Stranded Box Set

by Theresa Shaver

  She took off in a run straight at him. Josh threw his arm out to stop her but she dodged it and kept going until she came to a huge pit that had been dug in one of the garbage mounds. What she saw had her spinning away and bolting to the other side of the pathway to heave out the contents of her stomach. She heard feet pounding up to her and then sounds of some of the others puking as well.

  Quinn let out a strangled yell of anguish and Cooper violently screamed, “SON OF A BITCH!”

  Alex was bent over with her hands wrapped around her stomach when she heard Emily sobbing. She spit to clear her mouth and stood up and went to her friend, wrapping her in her arms. Dara was standing beside her, as pale as the death in the pit and silent hitches made her chest jerk so Alex grabbed her and pulled her close too.

  The girls huddled together and felt their insides break into sad little pieces. Alex wished she’d listened to Josh. She’d only taken a quick glance down into the pit of bodies but it was enough to sear the image in her brain forever.

  Lisa was standing at the edge of the pit. She had her arms wrapped around herself and she was rocking back and forth mumbling over and over, “She said it was garbage. She said it was garbage."

  Alex swallowed hard and pushed Emily into Dara’s arms before going to Lisa and trying to pull her away. When she took the girls arm her head turned and the largest, emptiest eyes met hers. “Anne Marie isn’t garbage,” she said flatly.

  “Who’s Anne Marie, Lisa?” Alex asked gently.

  Lisa turned back to the pit and raised her hand to point. Alex didn’t want to look but she couldn’t help herself. Following Lisa’s pointing finger, she saw a body wrapped in a clean white sheet. It stood out like a beacon against the gray bodies it had been dumped on. The sheet was so clean and it was only just starting to dampen in the rain. The main part of the body was still wrapped in the sheet, but the head and one pale naked arm and shoulder had been exposed when it was tossed into the pit. Alex found her eyes moving over the swollen, bruised face. It had been beaten so badly that it was impossible to recognize who it was. The damaged face was surrounded by a halo of shiny, clean blond corkscrew curls and a few curls that were matted with blood. Alex pulled her gaze away from the body and focused on Lisa.

  “Are you sure you know her? Her face is hard to recognize. It could be anyone, Lisa.”

  Lisa shook her head. “See? On her shoulder? She has a four-leaf-clover tattoo. She was captain last year and she got it for luck before we went to Regionals. We won.” Lisa trailed off.

  David had joined them at the side of the pit and he was studying the bodies. His voice was strangled when he asked, “Alex, do you recognize those armbands?”

  Alex looked where he was pointing. She wanted to run away and scrub her mind of what she was seeing, but the shock had worn off and she felt frozen with numbness as she looked at the grey arms and legs mixed together. She spotted what David was pointing at and as soon as she saw it, she knew what it was and other arms with bands came into view. Her voice had no emotion in it. She felt dead inside when she answered him.

  “They’re from the nursing home. The bands have the patient’s information and medications on them.”

  David didn’t look up from the bodies. “My grandma is in there. She had dementia. She wouldn’t have known what was happening. Did they just die or did they kill them?” he asked in a little boy voice.

  Quinn and Josh pulled the three of them away from the pit and steered them down the pathway before Alex could answer him. It was for the best. She didn’t think she could bear to tell him that they all had holes in their heads.

  Chapter Twelve

  Alex peeled her sodden clothing off her body and dropped it to the floor of the camper with a splat. Her skin was cold, clammy, and pale and she couldn’t stop the tremors that coursed through her. She wrapped her naked body in a towel and attacked her dripping hair. Once it was no longer dripping, she wrapped a dry towel around it and secured it like a turban. Everything she did since leaving the dump had been on autopilot. Her brain and body were numb from emotional overload. Climbing into her bunk, she piled blankets on top of herself and created a nest where she could hide for a while.

