Times What They Are

by D. L. Barnhart

  A large cluster of trees marked civilization far to her left: Crowley, by the map. Beyond them, light towers seemingly out of place in the rural setting. The road continued straight, bypassing the town as she’d hoped. A minute later, the tracks turned into the driveway of a modest two story home on the left. At their end, sat an unoccupied SUV, with the Crowley County sheriff’s emblem on the side panel. As she passed the house, a man stepped out the front door onto the porch. His head tracked Karla’s truck as he strolled toward the SUV. Karla increased her speed.

  She turned south at the next intersection and saw the sheriff’s car on the road behind her. The road was untracked and Karla pushed her luck, holding fifty on the straight road. A small drift shook the truck. Jessie opened her eyes.

  “Where are we?”

  “A couple hundred miles and we’re there.”

  They climbed a gentle rise.

  “Someone’s behind us!” Jessie cried.

  “It’s okay. We passed the sheriff a ways back. He’s making sure we leave town.”

  They crested the hillock. Karla hit sixty on the downslope and held it. The SUV appeared on the ridge fifteen seconds behind them. Karla slowed for a turn west and slid through the corner. The back end swung wide and caught a ditch, then pulled the front in after it. She tried to power her way out but only spun the wheels. She grabbed the rifle and watched the sheriff’s car approach.

  The SUV stopped in the intersection a hundred feet away, perhaps calling for backup, Karla thought. She didn’t see much choice but to get out.

  “If the man gets out with a gun, lay on the floor. Okay?”

  “That didn’t work last time.”

  Karla kissed Jessie’s forehead. “We’re too close to give up. Just stick with me.” Karla laid the rifle between the seats, stuck a pistol under her top and stepped into the snow.

  Chapter 65

  Karla stood in front of the truck, hands on hips, and stared at the SUV. Nothing happened. She released the cable on the winch, dragged it across the road, and secured it low around a telephone pole. She engaged the winch. The cable tightened and the truck slowly crawled from the ditch. When all four wheels reached the road, she released the tension, unhooked the cable and reeled it in.

  She glanced at the SUV, still in the intersection, then climbed into the truck. The SUV started toward them as another police vehicle came up the road from the south. Karla put the truck in gear. The SUV stopped ten feet from Jessie’s door. The other vehicle pulled in behind it.

  Doors opened on both vehicles and men stepped out. The sheriff’s right hand rested on the gun on his hip. The other man raised a shotgun. Jessie slid to the floor and Karla stomped the accelerator.

  The truck jumped forward, spraying snow from four tires. The sheriff drew his gun. Karla’s hand went to the Mini-14.

  “Mom!”

  The sheriff fired into the air. A warning shot to a fleeing vehicle? Karla counted. One, two, she touched the brake pedal, letting them see the lights, but kept her foot on the gas. Three, four, five, six, seven . . . . She ducked. The shotgun boomed. Pellets struck the roof and side mirror. She couldn’t see what they’d done to the back. She sat up, swerved right to avoid the ditch, and saw the men scramble to their vehicles.

  The road was straight and level. Karla tore down it. She skidded into the next intersection, but held the road and swung south. The police vehicles followed with less drama. A major intersection loomed ahead: Route 96. She braked hard and turned west. She pushed the truck to seventy and watched the police vehicles fall away. The truck skittered side to side, using both lanes. She slowed to fifty and got it under control. The sheriff closed a little and Karla accelerated.

  They continued in formation for several miles. At the county line, the sheriff slowed, then turned around. Karla took a breath.

  “He’s gone. It’s okay. You can get up now.”

  Jessie rose slowly and looked in the mirror. “Why did the police shoot at us?”

  Karla shook her head. “People aren’t themselves anymore.” She thought in reality the rural police were every bit as jumpy as she’d been at home—and also content to run strangers off without contact or a fight.

  * * *

  The snow depth fell to a couple inches and occasional patches of wet asphalt appeared. Karla studied the map and drove, still avoiding towns as best she could. The process was slow and filled with trial and error. The towns were on the map, but most of the county roads that led around them were not.

