Valley of Vengeance: Book Five in The Borrowed World Series Read online

  “It’s me!” she cried, but the voice that came from her mouth did not sound like her own. He seemed not to recognize it, either. Had she made it this far only to die in the yard of the home where she was born and at the hand of her seventeen year old son? The dispassionate cruelty of the world was sometimes unfathomable.

  It was perhaps fifty yards to the porch and he continued creeping steadily in her direction, the rifle leveled on her. Alice began to slide one arm free of a pack strap, hoping that without the burden of it she could roll toward the baler and take cover behind it.

  At her movement he fired again and a divot of grass flew up to her left.

  “Don’t you fucking move!” he yelled.

  He was trying to sound older and intimidating, but she could hear the boy beneath it. He sounded scared. Perhaps even scared enough to shoot a stranger he didn’t recognize. Perhaps even scared enough to kill his own mother in this confusing circumstance. The dam of emotion that she’d held back for so long on this trip weakened and crumbled. She began to sob. She had tried. She had given it everything she had to get back here. She didn’t want to die here. She didn’t want Charlie to have to live with the burden of having killed his mother.

  She was laying there with her face in the dirt, crying uncontrollably when he neared. He paused. Awareness seemed to settle onto him like fog settling onto the land. She could not blame him for taking so long to recognize her. She was in a strange car, carrying a backpack, her disheveled hair pulled back in a way that she never wore it before. She was dirty and her clothes ill-fitting. She was not the mother that left home a few weeks ago.

  “M-Mom?” he asked, his voice rife with uncertainty.

  She couldn’t respond.

  “MOM!” he yelled, leaning the rifle against the baler and dropping beside her. He rolled her over and lost it when he saw the blood on her face. “I’m sorry, Mom! I didn’t mean to. I didn’t know who you were!” He said other things but they were lost in the flurry of his own sobs. With all the blood, he couldn’t tell the extent of her injuries. He’d been aiming for her head and assumed his round had found its mark.

  Alice reached up, touching his face. Seeing his own tears, feeling again the need to take care of someone, she began to regain control of her own emotions. “It’s okay, sweetie. You hit the baler. Something just ricocheted off and hit me. I’m okay. Really I am.”

  She pushed herself up and hugged him. He still felt like her son. He still smelled like her son. Holding him brought back to life a part of her that she thought may have been gone forever. It was different, but there was still the capacity to care, to love.

  The sound of the door opening again made both of them look in the direction of the house. Alice’s mom, Pat, was coming outside. To Alice’s surprise, she was leading Alice’s husband by the arm, as if something were wrong with him.

  “What’s the matter with your dad?”

  Charlie hesitated. “He ran out of his medicine.”

  Alice’s husband had developed a heart condition a few years ago and he took medications for it daily. Although the condition was still present, the medication helped control the symptoms and allow him to function somewhat normally. She hadn’t seen him in this state. He looked like an invalid.

  “Why hasn’t he had his medication?” Alice asked. “He orders a three-month supply at a time. He was getting ready to start an unopened bottle when I left. He should still have about two months’ worth.”

  Alice’s husband had to take a seat on the top step, unable to continue any further. Alice’s mother hurried down to the yard, bunched her apron in front of her, and began trotting toward them, crying at the very sight of her daughter. She was awash in relief.

  “She’s okay!” Charlie yelled, his voice still shaky. “I didn’t hit her!”

  “His medication?” Alice repeated.

  “He brought a couple of days’ worth with him when we came down here the first time,” Charlie said. “It was whatever he had in one of those little pill reminder things you carry in your pocket. We were going to check on Gran, help her with a few chores, and then go back home for a while. We figured the power would come back on any time. If it didn’t, we’d pack up some stuff and come down here and stay with Gran. When we got back we found our house got broken into. They stole medications, all the gas we had, and a lot of the food. We barely had enough gas to get back down here. Dad tried rationing the medications but he ran out about two weeks ago and he’s been getting worse ever since.”

  “My baby!” Alice’s mom cried as she neared them.

  Alice reluctantly disentangled herself from her son and stood. She held her arms open to her mother, who slowed seeing the blood.

  “You’re hurt,” she said, saying the words as if discovering this hurt her too.

  Alice wiped at her face with the tail of her shirt, flinching at what must have been a bullet shard still stuck in the wound. “It’s not serious.”

  Pat took her daughter into her arms and Alice felt like she was a child again. Not in years had she felt so comforted. She began to cry again. Over her mother’s shoulder, she could see her husband on the porch trying to struggle to his feet, the pain of missing this reunion too much for him. He leaned heavily on the stair rail and carefully took one step at a time.

  “I have to go see Terry,” Alice said. “Let’s go to the house.”

  “Give me your keys and I’ll bring your car up,” Charlie said. “It’s not safe to leave it out along the road.”

  Alice dug her key out of her pocket and tossed it to him. She picked her pack up from the ground and slung it over her shoulder, then realized she was missing her revolver. She walked around looking at the ground for a moment.

  “This what you’re looking for?” Charlie asked, crouching and picking up the handgun.