  The ride back to base had been silent as they all dealt with what they’d discovered. Alex had sat in the back of the truck with her back against the cab and her knees drawn up to her chest, staring at the countryside as it passed by. Everything looked grey and dismal to her like all the color had been washed from the world. She kept seeing a repetitive motion out of the corner of her eye and when she finally turned her heavy head to look, she saw Josh was clenching his hands into fists and opening them. He kept repeating the motion, making his knuckles flare white against the bone before releasing them. Her gaze slowly traveled up his arms in a detached way until they landed on his face. Here was color. His face was bone white except for two bright red flags across his cheekbones. Alex hardly recognized her friend. She’d never seen such rage and anguish in his eyes before. He looked nothing like the goofy boy she’d loved like a brother most of her life. If Alex had been capable of feeling anything right then, she might have been afraid for him. He looked like he was about to tear something apart with his bare hands. Dara leaned against him and raised her hands to cover his. His hand clenching stopped but he continued to stare at his hands so Alex let her gaze slide away back to the passing landscape.

  Quinn drove them back to base without stopping to check on the last roadblock. He knew there was a good chance that one or more of his group wouldn’t be able to restrain themselves from attacking the guards if they saw them now. They all needed some time to come to terms with what they’d seen. As sad and angry as he was, he knew they needed cooler heads before they made any move against the men holding the town. When they pulled into base behind the camper van, everyone had scattered. Dara led Josh away into the trees, Emily and David went to the picnic table and sat in the rain just holding on to each other, Cooper paced around the campsite in angry strides before grabbing the axe and taking out his emotions by chopping up wood, and Lisa followed Alex into the girl’s camper. Quinn absently rubbed at his aching thigh before turning and going into the camper van. Time…they just needed some time.

  When Alex woke up, her eyes were swollen and aching, telling her she’d been crying in her sleep. The cold numbness had left her body, she was warm under the blankets and there was a comforting weight pressed up against her back. She didn’t know how long she’d slept, but the camper was dark and she knew night had fallen. She shifted slightly, and the person against her stirred. With a sleepy voice, Emily asked, “What time is it?”

  Alex drew her arm out of the warm cocoon to check her watch but it was too dark to see so she just shrugged against Emily and stayed silent. Emily’s hand found Alex’s under the blankets and they just laid beside each other lost in their own thoughts. Sounds drifted through the thin metal walls of the camper. Alex could hear low murmurings and the snap of wood burning in the campfire. She thought they should get up and eat something but that meant facing the others and talking about what had happened earlier in the day and she wasn’t ready for that. Emily didn’t give her a choice when she shivered and snuggled closer to her friend.

  “Do you think we’ll ever go back to the way we were before? You know, like normal kids who help out around the farm and have fun playing in the woods? Sometimes, I don’t think I’ll ever feel like a kid again.”

  Alex unwillingly flashed back through all the things she’d seen and done since leaving California.

  “No. We’ll never be the same again. Nothing will ever be like it was before,” she whispered and felt Emily nod against her shoulder.

  “Alex? Those people…at the dump. They were executed. Why? Why would the gang do that?”

  Alex sighed sadly, “They were elderly and some of them were sick so the gang wouldn’t have seen them as anything but extra mouths to feed.”

  Emily squeezed her hand. “I’m sorry, Alex. I know you kne
w a lot of them from volunteering there.”

  Alex thought about all the patients she had sat and read to or played cards with. She felt like she should cry for them but her heart had drained of tears and was filling back up with anger.

  “It’s such a waste! Do you know how much knowledge they threw away by killing those people? Those were the people that helped build our country. They knew how to work and fight and survive without modern conveniences. They lived this life we’re in right now and flourished! Just because they got old doesn’t mean they had no value!”

  Emily sat up and swung her feet over the side of the bunk. “Come on, let’s get dressed and get out there. We need to plan on how we’re going to make them pay for what they did.”

