The Search

by Darrell Maloney

  On his way back, he was confident that he’d performed well and done the best thing for his family.

  Then he saw the front door of his ranch house, kicked open and hanging pitifully from one hinge.

  The ranch house was a shambles, with overturned furniture and the contents of drawers dumped unceremoniously on the floor.

  He’d found the children, in an upstairs bedroom, huddled together in an effort to protect themselves against the evil that had invaded their home.

  Matt hoped that they’d all died quickly and without pain.

  He’d picked up his baby, Missie, a month shy of her second birthday.

  He’d cradled her lifeless body in his arms and cried for what seemed like hours before he was able to bring himself to lay her gently upon the bed and cover her with a blanket.

  It just didn’t seem proper to return her to the cold hard floor.

  Matt had dreaded going into the bedroom, for he knew instinctively he’d find Sharla there. And he did, although it was much worse than he’d expected. She looked like she’d put up a good fight, and he was proud of her for that. But in the end she’d been outnumbered and overpowered, and her poor body paid a brutal price for the resistance she’d put forth.

  They’d done unspeakable things to her, and he tried not to think about what she’d endured. For her, death was a merciful gift, and he hoped it had come sooner than later.

  Adding insult to injury was the fact that he couldn’t even bury them. The ground by that time had frozen solid and was hard as granite. Even his heavy pick-ax kicked up no more than a few shards of dirt and ice.

  So he did the next best thing.

  He’d cleaned each of them up as best he could, although even that was an agonizing task. He wrapped each of them in white sheets, wanting them to be properly dressed when they arrived at the pearly gates.

  And then he laid them gently on the ground under the big oak tree in the back yard, covering them first with heavy comforters to keep them warm during the long cold winter.

  Then by dozens of stones from Sharla’s garden, which he very tenderly placed upon them. Even though he knew they were beyond pain, he still hated placing the heavy stones upon their bodies.

  The weeks that followed were the worst of Matt’s life. He couldn’t eat, and he slept no more than an hour or two at a stretch.

  Then Sidney, his middle child, came to him in a vision.

  “You have to go on living, Daddy. Please don’t give up. It saddens us to see you wasting away like you are.”

  It was at that moment that Matt began his recovery. He decided then to rejoin the living. The pain would never go away. And for the rest of his life he would look at every man he saw and wonder… is this one of them?

  But little Sidney was right. Like it or not, he’d been left behind on a cold and cruel earth. And his belief in God was such that he could not, would not, commit suicide to be with his family.

  “I don’t know why you took them, Lord. I’m sure you had your reasons. I desperately want to join them, but I won’t rush it. Instead, I will be a good man and a good Christian. I’ll work hard to pass this test. And to earn my place to heaven so I can see my angels once more.”

  Matt had kept his promise. He never strayed from the path of righteousness. He seldom saw people anymore, but he made a point to never wrong anyone, ever again. He hadn’t been a perfect man before his family was wiped out. But he tried his best to be one now.

  That wasn’t to say he wasn’t still a bitter and angry man. The anger never left his heart.

  And it was the anger that drove his suspicious mind.

  After all the years that had gone by, he regarded every man he met with suspicion.

  Like the two before him, for example.

  Were they really looking for a woman, the wife of a good friend?

  Or were they two of the men who’d brutalized his wife and children before? Perhaps coming back to see if there were new victims in the house.

  “I am a Christian man,” he said to Brad and David. “That’s why I didn’t shoot you when you came onto my property without permission. And because I am a Christian man, I will let you leave without harm.

  “But I will give you this warning. If you set foot on my property again I will consider you a threat. And I will shoot you dead. With God above as my witness I will promise you that.”

  David said, “Very well, sir. We will leave your land and will not return. But please, be kind enough to tell us whether you have seen the woman we’ve been looking for.”

  “No, I have not. God knows that to be the truth. And don’t bother leaving your names, because I no longer trust any man.

  “Instead, I’ll tell you this. As I said, I am a man of God. If your woman comes here, or if I come across her elsewhere, I will protect her and will do whatever I can to help her heal. Once healed, I will leave it up to her to tell me where she wants to go, and I will take her there myself.

  “I do not know you. You may be who you claim to be. But you could just as easily be part of the evil that has befallen this earth. You could be bad men who are searching for an escaped captive. And if that’s the case, you can expect no help from me.

  “If I come upon this woman you call Sarah, I will tend to her and then take her where she wants to be, and I will protect her while she is in my charge. Expect no more of me than that, for that’s all I will promise you.”

  David was satisfied.

  “That’s fair enough, and we thank you, sir.”

  As he and Brad turned and walked away, David said to Brad in a lower voice, “I can only imagine the horror that poor soul has been through to put him in such a state of mind. But I hope he finds his own peace someday.”

  Chapter 43

  Sarah considered herself lucky in a way.

  She’d managed to get through four consecutive days without pissing Nathan off, and he finally decided she’d had enough punishment.

  At least that’s what he told her.