  “Careful,” Alice said. “It’s loaded.”

  Charlie carefully handed the pistol over to his mother, the muzzle pointed in a safe direction. “When did you start carrying a gun?”

  Alice didn’t have an easy answer for that. To tell even a part of the story would open a direct channel to experiences she wasn’t ready to relate yet. “It was a long trip home, honey.”

  Charlie nodded as if understanding exactly what that meant. Maybe he did understand it. Maybe he’d seen things the past weeks too. She had no idea yet what they’d gone through in her absence. Had people tried to kill her child? Had he been forced to kill someone? He certainly hadn’t hesitated to fire a shot at her.

  She began walking toward the house, holding her mother’s hand. Seeing them headed in his direction, Terry sagged awkwardly down on a lower step. Alice could not believe how bad he looked. He’d been weaker in the years since his heart condition developed but the medication had allowed him to live a somewhat normal life. This man in front of her appeared to be dying. When she reached him, seeing the dark rings around his eyes, the bloating in his body, she knew that he was dying.

  He held his arms out to her but could not stand. Coming outside and down the few steps appeared to have taken all he had in him. She could feel the weakness in his embrace, like she was hugging an elderly man. Despite his obvious relief at having her come home to them, she could feel that there was little strength in his body.

  “I’m sorry, baby,” he said as she embraced him, holding him tight.

  His words made her cry. “Why are you sorry?”

  He was crying now too. “I can’t do a damn thing anymore,” he said. “I’m not a bit of good to anyone.”

  “It’s not your fault,” she said. “The medicine was helping.”

  He released her. “The medicine is gone,” he said, shaking his head. “The house got broken into and they took it.”

  She wiped at her eyes. “Any idea who it was?” she asked, already having an idea of her own as to who it might have been.

  “No,” he said. “They hit several homes in the neighborhood. It got bad fast and has been getting worse every day.”

&nbs
p; She nodded at this, well aware of how bad things were.

  “We’re so glad you’re home, baby,” Terry said. “We didn’t know if you were alive or not.”

  “We’ve been so worried,” her mother agreed.

  “How was the trip?” Terry asked. “How did you get home?”

  As memories of her trip assaulted her, remembering the deaths she’d seen, the violence, she was overwhelmed. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “It was fine,” she said. “All that matters is that I’m home now. We can talk about the rest later.”

  Chapter 7

  Alice

  The table in Pat’s kitchen had been a wedding gift. She’d married Alice’s father Walter in 1954 when she was fifteen years old. Every meal she’d ever served as a wife and mother had been at that table. Alice thought about this as her mother cooked. She thought of all the meals she’d eaten there, all the conversations she’d had with her father, and all the things she’d told her mother about that she didn’t want her father to know.

  The table had not been something Alice thought about as she fought her way home from Richmond. She thought of family, of how much she enjoyed her backyard and the time she spent there with her son and husband. On those occasions that she did think of her mother’s house she thought of the farm itself – barns, livestock, and the fields. How this table could be so integral to her memory of family and not have crossed her mind at all surprised her. She ran a finger over the wood surface, touching scratches and dings, reading the braille written there. It was the story of a life, of a family.

  Around the table, Terry and Charlie sat watching Alice. They were obviously wanting to hear about her experiences but she wasn’t ready to talk yet. They studied her, seeing a difference that they couldn’t quite put a finger on. Alice could sense their confusion but almost found it amusing. Under normal circumstances, the two barely noticed if she dyed her hair a different color. How could they ever tell what was happening in her murky depths?

  Her mother was fixing biscuits from scratch and frying sausage canned from hogs killed on the farm. She cooked on an antique Monarch wood cook stove that had always been in this kitchen, even before it became Pat’s kitchen. When she bought an electric stove and didn’t need the old Monarch for cooking anymore, she and Walter kept it for backup heat, so used to the way it warmed the kitchen on cold mornings.

  When her mother was done with the sausage, she’d make gravy from fresh raw milk. The smell made Alice so hungry that she physically ached. It wasn’t just that it was food, because she’d had food. It was that it was her mother’s food, eaten with her family, and it would feed more than her belly.

  “So where’s all the livestock?” Alice asked. “I didn’t see any animals when I walked up. You must still have a milk cow, right?”

  “Locked in the barn,” Charlie said.

  “Shouldn’t they be out grazing?” Alice asked. “If we can’t get feed this winter, we’ll need them on grass as long as we can.”

  “We’ve already lost about half of them,” Terry said, his voice so weak that it was almost unfamiliar to her. “You know there isn’t a grocery store for twenty miles. The convenience stores were the only source of food once people couldn’t get gas. People were paying five dollars each for Little Debbie cakes. I heard jerky was twenty-five dollars a bag. Even at those prices that food only lasted a couple of days. When it ran out, there was no food in this part of the county at all except for what people had in their homes.”

  Alice hadn’t thought about that. Her mother’s community had no grocery stores at all. Before cars became so common, every community had its own country store. Now you were lucky if you even had a grocery store in your county. That made driving to the store a big deal in the best of times. People had to take a cooler for bringing home frozen items or they would already be thawing out by the time they got home. What had once been a mere inconvenience became instantly more serious when things collapsed.

