Legion of Despair: Book Three in The Borrowed World Series (19 page)

He pulled his radio from its pouch and confirmed the channel. “Honey, I’m home,” Gary said. It was a weak attempt at humor but he needed any levity he could get at this point.

Will, not surprisingly, was the first to respond. “Sounds like you found what you were looking for. I hear a truck.”

“I did,” Gary said. “And more. I’ve got someone with me.”

When Gary got close to the house, his family was crowding into the doorway to see who was with him. Will and Dave came out with rifles. Will had a set of binoculars and was scanning the perimeter of the property for any unwelcome guests. When he didn’t find anything alarming, he waved everyone out.

Gary pulled past the house, then threw it in reverse and backed up the driveway, getting as close to the garage as he could. Once he had the truck parked, Alice pulled in and parked in front of him.

Gary hopped out of the truck and Debra came and hugged him tightly. “I don’t like you going places alone,” she said.

Alice got out of the car and approached the group.

“Who’s that, Mommy?” Lana asked her mother.

“That’s someone Papaw works with,” Debra interjected. She walked over and hugged Alice. “How did this happen? Where did he find you?”

Alice smiled. “I haven’t made it home yet. I’m sure Gary told you that we split up on the way home. The government’s promises didn’t pan out, so we ended up having to head out on our own. I just made it back to the office last night and Gary found me there. He offered to help me get home.”

“We?” Debra asked, looking toward the car to see if someone else was in there.

“Rebecca started out with me,” Alice said. “She didn’t make it. She was murdered.”

Debra was clearly shocked, raising her hand to cover her gaping mouth. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Alice said. “I just feel lucky to have made it this far. It’s bad out there, and worse if you’re by yourself.”

“Are you hungry?”

“I am,” Alice admitted hesitantly. “But I don’t want to take your food. I know it’s hard to come by.”

“It’ll be okay, Alice,” Gary said. “We’re in good shape for now.”

“If you insist,” Alice said. “I would also like to clean up a little if I could.”

“There’s no running water, but I can set you up with a pot of warm water and a towel,” Karen offered.

“That sounds heavenly,” Alice said. “You don’t want to know how long it’s been since I had a shower.”

Karen led her off, while Debra headed to the kitchen. Everyone except for Will, Dave, and Gary followed her.

“Any trouble?” Will asked when the others were gone.

“Getting the truck was a pain in the butt,” Gary said. “It didn’t want to start and everything took way longer than expected. We didn’t have any trouble at the office, but we ran into a roadblock where you turn off Route 19 onto Kent’s Ridge Road.”

“Cops?” Dave asked.

“No,” Gary said. “Dumbasses.”

“How did you get by them?” Will asked. “Did you run the roadblock?”

Gary shook his head. “There was no running it,” he said. “That truck doesn’t have a lot of clearance and I was afraid I’d get stuck. Besides, what if I got through but Alice didn’t? As much as I didn’t want to, we had to stop and deal with them.”

“How’d that work for you?” Will asked.

“One of them tried to get romantic with Alice and she shot him through the car door,” Gary said.

“Ouch!” Dave said.

“Yeah, I think she’s been through some…
stuff
while she was on the road,” Gary said. “She’s clearly a different person than the woman I knew from work. So, of course, after she shoots one of them, the guy I was dealing with went to draw his gun and I had to kill him. Then all hell broke loose.”

“You guys get hurt at all?” Will asked.

“No,” Gary said. “The rest of them scattered like flies when I turned my surprise on them.”

“What kind of surprise?” Dave asked.

“A Slide Fire stock,” Gary said.

“What’s that?” Dave asked.

“Think full auto without the hassle. It uses recoil to bounce the rifle back into your finger, making it fire at a really high rate,” Will said. “I didn’t know you had one of those.”

“I didn’t
want
anyone to know I had it,” Gary said. “I like to keep a few tricks up my sleeve.”

“Can I see it?”

