The Search

by Darrell Maloney

  “I had the chance to talk to Joel for half an hour yesterday. He told me about the helicopter ride, and the last few minutes just before the crash. He said that as he strapped my father into his seat, Dad told him he was a former Marine.

  “Joel said that he and Dad bonded immediately. That for much of the flight they carried on a long conversation, through their headsets, about the military in general and comparisons with the Army and Marine Corps. He said after that, Dad told him about me. How proud he was of me for rebounding after I was shot. About how I was a strong woman who took no guff from any man. About one day when he was no longer around, that he knew I was strong enough to make it. That I was one tough cookie.

  “I knew that Joel was telling me the truth. Because that phrase, ‘one tough cookie,’ was what dad used to call me all the time.

  “Yes. Joel saved Hannah’s life and he deserves to join us for that alone.

  “But I have my own special reason for wanting Joel to stay.

  “He was the last person my Daddy ever spoke to. And the last words he heard from my Daddy were about me. That’s something I can’t say about anyone else on earth other than Joel. So yes, I feel a certain bond with him too. And I’d like to have him around so that when I want to hear about my Daddy’s last minutes I can go to him and ask him… Was he smiling? Was he happy? Was he content? What was he like just before he died? What was he…”

  She couldn’t go on. It was more emotion than she’d put forth at one time since John was killed. And she was overwhelmed.

  She simply turned and walked away.

  She walked down the hallway to her apartment, lay down on her bed, and cried.

  Ten minutes later there was a knock on Sami’s door.

  “Yes?”

  It was Debbie.

  Debbie sat on the bed beside Sami and took her hand.

  “The vote was unanimous. He’s going to be one of us. The only voice of dissent was actually just a question: How is he going to get his physical therapy if he moves here? Mark said that he and Hannah had already talked to the therapists. They will notify him by ham radio whenever he has an appointment and will send a van to pick him up.”

  Sami smiled, and Debbie wiped away her tears.

  Sami asked, “But how do we tell him? Mark and Hannah didn’t even tell him they were trying to get him in.”

  “Oh, I don’t think that will be a problem. Rachel stood up and announced to everybody that she loved him. And she wants to drive down to San Antonio and give him the news herself.”

  Chapter 36

  Sarah struggled to open her right eye. It was crusted over and hurt like heck.

  She got it about halfway open, but her vision was cloudy. She struggled to make out what she saw.

  As the scene around her began to clear, she remembered… the large colonial dresser… the matching night table.

  The four poster bed that she was once again handcuffed to.

  She tried to roll over, but every muscle in her body ached.

  With her one free hand she reached over and touched the left side of her face. It was tender to the touch and her left eye was completely swollen shut.

  The smell of urine was almost overwhelming. It had puddled on the plastic sheeting which once again covered the mattress. It was cold and clammy against her skin.

  Nathan was nowhere in sight.

  She didn’t know if that was a good thing or bad.

  She wanted to ask him.

  She wanted to say, “Why did you hit me? Was it really necessary? Did it really accomplish anything? It certainly didn’t help reheat your food, now did it?”

  But then again, would her questions enrage him? Would he lash out and strike her again? Maybe harder next time?

  She wondered whether all men were that way. She couldn’t remember ever being with another. She had the sense that not all men were brutal in the ways that Nathan was. She didn’t know why, exactly. But she had the sense that most men were gentle and protective of the women they loved.

  Perhaps it wasn’t him at all. Perhaps it was her. Nathan had told her that his role was the hunter and the gatherer.

  And that hers was subservient to him. Her role was to cook and clean and provide for his sexual needs.

  She’d accepted that without question, because she knew no better.

  And because she was somehow afraid of him, even before he’d hit her.

  But now, laying here in her own urine, she began to question her own lot.

  Surely life was better than this. It had to be.

  But Nathan had told her they were all alone in the world. That their friends had died and their neighbors were hostile and dangerous.

  She was trapped in this world. And as brutal and selfish as Nathan was, he was her husband. And like it or not, he was all she had in the world.

  She shed a tear, then immediately wiped it off.

  Not because she wasn’t sad.

  But because she no longer knew what might send her husband into a rage.

  She wondered if he’d always been this way.

  She, trying to be the good little wife, tried to justify his behavior in her own mind.

  Perhaps he’d been a good and giving husband once. Perhaps he’d changed by circumstance. Perhaps when the meteorite he’d mentioned collided with the earth, he’d changed as a matter of necessity.

  Perhaps when the world had become a cold and dark place, he’d become that way too.

  She was indeed trapped. But even though she could remember nothing from her former life, her character traits were the same. Sarah had always been a logical thinker. She’d always thought things through.

  As she lay there, she reasoned that she likely couldn’t change Nathan’s. That whether he was abusive before the crisis or became that way, he was unlikely to modify his behavior.

  The only other choice was to modify her own.

  She resigned herself to holding her tongue. To watch what she said at all times. To be complimentary of him, but never again to question him. Or to correct him when he was obviously wrong.

  She’d also go the extra mile to please him. Whether it was those things he liked for her to do in bed that she wasn’t particularly fond of doing, or cooking and cleaning for him, she’d do her level best to please him.