  Still, her strategy worked, mostly. She stumbled upon two checkpoints and turned around hurriedly before approaching them. No one attempted to stop her. The goal, it seemed, was to keep people out, pure and simple.

  In mid afternoon Karla neared Del Norte, at the head of a narrow river valley leading to the national forest. Westbound on US 160, she had passed two side roads north with weathered barricades and signs reading “Bridge Out”—meaning she couldn’t cross the Rio Grande and bypass the town that direction. The rugged mountains to the south offered no roads at all.

  On the outskirts of town, Karla tried the only two roads that presented themselves. Both dead ended a hundred yards from the highway. If there was a path around, it was not an easy one to locate.

  She checked the map again. The only visible options involved major detours. The shortest, a sixty mile loop, still left her entering Del Norte from the north. Because of mountains and rivers, she did not see her prospects greatly improving. The second option was a hundred and fifty mile detour through New Mexico that led to a similar bottleneck at Paposa Springs. Karla crept toward town. She needed to see what lay in her path.

  The checkpoint sat just inside the city limits—three vehicles lengthwise across the road. Karla watched as a Toyota pickup with Texas plates backed away from it, then U-turned east—only the third vehicle she’d seen on the road the entire day that didn’t obviously belong to the militia or police. She pulled to the right and gave it plenty of room. The truck slowed, as if to stop, then moved on. The driver raised his hand from the steering wheel in a country wave. The woman beside him stared straight ahead.

  Karla studied the barricade through binoculars. Behind the cars, five men with rifles watched her watch them. The men were dressed in a hodgepodge of styles. They did not appear to be military or law enforcement. The setup looked very much like the militias she’d encountered in Tennessee the year before.

  The men drew together and talked among themselves. Karla advanced slowly and stopped the truck fifty feet from the men. They hadn’t shot her at a hundred yards, and she felt safer having seen a vehicle drive away. This wasn’t going to be a repeat of Denver.

  Karla opened the door and the men raised their rifles. She stepped out without a coat or hat and with her hands spread from her body, palms facing forward.

  “Can we get through?” she called to the men. “We’re not going to stop in town.”

  “Where you from?” A tall man on the left asked.

  “Iowa.”

  There was a pause. “You’re under quarantine.”

  “Not when I left,” Karla shouted back. “I’m not sick and haven’t contacted anyone on the road.”

  “Where you headed?”

  “Cortez. We have family there.”

  “Who’s with you?”

  “My daughter.”

  The men conferred. One of them spoke briefly on a handheld device.

  “Let’s see her,” the tall man said.

  Karla walked slowly around the truck and opened Jessie’s door. She had her arms wrapped around her chest and looked scared. Karla held out her hand.

  “They want to see who we are. You need to get out. They’re not going to hurt us.”

  Jessie climbed down. Her movements were slow and a little awkward. Karla put an arm around her shoulder.

  “Okay? This is my daughter. No one else is with us.”

  Another pause. “She looks sick.”


  “No! Karla shouted. She helped Jessie out of her coat revealing the dried blood on her top. They stepped closer. “A man shot her in Kansas.” Karla raised the top to show the bloodied bandage. “Ten years old and he shot her.”

  “Why?” came the response.

  “Hell if I know. Didn’t stick around to ask. Scared of strangers, I expect. People are these days.”

  The men held a conference. Then the tall man motioned them closer. Karla held at thirty feet. The man was thin with wide shoulders. He wore a Carhart jacket and hadn’t shaved in a month. A surgical mask dangled on his neck.

  “We believe you’re okay, but you can’t come into town. We can’t take any chances. Do you have enough supplies for the trip?”

  Karla paused at the question. She didn’t think they were offering help. “It’s less than four hours. I need ten gallons of gas. Yeah, I’ve got that.”

  “Okay. I’ll tell you how to get around. It’s complicated. You need to listen up.”