“Later, Will,” Gary said. “I want to get something to eat right now and take a break. Tonight we need to have another family meeting. It’s not one I’m excited about.”

“Are there any more surprises like that we need to know about?” Dave asked. “Like that special stock?”

“I think when we pack up tomorrow you’ll be seeing several things you didn’t know I had,” Gary said.

*

That night, after the sun set and the light began to fade, Lana insisted on a fire in the backyard fire pit so she could roast marshmallows. Will and Gary were both apprehensive about spending so much time in the open. It bothered them deeply that the home where they’d experienced so many happy times had become a place where they couldn’t even relax and feel comfortable anymore. If anything, that in itself was a sign that they should move if there was a better option available.

After a lot of pleading from the little girl, they conceded to her. After all, the next two nights could be their last ones in their home for who knew how long. Gary needed to talk to everyone about it, and he hoped that having the conversation around the fire pit might improve everyone’s mood. They had to know it was coming.

“These are the last of the marshmallows,” Debra said as she set them and the sticks on the table. “If you want one, get one now or forever hold your peace.”

“How do you even make a marshmallow?” Charlotte asked, examining one. “Is there, like, some backwoods recipe for making them?”

“Not that I’ve ever heard of,” Gary said. “The marshmallow is purely a product of high technology.”

He smiled at Charlotte. He was being sincere. Gary had no idea how to make a marshmallow and it wasn’t like you could just Google it now.

Seeing no time like the present to ruin everyone’s mood, he decided to dig right into the topic of the meeting. “You’ve all seen the truck,” Gary said. “I don’t know if you all put two and two together yet, but it means that we’re going to have to leave our houses. At least temporarily.”

Gary paused for the collective groan and he was not disappointed. There was a groan, a lot of mumbling, and a chorus of rapid-fire questions, all of them from his daughters. He let them vent, then raised his hands like a politician to bring the cacophony to a halt.

“Surely you all know that this isn’t something I
want
to do, don’t you? This is my home. I raised you girls here. I’ve put a lot of sweat and labor into this place to make a home for all of us and the thought of a vandal breaking into it makes me sick. You know what makes me sicker?”

No one said anything.

“The thought of one of you getting hurt because I made the wrong decision about staying.”

Debra leaned over and took his hand. He smiled at her and continued.

“If we stay here because I can’t stand the thought of people breaking into the house, then I’m making the house more important than your lives and that’s not how I feel at all. You all are the most important thing in the world to me. I truly believe, with all my heart, that our best chance of survival is to get out of this town until things settle down and order is restored. Until then, I feel that the safest place for us is to get way out in the country with a group of people we can trust. That’s the only way we can maintain any level of security.”

“Do we have a group like that?” Sara asked. “I mean, I know you’ve talked about Jim and his family, but that’s not really a group. Is that going to be enough to really improve our chances? I don’t want to move and then have to move again if things get worse.”

“We’ve got to take one step at a time. Moving to Jim’s valley is a start. I never thought having a group was important before,” Gary said. “I concentrated on storing food and ammunition, buying weapons and solar gear, but I never thought about the importance of building a survival community. On the long walk home, Jim, Randi, and I had a lot of time to think about that. We started out as three people, but we made it home as a team. While I know it sounds corny, it was clear by the time we made it home that none of us could have made it without each other.”

“So that’s who we’ll be living with?” Charlotte asked. “Jim and Randi?”

“No. Jim has a neighboring farm that’s empty now. He’s going to talk to the owner’s relatives about us staying there and taking care of the place until they decide what to do with it. As far as I know, Randi is staying with her parents. She’s a nurse, though, and would be a darn good asset to any survival community. I’m sure that Jim would welcome Alice and her family too if we could find a place for them to stay.”

