Hard Favored Rage

by Don Shift

  “Okay, we got a motive, but how about suspects?”

  That presented a problem. In the old days, the latent prints could be run through the FBI in a matter of hours to identify the suspects. Security camera footage from neighbors could be pulled to get a description of vehicles in the area. Tire tracks could be used to help match the suspect vehicle and a BOLO put out for the stolen horse trailer. Now, about the only thing that would help is finding the stolen items and whoever in possession with fingerprints from the scene.

  “How about employees?”

  “Gilberto would never do this, totally out of character.”

  “Maybe someone put him up to this?”

  “Doubt it. I’m surprised he didn’t move his family out here. Has to be an opportunity thing. Old people with horses, easy target.”

  “Well that leaves us up a creek then.”

  “As if we were going to have a realistic chance at tracking these dirtbags down anyhow?” Sean said.

  “I’d like to see these murderers hang or whatever it is they’ll do these days,” Sam shot back.

  “Bullet in the head, in the dirt,” Mr. Sibley contributed. “Boys, we’ve done what we could. Maybe if things get up and running, Major Crimes can make something of what we’ve got. Otherwise, all we can do is keep a better watch over our neighbors.”

  The rest of the afternoon was spent burying the Andersons and bringing the hay home.

  By the next morning, the weather had changed. Gray, high clouds had come in overnight from the north following the abating soft east winds. In the fall and winter, the weather in Southern California frequently switched between warm and wet with little warning or reason. Usually, hot, high pressure spells ended with the return of the marine layer blanketing the area under cool fog. Instead, the air was cool and humid.

  It was eleven o’clock and Sam had just finished cleaning out the ash choked pool filter. Two months ago, they had been swimming in the pool, enjoying the Indian summer sun.

  “Well Sammy boy, can my pool be saved?” Mr. Sibley asked.

  “I don’t know, the pH is all screwed up. Appears our good weather has left us.”

  “Yeah, that high must have given over to a low. Odd that the clouds are coming north to south. This time of year I’d expect an atmospheric river coming up from Hawaii.”

  When Sam was finished, he washed up and went into the house. Lunch was a fried spam sandwich. He noticed a corner of the lettuce was burnt for some reason. At least we have lettuce. It sure beat the oatmeal he had for breakfast this morning and every last weekday morning for a month. With the massive supply of frozen foods the Sibleys’ had, the fresh fruit and vegetables, the dehydrated survival foods were the least palatable, but most abundant.

  Like many preppers, Sam had splurged and bought a thousand dollars worth of food buckets. The picture on the tub showed delicious soup, creamy mashed potatoes, oatmeal and cream of wheat garnished with fruit, tasty chocolate and strawberry shakes, and fluffy scrambled eggs. A month of food, it proclaimed. The reality was two thousand calories a day, if that, of boring, monotonous food that would last a family of four just seven days. Sam had learned more as time went on and supplemented his tubs of boring gruel with MREs, backpacking freeze-dried meals, dried fruits and vegetables, and plenty of rice and beans. If he got really desperate, there were always the oil-soaked, calorie dense lifeboat food bricks that tasted like cocoanut.

  Despite having a garden and an embarrassingly large stockpile, the diet on the ranch was indeed boring. Years of food for fifteen people required much of it be simple staples. Homemade tortillas, rice, and beans made for a very gaseous diet. Sam was thankful he gave up his room in the casita to Mika and was free to fart in reckless abandon in his corner of the shop. In fact, no one even seemed to care when someone ripped one in the presence of others. It was unavoidable.

  Mrs. Sibley had made the very wise decision to integrate various amounts of the survival foods into meals now. This way, the frozen, canned, and store-bought food wouldn’t be gone in six months, but could be mixed in with the dehydrated food and simple things rather than eating plain white rice or whatever for years on end. Avoiding food monotony was important, especially if anyone had picky young children. Tyler’s gluten intolerance made it especially challenging to plan meals around. Blessedly, no one was diabetic.