  In her heart and her soul, she knew it shouldn’t have to be that way.

  It wasn’t fair for her to have to treat him so well, all the while he treated her so poorly.

  But maybe it was necessary for her survival.

  She’d seen the look of evil in his wild eyes just before she’d passed out.

  And it was a look she never wanted to see again.

  “Nathan,” she meekly called out.

  There was no response.

  “Nathan, I’m sorry I talked back to you. I’ll try to do better. I won’t do it again.”

  Still nothing.

  Nathan Martel didn’t hear her.

  He was downstairs in the den, listening in to the Huckabee’s ham radio.

  In prison, Martel watched the small black and white television in his prison cell for up to twenty hours a day, because there simply wasn’t much else to do.

  He’d become a television junkie.

  Now, in the present world, television stations no longer existed. There simply weren’t enough survivors who were technically trained to operate or maintain them.

  And he’d already burned through the Huckabees’ collection of DVDs. Most of them he’d watched three or four times.

  He’d never used a ham radio before, but was able to figure it out fairly quickly.

  And for many of the sixteen hours his new “wife” had been unconscious, he’d entertained himself by listening to the chatter on the radio.

  It wasn’t television, but it helped him pass the time.

  He was getting ready to get up and go check on the woman when something came across the airways which unnerved him just a bit.

  “Hey everybody, this is Steve agai
n from the Central Texas Ham Radio Network. For those of you who haven’t been on for the last few days, we’ve been broadcasting a plea for help from a worried and desperate husband in the Kerrville-Junction area. His wife Sarah was out picking flowers in the woods and got lost. Husband Bryan and his friends searched for several days, but her trail went cold. She was injured and bleeding, and there is reason to believe she was picked up by someone and taken somewhere in the area for medical treatment.

  “Sarah is thirty two years old and Caucasian, brown hair brown eyes. Last seen in a gray jogging suit with a white t-shirt which reads ‘Hot Stuff.’ She has a small scar over her left eye and the tattoo of a bluebird on her right shoulder.

  “If anyone out there has any information about Sarah’s whereabouts you can contact us at frequency 249.83. Or you can contact Sarah’s husband at frequency 106.47. Both frequencies are monitored twenty four hours a day, seven days a week.”

  Martel reached up and turned off the radio.

  He sat in the chair for a minute longer, though, pondering the new information.

  “Sarah…” he said out loud.

  Nah. He liked Becky better. She didn’t look like a Sarah. She looked like a Becky.

  He reached behind the unit and removed the power cord from the wall, and then from the unit itself.

  He was going hunting for deer in the morning. On his way out he’d toss the cord into the burn pit.

  He hadn’t yet decided whether to keep his woman handcuffed to the bed in his absence. Since he punched her, she might leave while he was gone.

  But then again, if he didn’t unlock the cuffs, the house wouldn’t be clean and his laundry wouldn’t be done when he returned.

  He’d decide by morning.

  But one thing was damn sure. If she was able to get up from her bed, she damn sure wouldn’t be listening to the radio and realizing they were out looking for her. He’d watched her the day before examining the tattoo on her shoulder and commenting about how pretty it was.

  And he couldn’t abide by her hearing the radio broadcast and calling in to tell her real husband she was being held against her will.

  She no longer belonged to her real husband. She belonged to Martel now.

  And he planned to keep her.

  Chapter 37

  Martel found her sitting upright in the bed, trying her best to avoid sitting in the puddle of pee pooled on the bed top.

  He growled, “How long have you been awake?”

  “Only a few minutes. I’m sorry, Nathan. I shouldn’t have questioned you. I’ll try to do better, I promise.”

  He looked at her but didn’t respond.

  He was confident that she hadn’t heard the broadcast on the radio. The farmhouse was very well built, with thick walls and soundproofing, and she was on the second floor and on the opposite end of the house.

  No, he wasn’t upset about that at all.

  He was upset that she had found the nerve to sass him when he’d complained about her cooking.

  Martel didn’t like to be sassed, by man or woman. She was damn lucky she only punched and a couple of kicks to the midsection. If he had no use for her, he might well have killed her.

  He was even more concerned that he’d be setting a bad precedent if he didn’t include some additional punishment besides the beating. He needed to send her a very strong message that she must never, ever sass him again.

  He sat down on the bed beside her, careful not to sit in the puddle and soil his jeans with her urine.

  But he made no effort to uncuff her.

  “Honey, my wrist hurts.”

  “There’s a reason for that. Your wrist hurts because you stepped out of line. You disrespected me. That’s something you must never do to me.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. I…”

  “Don’t interrupt me when I’m talking to you, bitch. Let me finish. We had an arrangement. I saved your miserable life. You’d be dead if it wasn’t for me. When everybody else we know on this earth was dying, I kept you alive. I kept you safe and kept other men away from you so they couldn’t harm you. I fetched food and hunted and fished so you could have food in your belly. I stood guard while you slept so the marauders couldn’t get you and rape you and kill you.

