Enduring the Crisis (16 page)

“How far from home is he? You think he’ll make it back?”

She rubbed her eyebrows to shade her teary eyes. “It will take a long time if he’s able to get home.” She started to walk again and swallowed hard. “I’m leaving town. We have a place in the mountains. How soon do you think I should go?”

“Are you walking?”

“No, I have an old suburban.” She had no idea why she was opening up to him. He did just save her life. That probably had a lot to do with it.

“Hmm,” he tapped his temple. “Once I get you home, I’ll see what I can find out about the best way out of town. That is if you will let me come back to help you.”

Tammy nodded eagerly. She hated to admit it but she needed someone to help her for once.

The scene they walked up to was rather surreal. Many of the young men that had been parading down their streets for the past few days were lying side by side on the street not far from her house.

She tried not to focus on their bodies but she counted feet. The number wasn’t quite right. Then she made herself look at their lifeless faces. Sadness overwhelmed her. Degenerates as they were, they were some mother’s son. Maybe it was the fear of losing her own daughters that was giving her so much empathy to men that didn’t deserve it.

“There is one missing.” She wrung her hands. There were four other men just as big as Dale standing over their kill. She couldn’t stop rubbing her neck as she worried.

“These are the ones that showed up tonight. We didn’t miss any of them.” The shortest one puffed out his chest as if he was some sort of champion.

“Who is missing?” Dale asked.

“The brother of Idiot Boy.” She caught the smirk on Dale’s face. “That’s the one you shot.”

“Huh. That’s appropriate.” Dale hit one of men in the shoulder with the back of his hand. “We don’t know what he looks like so we won’t know him when we see him.”

“He’s been careful, more standoffish. I don’t know if he’s causing the same amount of trouble as them, though.” She rubbed her arm. It was starting to hurt even more.

“If his brother is dead, I doubt he’s standoffish after that,” Dale said.

She nodded. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

“Here, let me walk you to your house. I’m sure your kids are worried after hearing all this.” Dale gently touched her arm.

In a daze, she allowed him to walk her to the gate. She was about to unlock it when he rested his hand on hers to make her pause.

“We’ll keep an eye on things but you be extra careful. Like I said, we don’t know what he looks like.”

She nodded. Not able to suppress her emotions any longer, she pressed her fingers against her eyelids to make them stop tearing up.

“Hey, it’s okay. Tonight was not something you’ve ever experienced before. It’s gonna be hard.” He pulled her against his chest.

She was so exhausted, it took everything she had to hold in the sobs. Tammy wiped her eyes and pulled away. “I want to leave. I don’t want to mess around here any longer.”

“Where exactly are you headed?”

She hesitated and bounced on her toes.

“Just tell me the whereabouts, I know about preppers like you, don’t want to share. I get it. Here’s what I know and why I ask. There are roadblocks if you plan on heading out on the main roads. The military and police are monitoring who goes in and out. You should have gone ahead and left the day after, you know. Especially if you wanted to keep what all you got stashed away.”

Tammy stiffened and wasn’t sure what to do.

“Just tell me whereabouts, I’ve got some maps of the trails and little known back roads that will take you up to the mountains. I just need to know which way.”

“Garden Valley. I can head out from the northwest or the northeast, whichever is best. We are right in the middle.”

He nodded as he was lost in thought. “Okay, I’ll be back with a map. I’ll knock in a pattern on your backdoor, okay?”

She nodded eagerly.

“You go take care of that family of yours.” He sauntered off to meet his militia friends as they carried off bodies.

She shuddered as she opened the door. Fortunately the girls weren’t all there watching what was going on outside.

As she made her way downstairs in the dark, the pain in her arm started to throb. When she rubbed the skin, it itched. She paused before she opened the door. They would be traumatized by seeing blood on her again. Everything she needed was set up in their bunker, though. Opening the door anyway, the girls all turned and froze when they saw her.

She pointed right at Charlie and the fury she had felt earlier came back. “There is no excuse. None. For what you pulled tonight.” She walked past her girls with their mouths all dropping to the floor while she stormed to the bathroom and shut the door. She gripped the sink with both hands and dared not to look at her face in the mirror. There was blood splattered on her shirt. She turned on the spigot to the water container over the sink and washed her face. She could smell the blood. That blood wasn’t hers, she knew. She took off the wrap on her arm. Maybe she had more than the grazing of a bullet on her arm. The skin gaped open. No wonder it was bleeding so bad and likely why it was still throbbing. She probably needed stitches.