  Finished eating, Sam got up and went back to the shop. His quarters consisted of a plywood bunk built over the solar system batteries along the only section of the wall that didn’t have electrical equipment mounted over it. The room was deep inside the shop, well insulated, and cool. Covering the dawn and evening security shifts, 4 AM to 8 AM and 8 PM to midnight, the windowless room worked well for him. He lay down on his mattress and fell asleep, soothed by the soft hum of the inverters and fans.

  Around six, Sam walked to the house for dinner. For both reasons of comradery and rationing, everyone who was not sick or on watch was required to be at dinner. Auggie was covering the dusk outdoor patrol. The ground was wet, and everything smelled of rain.

  “Is that thunder?” Sam asked.

  “Sure is,” Auggie replied. “Been blowing up for the last hour. Looks like it’s getting worse. Hope your night vision is auto-gated; don’t want you going blind from the lightning.”

  Dinner tonight was avocado cilantro lime rice and beans. Having three excellent cooks in the house made the simple meals a lot less boring.

  “What’s with the weather?” Brooke asked. She and David had been sleeping all afternoon too. They were the regular late-night watch that Sam relieved in the morning.

  “Cold front. Steady rain moved out, unstable air riding in on the back of the storm,” Sean said. “Going to be nice and wet. Probably awesome surfing weather.” He, Tyler, and David were all avid surfers.

  “Remember how we were supposed to take Nick’s boat to the backside of Santa Cruz Island and surf there for Labor Day?” Palmer said.

  “Yeah, real bummer.”

  “Hey Dad, can we take one of the trucks down to the beach and go surfing?”

  “That’s a negative Tyler. Security is too sketchy. People are getting carjacked for driving anything that has gas.”

  Everyone suffered a little from cabin fever. Being outside most of the day helped, yet everyone yearned for a change in scenery. The men could go on patrol in the area, but the women were considered too valuable to risk the same way. Even Brooke, who could hold her own well enough with the men, stayed behind for the simple fact her ability to have babies was too precious to lose. Only once in the past several months did the girls go anywhere, which was two miles away to the Hidalgo Ranch to spend a few hours among the other women there.

  After dinner, it was Sam and Mika’s turn to do the dishes. Everyone else went out back to enjoy the lightning, which was a rarity in Ventura County.

  “Sam, I can’t help but get the feeling you’ve been trying to avoid me.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Well, first of all you only say ‘hello’ to me and never talk. You always seem to leave when I come into the room. And you are sleeping when I’m covering the security desk.”

  “It’s coincidence. Of course I like you.”

  Sam kept washing the dishes even though she had stopped and was looking right at him.

  “I don’t think you do. Is there some problem with me? You were nice enough at first when I was all beat up. Now it’s like I’ve peed in your Cheerios. Is it because you have to sleep in the shop?”

  “No Mika, it’s not because I have to sleep in the shop. I like it in there. It’s cool, it’s quiet.” Sam felt extremely awkward and wished he was done washing up.

  “Then what’s the deal? I thought we were getting close.” She put her hand on his shoulder.

  Sam jerked his arm away. That touch told him what she was really asking. “Mika, maybe I don’t want to get close to anybody.”

  “Oh, okay.” She picked up the towel and resumed drying.

 
Sam looked over and saw that she looked crushed. Why does Auggie have to be so into Asian chicks? Couldn’t he be interested in her? “Mika, you only like me because I’m the only single guy with potential here.”

  “That’s not true. I think you’re cute and can be really sweet.” Both were true, even though Sam felt he looked more like a gawky teenager than a man approaching middle age.

  “Look, I don’t want to be with you simply because my parts fit yours, okay? It’s all to easy, too convenient. Everyone expects us to hookup, and I don’t want to be with someone just because that’s all there is. Why don’t you find one of the guys working at Hidalgo’s place?”

  She took the hint and left the kitchen.

  Sam went back to his quarters and began to get dressed. It was raining again, so he had to pull out his rain suit, used plenty of times this wet fall. He felt bad about putting Mika down like that but hated the fact she had called him out on the spot. The truth was that he was nervous. Sam had only been in a relationship with two women since he got out of high school and also hated the feeling of being tied down. Holly had been the perfect girlfriend, there for him when he taught in Monterey and left him alone the rest of the time. The last thing he wanted during the end of the world as we know it was an emotional tie.