  “I did all that for you. And then you got mad at me one day and ran away, and the neighbors caught you. They beat you to within an inch of your life. And seven of the men all took turns at you. And when they were done with you they beat you again. Do you remember that?”

  “No…”

  “I rescued you and nursed you back to health. Surely you remember that.”

  “I’m sorry, honey. I don’t…”

  “You would have died a long time ago if it weren’t for me. I continue to provide for you. I continue to protect you from the evil neighbors. And all I ask is a few simple things. I ask you to cook and clean and take care of me sexually. I ask you to stay on the property because the neighbors and all outsiders are dangerous. And I ask you to respect me and to never talk back to me. Is that too much to ask?”

  “No. It isn’t, and I’m sorry. I really am.”

  “Well, sorry doesn’t cut it. When you do the crime, you have to do the time. You sassed me, and I cannot abide by that. I’m going hunting for two days. Maybe less. The deer are getting more plentiful out there. I might get lucky and take one the first day.

  “As punishment, you’ll stay chained up until I get back. And while I’m gone I want you to think real hard about the way you treated me. Saying you’ll never do it again is fine and dandy. But you’ve stabbed a knife deep into my heart and hurt me deeply. You’ve betrayed me. You have to accept your punishment. Then maybe, just maybe, when I return I’ll decide you’ve earned back my trust.”

  “But honey, I’m so thirsty.”

  “Quit your whining, bitch. You’re not helping your case here. I just told me how deeply you’ve hurt me with your disrespect and you want to piss and moan about being thirsty? God damnit, I ought to belt you again.”

  “I’m sorry. I…”

  “Oh, just shut up. I’ll leave some bottles of water and a couple of bags of trail mix on your night table. You can lay in your own mess until I return. I want you to think about what you’ve done.”

  She started to open her mouth one last time. To beg for mercy and to ask, “But what if the house were to catch fire or someone were to break in?”

  But she thought better of it. She decided that the chances of burning to death in a fire or being the helpless victim of an intruder were far less likely than her own husband beating her to death.

  Chapter 38

  “Nope. Forget it. You ain’t going anywhere.”

  Sami was adamant. She was sitting at a table in the dining room with Hannah and Rachel, and Hannah had just told young Rachel that she’d drive down to San Antonio with her.

  “But Rachel never learned to drive. And Mark has gone to join the search team with all the other able-bodied men. And she’s much too sweet and innocent to go alone.”

  “And you can’t go either, ding-a-ling. You just got out of the hospital. Have you forgotten that you almost died?”

  “No. I haven’t forgotten at all. But who will go with her?”

  Sami said, “I will. That’s who.”

  “Well, I have to admit, that idea does have merit. I mean, who better to off-set Rachel’s sweetness and innocence than someone who slept with the entire University of Texas football team and the marching band?”

  “Very funny. I’ll have you know that I only slept with half the football team and only a couple of dozen of the band members. After all, I’m not a slut, you know…”

  “Never implied that you were. Slut is such a strong word. I would have used ‘shameless hussy’ myself.”

  Rachel interrupted.

  “Oh, stop it, you two. I’m a grown woman now. Just show me the basics of driving and I’ll get there myself.”

  Sami and Hannah looked at each other. Sami said to Rachel, “Y
ou think driving is something you can just wing until you get used to?”

  “Well, the men all drive. Most of them can’t lift a toilet seat or pick up after themselves. So if they can drive, it can’t be too difficult.”

  Hannah considered Rachel’s words.

  “Well, she does have a point. The trouble is, it’s on her head instead of in her argument. Rachel, there’s nothing hard about driving. It’s kind of like riding a bicycle. You start out and learn from your mistakes and the more you do it the better you get.”

  Sami took over.

  “Yeah… but the difference is, when you fall off your bike you scrape your knee. When you hit something with your car you or somebody else gets hurt.”

  “But you yourself said there was very little traffic on the roads these days.”

  “That’s true. But there are a lot of other things you could hit besides other cars. And from the way you told Joel goodbye, I got the impression he’s quite fond of you. He’d probably be pissed if we let something bad happen to you before he moved up here and had a chance to do bad things to you himself.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Never mind, sweetie. That’s a whole other conversation.”

  “Well, please work it out. I want to get down there to tell him. And I want to do it tomorrow. I don’t want to wait for weeks until your little pissing contest is over.”

  Sami turned to Hannah and said, “My, she’s gotten quite bossy lately, hasn’t she?”

  “Yes, she has. I almost miss the way she was when she first joined us five years ago. Remember, when she was as timid as a mouse and never talked to anybody?”

  “Those were the good old days, for sure. Now it’s hard getting her to shut up.”

  “Very funny. I’m serious, you too. Please decide so we can leave in the morning.”

  Hannah said, “Okay, since you’re serious, I will be too. But only for a moment. Sami, honey, you know I love you. But you’ve been through hell the last two weeks and you’re an emotional wreck. That’s one reason you need to stay here. A second reason is, you’ve never been to Wilford Hall Medical Center. You might get lost. And third, if you had a flat tire and four men stopped to help you, you’d probably jump on them and they’d never get the tire changed.