  The truth was, he wanted her to satisfy his own needs and couldn’t have cared less about her comfort.

  But she was in a sorry state after lying in her own waste for so long.

  He made a big show of holding his breath as he walked into the room to unlock the cuffs.

  “It smells like a damn cesspool in here,” he proclaimed before quickly unlocking the cuff which held her to the bedpost.

  Then he quickly retreated to the relatively fresh air of the doorway, before barking orders at her.

  “Get this mess cleaned up and then clean yourself up. Then come downstairs. I’m tired of cooking for the two of us. That’s your damn job, not mine.”

  And it was her job. She’d decided, as she lay there wallowing around in her disgusting muck, that it was better to be abused than to be dead. And escape was not an option. He’d done a pretty good job of convincing her that she was the safest under his care.

  Such as it was.

  She decided she would accept his abuse as her lot in life and try her best to do as she was told. She’d go out of her way to pamper him and agree with him, even when he was wrong.

  Because she knew that to anger him would be to place her life in danger.

  Or at least would make her extremely uncomfortable.

  His entire body ached as she stepped onto the floor. Her muscles had already started to atrophy, and screamed in agony at the mere suggestion she’d dare try to use them again.

  She looked in the mirror above the dresser and noticed that the black of her face had faded into an ugly brown.

  At least she could open both eyes now.

  She opened both bedroom windows. They were on opposite walls, and a gentle breeze immediately started wafting through the room. It was the first fresh air she’d smelled in days, and it helped.

  Then she went to the bathroom and removed two hand towels from the towel closet. She used them to soak up what she could from the bed, and then rinsed the towels out in the toilet.

 
She took two others and dampened them, then wiped down the plastic atop the bed with a bottle of Pine-Sol she’d found beneath the bathroom sink.

  When she was finished, she stepped into the shower and washed the filth from her body. She remembered to shave her entire body, save her head and eyebrows, because that was the way Nathan preferred it.

  And she was all about pleasing Nathan.

  Because it beat dying.

  When she stepped out of the shower and back into the bedroom, the horrible stench had gone.

  But just to be safe she went to the dresser, where she found a spray bottle of Avondale perfume.

  That was odd. For some reason, she had the sense that she abhorred Avondale perfume. Simply hated it with a passion. She couldn’t say why exactly she knew that. She just… sensed it, for lack of a better word.

  She sprayed one puff into the air and sniffed it.

  And it confirmed her suspicions. It smelled absolutely terrible. Not as bad as the stench of her bodily fluids, but not far behind it.

  That made her wonder, just for a moment. Why on earth would the only perfume on her dresser be a perfume she despised? It made no sense.

  Had she been more clear-headed, she might have wondered if perhaps this wasn’t her bedroom at all, but a bedroom belonging to another woman. Perhaps it wasn’t her perfume, but somebody else’s.

  And if that were the case, what else might Nathan be lying to her about?

  Was his name even Nathan? And was hers Becky?

  She stopped herself before she asked herself such questions. For Nathan was waiting downstairs for her to start his dinner.

  And she couldn’t afford to make him angry. Not again.

  Chapter 44

  Sarah was a pretty good cook, although she hadn’t a clue how. She even voiced the question to Nathan over dinner that night.

  “I wonder how it is I can’t remember my own name, yet I know how to broil venison so it’s tender and cooked just right.”

  “I don’t know,” Nathan said rather gruffly. “Probably the same way you didn’t remember my name, but you remember how to screw the hell out of me.”

  He didn’t offend her. He talked that way all the time. She had the sense that other men didn’t. That maybe they had more class. But then again, she really didn’t know for sure. And didn’t know how she knew, if she really did.

  In any event, Nathan seemed to be in a pretty good mood.

  She was glad. She liked him better that way, and it was easier for her to relax.

  “Honey, who are the people in the pictures?”

  “What pictures? What are you talking about?”

  “The pictures on the walls. All over the house. Pictures of a man and a woman, and some kids.”

  “Those are your brother and sister-in-law and their children. You don’t remember?”

  “No. I looked hard at their faces, and none of them look familiar to me at all.”

  “Want to hear how they died? It’s pretty grisly. They suffered a lot. The plague was brutal. Had them spitting blood for days and tearing the hair out of their own heads, it was so painful.”

  “No. I’d rather not hear the details, if you don’t mind.”

  He laughed a sadist’s laugh.

  “Okay, suit yourself.”

  Then he changed subject.

  “The garden needs weeding. While you were laying in your bed I watered the plants to keep them from dying.”

  He paused, obviously waiting for some type of response from her.

  All she could think of to say was, “Thank you, honey.”

  He went on.

  “Tomorrow, I want you to spend some time out there and get it straightened back up. Those weeds will overtake the garden, and then we won’t have anything to eat except meat and that old hard corn. And I want you to start canning vegetables for winter.”

  The puzzled look on her face brought a question.

  “You do remember how, don’t you?”

  “Sure, honey.”

