skin on the trailer was thin.

  And it provided Dave a limited amount of fresh air as he worked.

  But he had to be careful.

  He was well aware of the warning signs: drowsiness, confusion, a mild headache.

  If he’d experienced any of the signs he’d have scrambled to the top of the pallets and crawled toward the open door of the trailer where the air was fresher and he could recover.

  It was slow going, especially at first.

  He crawled down between the orange-wrapped pallet and the pallet next to it. There wasn’t much space and he was pretty well wedged in.

  But that was okay. He knew from past experience that as he worked he’d create more and more space and it would get easier as it went.

  He pulled out his pocket knife and cut through the orange plastic shrink-wrap which covered the top of the pallet.

  That in itself meant this pallet was special, for most pallets aren’t wrapped across their tops.

  Unless there was something particularly valuable or pilferable hidden among its boxes.

  He picked up the first box and held it up to the light so he could see the markings on the box.

  The case was marked “EYE SHADOW, ASSORTED COLORS, 96 EACH”

  He tossed it aside, atop the adjacent pallet.

  The next box read “HAND CREAM, ALOE-INFUSED, 48 ONE PINT BOTTLES”

  It joined the eye shadow.

  It was obvious to Dave that most of the items on the pallet were personal grooming and cosmetic items. And that made sense. For the personal grooming section was located right next to the pharmacy in every Food World store Dave had ever walked into.

  He never witnessed the off-loading of such trucks, but he could guess how it worked.

  In this case, the last load on the trucker’s route would be the one which got pharmaceutical items.

  He might visit five different stores and might drop three or four pallets at each of them.

  By the time he got to his last stop, the three or four pallets he had left would all come off the truck.

  Most would be left in the store’s small warehouse until stockers came in to place the items on the shelves.

  The last pallet on the truck, though, the orange one in the number one pallet position, would be taken directly to the pharmacy area.

  The trucker would work with pharmacy personnel to cut the orange plastic and dig out the box in the middle of the pallet which contained medications.

  Together they would verify the contents, the pharmacy representative would sign the manifest to take possession of such items, and the driver would be on his way.

  At least that’s how it used to work.

  This particular shipment, on this particular trailer, would never make it to its original destination.

  Dave worked for the better part of an hour before he finally came to a box that was different than all the others.

  For one, it rattled when he picked it up.

  When he held it up to the light, he noticed it had nylon-reinforced tape across the top of the box.

  Across the special tape was a large orange sticker which read, in bold black letters:

  SIGNATURE SERVICE

  JOINT INVENTORY REQUIRED

  Do Not Break Seal Until Arrival

  At Final Destination

  It was a dead giveaway.

  This was the package he was looking for.

  But then he noticed something else that told him his job wasn’t finished yet.

  With a bold black marker someone had written on each side of the box, “1 of 3.”

  He placed the box in the dead space above the pallets, between himself and the end of the trailer.

  Then he went back to digging.

  The next box he picked up was marked just like the first, only it had the added annotation, “3 of 3.”

  He went through several more boxes of cosmetics until he found the one marked, “2 of 3.”

  With all three boxes on top of the pallets, he turned off his lantern and made his way toward the light at the back of the trailer, pushing the boxes in front of him.

  He didn’t realize until he made it to the trailer’s door and felt the coolness of the fresh air that he was covered in sweat.

  Chapter 49

  Three boxes, three people. Dave used his knife to cut open all three boxes, and each of them started rifling through them.

  “Tell me again what we’re looking for,” Beth asked.

  “Eledectine and Conicor.”

  They were long and unfamiliar names to Beth. And to Dave as well.

  But Sal knew them by heart.

  It was Sal who celebrated first when he found a very large plastic bottle and exclaimed, “Eureka!”

  Neither Beth nor Dave had heard anyone express joy with such a word before, but both assumed it was a good thing.

  “Conicad!” Sal shouted. “Thank God in heaven! We’ve found it.”

  Dave was a tad confused.

  “Conicad? I thought we were looking for Conicor.”

  “This is a generic equivalent of Conicor. It’s just as good. Dave, I could kiss you!”

  “If it’s all the same to you I’d rather you didn’t.”

  Sal opened the bottle, which contained two thousand tablets, and popped one on his tongue.

  “Don’t you need something to wash that down with?”

  “Nope. When I was young I had tonsillitis. They removed my tonsils surgically, which was the practice back then.