  For months, he hoped that Auggie and Mika would end up together by default, but that had not happened. Instead, Auggie insisted, once things calmed down, that he would find himself a nice Asian girl and make his parents proud, wherever they were. He was also chagrined because Mika was not as stupid or annoying as his colleagues had made her out to be. A decent and attractive woman. He knew he was in denial.

  He was just too proud to admit his initial impression was wrong and that he had discounted her like everyone else. On top of that, he was being a chooser in a world where everyone had been reduced to a beggar of one kind or another. Everyone would know something was up as soon as they became the least bit intimate and then it would be all “What took you two so long?” Sam hated having other people in his business like that. Fine, I have feelings for her, but that’s enough for now.

  Three hours later, the rain was falling steadily. The thunderstorms had moved on early leaving sheets of rain falling in their wake. A nerd all the way around, Sam would have loved for some forecast analysis from a weatherman and a radar picture. There must have been two fronts, one that passed through without rain last night and one now, with the unstable air in between. It had turned cold and Sam felt the chill through his light clothing.

  Walking would help warm him up. He walked up the road through the avocado orchard towards the north end of the property. There was a bridge over the barranca, and he wanted to see how it was holding up in the rains after the fire. Since the road sat in a depression, none of the trees on either side had burned up to the top of the slope. Even so, muddy black runoff came down the hill and down the small culverts on either side of the gravel.

  Sam stopped suddenly. He heard some sharp claps, muffled by the rain and the wind in the leaves. Was it thunder? He couldn’t tell. There, it came again. It sounded like something was banging against a metal shed in the wind. Twice more, he heard the noise. He listened for five more minutes but heard nothing. He keyed the mic.

  “You hear anything on the radio?”

  “Negative Sam, nothing on the scanners. What’s up?” Brooke answered.

  “Heard a noise, wondering if anyone radioed for help.”

  “Was it gunfire?”

  “Not sure. A banging.”

  “Check the barranca. Might be debris in a flash flood.”

  Sam kept his course towards the bridge. It was holding just fine.

  Dawn broke clear and clean. For this day’s hay expedition, Mr. Sibley chose Sean and they rode the horses. The choice was partly because they were visiting the large Coyote Ranch horse boarders, so it fit to arrive on horseback, and partly because the ground was muddy. Let the horses’ feet get muddy, Mr. Sibley thought. No flash flooding had happened at all aside from the small gullies cut into the fire scarred land. The valley had been lucky that the fire was terrain driven instead of wind driven and the vegetation loss had not been severe enough to destabilize the hillsides.

  The Coyote Ranch was high up in the hills, located behind several houses. For this reason alone it had not been raided like several of the larger stables located on or closer to the highway. The ranch was not advertised by signage so the only people who knew it was there had to have firsthand knowledge.

  As they trotted up the drive, the Sibleys noticed fresh tire tracks and bits of hay in the mud. Mr. Sibley held his hand up and signaled a dismount. With the horses tied up behind some trees and munching on wild grass, the two men advanced cautiously towards the caretakers’ house. The only sound was bird chirps as they hunted for worms. Usually the air was filled with the whinny of hungry horses.

  In the front yard, Benny Sanchez lay sprawled out in the mud, an exit wound visible on his back. The front door was ajar.

  “We’re not clearing this ourselves.” Mr. Sibley radioed in and called for Tyler, Sam, David, and Auggie.

  Twenty minutes later, the four arrived and jogged up from the road.

  “What you got?” Sam asked.

  “Home invasion and horse theft, I’m guessing.”

  Sam swore. “I heard something about nine or ten last night, like something hitting metal. I thought it was debris in the barranca beating against the bridge.”

  Mr. Sibley shook his head. “Sounds in the rain can play tricks on you. We wouldn’t have had any idea where it was coming from anyway.”

