Beyond the New Horizon (Book 2): Desperate Times Read online

  “Now you’re putting your cart in front of the horse. We don’t have any chicken’s so we don’t have the problem yet. Myself, I can put up with anything to have fresh eggs for breakfast.”

  “Well, let’s catch up, and we’ll have a little chat with John. It would sure beat the hell out of chopping wood.”

  They found John standing in front of a door at the end of the enclosed part of the haybarn. He was jiggling the knob uselessly. The door was locked.

  Journey, had her hands cupped to the side of her face peering into the only window for the closed room. “It doesn’t look like anyone is in here.”

  John walked around the corner, “And if there were someone in there, you would probably already know it. They would have shot you already.”

  Journey jumped back in alarm almost tripping over Matt, who had crowded up close to her. “Crap, I never even thought of someone shooting through the window.”

  “We all have a lot to learn in this post-apocalyptic environment. Now that we’re here, and no one else seems to be, we can either find the spare key or break the glass.”

  “Dad?” Lucas held up a piece of braided blue twine that had a silver key dangling from it.

  John held out his hand, and Lucas dropped the key into it. He fit it in the lock, twisted it and pushed the door open.

  “Can Matt and I go look around outside?”

  “Stay close. If I can’t see or hear you, you’re too far away.”

  The room was large enough to have a sofa, a couple reclining chairs and a pool table. The walls were unfinished drywall with a counter and cupboards down one wall. Another wall held a rack with three bows hanging on it, and someone had hung a Navajo print blanket for decoration. The floor was cement with a couple area rugs in front of the recliners. A wood-burning pot-bellied stove stood in one corner with a stack of wood beside it. They could see where someone had pulled an assortment of things from the cupboards and left them sitting where they’d fallen.

  Journey stood in front of one of the two interior doors, looking at John curiously. When she reached for the handle, he supplied, “Bathroom and the other is a bedroom.”

  She opened it and peeked in. Toilet, sink and a separate shower stall. A small medicine chest was set into the wall behind the sink. She pulled the door closed.

  As she walked around the room, Journey kept nodding as if she was taking an inventory. Finally, “I think I see why you would want to move us here. But I don’t understand why you didn’t come here to start with.”

  “That was Sam. I guess he was afraid if someone took the time to look over the hill or check out the hay barn we would be trapped. He had already moved a wagon load to the cabin, without telling me. At the time, I couldn’t see the flaws in his plan. We should have come straight to Carlos. Maybe…”

  “You couldn’t have done anything for him so don’t think it.” Journey thought for a moment, “So, you couldn’t see the hay barn from the house?”

  “You could have now with the leaves all gone, but not normally, especially in the middle of summer. We never trimmed that old walnut tree just for that reason.”

  “Okay. When we rode through on the forestry road, I remember several other places besides yours, and if I remember correctly, there were two places on the other side of the freeway.”

  John paled noticeably, he reached for the countertop to balance himself, “There were. I didn’t know the one family, they had just moved in. The other place is the Barbers. Married couple, two kids, both younger than Sherry,” John frowned, his shoulders sagging, “I haven’t seen them. I don’t know if they were even home when this all began.”

  “Lucas, did you see any of your neighbors in that bunch who came to your house?”

  All eyes turned to Lucas. He frowned and scrunched his face up in thought. Shaking his head, “No, but they were on the bus coming home from school.”

  “Do we need to check and see if they made it?”

  “How? In case you forgot there’s a river between them and us.”

  “I didn’t forget. I just keep wondering what would have happened to us if we hadn’t found you guys.”

  John laughed, “You would have survived without us. You’re all smart, and you seem self-sufficient. There’s no doubt in my mind you would have found a way to survive.”

  “What about them? Can we at least look?’

  John blew air out through his clenched lips and looked from Andy to Ben. They looked eager to do anything besides check out the barn. “Remember what I told Lucas about the banks being undercut.”