There was a soft knock at the door. “Mom, are you okay?” Zoe asked.

“I’m fine. Leave me be for a few minutes. Ask Amanda to find the super glue.” She sat her weary body down on the toilet, full of emotion. She wiped away the tears and blew her nose. Resting the back of her head on the wall, she looked up the ceiling and whispered, “Why now? Of all the times. I can’t take this anymore. Not on my own like this. Actually no one can.” She grabbed a towel and buried her face in it so her kids couldn’t hear her cry. When she closed her eyes, she could see that boy crumple to the ground and bodies lying in a row on the road.

There was another knock. “I have the super glue,” Amanda said softly.

“Get the peroxide out and put more lights on the table. I will need your help.”

When she was finally able to look at her face, she cleaned the rest of the smeared blood off her cheek and neck. Once she had pulled herself together, she came out of the bathroom and grabbed some gauze and some of the throwaway horse wrap they had for that kind of emergency before she went to the table.

Charlie was sitting off in a corner. Tammy avoided eye contact with her as she settled in and looked directly at Amanda. “It’s kind of bloody still, not really bleeding anymore though. It looks gross.”

“What happened?” Holly hovered near Amanda’s shoulder, as did Zoe.

“I had a run-in with those awful boys again. But they won’t be bothering us anymore.”

Their eyes all widened. She wasn’t sure if it was the wound looked that shocked them or the news that the harassers were gone. She winced as she held peroxide soaked gauze against her skin.

“Why?” Mae asked.

“Some good guys, really good guys, made sure that gang won’t bother us or anyone else anymore.” She couldn’t bring herself to tell them they were dead.

“How did they do that? Did they talk to them?” Mae wanted to know.

“They probably beat them up,” Holly said.

Tammy just shook her head. “You have to squeeze it closed and then get enough glue on it to seal it shut. But don’t touch it.”

“What did they do, mom?” Amanda held the cap to the glue and it was starting to ooze out.

“Hey, you’re going to glue yourself to something or to me here in a minute.”

Amanda shook her head and concentrated on the wound.

Tammy squeezed her eyes shut when it burned something awful as Amanda pressed the skin together.

“Are they dead?” Charlie asked.

Tammy didn’t answer.

“Did you see it happen? You must have.” Charlie walked up to table slowly out of curiosity.

“Well this blood on my shirt isn’t mine.” She glared at her daughter and instantly regretted it as Charlie fell to her knees and hugged her legs.

“Momma, I’m so sorry,” she sobbed.

“Well, you should be. After that outburst and I didn’t make you come home right away. You were supposed to be here long before dark and there I was, standing at that boy’s door while his mother pointed a shotgun at my chest. Ow.” She looked over at what Amada was doing. The glue was doing its job but stung much worse than the peroxide. “I’m not telling you the rest. I’m just lucky, really lucky I’m not dead.”

All the girls started to cry.

“Stop, girls. I’m here, I’m alive.” But she was tearing up too. “I’m here.” All the girls hugged her tight at once.

When they had their fill, Tammy kissed each one on the head as she stood up. “We have to leave as soon as we can. The trailer isn’t ready though. I need to work on that. I don’t want you girls up there. Except Charlie. I was waiting on your things all day. Did you get that done?”

“No because there was craziness outside and we all came down here.”

“All right, you need to go through your room tonight.”

“But all that out there, isn’t it safer here?”

“It’s safe much safer now.” However, there was a little lurking trepidation about the one.

Tammy had to have Holly redo the wrap Amanda tried to put on her arm. Her recent first aid class and her attention to detail far surpassed any of her sisters. Once she was patched up, she sent Charlie to her room with strict instructions to bring her things down to the main floor when she was done but do not take it into the garage yet.

“Where are you going?” Charlie asked when Tammy was leaving her room.

“To the garage.” She was hoping that Dale hadn’t already come and left because of how long it took for her to get patched up.