  * * *

  Karla drove west. The man had directed her to a ranch road two miles out. She had seen it on the way in and had believed it to be a driveway. The man had said to use the frontage road, but she saw no purpose in that and stayed on the highway. The turn came up quickly, and she might have blown past if not for the tracks.

  The road crossed a river on a narrow steel bridge, wound past a couple of houses, then skirted the edge of a large farm complex. Past that, a tree line marked another river a quarter mile to the east. Karla never would have picked this as a through road. Even with the tracks ahead, she had to wonder if they’d taken the wrong turn.

  Karla stabbed the brakes. A vehicle sat in the road ahead. She raised the binoculars and identified the Toyota they had seen at the checkpoint, stopped between two bends in the road that now seemed nothing more than a cart path separating farm fields. An open box sat ten feet in front of the truck. Its spilled contents appeared to be bags of flour or corn meal or some such. The couple stepped out and moved toward the box.

  A bullet ripped through the woman, backing her to the truck. The man caught the second one milliseconds later. Four more tore through their bodies before the shooting stopped and the couple lay still on the blood splattered ground.

  Karla threw the truck in reverse and stomped the gas. A farm trailer moved across the road blocking escape—the tractor pushing it screened by a row of wind break pines. She grabbed the rifle and Jessie and leaped from the truck, hitting the ground in a roll. Bullets kicked dirt beside them as they scurried through a small ditch and into scrub left sitting between the fields. Karla fired at the trailer then the trees that hid the tractor, only guessing where the shooter was.

  Jessie tugged Karla’s arm and pointed down the road at the Toyota. A preteen boy emerged through the open back door. He took two bullets before his feet hit the ground. A scream followed from inside the truck—another child still there.

  Karla shook her head. She moved through scrub toward the farm, Jessie following. The men firing from that direction were her main concern. They blocked the only way out. The riflemen from the road were out of her sight line. They would have to leave their protective cover and cross an open field to come after her. She didn’t see them taking the risk, unnecessarily.

  She reached the dense windbreak, fifty feet beyond where the tractor idled. She scrunched low and pushed through. A big man rested a shotgun on the back tires of the tractor. She dropped him with two shots, then fired three more at a man running through the barn doorway. He cut behind the wall. Karla fired through it and charged the barn.

  A third gunman fired a shotgun from behind an outbuilding far to the right. Pellets struck Karla with small effect, fired from well beyond the weapon’s effective range. She reached the barn wall and hugged it tight. Jessie crossed the open ground toward her. The shotgun boomed. Karla ran for the barn door, stepping between the opening and Jessie. Inside, a man sat against an old six bottom plow clutching his stomach. She moved closer and kicked his rifle aside.

  “How many more here?”

  He was slow to answer. She kicked his ribs.

  “My wife,” he wheezed.

  “She the one with the shotgun?”

  “She’s just makin’ noise. She ain’t gonna hurt no one.”

  Karla held up her rifle. “I will, you give me any trouble. How many on the road?”

  “Just the two.”

  Jessie moved closer and stood beside Karla.

  A handheld on the man’s belt crackled. “Charlie, speak to me.”

  “Tell him everything’s okay. There was trouble. The other man’s dead, but it’s okay now.”

  He hesitated. “You want your wife to live?” Karla asked.

  “Charlie?”

  The man slowly raised the device. “It’s okay, Brad. Under control.”

  “What’s all the shooting?”

  The man looked to Karla. She motioned for him to continue.

  “Woman had a gun. They said it was a woman and a hurt kid. Hank didn’t see it, got hisself killed.”

  “She’s down? And the kid?”

  “Yeah. It’s over here. The others?”

  “Three down. Fourth still in the vehicle. All clear up there, we’ll take care of it.”

  “Ten-four.”

  Karla put out her hand. Charlie passed the radio.

  “Honey, go check behind the wagon. See if there’s another door.”

  “We okay? You gonna leave Macy be?”

