Alone, Book 3: The Journey (21 page)

     Red felt a knot in the pit of her stomach, but said nothing.

     Over the next rise, Dave said, “What the hell is that?”

     It was a bright pink backpack, its compartments zipped open, its contents strewn across both lanes.    

     It was all he could do not to punch the gas pedal. He picked up speed as much as he dared, but didn’t want to move so fast that he drove right past the girl when they did catch her.

     He scanned the left side of the highway, while Red scanned the right.

     The light was starting to dim.

     Dave had a terrible feeling of foreboding.

     Red suddenly shouted, “Stop!”

     Then, in an anguished tone, she said, “Oh, God. No.”

     Dave braked hard, even as he turned his head to the right.

     There, in the high grass just off the highway, lay what appeared to be a heap of clothing.

     Both of them knew it wasn’t.

     Red ran to the girl. Dave hobbled right behind her.

     He stood helpless and watched.

     There was absolutely nothing he could do.

     Even with all of her medical training, Red was helpless as well.

     The girl’s throat had been cut. Nearly all the blood had drained from her body, saturated her clothing and puddled in the muddy ground around her.

     Red stood and walked over to Dave.

     They held each other, but there was no passion between them. Merely the support two humans needed from one another when their world came crashing down.

     Dave said, “I never even asked what her name was.”

Chapter 43

     The world had become a dark and dangerous place.

     They weren’t sure exactly what to do. But the sun was setting and it would be getting dark soon.

     They also didn’t know what had happened or why, but they knew one thing for sure: evil lurked somewhere nearby.

     Whatever they decided to do, it couldn’t be here.

     Dave ignored the pain and picked her up.

     He was amazed at how light she was. It was like carrying a limp oversized doll.

     He couldn’t help but notice that the smile she so freely gave to him earlier that day was now gone, replaced by a hideous look of terror that would adorn her face forever.

     “I’m sorry. I’m so, so, sorry.”

     Dave suddenly felt a heart-wrenching feeling of Deja vu. This was the second young dead person he’d apologized to in recent months.

     And the second death he felt directly responsible for.

     “I shouldn’t have sent her away,” he said. “I should have let her stay with us while we slept. She wasn’t much more than a child. I should have trusted her, and she’d still be alive.”

     Red was steadfast.

     “Don’t you dare take this burden from those who did this despicable thing. You didn’t do this. Neither did I. We weighed our options and came to a decision. Together. Under similar conditions, we’d make the same decision tomorrow. You know it and I know it. So don’t let those bastards, wherever they are, off the hook by accepting responsibility for something someone else did.”

     Red opened the cargo door on the back of the Explorer and Dave placed the girl tenderly inside. She rested atop several bags of clothes and provisions. Her head fell limply to one side and blood rolled from the gash in her neck and onto her bedding.

     Dave didn’t care.

     For a brief instant he thought of little Beth. His youngest. He wondered if she’d been out alone, on a desolate and dangerous highway, whether there might have been others who’d have the chance to help her and would shun her instead. Would Dave hate them for it? Would he lash out at them for it?

     Despite Red’s logic, he felt he caused this.

     Or at least allowed it to happen.

     Despite her pretty words, he did indeed feel responsible.

     And there was absolutely nothing he could do to fix it.

     It was Mikey all over again. The needless death of a young person. A young person who’d never get to experience all there was that made life wonderful. And he could have saved both of them.

     Mikey, by making sure what the young man had in his hand was a weapon before firing.

     And this young girl by taking her in, instead of sending her away.

     “Get in,” Red demanded. “You’ve got plenty of time to think later.”

     They climbed back into the Explorer, and it dawned on Dave it was probably a bad idea for both of them to have left it while it was running. Someone could have emerged from the woods, or from behind a stalled car, and taken off with it.

     When they left it, though, to run to the aid of the girl, it was the last thing on their minds.

     Red reached into the back seat for her Remington and asked, “Can you open that sun roof manually?”

     “No. It’s powered. Or at least it was once.”

     Without another word, she leaned out the passenger window and aimed her rifle toward the tree line.

     Dave had the sense she’d have blown away anybody or anything that emerged, whether they were party to the murder or not.

     She was that incensed.

