by Gerri Hill
“How long do we wait before notifying the families, sir?” he asked, hoping to play on Brinkley’s sympathy.
“As soon as we find the wreckage and know for sure what happened. What have you told them so far?”
“A secret training mission, sir.”
Brinkley’s face hardened. “It’s a shame you’ll most likely have to contact them again and tell them your so-called secret training mission ended in tragedy, Colonel.” He shook his head. “Because of a goddamn meteor.”
Sutter avoided his stare but nodded mutely.
General Brinkley stood then, and Sutter and Duncan both snapped to attention.
“I want to be notified directly as soon as you know something, Colonel. The sooner this mess is over with, the sooner we can work on damage control.”
“Yes, sir.”
As soon as the door closed, Sutter turned to Duncan, trying to mimic Brinkley’s stare.
“I blame you for this, Duncan.”
“Sir?”
“A four-second blip on the radar.”
“But, sir—”
“Goddamn four seconds,” he said loudly. “You inferred that it was a hostile aircraft. You said—”
“But, sir, I said—”
Sutter pointed a finger at his face. “I’m speaking now, Lieutenant. You are listening.”
“Yes, sir.”
He narrowed his eyes, piercing Duncan with his best glare. “If this ends badly, I won’t be the one taking the fall. You, Lieutenant Duncan, will be held responsible. Not me,” he said, tapping his own chest. He was pleased to see Duncan swallow nervously.
“Of course, sir. Yes, sir.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Corey guided Gretchen behind Butch, but she knew immediately that there was no one around. It was quiet. Too quiet.
“This is Carl Milstead’s place,” Butch said.
“Don’t hear a generator running,” Dana said. “Seems awful quiet.”
Corey nodded. “I was thinking the same thing.”
Butch got off his horse and walked through the gate of the small fence that surrounded the house. He knocked on the door.
“Carl? Rebecca? It’s Butch Ingram,” he said loudly.
“We’ll check the barn,” Corey said, turning Gretchen and giving her a little kick. Dana grasped her waist again as the horse trotted toward the barn.
“Hello?” Corey called. “Anyone home?”
They rode around to the side, finding the stables to the barn opened. Three cows, all with calves, grazed out in the field and two horses were eating from a large bale of hay. Chickens were scurrying about, scratching after insects, and there was a goat following after them.
“Doesn’t look like anyone’s around,” she said.
They went back to the house where Butch was waiting. He looked at her questioningly.
“Is the door locked?” she asked.
“I didn’t try it. Not many people lock their houses around here, though.”
“Let’s take a look inside.”
“I don’t know if we should do that,” Butch said. “Just because they don’t lock their doors doesn’t mean people can go in uninvited.”
“Yeah, well, considering the situation, I don’t think we need to follow proper etiquette,” she said. She turned, offering her hand to Dana who grabbed on and lowered herself to the ground. Corey followed, leaving the reins dangling around Gretchen’s neck.
The door was indeed unlocked and she pushed it open. “Anybody home?” she called. They were met with an eerie silence and she walked inside. The main room was neat and tidy, and she walked through it, finding the kitchen. This was a different story. Dirty dishes were in the sink and two plates of uneaten food were on the table. A lone fly buzzed between the two plates and more flies were on the dishes in the sink. A chair was overturned, as if someone had jumped up, knocking it over.
“Let’s check the bedrooms,” she said quietly.
Butch pushed open one door. It appeared to be a guest room, and it looked undisturbed and unlived in. The other bedroom’s door was opened. The bed was unmade, the cover pulled off to the floor. Corey stuck her head in the bathroom. It was clean and tidy, nothing looked awry.
“What do you make of this?” Dana asked. “It seems like a contradiction.”
Corey nodded. “I agree. There was some sort of a…a scuffle or something,” she said. “The house as a whole is very neat. Nothing is out of place. Living room, for example…nice and tidy. Clean.” She pointed at the bed. “Unmade bed doesn’t fit in with the rest of the house.”
“Bedspread on the floor certainly doesn’t fit,” Dana added.
“Bathroom is practically spotless,” she continued as they walked back into the kitchen. “Here…it looks like a meal was interrupted. I’d say less than a day ago.”
“If Carl was one of the guys who went looking for the helicopter, Rebecca would have been here by herself,” Butch said.
“You said no one locked their doors,” Corey reminded him. “Nobody out here but neighbors…no one to fear.” She shrugged. “Can’t imagine Rebecca met with some kind of foul play,” she said. “Not unless someone went Richard Filmore psycho on her.”
Butch shook his head. “Not out here. Everyone is pretty self-sufficient. I’d think that most out here—like my folks and like Dana’s folks—have enough fuel and supplies to last a month or more without power,” he said. “After that, then you might see someone going Richard Filmore psycho.”
“So you’re saying the folks who live in Paradox aren’t quite as prepared as those living out on farms?”
Butch smiled. “Yeah…city folks.”
Corey laughed. “Yeah, Paradox is a thriving metropolis.”
The smile left her face about the same time Butch’s disappeared. “So now what?” he asked.
“Head on to the next farm, I guess.”
