Alone, Book 3: The Journey (26 page)
Read Alone, Book 3: The Journey Online
Authors: Darrell Maloney
Chapter 55
Dave left everything behind in the trucker’s sleeper. Even his shirt.
Actually, not quite everything.
He carried a pair of Bushnell binoculars around his neck. They were top-of-the-line, and would allow him to easily make out faces at up to half a mile.
There were three faces in particular he hoped to see.
He decided to leave everything else behind in case others had their own binoculars, and could see him coming from a distance.
Dave wanted it to be apparent to everyone that he was unarmed.
He was lucky in that it was warm enough to be comfortable during his hike. He’d been worried that an early spring cool front would cause him to shiver and rethink his plan.
He’d studied the overhead photograph, and the map in the atlas, and knew the lay of the land like the back of his hand. He wouldn’t get lost.
He also wouldn’t get sloppy. Not this time.
If challenged, he would be respectful and state his mission, without deceit nor attitude. He would ask permission to very slowly remove the photograph of Sarah and his girls, now folded up and in his front pocket.
He figured that if the sentry knew Sarah and the girls, it would prove he was who he said he was.
If, on the other hand, the sentry didn’t know them by name, Dave could say, “This is my family. Are they here?”
Slowly and cautiously he moved through the woods, keeping the roadways just in sight and to his right.
Finally, after what seemed like forever, he broke free from the woods.
Before him lay a glorious panorama: a beautiful green pasture, with a cluster of buildings way off in the distance.
Buildings he recognized.
Buildings he once entered.
The buildings of his in-laws’ farm.
Dave went to one knee, behind a squat bush, just inside the tree line.
He raised the binoculars to his face and scanned the area.
He saw a sentry, on horseback, slowly riding away from him and to his right about two hundred yards.
He had a rifle strapped to his back and was riding the fence line, scanning the woods for intruders.
If David had reached the edge of the woods just a minute or so earlier, he’d have stumbled right into the rider’s view.
He wondered if the rider would have been so surprised he’d have shot Dave.
And asked questions later.
In any event, Dave was glad they had enough men to secure the perimeter of the farm.
It made the farm, and its residents and guests, much safer.
He raised the binoculars again and refocused, this time at a spot farther away, where he thought he saw movement.
His heart skipped a beat and he felt breathless.
He figure he saw was unmistakable.
The way she moved, the cut of her hair, the curve of her face.
This was the woman he’d loved for many years. This was the mother of his children.
This was his sweet Sarah. There, before his very eyes.
She was alive, and appeared well, as she carried a basket of laundry to a clothesline fifty yards from the main house.
Ten yards behind her was an escort, a man tasked with following her, to protect her from any sign of trouble. Dave didn’t recognize the man, but it didn’t matter. If he was there as Sarah’s protector, they were on the same team.
Dave resisted the urge to yell out in triumph, to announce his happiness to the world.
For there was something… just not right, about the scene in front of him.
It took him a moment to figure out exactly what it was, but then he could see it very clearly.
The man escorting his Sarah was holding his rifle, not sweeping the horizon and looking for trouble as he should have been.
Rather, he was pointing his rifle directly at Sarah.
He wasn’t her bodyguard.
He was her captor.
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Thank you for reading
ALONE, Part 3: The Journey
Please enjoy this preview of
ALONE, Part 4: The Battle
ALONE, Part 4: The Battle, will be available worldwide in August, 2015
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Dave had probably killed men in Fallujah. But when a Marine Corps fire team fires their weapons into a group of insurgents, and then finds three of them dead, there’s a sense of plausible deniability. It’s possible for each of them to convince themselves that hey, it wasn’t necessarily their own bullet that caused someone’s head to explode. Maybe they missed. Maybe the other Marines administered the kill shot.
So when he left Fallujah, he could in good conscience tell his friends that yes, he shot at people. But so did other Marines beside him. And yes, some of his bullets probably found their mark.
But then again, maybe not.
There were no ballistics tests done on dead insurgents.
After he came back from his tour, Dave did indeed struggle with his conscience. The Bible did, after all, say “Thou shalt not kill.”
It didn’t say, “Thou shalt not kill unless your country tells you to. Then it’s okay.”
It didn’t say, “If the bad guys have guns, go ahead and blow them to pieces.”
So he struggled with what he’d
probably
done.