     For two hours, they shared not a word between them.

     Each of them were lost in their own thoughts.

     And despite her admonishment that Dave not accept responsibility for the girl’s death, Red felt the same guilt herself.

     She, too, could have stopped the girl from leaving and didn’t.

     She wished the dying would end. The world had suffered enough pain.

Chapter 44

     They drove on through the night, stopping only once so Red could visit some nearby bushes.

     Not so she could relieve her bladder, but rather so she could empty her stomach.

     She never told Dave she’d needed to vomit, but he smelled it when she returned to the SUV.

     He almost asked her about it, but figured if she wanted him to know, she’d have told him.

     He dropped it, and assumed that it was her way of relieving stress.

     He remembered vomiting in Iraq, when he watched a medic perform a field amputation of a soldier’s leg.

     Dave’s fire team had stumbled across a shattered Humvee, laying on its side after being flipped by an IED.

     Two were already dead. One man’s upper body was almost completely gone.

     “You two, come and help.”

     The medic’s words were less a request than a demand.

     It didn’t matter that Dave’s team had their own mission to perform. It also didn’t matter that an Army sergeant didn’t normally grab passing Marines and put them to work.

     An American soldier was in trouble. And the Army and the Marines wore the same American flag on their uniform. They were brothers.

     And they lost too many of their own. When they had a chance to send one home alive, they did whatever it took to do so.

     “How can we help, sergeant?”

     “His lower leg is pinned underneath the wreckage. We can’t pull him out, and we can’t roll the vehicle off of him. He’s bleeding badly. His only hope for survival is to take the leg. As soon as I finish the cut I need for you to drag him clear so I can apply a dressing. Can you do that?”

     There was no question whether they could do it. He wore a different uniform, but he was one of them nonetheless.

     The medic applied a tourniquet, gave the man a shot of morphine, and severed the limb as though he were cutting a piece of steak.

     It wasn’t until he was dressing the man’s wound and preparing him for helicopter transport, that Dave made the mistake of looking over his shoulder. To see the man’s lower leg protruding from beneath the shattered Hummer, blood slowly oozing into the desert sand.

     Then he lost his lunch.

     Of course, his lunch had been an MRE. It wasn’t worth keeping anyway.

     Dave could empathize with Red’s plight, and decided not to mention her visit to the bushes.

     Instead, he said, “It’ll be daylight soon. We need to figure out what we’re going to do with her.”

     “Do you have a shovel?”

     “No.”

     “Anything else we can dig a grave with?”

     “No.”

     They were weighing their options when they passed an old stone wall on the right side of the road.

     Dave hit his brakes. At fifteen miles an hour, it didn’t take long to stop.

     Dave was wearing the goggles since he was driving. Red couldn’t see the stone wall and had no clue why he stopped.

     “Why are we stopping? What did you see?”

     “We’ll stop here for the day. I just saw a place where we can bury her, and we passed a semi about fifty yards back.”

     They got out and examined the wall.

     It had once been a majestic work of art, built on both sides of a road leading to a cattle ranch. But that was a long time before. Probably in the 1930s. And the weather had done its damage, causing the mortar to erode and the wall to partially collapse.

     It would suit their needs perfectly.

     Dave gently, almost tenderly, carried the girl from the Explorer to the wall. He went down to one knee and placed her against it.

     As the sun peeked over the horizon and shared its first glorious rays, he examined her and said a prayer over her body.

     Then he took her hands and crossed them over her midsection as Red watched.

     Suddenly, Dave pulled back from the body. He went to his feet and stormed away, brushing past Red and almost knocking her down.

     “What? What’s the matter?”

     Red was aghast. But Dave wasn’t sharing anything. He merely walked away, back to their vehicle.

     Red almost went after him, to demand to know what happened. But he’d let her have her space when she needed it.

     She’d let him have his.

     Instead of chasing him, she went to the girl’s body. To finish what Dave had started.

     She noticed the same thing Dave had.

     A silver bracelet on the girl’s left wrist.

     A bracelet with her name on it.

     A bracelet that said, “Sarah.”

     Red took seventy two rocks that had fallen from the collapsing wall.

     She wasn’t sure why she counted them. Perhaps it was in case Dave asked how many it took.