“A little farther up this road, that’d be Hal and Jean Bulgur’s place. Nice folks. Or we can keep going west…Dusty Truchard’s place. I can’t recall his wife’s name.”
Corey turned a circle, looking out around them in all directions, trying to picture the map she and Butch had gone over that morning. She faced west where the sun was already starting to fall, signaling that the end to the day was fast approaching.
“Let’s try the Bulgur place first,” she said. “When I left, they were still trying to determine which grid the helicopter could have gone down in. We need to head west after that, I think.”
* * *
It was getting late, and Dana had had about enough of riding behind Corey on the saddle. She took off the cap that Butch had scrounged up for her at the feed store in Paradox and ran a hand through her hair. The cap was a god-awful bright red, advertising Tommy’s store, but at least it kept the sun at bay. She sighed, wondering what time it was. For that matter, she wondered what day it was. It seemed like it had been forever since she’d left her parents’ place. Would this be their fourth night out already?
“You’re sure quiet back there,” Corey said.
“Tired.” She sighed. “And my ass hurts.”
Corey laughed. “I guess tomorrow you’re going to want the saddle back, huh?”
“If Captain Conaway will permit it, yes. You know, it was my horse.”
“You didn’t even know her name,” Corey countered.
“Makes little difference.” She pointed to a gadget that Corey had tied to the saddle. “What’s that?”
“Oh…it’s a transmitter. Sort of.”
Dana perked up. “Like you can talk to someone?”
“I haven’t been able to get it to work. It’s solar powered, no battery,” Corey said. “I was able to communicate when they dropped me off, but the farther I got into the zone, the less effective it was. Apparently, it’s affected like everything else.” Corey glanced back at her. “It’s got a tracking device on it. Even if I can’t get a transmission out, I’m hoping they can still track me. But if it’s blocked…�
�
“And it probably is,” Dana said.
“Yeah. I’ll keep trying.”
They could see the farmhouse from the road, and they guided the horses down the narrow lane. A black dog started barking and Dana saw someone standing on the porch. As they got closer, she could see that it was a woman wearing a floral housedress.
“Best let me go up first,” Butch said. “Looks like Miss Jean has a shotgun with her.”
“Jesus…not another crazy, I hope,” Corey murmured. “Do you know them?”
“No,” Dana said.
Corey pulled Gretchen to a stop, and let Butch get ahead of them. Dana glanced down where Corey had strapped a gun to the saddle. She had been a little uncomfortable with it there, but now that they were staring down the barrel of a shotgun, she didn’t mind it so much.
“Miss Jean? I’m Butch Ingram, down from over the south side of Paradox Valley,” he said.
The woman pointed the shotgun directly at Butch. “Don’t come any closer.”
Dana leaned closer to Corey. “What do you think is up with her?” she asked in a whisper.
“I have no idea.”
The black dog stood next to the woman—Jean—but his barking had ceased. She still didn’t lower the shotgun.
“Get off your horse slowly,” Jean said to Butch. “I surely do know how to use this thing,” she said as she waved the shotgun at him.
“Yes, ma’am.”
He slid off the saddle and onto the ground, holding his hands up. Dana wondered if he was as nervous as she was. Corey apparently was too, because she untied the bottom strap that was holding her gun.
“Stop right there,” Jean said, and Butch did, still holding his hands up.
“We don’t mean you no harm, Miss Jean. We’re just like you…got no power.”
The dog walked closer to Butch, tail still wagging.
“Who are they?” Jean asked, looking over at her and Corey.
“This here is my cousin Dana…she’s Louis and Barbara Ingram’s daughter,” he said and Dana smiled and nodded at her. “And this is…this is Corey. She had the misfortune of going camping around here. We picked her up the other day.” He smiled. “Well, I guess it was three days now when we found her on the road. Got my days all mixed up, I guess.”
Jean nodded, then pointed at the dog. “Pet Lucky.”
Butch frowned. “Okay. He’s not going to bite, is he?”
“You better hope not.”
Butch stuck his hand out slowly and waited while Lucky sniffed it. The dog’s tail was wagging wildly, and Butch then scratched his head as Lucky danced excitedly around him.
Dana sighed with relief as Jean lowered the shotgun finally. “Sorry. I couldn’t take a chance,” she said. “Not after what happened this morning.”
Corey kicked her boot out of the stirrup, and Dana took her arm as she slid to the ground. Corey followed.
Dana walked closer to the woman, offering a smile. “I’m Dana,” she said. She pointed behind her. “This is Corey.”
“Miss Jean…we heard that some men from the valley here went looking for that helicopter,” Butch said. “You know anything about that?”
She nodded. “Yes. My Hal was one of them.”
“Okay,” Butch said. “I don’t guess you know which direction they went, do you?”
“Why do you want to know?”
Corey stepped forward. “We’re trying to find it too,” she said. “We figure if it’s a military helicopter then somebody is bound to come looking for it.”
Jean nodded. “They headed off four, five days ago now, I guess. Sunday afternoon. Hal said they were going across the canyon to the other side of the creek. Up by the high ridge.”