  Sam and David moved around the side of the house to cover the back door and flank, while Tyler and Auggie covered the driveway. Sean and Mr. Sibley went in the front door. As expected, the house was empty, at least of living creatures. The dog was shot dead in the living room and what they assumed to be the elderly senior Mr. Sanchez. Benny’s brother, Victor, was dead in the hallway leading to the bedrooms.

  A dead woman that no one knew lay sprawled on her back on a bed. She had been stripped to the waist and her genitals bore evidence of rape. Someone had also made a clumsy attempt to penetrate her with a rough object that was no longer in the room.

  “Check this out.” Sam held up the woman’s hand. There was a large and deep bite mark to the outside of her left hand. “She fought somebody. Her nails are broken off.” She also had a congealed laceration to her eyebrow and a bloodstained right eye. “See the burn marks? This gunshot wound is contact distance. She fought somebody and got shot right between her—I mean right in the chest.”

  “No ring on her finger, it’s not Benny’s wife,” Sean said.

  “Unless they stole it,” David added.

  “No Sean, it’s not her. Benny’s wife was short and slim. She’s too tall.”

  “So Victor’s girlfriend. Where is Benny’s wife?”

  The four men looked at each other in alarm.

  “We gotta check the property, now. Every square inch. She could be hiding out there somewhere. God only knows who she thinks we are,” Mr. Sibley said. Everyone began moving outside. “Hey! Heads on a swivel. Who knows if there are still bad guys out here?” He toggled his mic to tell Auggie and Tyler the plan.

  Rifles at the ready, the six men searched the property. Every clump of brush, corner, alcove, closet, culvert, and ditch was checked for any sign of the missing wife. No one was there. The ranch’s six horse trailer and the truck that towed it were gone.

  “Why did they leave the hay?” Auggie asked. Inside the barn, enough hay remained to feed a dozen horses for a month. Judging from the fresh horse apples, there had been about fourteen horses here last night, well below the three-dozen capacity.

  “They took some. It was a raid for meat, not for transportation.” Mr. Sibley pointed out that like at the Andersons, the saddles were still in the tack room and only some of the hay was gone. “I’m guessing they took just enough hay to feed the horses until they needed to slaught
er them.” Horses that were stolen for transportation were taken months ago, when gas ran out and the horses were still well fed, long before the humans became desperate to eat anything.

  “Okay, back to the house for now and let’s see if we can find anything to identify the suspects. Tyler and Sean, you take the truck back, get a trailer each, and come back here. Check and make sure that forklift still runs before you leave.”

  Back at the house, the only evidence of the attackers were empty AK-47 cartridges and a few 9mm cases in the bedroom. A couple of 12-gauge hulls were all that remained of the guns the Sanchez brothers fought back with. The house had been looted of food and anything useful. Sean and David looked around while the others worked on a grave.

  “They tortured her after they raped her,” David said.

  “Probably shot her as she took a swipe at her killer.”

  “When I went in the other room, there were muddy boot prints going to the closet and around the dresser,” David said.

  “So?”

  “I was the first one in.” They went over to the room. It looked like some women’s clothing was missing from the closet and open drawers.

  “So it wasn’t any of our footprints. What do you think? Kidnapped? Someone tossed her stuff in a bag?” David nodded. Both of them knew that the missing wife was probably now a sex slave somewhere, if not dead. But which was the better of the two? Sam didn’t address what they both were thinking. “Need to re-check the Anderson’s yard for AK cases and see if the shooters are the same.” Sibley let Sam and David take the horses to the Andersons. Neither was a particularly good horseman, but they had learned to get along with Bilbo and Willow over the past few months.

  When the trucks came back with the trailers, the 1,000-pound round bales of hay were loaded up and strapped down. With the bodies in the ground, there was nothing more to do here. The exiting trucks stopped for a man coming up the driveway. He was white and looked emaciated. Sickly and gaunt people were par for the course when virtually everyone was getting little to eat, but this man was different. His cheeks were sunken and most of his hair had fallen out. He looked to Tyler to be a living photo of a Holocaust victim.