     Or more likely it made it easier for her to deal with what she was doing.

     One by one, she very gently placed each brick upon the body.

     Once done, she looked to the sky and said, “God, please take Sarah’s soul to a better place. This one really sucks.”

     It wasn’t much of a prayer, but she was satisfied that God had gotten her message.

     Then she went back to the highway, where she found Dave sitting on the pavement next to the truck.

     She placed a hand on his shoulder and said, “Come on. Let’s get some rest.”

Chapter 45

     The sky turned overcast again, which was fitting. A bitter north wind blew in, and it appeared for awhile that Old Man Winter might make one last effort to make their lives even more miserable.

     But the cold brought no precipitation.

     The trip was on again.

     The mood, though, was as somber as ever.

     Red shivered as she climbed behind the driver’s seat to take her turn at the wheel.

     “Please tell me that the heater works in this thing. Lights and windows are luxuries. But I can’t live without my heat.”

     “Sorry. Every one of the fuses blew, including the one for the heater.”

     “The heater had its own fuse? I didn’t know that.”

     “Yep. And even if the heater itself worked, we’d have no way to turn it on. The controls are part of the dashboard, which also fried.”

     “It’s colder than the devil’s heart.”

     “Yep.”

     “Feel like playing forty questions?”

     “Not particularly.”

     “Okay.”

     The pair rode along in silence for the first two hours of the trip.

     The wind had been knocked out of their sails, and neither was really in the mood for pleasant conversation. They were cold, angry, and sad.

     And Red, for one, was a little bit testy.

     “You had the brains to get your car running again. Why the heck didn’t you rig up some kind of heater? I’m freezing over here.”

     “Sarah used to call it a car too. I always told her it’s not a car. It’s an SUV.”

     “What the heck’s the difference?”

     “There’s a big difference. A car’s a car and an SUV is an SUV.”

     “Oh, shut up.”

     Another hour of silence followed.

     Then Dave offered an olive branch.

     “If you want to switch off and let me drive, you can wrap yourself up in blankets. That’ll help.”

     “It doesn’t matter now. I can’t feel my legs and feet anymore anyway.”

     “I can feel mine. They’re toasty warm in these blankets.”

     “Did anybody ever tell you you’re a smartass?”

     “Yep. It’s how I roll. It’s the essence of my soul. It’s the fiber of my being. It’s who I am, and what I am. It’s what I live for.”

     “Oh, brother.”

     For the next few minutes she mulled over his offer. Then she looked over and noticed he was nodding off for a nap.

     She waited a few more minutes, until she was sure he was asleep.

     Then she said, in a loud voice, “Okay. I accept your offer.”

     He shook himself until he was half awake.

     Or at least enough to grunt out, “Huh?”

     “I accept your offer. I’ll let you drive, you give me the blankets.”

     By now Dave was way too comfortable to play her silly game without an argument.

     “I must be having a bad dream. It has an evil woman who wants to steal my blankets.”

     “I’ll show you a bad dream. You shouldn’t make an offer if you’re not planning on keeping it.”

     “You’re right.”

     She pulled over and they switched places.

     “Still want to play forty questions?”

     “Okay. You can start while I’m getting comfy in my new blankets. Ooh, thank you for warming them up for me.”

     Dave tried not to shiver as he muttered, “Don’t mention it.”

     He waited until her arms were buried underneath the blankets. She was less likely to punch him that way.

     “Okay, first question. Why do you pull over to the shoulder every time we switch drivers? I mean, we’re the only ones on the road. You’re not in anybody’s way.”

     “Shut up.”

     He pondered her request.

     “If I shut up, I can’t play the game.”

     “Okay, don’t shut up. But don’t be a back seat driver.”

     “I wasn’t in the back seat. I was in the front seat.”

     “Just how bad do you want to get beaten up tonight?”

     He decided it might be wise to back off a bit.

     “Not much, actually.”

     “Then get on with the next question.”

     “Okay, next question. What are we going to do when we get to Lubbock? Who are we chasing? What are we going to do with him when we find him?”

     She just looked at him for a long moment, then chose her words carefully.

     “You’re not coming with me. The rest does not concern you.”

     “Yes, I am coming with you. You may need my help.”