  They nodded and left the room.

  “Dad? Can’t we go and just watch? We won’t get anywhere close to the river. We promise.”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake. Don’t go passed the old hedge. If you hear me call you, you come back on the run.”

  They didn’t answer and turned to crowd out the door. John stopped them, “You two mind Andy and Ben. If they say to leave, you do it. No questions!”

  “Yes, sir!” They took off at a jog to catch up to the two men already at the top of the short incline, between the barn and where the house used to sit.

  Andy and Ben saw the boys running and slowed to wait for them.

  “So, he caved did he?”

  “No, he didn’t,” Matt looked at Andy. “He said we had to stay back and listen to you guys.”

  “Actually, as far as my Dad is concerned, that’s caving. He only did it because you were there. Had it been just me…I would still be there helping him do whatever he decided to do. That’s why I wish Uncle Sam was here. He lets me do just about anything.”

  As they drew closer to where the house used to sit, they could see that for the most part, the new river did follow the freeway. However, it had a bend in it that had collapsed the house, leaving nothing behind. They walked east toward the McMillan property following the water, but careful to stay well away from the banks.

  Ben stopped and pointed, “Look there. Is that someone's house?”

  “Part of one,” Andy agreed. “I wonder who it belonged to and how it got up there.”

  “I don’t think it just got up there. I think the ground in front of it dropped away or the land it’s sitting on, raised up. Kind of hard to say the way the ground under it is so torn up.”

  “I wouldn’t want to be them, then,” added Matt.

  “You know, I think that’s the Barbers house. It used to sit down along the creek bed.” Lucas stared at the broken house.

  It looked as if someone had picked it up and cracked it like a nut and thrown half of it away. The remainder of the house literally hung suspended about twenty feet over the ravine. The bathtub and plumbing hung down, leading nowhere. Pieces of drywall hung swinging as if there were a breeze or something was shaking the house. The footboard of someone’s bed hung off the broken floor. Curtains still fluttered from an upstairs window.

  “Oh, hell no! Boys, stay here!” Andy ran closer to the water. He didn’t think about an undercut nor the possibility of the ground collapsing. He was intent on the fluttering curtains. As he drew closer, he could see the arm that was waving the material out the window.

  At the river’s edge, the water rushed past and Andy could see the rocky bottom and the debris that floated by. The water itself didn’t look deep, but it was twenty feet down to the edge and was moving too quickly to safely cross.

  Andy cupped his hands around his mouth, “Can you hear me?”

  He thought he heard someone answer. The white curtain shook violently.

  “Oh, holy crap. I wondered why you took off. What are we going to do?”

  Andy turned to Lucas and Matt as they ran up. “One of you, go back and send John here with ropes and a ladder if he can find one. Tell him we need to cross the river that someone is trapped on the other side.”

  Matt and Lucas looked at each other as if neither was willing to go. “Both of you go.” When they still stood, Andy yelled at them. “Now!”

  They took off at a
run back the way they had come.

  “Hang on. We’re going to get you out of there.”

  “How are we going to get across without getting washed downstream?”

  Chapter Eight

  In the time it had taken Sam to start the tractor, Gina had made some instant coffee from one of their MRE’s. They had decided not to eat anything until after they’d completed the grisly task. They would bury all three bodies together to save time.

  “It doesn’t seem right to bury Jake with those two.”

  “Jake is beyond caring what happens to him now. I just want to get this done before it starts snowing again.”

  Gina had found some brown gardening gloves for each of them in one of the cupboards. They were stiff and crusted with dried dirt, but the idea of wearing them was far better than handling the bodies with their bare hands.

  By the time the last scoop of dirt was dropped on the grave, both Gina and Sam were glad they had not eaten anything. Gina wished they had waited on the coffee too. The smell from the closed up stall had emptied her stomach before they’d moved the first body.

  “Don’t think of them as people. Think wood or whatever, just not people. It’ll be easier that way.” His voice was muffled behind the blue handkerchief he’d tied over his mouth and nose.