  “People started breaking into homes and farms looking for food,” Charlie said. “We were afraid to go back home and leave Gran alone. We were afraid someone would break in on her.”

  Pat bristled. “I can take care of myself,” she said. “I have for years.”

  “I know you can, Mom, but it’s different when you don’t have the law for backup. You can’t hide in the bedroom and call the police. You have to finish things.”

  Everyone looked at Alice for a moment, understanding what she was saying but curious about what was not being said. Had Alice been forced to “finish what she started” on the road? Had she had to finish people?

  “They took one of the cows first,” Terry said. “Someone cut the fence and led it down the road with a bucket of grain. They’d spilled little bits of it here and there. We tried to track them but I couldn’t get very far and I wasn’t going to let Charlie go alone.”

  “I wanted to go,” Charlie said. “I wanted to get them.”

  “I wanted to get them too,” Pat said, reaching out and patting Charlie’s hand. “But a grandson is worth more to me than a cow.”

  “Gran, that’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me,” Charlie said, smiling.

  “What about the dog?” Alice asked. “Didn’t it bark? I didn’t hear it when I pulled up, either.” The farm had always had a couple of dogs, though they were down to a single blue heeler/beagle mix.

  “They killed it,” Terry said. “It was too friendly with people to be a decent guard dog. They beat it to death with a stick. We found it laying in the ditch just the other side of the fence.”

  There had been a day Alice would have cried over the death of a sweet dog but not anymore. She was almost surprised to find that she could still love people. She’d been worried that all her softness and compassion had been pushed out by her experiences on the road. Still, there was less room in there now. She could feel it. The people and things she could feel love for would be fewer than they had once been. She also wondered if the only reason she still loved these people was that they had already been in her heart before the horrible experiences she went through. Did that mean there might not be room for anyone new?

  “We started keeping watch after that,” Charlie said. “I stayed up all night but someone still got two of the hogs. I never even heard a thing from in here and Dad wouldn’t let me stay out in the barn.” He cast an accusing glance at his father.

  “I didn’t want him out there on his own at night,” Terry said. “The boy seems to think he’s invincible or something.”

  “I told Charlie if he ran into the wrong people he’d end up like that dog – beaten to death,” Pat said. A practical country woman, Alice’s mom never did sugarcoat things.

  “A lot of this is my fault,” Terry said, looking down at the table and shaking his head. “Since my medicine ran out, I’m not much help at all. I’m too damn weak to stand watch at night and I can’t do any of the chores. It’s not fair on Charlie and your mom to have to do it all.”

  “So you’re not standing watch anymore?” Alice asked.

  “We try to,” Pat said. “It’s just hard after working all day. We’ve had all this canning to do, taking care of what animals we have left. We’re exhausted.”

  “Have you considered leaving?” Alice asked.

  They all looked at her stunned.

  “Honey, we’ve got water, wood heat, a springhouse for storing milk, and the animals. This is a much better setup than we’ve got back at our house,” Terry said. “It’s a better setup than most people have.”

  “How much longer will it be ours?” she asked. “How much longer before, instead of stealing from you, someone decides to kill you and take the place for their own? Once the weather turns cold, people will start looking for more than food. They’ll start looking for homes with chimneys that they can take by force. If you can’t keep the animals, how can you hope to keep this house?”

  Alice could tell from the look on their faces that they hadn’t considered this. She
could almost understand, considering that they were so sheltered here from the events taking place in the outside world. “People are doing those things,” Alice said, pressing her point. “They’re behaving in the worst ways you can imagine. I’ve seen it. I want to stay here and I hope we can keep it, but it may be harder than you think.”

  “Maybe we can talk to some of the neighbors and work together?” Pat suggested.

  Alice shook her head. “No offense, Mom, but everyone up and down this road is around your age or close to it. Defending homes is probably not one of their strongest skills.”

  “I don’t want to leave,” Pat said. “This is the only place I’ve ever known.”

  “I’m not saying you have to, Mom. I’m just suggesting that we might need an escape plan in case staying here falls through.”

  “Escape to where?” Charlie asked. “If the world is that dangerous now, where the heck can we go and hope to be safe?”

  “I know some people,” Alice said. “People I work with. They would welcome people with your skills, Mom. They helped me get home and they offered to let us join them if we needed to.”

  Pat shook her head and made a sound of disapproval. “I don’t have any skills, Alice,” Pat said. “I’m just a plain old farm wife. A country girl. It’s all I’ve ever known.”

  “Those are priceless skills right now,” Alice said. “Being able to farm, to raise food, and to preserve food, it’s nearly a lost art.”

  “I’m not so sure about giving this place up to throw in with other people,” Terry said. “I hate the idea of strangers moving in here and having the run of the place.”

  “The idea makes me sick,” Alice said. “And I’m not saying we have to leave. I’m saying that the people who plan are the people who live, and we need to plan for everything. I saw it on my way home. There are actually people out there who did plan for things like this and they were ready. I wasn’t.”