     “Yeah, sure. I’m going to depend on you for help. I saw you in action in Blanco, remember?”

     Her words stung just a bit.

     “Hey, I can hold my own in a fair fight. I used to be a Marine. But they got the drop on me, and Savage took my gun. Then they hit me from behind and everything went black.”

     “If you expect everything to be a fair fight, you woke up in a different world than I did. We’re going to do what we planned on. We’ll be in Jacksboro sometime tomorrow night. That’s where I get out and say goodbye. You go on your mission and I’ll go on mine. Exactly what my mission is doesn’t concern you.”

     “Yes. It very much concerns me. You saved my life. The very least I can do is to give you some backup in case you need it. My mission has waited for a year. Sarah would understand why it can wait a few more days.”

     “This question is asked and answered. Go on to the next question or I’m going to sleep.”

     Dave dropped the subject. But he wasn’t finished. Not yet.

Chapter 46

     Dave was sullen and moody the next day. He answered Red’s questions and replied to her comments when he felt it appropriate. But he didn’t offer anything more than he had to.

     Sarah, and most of the other women he knew, would have assumed he was mad at them.

     Red would be justified in thinking the same thing. But she didn’t.

     She knew the heartache and guilt he felt from young Sarah’s death. She also knew about Mikey, the high school student Dave shot breaking into his house in San Antonio. Dave was directly responsible for Mikey’s death, sure. But it was justifiable. He had something shiny in his hand that looked like it might be a weapon.

     The fact that it was a silver spoon he was boosting didn’t matter. Red told Dave this, and he already knew it to be true.

     “I know it was an honest mistake. I know that no jury would convict me. He was in my house, and it was dark and I saw something in his hand catch the moonlight as he turned toward me. But the fact is, justified or not, I took a human life. Whether I can forgive myself is irrelevant. A man, a living, breathing human being, is no longer here because of something I did. And nothing you or I or anybody else can say is going to change that.”

     She knew he considered young Sarah a different chapter of the same story. In an effort to protect his property, he made what appeared to be a sound decision. And although he hadn’t intended it so, someone else paid a terrible price for that decision.

     Nothing she’d been able to say changed the mood he was in.

     She finally decided that he was going through a grieving process, as though Sarah was a loved one or a friend. Nothing could speed up the process, or lessen its pain. It was just something he’d have to work through.

     The pair crawled into the trucker’s bunk to rest just before noon. It was to be the last time they’d share such quarters. Both of them knew it, but neither mentioned it. Dave was still in his funk, and Red was content to just let him ride it out. But she would be there for him until they parted ways. Just in case he needed a shoulder to cry on.

     Dave awoke first, about half an hour before sundown.

     His bladder was getting ready to burst. Red was flat on her back next to him and snoring softly.

     He considered his options. He could wake her up, but then she’d be as testy as he was, probably for the entire night. And he needed for her to be in a good mood so he could coerce her into letting him go to Lubbock with her.

     He could just lay back and try to tolerate the pain.

     But it was already hurting terribly, and would just get worse.

     Or, he could try to crawl out of the bunk without waking her.

     It wouldn’t be easy, but he decided the third option was really the only one he had.

     Very slowly he moved, an inch at a time, like a cat stalking its prey. Bit by bit, body part by body part he went, until he climbed over her.

     Dave was directly over the top of her, one foot on either side of her legs and propped up by his toes. His arms were fully extended, one on each side of her torso. It was like he was in the middle of a push-up directly over her body.

     And Red chose that exact moment to wake up.

     Her nose was six inches from his.

     She cleared her throat and calmly said, “I hope this isn’t what it appears to be.”

     Dave hadn’t realized it before, but he now imagined how it would have looked to someone suddenly opening the sleeper’s curtain and peering inside.

     He swallowed hard.

     “Nope. Please don’t kill me.”

     “If it’s not what it appears to be, then exactly what in hell are you doing?”

     “I have to go pee. I’m trying to get out.”

     “Why didn’t you just wake me?”

     “I’ve seen how cranky you get when I wake you.”

     She couldn’t deny it. Not with good conscience anyway.

     Dave hovered over her for just another moment. Then he asked, “Can I go now?”