  Alex felt goose bumps cover her body when Emily threw back the blankets to get up. She scrambled out and searched around for dry clothes to put on. She stumbled over her cold wet clothes that she’d left in a heap on the floor. After she’d dressed and thrown her messy hair into a ponytail, she picked them up and hung them to dry. Alex could tell that the rain had stopped since she could no longer hear it against the camper’s metal roof, but the air was damp so she pulled on an extra jacket and stepped out into the campsite.

  Everyone was sitting around the campfire eating, except Emily, who was over at the camp stove dishing up two bowls of pasta from the pot. She met Alex halfway and handed her the steaming bowl before they found seats and joined the others. They ate in silence, staring into the fire. Once Quinn had finished his meal, he cleared his throat and addressed them all.

  “I know what we found today was a huge blow, but I think we need to put it aside and concentrate on coming up with a plan to free the town as soon as possible before they kill anyone else.”

  Josh set his bowl on the ground beside his chair and his face had a hard set. “We need to kill them all!”

  Cooper nodded and stood up. “I’m ready to go in and start picking them off!”

  David frowned at the two boys. “Hey, I’m upset about what we saw today too, but we can’t go looking for revenge! Acting in self-defence is one thing but we can’t just go in and start murdering these men. That would make us as bad as they are!”

  Josh and Cooper glared at David while Josh said forcefully through gritted teeth, “THEY DESERVE TO DIE!”

  David held his hands up in a pleading gesture. “That’s not for us to decide! We aren’t the law. We don’t get to play judge, jury and executioner!”

  Alex’s cold, hard voice had all eyes swinging her way.

  “That’s where you’re wrong. This isn’t the old world. It’s down to the basics now until some form of government comes forward. There are two sides, good and bad. They made their choice…they picked the wrong side! We’ll kill who we have to and turn the rest over to the townspeople once we free them.” She looked around at the group and met each pair of eyes before continuing, “Tonight we make our plan and tomorrow we do it. I’m not waiting anymore. You can come with me or wait here. I don’t care anymore what you choose. I’ve picked my side…it’s time you picked yours!”

  Her eyes held a fierce challenge and Josh and Cooper stepped towards her without hesitation.

  “I’m in!”

  “Let’s do it!” he said as Quinn joined them with a nod. Dara and Lisa stood and agreed as well. Emily looked at David and went over and kneeled in front of him.

  “David, they’re starving, terrorizing and killing our families. We need to do this!”

  He shook his head and rubbed at his face. “It’s not that I don’t want to stop them. It’s…”

  She cut him off by leaning away from him and standing. Looking down on him, she said, “I love you, David, but this is it. You need to decide now. Are you going to fight with us or not?”

  His face drained of color and he looked at her like she’d slapped him before searching the hard faces of his friends and finally nodding.

  Emily gave him a tight smile and nodded before walking away to join the others. She knew he would do what was needed, but now she didn’t know if they would be together after it was done. Suppressing the tears she felt pricking at the back of her eyes, she pushed those thoughts away for now. They were going to war.

  They gathered around the picnic table and anchored the hand drawn map with two lanterns for light. Quinn had filled in the numbers of the guards at all the locations that they knew about and the total came to forty-nine with sixteen unaccounted for.

  Once everyone had studied the map he started to talk. “Okay, we can send a team over to the last roadblock that we didn’t check today to confirm their numbers, but it’s looking good that there will only be four based on the others we’ve seen. I like part of Alex’s plan that she came up with but we’ll have to tweak a few things. Let me tell you all what I think we should do and then we’ll toss it around and see if everyone agrees.” When he got nods all around, he continued, “First of all, tomorrow night is when we go. She’s right that we can’t wait any longer. We leave the roadblocks alone and in place for the first part of the plan. We don’t know when they rotate the guards and we don’t want that to give us away too soon. We hit the farms first and we do it together. My place first because it’s closest. We go in after dark and get the jump on the guards in the house. While most of us hold them, the others will go out and unlock the barn. We have a lot of extra guns that we can hand out to the people and they can decide what to do with the guards. Hopefully we can take them by surprise and we won’t have to kill any of them, but we’ll do what we have to,” he said this last part while looking at David, who nodded gratefully.