She made it to the kitchen when there was knocking on the back door and she jumped. The way the knock sounded, she knew it was Dale. Checking behind her to make sure she didn’t have any kids deciding to lurk on the stairs, she grabbed a lantern and headed out the door.

He didn’t say a word and only waved when he saw her. She picked up the lightweight table they had on the patio and carried it to the corner of the house where she could sit with him and talk without alarming the girls by hearing his voice so close to the house. There had been too many scares for the girls already. However, she desperately needed his help to make a plan to get out of town.

He carried two lawn chairs over to the table before spreading out the map. He set the lantern at the top of the map as he sat down. He pulled out a pencil and waited for Tammy to join him.

She rubbed her arm, wishing she had taken some ibuprofen before she had gone outside.

“How bad was it?” He took notice that she was uncomfortable.

“It was worse than I thought. I probably needed stitches but we used superglue. That stings worse than peroxide. At least it didn’t go through my arm.”

“I had hoped I got him before he could shoot. I actually didn’t think he had it in him. At least I didn’t take any chances by giving him the benefit of the doubt.” He was about to hunch over the map again when he paused and looked at her instead. “How far away is he?”

“Why do you need to know?” She frowned at the table. The roads he was looking at were so small, they were hard to see under the lantern light.

“Is he on the other side of the state far? Or on the other side of the country far? I just want an idea if you’ll be on your own for long.”

“He’s farther than that. He’s in a small village by the Bering Sea in Alaska.” She covered her face when she felt her throat start to ache. “If this goes on as long as I suspect, I won’t see him again.”

Dale let out a slow sigh. “I didn’t even think he would be that far.”

“Yeah, well… The last thing I really want to do is drive that suburban with a trailer attached to it up to the mountains on my own. I drive Old Betsy around town just barely.”

“Have you driven with a trailer before?”

“Hardly ever. Like backing the suburban up to it and then pulling it out onto the street. I tend to do that badly. That’s it.”

“Hmm.” He went back to scouring the map. “I don’t know what kind of map reader you are, but I was looking at this route heading up past the Military Reserve Park. Here’s Shaw Mountain Road. It’s a lot of mountains, lots of places where you could take wrong turns but you’d get to go through Placerville and wind up on the Banks Lowman Road without using the main roads at all. It you’ve never driven that thing with a trailer anyplace, that’s not a good way to go. Too many tight corners on narrow mountain dirt roads.”

“Why do you keep asking me about my husband? Are you married? You aren’t wearing a ring.” It took her a lot of guts to ask that question, she was hoping he didn’t get the wrong idea either. He was making her nervous with his prodding though. He was going through a lot of effort on her behalf.

“I’m divorced. It happens to a lot of guys like me that have been over there a few times. She got use to me being gone and I was used to taking care of me when I got home. It was a mutual thing in the end. But I got two kids. Love them and will do anything for them. I don’t even live over here, they do. As soon as I realized the power wasn’t coming back and things were going to hell in a hurry, I got on a bike, not a motorcycle, and pedaled my way across town. Rather stupid of me to be so hasty. I got to the ex-wife’s house and she hadn’t been to the store. She barely had any food. I hauled it back home and literally had to fight my way back when I filled up one of those kid hauling bike trailers with food.” He shook his head. “I’m doing what I can to make sure they’re okay. But I can’t sit around doing nothing. There’s another reason we aren’t married anymore. What’s worse is there’s not much I can do when we weren’t prepared for this.” He looked up at her and raised his eyebrows. “I mean, I’m not asking for nothing. I’m just not looking forward to the day when my kids start telling me they’re hungry all the time. I’ve seen kids like that. It got to me and they weren’t even mine.” He got a little emotional and cleared his throat before he let it get the best of him. “Never mind about that, I got MRE’s galore. The kids hate them but when it’s what you got, they’re getting use to them.”

“I have food I can give you. In fact, if you’ll watch the house after I’m gone there will be more that you can take. I can’t take all the water. You see me off, and I’ll leave you a list.”

He shook his head. “That’s not why I’m doing this.”

“I was ready for this, I actually prepared for the day that my neighbors might not have what we have. I have boxes ready to give those who really need it. This morning we were able to help several families. It’s what we’ve been getting ready for. Unless you want to help me get to the cabin instead.” She had time to look at all the crazy zigzag roads that obviously tracked through the mountains by the way they squiggled, areas where she’d never been. She was decent with a map but she usually had freeways to follow, or roads with names and plenty of traffic.

