Defending No Where (The No Where Apocalypse Book 3) (12 page)

I took her hand and smiled. “I love you, I love Daisy. I love Libby, and Hope, and Lettie. You’re all my family. How could I possibly not love any of you?”

I figured it was the gentlest way of letting her down. I was always stupid, and that moment was no different.

“Can you just tell me that every once in a while?” she begged. “You don’t have to mean it, but just hearing it will make this all more bearable.”

“You know how I really feel, Violet. My heart is pure, and it belongs to Daisy.”

She nodded and then leaned in for a hug. That seemed like the least I could do for her. She’d been brutally honest with me and probably didn’t get the result she had hoped for.

“I love you,” she whispered. I thought about reminding her of what I just said, but she looked up and caught me off guard. “And I know Daisy has never told you that.”

Damn it. She was slyer than I’d thought. Maybe the hug, the one she was still clutching tightly, hadn’t been my best idea.

I opened my mouth to warn her off, but a scream from the front of the cabin cut me off. A long, mournful scream that was becoming hysterical by the second.

“Daisy!” Violet and I uttered at the same time, running as fast as we could to the house.

Day 1,090 - continued

I beat Violet to the porch to find Daisy crying and pointing towards the road. I expected to see visitors on horseback. However, a careful study of the blacktop revealed nothing.

“What is it?” I gasped, out of breath from my short sprint. “What is it, Daisy?”

She pointed, and behind us, Violet let out a stillness-shattering scream. My head tore spun around to face her, only to see the same look of horror on her face, crying and pointing, unable to make out words.

I looked towards the road again, taking a few steps towards it. Everything was calm, all was quiet, and nothing was out of place.

I turned back to them. “I don’t see anything. What am I missing?”

They both continued to sob and scream and point. Libby came out the front door.

“On the other side of the road,” Daisy sobbed, “in the trees, just right of the dead spruce.”

I looked again, but still saw nothing. Maybe a few crows, but nothing life-threatening.

Just before I turned around again, I saw a crow land on something. That was when Libby let loose with a scream of her own.

I took a few more steps forward and stopped, feeling my body shudder.

On the far side of the road, right where Daisy said, hung two charred bodies. Ropes were wrapped around their hands, feet and necks. The crow pecked at the blackened flesh.

With no one’s help, I cut the bodies down from the tree. Except for the smell of charred flesh, the task wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. It was dead people, and it was all gruesome and such, but the screaming women were worse in my mind.

From across the road, Violet shouted instructions, “Are they real? You should bury them. If they’re not real, you don’t have to, I guess. If you need help, you’ll have to wait until Mr. Wilson comes tomorrow. I’m not helping and Daisy says she’s physically ill because of all of this. Don’t you think you should catch them instead of letting them drop like that?”

That was it. I trotted across the road to the cowering teen.

“Listen, this is bad enough without all the commentary,” I hissed. “And of course they’re real people.” She looked at me funny. “Well, they
were
real people. Now, they’re just dead people.”

She peered around me at the stiffies. “Are they burnt?” She clutched at my arm. “Like burnt to death?”

I gazed back across the road. “I don’t know if they were fried pre- or post-mortem. But that’s really not the worst part.”

She looked at me, horrified. “How could it possibly be any worse?”

“You don’t want to know the details, trust me.”

“Tell me, Bob. I deserve to know.”

I gave her a sideways glance. “Well, they’re naked, of course. Their eyes have been gouged out, and they seem to be missing most of their front teeth.” I heard her gasp, but there was more. “Neither has a tongue, the man’s, um...thing has been cut off, and unless I’m mistaken, women are supposed to have breasts.”

Her eyes stared off into the distance, opened wide as dinner plates. “Who did this?”

I handed her something I’d found nailed to the man’s back. A single piece of white paper that looked so out of place that there was no missing it.
 

She read it aloud, “Leaf now.” I noticed her head shake.

“So, we know they’re illiterate.” Violet nodded. “But aside from that, I’ve got no idea who sent this message.”

Violet continued to study the note. “It all seems kind of extreme to me.”

“No shit, sunshine. I think that was the point of it all. Shock and awe, you know.”