Alice raised an eyebrow at that, but had no comment. She was acutely aware that the spot her family was currently living in was completely unsuitable. She hoped that her husband and son were somehow faring well. She really hoped that they had chosen to go to her mother’s farm at the other end of the county. If they weren’t home when she got there, that was the first place she’d look. She knew there were resources there, though she was unsure about security. She couldn’t imagine her mother having to fight off people wanting to steal a cow.

“Is it really that unsafe here?” Alice asked. “Unsafe enough that you all are ready to leave your homes?” It worried her, because if it was unsafe here then her family was probably facing a similar situation if they remained in her neighborhood. Even with what she’d been through, it was just hard to imagine that suburbia was falling apart. After all, wasn’t a home in the suburbs supposed to be the American dream?

“It’s been scary at times,” Debra said. “We’ve had some… encounters. It’s hard to even relax because you never know who’s going to show up next and try to take your stuff. I don’t like it but you have to be suspicious of everyone you see. No matter how innocent they look, you can’t know their true intentions.”

“But what about the
good
people?” Alice asked.

“What about them?” Gary asked.

“Where the hell are they?” Alice asked, raising her voice. She noticed the startled look on the children’s faces. “Sorry. I just want to know where all the
good
people are. Why is it that the bad people are driving everyone’s decisions? Why are we all at the mercy of bad people? I’ve about had enough of it.”

“I imagine the good people are hiding in their homes, trying to keep their families safe,” Gary said. “They might be doing what we’re doing, trying to hold on as best they can and avoid contact with people. Either way, you can be surrounded by good people and all it takes is one bad person to screw up everyone’s day.”

“Then why isn’t someone doing something about the bad people? Why are good people allowing bad people to call the shots? Why are we even allowing bad people to live if they’re causing so much trouble?” Alice would have never said such a thing a year ago, thinking all people were basically good and salvageable. Now she was not so sure about that.

Gary was surprised to hear Alice speak this way. “I guess that’s an age old question, Alice,” Gary said. “In the modern world, we try to understand bad people, make excuses for them, and try to fix them if we can. That can’t work the way things are now. We need to get rid of them. You get one chance, and if you screw up a second time, we’re done with you. I don’t know. Maybe that’s the only way we save the good people.”

Alice shook her head, plainly frustrated at the state of things.

“It reminds me of this story,” Gary continued. “There was this bus full of ugly people and it crashed, killing everyone on board.”

“Seriously, Gary?” Debra said. “A bus full of ugly people?”

“Bear with me,” he said. “A bus full of ugly people, a wreck, and they all die. So they get to Heaven and Saint Peter meets them at the gate. He says he’ll give each of them one wish before they enter the gates of Heaven. The first is a woman and she tells Saint Peter that she wants to be beautiful. He grants her wish and she immediately becomes the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen.”

“Everyone else in the group sees how beautiful she becomes so all of the rest of them wish for the same thing, until Saint Peter gets to the last person in line. He’s laughing as he approaches Saint Peter and Saint Peter asks him what he wants for his wish. ‘Make them all ugly again,’ he says.”

Gary looked around the fire while everyone pondered the story.

“That’s an awful story,” Sara said, her eyebrows crinkling. “I don’t like it.”

“The point is that it only takes one jerk to screw things up for everyone,” Gary said. “It’s a parable. A lesson. There’s a moral.”

Debra rolled her eyes and placed a fresh marshmallow on Lana’s stick. “So what do we need to do to make this move happen?”

“It’s a major undertaking,” Gary conceded. “With the extra fuel I got, I think each family can take a car and try to pack as much of your personal stuff in there as you can. Take durable clothes and remember that the weather will get colder eventually. Take raincoats, gloves, hats, socks – everything you can. We can’t count on our stuff being here when we come back. Try to take warm clothes for everyone. It’s about durability, not looks. You won’t need high heels, black dresses, or a selection of purses. Leave all that. I’m going to try to pack all of the food and preparations into the big truck. If there’s any room left, we can fill it with more of your stuff, but don’t count on doing that. Between guns, tools, food, and gear, there may not be much room left.”