“I can’t leave my family.” He forced a half-smile on his face. “Don’t get me wrong, I desperately want out of here. This is going to rapidly become a something like a war zone the more desperate everyone gets.”

“You could even help me get up there and I could let you have the suburban to come back. I’m that desperate.”

He gave it some thought but shook his head. “It’s too dangerous already. I was going to tell you, Ron said the military will possibly be here tomorrow. If we’re lucky, it will be the next day. Which means you gotta leave right away. Rumor is they’re trying to put the city in lockdown.”

“I can’t do that road.” She pointed where he still had his finger.

“I had another route.” He leaned over the map tracing roads. “Here. You don’t even have to go up to Bogus Basin road. You turn off on Cartwright right here. It’s paved most of the way. You’ll bypass the roadblock on highway fifty-five. Don’t take Dry Creek road. Too soon. Follow it up to Shafer Creek and it feeds into Harris Creek and that should get you really close to Horseshoe Bend. You can see here, if you miss those roads or get turned around, head west on any of these and you’ll get to the highway eventually. Just take it slow and have the girls check off each road you come across that matches the map. After that, most of your mountain driving to Garden Valley will be on the main road, which will be easiest for you. Unless there are a lot of stranded cars still on the road. Hopefully you’ll burn less gas when you get back to paved roads hauling that trailer. The one thing I don’t know is if there are any roadblocks or restrictions happening in Horseshoe Bend but at least that is the only real town you have to go through.”

Tammy was bouncing her leg. She tucked her hands in between her knees to force herself to stop. “Every time I think I have it in me to do this, I turn around and scare myself to death. It sounds so much easier to stay put but I know I can’t do that. Every day is harder than the one before and I know that won’t change. Are you sure you don’t want to come? Maybe I can figure out how to get your family out too.”

He shook his head and looked at the map without looking her in the eye. Reaching over, he pulled one of her hands out and held it. “You know, if I thought she’d consider it, I might take you up on that offer. As it is, she’s more stubborn than you thinking help is coming. What help is coming isn’t really going to help her and the kids the way she thinks it is so I have to stay. You have to go. I’ve been keeping an eye on this place when I heard that you and those girls were fending for yourselves. As rough as it has been for you already, you have no idea how much worse it could have been. I stopped a few other robbery attempts the past few nights. I have a clue now that you do have the means to be safe in your own home. Honestly, it would be stupid for you to put it off any longer.”

She nodded solemnly and she wiped a tear from the corner of her eye.

“I know you can do this. I mean, I watched you stand up to that kid. You’ve held onto those girls. There was another family a few blocks over, their daughter disappeared the second night and no one knows a thing. You have what many wished they had right now. Now those wishers are wanters on your doorstep. Tammy, haul you and your family out of here like right now.”

She drew in a deep breath and he pulled her against his shoulder, careful not to touch her injury. “You can do this.”

“I just don’t want to.” She forced a smile on her face when she looked up at him. “I needed to hear that, though. Thank you. I’ll get the last of it together tonight. We’re almost there.”

He held up a fist for her to fist bump. She did, felt super awkward, but she knew she could do it. She just needed to pull herself together.

“So you need to leave before anyone is up, like four in the morning. It’s real quiet out here then. You should be able to drive around without people running out their doors to see what is actually driving down the road. That should be plenty of time to get you into the hills before anyone notices. I don’t recommend using your headlights until you are well outside the city limits.”

“How am I supposed to see the road? There are obstacles, you know, like lots of cars still in the way.”

“Use lanterns or flashlights, lights that aren’t so bright. You aren’t going to be able to go all that fast as it is. I’m sure there’s not a clear road in the city.”

She tried to take it all in and then she shut down the anxiety part, just processed her new to do list. “All right.”

“So suck it up buttercup. No one said this was going to be a garden party.” He gave her a good-natured wink as he got up from the table. “I’ll be checking in on you to see if you need any help later if you’re still up.”

She watched him leave and had no desire to get up. She did anyway because she had a lot of work to do.