  Gina was not so fortunate, she had removed her tee shirt and tied it around her face. She smelled her own sweat as she worked. By the time they had rolled Dave out of the stall door, both she and Sam had worked up a sweat. She was grateful for the stink of her own body odor. It helped to mask the cloud of decay hanging over the stall. Dave was beginning to bloat, but he hadn’t turned putrid yet, and she was grateful. With his body filling the bucket, Sam went to dump him in the cavity he had hollowed out.

  He was going to pick up Amanda’s body on his second trip. Gina had offered to help, but he’d said no.

  While Sam was gone, Gina walked around the back of the barn to where the horses were tied. Sam had set a bale of hay in front of each of them and cut the strings. The horses munched quietly. Sham whickered to her when she walked up beside him.

  Gina was sure he was offering sympathy and wrapped her arms around his neck. When he seemed to push against her, a gesture that Sailor had always done for comfort, she broke down and cried. She cried for the man named Jake, whom she didn’t know, and for his family because they would surely miss him. She cried for every person who had died and would die in the future.

  When her tears finally quit, she realized she had cried for herself and her friends. Her friend list had grown the past few weeks, but she had cried for them all.

  Gina snorted and wiped her sleeve across her nose. Making sure she was alone, she hawked and spit off to the side. “That was pretty lady-like, wasn’t it boy?”

  Gina closed her eyes and prayed Jake had been dead before he had been butchered. She prayed harder that Dave and Amanda had met the devil and would suffer in hell forever. She prayed they would find a way for all of them to survive, and she prayed she could put what they had done that day behind her and it wouldn’t haunt her dreams. She prayed she could still look at herself in a mirror sometime in the future and see herself and not a crazed killer.

  Gina flinched when she felt a hand on her back and turned into Sam’s arms. She stood in his embrace for what seemed like forever, and she began to nod off. When her knees buckled, he led her to the hay bales they had slept on and pulled her down beside him. Fully clothed, he pulled his sleeping bag up and over them.

  Sham woke them several hours later. His foot was banging on the empty bucket. Gina rolled over to see what the racket was about and realized she had been wrapped up with Sam. He was lying inches in front of her, watching her through his half-closed lids.

  Gina smiled at him and wiped her mouth. “He’s right. I could use something to wash my mouth out with too.”

  Sam grinned and blew disgusting vomit breath at her. Gina shrank away from him. “Aw, Jesus, do you know how gross that is?” She wrinkled her face up.

  “You didn’t mind it a while ago when you were snuggled right in close.”

  “I probably didn’t notice it then. Now I do, and it’s disgusting.” She flipped her braid over her shoulder and wondered how bad she looked. Her hair had been in the same braid for days, and she knew it was full of hay. Loose strands had escaped and hung around her face. She smoothed it back as best she could and stood up.

  Sham banged on the bucket again. Gina hurried to pick it up before he broke it. “So, is there water anywhere close?”

  Sam pointed as he sat up. “There’s a well right by the shed there. Or if you wait a minute, I’ll prime the pump, and we can pump it.”

  Gina looked around. She hadn’t noticed a shed, but she hadn’t looked either. The day before she had been pre-occupied with Amanda. About forty feet from the corner of the barn stood a weathered board building. The corrugated metal roof was rusted, and the wood looked green. She waited for Sam and followed him to the building. The doorway faced away from the barn, and when they rounded the corner, an old fashioned hand pump sat beside the door. Off the corner of the building stood an even older rock walled well, complete with the handle for raising and lower a bucket, but the rope hung down several inches with no bucket tied to it.

  “Can we just dip it?”

  “We could, but this will be much faster. Step aside and let the master show you.”

  Gina laughed, “Are you sure you know what you’re doing? What are you going to use for a rope?”