Dana noticed that her voice was cracking, and she looked like she was about to cry. She walked closer to her and touched her arm. “You know my folks?”
Jean looked at her, tears welling in her eyes. “Yes, I know them.”
“Is everything okay?” she asked gently.
Jean let the shotgun slip down until it was touching the ground. “No. I don’t think anything will ever be the same again.”
Her tears turned to sobs, and Dana instinctively opened her arms, letting Jean Bulgur cry on her shoulder. For all her bravado with the shotgun, Jean was a small, frail woman whose slight body shook with each sob.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Anna Gail wished she knew what time it was. She’d always been a stickler for having supper at a decent hour, even during the summer months when the days were long. They had several more weeks before she’d call it summer, but the daytime temperatures sure had been warm lately and it seemed like forever before the sun lowered enough to call it evening time. Of course, longer days meant they didn’t have to use the generator for lights. She kept her refrigerator going, though, running it several hours at a time. If this power outage kept up, she’d probably move what was left at the house over here to the store. No sense in them running two generators like they’d been.
She knocked on the back door to let Richard know she was there. She didn’t want him accidentally shooting her. That rifle of his never seemed to be out of his grasp lately.
“It’s me,” she called as she went inside. “I brought supper.”
He was sitting in a chair facing the front door, keeping watch. His rifle was resting on his lap. She shook her head.
“You sitting there like that, you’ll scare off any customers that we may have.”
“We don’t need any customers,” he said. “This might be all we have to our name soon.”
She put the basket on the counter near the cash register. “Oh, Richard, what good would it do us to have all this and our neighbors have nothing?”
“I’m just saying…we need to be careful. We don’t have the money to feed this whole town.”
“You know they’ll make good once the power comes back on,” she said. She lifted up the towel that covered the basket. “Made fried chicken today. Had that last hen in the freezer.” She went about taking plates out for the two of them and setting up their meal. It was a warm day and she thought potato salad would go good with the chicken.
“Where’s Holly?” he asked.
“She went over to Gail’s house. Gonna share supper with them. I told her to get home before dark.”
He nodded. “We broke into Gilbert’s gas tanks today,” he said. “Got through that damn safety valve finally.”
“Well, good. Maybe now you can relax knowing we won’t all run out of fuel.”
“Had a hell of a time rigging a pump up, though,” he said as he stole a drumstick from the platter and bit into it. “We tied together a bunch of hoses and dropped them into the tanks. We’re using a hand pump to siphon the gas out.”
“I don’t imagine Gilbert is having a problem selling fuel then.”
“Had people lined up,” Richard said. “He’s keeping a ledger of who’s getting fuel in the hopes that people will pay up when this is all over with. Good luck with that.”
“That’s what I’m doing here. What if Gilbert was like you and wanted to keep the fuel all to himself? We’ve got to share with our neighbors,” she said. “I imagine Tommy is doing the same thing up at the feed store.”
“Makes me nervous is all,” he said. “What are we going to do when it runs out? Then what?”
“Oh, Richard, you act like the power is never going to come back on.” She scooped potato salad onto a plate and added another piece of chicken and handed it to him. She paused before fixing her own plate. “Of course, I sure thought that we would have heard something by now.”
“It’s a government conspiracy, that’s what it is,” he said around a mouthful of potatoes. “God only knows what’s happening out there. We may have been invaded by Russia or even the Chinese.”
She didn’t contradict him. That was the second time he’d said that. She, for one, thought no such thing.
“I wonder if Butch and those girls made it to the saline
plant yet? Surely they’ll find out something there. Someone will come to help then.”
“Saline plant? I heard that Butch and those gals were spotted heading up north, toward Squaw Valley,” he said.
Anna Gail shook her head. “No. He said they were going to follow the creek all the way to the Delores if they had to.”
“Well, apparently they changed their minds. Makes you wonder about him traveling with those two gals.”
“One is his cousin, Richard.”
“Yeah, and the other one ain’t hardly no woman, I’ll tell you that.”
“Oh, she was a little different, I suppose. But she seemed nice enough.”
“Different?” he scoffed. “Lot more than different. We don’t need her kind around here.”
“Guess we don’t need to worry about that now,” she said. “We probably won’t ever see her again anyway.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Corey stared at the barn door, wondering what they were about to find in there. Jean’s story of a crazed man—her husband—chasing after her was certainly riveting and a bit scary.
“I can’t believe Jean shot Hal,” Butch said as he stood beside her. “You think he was really…you know, possessed, like she said?”
“She seemed to think so.” Of course, she too was having a hard time wrapping her mind around the fact that this elderly woman had confessed to shooting her husband…her husband of fifty-some-odd years.
She glanced behind them, but all was quiet. Well, except for the humming of the generator. Jean was kind enough to offer them a meal, and Dana had stayed with her to help. Corey wasn’t sure if it was the prospect of cooking that was so appealing to Dana, or if she was simply avoiding whatever they might find in the barn. Regardless, she had eagerly offered to stay behind with Jean. Corey couldn’t say she blamed her.
“We should probably hurry,” Butch said. “Clouds are rolling in. Gonna get dark early tonight.”