  “Unless she tries to stop us on our way. Don’t suppose you can call her on this without alerting your friends down the road.”

  Charlie smiled weakly.

  Karla watched Jessie step behind the trailer. She turned back to Charlie and raised the rifle. “You would have done it to me.”

  “Mom!”

  “It’s okay. Is there a door?”

  “Sure is.” A woman in jeans and a ranch coat stepped into view. She held Jessie in one gloved hand and a shotgun aimed at Karla in the other. She shoved Jessie to the ground and spoke into a handheld. “Brad, need you up here.”

  Chapter 66

  Macy took a step closer. “Hand the rifle to Charlie.”

  Karla’s options flashed quickly and they were not good. She dove to the floor and tangled with Charlie, hoping Macy wouldn’t fire on her husband.

  “Shoot her!” Charlie wheezed.

  He grabbed the barrel of Karla’s rifle, and they fought for control. Karla squeezed off five rounds then released the empty weapon. She yanked Charlie in front of her and drew the 9mm from her belt. She pulled the trigger once before Charlie smacked her with the rifle. And then the shotgun boomed.

  Karla pushed off Charlie and tumbled sideways. He turned slowly toward her, a huge wound on his left side. He pointed the rifle. She shook off the blow and shot him.

  Macy leaned against a grain wagon, blood dripping from under her coat. She racked the slide on the shotgun with difficulty and tried to raise it. Karla steadied the pistol and shot her, too.

  A rifle sounded from down the road, then a second shot. Karla ejected the pistol’s clip and reached for the spare that wasn’t in her pocket. She cursed as she slammed the empty clip home and put the gun in her belt. She stood and moved for Charlie’s rifle.

  Karla froze at a shadow in the doorway. A man in a rubber suit, like a scuba diver’s, stood with a hunting rifle aimed at Karla. A red dot danced over her heart.

  “So you’re the one causing the problems.” He shook his head. “Sorry babe.”

  A shot. Then another and another. The man stumbled back and turned toward Jessie, sitting against the wagon tire holding her pistol in both hands. She fired again and missed. Karla dove for Charlie’s rifle and shot the man twice. Then she rolled to her feet and peeked out the door.

  Another man in a rubber suit came around the trailer blocking the road. He saw Karla a second too late. She shot him and shot him again, emptying the rifle. She pic
ked up the dead man’s weapon and stepped outside. If Charlie had told the truth, that man was the last of them. She walked over. He was still breathing. She shot him until he wasn’t.

  * * *

  Karla hugged Jessie, then collected weapons and ammunition. She searched the house and came up with much more. She also found boxes of food, survival gear, gold coins, and suitcases stacked ten high in the barn. People sent there were executed and robbed. The men would have hit a bonanza with her truck.

  She stacked food boxes outside, collected Jessie, then climbed onto the tractor and pulled the wagon from the road. Behind it, sat a utility vehicle, towing a black metal trailer with four bodies laid out: the couple from the road, the boy, and a girl in a pink dress, Jessie’s age, shot in the back of the head.

  Karla brought up their truck and told Jessie to stay with it. Then Karla climbed into the utility vehicle. She drove past the Toyota and stopped. A plastic container lay in the road with its lid off. Bags of flour and sugar and rice filled it. She picked up a bag, didn’t like the feel, and cut it open. Sand poured out.

  She moved on to a stand of trees sticking from the scrub. A blind had been set up, five feet above the road, fifty feet from the food box. Gun rests and chairs, two people, more if needed, firing simultaneously. It was an execution stand. She took a last look at the dead family and walked to her truck, wondering how many others had met the same fate.

  * * *

  Karla crammed the truck with food and lashed more to the roof. She filled the gas tank and her gas cans, listening on the handheld for chatter. She studied a Rio Grande County map from the house, then backtracked east on US 160, crossing, the Rio Grande midway to Monte Vista. She worked north then west, crossed Route 112, and finally, in the gathering darkness, rejoined US 160 west of Del Norte.

  “Are we going to stop?” Jessie asked.