  “Not to worry. I’m an old hand at this,” Sam used twine knotted together and lowered the five-gallon pail. They heard it splash when it hit the water, and Sam let it rest to collect some. Turning the crank, the bucket came back up the well about a third full. Sam grabbed the bucket and cut the twine. Next, he poured the water into the top of the pump where the piston came out, filling it until the water flowed from the spout and began pumping. Soon he had water from the underground well flowing with every pump of the handle.

  “I don’t understand why we couldn’t have simply used the water you got from the well.”

  “Did you see how dirty the water is? That well is about dried up. This water is sparkling clean.” Sam continued to pump until the bucket was full. He offered it to each of the horses. Three buckets later the animals were no longer thirsty, and Gina scattered more hay for them. Once Gina had boiled enough of it to refill their water bottles, they were set to salvage anything they thought could be of any use to them.

  Back in the doorway to the tack room, Gina stopped, afraid to go in. She didn’t think she could handle the sight of human bones throw haphazardly in the corner.

  Sam pushed her from behind, “Go ahead. I cleaned the room out.”

  She stepped in. He had cleaned everything including the pile of dirty bedding. Only the rusty stains ingrained into the wood floor indicated anything had ever happened there.

  “I’m going to look in the equipment room next door and see what I can find.”

  Gina already had her head stuck into one of the cupboards, pulling things out onto the floor. He heard her muffled okay.

  When Gina was done, she had little more than a few pieces of tack for the horses, a couple of old halters, two blankets that needed repairs, some worn out brushes and a box with four horseshoes in it. She only had one cupboard left, and it was the one behind the red stain on the floor.

  To Gina, it somehow felt disrespectful to walk where another man’s life blood stained the wood, but there was no way around it. She squatted down and pulled the doors open.

  “Now that’s more like it,” Careful to not let anything touch the floor Gina pulled out coils of braided rope and what looked like some kind of a harness. It didn’t look like something you would use on an animal, and Gina wondered who in the family had been the climber. The cupboard finally empty, Gina gathered up the plunder and carried it around to the hay shed where she dropped the first armload beside a pile of things that Sam had evidently already
put there. Gina went back for another load. After depositing the last of the treasures that she had found, Gina went back for one last look. She could hear Sam banging around in the room adjacent to the one she was in. She heard a thump on the shared wall followed by what she assumed were swear words and went to see if she could help him.

  Gina found him sitting on the floor, rubbing the back of his head. “What’s up? I heard you from where I was,”

  He pushed at the pitchfork lying beside him, “Damn thing fell off the wall and clobbered me on the head.”

  Gina tried to show the proper amount of concern, but ended up laughing instead. “Sorry, but a smart person would have cleared the wall first.”

  “Just be quiet and grab the rest of them before they fall off too.”

  She removed another fork and a rake and set them to the side. The two manure shovels, she set out the door. Against the outside wall and below, the only window stood four fifty-gallon drums with lids. She picked up the first lid when curiosity got the best of her.

  “Well, Holy shit!” She dropped the lid and fit it back in place and looked under each of the next three lids. The first one she didn’t know the contents, but if she was to guess it could be chicken feed, and the next two were full of oats. The last barrel Gina recognized and knew the horses would be happy for a little while. It was full of horse cob. A mixture of rolled corn, oats, barley, and molasses.

  “I would have eaten this rather than what they chose to eat,” she said as she tapped the lid back in place.

  “Horse feed?” Sam asked, looking up at her.

  She nodded, “In this last one. I bet if it was cooked it wouldn’t be half bad.” She shuddered, “A hell of a lot better than what they ate.”

  “Stop reminding me.”

  “Sorry. I can’t shake it. I almost wish I had been the one to shoot Amanda. Maybe it would have given me some kind of closure…you know?”

  Sam sighed, “I thought the same thing, but I’m really glad neither one of us had too. Killing an enemy in a war situation even when you’re all pumped up on adrenaline, is hard, but to do the same thing to someone you know is entirely different.”