  “They don’t do it anymore. They treat it with antibiotics instead.

  “But back then that was the standard procedure for anyone who got tonsillitis. And people who’ve had their tonsils removed typically don’t have any trouble swallowing pills.

  “If you have to wash your pills down with something I’m guessing you still have your tonsils. That’s what typically catches pills and keeps them from going down.”

  “Um… okay.”

  Dave didn’t know that.

  Neither did Beth.

  Sure enough, both had to wash their medications down
with some type of fluid.

  And both still had their tonsils.

  “That’s it,” Dave smiled and said. “Now I officially know everything. I can stop learning now.”

  Unfortunately, Sal’s luck extended no further on this particular day.

  His other medication, Eledectine, was nowhere to be found.

  Not on this truck, anyway.

  “Not to worry, my friend. We’ll stop at every Food World trailer we come across, as well as every brown truck, until we find you some.”

  “Are there that many Food World trucks out there?”

  “It’s the number four retail grocer in the country. There are a lot of them. You just never noticed them in your travels because you learned to look for the piles of discarded items on the highway at the end of the trailer instead of the logo on the trailer’s side.

  “I’m guessing we’ll pass one every three or four days on the back roads. Maybe one every other day once we’re back on the interstate.”

  Dave tried, but was unsuccessful, to talk Sal into taking the entire bottle with them.

  “I learned my lesson,” Sal said. I will take more than the thirty day supply I used to take. I’ll take ninety days worth.”

  “But if you take the whole bottle you may never have to search for them again. By the time you finally run out the manufacturers might be making them and getting them out again. Do you know how long two thousand days are?

  “Over five years,” Beth proudly proclaimed.

  She’d already done the math in her head.

  “No, Dave. That wouldn’t be right and it wouldn’t be the Christian thing to do. Someone else will happen along that will need those pills just as desperately as I do.

  “And if what you say is true… if we will pass more trucks like this one along the way, then there will be other opportunities for me to get more.”

  They went back and forth about it for half an hour or so, before Dave finally relented and gave up the fight.

  “Okay,” he said. “I just hope you’re right. Not everyone is as considerate as you are. I hope we don’t get to the other trucks to find out they’re all cleaned out.”

  “If that’s what God intends for me, then so be it. At least I’ll die with a clear conscience, knowing I didn’t doom someone else to death.”

  They left all three of the boxes on the end of the trailer, alongside a note Dave scrawled in black Sharpie on the inside trailer wall.

  “Please take only what you need so that others may have an equal opportunity to live.

  “In the future, watch out for trailers similar to this one. If the pallet in the number one position, directly behind the driver, is wrapped in orange plastic, that pallet contains medications.

  “Again, please share with others. God bless you all.”

  As an afterthought, he went back and added, “P.S. - Karma is watching.”

  Beth asked her father, “Daddy, who is Karma?”

  “Karma isn’t a who, Peanut. It’s a thing.

  “Or maybe it is a who. I don’t know.

  “In any event, it’s kind of a superstition. It’s said that if you are kind and do nice things for others, Karma will reward you by making things easy on you.

  “But if you’re mean and take advantage of others, Karma will not cut you any breaks and bad things might happen to you.”

  “Is that what Mom meant when she used to tell you if you weren’t nice to her she wouldn’t let you live to see tomorrow?”

  Dave smiled.

  “Yes, Peanut. That’s exactly what she meant.”

  “Do you think it’ll work? Your note about Karma, I mean.”

  “I hope so. At some point in this big bad world people are going to have to start caring for strangers again.

  “I’m not sure we’re quite there yet. But I sure hope we are.”

  Chapter 50

  When they entered the city of Lubbock Dave couldn’t help but think of Red Poston.

  Red’s real name was Debbie, but she let Dave know in no uncertain terms he was to call her by her nickname.

  “I was given the nickname by my Daddy when I was very young. He said it suited me. And since he was the finest man and the smartest man I’ve ever known, I never argued the point.”

  Dave got the message.

  The two met when Red saved his life on the streets of the tiny town of Blanco.

  Dave was on his way from San Antonio to Kansas City and stopped in Blanco to pilfer some spare parts for his Explorer.

  The auto parts store was part of a nationwide chain and was shuttered due to the blackout. It would likely never open again.

  Dave figured nobody would miss the parts, but was caught by a sadistic banker suitably named John Savage.

