The Great Thirst Boxed Set

by Mary C. Findley

  “Your brother resented Talia being there?” Sophie asked. “Why?”

  “We play this guilt trip thing all the time – over everything,” Keith sighed. “I ran off to college, he ran off to the Army – both of us guilt ourselves and each other over not being here for mom and dad. It comes out so sick, with us fighting all the time.”

  “Ah,” Naddy said. “What does this have to do with Talia?”

  “I just went downstairs for a second to get a drink. When I got off the elevator she came running out of the room, told me he was there, and then left in a big hurry. Dan blew up at me about her being there, so I guess maybe he blew up at her too. Do you think she’s okay? Should we check on her?”

  The older couple looked at each other. “Where is Daniel?” Naddy asked.

  “Most likely at John’s Bar and Grill,” Joshua replied.

  “The last place he should be. Of course. Keith, we have a rental car. Can you take my wife to Talia’s apartment and see if she is there? Be certain she is indeed all right? Joshua, I will go with you to this bar and between us perhaps we can bring Daniel home?”

  Talia slid between the stools at John’s as Dan ordered his fifth drink. She could tell because four empty glasses sat in front of him. She pushed the full glass onto the floor as soon as the bartender set it down. Dan’s head snapped up and he stared at her.

  “You are a selfish pig,” she said. “I’m taking you home, though I don’t know why your family should have to deal with you.”

  “What are you doing here? Did you follow me?”

  “No, I got a voicemail from Keith when I was lying in bed feeling sorry for myself. I figured from what he said that you’d run out on your family when they needed you the most. It made sense that you’d run to wherever you could get a bottle. This is a small town, and this bar is close to your house.”

  Dan took a swipe at her and she blocked it with her forearm. He hesitated a minute, dazed. He swung again. She grabbed the fleshy part of his thumb and in a second he crumpled to his knees, groaning.

  “Bitch,” he hissed. Talia twisted and he crashed to the floor.

  “How much does he owe you?” Talia asked the bartender. She shoved bills across the counter while the man was finding his voice. “Is that enough?”

  “Let me get your change,” he said feebly.

  “Keep it. Buy a new glass or something. Get up, Dan.” Talia kicked him.

  “Ow!” Dan squawked.

  “You gonna let this pretty little thing beat up on you?” another drunk demanded. “I can teach you better manners, little girl.”

  Talia slammed a knee into the man’s groin. He crumpled beside Dan. Talia kicked Dan again. “Get up!” she snapped. “I don’t want to hurt you, but my temper is still my biggest besetting sin.”

  Dan struggled up, holding his side. “Are those combat boots? Are you a vet?”

  “Yes, and no. I trained with the Israeli army for awhile.” Talia propelled him to the door of the bar.

  They emerged as Joshua and Naddy pulled up in Joshua’s car. Both men got out as Talia shoved Dan out the door. He missed the step and fell on the ground. “Ow!” he said again.

  “Talia, my precious, I see you have found Daniel.” Naddy laid a comforting arm around Joshua’s sagging shoulders. “Is he ready to come home now?”

  “Yes, Amu. He’s ready. Aren’t you, Dan?”

  “Yeah,” Dan groaned. “Hey, Dad. You didn’t have to send Xena after me.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Bradley,” Talia said, hanging her head at the look on Joshua’s face. “Amu and Zanamu taught me sometimes tough love is best.”

  Naddy took out his phone. “Sophie, my jewel, Talia is with us. We will meet you at the house. Yes, we have Daniel. All is well, or soon will be.”

  Keith and Sophie walked into the house just a few minutes after Naddy, Joshua, Talia, and Dan arrived. Dan had flopped down on the couch and was already snoring. Talia saw the shame and anger on Keith’s face as he stared at his brother. He glanced up and she realized her fists were still clenched so tight her nails bit into her palms. She relaxed them, but not before he saw her tension.

  “Hey, I’m sorry Dan yelled at you,” Keith said softly, moving to her side. “Of all the times for him to–”

  “Never mind.” Talia touched his cheek. “I’m so sorry about Joana. We’ll be back tomorrow, okay?”