She looked at me confused. “I don’t follow.”

“You know, George Bush, Iraq, shock and awe.”

She shrugged. “I don’t remember that, I guess. And what does any of this have to do with dead people?”

I pushed past and wondered where I’d put my shovel. “Are you going to help me bury them or what?”

I peeked back to find her still staring across the road at the bodies.

“I think I hear Hope crying,” she muttered, turning for the cabin.

Some help she was. At least we were off the subject from earlier. Maybe that was all behind us now.

Day 1,092

Wilson showed up the day after I expected him. Either I had the day wrong or Wilson was on his own schedule. Either option was plausible.

After hearing the story three times, once from each of us, mine less hysterical than theirs, he walked across the road with me and studied the crime scene.

“Any ideas?” I asked, watching him kick at the brown weeds beneath the hanging tree.

He moved slowly through the underbrush. “Yeah,” Wilson drawled, “someone wants you to leave. Wants your place, probably your supplies, too.”

That part bothered me. Any outsider who thought we were living high on the hog was sadly mistaken.

Our meals consisted of stewed meats — beef, pork, chicken, venison — a small smattering of vegetables, a limited number of ugly potatoes and burnt flat bread. We rarely drank anything other than well water, and even that wasn’t a treat anymore due to the brown color that infiltrated it each summer.

“They don’t know what they’re asking for,” I ruminated, watching my friend continue his search. “I don’t think anyone lives very well anymore. Anywhere.”

He looked back at me with a crooked half-smile. “If they got nothing, or next to nothing, it probably looks to them like you’re living in the lap of luxury. If they’ve seen me bringing you supplies, they know you got something. And that sure beats the hell out of having nothing.”

Wilson emerged from the brush, picking a wood tick off his arm and casting it aside. “Let’s check the road.”

We walked a mile south, then another just for good measure. I checked in with my family before we made the same trek north. According to Daisy, they were fine. They still had Lettie’s 30-30 next to the door, ready for action if needed. Violet begged me not to leave again. The hour absence made her anxious, she claimed. Daisy helped sooth her nerves as Wilson and I headed north.

I had checked the road in both directions the afternoon after finding the burnt corpses. Though I had only traveled several hundred yards in each direction, I found nothing. At least that day.

All the way to the first bend, some 200 yards, was clean. That wasn’t news to me. However, shortly after the bend clues began to pop up. Easy clues to spot.

Almost four years of the apocalypse had left the roads barren. Here and there the blacktop crumbled. In some spots it was almost gone, revealing the gravel beneath the formerly jet-black surface.
 

Branches and leaves were the only things on the road, and those were more prevalent in the fall and spring. During the summer, the winds and rains cleansed the roads of debris. That’s what made the mess ahead so noticeable.

Wilson kicked at the pile in the middle of the road. “Looks like this is two, maybe three days old.” He peered ahead, further up the road. “Looks like another pile a little ways up.”

I was glad he was a horseshit expert. The timing spoke volumes.

“So, most likely the Barster gang?” I looked back at him for confirmation, getting a non-committal shrug.

“They’re probably not the only people with horses up here, but could be, I suppose.”

His tone was less than convincing and his posture made me wonder what he was thinking.

“Can you find out if they’re back in the area?” I asked as he kneeled down in the gravel. “Just so we know. I think it’s important for both of us to be clear on this.”

His lips slid from side to side over his brown stained teeth. He stroked his beard several times before removing his hat. Wiping his head with a dirty brown rag, he rose.

“This may not be a war you can win, Bob,” he replied, his eyes as tight as his dry lips. “You may want to consider all your options. They could have recruited reinforcements.”

I felt the blood rush to my extremities. Did he really think there was a world where I wouldn’t go after the people who had killed my friend? The hoodlums who had terrorized us not once, not twice, but at least three times? If he did, he was sorely mistaken.

“There’s two options,” I whispered, peering back down the road towards my place. “One, I hunt them down. Two, I wait them out and kill them when they show up again.” I turned and faced Wilson head on. “Either way, they’re leaving this Earth in a gruesome fashion.”