Then he met with a priest who gave him absolution.
“If you did take another human life, God has forgiven you.”
He was off the hook for the men he’d killed in Iraq.
Mikey was a whole different story. There was no doubt he took Mikey’s life.
But it was dark. Mikey turned, and Dave saw the glint of something shiny in Mikey’s hand. Surely God could see that he had to fire. The Marines had trained him to react swiftly to a threat. They taught him that a slow Marine is a dead Marine. His instinct told him to kill or be killed. So he did.
And even then, even when he knew he had no choice… even then he struggled with what he did.
This. This was new territory for Dave.
The dead man beside him was no threat to Dave.
At least not directly.
He wasn’t shooting at Dave.
In fact, his weapon was still in its holster.
Yes, this was the man who’d brutalized his sweet Sarah.
And given a chance, he probably would have killed Dave.
But Dave didn’t give him that chance.
Dave looked down upon the man’s body, a bit surprised that he felt no guilt.
He felt no remorse.
All he felt was disgust
And not with himself
For the sad fact was, this man was a despicable human being who deserved to die.
He wasn’t the only one. There were four more.
Dave knew that despite his initial reservations, he was up to the task.
The ones he loved most in the world were depending on his being the last one standing.
He moved out. It was time to get it done.
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If you enjoyed
ALONE, Part 3: The Journey
You might also enjoy
RED: The Adventure Begins
RED: The Adventure Begins, will be available worldwide in June, 2015.
Here’s a preview…
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Red had a worried look on her face.
And Red never worried about anything.
“Dad, I don’t like this. This isn’t just a typical blackout. This is something worse. Much worse.”
“Now, honey, don’t jump to conclusions. It’s only been a little more than a day. We’ve had blackouts that lasted longer than this before.
“Look at it like an unearned vacation. We didn’t ask for it, but it’s here. Let’s take a day off and go fishing. Heck, we can’t do anything here anyway.”
But Red was adamant.
“No, Dad. You aren’t listening. Haven’t you noticed we haven’t had any traffic since the power went out? I mean,
none.
In a day and a half we haven’t had a single car roll into town. You know why? Because the cars are all dead, that’s why.
“Bonnie and I rode up to the highway this morning. I wanted to see if I could find which transformer blew, and whether they had a crew out there replacing it.
“What I found instead were abandoned cars, as far as the eye could see, in either direction. Many of them had their hoods up, like their owners had been trying to get them running again.
“There are people up on the highway just wandering around, not knowing what to do. People sleeping in their cars. People in shock.
“Dad, what in the world could possibly cause all the cars to stop working at precisely the same time all the power went out?”
Her father’s face suddenly turned ashen.
He stumbled over his words.
“A nuclear blast at high altitude could have caused it. But only a few countries have the capability of doing that. And they have no reason to. It would harm them as much as us.
“There’s only one other thing I know of that could cause such chaos.”
He didn’t want to go on.
But she needed to know.
“One of the things pilots study is the affect the other planets and sun can have on our own planet. How their gravitational pulls can affect our compasses and such.
There’s a phenomenon that can occur during a massive solar storm. If the storm is large enough, it can send electromagnetic pulses toward the earth. Those pulses can short out anything that runs on electrical power.”
“Dad, please tell me it’s just temporary. That things will start working again once the solar storm has passed.”
“No, honey. I’m sorry. If that’s what’s caused this, then it’s permanent.”
He held her close before finishing.
“And we’re all doomed.”
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If you enjoyed
ALONE, Part 3: The Journey
You might also enjoy
FINAL DAWN
Available now at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble Booksellers.
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What would you do if you finally found the love of your life, and were making plans to spend eternity together - and then found out that eternity was only two years? Mark is a romantic and carefree young engineer, and a bit of a cornball. His beloved Hannah is a beautiful scientist. Pragmatic, intelligent and analytical, she longs for the family she never had, and a change from her horrific childhood. Mark offers that change, and her life is finally complete.
Then Hannah discovers that mankind is doomed. Suddenly their lives become a mad scramble, to find a way to save themselves and everyone they love.
An excerpt from FINAL DAWN:
Sometimes the gods of fate smile upon you, and bestow on you a treasure of such magnitude, such wonder, that you pinch yourself over and over until you finally believe it’s really real.
And sometimes those same gods bestow upon you a bowl of smelly, steaming crap.