  “Okay,” Keith said woodenly. “But – Why are you already here? What happened? Did Dan do something else to you?”

  Talia shook her head. “Good night, Keith.”

  Chapter Forty-three – “This Is so Hard!”

  Keith woke at dawn, even though he realized he didn’t have work and didn’t even have to go to the hospital anymore. As he made coffee he tried to block out the memory of his dreams; of a voice he hadn’t heard in more than a year begging him to … To what? What had Joana wanted so badly for him to do?

  Dan stumbled into the kitchen as the aroma of the coffee spread. “Aw, man, I was hoping dad made it. Your coffee sucks, Keith.”

  “When Talia comes over later, you are going to apologize to her.”

  “Hey, trust me, she paid me back last night. I think she broke a rib.” Dan rubbed his side. “Was she kidding about training with the Israeli army?”

  “Are you still drunk? I can’t believe you.”

  “Naw, but I am seriously hung over. What, you didn’t know your girlfriend is like, Mossad or something?”

  “She’s not Jewish. She’s Persian. And you are such a jerk.”

  “You have no idea what happened last night? She didn’t tell you? Nobody told you?” Dan poured himself coffee, slurped, and made a face. “Still sucks.”

  “You’re welcome,” Keith grunted. “So, are you going to tell me what happened with Talia?”

  “She found me at the bar, thumb-tapped me, and got in a couple of kicks in the ribs. That girl has some skills! Bobby Rourke’ll probably be sitting with an icepack between his legs for a week.”

  “Bobby Rourke? You’re hallucinating.” Keith’s night of dreams washed forward from the corner of his memory and he suddenly knew what the dream Joana had said. Make peace with Dan. Do it for me. “No way.”

  “Yes, way.” Dan apparently thought he was still talking about that bar nonsense. “Maybe I need an icepack. Crap.” He shifted in his seat.

  “Dan … I’m sorry.”

  Dan eyed him over the rim of his coffee cup. “What?”

  “I said I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “For fighting with you all the time. For fighting right there in front of Joana. It was your last chance to see her, and I couldn’t keep my mouth shut.”

  “It takes two, bro. I shouldn’t have gone off on your warrior chick. She was where I should have been. She’s been where I should have been since she came here, hasn’t she?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She fits in with our family better than I do. She’s got faith, right? Joana and Grandma both loved her at Christmas. Me they just looked at, all sad. Why can’t I stop making all of you sad, or mad, or – why can’t I just believe again?”

  “Because it’s hard,” Keith shrugged. “I met a guy in Syria who got his girlfriend’s finger cut off, got Naddy stabbed, and got Talia so mad at him she said … I don’t even remember what she said. He said he’d become a believer after going through all that. He’d gone searching for other believers. But he told me it was too freaking hard. I heard him apologizing to God for swearing.

  “That’s when I started to realize what it must be like for you in the army. I had Dad, and Joana, and Grandma, but you had a bunch of guys screaming obscenities in your face from morning til night. And I despised you for questioning God. I’m sorry for that too, Dan.”

  “Stop apologizing, okay? It’s not your fault. None of this is your fault. It’s mine. Talia should have kicked my head in last night. But I think maybe she kicked some sense into me. She’s something else. You better
appreciate what you got there, baby brother. Brains, beauty, next-level skills, plus she loves God. Then there’s that car.”

  “Shut up!”

  “Look at you smiling. You shut up. Yeah, I know, and I’ll apologize, sure.”

  Talia and her aunt and uncle arrived mid-morning. Talia was more than a little startled by Dan’s apology, but she smiled and kept her eyes down.

  “I was wondering if it would be okay for me to sing a song at Joana’s funeral?” she asked Joshua. “I don’t want to intrude, but I know there was one she liked a lot. I sang for her a couple of times when I was here, and she wanted to hear “His Eye Is on the Sparrow.”