  Savage seemed to take the theft personally, even telling Dave at one point the parts belonged to him and “every other citizen of Blanco.”

  He seemed to take great delight watching two of his henchmen beat Dave with baseball bats for his transgression.

  They probably wouldn’t have stopped until they killed him, except Red fired a shot into the air to get their attention, then told them to back away.

  She got him out of town and back onto the highway, where she nursed his wounds until he was able to get on the road again.

  The two quickly bonded.

  Red opened up to Dave that she was headed north to Lubbock, where she had to repay someone for killing her father.

  Dave, in turn, told her he had a working vehicle and offered to give her a ride.

  They made it most of the way, until she abandoned him and left a note behind.

  Don’t follow me. You’ll never find me because I’m moving overland. I don’t need your help anyway. This is something I need to do alone. You have your own mission. Good luck. I wish you well.

  -Red-

  He’d thought of Red many times in recent weeks.

  Whether she’d been able to find the man responsible for her father’s death.

  Whether she’d exacted her revenge.

  Whether she’d survived the ordeal.

  Many times he’d wondered whether he should have gone to Lubbock despite her protestations.

  After all, she had saved his life.

  The least he could have done was to provide her backup.

  In the end, she didn’t want him to. And perhaps that was for the best.

  If he’d taken a detour to Lubbock, even if it was just for a few days, it would have impacted on his mission to find Beth.

  If he’d gone through Albuquerque on a different day he might never have met Tony. He’d never have teamed up with Tony and might never have found out Sal and Nellie passed the city by.

  He might still be in Albuquerque now, searching in vain for a daughter who wasn’t even there.

  It struck him as odd how circumstances can change so dramatically when one decision or action is taken out of the equation.

  In any event, he’d make a point to ask around as he passed through Lubbock to see if anyone recalled seeing a striking redhead on a tall Morgan who went by the name “Red.”

  He had to believe that anyone who came across Red in her travels would remember her, for she was a woman who left quite an impression.

  “Have you been to Lubbock before?” Sal asked as they neared the city.

  “I had an uncle who was stationed at an Air Force base there years ago,” Dave said. “One summer I went to visit my cousins and they took me to an air show at the base. I got to sit in a fighter plane.

  “I think the base closed down not long after that.

  “I’ve passed through it a couple of times over the years since then,” Dave said. “But my uncle didn’t live there anymore so there was no real reason to stop.

  “It always struck me as a nice place though.”

  Dave looked at the sky and said, “It’s almost noon. Why don’t we stop for the day here and go into town tomorrow?”

  “You want to pass up the chance to sleep in a motel room?
We just passed a sign that said there’s a travel lodge in a couple more miles.”

  “Well, honestly my bad omen alarm has been bugging me the last couple of days, Sal.”

  “Your bad omen alarm?”

  “Yeah. It’s something I developed in the Corps. In Iraq, specifically. If I had it before then I was never aware of it.

  “There were a couple of times when I just had a weird feeling in Iraq that something wasn’t quite right. That we needed to watch out for an ambush or a booby trap.”

  “Did your premonitions ever come true?”

  “Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But enough times to make me learn to listen to my gut.”

  “Should we just bypass Lubbock? Go around it?”

  “No. According to our map there is no good way around it.

  “And my feeling isn’t very specific. It could be a false alarm. Heck, it could even be indigestion, for all I know.

  “I’d just feel better bedding down outside of town. Out here there are a lot fewer people who might try to steal our horses while we sleep.”

  “Say no more, my friend,” Sal said as he pulled back on the horses’ reins and brought them to a stop. “This looks like a dandy place to spend the day.”

  As Dave drifted off to sleep he couldn’t shake the feeling something bad was on the horizon.

  Maybe not today.

  Maybe not tomorrow.

  But something bad was coming. He was sure of it.

  Chapter 51

  Terry Vega was a surly sort.

  Some would say it wasn’t his fault, necessarily.

  He turned twenty nine the week before but didn’t know it, since he was like most of the survivors and lost track of time.

  He honestly didn’t know whether it was March or April.

  Heck, it could have been November, for all he cared.

  Twenty nine years before he was born to a heroin-addicted mother.

  He never met his father. His father was doing forty-to-life at Rikers Island for capital murder.

  That was really all Terry wanted to know.

  He was slow to develop mentally and emotionally, a direct result of the heroin which coursed through his veins in his mother’s womb.