His face hardened. “More gruesome than burning and mutilating people? I’m not sure you have that in you.”

I nodded slightly. “You’d be surprised what I’d do to protect my family, Wilson. Mighty surprised.”

Day 1,092

We argued amongst ourselves for a day and a half. But nothing, nor no one, was about to change my mind.

After dinner, we sat around the table. Both Libby and Hope slept soundly in the bedroom. Violet had left the door slightly ajar in case the baby awoke.

“Here’s what I think,” Daisy began, reaching for my hands. I was sure I wasn’t going to like whatever she had to say. “Maybe we need to go and move in with Mr. Wilson, like he suggested. It sounds like he has enough room for us all. And it would be much safer.”

I opened my mouth to counter, but Violet beat me to it.

“I can’t move in there,” Violet stated, pursing her lips. “I can’t. And you know why, Daisy.”

Daisy nodded and smiled at her. “But this may be necessary for our survival, Vi. For Hope’s survival as well. You see that, don’t you?”

Violet shook her head fiercely. “I can’t. He’s never come to see me or Hope. And I don’t even want to see him again. Please don’t make me.”

I placed a hand in each of their directions. “There’s a bigger issue than just moving in with Jimmy Wilson. It’s all about survival. Moving locations will probably just put off the pending battle. It’s not going away.”

Daisy looked at me with pleading eyes. “There has to be some other solution, Bob. There just has to be.”

I folded my arms across my chest. “We stand and fight, or I hunt them down. This has to be taken care of now. We can’t wait one more year, even one more season. You saw what they did to those people they left hanging across the road. The time is now.”

Violet ran her fingers through her hair, tugging at the ends. “I agree,” she whispered, a bit of vibrato caught in her words. “I think you should take Jimmy and Johnny and go take care of this. That’s what I think.”

Daisy’s jaw dropped, her head shaking back and forth. “No, please. I don’t want anything to happen to you or the Wilson boys. We need to seek refuge with them. Together we’ll make our stand. Even Mr. Wilson said that was a good idea.”

The tides had changed, and Daisy knew it. It was always me against them, but now I had Violet standing firmly in my corner.
 

“I won’t give up this place,” I retorted. “They drove us from Lettie’s. They’re not driving us out of here.”

Daisy turned to me, clutching my hands in hers. “Bob, I don’t want anything to happen to you. I don’t think I can live without you. You have to know that.”

“I can’t either,” Violet added quietly. Her eyes met ours. “But I can’t live in fear anymore. Most nights I lie out here awake, listening for you at the window, Bob. If I think you’ve fallen asleep, I lift my head to make sure your eyes are still open. And when you take guard Daisy, I don’t sleep at all. We can’t keep going like this. It’s not fair to any of us.”

Daisy swiped away a few stray tears streaking down her tanned cheek. “I’ve just been hoping and praying it wouldn’t come to this. I just thought that maybe they’d move on. I don’t want anything to happen to any of us. That’s all I care about — our safety.”

I rose and walked over to the front window. “Wilson will be back when he has news. Either that, or he’ll be back in four days with more supplies. Something tells me that before summer is over, this is coming to a head.”

Violet and Daisy exchanged a look. “How long until the end of summer?” Violet asked.

“Probably a month,” I answered, gazing at the twilight outside. “I figure its mid-August. Another month before it starts to turn into fall. If we don’t do something before then, they’ll be here to visit us.”

“Maybe something good will come before then,” Daisy said, a tinge of hope back in her voice. “Perhaps they’ll lose interest in us and move on. Or maybe they’ll meet some other demise and never make it back.” She smiled at me and the frowning Violet. “I can just feel it in my bones, Vi. This will resolve itself without any violence on our part.”

Violet rubbed the top of Daisy’s extended hand. “Or maybe Bob will go after them and get this over with so we can live in peace.”

Daisy’s face fell. They weren’t the words she wanted to hear, and were probably closer to the truth than she wanted to admit.

Day 1,095

Each day we waited for word from Wilson. I knew the Barster gang had to be back in the area. It was only a matter of time before he showed up. I used the quiet time to prepare myself.