  “That used to be my favorite song, too,” Dan spoke up. “You can sing, too, Warrior Chick? Guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

  Most of the town turned out for Joana’s funeral and Talia did indeed sing. Keith had known she had a sweet voice, but she had kept it so hushed when caring for Joana that he had not expected the power she put behind it during the service. Many people who had not been moved by anything else in the service sniffled and hid tissues during her song.

  “”Thank you.” Grandma Bradley patted Talia’s face when the funeral ended. “Thank you.”

  Outside the funeral home, Keith and Talia were met by the entire Bible as Literature class standing in the lawn. “We wanna know when the Restoration Project’s starting up again,” Jayna said.

  “The – Restoration Project?” Keith repeated.

  “Yeah.” Another student said. “We wanna start back in copying the Bibles and stuff. But all our stuff is at school.”

  “But it’s summer,” Talia said feebly. “Some of you already graduated. You want to do schoolwork in the summer?”

  “We didn’t want to be a bother, with Ms. Bradley getting’ sick and all,” one of the girls said. “But …” She trailed off and the kids looked at each other.

  Tom stepped forward. “I lost my summer job because somebody told my boss I read the Bible on my breaks where customers can see me. They said it’s against company policy because we might offend somebody. Mr. Bradley, people are still getting phone calls, and stuff comes in our email, like spam, but it says our Bibles are gonna be destroyed.”

  “Yeah,” another boy said. “This thing ain’t over, whatever it is, whatever them people been telling us. The Repository site keeps goin’ down, and glitchin’. A lot of the tablets they gave us don’t work right. We need to start copying Bibles and stuff again or I think we ain’t gonna have any. We need to start our own repository site, and maybe protect it extra, so they can’t mess it up, too.”

  “You’re serious?” Keith demanded. “You’ll come to the school and work? If we show up to let you in, you’ll be there, and you’ll make it worth our while to be there with you?”

  The kids shifted uneasily and looked at each other. “We need to do this, Mr. Bradley,” Adam insisted. “Some of us got summer jobs, and stuff, so we can’t be there all the time, or even at the same time. But don’t we have to keep the Word from disappearing?”

  “Yes,” Talia said. “We do. But both the Mr. Bradleys have summer jobs. So I will be there with you when they are at work.”

  “”Yeah!” all the students exclaimed. “When do we start?”

  “You guys get on the email account we set up for class assignments,” Keith said. “We’ll route you to a different email, a protected one, and then get rid of that account. Everybody needs to figure out a schedule – When you can be there, and send it to us before the weekend. We’ll start work Monday, okay?”

  “So when’s the wedding?” Dan demanded as they sat at dinner after the funeral.

  “Daniel Homer Bradley, hush,” his grandmother said.

  “What? You mean you ain’t even engaged yet? Want me to help you pick out a ring or something before I go back?”

  Keith ducked his head and flushed scarlet.

  “What wedding is this?” Naddy asked.

  “You kidding me, Papa Indy? My bro and your niece, of course.” Dan poked him in the ribs.

  “This is not possible,” Naddy rumbled.

  “Of course it is possible,” Sophie snapped, slapping his shoulder from her seat on his other side. “Do not speak like a fool.”

  “You have planned this, Keith, to ask for our Talia’s hand?” Naddy persisted.

  “Well… I was hoping for your blessing, yeah.” Keith wondered if he had violated some Persian custom, or just an Uncle Naddy custom. “I mean, I’m sorry if Dan upset you, dropping the bomb like that. We can wait, or whatever you need us to do.”

  “Talia is consecrated to the task of finding and protecting the Testaments,” Naddy said. “This is her destiny, and her choice. She cannot abandon what she has vowed to do.”

  “Amu, I don’t have to abandon the Testaments because I marry Keith,” Talia protested. Her cheeks burned. “You and Zanamu are married, and you still do the work.”

  “Your aunt and I have resources, training, contacts to aid us.”

  “You think I don’t have my own training, my own contacts?” Talia demanded. “You think Keith and I have no skills? Who went after the scrolls and made contact with the Guardians who had them? Who figured out how to assemble the map and helped with the lights and power sources? Who found you in the desert?”