  Quinn looked around at the others. “David’s right in some ways. We can try to do this without killing all of them. Revenge might feel like the thing to do right now, but it’s something that we’ll suffer from down the road. So, we’ll shoot if we have to, not because we want to.” He looked at Josh and Cooper who had cooled down a little and they both gave grim nods in agreement.

  “Alright, the next step is to explain the plan to the people we free on Grandpa’s farm and convince them to go along with it. We’ll arm some of them to stay behind in the barn so they can deal with any new guards that are sent out. We can’t have anyone running to town on a vendetta or the whole plan will fall apart. We hit each of the four farms like that and then split up and get into position at all four roadblocks. Once the sun is up and they send men out to check on why no one has come in from the farms for visiting day, we take out the roadblocks. We’ll use the radios to stay in contact and with the extra men who will join us from the farms, we should have enough firepower to take them out and move into town.”

  Quinn paused to take a drink from his water bottle and then focused on Lisa. “I’m sorry, Lisa, but we’ll have to clear your house. It’s on the outskirts of town and we can’t have any guards that are there coming up behind us.”

  She looked at him with an empty expression. “Do what needs to be done. My mother picked the wrong side. It’s on her head, not ours.”

  Quinn nodded and looked away quickly. The emptiness he saw in Lisa’s eyes hurt his heart. Clearing his throat, he continued with the plan.

  “We’ll have to keep a careful count of how many guards leave town to go out to the farms. We want to have a solid number of who’s left in town. Hopefully it will be less than ten at that point. Now, this is the trickiest part. We know that ten of them usually watch over the women and kids at the school area but that could be changed when they send guys out to find out what’s happening on the farms. We may have to make it up as we go when we see where the last guards are. The very last thing we want is for them to barricade themselves in with the women and kids as hostages.” He looked around at the others and asked, “Any suggestions?”

  Alex glanced at Emily, Dara, and Lisa before sliding over to Quinn. Her face was set in stubborn lines when she answered him. “Yes, but you guys aren’t going to like it.”

  Josh looked up from the map and focused on Alex’s face.
What he saw there had his eyes widening and he started to shake his head.

  “NO. No way! Whatever it is, Alex, no! I know you’re the take charge, rush in and get it done girl but this is different! These guys are savage!”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “And what? We haven’t faced savage more than once in the last month? We need to get this done! The only way to be sure that the women and kids get free is if we go into that school. So, here’s my plan. You guys and the men who come with us surround the school and community centre. You’ll need to have people who can shoot a rifle well up on a few roofs for good coverage. Us girls go to the fence where Cooper and Dara made contact and slip in and blend with the prisoners. We’ll only be able to take handguns we can hide under our shirts but we’ll go in armed. Once the shooting starts outside, we take down anyone inside and lock it down until you give us the all clear. It’s the only way we can control what happens in there.”

  Josh was sputtering and Dara laughed at him, “Forget it, Josh! It’s a solid plan. I’m with Alex.”

  Emily didn’t even look at David she just nodded. They all looked at Lisa expectantly and she just shrugged. “I’m good to go wherever you guys want me.”

  Alex frowned at her response. It was like Lisa had been scooped out and an automated shell was going through the motions. They would have to keep an eye on her and try to help her work through things once this was all over. She turned her head and met Quinn’s eyes with raised eyebrows.

  “Well?” she asked him.

  His gaze was steady when he replied. “I flat out hate it and I’m scared out of my mind that I might lose you…but it’s a go. It’s our best chance, but you better be so careful, Alex…all of you have to make it out of there. We’ve come too far to lose any of you.” His words might have been for all of them but his eyes never left hers and the love she saw in them took her breath away.