  It was a lie. She didn’t have a clue how to can vegetables. But she sensed a bit of anger in his question, and she wasn’t about to admit that to him.

  She figured, how hard could it be, really? She’d seen a device in the back of the cupboard. It was stainless steel and resembled a crock pot with a pressure gauge sticking out of its top.

  She’d remembered a plate on the front of it that said “Smithson Canning Cooker, Sandusky Ohio”

  Maybe she could find an owner’s manual in one of the drawers in the kitchen, and could memorize the instructions when Nathan was sleeping.

  “Of course, honey. I’ll go out in the morning and pull up all the weeds. Then I’ll pick all the ripened vegetables and berries and start canning them.”

  “Don’t can all of them, you dumb bitch. We still have to eat now, too. Just can the extras. The ones we won’t need, so we can have them when the weather turns cold again.”

  “Okay. Yes, you’re absolutely right. Nathan?

  “I was wondering about that. When the weather gets cold, don’t I wear clothes to keep warm?”

  “Nope. You’re naked all year around. Surely you can remember that, can’t you? When you run outside to grab firewood and then you coming running back in as quickly as possible?”

  “No. I’m sorry, I don’t remember.”

  I let you wear a couple of pairs of my socks when you go out for firewood. You leave them by the back door when you’re not using them.

  “Do I wear one of your coats too?”

  “No. I like the way your body looks when you come in all covered with goose pimples.”

  She wasn’t sure if he was kidding. But she thought it best to smile and drop the subject.

  “Yes. I like the way you look at me when I come back in like that too.”

  Chapter 45

  It was just before noon the following day when Brad and David turned up a dusty and rutted road in their never-ending search for Sarah.

  Once upon a time, before the world went dark and froze over for seven long years, the dirt roads in Kerr County received routine maintenance. Every six months or so, a Caterpillar road grader made its rounds of all the dirt roads that weren’t on private property. The operator dropped the big Cat’s heavy blade and dragged it along, smoothing the road of its high spots and ruts.

  But that hadn’t happened in many years now. There simply weren’t enough surviving employees of the county.

  And many of the old roads, like this one, were barely passable.

  They’d visited three ranches and one farm whose long driveways connected with the old dirt road. Two of the ranches had been abandoned long before. One had been ransacked repeatedly, and everything edible had been taken.

  The other, oddly enough, appeared never to have been violated. The cupboards were full of canned goods, now swollen from having been frozen and then thawed. Three cases of bottled water were still stacked neatly in one corner of the cupboard, which still contained a wide variety of packaged food items.

  A cup of coffee lay at the end of the dining room table. The black stain on the inside told the tale of the cup, which had been left there half full, the coffee having frozen, then thawed, then evaporated long before.

  Brad commented to David, “It looks like he just went out front to get the paper and never came back.”

  The next farmhouse told a sadder tale.

  It was neat as a pin, save the dust and cobwebs which had accumulated in recent years. On the living room sofa, huddled in each other’s arms, were two skeletons still clothed and wearing heavy winter parkas.

  There was no visible trauma, but several empty bottles of prescription medicines on the coffee table beside two empty water bottles.

  This time it was David’s turn to speculate.

  “I’m guessing they ran out of hope long before they ran out of winter. Probably took every pill they had and then just snuggled to stay warm until they drifted off to sleep.”

  “It’s a shame they
didn’t go over to the neighbor’s house. There’s plenty of food still over there they could have used.”

  “Yeah. I wish they would have. But then again, maybe they just got tired of living and figured it was no longer worth the effort.”

  The last ranch house they’d visited was inhabited by an old codger and his two grandsons, who were friendly enough but who had the suspicious eyes they’d seen time and time again among the other survivors.

  “We ain’t got no extra food, if that’s what you’re looking for.”

  The old man did all the talking. The grandsons stood on either side of him, rifles in hand in case there was trouble.

  “No, sir. We’re looking for a friend of ours, a woman named Sarah. She went missing in the woods not far from here, and we’re checking all the farms and ranches to see if anyone has seen her.”

  “It takes a lot of guts to go knocking on doors around here, son. You’re just as likely to be shot as you are in finding your friend. She must be pretty special to you to take that risk.”

  “Yes, sir. She is a very special woman.”

  “We ain’t seen her, son. But we have a working pickup. If she comes here we’ll bring her home. I’ll do that much for you.”

  “Thank you for that, sir.”

  Then, as an afterthought, David continued.

  “Sir, the ranch just south of yours. It was abandoned. Do you know what happened to the owner?”

  “He went hunting a couple of days after the skies went dark. Said he was going for a deer before somebody else got them all. Never came back.

  “We found him a week later when we went for our own deer. Dead. Shot in the back in a clearing, with deer entrails all about him and a knife right beside him. It appeared he was field dressing his kill when somebody shot him and took it away from him. Left him there to freeze solid in the middle of the damn woods. Damn bastards. He was a good man and a good friend. He deserved better than that.”