  “Perhaps you are prepared in other senses, but the salaries of two high school teachers cannot pay for the demands of this mission of ours. Our funds are available to you while you remain with us. But if you marry, your husband must be your companion, your provider, and you will have nothing to draw upon.”

  “We would not cut them off, you foolish old man,” Sophie said.

  “We must. It would shame Keith for us to direct their lives, to control them and give money to them. It would be a disgrace. He is not bound to this holy quest, but he would be bound to provide for his wife. We cannot be to them in the stead of God. This is what holy matrimony means. Besides, here is Keith, bound to help his father provide for his grandmother, the school, and this house. These are good and right obligations. It is ill-advised from both perspectives for them to marry.”

  “Wow, this is stone-age stuff,” Dan snorted. “You’re gonna let Papa Indy decide if and when you tie the knot, bro? Is he going to drag Warrior Chick back to the cave by her hair and lock her up til the magic quest is done?

  “Seriously, I was starting to like you people, but this beats anything.” He slid his chair back and stood up. “Let me know if you wanna elope, Keith. I got a buddy who flies and he’d pick you up and take you to Vegas in a heartbeat.”

  “Dan, this is none of your business,” Joshua said, rising also. “There’s time to deal with all of this later. Keith and Talia are not going to do anything foolish, so you stop trying to start something.”

  Dan snorted loudly and left the room. The phone rang as Joshua started to sit back down and he moved into the hallway to answer it.

  “Slow down, please. I can’t understand you. Who is this? What? The school is what? That’s impossible. We haven’t heard any sirens. No, I didn’t mean to call you a liar. Thank you. Thanks for calling.”

  Joshua turned back toward the kitchen where everyone had stood up, even Mrs. Bradley, and stared at him.

  Dan stepped into the hall beside his father. “What happened?”

  “A bomb went off at the school. At least that’s what Angie Pearson thinks happened. Just happened.”

  As if to punctuate his sentence, a faint wailing sound penetrated their stunned silence. “Was anybody there?” Talia gasped.

  “I don’t think so.” Joshua rubbed his face. “Thank the Lord those kids just cooked up this idea to go work on the Restoration Project today, and no one was doing it already.”

  “Wait.” Grandma Bradley stopped her son as he started to make a phone call. “Those students who were talking about their projects after the funeral – They said all their things were at the school. Does that mean somebody heard them say that, and went over and bombed t
he school, that quick, to make sure all the things were destroyed, and they couldn’t work on it anymore?”

  “Grandma, you’re trippin’,” Dan scoffed.

  “We need to find out how much damage there is,” Keith said.

  “We will not get near the place,” Naddy cautioned. “And we must not interfere with the emergency workers. It is best to wait for more information.”

  “It is crazy, that it would happen right after we talked about starting up the Restoration Project again. It’s like the black Sprinter’s been spying on us again.” Keith gave a weak chuckle.

  “It was,” Dan said.

  “Now you’re the one tripping,” Keith said.

  “No, I remember, I was standing back while you guys were talking to the kids, and I saw something out of the corner of my eye go around the corner past the funeral home. It was black, and it was big. I think it was that van that we saw at Christmas.”

  “You saw that van at Christmas?” Talia asked Keith. “You never told me.”

  “I guess I forgot.” Keith rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah, remember, you said we could use the Tesla to take Grandma back home, because Dan wanted a ride in it? So, on the way back, the van showed up. I ran after it down the road when it went on past. Dan saw it too, and Clark chased it, and Dan said the same thing about it that I did. It might be listening rather than trying to hit us. How close was it, Dan, when you saw it today?”

  “Went right by on the street next to the funeral home parking lot.”

  “So they heard about starting the Restoration Project back up,” Keith muttered. “And … We do need to go find out how much damage there was.”

  “We should take that big fancy van Doc and Mrs. Indy fixed up for Grandma and Joana,” Dan suggested. “Everybody can fit, right?”

  “Excellent idea,” Naddy replied when Joshua looked uncertain. “We will need to know when it is safe for Mrs. Bradley to return to her apartment, or if we will need to get her things to stay at your house.”